33 replies to this topic

[Flyby215]

I agree with a few people here, Mad Dog MUST be modeled after its MW2 appearance, not MW4. The MW4 version is so ugly...

I'm sure the devs know full well the Mad Dog is a fan favourite, and will certainly be released in due time. Due to its similarities to the Timberwolf, I think the Mad Dog would be lower on the priority list, perhaps relegated to some sort of clan booster pack set to be on sale by Christmas or something...

[Myke Pantera]

Well, thats the problem with the fixed Engine Sizes. Nova, MadDog, Hellbringer, Summoner, MadCat all run at the same speed. Since speed (, responsiveness) and size are about the only things that speak for lighter mechs, it's clear that the lighter chassis will be at a disadvantage compared to the heavier ones if speed is taken out of the equation.

I will still play the MadDog just because it's the MadDog... Same as i play the Nova, because it's the Nova. Won't play the MadCat because everyone else does :\

Nice work OP!

[Coralld]

The Mad Dog would actually have better hit boxes than the Timberwolf. Example: If you wanted a missile mech Timberwolf, the Timberwolf gets those big mickey mouse ears which greatly increases its ST hit boxes, the Mad Dog wouldn't suffer from this at all. Also, the Mad Dog is very narrow from the front, it also has skinny arms and legs.

Edited by Coralld, 16 July 2014 - 07:21 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Your forgetting a few things.

1) Mad Dog is 15 tons lighter and therefore will likely be lighter on its feet with more agility.

2) Torso Twist. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mad Dog won't have significantly more torso twist range than the TImberwolf.

3) Size and hit boxes. Mad Dog may be significantly smaller or have better Hit Box or some other quirk of shape that makes them more survivable than a Timberwolf.

Now like you I am just theory crafting and throwing out possibilities but these are a few of the things that can contribute significantly to the effectiveness and general "feel" of the mech. In the end, this and the personal preference or lack there of for these features are what determines if a mech is good or bad.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Keeshu, on 16 July 2014 - 04:29 AM, said:

Well if you think of it the Mad Dog that way, you're probably not going to like it.


Well there's only 3 other configurations outside of Prime that the Mad Dog can use, all the others have new weapons.
A has 1 Ballistic in the RA (LB 5X AC), 3 Missle in the RT (3 SRM 6), 3 Missle in Left Torso (3 SRM 6 again), and 1 Energy in the left arm (ER PPC)
B has 3 Energy in the Right arm (2 ER mediums), 2 Missle in the RT (2 Streak SRM 6), 1 Missle in LT (LRM 20), and 2 E in the Left arm (2 ER Larges)
C has 1 ballistic in the Right arm (Gauss), and 1 ballistic in the left arm (Gauss)
Note: The C only has 4 tons of ammo
A allows the Mad Dog to be even more Missle Focused, and has 1 ballistic
B makes the Prime variant obsolete because it has the same hardpoints, but 1 more Energy, and 1 more missle
C allows the Mad Dog to have yet another Ballistic hardpoint, which allows for more options

I can see why you wouldn't want people running Gauss dog, we see enough PPCs and Gausses in game already. But A and C have more benefits to be picked than B does, so I find it unlikely that we won't get C. Besides, It's not like Dual Guass Mad Dog is going to be the worst thing out there, there's plenty more things that are faaaar more meta than that. I also love mechs that are focused around the guass rifle (Like Shadowcat), even if they aren't useful.

Thats it exactly. In a mech game, where were supposed to be in big stompy mechs that have a little more durability then in a Human based shooter, its annoying as hell to have an 85t Assault with max armor essentially 2 shot before even firing a shot itself. Prolly part of the reason people are so passive in thisgame......for fear they will be OHK by Gauss/PPC loads...I know its why I sometimes dont move much.....that and LRM barrage as soon as I step out of cover...

And if we want variants of the MAd Dog? Give us Prime/A/B just like the Warhawk....

Atleast the Mad Dog doesnt have an S variant haha.

And to make the Prime not obsolete to the B Version, give it quirks that kinda buff up it's missiles or something, or shorter duration on it's pulse lasers....something ot make it more appealing over the B.

And yes, The Mad Dog is simply sexy, I first saw it in MW2, in all it's boxy glory, but I fell in love almost immediately...even if I was only 5 and couldnt even play the game well enough to get past lvl1...it was fun to lob the missiles at the enemies...

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 16 July 2014 - 07:51 AM.

[FupDup]

Satan n stuff, on 16 July 2014 - 01:46 AM, said:

That would make the first heavy with ECM a clan mech, imagine all the cries of P2W.
They'd probably be right in this case.

Make it available for C-Bills, then, but perhaps at an inflated price for a while.

