49 replies to this topic

[YueFei]

Troutmonkey, on 19 November 2013 - 04:54 PM, said:

I've never piloted an awesome but I use both LLs and PPCs on my Stalkers without too much issue. Maybe the lower tonnage gives you less HS sinks, but you can get around Ghost Heat by just chaining LL's and only firing Dual PPC (not 3)

Doesn't work for an Awesome even though it works for a Stalker, because the Stalker's profile and weapon mounting location allows you to peek&shoot efficiently. You expose yourself as little as possible, because your weapon mounts are up high, you don't need to spend alot of time rolling up a hill to fire, and then rolling back down the hill into cover.

WIth the Awesome, you need to spend ALOT more time rolling up a hill to clear your weaponry to fire. And after you shoot, you spend more time rolling back into cover. Combine this with the wide and easy-to-core profile compared to the Stalker, and you see why the Awesome was already disadvantaged. Now you stack ghost heat on top of this, forcing an Awesome pilot to either chain his weaponry and spend *even more time* exposed to enemy fire, or he has to Alpha his stack of weaponry and get ghost heat pushing him toward shutdown.

When they add the ability to crouch, things may improve for the Awesome, but for now, without a big change to hitboxes to make them sturdier, they're going to be at a disadvantage.

Better hitboxes, along with giving the Awesome higher engine limits for faster *twist* speed to block shots with the arms and side torsos, are going to be needed.

[Koniving]

Koniving, on 20 November 2013 - 06:30 AM, said:

Carrioncrows, on 19 November 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

With your version I see a merit and an issue.

We'll go with the issue first. They can't "remove" the 'shoulders' when the arms go, and the arms are really easy to destroy as it is. In fact even if they remove the 'ghost' hitbox that always lingers after the arm is gone (see Centurion 'ghost arm' issue), there's still 25% of the arm left over to cut damage by 50%. But who actually aims that high?

Now here's where that becomes a merit. LRM strikes from any real distance (where an Awesome should be instead of the front line) will come straight down. That means the arms would take a lot of the damage, and later on, reduce a lot of the damage. What this means is that much like a Stalker is actually highly vulnerable to LRMs at long range and not so much to direct fire, the Awesome with Carrion Crow's changes would be highly resistant to LRMs at long range. The downfall to this is that with either design, the CT will take lots more LRM damage than the STs due to the fact that the front CT encompasses the head on all sides.

Both styles leave one core problem. You can kill the Awesome's front CT from behind by hitting the top or back of the head with the slightest upward angle. Much like you can fry the Hunchback's left rear torso by shooting the cylinder from in front or its front CT by hitting the back of its head.

Carrioncrows, on 20 November 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

That's the idea.

The arms themselves do not have a lot of hardpoints in them. The one verson that does, the 8T has 2 energy in each arm and besides that the only other mech is the Pretty baby with 3 hardpoints in the arms.

The arms are there to be used and need to be used.

Where this is going to come into play is for hill humping, cresting a hill and firing and then back down again.

The Awesome is renown for being a mid to long range sniper so having those hit boxs up high will help alleviate some of the damage and though the Awesome has some lower mounted hardpoints it can still be effective by taking the hit on the shoulders and returning fire.

This lines up with the lore of the awesome. Because it has those massive shoulder blades and pauldrons in just about every render or picture ever made. So anything that makes the awesome more unique and tougher is a good thing.

I am all about making assault mechs tougher.

This doesn't mean adding more armor, it means that you have to peel it: Arms, ST, CT.

And yes if it means you have to go through the arm to get to the CT because you have a poor angle or are a bad shot. Well that's just rewarding the pilot for doing a good job of protecting himself. That is what skill is on both sides of the engagement.

[gaSyeraSS]

YueFei, on 20 November 2013 - 09:08 AM, said:

Doesn't work for an Awesome even though it works for a Stalker, because the Stalker's profile and weapon mounting location allows you to peek&shoot efficiently. You expose yourself as little as possible, because your weapon mounts are up high, you don't need to spend alot of time rolling up a hill to fire, and then rolling back down the hill into cover.

