17 replies to this topic

[Hatachi]

A thread came up in General Discussion about if jump jets needed an overhaul and the overall consensus was leaning towards a yes. I threw a quick idea out and at least one person in the thread seemed to like it, so I took some time to mull it over in my head and try to hash out the idea more thoroughly. The goals are following.

• Limit overuse in poptarting
  
• Push it further into the roll of improving quick positioning of a mech
  
• Make it a strong tool for infighting
  
• Keep it from being something that is straight out better,such as single jumpjet turning, and make it feel like a more separate unique tool.
  
• Give it a stronger feeling of physicality with its use

The general idea is as follows. Instead of a slow lift starting when you hold the space bar, you would start readying fuel for the jump. Fuel would be measured by the amount of jump jets equipped. Think of each jet as an extra "stage" in the jump. When you let go of the button your are blasted forward at roughly a sixty to eighty degree angle. Something optional could be a second jump jet button or a quick doubletap of the jump jet button to launch at full jump jet power immediately.

The lore always gave me the impression of jumping to be one of the roughest things you could do to yourself in a mech. One TRO mentions early pilots learning to jump were prone to death in the training. I'm trying to capture the feeling of launching yourself into the air with the feeling you just kicked yourself the impulse of a few AC/20 shots out your rear. Jumps would have massive shake and a large shake on landing. Jumps would have a far greater length in the forward direction than they do now.

Momentum of the jumps would be far more heavily influenced by the impulse of the jump than current movement momentum. For example, a dead still mech with a large array of jump jets, such as a Spider or Summoner, would still leap forward a great distance. Leg damage should be lowered from jumping great a deal from the current fall damage system. In my reasoning it would be due to it being a prepared fall with the mech readying itself for impact vs basically "tripping" while running off a cliff. However jumping down to lower terrain would still cause damage, just less so.

The intended goal is to achieve a feeling of bounding leaps instead of the softer hovering feeling we have now. Mechs would spring forward to jump over upper gaps on Canyon and leap large sections of block sections for surprise attacks in enclosed urban environments giving them more of a "raiders tool" feeling. This would also lead to them being very useful for knife fighting in the ability to quickly change your angle in relation to your opponent within short ranges.
This also removes two things that jump jets, for better or worse, do now. They could still possibly be used to poptart, but it would be very hard to aim during the jump and the forced forward momentum would lead to the need for more careful consideration of the angle of the jump. This would also change the dynamic of single jump jet turning, where a single jump jet greatly increases maneuverability in turning. This could lead to two types of maneuverability in mechs. Ground speed with good turning that we have now, and the ability to blitz in a straight vector.

For an example of my thoughts on fuel use, let's take a six jump jet spider. It could make a "six jump jet" strength jump and then require ground time to refuel, or it could perform two "three jump jet" strength jumps in succession or a "four/ two" split in power between jumps. Refuel mechanics would work similar to now where fuel is regained while on the ground. The speed and how long a pause before refueling begins is one of those things that can only be properly decided with tweaking through actual implementation.

TLDR: Bursting forward jumps VS current, more hover-like, system

Feel free to offer counter ideas or blast mine apart. I wouldn't post this out here if I didn't want to hear differing opinions.

Edited by Hatachi, 25 September 2014 - 04:53 AM.

[RangerGee412]

Make jump jets an all or nothing piece of equipment. You want JJ you gotta take a full complement, no exceptions. Then balance from there without the need to have to worry about how to balance for just one jump jet.

I like your ideal but I could see a drawback. With your system I would use half my jump jets to jump in, shoot off an alpha and jump out immediately. Would kind of be a new form of poptarting. It could be abused.

Edited by RangerGee412, 25 September 2014 - 07:25 AM.

[Hatachi]

I thought about the jetting forward backwards thing. I think it would be helped by the fact you can only boost forward, so even with a second jump you would still have to physically turn the mech 180 degrees around. The issue I see with all or nothing jumpjets is things like variants that have the option for more jumpjets than come stock.

[RangerGee412]

Hatachi, on 25 September 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

I thought about the jetting forward backwards thing. I think it would be helped by the fact you can only boost forward, so even with a second jump you would still have to physically turn the mech 180 degrees around. The issue I see with all or nothing jumpjets is things like variants that have the option for more jumpjets than come stock.