Viktor Drake, on 16 July 2014 - 07:36 AM, said:

Your forgetting a few things.

1) Mad Dog is 15 tons lighter and therefore will likely be lighter on its feet with more agility.

2) Torso Twist. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mad Dog won't have significantly more torso twist range than the TImberwolf.

Actually, MWO based agility on engine size most of the time, which means the two mechs would also certainly have the same agility.

As an experiment, you can look up the agility of the 30 ton Kit Fox and 55 ton Ryoken on Smurfys, and you'll see that their agility profile is a 100% copy -- excluding torso twist range, where the heavier Ryoken gets an advantage. Yup, that's right, the 55 ton mech has slightly superior agility to the 30 ton mech. Lulz.

Since the Mad Dawg has the same top speed as the Mad Cat, a similar trend is very likely unless Piggy gives it specific quirks.

[Sable]

Why do people keep saying the Bounter Hunter Timberwolf has ECM in it's right torso? On sarna it says it has ECM but doesn't list a specific location. If PGI did end up going with this mech for the Timberwolf Hero i would assume they would put the ECM in the centor torso which would limit the ECM to only the Bounter Hunter variant. If it was in the side no one would buy the mech as they could just buy the omnipod.

Is there a spec sheet somewhere that lists the ECM as in it's side? Just wondering where this info is coming from.

[FupDup]

Sable, on 16 July 2014 - 08:57 AM, said:

Is there a spec sheet somewhere that lists the ECM as in it's side? Just wondering where this info is coming from.

Yes.

http://bte.battletec...te/pdf/1976.pdf

[Satan n stuff]

FupDup, on 16 July 2014 - 08:33 AM, said:

Make it available for C-Bills, then, but perhaps at an inflated price for a while.
Fair enough, but it wouldn't stop people whining about OP clan mechs.


Actually, MWO based agility on engine size most of the time, which means the two mechs would also certainly have the same agility.

As an experiment, you can look up the agility of the 30 ton Kit Fox and 55 ton Ryoken on Smurfys, and you'll see that their agility profile is a 100% copy -- excluding torso twist range, where the heavier Ryoken gets an advantage. Yup, that's right, the 55 ton mech has slightly superior agility to the 30 ton mech. Lulz.

Since the Mad Dawg has the same top speed as the Mad Cat, a similar trend is very likely unless Piggy gives it specific quirks.

Turn rate and torso twist rate are effectively locked in a fixed ratio to top speed, barring any quirks that affect any of them, but acceleration is largely tonnage based, a lighter mech with the same top speed as a heavier one will accelerate and decelerate faster. Compare Locusts to Spiders or Jenners to Cicadas and you'll find the difference quite noticeable.

[Keeshu]

Viktor Drake, on 16 July 2014 - 07:36 AM, said:

Your forgetting a few things.

1) Mad Dog is 15 tons lighter and therefore will likely be lighter on its feet with more agility.

2) Torso Twist. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mad Dog won't have significantly more torso twist range than the TImberwolf.

3) Size and hit boxes. Mad Dog may be significantly smaller or have better Hit Box or some other quirk of shape that makes them more survivable than a Timberwolf.

Now like you I am just theory crafting and throwing out possibilities but these are a few of the things that can contribute significantly to the effectiveness and general "feel" of the mech. In the end, this and the personal preference or lack there of for these features are what determines if a mech is good or bad.

#1 I know fupdup already covered it but I wanted to say a little more. Just because it's lighter, doesn't mean it's more agile. look at the Dragon+Quickdraw vs the Blackjack, Hunchback, and Centurion. Also, Timber Wolf runs the same speed as the Mad Dog. Though it would make sense if it could torso twist and move it's arms faster, but we don't know if that'll be the case yet. Though I think they'd be crazy to put negative quirks for it's twisting + aiming speed. But hey, I'm all for fast mechs (just heavies are my favorite weight class because they have a nice balance of everything)
#2 While MW4 did a bunch of things I didn't like to the Mad Dog, it's ability to go 360 is one thing I really loved. I just hope that if it gets this abillity, that it won't torso twisting like an atlas like it did in MW4.
#3 With how different the classic design and MW4 designs are, I'm not sure what to expect. I wouldn't even be surprised to see a new hybrid build. I mentioned this in the "my thoughts" part of the Mad Dog vs Timber Wolf. Yes, I'd be surprised if the hitboxes aren't generous for the Mad Dog vs Timber Wolf.

