97 replies to this topic

[Pyrrho]

Nick Makiaveli, on 09 February 2014 - 10:16 AM, said:

Umm, those aren't to the same scale...I mean seriously...a Wasp was larger than a Warhammer? They are pretty obviously scaled to fit the document......

Also notice that the Wasp has its feet offset from the bottom of the document by a human-sized margin.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Dimento Graven, on 09 February 2014 - 10:23 AM, said:

Actually, they are... Take a look at the 'human' to the right of each mech.

That sets the scale.

Serves me right for thinking FASA had a clue...

Pyrrho, on 09 February 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

Also notice that the Wasp has its feet offset from the bottom of the document by a human-sized margin.

Which would make it almost the same height.......ah well that's what you get when you start mashing together different movies and arbitrarily tossed around weights etc.

[Dimento Graven]

Nick Makiaveli, on 09 February 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

Serves me right for thinking FASA had a clue...

Which would make it almost the same height.......ah well that's what you get when you start mashing together different movies and arbitrarily tossed around weights etc.

Well keep in mind, PGI was pressured by the noisiest, but probably smallest minority, of malcontents that size HAD to scale with weight. Ensuring that due to density, the Atlas could float in water...

Anyway, my point is, the Locust is fine as is.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Dimento Graven, on 09 February 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

Well keep in mind, PGI was pressured by the noisiest, but probably smallest minority, of malcontents that size HAD to scale with weight. Ensuring that due to density, the Atlas could float in water...

Anyway, my point is, the Locust is fine as is.

Yea the same people who couldn't understand that size /= height alone.


I've always had the impression that a Locust was tiny.....wasn't it show as such on the cover of one of the GDL books?

*edit*

Here we go...looks much smaller here than in the blueprints and likely where I got the idea.... LINK

Edited by Nick Makiaveli, 09 February 2014 - 01:37 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

Dimento Graven, on 09 February 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

Anyway, my point is, the Locust is fine as is.

Jenner D : 1.81 W/L 2.25 KD
Jenner F: 1.61 WL 2.73 KD
Raven 3L: 1.69 WL 2.51 KD
Raven 4x: 2.54 WL 2.67 KD -bought after the "new" matchmaker started
Spider 5d: 1.7 WL 3.14 KD
Com-1B: 1.53 WL 2.0 KD
Locust 1V: .5 WL .4 KD
Locust 3M 1.19 WL .94KD

Locust is just fine if you want to grief your own team.....

[Alistair Winter]

[Nick Makiaveli]

Kin3ticX, on 09 February 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

Jenner D : 1.81 W/L 2.25 KD
Jenner F: 1.61 WL 2.73 KD
Raven 3L: 1.69 WL 2.51 KD
Raven 4x: 2.54 WL 2.67 KD -bought after the "new" matchmaker started
Spider 5d: 1.7 WL 3.14 KD
Com-1B: 1.53 WL 2.0 KD
Locust 1V: .5 WL .4 KD
Locust 3M 1.19 WL .94KD

Locust is just fine if you want to grief your own team.....

KDR is not the end all be all stat for this game. I've won games in my Locust and never fired a shot. Why? Because I capped in Conquest, or tagged enemies way out side of my weapon's range, and/pr capped in Assault.

Or gotten a whole lance to chase the squirrel and drug them to the other side of the map before they killed me. Nice, now the score is 0-1, or would be except my 11 teammates just ate your 8 teammates for lunch and are now coming for you.

[Kin3ticX]

The point is, the locust is more than 5 tons worse than a commando.........

[Deathlike]

Kin3ticX, on 09 February 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

The point is, the locust is more than 5 tons worse than a commando.........

COMMANDO COM-2D 63 38 24 1.58 56 31 1.81 15,478 57,932 06:16:54
COMMANDO COM-3A 72 35 36 0.97 45 50 0.90 15,503 59,280 06:57:05
COMMANDO COM-1B 81 40 39 1.03 52 55 0.95 14,499 57,389 07:41:18
COMMANDO COM-1D 89 46 43 1.07 59 54 1.09 19,801 57,429 07:55:50

At least the non-ECM Commando is a 50-50 proposition... but gee, the mini Oxide (aka Commando-2D) is still pretty good. Then again, I didn't go DHS (only build that it makes sense to not go DHS... *shakes fist @ Terra Therma*)

[Dimento Graven]

Nick Makiaveli, on 09 February 2014 - 01:35 PM, said:

Yea the same people who couldn't understand that size /= height alone.


I've always had the impression that a Locust was tiny.....wasn't it show as such on the cover of one of the GDL books?

*edit*

Here we go...looks much smaller here than in the blueprints and likely where I got the idea.... LINK

I get where you're coming from. Back in my TT days we always let Ral Partha be the 'guide' when it came to the scale of the 'mechs.

I just dug out of the back of my closet some of the figurines that have survived the 30 years of moves I've had since I assembled these, and this is what you can see:



Now considering the 30 years of getting bashed around the various moves, my Locust figurine is a bit
'worse for wear' missing arms, main weapon and his antenna, you can still see that FASA and Ral Partha had decided the scale of the mech is comparable even to the 60 ton Warhammer.

Ultimately in MWO it makes no 'hill of beans' but that's where my 'opinions' of 'mech scaling come from... All the Ral Partha figurines were created in the same 'scale'... 1:285 if I remember correctly.

[Kin3ticX]

yeah and tabletop has a lot of bearing on how a locust should work in MWO

[EGG]

Remove 10 HS requirement.

