91 replies to this topic

[Madurai]

Since none of the BT universe weapons seem to be any great shakes in the accuracy department anyway, having a lot of dispersion off the reticle seems to be the easiest fix for the problem. You want to aim way off center-of-mass for fancy trick-shooting? Go ahead and try.

I'm hoping that there are playable tanks, anyway.

[Sovery_Simple]

Why not mix the systems? One leg goes offline? Then you move with a horrid limp. Second leg goes offline? You fall to the ground, able to shoot still. Then you either win or die trying. Well, that or eject ~.^

[eXecute]

pbiggz, on 31 October 2011 - 04:22 PM, said:

In mechwarrior 4 if you destroyed the leg, the battlemech limped at half speed, destroying the second one destroyed it, your thinking of 3, where the legging was the end, and this was likely due to simple game engine limitations.

I would expect something similar to mechwarrior living legends, where getting legged throws you onto the ground, giving you the choice to either fight on to the bitter end, firing at what you can, or ejecting.

Mech 4 you can blow it off and it goes into a limp, hit it again and the whole mech goes up. Mech 3 you can crit the leg to make it limp and hit it again and the mech falls down but the pilot dies.....

[CobraFive]

Well... since this is an MMO now, and our pilots have skills, maybe it should be related to that?

So say you can take a skill that makes it so you limp instead of fall down when you get legged. But of course taking that skill would be to the exclusion of another skill... like accuracy boosts to autocannons or increased sensor range or what have you.

I still think legging, itself, shouldn't be easy. Shot dispersion is perfect as mentioned, and fits the fluff anyway. Plus, it can let us specialize our pilot skills, focusing on increasing the accuracy of particular weapons.

Edited by cobrafive, 31 October 2011 - 09:16 PM.

[Tyra]

Discussions like this make me excited for this game.

[Hayden]

Out of curiosity does anyone remember the opening cinematic from MechWarrior 3? After the MadCat goes critical the Vulture is caught in the explosion and the right leg rendered immobile: the result is that the 'Mech appears to go much slower than even half speed. Why not take a page from that? Say make the leg being blown off as being contingent on an extra critical roll? I.E. The leg is destroyed, a critical roll is made, if the roll succeeds the leg is blown off and the 'Mech falls over and can then sit up: if the roll fails the leg remains attached but is completely useless, greatly slowing down the 'Mech?

[Beaker]

People who complain about legging usually fall in to 3 categories ::

1 :: Clanners with some idea that it's dishonourable to leg.
2 :: People who strip armour off them to fit another LL and heatsink in there.
3 :: People in horribly slow mechs who just got pecked to death by a light that weighs less than the weapon loadout of the Assult they are plodding around in.

Legs are a part of the mech, therefore a valid target.

[Silent]

Mech tippin' errday.

In my opinion, a heavily damaged leg should slow the mech down to a limp, while a completely destroyed leg should tip it over. If certain pilot skills are high enough there should be a chance that a falling mech recovers and goes prone, or manages to balance itself. That way, rookies would probably find themselves very rarely getting out of a situation like that, while veterans would have a better chance of recovering due to experience.

[CobraFive]

beaker, on 31 October 2011 - 09:34 PM, said:

People who complain about legging usually fall in to 3 categories ::

1 :: Clanners with some idea that it's dishonourable to leg.
2 :: People who strip armour off them to fit another LL and heatsink in there.
3 :: People in horribly slow mechs who just got pecked to death by a light that weighs less than the weapon loadout of the Assult they are plodding around in.

Legs are a part of the mech, therefore a valid target.

I'm not a clanner, I don't strip the armor off to game the system, and I've never had that problem in an Assault mech... so... no?

The reason I think legging is dumb is because its too easy. Which is presciently why pretty much no-one has suggest removing legging, only that it needs to be tweaked for good gameplay. Otherwise everyone will be legging everyone over and over forever, like MW3.

[Lester McDougan]

Why your mech would explode by having a leg destroyed makes no sense. Falling over yes, actuator crits slowing movement? yuppers, Stackpoling?!?! **** no (although there could be a chance for an engine crit from dmg sustained when falling). As for legging being a viable tactic, of course it is. Do I like it when it happens to me? Not one bit but bravo for being able to do it. Every mechs legs are different depending on design and what type of frame they need to support so while most of the lights have paper thin armor down there they also have a horrible target profile with often spindly legs. Hit recognition should reflect the size of the target. Same should go with cockpit size. Some are obviously larger than others and make easier targets. So pilot death should be something to strive for as well.

[Goose]

Seems to me legging is the biggest symptom of guns being way too accurate in the game. Back in MW2, I could tie together 6 Ultra/2s (IIRC), and blow most things to ****'n gone in ~.75 seconds, 'cause they all hit the same location. In the board game, you do that, and all the damage would spread across 4 or so locations.

There needs to be a way for fire that doesn't involve a Targeting Computer to scatter around the target, weather it's giving all units a nasty gnat (the guys whom stand still should take it in the shorts), or piling on a lengthy fire delay, or what.

But it needs to be there.

