32 replies to this topic

[Green Mamba]

Just Bought a Griffin and went to 3rd person view beside a Battlemaster ingame and Low and Behold there wasn't too much difference between the 2 (or didn't appear to me as much a difference).Why is this? I haven't had a Medium Mech since I sold off my cicadas and that was well over a Year ago so haven't been keeping close track.I mostly pilot Lights and Assaults.

Edit* typos in Title

Edited by Green Mamba, 17 September 2014 - 11:37 AM.

[Christof Romulus]

Because mass and volume and science...
Oh and this is a video game.

[Andross Deverow]

Green Mamba, on 17 September 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

Just Bought a Griffin and went to 3rd person view beside a Battlemaster ingame and Low and Behold there wasn't too much difference between the 2 (or didn't appear to me as much a difference).Why is this? I haven't had a Medium Mech since I sold off my cicadas and that was well over a Year ago so haven't been keeping close track.I mostly pilot Lights and Assaults.

Edit* typos in Title

IMHO it was a poor decision in the scaling department.

Regards

[Green Mamba]

LOL....I don't think Volume works that way except for the Stalker Mech of course.If it is Slimmer but Taller there could be a tradeoff

Andross Deverow, on 17 September 2014 - 11:40 AM, said:

IMHO it was a poor decision in the scaling department.

Regards

Actually this is what I was thinking myself

[Tombstoner]

I hope its has to do with how art interacts with a linear increase in volume. meaning a skinny design winds up being taller by default. This might explain why the URBI mech cant be released since its such a small mech to begin with its squat round ish design might lead to something very short but armed with an ac-10.
transforming the URBI into a very small hard to hit op little power house.

[UrsusMorologus]

Some of them are built for sniping and need to see over things, so some of it is attributable to platform purpose. But I suspect it was a balance choice, albeit a mistaken one. Mediums are often used for specialty builds with potential for high burst damage, so making some of the sniper platforms easy to see and target is one way to balance that out (as opposed to lights that can't carry enough to core you out, so those can be small and sneaky). But some of them are too large. I bought a Shadowhawk 2D and gave up on mastering the chassis by the time I got through basic level with it, just too big.

[Mechteric]

Yep, I've complained on this topic before plenty of times too. Maybe without IGP they'll actually consider doing the right thing now.

[Prezimonto]

Tombstoner, on 17 September 2014 - 11:46 AM, said:

I hope its has to do with how art interacts with a linear increase in volume. meaning a skinny design winds up being taller by default. This might explain why the URBI mech cant be released since its such a small mech to begin with its squat round ish design might lead to something very short but armed with an ac-10.
transforming the URBI into a very small hard to hit op little power house.

There's some video's of a few people running the Anansi with an Urbie loadout. They actually do okay, filling in a support direct damage role.

[Bishop Steiner]

Green Mamba, on 17 September 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

LOL....I don't think Volume works that way except for the Stalker Mech of course.If it is Slimmer but Taller there could be a tradeoff



Actually this is what I was thinking myself

It doesn't.

The goal in any military vehicle is to reduce volume, and give as small a target profile to the enemy as possible. Totally counter to PGIs assertion, for instance that the arms of a Catapult are mostly empty space. (Though in this case, judging by all the vcrs hanging outside my missile bays, they apparently, really are. Wonder why those are fire delayed for the doors to open, too?)

Any such designer would shortly be unemployed.

All mechs, are largely made of the same stuff. Density, except on weapons, will be largely the same, so really, the heavier the Mass (determined by Internal Structure, not by weapons tonnage) the bigger the mech will almost always be, barring massive engineering advances, which is why it would make sense for Clan MEchs to present a smaller profile than IS ones of the same mass.

Mind you that mas can be stretched in any of the various 3 dimensions, but the total volume should be reasonable constant, with weapons scales locked.

Obviously this is not the case.

Short answer..... PGI Modellers work in a bubble, without enough oversight to ensure consistency in the models.