Reduce the amount of falling/collision damage on legs.

Make their radar-detection range 200m, instead of 800-1200 (with module/nap), kind of pseudo-ECM.

After that, consider excluding them from the 12 mech count up to a total of one. Eg drop with 12 normal mechs + 1 lolcust. More than 1 lolcust and they eat into the 12 mech count, but the matchmaker should attempt to avoid this.

[Kin3ticX]

yeah the matchmaker would be a good way to balance the locust. If the locust on got tiered against a locust or maybe a commando then it wouldnt be so bad.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 09 February 2014 - 08:58 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Kin3ticX, on 09 February 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

yeah and tabletop has a lot of bearing on how a locust should work in MWO

The system worked well for 30+ years, so yeah, there's a LOT to be said about staying as true as possible to table top.

The ONLY thing that complicates applying TT standards to MWO is the 'pin point' aiming that most weapons in MWO allow. Eliminate that, and you could revert every single thing in this game back to original TT rules and standards.

Of course do that, and there would STILL be no defined "role" for the Locust, nor would it be any more 'survivable'.

Unfortunately the custom version of the Crysis engine they're using won't support multiple cones of fire (effectively you'd need one for each weapon on your 'mech and the 23 others in the match with you). I doubt the server could handle resolving a potential 240 weapons firing near simultaneously, at any given moment in every potential match going on. So, we have the 'compromise' we do in MWO.

Something's gotta give... If it's your idea of what a 20 ton 'mech should be, it's literally and figuratively a very small price to pay.

[Deathlike]

Kin3ticX, on 09 February 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

yeah the matchmaker would be a good way to balance the locust. If the locust on got tiered against a locust or maybe a commando then it wouldnt be so bad.

I spent the weeks after the PP release to have a glorious time for using the Commando to troll the Locust.

Believe me, I feasted. It was excellent.

[SpiralFace]

Deathlike, on 08 February 2014 - 12:12 PM, said:

You're making the mistake that they'll keep it to 40 tons per player (480 tons total for 12 players). How is PGI going to possibly sell Assault mechs with this kind of change? (Buying assault mechs = more MC required.) It suddenly will cripple them because Assault pilots will not be a viable option (meaning less of them playing or buying those mechs due to CW/tonnage limits).

A more reasonable number for tonnage limits is 60 tons per player which is what I'm basing my numbers on.

If you think it's going to stay @ 40 tons, prepare for people who bought into the Boar's Head, Heavy Metal, and Dragon Slayer to not be so happy.

Lolcusts have virtually no place in the current state of the game, no matter how you are trying to "imagine" tonnage limits.

Also, Assault mechs suddenly required to be solo? That's not going to go well.

Also, under your terrible idea of of the 40 ton system... it'll look more like this:

Jenner+Shadowhawk. For every 3 Jenners fielded, you get 1 Shadowhawk. 9 Jenners, 3 Shadowhawks. Some people might get more creative... and try to field 6 Jenners (or 4 Jenners + 1 ECM Spider), to produce 1 Cataphract.

It's all meta-compliant.

As I said in my OP, I don't think its going to stay at 40 either. Its too steep. 50 is where my money is going to be.

And they'll still sell assult mechs, Other people are just going to have to start playing lights to use them.

Yeah, its something that people are going to complain about, but the dev's have said its comming, so those meta humpers that cling to their highlander and DDC lances are going away, and those that cling to jenners and shadowhawks are also going to have to justify the tonnage put into them because if you choose to take those heaviest in the class units, you aren't going to have the ability to take DDCs' and the like.

Those pilots that can roll with locusts will still be fine (as your not going to be dealing with as much armor / firepower on the field.) and you will allow for other support mechs to be better suited to countering threats.

Even if the tonnage limits hit 50 (which is still where I think its going to eventually fall.) you are still loosing 5 tons somewhere just by taking a shadow hawk. And only gaining 15 tons with a jenner. Talk a locust, and you double that number to 30 just for taking a locust, and contrary to what others think, they are not as terribad as people keep on saying. they Just aren't AS good as Jenners and firestarters. Which is fine when the entire metta of weight balancing comes into effect.

[Willard Phule]

Lots of very good points and all but....it's a Locust. I mean, well....it's a Locust. It's got PVC pipe internal structure and cardboard/duct tape armor. What do you expect? Even in TT, it's the cheapest mech available. There are light internal combustion engine vehicles that cost more (not many, mind you, but there are).

I'm just saying.

Don't take that to mean that it's worthless. If you were putting together teams based on cbill cost or tonnage, you could easily field a "weenie horde" of Locusts that can simply do a Mongolian Horde charge against heavies and assaults...and overwhelm them.

Unlike MW:O, speed is the savior of the light mech in TT. Those little buggers move so fast, the target number goes off the chart sometimes.

Edited by Wendigo Garou, 10 February 2014 - 06:23 AM.

[General Taskeen]

Game adopts TT damage for a game where no dice rolling exists, and even includes very close TT armor and internals. Locust goes poof.

No need to get your brains hurting to see the core of the issue.

[Thejuggla]

I think a size reduction would be fair, it has nothing else going for it it may as well be smaller.

[Jman5]

I agree with the argument that PGI should look at the minimum heatsink requirement for the Locust. Best case scenario you have to squeeze in 3 tons of heatsinks just to meet minimum requirements. Add that to the armor/bones and you are spending more than 1/3 of your total weight on just prerequisites. It's essentially a 12 ton mech when all is said and done.