[lichbane]

wahlnutz, on 31 October 2011 - 04:20 PM, said:

I would love to see legs hamper movement after being critically damaged/destroyed, to seeing the leg be blown off of the mech toppling it to the ground and having the possibility of continuing to engage from a restricted prone position.

This +10

[xXGLORYXx]

If they make it so a blown off leg makes you fall over, I really hope they also make ejecting count against you like in the other games so I can leg the whiners and make their score go negative from repeated sui's. Just kidding, eveyone who plays is a nice guy and would never grief anyone, right?... right?

Limping was good, but I'm with the people who think it might not be 1 object or the same result eveytime you shoot a leg. I hope atleast. Just remember kids, if they cannot see your legs they cannot shoot them. I kinda compare it to the best alternative to LAMs, a hill.

[nighthawk441]

The most fair thing i can see is this:

You cannot die from having both legs blown off but,

1 leg gone = 1/4 speed
both legs gone = 1/8 speed

After this all damage taking to legs should be shifted to the body / torso ( i think some other mw game did this )

To me destroying legs is more of a mech hindering strategy, similar to taking out arms and shoulder mounted missile racks.
Taking out the enemies weapons will give you a significant advantage, and the same will go for a mech 1/8 speed, allowing you to basically line up perfect shots afterwards.

when i played mechwarrior 4 with my friends it was always a huge legging battle with autocannons, I felt as if it took away a lot of the fun from the game.

And this all relates to the idea that mechs during battle should often be disabled, going critical only happening on rare occasions.

[Sauron]

I don't think there's a way to make everyone happy when it comes to thinks like legging, head-shots, stripping, etc. I intend to leave how this is handled up to Piranha games and adjust to whatever it is they release. I will try to keep it fun for those I am lucky enough to get to play this next generation of Mechwarrior games with.

[xXGLORYXx]

keeping in mind that we don't know the scoring system or match progression...

In MW4 people legged generally beause people use less armor there than anyother part except for the hud and back. The better players either killed the other guy with CT shots quickly to remove mechs and dominate the field or they took weapons off the other mechs to make them ineffective. Legs were generally reserved for when a player didn't armor them and it became a quick kill or wanting to gimp the mech before dying or in an attempt to kill before being killed, oh and griefing.

The mediocre players usually went for legs because of players not using leg armor and that was the easy way for them to actually get kills, ofcourse legging doesn't really give many points.

The bad players cried about legging and tried to impress their personal sense of honor, lol, on other players.

[Kristof Bowen]

This is MechWarrior, therefore there will be legging.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Trouble with legs- **** any location is that the games rules are written not expecting you to be able to target a particular location. You don't control where the shot goes. With a sim you control where you fire. This is particularly problematic with alpha strikes as they all tend to hit the same spot.

Couple fixes
-Dispersion like most tactical FPS have. Your weapon will land somewhere in the circle. Calculated per weapon, so each weapon has a chace to hit a different spot. Bonus- pilot skill can make this smaller/larger.
- Make alpha strike have a much larger dispersion than normal. This will make it almost impossible to alpha strike any limb without wasting a lot of damage. Pilot skill again could affect this.
-Make different hit boxes for armor/crits and internal structure. That way the internal structure hit box can be adjusted to reduce the chance of completely removing limbs.


Damage should probably knock you down. That way you can take falling damage and add another roll for pilot skill. I'd just allow mechs with a blown off leg to get back up on successful attempt and walk at a slow limp.
I don't hate the idea of breaking legs up into smaller pieces, however it gets further away from the paper rules.

[SM SUCKER]

MWLL did a good job on legging. They increased the armor on the legs (amount of armor is now between side and center torso) so that it is a tactic that comes at a price.
And hitting the legs is not as easy as is hitting the torsos.
Let's see how MWO will handle aiming.

[Owl Cutter]

We should be able to have fun legging mechanics without it becoming a cheap tactic.

fenixstryk, on 31 October 2011 - 04:33 PM, said:

In MW2, unless I'm misremembering, if you lost a leg, you fell over and waited for them to kill you. You could still shoot.
In MW3, if you lost a leg, you died instantly.
In MW4, if you lost a leg, you moved at half speed and any further damage to that leg went to your Center Torso / Internals.
I don't remember what MechAssault did and I don't really care.

I would go with what MW2/MWLL did. I don't really fancy the idea of limping around, but instant death doesn't seem fair either.

In MW2, losing one leg leaves you standing in place unless you have functioning jump jets, in which case you get to jump and use lateral thrust. In [MW2:] Mercs you fall over and have to torso-twist to hit anything. It's as fun as it sounds. You could still use jump jets in Mercs, too; when using them, they right your 'mech but you fall over again when you stop thrusting. It's hilarious and awesomely immersive at the same time, so I'd like for legging to work the same way in MWO but with one change.

The reason it's too drastic a result for the effort, esp. if salvage is important, is that in a game with actual aiming involved we get a choice between damage divided across two locations when aiming low and six when aiming high. Just give armor allocated to legs some extra resistance to incoming damage, so shooting at the torso and arms becomes at least as desirable. I like the idea of being able to get better salvage through greater effort; kill it as quick as possible but lose out on spare parts and upgrades, or take more time and risk for a bigger payoff?