You dont necessarily have to jump back just jumping any direction out of danger would be enough.

The whole allure of a mech with more jump jets would be the added distance, may be useful.

Personally my system would be you either have max jumpjets or nothing. Once you hit your jump key 1/2 of you fuel is used on the initial blast, you launch at a 45 degree angle or so. With your remaining fuel you can either use it to go further by feathering the JJ, hold the JJ key for increased height or use it to feather your landing. The drawback I would use is you cant jump again until you have enough fuel to do your initial burn.

Edited by RangerGee412, 25 September 2014 - 06:52 AM.

[VtTimber]

+1 - All or nothing and then balance from there.

Done, provides drawbacks to taking jumpjet equipped mechs but also balances that with improved mobility... as it should have been from the beginning.

The WHOLE reason jumpjets need balancing is because of the fools who started abusing the system and taking 1 jump jet... that is when it all went down hill.

Fix that and then start balancing.

[Dawnstealer]

Not sure I'm on board with the all-or-nothing thing. I would just make it a parabolic line, so 1 jump jet does very, very little, barely getting you off the ground, barely propels you forward - you're lifting a 20+ ton vehicle off the ground: with one jet, it just shouldn't do much at all.

But with 8, like the Spider 5V can mount? That thing should be damn-near a LAM in upward/jump mobility.

The problem is, and always has been, pop-tarts. The ability to shoot while jumping is the problem, not the actual ability to jump itself. This is largely fixed now, but at the cost of what makes jump jets worthwhile. Either keep reticle shake throughout the entire jump, or turn off weapons while jumping.

Then implement the curved line of jump jets and make them a rapid way to move forward or up (or back, or turn, if you have enough jets to pull it off).

Edited by Dawnstealer, 25 September 2014 - 06:53 AM.

[VtTimber]

Nope, have to disagree. Having the ability to mount less than the stock # of jumpjets is what led to this whole situation. All or nothing, then balance from there.

You KNOW that if they rebalance but still allow only 1 jumpjet people will complain that 1 jumpjet should do more than it does...

IT HAS TO BE ALL OR NOTHING

There HAS TO BE some downside to having so much more mobility and that downside is the tonnage for a full complement of JJs

Edited by VtTimber, 25 September 2014 - 07:00 AM.

[Reitrix]

RangerGee412, on 25 September 2014 - 06:10 AM, said:

Make jump jets an all or nothing piece of equipment. You want JJ you gotta take a full complement, no exceptions. Then balance from there without the need to have to worry about how to balance for just one jump jet.

I like your ideal but I could see a drawback. With your system I would use half my jump jets to jump in, shoot off an alpha and jump out immediately. Would kind of be a new form of portraying. It could be abused.

That actually sounds brilliant, and captures the "raider" feeling the OP mentions.

Its quite unlike poptarting, as the hostile 'mech performing such a maneuver would be fully exposed and vulnerable until he could jump away. Not only that, but if the raider misaligns his exit strategy, he's probably going to die, especially if he did it to a Lance of hostiles.

[Shlkt]

1 or 2 jump jets are attractive now because you get a lot of utility from being able to hover. You don't need any lift, for example, to hover over a canyon in Canyon Network. The underlying problem is that we gain the same hover time from 1 jump jet as we do from 12. So why take 12? They just generate more heat and cost tonnage!

The vertical acceleration provided by large numbers of jump jets is not sufficient incentive because most mechs now jump about as well as bricks. If you're going to jump like a brick you might as well do it using as few jets as possible.

If you reduce flight time for low numbers of jump jets then that would fix some of the problem. e.g. flight time = 1 + 0.5 * {# of jump jets}. One jet would then provide 1.5 seconds of flight, which is not nearly as useful. Players would have a good reason to max their jets.

Lift would need to be rebalanced, though, possibly by changing thrust vector over time. This is because vertical height scales quadratically with acceleration time; i.e. a 12 JJ Spider with a flight time of 7 seconds would be ridiculous at current vertical acceleration rates.