While I always love these sort of things, we also got to remember to think about other mechs in the future, and the other medium/heavy mechs besides the Timber Wolf. All too often in games I see something become OP just because it was being compared to something else OP and it didn't take into consideration about everything else in the game it was in. Though, MWO seems nerf happy (which I'm fine with, I like a longer Time To Kill)

LordKnightFandragon, on 16 July 2014 - 07:47 AM, said:

Thats it exactly. In a mech game, where were supposed to be in big stompy mechs that have a little more durability then in a Human based shooter, its annoying as hell to have an 85t Assault with max armor essentially 2 shot before even firing a shot itself. Prolly part of the reason people are so passive in thisgame......for fear they will be OHK by Gauss/PPC loads...I know its why I sometimes dont move much.....that and LRM barrage as soon as I step out of cover...

And if we want variants of the MAd Dog? Give us Prime/A/B just like the Warhawk....

Atleast the Mad Dog doesnt have an S variant haha.

And to make the Prime not obsolete to the B Version, give it quirks that kinda buff up it's missiles or something, or shorter duration on it's pulse lasers....something ot make it more appealing over the B.

And yes, The Mad Dog is simply sexy, I first saw it in MW2, in all it's boxy glory, but I fell in love almost immediately...even if I was only 5 and couldnt even play the game well enough to get past lvl1...it was fun to lob the missiles at the enemies...

People would be passive even if PPCs and guass/long range weapons weren't meta (though it would help if they weren't the meta). They need to reduce all the damage they can get. Just being seen by the enemy team can be a bad thing.

I probably wouldnt use anything else if the Mad Dog had jumpjets, that's the one thing it's missing to make it the perfect mech for me.It'll never happen though (at least in this game, I see you lurking Mechwarrior 2!)

I don't like to rely too heavily on quirks for balancing in general, it makes things more difficult. Though yeah, that's the only way to balance B over Prime off the top of my head. I'd love a buff for it's missles, it is supposed to be based around shelling LRMs on enemies, and only using it's lasers to finish people off.

Yeah, I played Mechwarrior 2 when I was about 8 years old. Asking for help didn't work at all, no one around could figure out how the game worked, so I had to learn everything myself. It's one of the few cases in games where I learned something from the AI, because of the side-stepp-like jumpjet manuevers you could do, since the Rifleman IIC and other mechs loved to do it all the time. However, I ended up using energy weapons mostly because I didn't know how to add more ammo... Which is probably a good thing because I probably would have been even more biased towards missles (though I never liked ballistics in MW2 except the gauss rifle)

FupDup, on 16 July 2014 - 08:58 AM, said:

Yes.

http://bte.battletec...te/pdf/1976.pdf

Beat me to it. Curse you need for sleep!

Satan n stuff, on 16 July 2014 - 10:27 AM, said:

Turn rate and torso twist rate are effectively locked in a fixed ratio to top speed, barring any quirks that affect any of them, but acceleration is largely tonnage based, a lighter mech with the same top speed as a heavier one will accelerate and decelerate faster. Compare Locusts to Spiders or Jenners to Cicadas and you'll find the difference quite noticeable.

I never tested this out, I thought it was engine based like everything else. Probably not a huge buff, but at least it's something. Neat.

[Karamarka]

JJ nerf really hurt summoner's 5 JJ. So +1 for the Mad Cat.

[Keeshu]

Karamarka, on 16 July 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

JJ nerf really hurt summoner's 5 JJ. So +1 for the Mad Cat.

Wouldn't that hurt Timber Wolves more than the Summoners? They are 5 tons heavier, they'll be more encouraged to put more jumpjets on to be closer to Summoner's jumpjets
/

LordKnightFandragon, on 16 July 2014 - 07:47 AM, said:

Prolly part of the reason people are so passive in this game......for fear they will be OHK by Gauss/PPC loads...

Sorry to quote you again, but I just remembered how most people are considering the 2 ER PPC 1 Gauss the meta on the Timber Wolf right now, which is probably more devastating than the double gauss. Even if you do get the B, you're still going to see that meta whether they choose A or C because both A and C have a 1 ballistic Right Arm, just without the ability for jumpjets.
I'm just hoping for A and C so there's more customization for using double ballistic builds (that aren't just double gausses) being used with the missle side torsos.

Edited by Keeshu, 16 July 2014 - 12:25 PM.

[MonkeyCheese]

Keeshu, on 16 July 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

Wouldn't that hurt Timber Wolves more than the Summoners? They are 5 tons heavier, they'll be more encouraged to put more jumpjets on to be closer to Summoner's jumpjets

Exactly... it is all just TW egos running around when it comes to jumpjets because they can have ANY number they want from zero to five, but to seriously compare the jump capability TW pilots would have to bring all 5 jumpjets but I am sure most are too gunho and are like "lets bring as many big guns as possible"" and then they can barely jump...

[Redshift2k5]

Excellent evaluation