26 replies to this topic

[Ragnar Darkmane]

All I'll say: Catapults need a massive hitbox buff. They are extremly outdated with their super broad CT, especially when you consider that a Timber Wolf is ~20 kph faster, carries at least 40% more firepower (not mentioning that they even got JJs on Prime unlike the CAT K1) and is twice as hard to kill than a CAT thanks to it's infuriatingly good hitboxes, for being only 10 tons heavier (which has almost no balancing impact even on MM).

Other mechs like the Awesome need to be looked at as well...

[Malcolm Vordermark]

I Zeratul I, on 21 October 2014 - 12:48 AM, said:

What if armor distribution was altered so that a mech's arms had less armor than a mech's side torso by a value of 10-20 points? Like say if every mech in the game received a 10% to 20% RT/LT/CT armor boost..

Your mech should not be running 20 points of armor in the back. The Banshee should be running 75 armor up front, maybe 70 if you're not too confident in your situational awareness. That gives it 10 points difference between the arms and torso, not that anyone would run max arm armor on a Banshee.

The armor difference would have to be much more extreme and even then torso mounted weapons would also go a long way to making arms undesirable targets in most cases.

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

LordKnightFandragon, on 21 October 2014 - 03:39 AM, said:

Strip 10 pts off the back and place it on the front of the ST, then see where hte math adds up. Or, run 15 armor on the back, 54+15=69, more armor then the arm........that is based solely on your own allocation of armor. If you went 0 armor and just went all front, its still more armor then your armor, 54+26=80. So, the 80 is the max armor the ST can have, which is more then the arm.....

15 armor on the back is 65 on the front(15 + 65 = 80). The arm has a maximum of 64 armor. You'd only have 1 point more armor on the torso than on the arm. 1 point difference is equivalent to being shot with a single machine gun for approximately 1 second. Its 1/5th the full damage of a medium laser. Would that make a noticeable difference or affect things in a significant way?

Of course, this says nothing about whether side torso armor might use a boost to make arms, which are typically smaller and more difficult to target than side torsos, more tempting targets. I was hoping people would comment on that. Thus far no one has bothered.

Also, this is the second time I'm pointing out "80 armor" isn't really 80 because its split between the front and back. Could you respond to that statement or at least acknowledge it?

Moenrg, on 21 October 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

That question has multiple answers. The quickest of which is it depends. It depends on what I have in the mech (weapons), how I plan on fighting with the mech, what is the layout of hitboxes, and if I plan on using the mech in group or not. The explanation of each item could take pages if I wanted. But some simple rules:

1) If the rear hitboxes are tiny and very hard to hit, there is little reason for armoring them much at all. For example the rear torso behind the hunch on a hunchback. 2 to 4 armor points are more than enough. However since you posted the back of a pulse laser banshee, I would start with 14 armor points there.

2) Pulse lasers don’t require much face time, but if I was using Lasers or Clan AC’s, I would need more face time to deliver full damage – thus my front torso needs a bit more armor – I might drop it down to 12 if I was using a laser banshee (I normally don’t).

3) If I was dropping in group, and had dedicated mechs for sweeping lights (and I was a brawler) I’d drop it down to 10, as I have other mechs to “watch my back”.

The bottom line is you want to keep the enemies if front of you as much as possible and thus keep your armor in front. I would suggest starting with 14 on your banshee, then seeing if you die more to front torso’s than back. Move a point here or there and keep experimenting. Also the armor on your arms is very expendable in a banshee as you have nothing vital there (there are mechs where I run with no or very little armor on one arm as losing that arm means nothing to the mech). There is really little reason to keep it maxed (drop it by half or more to gain more tons for HS/engine size). Obviously it is almost always a good idea to keep torso armor maxed, arms and legs should usually be the first area to look when cutting armor (don’t cut leg armor on lights though). Lights, in general, have more % armor on their backs (if brawlers) as they will normally be shot from more angles (though you should almost always be shooting at a light’s legs). Remember that arms can be hit from either the front or the back, while torso’s can only be hit on the appropriate side, so arms wind up being vulnerable more often. And for those who say you should be "shooting the CT" perhaps, but for your own mech (and certainly for assault pilots) you should be torso twisting as much as possible to be taking those hits on your arms.

WOT is a very good game in its own right, but Battletech (and Mechwarrior) has a very rich history and is also a very good game in its own right. PGI understands there are VERY loyal battletech fans who know the history by heart and can quote you chapter and verse from it. They know the rules of battletech (where MWO gets a lot of its rules) and have played it hundreds of times. “Suggesting” that MWO be more like WOT or some other FPS game is anathema to those fans. You might have very good ideas, but I suggest you read some of the battletech books (dedicated to the clan invasion period, most of which I have read 4 or more times) and read the rules of Battletech (including battlemech construction rules, which MWO is fairly closely following) and perhaps see why what you are suggesting in considered wrong by many others. There is so much more to MWO than some first person shooter, depriving yourself of the knowledge of the history of the Inner Sphere is limiting yourself in so many ways.

