437 replies to this topic

[Black Sunder]

Personally I htink you should be able to fire as many weapons as you want at once in groups as you want. Go ahead and risk a shutdown or even worse, a core breach with an alpha of 12 lasers. My lancemates will see to your destruction while you're cooling off. If I survive, I'll be there to help them as well.

[Malavai Fletcher]

Honestly i dont even see where half of you are comming from with your point of views.I played and commanded many drops through the mw4 series in the NBT league,people allways complained about this then,it was usually because they weren't as quick or as accurate as the person/team they had been fighting,or they just used really bad tactics.

There were in the league two teams that were absolute monsters with mechs boating lasers,so the one thing i did when we fought them was to not stand 800m away and play their game against them,that would just be dumb.I would bring a mixed group of loadouts,3 pure short(lbx20,medium lasers),3 mixed(large laser,lbx) and 2 long range,all quick,all reflective armour.Run passive and blip your radar,long range are there just to poke at them when we had visual so we could get under their noses.......by most of what i have read i guess not many of you have seen a bunch of short range mechs running rampant over a team of laserboats,it is a massacre.

And of course there is allways the added bonus of rushing laserboats,they seem to huddle together,if you blow up a mech next to a bunch of overheating laserboats its just LOL.

And before anyone says that you cant rush on every map....you can,you just need to change your stratergy,i led my team across a large open field to get under the ridge the laser team where camping from,i knew i would end up having to scramble across a large open area and knew i would get punished doing it,so i fielded a templar with max reflective armour and RAC2's,i only just made it across,but had managed to draw most the fire and knock around anyone who stuck their head over the ridge,my 7 short range team mates went over the ridge and made really short work of the so called overpowered laserboats.

As for missleboats,lol,i never ever understood why these where percieved to be imba,they have one incredibly obvious weakness.....any,ANY undulation in the terrain can be used to avoid fire from them,hell,you can even sucker them into locking and firing at you to dip back down behind a hill again and listen as the missles slam into the otherside of the hill,or,a personal favourite of mine,if a mboat is firing into a brawl get behind an enemy player and watch as the missles track you but slam into the guy your sparring with.

The cone of fire idea seems like another lazy idea so people dont have to think outside the box to win,RAC's,pulse lasers and chain fired missles,incredibly hard to fire back at a mech let alone get a pinpoint shot off.

Hmmmm,people get one shotted by alpha strikes,i only saw this when a medium would take on a fatty,and to be honest,if your going to go up against a fatty when your in a medium,you really should kind of expect it.If your getting one shotted by a similar size mech to you you should really invest in some armour or leave the NHUA server.

The thing that got me absolutely hooked back then was the massive amount of tactical detail you could bring to a drop to try and beat your enemy,saying that boating was bad for the game is just nonsense,if you didn't try and change your tactic to beat boating then of course you would lose,i saw the comment that there was only a handful of viable loadouts to use,which is just plain wrong,or that you had to take a fatty to compete,ha,on the open servers i played on if you dropped in a fatty chances are you would be the first mech to go boom.

I dont know what most peoples experience of MW actually is,if you only messed about on third person public servers then you missed such a massive amount of how the game should of been played,hell if you played in a third person league you missed a massive amount of how the game should of been played.

Just to clarify,i really saw no problem in boats or alpha strikes.

[Kargush]

If someone boating or alpha striking is enough to ruin this game for you, I'd hate to see how you deal with real-life dissapointments.

Because really, of all the complaints I've seen, only the raging Clan-hate strikes me as less grounded in anything even remotely sane or thought-through.

Edited by kargush, 25 November 2011 - 12:49 AM.

[Raeven]

Bloody, on 24 November 2011 - 02:42 PM, said:

Alpha Strike was not an option in the Battletech TT games. Damage was randomized and targeting was purposefully turned down to make the game about Mechs slugging it out. Sure certain weapon and piloting combos were better than others but Alpha strike was not a huge deal as Heat was a huge factor in TT games. ( add in Double movement + less than optimal Gunnery skill and the chances to hit were low )

now if you all want a mech assault MW type game where pin point targeting was accepted then expect the game to be like that, ALA Counter Strike Source where the majority of engagements consist of Headshot kill/ Non HeadShot kill.

