2 replies to this topic

[Rooikat]

Hey Warriors,

Have been looking at the fall damage sustained by mechs during regular movement on the battlefield, while jumping off of anything high and just in general...and I've noticed some interesting inconsistencies.

Bearing in mind that I have been concentrating on lights and have yet to expand into the other chassis types.

So far, testing is with a Spider-5V with 12JJs and an XL280. With speed tweak, I am moving at 166.3kph.

Seems that if i hit a slight bump that causes me to be airborne - my fall velocity will always exceed 30ft/sec resulting in damage, but I do not always take damage. If I throttle down to account for the bump, and my fall velocity hits 30ft/sec...I take damage as per the minimum fall damage limit.

Damage taken avgs. out about 1-2% per fall.

Now lets up the stakes...If I jump off of the peak in I9 on Alpine peaks, and fire the JJs at the second of leaving the ground, my height will cause a fall velocity of 170ft/sec giving 7% damage.

Lets drop it down a bit: Jumping from off of another mech. Piggy backing on bugger mechs is always fun...but fall damage now kicks in...Jumping off of the Centurion in J7 of Alpine causes a velocity of 34ft/sec and 1% damage.

I like the idea of damage due to heights and distance traveled - real world physics is great to see! But I am wondering about lateral distance traveled and damage received when a mech built for speed cannot sustain that motion.

Example: Light mechs are meant to go fast...thats why they make exceptional scouts. But if a mech moves at a high speed and hits a bump that causes lateral airborne motion of more than a second with a slight vertical drop, triggering the fall damage counter, takes damage every time, then that might be a bit much.

It would be the equivalent of a steeple chase runner taking damage every time he or she jumps over an obstacle...even though the body has been trained for taking the impact of the low landing.

Mechs have the same instrument - its called knees and flexing the leg.

A second test on Frozen City: I ran off of the building bump in B2 at 166kph, had a lateral and vertical fall velocity of 31ft/s and sustained - 0% damage.

Repeated the same movement, but throttled my JJs for a split second: Fall velocity hit 32ft/s and I sustained leg damage. This feels...unreal and inconsistent.

Test video: http://youtu.be/sRmtHgPtmu8

Is it not possible to look at the data of when damage is kicking in and take into account that mechs, especially lights and the faster mechs, are able to land and absorb the impact of falling their height? Could not a ratio of some kind be used where the height fallen and the chassis type is taken into account before the velocity of the mech calculates the damage sustained to the legs?

[Bigbacon]

it is going to get tweaked.

Admins/mods, you REALLY need to pin a post in this section that links to the other post you've already made about this.

[Dimento Graven]

I'm sorry but fall damage needed to be changed. At one point (back in April) I had run a test with a Locust in the Training Grounds on River City map, repeatedly jumping off the ledge where the dropship is located.

While I no longer have the full video of the destruction test (I did YouTube the comparison of a Locust falling and an Atlas falling from the same height, but not the extremely long and terribly boring video of a Locust running and jumping off a ledge over and over for what I recall was over half an hour), I know it took well over 50 falls from a height at least 3 times the height of the Locust before I blew off a leg.

Over 50 falls.

That seems extremely unrealistic considering the lack of armor in the Locust.

Compare that same rate of damage on a mech that has many, many, many, many times the amount of armor in the legs as a Locust and you see it provides them a nigh invulnerable ability to poptart with darn near ZERO consequences.

With the damage levels as they are NOW however, you see poptart'ing being reduced to being practiced only by the truly skilled, and not the idiots who are only too happy to pound their own 'mechs into the ground like so many railway spikes...

Edited by Dimento Graven, 07 July 2014 - 09:05 AM.