43 replies to this topic

[CCC Dober]

I would like to suggest the following to tackle two known problems/exploits: legging and weapon stripping

1. The reason why legs have been tempting targets in the past was that they had only a fraction of armor
compared to a fully armored torso PLUS they could be hit from all sides PLUS damage heavily affected
mobility and general survivability.

Solution:
Split up each leg into 3 different parts (foot, lower, upper) and give each of them the full armor and internals
according to standing specifications. This will make them about as hard to kill as the torso above.

2. It was equally not unheard of to see people deliberately strip enemy Mechs of their means to fight back to
grief or ridicule them. Arm-heavy Mechs suffered the most on average. Arms shared roughly the same
problems as legs but were a bit harder to hit from all angles. Although it was much easier to rip them off.

Solution:
Split up each arm into 2 different parts (lower, upper) and give each of them full armor and internals
according to standing specifications.


If such a system is already in place, please consider this thread superfluous and void.
Otherwise I hope this will turn MW:O into a more pleasant experience. Thank you for your attention.

Cheers

[Steel Prophet]

Just to get things right here:
Split the legs in 3 Parts and give all of them the armor and internals of a "full" leg?

And what should be the consequences, when one of those parts has been destroyed? None at all? Doesn't sound too good for me.

Same applies for Arms.

[Son of Jaak]

I think the idea Dober is trying to get across is that by splinting up the leg into three or more hit zones it will make the leg less of an automatic target. While moving and shooting it is difficult to consistently hit only a section of leg instead of the leg as a whole, making the "spray and pray" technique less effective on the legs.

A benefit of this type of system would be the use of area effect weapons, such as missiles, that will be able to damage the whole area of the leg and precision weapons, such as lasers, would be more efficiently used on the torso or larger area portions of the mech.

Of-course, if a section of leg would fail then the whole leg should collapse.

[CCC Dober]

@Son
I was thinking about the partial destruction and decided to omit the details, so the devs can try and tweak things as they see fit.
The general idea is as you say and I hope this system is already in place or can be considered.

The toughest nut to crack is how to justify the effective armor multiplicator on both arms and legs. Some people excel at exploiting the aforementioned 'problems' and they will openly oppose this idea, pretty sure of it. I just hope the devs see what's what, if it ever comes to that point. But I'm positive all in all. We can still go hull-down if this idea runs into a brick wall, just means more camping. No problem with me =)

[Steel Prophet]

I don't see a Problem with ppl shooting Arms and/or Legs. Never did. By stripping your enemy of his mobility or weapons you create an advantage for yourself/your team to kill that enemy.

Also hitting the moving legs of a moving Mech isn't that easy. Someone wants to waste some shots on it? Go ahead! Of course if the enemy is just standing there and has the armor removed from his legs (as seen a lot in MW4) well... then he simply deserves to get shot down in that way.

[Son of Jaak]

The Mechwarrior franchise is first and foremost supposed to be a simulation. As a simulation, having the legs as one hit box never made sense to me as most legs are jointed and as such should at minimum have two hit boxes.

[ManDaisy]

fully armored legs have equal armor to a torso.

[Son of Jaak]

The argument I am making is for hit boxes, not the amount or armour the legs have.

[CCC Dober]

@Son
I gave the idea another spin and realized something. In the past there was only one hitzone for either leg or arm and that carried over into the game unmodified. The results were that hitting both parts of the Mech was easier than when you attempted to do that with dice in the original game. This led to the exploits I mentioned. Conversely, if the original game sported multiple hitzones for both arms and legs, they would have been incredibly hard to kill and thus become equally prone to exploits. What we have here is one of the extreme cases, where things that work well and balanced it TT simply don't work as intended in a realtime environment.

Back on track: I realize that this game is trying to capture the spirit of the game and that both aforementioned environments have different rules. In order to preserve the feeling and character of the TT, it might become necessary to handle multiple hitzones for arm and legs 'under the hood'. Visually everything stays the same, armor, internals and values. But in combat things would suddenly start to make sense. Like shooting off the foot of a Mech may still allow it to limp slightly faster than with a blown lower leg. Or that a savaged upper arm doesn't automatically render lower arm mounted weapons useless. Things like that go a long way to consolidate both what you can read (Victor's Daishi having his foot actuator blown to pieces) and experience (TT) in this game.

I could give an example on how it may work out in the end (hypothetical values).
Let's say you want to destroy the leg of another Mech and your shots have to cover a long distance. The first salvo deals 15 damage to the upper and 10 to the lower leg. The next salvo ended up with 10 hitting the foot and 15 hitting the lower leg. Assuming that your maximum leg armor is 20 for the whole leg that means each part of it is equally armored. So the upper leg is down to 10/20, the lower is down to 0/20 (internal damage of 5) and the foot at 10/20. Overall the average armor level is down to 15/60, which is 25%. Internal structure is good so far, only the lower leg is a bit shaky. Let's say the average internal level is at 80%. So the target display would display the leg armor as orange-red and the internals green-yellow-ish. Visuals however show the lower leg armor to be a total mess and that is where we come full circle. This is the spot where the leg will offer the least resistance and severely cripple movement speed if destroyed. If it was the foot, less so. Upper leg would probably result in dragging the whole leg at a snail's pace.