Not true. Alpha strikes came along as part of Solaris VII rules. Since the game is based more directly off SVII, the Alpha strike is canon. The best option IMO is to simply limit customization to the rules as written. MW4 was broken in it's interpretation of customisation. You were able to load WAY more armor, weapons, and heatsinks to a single 'Mech than you should have been able to.

I liked the way MPBT handled the issue. When you fire an alpha strike, you incur heat. As the heat goes up, you suffer penalties to your aiming. Just throw off a few weapons aim the higher the heat goes. In MPBT, there was no CoD. You hit what you aimed at. A typical alpha of 4 medium lasers from a jenner or the like would cause enough heat that three of them would hit where you aimed and the 4th was randomly thrown off to an adjacent hit location. Sometimes that random hit would target the place you aimed, sometimes it didn't.

The way MPBT handled headshots was also through randomisation. Head armor was doubled I think, but the game also randomised your shot if you aimed at the heat to an adjacent target location. It was a rather elegant solution to using direct fire in the simulation. It left the head a viable target, but it wasn't an easy kill by any means.

Either way, CoD or direct fire, as long as it's done well it'll be a good game.

[MaddMaxx]

kargush, on 25 November 2011 - 12:48 AM, said:

If someone boating or alpha striking is enough to ruin this game for you, I'd hate to see how you deal with real-life dissapointments.

Because really, of all the complaints I've seen, only the raging Clan-hate strikes me as less grounded in anything even remotely sane or thought-through.

(speaking in generalized terms here so no Panty bunching required please)

Really! So you just bundle the whole mess under "deal with it"? How about those who would play the game to help alleviate life's daily grind.

Now if you live in your Mom's basement, fine, that could been seen as having a limited daily grind. Sadly, others want to play the game for the pleasure of it, not to add another Frak'ing grind to their day.

Besides, this game will have to appeal to a larger audience than just the Super Hard Core League "Playa's" who can deal with all the stuff Boats and the like throw at them. Bravo lads. Every game needs a few Hero's. Make application already, space is limited.

Pretty much everyone else wants to have some FUN. If they add in the hard core Team hunting and being a Hero mode, great.

Forcing others to Play it the way "you think" it should be played ain't gonna fly as "you" ain't everyone else.

So there.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 25 November 2011 - 07:01 AM.

[Malavai Fletcher]

Of course you have to find a way to deal with whatever boats throw at you,if you didn't you end up whining about it on the forums,as for being a hero,no,being part of a team trying to win over another team,yes,i fail to see how this is not fun,i hope by fun you dont mean the pilots on each team running around doing their own thing,sounds like any random crappy pub when i played.

Hmmm,forcing others to playing it the way i think,heh,i just gave examples that i had used that worked against a team of boats,i dont expect anyone to use a tactic we were using 6 years ago,trying to kind of make the point that the game offered you so many options,the mechlab,the variety of maps,the playing conditions,with a little imagination you could get round most problems.

[Melissia]

I still wonder what the people whining about "laser boats" wanting to restrict customization will do when they come across a canon 'mech variant which is, in fact, a "laser boat", like the Nova which has 12 ER Mediums in a 50 ton 'mech and more than enough heat sinks for the job.

Whine some more is my guess.

Edited by Melissia, 25 November 2011 - 04:49 PM.

[dm5k]

I voted for 1st one below because it would be the most balanced. But I really like the 2nd one. There should DEFINITELY be risks to alpha striking constantly.

"No customization. Players have to choose from canon designs or dev "balanced" canon designs."

"Lower Alpha Strike usage!: it should be rare and rather risky! Should take more of a toll on the mech (that much heat doesn't dissipate immediately!). More weapons fired at once means greater chance of "something" going wrong."