[Lefty Lucy]

VtTimber, on 25 September 2014 - 06:59 AM, said:

Nope, have to disagree. Having the ability to mount less than the stock # of jumpjets is what led to this whole situation. All or nothing, then balance from there.

You KNOW that if they rebalance but still allow only 1 jumpjet people will complain that 1 jumpjet should do more than it does...

IT HAS TO BE ALL OR NOTHING

There HAS TO BE some downside to having so much more mobility and that downside is the tonnage for a full complement of JJs

Not necessarily. Given OP's idea of a charge-up mechanic for JJ, a single JJ would net you a shorter charge time, but also a much, much shorter jump. If a full charge on a single JJ is only going to take you 30 m forward and 6 m up that does its own job of balancing the system.

[cranect]

With mechs like the Spider 5V you can already do the jump in, lay an air strike, and jump out. Even when you are going 160 kph and flying you still normally take some hits though. With something bigger and slower it could kill you.

[RockmachinE]

The only problem with drastic JJ changes is that maps and even the rest of the game mechanics were not designed with this in mind. This could break gameplay severely.

That being said I like the idea, that's how JJs should work.

[RangerGee412]

Lefty Lucy, on 25 September 2014 - 07:34 AM, said:

Not necessarily. Given OP's idea of a charge-up mechanic for JJ, a single JJ would net you a shorter charge time, but also a much, much shorter jump. If a full charge on a single JJ is only going to take you 30 m forward and 6 m up that does its own job of balancing the system.

With the ability to take only a few JJ is you can get an increase in mobility without really sacrificing firepower or armor. The ideal is to make it so people have to choose between high mobility, or more firepower. With the ability to choose the amount of JJ you can get both.

Louis Brofist, on 25 September 2014 - 07:39 AM, said:

The only problem with drastic JJ changes is that maps and even the rest of the game mechanics were not designed with this in mind. This could break gameplay severely.

That being said I like the idea, that's how JJs should work.

Its difficult to make JJ work nicely without making them the go to piece of equipment that everyone's gonna want to use. thats wy i believe making equiping jj an all or nothing thing would force you to choose between mobility and firepower.

[Hatachi]

Louis Brofist, on 25 September 2014 - 07:39 AM, said:

The only problem with drastic JJ changes is that maps and even the rest of the game mechanics were not designed with this in mind. This could break gameplay severely.

That being said I like the idea, that's how JJs should work.

This occurred to me when I was writing up my general theory. What I finally settled on was the only map that has heavy interaction with jumpjets and its layout seems to be Canyon, and possibly the snowbank on the snow version of Forest Colony. I could be forgetting somewhere. I think the proposed system wouldn't change the interactions on those maps other than you clearing the obstacles or gaining the height to top of canyon faster.

@Shlkt

Don't forget that in this system total fuel is based on the number of jets installed. Could a possible answer to this question be a slight pause in movement using a bracing for jump animation to break over the top forward momentum crossing with the strong forward jump thrust? I'm just riffing here.

Edited by Hatachi, 25 September 2014 - 08:11 AM.

[VtTimber]

I'm not a fan of this fuel based approach unless you are forced to carry the full complement of JJs. Then you could use this fuel system to have multiple jumps but I don't know if that would work...

I can just imagine JJ's working correctly, a Victor jumps into the middle of a lance of Mechs from over a hill and opens up with his AC20 in close range... this is what the Victor was supposed to do and it would only work if JJs were more explosive than what anything close to what we have now.

Again, this MUCH greater mobility would be balanced by the fact that the Victor was carrying 4 or 5 tons worth of JJs that could not be removed.

[Mechteric]

Just about any change to jets at this point would make me happy. I wouldn't mind seeing it in action before delivering judgement.

[Wyest]

Resurrecting one from the dark age...

I like the charge mechanic idea, so long as it doesn't fling me into a wall instead of onto the building/canyon wall like I actually want... Being flung ahead would also stop the whole jump-and-spin thing we have going, and the whole 'tap jump to stuff with hit-reg' that always comes back.

It's better than any other option for JJ's I've seen floated.

Edited by Wyest, 03 September 2015 - 07:04 PM.

[Hatachi]

Was not expecting someone to post on this thread after so long. I appreciate the idea being brought back to light though, thanks.