SuckyJack, on 12 February 2014 - 09:19 AM, said:
Your entire post -just- addresses what I said about percentages and actually agrees with what I said without touching on how imposing limits on Maximum Armor based on a Variant's Stock Armor would have the same extreme negative effect just in a different direction.
If you're trying to hammer in that there are underperforming Variants and Chassis in MWO then yes, I agree. But to take the BT TT game and transfer it to a Simulation/Shooter Video Game requires adding in a ton of systems that did not exist in the TT game. Variables for Torso Twists and Arm Movement, Movement Profiles, Hit Location Hitbox sizes and locations just to name a few.
If you want to fix Underperforming mechs then you examine the mechs and tweak them as required. There are plenty of mechs that do need to be revisited, the Jenner-F is now one of them and many of the early mechs were hit with a balance pass in the early closed beta and haven't gotten a review since.
MWO currently follows the BT rules for mech customization, it just currently ignores the time and labor costs for doing so. To limit customization on armor would further turn the game offensive, further tilt the favor in weapons or it would gut the customization aspect of MWO completely in an attempt to balance around that.
The system you propose is completely convoluted in that you are creating a situation where one Jenner Variant cannot have the same amount of armor as another Jenner Variant. Stock Variants were created through the customization and refits of the chassis, very rarely will you find a complete redesign of a chassis within two variants.
You want a convoluted system to add meaning to underperforming chassis and variants when we are trying to get rid of convoluted systems like Ghost Heat. No, lets get PGI to look at Mechs that don't have a place in the game instead of completely putting the system on it's head in a manner that will make some mechs less obsolete and obsolete different mechs instead.
Actually it's a very simple system, and by doing it is actually stripping the one tabletop rule that PGI hasn't broken yet. All variants of all mechs within a weight class are allowed the same engine limits and can equip any weapon and any number of weapons so long as the slot allows it. For example large lasers on knees, AC/2 in any cockpit, LRM 10s on legs, or even 18 Streak SRM-2s all rear mounted just for fun!
Tabletop hasn't got limits for inner sphere mechs other than 'time' and expense which only matters in campaigns. In setups like MWO, all that goes out the window.
But PGI put limits on. We have stock-based engine limits. Used to be a nice even number of ratings above the current stock. We have stock-based weapon hardpoints. Both of these are Shooter / Simulator functions. But what remnant of tabletop do we have left? Armor equality.
What I'm proposing is
removing that shred of tabletop, not imposing tabletop. After all, unlike tabletop rules which account for the creation of unique and original mechs, lore says mechs can't do what's on tabletop. Lore says Jagers don't carry that kind of armor because there's no space for it, they need it for weapons and ammo. Lore says Thunderbolts don't have the space to boat craploads of ammo. Lore says Cataphract 4x can't throw on a big engine because it carries boatloads of extra ammo for it's autocannons.
Welp, PGI took the can't throw on big engine part from lore. Sure doesn't exist on tabletop. In fact the Stalkers can equip 340 engines. Stalkers and Battlemasters can and in fact do go the same speeds within tabletop by swapping the engine out with the few engines available to them. So why not the armor part?
Jagers are supposed to be paper thin armor. It's literally a characteristic of the mech. It's what makes the mech fair versus its immense firepower. Thunderbolts are meant to be incredibly armored. The Dragons have superior armor to the Quickdraws who surpass them in every other aspect. But with tabletop's and thus MWO's generic mech armor equality system we can't have what the mechs are meant to be from lore.
So what's gonna make up for when PGI slaps on crappy hardpoints and then a crappy engine limit based on the stock mech's equipment... but then fails to slap on the variant's singular rewarding trait -- immense armor that surpasses all the other variants?
What would allow an Urban mech to compete with a Spider? The fact that a Urban mech has a 3rd more armor and better firepower. Firepower is relative. The speed is not; PGI's limitations would keep the Urban at 62 kph WITH speed tweak and maximum engine size based on stock values. Without better armor than a spider it's dead on arrival. Stock mechs come with these traits that PGI throws out in favor of tabletop rules.
I'm saying instead, base variant's armor maximum on stock + #tonnage or # points more.
You're saying it'd favor weapons? Good. The best weapon mechs in MWO also have the thinnest armor.
Metas would have more choice.
- Great Armor OR
- Great Firepower OR
- Great Speed, or
- combination of good armor and firepower but no speed,
- combination of good firepower and speed but bad armor,
- combination of good speed and armor but no firepower, or
- a jack in the middle with modest firepower, armor and speed.
That's what I'm bringing to the table in a non-convoluted system that's literally as simple as "Variant stock armor + amount = new variant maximum armor."
Let's see Paul explain ANY system he ever made in statement that short. Counting the symbols as words that's literally 11 words.
Otherwise, what we have now is a tabletop rule that with MWO's other rules essentially say that because
this
weighs the same as this
it's entitled to have the same armor. Even though the first one is clearly less armored, smaller, and a lot faster with a lot more ammo while the second is a lot larger, a lot slower and extremely limited in ammo.
Edited by Koniving, 12 February 2014 - 12:27 PM.
1
. Stick with what you have fun with.
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