744 replies to this topic

[Ultimax]

Thoughts on October Road Map

• Fall damage: This seems like a good tweak overall.

• Increased JJ thrust: Another nice idea, not convinced of the value in actual gameplay. This game is about shooting people and positioning, taking a ton of JJs for thrust will be fun but I doubt more effective than more weapons/heatsinks.

• Omni-mech JJ slots:
  
  • Summoner: This will probably make the few Die-hard summoner fans happy, but realistically the Summoner’s problem of a lack of tonnage will continue. There is no way around it, in this game fire power is more important than “super jumping” and the Summoner will continue to be undergunned for a 70 ton mech.

• Timber Wolf S: This seems an unnecessarily painful nerf for the S variant, I think we will see this variant disappear from regular play. Transferring the problem the Summoner has to more mechs doesn’t balance the game - it just reduces the number of variants in play. There is no real reason to ever play the S variant now over the Prime or C. I’ll probably abandon the S variant, as 5 tons of Jump Jets will still be pointless and too confining build-wise, especially when it reduces you to 23 tons of pod space. I hoped you guys would have learned from the Victor and Highlander nerfs that are only now being reversed 7 months later.

• Timber Wolf Prime/C + S Torsos: This seems a reasonable nerf and I understand why it’s being done. That being said, I’m not happy watching build diversity shrink clan side even further. This nerf effectively kills several missile heavy loadouts (requires 2x S torsos) which aren’t really optimal to begin with.

Other Omni-JJ thoughts: The conundrum is that if you make JJs too important, or too good, then non-JJ mechs (most mechs) suffer in gameplay - on the other hand if JJs remain marginal even with a lot of thrust, then 5x JJs locked into variants basically removes those variants from being competitive.

• Destruction of a Clan Side Torso: I’ll wait to see how this plays out in practice.

• Updated Reward System: Sounds interesting, I look forward to more details.

• Inner Sphere Quirk System: Looking forward to more details.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 29 September 2014 - 03:32 PM.

[VanillaG]

I like the 20% loss of heatsinks for side torso but I would also like to see a recalculation of remaining heat sinks when a section is lost. If you lose an arm with 3 heatsinks your heat capacity and dissipation should go down.

[101011]

Rebas Kradd, on 29 September 2014 - 03:21 PM, said:

Well, that's happening anyway. Since we're talking about the validity of ADDITIONAL buffs, I figured I'd speak on that basis.

I believe we should make small tweaks one at a time before going full out and slamming down both nerfs at once.

[keith]

N0MAD, on 29 September 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

The idea of losing speed and heat capacity after clan torso loss is a good idea..almost common sense no?

PGI finally did it right. u start by doing something small, then if it doesn't work u add more to it. this is not the norm PGI nerf bat 9000. i kinda almost have faith back in PGI, i shall see back in the end of the month.

[Xarian]

Russ Bullock, on 29 September 2014 - 03:01 PM, said:

Since they both use the same class of JJ's your right that they behave the same way in game. You could say the same thing about comparing the 35 ton Jenner to the 30 ton spider that use the same class of JJ's.

I don't have plans just yet to apply this kind of granularity to the exact tonnage being lifted.

Russ, the good news here is that the math here is very simple. Just take an "exemplar" mech from each class of JJs to use as a base, and then have other mechs have scaling thrust based on that exemplar. For example, if the Jenner in the above example is the exemplar for light mechs, then the Spider would have (35/30) times the thrust if it has the same amount of JJs. You could probably just pick the heaviest mech available for each class of JJs as your exemplar: Jenner (Class 5), Shadowhawk (Class 4), Timberwolf (Class 3), Victor (Class 2), and Highlander (Class 1)

Edited by Xarian, 29 September 2014 - 03:31 PM.

[Chemie]

XL crits should hurt speed not DHS

Quirks are not enough to balance IS vs clans...just makes under played IS more viable.

[ebea51]

Some good stuff here... but I do not agree with the changes to velocity in regards to fall damage.

Yes, full jumpjet mechs have the right to feel more mobile.
I agree with the adjustable thrust and turn rate changes.

HOWEVER...