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Irony being irony, I leveled a Banshee M's basic techs only a few days ago to x2 my S and E. After grinding techs on a timberwolf, warhawk and direwolf, the banshee felt unbelievably slow and unresponsive. It felt like trying to maneuver a boulder even with all basic techs acquired.

It wasn't until I got my x2 bonus on my Banshee S and Banshee E that they started to feel somewhat responsive.

If you haven't dropped in a banshee recently, or have never owned a banshee. I think you should drop a few games in one and see if you would still recommend going "14" on rear side torso armor. Based on my experiences, I would say a banshee turns slower and is less responsive than a direwolf. Especially with variants that can't mount larger than a 340 engine.

Its easier to get behind a banshee and unload alphas into its rear side torsos than it is to get behind a direwolf and do the same. Running extremely low rear torso armor could well be a bad idea. Unless you have a 360XL - 400XL engine. But, I'm pretty sure none of you would recommend running an XL in an assault with big side torso hitboxes, so that would be out of the question for most of you, I would guess?

Dracol, on 21 October 2014 - 04:05 AM, said:

Having run Cicadas for a very long time, I can tell you this: I lose my arms all the time.

Why you ask? Cause I make em take the hits instead of my torsos. Yes we don't have random tables and people can target the CT every time. But, I can also torso twist and put my "arms" into the line of fire, something you really can't do in TT.

If one just faces off against an opponent, then ya, you're not going to lose arms often. But once one gets proficient at twisting and spreading damage, you'll start to realize having that extra armor in the arms is a great benefit.

Side note: Any overall increase to armor as you proposed would benefit Heavies and Assaults the most. IMHO, and I think a lot of people agree, any general boost to those classes is not all that beneficial due to keeping Mediums and Lights viable.

I see a lot of cicadas lose arms deliberately with cicada variants that have no arm weapon hardpoints.

But, how many jenners have I seen lose arms when near to half their weapons were mounted there? None. Its not something I can claim to have witnessed. I've seen a lot of legged jenners. And, I've seen a lot of cored jenners. But, never an armless jenner. The way things are, there's no incentive to target a jenners arms. The arms are smaller targets and have about as much armor as the side torsos.

Maybe if a jenners arms had 10-20 less armor than a side torso, someone with good aim might opt to shoot a jenner's arms rather than its legs or core. The same could be said of jagermechs. If a jagers arms had 10-20 less armor than its side torsos someone might opt to target its arms, even though they're more difficult to hit.

It could change in game dynamics and ease the repetitiveness factor. It might contribute towards gameplay depth and give pilots more options at their disposal. A 10-20 point boost to side torso armor is only a difference of 1 AC-20, 2 PPC's, 2 large pulse lasers, or 4 medium lasers. Its not something that would make an extremely difference. But, maybe just enough to give people an incentive to target a mech arms under some circumstances and breakup the monotony of every game being "the same".

It might also be fair for a mechs side torsos to have more armor than the arms considering they're often larger, easier to hit and a person loses more components when one is destroyed.

I'm not sure which weight classes would benefit from having armor boosts. If its done proportionally using a percentage based system it is possible buffs could be distributed equally. 20% buff of a banshee's 80 armor on the side torsos is a gain of 16 armor points. That might be near equivalent to a 20% buff on a jenners side torsos which amounts to a gain of around 6.4 armor points. It might sound like assaults are being shown preferential treatment with a gain of 16 as opposed to a gain of 6.4. But with light hitboxes being so much smaller and lights moving at faster speeds it is possible everything could balance out with something resembling equality.

FupDup, on 21 October 2014 - 05:45 AM, said:

Your side torsos will have a lot more armor if you frontload it....who uses 26 rear armor anyways? That's way too much. I don't ever go over 12 rear armor, even on Dire Whales. Most of my mechs are under 10 and only occasionally regret it (it helps more often than it hurts, by a long shot).

Who uses 26 rear armor on a banshee?! Too much you say?! I took that smurfy screenshot from McGral18's "wubshee" build. McGral18 is like an unsung banshee master on this forum. I had to screenshot from the best. I knew people would harp upon those numbers so I had to use a source for them that was tough to dispute.

I normally go 16-20 rear armor on rear side torsos. Lighter on light and maybe some medium mechs. I think an 8 on a RRT or RLT gives someone about 10 armor points higher on a front side torso than an arm & leaves them extremely vulnerable from the rear. It doesn't matter much in a light or medium mech. You're normally moving enough that you can keep track of where everyone is & only rarely will someone manage to sneak up behind you without you knowing they're there.

But, its different with assaults. Assaults are far more prone to being taken unawares from behind. I run 16-20 armor on the rear torsos of assaults and sometimes I feel a need to allocate more. I've run up behind a lot of people in this game and unloaded a few alphas into their backs with something like a 50 damage alpha. I think a few weeks back I unloaded 10 clan small pulse lasers (inside their maximum effective range) into the back of a highlander that didn't die after I put something like two alphas into his back.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people run 20-30 or higher values in their rear armor with assaults, I've put multiple alphas into pplz backs and they didn't go down.