Hence the size of the 7 ton PPC on the Banshee, and the same 7 ton PPC on the firestarter being the size of a Medium Laser on the Banshee.
http://mwomercs.com/...k/page__st__260
http://mwomercs.com/...ing-and-models/

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 17 September 2014 - 11:57 AM.

[Green Mamba]

CapperDeluxe, on 17 September 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

Yep, I've complained on this topic before plenty of times too. Maybe without IGP they'll actually consider doing the right thing now.

I never really took noticed I had some Hunchies and Cicadas when I first started playing Nov 12'.which I think they may be Volume Proportionate to weight with other Mechs.As I said I haven't played them in a long time so wasn't paying attention how it was .I think it may be the Newer Mediums that are disproportionate

Edited by Green Mamba, 17 September 2014 - 11:57 AM.

[Carrie Harder]

It's a carryover from Battletech Tabletop. Scaling was arbitrary there, because your targeting rolls weren't affected by the size/shape of the enemy's pewter miniatures. The difference there was only cosmetic. TT featured many heavy/assault mechs that were fairly small and lights/mediums that were utterly ginormous.

But in MWO, aiming means that size and shape are more than just cosmetic, which is why mechs with less armor and firepower should present a noticeably smaller target profile than their heavier counterparts. We can still have a little bit of deviation at each weight interval, like a Trenchbucket being a bit taller than a Lunchback, but overall the mech with less armor and firepower should be smaller to compensate for those flaws.

Edited by Carrie Harder, 17 September 2014 - 01:14 PM.

[Jin Ma]

they don't have a set procedure for scaling any of these mechs

You'd think it was important with how much they talk about having a consistent art direction, but i guess adding a scaling phase to their mech pipeline is too much work.

so in the end the lineup looks like a game where you download a bunch of mods and the models arn't all to the same scale

Edited by Jin Ma, 17 September 2014 - 01:19 PM.

[Mazerius]

Insert Quickdraw(worst scale mech imo) into 3d program of choice, select all components, set scale to .9 or .8 boom its suddenly useable

Works for the mediums as well really.

Edited by Mazerius, 17 September 2014 - 01:35 PM.

[STEF_]

Being a medium mech pilot, I ask

1) Better scale (max height hunchback or wolverine)
2) better quirks

edit typo

Edited by Stefka Kerensky, 17 September 2014 - 01:34 PM.

[Rebas Kradd]

Mediums need to be smaller to fully flesh out their advantage over larger mechs. They lack the speed of lights and the armor/weaponry of heavies, so if none of those qualities are going to change (speed could), size should.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 17 September 2014 - 02:02 PM.

[AlexEss]

Three different reasons.

A: FASA did not care one iota about scale and Ral Partha did not have much in the way of options due to primitive casting methods. The size of mechs could change between lore source to lore source due to being 2:nd party.

B: It is easier to scale the weapon with the mechs when you actually move parts between them. Take that arms from a awesome and scale it down to fit a light mech. without scaling each weapon mount would have to be crafted specially for each mech and some mechs would look really bad. I guess we traded the "big" weapons when we got the modular system. K2 being a good example of that.

C: The scale of mechs get a bit wonky in-game especially from inside the cockpit.

[Pendraco]

[Murzao]

I don't really care how tall a mech is.....I just like my Centurions with an eating disorder to make the CT pencil thin......but it was too powerful so they gave my Cent some food to fatten him up:P

[Jin Ma]

Mazerius, on 17 September 2014 - 01:26 PM, said:

Insert Quickdraw(worst scale mech imo) into 3d program of choice, select all components, set scale to .9 or .8 boom its suddenly useable

Works for the mediums as well really.

i'd really like to see them at least try to do it once with some of the worst offenders, before saying its going to be too much work.

And honestly, if its going to be so much work rescaling these mechs, why not put a tiny bit of work to get them right the first time.

[Monkey Lover]

kto mech are the size of an atlas