[Melissia]

Just because there'd be only canon designs doesn't mean it'd be balanced. Tabletop rules for a turn-based, luck-based strategy game doesn't translate well in to a real-time, skill-based first-person shooter/simulator. A design that's balanced in tabletop can be utterly over or under powered in a real-time scenario.

Edited by Melissia, 25 November 2011 - 07:11 PM.

[EDMW CSN]

Melissia, on 25 November 2011 - 04:48 PM, said:

I still wonder what the people whining about "laser boats" wanting to restrict customization will do when they come across a canon 'mech variant which is, in fact, a "laser boat", like the Nova which has 12 ER Mediums in a 50 ton 'mech and more than enough heat sinks for the job.

Whine some more is my guess.

A Nova cannot alpha strike unless you want to risk shutdown every time without fail. The raw damage is excellent for sure though. But in TT most of the damage is not focused on 1 portion of the target, in all MW iterations the damage is focused to wherever you are aiming at.

Hence that is why laser boats get a lot of hate since they are the "easiest" to use (no lead time, hitscan etc) for direct fire.

Edited by [EDMW]CSN, 25 November 2011 - 09:30 PM.

[guardiandashi]

and the "excessive accuracy" issue represented by the typical "mechwarrior" title historical hitscan all weapons automatically act as if fired directly out of crosshairs is so athema to many of the "tabletop" lore/game people. note I am not saying the targeting should not follow in general where you aim on the screen, additionally I am perfectly fine if you are firing 1 SINGLE weapon it hits "exactly where you are aiming" (within the weapons native accuracy limits) what I have been argueing is that when you add the second, 3rd, 4th, etc etc weapons they should not ALL automatically hit the exact same 1mm circle or even 1 meter circle on the enemy mech. I am ok with them hitting reasonably "near" but if you are over the "short range band" on the weapon you should start having deviation issues with that weapon above and beyond the base accuracy.

IE if you are firing machine guns or small lasers in tabletop they have range bands of 30/60/90 meters this means (in my mind) that at up to 30 meters they are going to typically hit within say 1-3 meters of the center of their theoretical aimpoint (actual aimpoint MAY {will} vary) at the 31-60 meter this margin of "accuracy will expand to say 1-6 meters of theoretical aimpoint (you are getting closer to the weapons limits of "accuracy) and from 61-90m range it is at the ragged edge of the weapons theoretical accuracy meaning even though the system claims it is aimed dead on the 0 point on the crosshairs it may in fact be aimed up to 9 meters or so OFF of that theoretical aimpoint because the weapons accuracy is barely able to get it "aimed" at a target that far away

now unlike what a lot of "sim" people are claiming I have not seen a concerted "tabletop" advocates, insisting on NO customization in fact I see more demands of no customization from the "sim" group I see a lot of requests for "resource/facility" restricted customization such as pulling in the strategic ops or mercs handbook 3055 customization rules or some varient therof but personally I HATED the mw4 customization restrictions because they totally missed the POINT of the customization rules in favor of some arbitrary customization rules set that would better fit in say an armored core game or something.

[SL33TBL1ND]

Maybe just make Alpha Striking increase the recycle rate of each weapon for that cycle? Or just up the amount of heat gained from doing it. Instead of heat gained being "heat of all weapons individually added together", instead make it add additional heat on top of that.

Edited by SL33TBL1ND, 25 November 2011 - 10:29 PM.

[ArchSight]

Special: A veteran MechWarrior is sharing knowledge of how mech combat is done.

A Boat has it's problems which can be exploited by players. I see no reason to get rid of boats or the alpha strike.

A boats weakness is the fact they only have one single type of weapon. If it's a missile boat you can take advantage that missiles have a tough time staying on target at close range or they carry a large amount of explosive ordinance. If it's a laser boat you can take advantage of the heat output with flamers or causing them to fire their weapons off too much. If it's boated with only close range weaponry you can out range it from afar and the amount of time it takes to close in on you. If there ammunition based only they can run out of ammo and be completely useless after. Also there's the different armor types situated vs each weapon type you could bring.