WIth the Awesome, you need to spend ALOT more time rolling up a hill to clear your weaponry to fire. And after you shoot, you spend more time rolling back into cover. Combine this with the wide and easy-to-core profile compared to the Stalker, and you see why the Awesome was already disadvantaged. Now you stack ghost heat on top of this, forcing an Awesome pilot to either chain his weaponry and spend *even more time* exposed to enemy fire, or he has to Alpha his stack of weaponry and get ghost heat pushing him toward shutdown.

There arent only hills that can be used as coverage before/after firing, ever tried to walk behind a cover like a building, twist torso towards enemy, shoot a side-mounted weapon and twist back sideways with a stalker? guess no, cause there is nothin to twist. your stalkers ct/st can always be hit from almost any direction. most of you guys only think of walking up hills as a matter of coverage. but the fact is, there are two different types of coverage that can be used, vertical and horizontal. Perfect example for this is a arm/sidetorso mounted weapons on one side... like on Highlander OR the awesome (1x PPC Arm. 2xPPC Sidetorso)

[Tezcatli]

I really don't think it should be part of the arm. It visually looks like it should be part of the side torsos. And the arm hit boxes are high enough that on a side profile you can't hit those shoulders. That's just my opinion.

[SpiralFace]

Tezcatli, on 20 November 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

I really don't think it should be part of the arm. It visually looks like it should be part of the side torsos. And the arm hit boxes are high enough that on a side profile you can't hit those shoulders. That's just my opinion.

I agree with this sentiment.

While I agree with the OP's statements and the fact that the mech still looks disproportionately too heavy in the CT, I don't think the solution is making clear torso components "count as" the arm components.

Mostly because the suggested arms as proposed in the OP makes it the dominating feature on the mech. This would ultimately lead to balance concerns, as you are really hoping for core Torso parts to count as arms, as these parts will act as damage "null zones" when the location is destroyed since it reduces the transferred damage by 50% for every location transferred.

Creating these "null zones" basically makes it where mechs would have core parts of their body where they can naturally try to "shield" attacks from affecting these areas. In the case of the awesome that you drew up, the first thing that comes to mind is LRM balance, as those two nubs would act as arm absorbing shields that would make the spread you get on missiles detract from the amount of total damage they do on the mech overall.

On most mech, especially assault mechs, this would mean that they are not only better at tanking damage, but then "absorbing" damage created by these lost areas. (And as many know assaults are powerful enough as they are.)

I'm all for the Hit box tweaks as the CT area and the pelvic area is a clear sore point for the mech and I agree with the original thread that out lines its distribution to the legs rather then the CT. But the arm's are a can of worms that I think is much more delicate because you are taking away from the core torso hits. My immediate feelings upon seeing at least the awesome is that its a step in the right direction, but the side torso's can extend a bit further into the CT mass, as it is a massive CT zone.

If anything, it should count as an arm hit only through a sliver of a hit box that covers the geometry that faces the arm like it does for some of the light mechs, but to have a massive protruding hit box mass that "counts as" as arm despite it being a large portion of the torso area is in my mind a bit too much.

Asides from a slight reduction in CT size, I like the new distribution on the current model. If anything, I think this is a case where the physical mesh geometry should be adjusted a little bit. (Similar to how the early catapult CT was modded.) The awesome was always hulking assault mech, but its pretty much a walking barn from both the front and side profile the way its current interpretation is handled.

[John MatriX82]

Dear Spiralface, I understand the concerns and I'm sure there are a lot of people that think what you do, as probably PGI did.

The awesome is a gimped, inferior chassis since its first appearance. It was feared with large engines, 6 MPLs and a cr4pload od single heatsinks back in CB, but then engine restrictions, Atlases, Cataphracts, Stalkers, Highlanders, Victors, DHSs not working @ 2.0, ghost heat, have really made it obsolete.


To make it more useful it needs serious buffs, one is that of the shoulder hitboxes, the others are engines upped for 8 series, the third (but relatively less important) is to give specific bonuses like 3xPPC firing ability.

With the latest hitbox adjustement, the survivability while employing standard engines has improved, but at the expense of the XL ones, thus making 9M and PB and their large engine capability less useful.