By increasing the velocity a med or light (and I personally pilot both) can hit the ground at before taking damage REDUCES immersion.
These mechs are 20-55 tonnes!!
They will reach terminal velocity fast and when they hit the ground, they will do DAMAGE. ALL velocity penalties should be higher for all classes of mech to more realistically portray ingame the MASS of the machine you are piloting.

All mechs should take leg damage at the SAME velocity cutoff, with the damage calculated using velocity and tonnage.
The faster you hit - the more damage.
The heavier you are - the more damage.

If you want to mitigate this damage for jump jet heavy mechs...
- Why not increase the initial jump jet thrust burst, so smaller (instead of longer) bursts are needed to arrest fall velocity
- Make a mech QUIRK that some mechs have high tensile leg actuators, so they can absorb/take more fall damage before becoming damaged.
- Make a mech MODULE, something like 'High Pressure/Performance Leg Actuator Hydraulic/Pressure system' that allows legs to absorb/take more fall damage before becoming damaged and have I generate a small amount of heat (to simulate the system working in overdrive) that is a proportionate to the amount of damage it is mitigating (to a higher damage cutoff).

Battlemechs are HEAVY... they have a lot of MASS!!!
There is currently NO WAY to FEEL this ingame other than dropping from a great height because there are no collisions... don't take away/reduce the only thing (currently) that is giving us the only sensation we are piloting a huge, heavy battlemech, instead of a feather-weight cockpit with legs and weapons attached...

We need more ways ingame to convey/portray the MASS of the battlemechs we are piloting... and the consequences of piloting that mass poorly.

Edited by ebea51, 29 September 2014 - 03:31 PM.

[wanderer]

Quote

A Clan engine has a total of 10 critical engine slots and the destruction of a Side Torso in a clan ‘Mech means the loss of two of those slots, or 20%.

Actually, in TT the destruction of a side torso XL for a Clanner destroys two-thirds of the engine's critical machinery. Three hits to an engine disables it- it simply has lots of crit locations to represent being a big target- and this is also part of why later 'Mechs have options for what's called Compact Engines and Gyros. You can put more stuff into the same location, thereby insulating it against those lethal three crit hits being so likely.

It's not [redacted] rocket science- if you read the rulebook, there's an easy, clear answer to your problem. Just make engines damageable like they should be with the appropriate increases to heat load as they absorb more hits and you've not only fixed Clan XLs, you've made a better damage model for all 'Mechs. One third of engine health gone = .5 heat/sec. Two thirds = 1 heat/sec, and obviously fully destroyed = dead engine. A Clan XL side torso will generate 1 heat/sec when trashed, which is a nice solid penalty - and everyone else's engines will behave like they should when damaged as well.

And likewise, get a real overheat system working. You've been using the same kludgy, almost penalty-free placeholder for years now. If the overheat bar had actually caused increasingly negative effects from the get-go like it should, we would never have "needed" ghost heat and 100%-overheat dancing would have been the [redacted] it should have been from year 1.

Edited by Marvyn Dodgers, 29 September 2014 - 03:43 PM.
Language/insults

[Solahma]

What about the missing weapon modules? when can we expect those?

[Ozric]

Another informative post. Welcome news about the JJ changes, everything looks good and makes sense. In particular making a single rule for Clan JJ pods was definitely the way to go.

Nice that the IS quirks are on schedule, and they seem to be just the sort of thing we were all hoping for. Sorry to hear that Clan quirks are further away but balancing being balancing that makes sense as well. I'm also very interested in finding out where certain variants have lined up in the 1-5 tiers.

Reward updates, don't tease us you teasing tease, give us the sugar.

[Damocles69]

so jj mechs are going back to the top of the pile and clans remain op. cool

[Kaeb Odellas]

Russ, are mech tiers evaluated on a variant-by-variant basis? While I would probably place the AS7-D-DC as a tier 2 mech, the AS7-K is definitely a 4 or 5.

Edit: Whoops, already answered

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 29 September 2014 - 03:35 PM.

[KamikazeRat]

How will the client handle the Timberwolf-S suddenly having JJs and a full complement of weapons/ammo in those locations? is it going to strip the build? reset it to factory? or just add them and have a slot violation that you have to manually fix? im probably going to preempt this and just add some JJs to it, but not everyone will.

