109 replies to this topic

[Torgun]

This is one thing you can be 100% sure PGI don't give a damn about. I don't know how many times in big threads this has been pointed out, and not one single thing has been done about it. Quite contrary, they just keep churning out huge medium mechs that make several Heavy mechs feel like they need to pump some iron. It's a lost cause no matter how you look at it.

[Koniving]

HlynkaCG, on 15 October 2014 - 12:01 PM, said:

I disagree, the Hunchback and Blackjack are quite reasonably scaled.

Thing is that the Centurion Trenchbucket, Griffon etc... should all be similar in size, not a head taller, and half-again as wide.

I can agree there... until finding out the actual meters of each.

The Hunchback is 13.3 meters in MWO. Please look at the TOP row of this, ignore the bottom two rows as they're "scaling buff fantasies."


Note that the Centurion is also 14.7 meters tall.

Now, consider this...
The Battletech canon for the scale some of the battlemechs are about to follow.
The Atlas is 13 meters tall.
The largest mech, Battlemech or Omnimech, in 3050 is the Executioner which is an exceptionally tall 95 ton Omnimech at 14.4 meters. The tallest mech in Battletech in 3050.
The Hunchback and Commando are the same height at 9 meters (so still shorter than the Commando in MWO) and the difference is that the Commando is very skinny while the Hunchback is really bulky. The Centurion, admittedly, is much skinnier than the Hunchback's torso with arms and legs just barely thinner, and the Centurion is considerably taller at about 10 meters with the Trebuchet specifically stated at 10.7 meters tall.

Some other fun facts: An ongoing trend in Battletech's scaling is that mechs which have ferro or endo steel tend to be larger than mechs without, this is because while the materials are lighter they are inevitably bulkier, consuming space both inside and outside of the mech (expanding inward and outward), so of a certain chassis one that comes stock with endo steel can up to .3 meters taller than one without.

Just some food for thought.

(A comparison: An Atlas is 13 meters tall. A Dire Wolf is 12.3 meters tall. The Dire Wolf has considerably more horizontal surface area while the Atlas is taller. Even so ultimately the Dire Wolf is 'larger' even if it is shorter).

(Another comparison: The Hunchback is 9 meters tall. The Nova is 8.3 meters tall. Admittedly the Nova is a bit larger in total surface area, though only slightly. This is assuming that the Nova has no pelvis from which to torso twist as is lore proper.)

(Fun fact: In BT, the Timber Wolf is taller than the Summoner [when including launchers] by 0.2 meters. In MWO the Summoner is taller than the Timber Wolf by 0.7 meters.)

Edited by Koniving, 15 October 2014 - 12:18 PM.

[Bront]

Alistair Winter, on 14 October 2014 - 04:49 PM, said:

Medium mechs the size of assault mechs, and the smallest and the light mech in the game, which is supposed to scout for the rest of the team, has a cockpit like this, while the assault mechs, which are supposed to rely on other mechs for scouting, have a cockpit like this.

The Bike Rack is so you have something to ride when your mech dies a quick death. I just wish I could mount a bike there as a cockpit item.

Either that, or it's a nerf to the OP (p) variant.

Viktor Drake, on 15 October 2014 - 09:34 AM, said:

Alot of heavies have this issue to. Quickdraw is 65 tons yet is massive next to a 60 ton Dragon.

Both are 60 tons actually. The Quickdraw is kinda thin, but not really. Some of the other tall mechs are thin, but not super-thin.

[Bront]

Torgun, on 15 October 2014 - 12:10 PM, said:

This is one thing you can be 100% sure PGI don't give a damn about. I don't know how many times in big threads this has been pointed out, and not one single thing has been done about it. Quite contrary, they just keep churning out huge medium mechs that make several Heavy mechs feel like they need to pump some iron. It's a lost cause no matter how you look at it.

Not caring about and not having the resources to fix it right now are two different things. PGI actually has addressed it once or twice as something they'd like to do, so I think they fall more on the latter.

[Torgun]

Bront, on 15 October 2014 - 12:23 PM, said:

Not caring about and not having the resources to fix it right now are two different things. PGI actually has addressed it once or twice as something they'd like to do, so I think they fall more on the latter.

If they actually cared they'd at least tried to scale the newly made mechs better. But this problem has been pointed out long ago, and the big mediums just keep on being made. So no, they really don't care.

[Roland]

Felio, on 15 October 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

Unfortunately to resize a 'mech, they would have to recreate it from scratch -- modeling, texturing, hitboxing, placing the cockpit camera, all of it.

Dude, this just is not true at all.
This isn't even remotely true.

[Dock Steward]

Torgun, on 15 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

If they actually cared they'd at least tried to scale the newly made mechs better. But this problem has been pointed out long ago, and the big mediums just keep on being made. So no, they really don't care.

And make the old, out of scale mechs even worse by comparison? At least right now, they're all off.

Yeah, better scaling would be nice.

[Torgun]

Dock Steward, on 15 October 2014 - 12:28 PM, said:

And make the old, out of scale mechs even worse by comparison? At least right now, they're all off.

Yeah, better scaling would be nice.

I think it makes sense to stop something when you know it's a mistake. To just keep doing something wrong when you're aware of it just so you don't have to correct old mistakes, is just plain lazy.