What I (and not only I do, you can see Carrion's posts, but there are many others who share the idea) propose it's a solution to keep that gimped, "moving wall"-like model as it is now.. tweaked to make it a decent and enjoyable ride.

Even with those adjustements, it will still be the bulkiest and the easiest to hit (because you'll hardly miss to hit a giant flag) of all MWO mechs.
If anything of what I say and many other folks who have been asking for a rethinking of that chassis... can't be done, then it's a serious time to talk about re-making the whole model from scratch.

Finally I'd like to remind that Centurions are so "tanky" thanks to the ability to absorb less damage while the side torsoes are blown away, because the broken arm transfers 50% of the damage to the side torso, if the latter is blown off, then the damage transfered to the CT is only 25%.
In this particular case-scenario, an experienced player will know that to reach for a XL engine, the hitbox of the side torso isn't the upper shoulder, but the still quite extended side-chest area.

[SpiralFace]

Hench why I said in my final part that I feel the Geo needs more attention then just the raw hit boxes.

I'm not disagreeing that its defiantly a sore spot in the lineup, but creating huge arm zones out of giant torso chunks I feel would cause more problems in the long run then they solve. Just think, if you destroy the torso location and then hit that upper shoulder area with an AC 20, all of a sudden, you only take 5 damage in the CT. Where as it would be 10 damage if it counted as a torso hit. This makes a significant portion of the remaining torso components that don't get destroyed with the arm an active shield causing you to absorb damage at a ridiculous rate since only 25% would transfer to the CT. And not just on a specialized chunk of the mech like the centurion, but a LARGE portion of the mechs torso. Attacking the mech from up high or with LRM's would instant gimp the arms, and then provide an active shield later for the rest of the mech. To me, this is not a good solution because rather then balance out what is already there, this throws the entire dynamic of the mech on its head in what I think is a bad way because it creates such huge null zones. (Where the centurion shield is only really relevant for flank hits against the mech from a single side.)

Additionally, a "remake" of the mech wouldn't be needed. As most modders have pointed out, the original Catapult had a much broader cockpit and CT initially that has been altered to slim down the CT profile of the CAT from the front. The same could be done with the Awesome. Its involved, but not impossible as its already happened before within the development process. Both for the CAT and the Raven.

For now, they need to collect their data, I would rather they do incremental adjustments addressing different things then just take a hammer to a single problem. The problems with the Awesome's don't begin and end with only the hitboxes. I would rather see them go slow and steady to create a more balanced solution to addressing the frame then just take a sledge hammer to the design for the sake of getting people to use them.

[BINDLETORC]

I play my awesomes a lot. they used to be tricky given their quirks and huge hitbox on the CT. Played today for the first time after the patch and I was astounded by the difference. No longer do I need to worry about my CT. I am dead before I start. AWS-PB out of the box with an XL is toast in seconds.
Keep working on it, please.

[SchwarzerPeter]

I don't see the point in making part of the side torsos arms. It would be utterly confusing for everybody who is not driving a awesome. Making the CT smaller will result in bigger side torsos, logically. And running an XL in a assault is a risk in the first place.

[Troutmonkey]

I really like this idea. It makes the Awesome unique in it's ability to spread damage. Giving one advantage to an otherwise gimped chassis.
Once the arms are blown off those areas of the arm still remaining would become part of the side torsos hit box, and take damage normally. It's still fat and easy to hit, but at least a torso twisting will go a lot further

[Zomboyd]

I love the look of the user made hit box for the awesome maybe its something that should be looked at for a lot of mechs. especially assults

[hercules1981]

I'll add my 2 cents in and say, u fixed the pelvic area so what's so hard about increasing the arm area and decreasing the side torso area(which is what every1 that plays this game has been saying for months) PGI u must want 80 ton punching bags running around for all of us to shoot at cause it isn't the victor that's for sure. I sold my 9m as soon as the victor came out because it is inferior and every1 knows it. Slower, easier to hit for sure, and no jets. At least give it a chance by making those arm hit boxes bigger. I bet all your buddies joke with u and say, dam u really messed up on those hit boxes man, look those shoulders be arm hit boxes not side torso. U hit box designator or whatever u call yourself there at PGI guy!