If you've played Mech Warrior before you would know that firing off and alpha strike is very risky not because of heat management alone but because of reload and recharge times. You can miss your target and you can be forced to miss your target. Thats the reason why mechs shoot there guns one at a time; it's to cause the other mechs to miss it's shots from the impact of your weapons hitting them. The use of chain firing your weapons can save your life on the battlefield if you know when your enemy is going to fire. They fire when they see you and when you see them. So fire every time they look at you. Your torso twist speed and turning speed with your legs play into shooting first.

Mech to mech combat is far more complex than just shooting at each other. There is also a tactic where you force players to shoot other parts of your mech instead of it's core or already damaged leg. It's to simple alter what sides of your mech that face them. Mech combat is: Shoot, rock them, alter position of your armor that is facing them, turn to shoot again, rock them, alter position of your armor that is facing them, repeat. The more weapons you have, the more times you can rock there aim with your shots.

I feel sad that not any reviewer of mechwarrior games understands how mech combat is truly done or some old mech fans that never learned how by resorting to just sniping. Too many people have failed to learn how to fight in a mech.

Although, that is completely reliant if this game is truly a mech simulator like they say.

[EDMW CSN]

Bear in mind in 3049, there is only FF armor and Standard armor. And that AMS you have, have limited shots. So it is all the more important to balance out boats unless you enjoy the return of 14 Er small laser shadow cats (legal fit btw since it's Omni tech) that can 1 to 2 volley your mech's leg off.

The easiest solution is to implement Cone Of Firing. You can still alpha, you can still boat your favourite direct fire weapons but just don't expect them to hit the same pinpoint location. Missile boats have being dealing with this problem, why don't implement this on direct fire boats ?

Edited by [EDMW]CSN, 25 November 2011 - 10:56 PM.

[ArchSight]

[EDMW]CSN, on 25 November 2011 - 10:54 PM, said:

Bear in mind in 3049, there is only FF armor and Standard armor. And that AMS you have, have limited shots. So it is all the more important to balance out boats unless you enjoy the return of 14 Er small laser shadow cats (legal fit btw since it's Omni tech) that can 1 to 2 volley your mech's leg off.

The easiest solution is to implement Cone Of Firing. You can still alpha, you can still boat your favourite direct fire weapons but just don't expect them to hit the same pinpoint location. Missile boats have being dealing with this problem, why don't implement this on direct fire boats ?

My 3 er large laser chain firing shadow cat out ranges the 14 Er small laser shadow cat. It also maintains jumpjets, good heat management and enough speed to circle any class of mech out there. Er small lasers don't have enough impact power to cause your cockpit to rock out of aim. one ER large laser firing into that alpha striking boat will have plenty of chance to disrupt it's aim. it may have a faster recycle time but I'm not firing all of my er large lasers at the same time. Also lower range of er small lasers means you have to travel stealthy into range or take the punishment as you close in. even if the map is city like, I can still shoot you down the street or bring weapons that are far better suited for close range combat like an lbx or auto cannon. I can also just bring a Er large pulse laser. The way you move your mech will also be a factor. It's possible to maintain the distance away from you and keep you from looking at me. It will all depend on how you play your mech.

[EDMW CSN]

ArchSight, on 25 November 2011 - 11:29 PM, said:

My 3 er large laser chain firing shadow cat out ranges the 14 Er small laser shadow cat. It also maintains jumpjets, good heat management and enough speed to circle any class of mech out there. Er small lasers don't have enough impact power to cause your cockpit to rock out of aim. one ER large laser firing into that alpha striking boat will have plenty of chance to disrupt it's aim. it may have a faster recycle time but I'm not firing all of my er large lasers at the same time. Also lower range of er small lasers means you have to travel stealthy into range or take the punishment as you close in. even if the map is city like, I can still shoot you down the street or bring weapons that are far better suited for close range combat like an lbx or auto cannon. I can also just bring a Er large pulse laser. The way you move your mech will also be a factor. It's possible to maintain the distance away from you and keep you from looking at me. It will all depend on how you play your mech.

