9 replies to this topic

[Livewyr]

Currently: Jumpjets slowly lift you off the ground until you reach maximum height. The more jumpjets you have, the more lift and height you get.

(Personal opinion: It feels like an anti-gravity drive rather than a Jump Jet. Especially now, I feel like I lose mobility when playing with my TBR)

Suggestion:
Give the Jets greater thrust, and have them burn fuel much faster. (A Jump)
Make the Jump Jet thrust related to the engine, in a similar fashion as the maneuverability of torsos, acceleration, top speed, etc..
[EDIT for clarity: Amount of height and speed of thrust still depends on number of JJs.]

Not sure on the specifics of the equation at the moment. (Too tired to do math.)

This would aid light mechs (who generally, in order to make their crazy speed add crazy engines for their size) and mechs who trade engine power for firepower or armor.

Edited by Livewyr, 16 July 2014 - 06:17 AM.

[Tim East]

I'm not necessarily against bigger engines giving more thrust, but bigger battlemechs still need to require more thrust to do anything than smaller ones. That is to say, a 30 tonner with a 300 engine should jump much (3x, maybe?) faster and farther than a 90 tonner with a 300 engine. Tentative yes vote.

[Livewyr]

Tim East, on 16 July 2014 - 03:50 PM, said:

I'm not necessarily against bigger engines giving more thrust, but bigger battlemechs still need to require more thrust to do anything than smaller ones. That is to say, a 30 tonner with a 300 engine should jump much (3x, maybe?) faster and farther than a 90 tonner with a 300 engine. Tentative yes vote.

Yes, weight would be a factor as well. (Just like speed, accel, etc..)

[Ancient Demise]

The thrust really needs to be scaled either by mech weight (normalized so all mechs go the same distance with the same number of jump jets) or by jj class (same thrust across each weight within class). The thrust that will lift a highlander 33 meters up will launch a spider almost 900 meters.

Imo JJ power could be a function of both engine size and number of jets, both increasing linearly and scaled as i said, and this idea would work really well.
With a different thrust vector and some newtonian physics (and standardized gravity) jump jets could actually increase mobility a lot like they do in BT lore.
Jumps up would leave you with a longer hang time that would leave you open to return fire at the vertex. An angled jump (changeable either through a module or by design) would greatly increase a mechs mobility by bypassing terrain and potentially going over your max speed. This could be balanced by having the mech stumble at a low speed when it hits the ground in addition to the heat, shake, and potential ground damage. With a high momentum and lower fuel levels a mech would not be able to change directions in midair, but that is fine by me.

[Mad Porthos]

Like Tim East above, I tentatively agree with the OP. The recent jump jet rework has been interesting, but to many of those I know does not quite seem to hit the mark. I get that it's made poptarting WITHOUT a cost in weight more difficult. I also get that the linear thrust increase and heat increase were needed and are appreciated by many. In fact, the linear thrust increase is very noticable in a few mechs that have high numbers of jump jets, like the Spider 5v/5d which with 8 and 12 jets respectively- they can now get big air again, though that's not worth much given thier anemic weapons loadouts.

The problem with the most recent change is that some mechs that WERE NOT pop tarts, did have significant parts of thier "feel" or uniqueness defined by having jump jets, for instance, the Jester. Though it only had 2 jump jets and they were used for manuverabilty primarily, to obtain that manuverability, they needed to be able to do things like jump up a small ledge or cliff, onto a low storied building or jet up a hill to avoid slowdown. Of these things, only the last is now possible and even that not well. A jester trying to get into say, "the cave" in Frozen City, cannot walk into it by jumping up the small cliff by the saddle any more, because even with it's maximum load out of 2 jump jets, it's total lift is 9.7meters. Less than half it's actual height. Insufficient for actually benefiting from the jump jets, due to the limitation of 2 on the hero variant of the chassis.

Here, the adjustment seems awry, since the desire was to make people pay for things like the jump jet benefits which they were not doing with only one jump jet mounted in some instances... yet with this mech and a few other mechs, the maximum they can mount is now NOT sufficient to maintain a reasonable mobility and jump effectiveness. If this is to be the eventual jump jet system, I think most mechs will need a pass possibly giving them a few more or a few less jump jets on case by case basis, given the fact these chassis were given their CURRENT number based on a system where most of thier thrust was gained UP FRONT from the first jump jet.

Edit: Also, a way of handling this, as Ancient Demise points out above, is if jump jets thrust can be tied to current engine rating as it relates to the current weight of the mech/class of jump jet. If tied to a approximation of the "thrust/weight" ratio generated by the fusion engine of the mech, which could be stronger given a bigger engine, but also countered by the greater weight of the mech it is IN, then you have a system that I think could work very well yet not have the flawed "up front" thrust of the old one jump jet system. The DISADVANTAGE one would have for having less than the maximum number of jump jets would be decreased thrust and you could also have MORE SHAKE, because the mech would be less stable with fewer jets trying to lift it.

