92 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

Absolutely awful.

If they had made it impact the climb angle, like "size" ratings do, then it would have been very useful.

10 degree/20% better climb angle? SIGN ME UP!
10% reduction to 1 second of momentum loss? Uhh...

Troutmonkey, on 22 November 2013 - 08:42 PM, said:

+10% reduction in deceleration? I'll Pass
+10% in degree of climbing possible? I'll take three please

Looks like we feel the same way, but I swear I didn't see your post first.

I started a thread on this the second the module got announced, though. It's silly. I don't know why they wouldn't realize how useless it is like this.

[MavRCK]

Maybe the module was suppose to be 100%?

[Corvus Antaka]

50% would seem more reasonable, especially given the cost.

[Tolkien]

daemur, on 21 November 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

I see your request, and raise you this:



The image relates to my above hypothetical scenario. The amount of time it takes for a mech to decelerate is variable.

Thank you very much for clarifying this, Daemur, as it lets users make an informed decision on where to splash our hard earned GXP.

[Muffinator]

JimboFBX, on 22 November 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

either the description of what it does is inaccurate or you are imagining it

Have you tried it? Cos it would be pretty rich for someone who hasn't tried the module to be telling someone who has, how well it works...

Edited by Muffinator, 23 November 2013 - 02:46 AM.

[Atheus]

Muffinator, on 23 November 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

Have you tried it? Cos it would be pretty rich for someone who hasn't tried the module to be telling someone who has, how well it works...

If I told you about a module that added 1cm range to lasers and then told you that it really boosted my laser damage, would you be a bit skeptical? It's quite possible to gauge a module's usefulness without actually trying it. Otherwise, how would you know which module to purchase?

[Tolkien]

I drew up an example to help myself understand what the module would do in action.



I've selected 35 degrees since it's midway between the speed where a catapult is initially affected (25 degrees) and where it would stall (45 degrees) so it will move at half speed - see here for more info http://mwomercs.com/...ement-behavior/

In this case the vertical displacement is 25m *sin(35 degrees) = 14.34m
This makes the face of the hill 28.82 metres in length from the bottom to the top.

The catapult is initially moving at 80 kph (22.2222 m/sec) and will decelerate to half that (11.1111 m/sec) over a certain distance.

Using d=v1t+1/2 At^2 we can calculate this distance.

Without Module:
Without the hill climb module installed, t is 1.0 so A=(11.111-22.222)/1.0, or -11.111m/s^2
d=22.222-5.555
d=16.666 metres up the hill before we are moving at 40 kph.
This means the remaining 12.154 metres (28.82-16.666) will take 12.154/11.111 =1.094 seconds

The total time to get to the top is 2.094 seconds!


With Module:
Without the hill climb module installed, t is 1.1 so A=(11.111-22.222)/1.1, or -10.101m/s^2
d=24.444-5.051
d=19.394 metres up the hill before we are moving at 40 kph.
This means the remaining 9.427 metres (28.82-19.394) will take 9.427/11.111 =0.848 seconds

The total time to get to the top is 1.948 seconds!

So for 15,000 GXP and millions of cbills, and a module slot you can get up there 146 milliseconds or ~6% faster you lucky so and so.


Bonus round! What happens if the catapult starts half way up a hill?

Let's imagine a scenario where you're on an island, watching the enemy changing position over time (e.g. crimson strait). You have managed to get yourself a nice ridge to watch from on the side of a hill with some cover, but you do not have jumpjets so you have to walk up and down to take shots and return to cover. Does the hill climb module help us prevent the enemy freely changing positions?



Sadly no, pro-mctagonist is initially stopped, so the hill deceleration module does nothing in this scenario.

So in short, it's more of a hill charging module than a hill climbing module. It will (ever so slightly) improve how fast you can charge up a given hill, but it won't actually make your climbing abilities any better if you ever stop.

[ShinVector]

Tolkien, on 23 November 2013 - 02:53 AM, said:

So in short, it's more of a hill charging module than a hill climbing module. It will (ever so slightly) improve how fast you can charge up a given hill, but it won't actually make your climbing abilities any better if you ever stop.

Thanks for the write up.. I knew those module pedallers scammed me..

[Atheus]

Tolkien, on 23 November 2013 - 02:53 AM, said:

I drew up an example to help myself understand what the module would do in action.

Spoiler

I've selected 35 degrees since it's midway between the speed where a catapult is initially affected (25 degrees) and where it would stall (45 degrees) so it will move at half speed - see here for more info http://mwomercs.com/...ement-behavior/

In this case the vertical displacement is 25m *sin(35 degrees) = 14.34m
This makes the face of the hill 28.82 metres in length from the bottom to the top.

The catapult is initially moving at 80 kph (22.2222 m/sec) and will decelerate to half that (11.1111 m/sec) over a certain distance.

Using d=v1t+1/2 At^2 we can calculate this distance.

Without Module:
Without the hill climb module installed, t is 1.0 so A=(11.111-22.222)/1.0, or -11.111m/s^2
d=22.222-5.555
d=16.666 metres up the hill before we are moving at 40 kph.
This means the remaining 12.154 metres (28.82-16.666) will take 12.154/11.111 =1.094 seconds

The total time to get to the top is 2.094 seconds!


With Module:
Without the hill climb module installed, t is 1.1 so A=(11.111-22.222)/1.1, or -10.101m/s^2
d=24.444-5.051
d=19.394 metres up the hill before we are moving at 40 kph.
This means the remaining 9.427 metres (28.82-19.394) will take 9.427/11.111 =0.848 seconds

The total time to get to the top is 1.948 seconds!