[Mawai]

I'm not sure where you get the canon numbers from ... other sources seem to indicate slightly larger ... putting the Atlas at 16m.

My Atlas height estimate came from:

http://bg.battletech...sgis9v49qg3g954

http://battlemechclu...mech-sizes.html

http://mwomercs.com/...post__p__531831

http://suptg.thisisn...22878985187.jpg

[Dock Steward]

Torgun, on 15 October 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

I think it makes sense to stop something when you know it's a mistake. To just keep doing something wrong when you're aware of it just so you don't have to correct old mistakes, is just plain lazy.

Maybe, but consistency helps breed balance. Not the only factor in balance, for sure, but a necessary component.

[Torgun]

Dock Steward, on 15 October 2014 - 12:37 PM, said:

Maybe, but consistency helps breed balance. Not the only factor in balance, for sure, but a necessary component.

Doing something consistently bad is good for balance? You sure have a very strange concept of balance.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Kevjack, on 14 October 2014 - 05:40 PM, said:

Every medium is oversized.

When I hit the lotto, I'm going to buy PGI, just so I can hire staff that's dedicated solely to resizing medium mechs.

Which mechs in this game are actually scaled properly? Probably none? Why is it so hard to scale them right? Its not like there isnt TT TROs that tell the devs....

Would it be so OP and unbalanced if all the mechs were the right sizes?

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 15 October 2014 - 12:42 PM.

[Dock Steward]

Torgun, on 15 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

Doing something consistently bad is good for balance? You sure have a very strange concept of balance.

At least everything would be consistently bad...so balanced...but bad.

[Torgun]

Dock Steward, on 15 October 2014 - 12:52 PM, said:

At least everything would be consistently bad...so balanced...but bad.

Since it's a problem that affects mediums way more than any other weightclass, it's not balanced at all. Unless you consider terrible balance as something to strive for.

[Dock Steward]

Torgun, on 15 October 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

Since it's a problem that affects mediums way more than any other weightclass, it's not balanced at all. Unless you consider terrible balance as something to strive for.

It's balanced as far as the mediums compare to mediums.

Look, I said a scale sweep would make me happy, I;m just saying that to have half the mediums in the game too big and the other half just right, is worse for balance than having all the mediums being off.

Edited by Dock Steward, 15 October 2014 - 12:59 PM.

[Koniving]

Roland, on 15 October 2014 - 12:28 PM, said:

Dude, this just is not true at all.
This isn't even remotely true.

Indeed.

On your left is the original Centurion in MWO.
On the right is one rescaled so that each major limb matched the art (arms, legs, torso, head).

This took me about 15 minutes to get the measurements and about 20 seconds to actually do it. Of course there's a bit more to it than that for MWO, so realistically it may take several days at the most for a single chassis.

Edited by Koniving, 15 October 2014 - 01:01 PM.

[UrsusMorologus]

Actually, need to wait to see what happens with the quirks pass. It might be possible to (more or less) balance with those alone.

[Torgun]

Dock Steward, on 15 October 2014 - 12:58 PM, said:

It's balanced as far as the mediums compare to mediums.

Look, I said a scale sweep would make me happy, I;m just saying that to have half the mediums in the game too big and the other half just right, is worse for balance than having all the mediums be off.

Say mediums make up 25% of the mechs, if half of them are badly scaled thus badly balanced that would be 12.5% of the total mechs that are badly made. But instead if all mediums are badly scaled, 25% of the total mechs are badly balanced. So more badly balanced mechs is a good thing? Makes no sense.

[Dock Steward]

Torgun, on 15 October 2014 - 01:01 PM, said:

Say mediums make up 25% of the mechs, if half of them are badly scaled thus badly balanced that would be 12.5% of the total mechs that are badly made. But instead if all mediums are badly scaled, 25% of the total mechs are badly balanced. So more badly balanced mechs is a good thing? Makes no sense.

Agree to disagree then.

[FupDup]

LordKnightFandragon, on 15 October 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

Which mechs in this game are actually scaled properly? Probably none? Why is it so hard to scale them right? Its not like there isnt TT TROs that tell the devs....

Would it be so OP and unbalanced if all the mechs were the right sizes?

TT is the REASON why mediums are so big in MWO. TT made a lot of mediums towering giants that dwarfed other mechs, and also featured minuscule assaults at times. It's literally that lore "flavor text" that got us into the current scaling mess in the first place.


A more sensical way to scale is simply based off of tonnage, with some minor deviation to account for things like geometry (i.e. it's okay for a Trebuchet to be a little bit taller than a Hunchback because it's skinnier, but it's 100% unacceptable for the Treb to be assault mech sized or even the size of a middle-range heavy). Mechs of lower tonnage have less armor and less firepower, so it's only fair that they are at least somewhat harder to peg shots on.

TT's scales had zero effect on Tabletop gameplay, because targeting rolls didn't account for the physical dimensions of an enemy target. An Urbanmech was just as easy to hit as an Atlas, which is completely stupid (in fact, the Urbie was even easier to hit than an Atlas due to its slower speed!). MWO is a game based on aiming manually, so scaling mechs based on arbitrary flavor text doesn't make much sense here -- because size DOES matter in this game.

Edited by FupDup, 15 October 2014 - 01:05 PM.