Edited by Mad Porthos, 17 July 2014 - 06:46 AM.

[OznerpaG]

instead of making a new thread i'l just post this JJ idea here - i posted it in the JJ feedback thread but it's over 20 pages long now


i'm thinking maybe PGI is taking the wrong approach to JJ - they are making each additional JJ = additional lift

what it should be is ALL JJ should give the exact same amount of lift, but more JJ = more fuel to get more burn time and therefore more height

for example:

1 JJ gives 2 seconds of burn time - about good enough to softly pad a landing when jumping off a hill

2 JJ gives 4 seconds of burn time - helps get up hills, but not enough to give a lot of height

3 JJ gives 6 seconds of burn time - now we should start getting decent height with leftover to pad the landing

4 JJ gives 8 seconds of burn time, etc

of course numbers might have to be adjusted with testing, and maybe light mechs might get slightly more burn time with each JJ while assault mechs would get slightly less, but i think overall adjusting burn time makes more sense and is a lot less complicated than studying charts and graphs to figure out all the fancy math lol

[Koniks]

Cutting the base lift was a good start.

Now they need to increase the boost values on Class 1-4 jets. And I agree that they should make the lift equation more dynamic to account for tonnage and engine size.

[MercJ]

I do think a complete rework or re-imagining of jump jets would solve a lot of issues. I like OP's idea, it just feels like using jumpjets should be a mobility thing rather than "flying." Make activating jump jets a violent, explosive "launch" that flings you a (to be decided, but it should be a decent amount) distance up and forward - that way, you can't just hop up and down. Solves the pop-tart issue and the "glitch-HSR" hop around dance.

Along with that, when getting shoved around by jump jets, since it's a huge (violent) thrust that's catapaulting a multi-ton object around, it should be a "barely controllable" experience - definitely throwing off aim and such. It's for mobility, not a firing platform.

[Mad Porthos]

One of the things that could help this, and yes, I've already said it another way, is to make sure the engine is the source and determiner of thrust/power, while jump jets determine how effectively it is applied and/or how stable the mech is being thrust. By the lore, the fusion engine of a mech is creating thrust by venting super heated engine plasma and gases, or at least, using electricity to super heat some other reaction mass like air from the atmosphere around. In cases when a mech is operating in a vaccuum, the lore implies that some on board reaction mass is included, enough to make it through most engagements since there will not be any atmospheric reaction mass to take in and then vent to create thrust. Ultimately, it's PGI's choice, but I think that if you have a fuel source of "thrust" and it's coming out of one location (one jet) it will make for a much less stable platform, which is harder to cool as all that exhaust comes out of it. Multiple jets one would think are easier to cool at the same time, would offer greater stability and greater reliability as they are being damaged and one after another fails.

In either case, based off the general feel of the original game, a mech could jump in a manner allowing it to travel roughly equal to it's walking distance in the same ten second turn. That distance was rather 2/3 of it's max speed in that same time period and while you did not have to move that whole distance, typically you could. With the changes to a game like this, a computer game obviously we've had major changes and I don't really expect mechs to be jumping the same hundreds of meters they could walk or run in ten seconds, but it would be feasible I think for them to still have much more of a forward or at least DIRECTIONAL thrust than they do now, accompanying a vertical thrust that is sufficient to clear some of those very obstructions that jump jets are supposed to help you be able to be more MANUVERABLE around, such as hills, cliffs, buildings and the like.

The vertical component of jump has often been a great boon to pop tarters and many of them are deriding this "fix" as something that won't keep them down for long, once they adjust. They may well be able to, because many of them always have run more than simply one jump jet, having created builds that actually could spend the requisite tonnage on jump jets and more. They would be more effected if jump boosts threw thier mechs more forward in a given direction, in an arc, because if they were trying to use hills as cover, they would rather be leaping over the very hill they expected to provide cover, further more, if they tried to game things by "DELIBERATELY" not clearing hills and buildings, so they'd fall down behind them after shooting for cover, they would still be battering their mechs to death if thier velocity forward created significant impact. Hence, if a jump jet for example provide X m/s vertical lift, it should provide perhaps half that as directional lift. As one piles on more jump jets for height, they would have to contend with more horizontal thrust, preventing them as much advantage from being able to leap and land in the same secluded cover area. Decreasing jump jets to decrease the "offset" when they jump would also prevent them from actually getting the height to make thier cover clearning shots.

[Gladewolf]

Tie the maximum number of jets possible to engine size/mech speed, and do away with arbitrary maximum jump jet numbers. That should unbreak the mechs that should never have been limited to low numbers of jump jets in the first place....Which are as of now limited in capability for no real good reason, like the Jester. Maneuverability will cost firepower, the balance of nature will be restored.