Edited by hercules1981, 20 November 2013 - 05:03 PM.

[SpiralFace]

Troutmonkey, on 20 November 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

I really like this idea. It makes the Awesome unique in it's ability to spread damage. Giving one advantage to an otherwise gimped chassis.
Once the arms are blown off those areas of the arm still remaining would become part of the side torsos hit box, and take damage normally. It's still fat and easy to hit, but at least a torso twisting will go a lot further

That is the issue though,

First off, the arms become the biggest part of the mech, and there for take more proportional damage then core hits do.

Additionally, once you nuke the arm, the "shoulder bits" don't just become parts of the torso, they become a shield that stops 50% of the damage from transferring from the arm locations to the next locations. This means that more then 1/3rd of the current side torso surface area becomes abrasive shields that absorb damage making it more difficult to take out the mech as a whole despite a solid torso hit. Its one thing when they are small "one off" bits like the centrion that only affect hits from the side, but when they are super large portions of your entire body structure, its a bit on the abusive side.

This is only compounded when you see that the 1/3rd of the side torso that is affected by this is also the top `1/3rd of the entire model. This would mean that hits that "come high" like LRM's or shots from elevated terrain have an increased chance of nuking the arms and then having half of their damage just "bounce off" the dead limb.

I'm all for making the Awesome more competitive, but this is on the abusive side. Just as torso's should be fairly equial in coverage, so should the arms be as well. Not dominate the hit box structures in the name of making things able to just abuse the hit transfer system.

[John MatriX82]

SpiralFace, on 20 November 2013 - 08:26 PM, said:

I'm all for making the Awesome more competitive, but this is on the abusive side. Just as torso's should be fairly equial in coverage, so should the arms be as well. Not dominate the hit box structures in the name of making things able to just abuse the hit transfer system.

The surface of the side torsoes even in that case (aka having the shoulder pauldron to be part of the arm hitbox as in that image), would be much higher than that of an Highlander or of a Victor, maybe even more than an Atlas too; it would be still pretty easy to hit especially once the arm has been blown off, because all the side is exposed and visible even if you torso twist. It wouldn't be a problem at all, imho.

Quite frankly the whole model is wrong, albeit I like the looks, since day 0. It deserves that love, or at least to let us try that. Even with that combo, don't fear that awesomes will become uber competitive mechs, they don't have JJs, they still retain that huge shape, their weapons will still fire from the hip, but at least you could try to have some fun into them from time to time.

As it is now, we're all short of one assault, a chassis worth 5 darn and pretty different variants. Few assaults can say to have as many and quite different from each other; we could talk about the Stalkers, but Stalkers are all the same!

[SpiralFace]

John MatriX82, on 21 November 2013 - 02:18 AM, said:

The surface of the side torsoes even in that case (aka having the shoulder pauldron to be part of the arm hitbox as in that image), would be much higher than that of an Highlander or of a Victor, maybe even more than an Atlas too; it would be still pretty easy to hit especially once the arm has been blown off, because all the side is exposed and visible even if you torso twist. It wouldn't be a problem at all, imho.

See, to me, this is why having the arms transfer to the inside torso all the way up to the CT is just going to cause more issues with the damage transfer.

With the Centurion, the shield is only one one arm and has a very distinctive profile that only really makes it applicable from flank hits. The proposed arms extending into the torso not just cover the upper section of the torso, but also the shoulder nub and socket (which still remains even after arm destruction.)

This means that in addition to getting a nub that covers close to half of the torso area from the flank that allows shielded damage (which i'm fine with as that is consistent with other designs,) you also get an entire 3rd of your side torso mass that is dedicated to the arms as well that also will not be destroyed with an arm destruction. That 1/3rd of your entire torso is then just there to block damage, which is completely unfair to other designs that simply don't do that. The major deal breaker to me, is that nub takes up nearly all of the mech torso's "vertical profile" which means that attacks from up top on maps like Frozen City or Canyon Networks will more then likely hit the Arms or the CT rather then the right or left torsos because that section pretty much sheilds your entire upper torso's from attacks expecially after the damage reduction stuff starts kicking in.