So for 15,000 GXP and millions of cbills, and a module slot you can get up there 146 milliseconds or ~6% faster you lucky so and so.


Bonus round! What happens if the catapult starts half way up a hill?

Let's imagine a scenario where you're on an island, watching the enemy changing position over time (e.g. crimson strait). You have managed to get yourself a nice ridge to watch from on the side of a hill with some cover, but you do not have jumpjets so you have to walk up and down to take shots and return to cover. Does the hill climb module help us prevent the enemy freely changing positions?



Sadly no, pro-mctagonist is initially stopped, so the hill deceleration module does nothing in this scenario.

So in short, it's more of a hill charging module than a hill climbing module. It will (ever so slightly) improve how fast you can charge up a given hill, but it won't actually make your climbing abilities any better if you ever stop.

There should be some sort of award for posts like these. I'd like to nominate this one. Brilliant!

To further drive the point home that this module is worthless, that scenario is practically "best benefit scenario" for that module, by using a small hill that takes ~2 seconds to climb. As the hill gets larger (and your Vfinal takes a larger share of the hill climb) the module's impact on the full climb diminishes even further.

Edited by Atheus, 23 November 2013 - 03:44 AM.

[Ensaine]

Goes to show how out of touch these dev's are........sounds like 5 minutes in game should have pointed them in the right direction.......

[Tolkien]

Atheus, on 23 November 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

There should be some sort of award for posts like these. I'd like to nominate this one. Brilliant!

To further drive the point home that this module is worthless, that scenario is practically "best benefit scenario" for that module, by using a small hill that takes ~2 seconds to climb. As the hill gets larger (and your Vfinal takes a larger share of the hill climb) the module's impact on the full climb diminishes even further.

Addendum - similar to what you said - if you are climbing across a very large hill like on caustic in the centre, or on alpine, the module will do approximately nothing expressed as a fraction of the time you spend walking. Reason being it's only doing anything during that initial period of deceleration.

Also, if you are stopped and then start to climb a hill, I doubt it does anything since you will just accelerate up to your maximum hill climbing speed and it doesn't say anything in the module description about increasing acceleration when moving uphill, just decreasing deceleration (not exactly the same thing).

[Zolaz]

This module is PGI's new way to troll their player base.

[Atheus]

Zolaz, on 23 November 2013 - 09:02 AM, said:

This module is PGI's new way to troll their player base.

That was actually my first thought. And here I thought I managed to avoid getting trolled by not purchasing the module, but in the end I still got trolled because I've probably spent an hour and a half in these stinkin' forums talking about how {Scrap} that module is.

[Deathlike]

I guess this is a good time to ask if spending 5k GXP on the Adv Gyro module is worth it.

[Jonathan Paine]

Loved the post Tolkien! Over broken terrain you can maintain roughly a 6% speed advantage. Used correctly, a mech on broken terrain with a 325 engine can keep up with a mech with a 340 (same tonnage).
Too bad hill climbing is a module, while speed tweak is a skill. Should be the other way around.

[Tolkien]

Jonathan Paine, on 23 November 2013 - 10:14 AM, said:

Loved the post Tolkien! Over broken terrain you can maintain roughly a 6% speed advantage. Used correctly, a mech on broken terrain with a 325 engine can keep up with a mech with a 340 (same tonnage).
Too bad hill climbing is a module, while speed tweak is a skill. Should be the other way around.

I think you can actually do a little better than 6% over broken terrain. The goofy thing about the way this is implemented is that it does the "most" over a bump that takes your mech *EXACTLY* 1.1 seconds to traverse, but still not very much. At best it would be ~10% ish using the same slope as in the example above. Over any sort of climb up a real hill (e.g. the caldera or alpine) this isn't going to do squat as a percentage.

[Jonathan Paine]

I find that the module works best when you do the left right traverse, trying to stay at the optimum climbing angle by switching direction. My optimum experience was heading towards the center of Terra Therma, where I doubled the speed of a lance mate who went straight up.

[Atheus]

Jonathan Paine, on 23 November 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

I find that the module works best when you do the left right traverse, trying to stay at the optimum climbing angle by switching direction. My optimum experience was heading towards the center of Terra Therma, where I doubled the speed of a lance mate who went straight up.

This sounds pretty suspicious to me. You're not going to get 100% more speed out of this module no matter what, so your anecdote is obviously misleading.

[Tolkien]

Jonathan Paine, on 23 November 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

I find that the module works best when you do the left right traverse, trying to stay at the optimum climbing angle by switching direction. My optimum experience was heading towards the center of Terra Therma, where I doubled the speed of a lance mate who went straight up.

If I understand how the slowdown system works, this is because you can climb a hill much faster doing a shallower approach than going straight up.

E.g. If you go straight up a hill that is 35 degrees in our imaginary catapult you are going to go at 40 kph (half speed).

If one of your teammates goes up that same hill not straight on, but at a 45 degree angle to the slope, your friend will have to cover 41% more ground than you did, but he'll be doing it at double the speed, since the effective gradient of the slope will be less than 25 degrees along his path of travel!

2/1.41 = 1.41

So even without a hill climb module, if you take this theoretical hill at an angle you can get up it >40% faster than someone who just charges straight up.

[Jonathan Paine]

Also, since the module slows down speed loss, you lose less speed while you change direction - since you are hitting a steeper slope while you turn from side to side. End result: more than 10% boost.

But yeah, this is more like a "rough terrain" module than a hill climber.