9 replies to this topic

[John1352]

This post assumes you've read these balance changes: http://mwomercs.com/game/patch-notes

The fall damage as set in this patch is a significant disadvantage for light mechs. The rate of increase of damage to lights as fall damage increases is higher than that of both mediums and heavies. Lights move fast, and tend to have a lot more airtime as they run down hills, meaning they hit the ground faster. The slightly higher threshold value is not enough to counter this.

Lights are also killed by leg removal far more often than larger mechs, once a leg is gone, it is almost always game over. If I put 32 leg armor on each leg of my jenner, and 32 on each leg of my atlas, the jenner will still get legged more often. With ~40 damage pinpoint alpha strikes being thrown around regularly by large mechs, taking 8 fall damage can often be the difference between losing a leg and being a sitting duck, and doing some nice friendly circles around that enemy assault.

I played around with a spreadsheet, and made this graph of how fall damage could look for 4 common IS battlemechs and one mech I see once a week. The threshold value is dependent on the tonnage of the mech. NOTE: Vertical axis is not scaled properly, it is the thresholds that are of interest.


The formula I used was damage = fall rate - 1500 / mech tons, with 0 damage whenever that formula would give a negative number. I tried some different formulas, but this graph illustrates the idea best. The lines don't need to be parallel, they could be adjusted to give a bigger penalty to smaller or larger mechs, but small mechs will be able to maneuver without losing leg armor, and poptarting victors will get a suitable penalty.

NOTE AGAIN: Vertical axis is not scaled properly. (someone will have missed the first note)

Light mechs should be able to poptart as much as they want, they're fighting mechs that can kill them in one shot to the front CT.

[Tyman4]

The part that gets me isn't the jump sniping. It is the lights that have very high speed and no JJs. Locust is a prime example. Literally just running around the rolling hills it starts flying off terrain that is reasonably flat. Any person (or mech) with knees would be able to run over the terrain without hurtling off, but the models have no give in their legs. The models react like box cars on a track. they just launch off into air without adjusting at all for the terrain.

While this would be very difficult to implent (I imagine), just a higher threshold to begin light mech leg damage would work the same.

Tyman

[TeeREX]

has anyone else niticed if u fall and studder fall it compiles damage studder 3 times and down to 90 %

[John1352]

TeeREX, on 04 July 2014 - 02:12 AM, said:

has anyone else niticed if u fall and studder fall it compiles damage studder 3 times and down to 90 %

Haven't seen this one, but my jenner only goes 15 on one leg.

[Karl Streiger]

Hey - thanks for the input

- afaik the current system has two scalar modification options

the first is the weight class modificator : 4% for lights, 3% for mediums 3,5% for heavys and 4% again for assaults.
Interesting that lights and assaults get the worst modification

the second value - is the vertical fall speed - its 38, 35, 35 and 33 ft/s.
THat means lights could take more stress by falling.

While i may understand the first modification - its simple for balancing - if light jumpers or assault jumpers become a problem you can tweak this value....

What makes me nuts is the second fts value - I'm pretty sure its hard coded. While i think that those speeds are to low - turning BattkeMechs (that can make orbital drops) into GrannyMechs with arthrosis - that hardly can climb down stairs - there is a much bigger problem, and your values show that you did the same mistake:

Why should the legs of an assault mech take more damage as the legs of an light mech
You may be right - if a Victor would have the legs of a Locust but he hasn't

Why should this legs - constructed to take the stress of a 90t Mech



TAKE MORE DAMAGE AS THOSE constructed to take the stress of a 30t Mech

[Tyman4]

Because physics. Small objects take less falling damage. At the same speed which is worse to get hit by a BB or a melon? BB
Or vice versa, for the melon and the BB to exert the same force the BB must be going much faster then the melon when it hits you.

Or in a more logical sense, because the community thinks that Highlander is denser then Spider so he falls with less air resistance. On top of that the highlander's additional weight is not spread out in the same proportions of legs to absorb shock from a fall. So his legs have to withstand more absolute stress than the spider's legs and also (most likely) more proportional stress than the spider. With the same materials used, that would increase the damage accrued by falling.

Tyman

Edited by Tyman4, 04 July 2014 - 03:21 AM.

[MonkeyCheese]

Plenty of evidence and discussions in this thread here guys check it out, the video I posted there shows the raw end of the stick that light mechs without jumpjets get http://mwomercs.com/...ll-damage-pt-1/

also I just <3 that concept spider paint.

[John1352]

Karl Streiger, on 04 July 2014 - 02:53 AM, said:

Hey - thanks for the input

- afaik the current system has two scalar modification options

the first is the weight class modificator : 4% for lights, 3% for mediums 3,5% for heavys and 4% again for assaults.
Interesting that lights and assaults get the worst modification

the second value - is the vertical fall speed - its 38, 35, 35 and 33 ft/s.
THat means lights could take more stress by falling.

While i may understand the first modification - its simple for balancing - if light jumpers or assault jumpers become a problem you can tweak this value....

What makes me nuts is the second fts value - I'm pretty sure its hard coded. While i think that those speeds are to low - turning BattkeMechs (that can make orbital drops) into GrannyMechs with arthrosis - that hardly can climb down stairs - there is a much bigger problem, and your values show that you did the same mistake:

Why should the legs of an assault mech take more damage as the legs of an light mech
You may be right - if a Victor would have the legs of a Locust but he hasn't

Why should this legs - constructed to take the stress of a 90t Mech
(snip)
TAKE MORE DAMAGE AS THOSE constructed to take the stress of a 30t Mech
(snip)

That's a really well thought out post, but here's the problem:

A bigger mech would have longer legs, a much larger engine as volume increases cubically (volume of cube = length ^3), so even though heavier, would probably go as fast as a small one. It has more room for jumpjets, weapons, heatsinks.

Basically, if you go bigger, you end up better in every way, perhaps excluding armor thickness per ton, as you have a bigger surface area to cover. That makes for a bad game.

[Smegmw]

My opinion the current fall damage mechanic is absurd. What were the fall rates based upon? I believe it was just another case of feels right to Paul. Now that I'm done with the PGI bash a constructive statement.

I don't know about material strengths but I do know gravity is a constant regardless of any other factor so fall damage should be the same for every object made out of ferro titanium bones and ceramic armor plates.

I'm going to go with what I know and base this on terminal velocity for flesh and blood. A 200 foot drop at approximately 117 ft/sec will kill a human being almost every time. Lets say we take half of that and say that is the threshold that a mech with ferro titanium bones backed up by myomer fiber muscles cannot absorb the energy of a fall. So we would have a fall damage threshold at a 100 foot drop at approximately 58 ft/sec.

Of course the drop distance would be specific to earth's gravity. If/when you got on a planet with higher or lower gravity the drop distance would vary but the speed of the fall would be the same before a mech would take damage.

Amount of time falling should never be a factor as in lesser gravity the time would be greater and greater gravity the time would be lesser.

Edited by Smegmw, 05 July 2014 - 12:05 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I haven't had problems with the setup for fall damage, but if necessary I can see adjusting the thresholds a bit on the vertical speed for lights or extend how long a light can be in the air before triggering fall damage.

Also, if there are parts of maps that are causing absurd fall damage scenarios, then those should be reported to support to fix the maps, IMHO.