MW4 damage figures for weapons are all wrong and the mechs are carrying far more armor than normal. In "real" TT figures, the Atlas can only mount 19.5 tons of armor, max. As opposed to MW4: mercs, the Atlas can carry 25 to 27 tons of armor.

In MW2/MW3/TT 14 Clan small er lasers deal 70 points of damage accurately. Enough to core almost any mech with 1 volley or completely saw off the limbs of any mech. Even if the mech survives that 70 hit point damage barrage, mechs that take 20 damage and higher in a single volley will have a chance to fall over. You need to fire all 3 large lasers to guarantee a mech knock down (in TT Er large lasers deal 10 pts of damage).

Of course we will not know how Piranha is handling the damage, heat and armor ratio but they did mention being extremely close to the table top iteration, so I won't be surprised if the damage handling is the same.

Edited by [EDMW]CSN, 25 November 2011 - 11:43 PM.

[Naughtyboy]

i say no to swaping weapons on chassis,there is a reason there is over thousand mechdesigns/versions within the battletech universe. There should not be any reason to be able to swap weapons on a canon chassi, those comes with the omnimechs when the clans arrive,the inner shphere had no knowlage of it or how to do it before the Clans. So no to swappin weapons freely..as to alpha strikes all weapons(except the ballistic ones )need energy,moving(walk,run and jump)needs energy . There is a reason why there is diffrent sizes of engines the bigger mech the more power/energy it demands just to be able to move around,then add fireing all energy based weapons..my beet it would most likely raise heat levels so high the mech either shutdown or lose other vital components for a period of time or even fry them.not to mention overheating might casue your ammo(autocannon,missiles) too ignite and tear the mech apart. so my guess is alpha strike was mostly used as the last way ..ofc there is mechs that is undergunned like one of the banshee models(think it have only a ac20 and some medium lasers)..if you carry more weapons then your engine can devote power for..well then an alpha strike would surely be a kamikaze type of action.

[Ran Ito]

I'm for introducing weapon recoil and altering weapon aim points, maybe something like chromehounds used to have.

I've always felt alphas cheapened the game since once you got familiar with a mech you could pretty much take it down in one or two well placed salvos.

[ArchSight]

[EDMW]CSN, on 25 November 2011 - 11:41 PM, said:

MW4 damage figures for weapons are all wrong and the mechs are carrying far more armor than normal. In "real" TT figures, the Atlas can only mount 19.5 tons of armor, max. As opposed to MW4: mercs, the Atlas can carry 25 to 27 tons of armor.

In MW2/MW3/TT 14 Clan small er lasers deal 70 points of damage accurately. Enough to core almost any mech with 1 volley or completely saw off the limbs of any mech. Even if the mech survives that 70 hit point damage barrage, mechs that take 20 damage and higher in a single volley will have a chance to fall over. You need to fire all 3 large lasers to guarantee a mech knock down (in TT Er large lasers deal 10 pts of damage).

Of course we will not know how Piranha is handling the damage, heat and armor ratio but they did mention being extremely close to the table top iteration, so I won't be surprised if the damage handling is the same.

I'm not debating numbers; that can be set to anything for all I care. I'm stating the tactics you can use to fight various mechwarrior's. The three Er Large laser SCat doesn't knock down, only rocks a mech cockpit. I have another SCat I can barely remember that can knock down other medium mechs. It had a lbx20, 2 er large lasers, I believe, and a medium laser. It's engine was completely down graded, and it had no armor on one of it's arms. It will knock down any medium mech with it's alpha strike that got into lbx range. Defiantly not a boat. In MW4 you can't out fit a lower ton mech to knockdown a higher ton mech. I've truly never seen a heavy mech knock a assault mech to the ground without destroying it first.

[Karn Evil]

Honestly, I rather thought alpha-striking worked rather well the way it was in MW3 - half the times I tried it, I just sort of exploded. The other half I knocked the enemy on his back and spent a while inspecting the ground in front of me while he picked up the pieces of his face.