[990Dreams]

Much appreciation about the continued notification of progress plans to the community! Looking forward to the coming updates!

[Renegade Preacher]

Just one idea to the QUIRK section.

Instead of creating a huge quirk table for every mech to make EVERY mech usefull and playable (many would agree, many would be disappointed), you should simply use a Proportional Armor Point System.

ES.: Hunchback should have more armor points applied to the right torso to reflect the greater torso size.
It sounds strange having a very big right torso with the same armor points of the left one (where do you put the same amount of armor in the smaller torso?)!

ES.: Catapult should have more armor points applied to the right and left arm to reflect the greater arms size.
It sounds strange having very big arms with less armor points of the smaller torsoes!

In this way EVERY mech would be UNIQUE and usefull on the battlefield!
EVERY mech would have its own intrinsic quirk!

I'm not a programmer but I think this can be done by changing your armor points tables (a mere data entry work).

PROPORTIONAL ARMOR POINT SYSTEM... please think of it!!!

[Leigus]

Russ Bullock said:

...I am going to be making a small adjustment to allow the thrust to increase a little bit faster as you add more JJs. This will make those 'Mechs feel a little more mobile and give more advantage to 'Mechs that dedicate more space to JJ...

IMO, jump jet height should start at a negative value for 1-2 jets (aka, they still output a constant thrust/jet, but you need a certain number of jets to overcome the mech's weight). Like so:


(For reference, since there was confusion the first time I used this graphic: this is supposed to be a model for the Spider -- with this, the Spider 5V with max JJs goes twice as high as the Spider 5D with its max of 8. To tesselate this to other weight classes, say Assault, consider "8" to be the maximum number of jets of the average chassis of that tonnage, so for Victors 8 --> 4. Hope that clears some stuff up).

That way, mechs still can't get away with mounting only 1-2 jump jets to poptart and you aviod messing with a finicky exponential curve. (As an added bonus, this system is closer to how jump jets would be have in real life).


Aside from this, I really like all the other changes proposed. The quirk system seems like a great option for buffing underpowered mechs without haveing to globally alter the game.

Edited by Leigus, 29 September 2014 - 03:35 PM.

[KamikazeRat]

Kaeb Odellas, on 29 September 2014 - 03:30 PM, said:

Russ, are mech tiers evaluated on a variant-by-variant basis? While I would probably place the AS7-D-DC as a tier 2 mech, the AS7-K is definitely a 4 or 5.

Russ Bullock, on 29 September 2014 - 02:51 PM, said:

yes this is per variant. For instance The majority of Dragons are considered tier 5 but the Flame is a tier 3 mech.

[Felio]

I'm not sure the JJ thrust and turn rate buffs are going to be enough to help the Summoner.

With max armor and 5 JJ, the TBR-S has 1.77 more tons available and 28 more armor, which admittedly isn't much.

But the hard points, oh, the hard points. The only thing the SMN does that the TBW can't do better is it can put two SRM launchers in an arm instead of a side torso. Not irrelevant but not a game-changer either, and if it does even that, it pays a high price.

It misses out on two of its maximum of four energy hardpoints and excludes by weight putting ballistics in its side torsi -- the result being it relies on a paltry two energy hard points for direct location damage, with too much free tonnage for 2 ERML and not enough for 2 ERLL without overheating badly.

How is all that jump mobility going to help if it gets vaporized by the much more versatile weapons platform that is the TBW?

My only other nitpick is that I'm not sure how I feel about weapon-specific variant quirks and the effect it might have on build diversity, both what I encounter in the field and what I might consider in my own builds.

[Lucky Noob]

i rely start to beliece again in you, Great Update, no i will not Nail you on the dates, when its done is enough for me, just knowing you have good Plans , in my personal eyes is great.

[ExplodedZombie]

For the most part this sounds really great. However, I'm concerned about the 20% Internal Heatsink penalty to the ST being blown out of Clan mechs. For a balanced Clan mech, losing a ST means losing roughly 50% of firepower. Not only does that lower your standard heat generation, but your ghost heat, as well. Even with 20% penalty, won't you still be running much cooler.

Again, this would be on a fully balanced mech (weapons and DHS spread evenly). Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong...