Roland, on 28 February 2014 - 07:38 PM, said:
Making them side torsos would be such a hilariously terrible idea, that it is insane people would suggest it.
Yes, make a mech that has an xl engine have giant targets that such up over its head and can be targeted from literally any angle! Brilliant!
That isn't how it is going to work though.
The ears on the mad cat will almost certainly be auxiliary hit boxes, just like they have been in prior Mechwarrior titles.
Not only is this idea supported by the fact that it makes sense, but there was a bug in the early versions of the game that caused the mechs armor display to be replaced by one for a madcat, and you could see that the ears were different sections.
But hey, pgi has a good track record for screwing stuff up at this point, so maybe they will take the advice of folks here and just cripple the most iconic chassis in the game.
I'm not giving them money for one anyways, and I don't expect the game to still be around by the time they release it for cbills.
I would personally like auxiliary hitboxes for the ears as well, but keep in mind that PGI already has pooped on several mechs like the Hunchback and Thunderbolt by using side torsos instead of auxiliaries. Failure is always an option with piggy behind the wheel....
A bit off-topic, but no matter how well they do the hitboxes, the Mad Cat is already shafted by the Omnimech restrictions. Its stock engine is a totally oversized XL375. You have exactly 27.5 tons to use for weapons. No more, no less. You can't downgrade your engine to get more tonnage like previous games. That XL375 is permanent. At first, it would appear to not be that bad because Clan tech is a lot lighter and smaller than IS tech. However, Clan Omnis also often pack absurdly oversized engines or other design flaws that reduce their loadout capabilities.
As an example loadout, let's say that I want to replicate my 2 UAC/5 + 2 LL Victor using a Mad Cat. A Clan UAC/5 weighs 7 tons. It will probably have a similar RoF to the IS UAC/5, which means I'd want 3 tons of ammo per gun. A pair of these guns with ammo will weigh in at 20 tons (7 + 7 + 3 + 3). That leaves me with 7.5 tons for energy. I can't use a pair of Clan ERLL, because those are 4 tons each. I'll probably have to use 3 Clan ERML to match the damage of the 2 ISLL (PGI is nerfing Clan energy weapon range, however, so the range will be shorter), and I'll have 4.5 tons to use on other weird stuff.
In the end, the mech can't actually carry much more firepower than an IS mech of similar weight. In previous games that lacked Omni restrictions (i.e. MW4 and MW3) they could pack in craptons of weapons. Here, though, most of them will be fairly unimpressive in the weapons department due to design flaws those mechs were given for an 80's board game. Not only do we have the restrictions, but MWO also requires a lot more ammo and DHS to operate mechs than in the board game.
I am actually expecting most of the Clan mechs to be fairly average or even underpowered (particularly the Kit Fox, which goes 106.7 kph after speed tweak and carries Locust armor). Some like the Ryoken will still be beastly, some might be okay-ish (like Mad Cat), and some will be pure trash (like the Uller). What's utterly hilarious is that the 55 ton Ryoken actually carries virtually the same armor as the 70 ton Thor, and can run faster,
and can carry a slightly larger payload. It also will probably be a leaner, less fat target than the Thor. Lulz.
If PGI goes with 10v12, I would not be surprised to see the Inner Sphere crushing the "invasion" with ease most of the time. The stars versus lances thing was built around a board game with limited customization, of crappy IS stock builds using SHS versus semi-crappy Clan Omnis with stupidly huge engines and/or too little armor.
Edited by FupDup, 28 February 2014 - 08:44 PM.
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