The above is what goes on in the novels and gives us a more accurate idea of how it was envisioned originally (personal impression). The TT game can't display such a level of detail for the reason I have mentioned already and because it is complicated enough without it. MW:O on the other hand is not limited in such a way and can combine the best of both worlds, so to say. And it already does, see persistent visual damage. The calculations and tedious things basically run 'under the hood' and I think this allows for more refined hitzones while staying true to the spirit of the game.

So by my reckoning we may get more realism/depth and less griefing from this.

Edited by CCC Dober, 24 June 2012 - 02:30 AM.

[Steel Prophet]

Son Of Jaak, on 23 June 2012 - 12:55 PM, said:

The Mechwarrior franchise is first and foremost supposed to be a simulation. As a simulation, having the legs as one hit box never made sense to me as most legs are jointed and as such should at minimum have two hit boxes.

I fully agree with that and the same would count for arms aswell i say. What i don't agree with is the implication that shooting the legs or arms is some kind of "exploit" (sounds too close to "cheat" to me).

[MarneusB]

Dober, I love it. It adds a sense of realism to this simulation game, and makes things a whole lot more fair.

Not to mention that it's more realistic. 2 tons of armor, but all of it only at the knee actuator? Splitting/averaging makes it a little more realistic in that sense as well.

[MrMasakari]

I do see your point OP and I do really like it to a certain extent. However I don't think legs and arms should have (roughly) the same amount of armor as centre torso, because 90% of people will then just aim for center torso because it will probably just be a lot quicker (generally). But I do think the arms and legs should be segmented so you can't simply just blow off someones arm and half their weapons with one lucky shot/alpha strike as in mw4 and mw3. Regardless I do think its a step in the right direction for realism and for balancing too really

[Toldor]

If you look in the BT-Hit-Table you see you only have 25% to hit the legs. So if the programmers did a good job, then not all of your weapons are always hitting the legs if you fire at them. Most legs have severe problems after 2 or 3 medium-laser hits.

[CCC Dober]

Toldor, on 25 June 2012 - 03:59 AM, said:

If you look in the BT-Hit-Table you see you only have 25% to hit the legs. So if the programmers did a good job, then not all of your weapons are always hitting the legs if you fire at them. Most legs have severe problems after 2 or 3 medium-laser hits.

It is my understanding that this game will be skill based and that means 'chance-to-hit' will be determined by the player for the most part. So if you are able and willing, you could hit specific locations with 100% and that happened repeatedly in past MW games. With known consequences, since arms and legs weren't exactly hard to hit in the first place. It's one of the more long standing problems and I hope this suggestion is feasible from a technical point of view. It would still reward skill because the total armor in the hitzones remains unchanged and the consequences stay the same, except they become more refined and realistic. But the ease of legging and stripping weapons would be more in line with the TT and novels, which makes a lot more sense than what we've played on PC in the past. It's a rather poor experience to see an arm or leg vanish completely/become useless, just because you got hit in the foot or hand actuator. So my hope is that this will also become a thing of the past if this idea of multiple hitzones gets a go (or is already implemented).

[Agent CraZy DiP]

My two pennies... Multiple hitboxs...

This is just an idea and is only one possible way.
Lets say the leg has 100 points of armor and it's divided into 2 hit-boxs, lower and upper. Splitting the armor into two segments of 50 armor a piece. It will still take a keen eye and a steady hand to take out one segment of a leg for all its 50 armor points without missing or hitting the other segment. Some people wont like this cause they paid for 100 armor points and they will feel they're not getting their moneys worth.

Way number 2... My preferred method...
Lets say you have 100 armor points, again divided into 2 hit-boxes... Now lets say each hit-box has 75 armor points... Now before you say learn to count that's 150 not 100... hear me out. There is two ways to take out a leg. Either by doing 75 points of damage to a single segment... and here's the fun part... by doing 100 points of damage cumulative over the two segments!

[Fastred]

CCC Dober, on 24 June 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

@Son
I gave the idea another spin and realized something. In the past there was only one hitzone for either leg or arm and that carried over into the game unmodified. The results were that hitting both parts of the Mech was easier than when you attempted to do that with dice in the original game. This led to the exploits I mentioned. Conversely, if the original game sported multiple hitzones for both arms and legs, they would have been incredibly hard to kill and thus become equally prone to exploits. What we have here is one of the extreme cases, where things that work well and balanced it TT simply don't work as intended in a realtime environment.