In the end its not up to us but the dev's to balance this. And personally, I can see why they wouldn't copy your suggested layout 1 for 1. Its good to see them looking into it, and I think they can defiantly tighten up the profile on the side torso's as in the image that you linked to, but the entire arms extending to cover 1/3rd of the side torso mass thing to me is a bad idea because of how it affects the damage transfer rates on the residual parts that are left behind. We already have a large shoulder socket that is already apart of the arms that blocks damage from the flanks, I personally do not see a reason why we have to have one from the front as well.

[John MatriX82]

The reason is always the same, to make the chassis more viable. It's a bonus, I quite frankly don't see so much "unfairness". At the moment the thing is unfair because it's the bulkiest mech of the whole game, larger than an Atlas but with 20 tons less to be used for weaponry and.. armor.


We're both bringing as an example the Centurion, which tbh is sturdy as it is reknown also because it's bugged, not only for the nub or the side torsoes that reduce dmg transfer to the ct when they are blown off (try it for yourself, a lot of times you shoot the ct or side torsoes and dmg is dealt to the arms, in an inexplicable way).

And what do you do with Centurions to better deal with them due to the above issue? You shoot the legs.

Awesome's legs are those proper of a sumo warrior (with the same kind of scuffs too ); making the upper pauldrons part of the arm hitbox won't save an AWS from the (pretty easy) risk of being legged to death.

[Roland]

SpiralFace, on 20 November 2013 - 08:26 PM, said:

That is the issue though,

First off, the arms become the biggest part of the mech, and there for take more proportional damage then core hits do.

Additionally, once you nuke the arm, the "shoulder bits" don't just become parts of the torso, they become a shield that stops 50% of the damage from transferring from the arm locations to the next locations. This means that more then 1/3rd of the current side torso surface area becomes abrasive shields that absorb damage making it more difficult to take out the mech as a whole despite a solid torso hit. Its one thing when they are small "one off" bits like the centrion that only affect hits from the side, but when they are super large portions of your entire body structure, its a bit on the abusive side.

This is only compounded when you see that the 1/3rd of the side torso that is affected by this is also the top `1/3rd of the entire model. This would mean that hits that "come high" like LRM's or shots from elevated terrain have an increased chance of nuking the arms and then having half of their damage just "bounce off" the dead limb.

I'm all for making the Awesome more competitive, but this is on the abusive side. Just as torso's should be fairly equial in coverage, so should the arms be as well. Not dominate the hit box structures in the name of making things able to just abuse the hit transfer system.

Your assertion that the awesome would somehow become some unstoppable juggernaut is laughable.

Make the change, and see what happens. I'm 99% sure that you're not gonna suddenly see awesomes running all over the field in every game, because they will still generally be inferior to every other assault mech.

[Bad Andy]

I'm still disturbed by PGI's previous assertions that the Atlas is the "endgame" Assault mech. Actually, right now the Highlander is the premier assault mech for competitive play. But the attitude towards mech classes should definitely be "rock paper scissors" rather than asserting that the Awesome is an entry tier assault mech from which you progress to the Atlas. That isn't a realistic attitude in an enviroment in which most players have spent hundreds of millions of c bills on mechs already.

[Gorgo7]

John MatriX82, on 20 November 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

With the latest hitbox adjustement, the survivability while employing standard engines has improved, but at the expense of the XL ones, thus making 9M and PB and their large engine capability less useful.

After having used my 9M with an XL380 since the hit box fix. I couldn't disagree with the above sentiment more. The smaller CT meaning a transfer of damage to the ST's works wonderfully, it is especially useful on the STD engined 8Q and 8T's that I run.
KUDOS to the designers.

It seems to me that the armchair designers who are complaining are doing so because their "vision" didn't get played out.

Run your Awesome's for a couple of weeks before accusing the designers of not listening to (and fixing) your complaints. That's what I'm doing and it's looking good!

Cheers!

[John MatriX82]

Yep now you lose sides as easy as you lost the ct previously. I don't even bother to bring an AWS vs the players I play against daily, with the hitbox change that Carrion (and many others like me) are pushing, it could stand a little chance, without it's as worthless as it was before the fix.