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Strum Wealh, on 23 August 2014 - 06:07 PM, said:
Much of that assumes that one sees them coming before one's legs start taking damage (which is unlikely to be the case for constant-zoom snipers & most missile boats, among others).
That indicates a mech pilot who lacked situtational awareness, and Darwin would punish them accordingly.
Strum Wealh, on 23 August 2014 - 06:07 PM, said:
It also depends on how it'd be implemented - the actual implementation could be something along the lines of "a bunch of guys pop out of the ground (as though emerging from spider holes), plant satchel charges on your 'Mech's legs, and run before the charges blow" - kind of like a weaker arty strike that comes up from the ground instead of dropping from above.
They might even make the spawn/de-rez cycle fast enough that one mightn't be able to target them, or might just make them invulnerable to enemy fire (or do both, with the former serving to largely disguise the latter.)
Then, the A-Pods could be automatic defensive measures that would go off on their own, one at a time, in the event that an infantry consumable was activated within so-many-meters of a 'Mech, much like how AMS goes off whenever an enemy missile comes within a certain distance.
They might even make the spawn/de-rez cycle fast enough that one mightn't be able to target them, or might just make them invulnerable to enemy fire (or do both, with the former serving to largely disguise the latter.)
Then, the A-Pods could be automatic defensive measures that would go off on their own, one at a time, in the event that an infantry consumable was activated within so-many-meters of a 'Mech, much like how AMS goes off whenever an enemy missile comes within a certain distance.
Making them basically impossible to fight with any means other than one highly specific piece of equipment doesn't sound very fun.
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The point is, MWO's design makes certain weapon roles not work out like they did in TeeTee. Note ahead of time: don't get caught up in the specific examples (risk of thread derailment), they're just meant to demonstrate how certain aspects of a real time game end up differing from a turn-based land where you roll 2d6 to fulfill your destiny.
For example, the primary role of pulse lasers was to hit the target more frequently than a normal laser, indicated by their -2 to-hit modifier. But here, since we can aim our guns with no random factors involved, having a higher likelihood of hitting can't really be done, so PGI just made them better at focusing their damage into one spot (shorter duration). Or, how SSRMs in TeeTee would refuse to fire when they "missed," thus saving ammo and heat where a normal launcher would produce waste...but in MWO, PGI turned them into aimbot crutches that almost always hit. Or, critical hit weapons don't work like they normally would because of items having HP, thus making them not blown out by a stray pellet (PPFLD is better at critting out equipment here).
And for lasers, their duration mechanic to spread damage just so happens to make them able to sweep over a decently sized area. We also have the ability to directly aim at the pixel we wish to, with no dice rolls to dictate if we hit or where we hit. Combine those two mechanics together and we get something that acts like a "laser machine gun" of sorts in that it can spray over a moderate area. The Clan ERLL in particular, with its 2.0 second beam, can make a very long sweep and has a very high "potential" number of infantry soldier kills per firing. What's also ironic is that pulse lasers had +2 extra damage to infantry (larges and mediums at least, the small pulses just did 2d6 damage to infantry) but in MWO their shorter duration would actually make them less effective in that capacity.
Edited by Carrie Harder, 23 August 2014 - 06:26 PM.