Back on track: I realize that this game is trying to capture the spirit of the game and that both aforementioned environments have different rules. In order to preserve the feeling and character of the TT, it might become necessary to handle multiple hitzones for arm and legs 'under the hood'. Visually everything stays the same, armor, internals and values. But in combat things would suddenly start to make sense. Like shooting off the foot of a Mech may still allow it to limp slightly faster than with a blown lower leg. Or that a savaged upper arm doesn't automatically render lower arm mounted weapons useless. Things like that go a long way to consolidate both what you can read (Victor's Daishi having his foot actuator blown to pieces) and experience (TT) in this game.

I could give an example on how it may work out in the end (hypothetical values).
Let's say you want to destroy the leg of another Mech and your shots have to cover a long distance. The first salvo deals 15 damage to the upper and 10 to the lower leg. The next salvo ended up with 10 hitting the foot and 15 hitting the lower leg. Assuming that your maximum leg armor is 20 for the whole leg that means each part of it is equally armored. So the upper leg is down to 10/20, the lower is down to 0/20 (internal damage of 5) and the foot at 10/20. Overall the average armor level is down to 15/60, which is 25%. Internal structure is good so far, only the lower leg is a bit shaky. Let's say the average internal level is at 80%. So the target display would display the leg armor as orange-red and the internals green-yellow-ish. Visuals however show the lower leg armor to be a total mess and that is where we come full circle. This is the spot where the leg will offer the least resistance and severely cripple movement speed if destroyed. If it was the foot, less so. Upper leg would probably result in dragging the whole leg at a snail's pace.

The above is what goes on in the novels and gives us a more accurate idea of how it was envisioned originally (personal impression). The TT game can't display such a level of detail for the reason I have mentioned already and because it is complicated enough without it. MW:O on the other hand is not limited in such a way and can combine the best of both worlds, so to say. And it already does, see persistent visual damage. The calculations and tedious things basically run 'under the hood' and I think this allows for more refined hitzones while staying true to the spirit of the game.

So by my reckoning we may get more realism/depth and less griefing from this.

Well stated CCC Dober

Edited by Fastred, 25 June 2012 - 07:28 AM.

[Fire for Effect]

unlikely to happen since it would be to far removed from the original ruleset. Do not forget if you move your legs are moving and since naturally these a quite close to the ground the can be obstacles or other places where you can hide your legs from enemy fire...

[Littlejohn]

Agent CraZy DiP, on 25 June 2012 - 06:42 AM, said:

My two pennies... Multiple hitboxs...

This is just an idea and is only one possible way.
Lets say the leg has 100 points of armor and it's divided into 2 hit-boxs, lower and upper. Splitting the armor into two segments of 50 armor a piece. It will still take a keen eye and a steady hand to take out one segment of a leg for all its 50 armor points without missing or hitting the other segment. Some people wont like this cause they paid for 100 armor points and they will feel they're not getting their moneys worth.

Way number 2... My preferred method...
Lets say you have 100 armor points, again divided into 2 hit-boxes... Now lets say each hit-box has 75 armor points... Now before you say learn to count that's 150 not 100... hear me out. There is two ways to take out a leg. Either by doing 75 points of damage to a single segment... and here's the fun part... by doing 100 points of damage cumulative over the two segments!

I guess I just don't get this whole multiple hit box thing. If you disable ANY part of a Mechs leg the WHOLE leg is still going to be useless. You can't blast apart "some" of a leg and still have the leg operational.

[I Am Sancho]

I can see having a single hit box for a leg or an arm also becoming a problem as we diversify the number of mechs. Mechs simply by their design will have advantageous or negative effects because they simply have easier/larger legs or arms to hit. A big arm like on a rifleman would be easier to hit than another same weighted mech simply because the model hit box takes up more area. Even if the armor value was the same, the very design makes a flaw in balance mechanics that would be difficult to work out without multiple hit boxes.

[I Am Sancho]

Littlejohn, on 27 June 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

I guess I just don't get this whole multiple hit box thing. If you disable ANY part of a Mechs leg the WHOLE leg is still going to be useless. You can't blast apart "some" of a leg and still have the leg operational.

I would say that the leg should probably still become inoperable, but, think of it more like trying to drill a hole down to the structure. With multiple hit boxes, it is harder to keep your drill on the point where you are working at. It doesn't make the leg stronger per say, it simply makes it so you have to be a better shot to get down to the structure. This is a way to keep skill based aim but still keep TT based difficulty at taking out limbs.
Another way to put it, you are chopping a tree down, it takes 40 chops to get through the tree, if you just hack anywhere on the tree 40 times(single hit box), it shouldn't fall, instead you need to work at getting 40 chops in a small enough area (multiple hit boxes) to work through the tree.