LordKnightFandragon, on 21 October 2014 - 05:54 AM, said:

So overall, people dont use that much rear armor? I know I was running 20, but lowered it to 15 on my Whorehawks.

Running 15 rear armor in a medium mech that can turn on a dime is completely different from 15 in an assault that corners more like a snow plow than a sports car.

I suspect that contrary to what a lot of people are saying in this thread, most assault pilots do run heavier rear armor. Especially pilots of inner sphere assaults, many of whom run small(er) standard engines with slow turning rates.

There's no way its viable to run a 100 ton atlas (or a 95 ton banshee) with a 300 standard engine and only 10 rear side torso armor.

I'm sorry, but I have to call bs on that.

Tombstoner, on 21 October 2014 - 06:09 AM, said:

The heart of what your getting at is the port from TT to FPS is incomplete: SCALE matters. It fundamentally alters so many things. one item is armor per tons effective level of protection. Max armor should scale by surface area. It doesn't, so mechs like the atlas are fundamentally much weaker then needed and small fast mechs like the spider are buffed.

Size affects chance to hit and shot placement. large arms make it much easier to spread damage via toso twisting. small cicada arms are just about useless in that roll but do work to soak damage.

Basically the MWO port from TT is incomplete. The game is really by definition an ALPHA.

That's an interesting point, thx for bringing it up.

Ultimatum X, on 21 October 2014 - 06:56 AM, said:

I strip down to single digits on most builds, survivability usually goes up as a result.

As said above, that banshee loadout came courtesy of McGral18's Wubshee. I knew people would focus on that.

Just to be clear, you would strip down to single digits with a 95 ton banshee running a standard engine that didn't allow it to turn well?

YueFei, on 21 October 2014 - 07:50 AM, said:

Zeratul, you're also forgetting about internal structure health. The side torsos have more max armor and also more internal structure hitpoints than the arms. My HBK's arms have 16 structure, 32 max armor, but the shoulders (pre-quirk) have 24 structure, 48 max armor.

It would make no sense for me to run with side torso armor at 30/18, which is kind've how you've setup your example in the opening post.

Once armor is stripped away, internal components become vulnerable. The next hit could destroy internal components no matter how much internal structure is present especially if the next shot is a gauss, ac20 or weapon that is known to have a damage bonus to internal components.

But, that's beside the point. The topic that I wanted to discuss is whether or not arms should have less armor relative to side torsos to make arms more viable targets from a risk versus reward perspective. And also whether side torsos deserve to have more armor than arms considering they're often bigger & easier to hit.

Ragnar Darkmane, on 21 October 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:

All I'll say: Catapults need a massive hitbox buff. They are extremly outdated with their super broad CT, especially when you consider that a Timber Wolf is ~20 kph faster, carries at least 40% more firepower (not mentioning that they even got JJs on Prime unlike the CAT K1) and is twice as hard to kill than a CAT thanks to it's infuriatingly good hitboxes, for being only 10 tons heavier (which has almost no balancing impact even on MM).

Other mechs like the Awesome need to be looked at as well...

Pound for pound, a catapult and maddog may be the comparison you're looking for.

A timberwolf's inner sphere rivals may be cataphracts and orions. I've never owned a cataphract or an orion. I couldn't really say how a timberwolf stacks up against either. If I remember right, a timberwolf is supposed be an apex predator of mechs both canonically and in terms of BT tabletop rules. Its supposed to reign supreme in its weight class. Its hard to complain about timberwolves being extremely powerful when everything ever written on the topic says that's the way it was always meant to be?

I've been using an awesome 8Q. If I use the right builds it seems to score an average of 400-500 damage per game. If I use the wrong builds I have a tough time breaking 100-200 damage. It seems plenty capable as is. Its just not as forgiving as clan mechs and its role is narrowly defined in terms of it not having a great deal of versatility. Whereas a direwolf, warhawk, timberwolf and other clan mechs can brawl or snipe. They can boat LRM's, SRM's, lasers, ballistics or a combination. The awesome seems narrowly defined in terms of it being effective as an LRM boat or energy weapon boat.

Rouken, on 21 October 2014 - 08:06 AM, said:

Your mech should not be running 20 points of armor in the back. The Banshee should be running 75 armor up front, maybe 70 if you're not too confident in your situational awareness. That gives it 10 points difference between the arms and torso, not that anyone would run max arm armor on a Banshee.

The armor difference would have to be much more extreme and even then torso mounted weapons would also go a long way to making arms undesirable targets in most cases.

Like I said above, those banshee armor stats come courtesy of McGral18's *Wubshee* build.

And also as I said before would you recommend running 10 rear side torso armor in a 95 ton banshee with a 300 standard engine? What type of engine would you recommend that banshee run with its 10 rear armor?

I've said multiple times that I run XL's in all assaults, except stalkers. Many say that makes no sense. They say: side torsos are too easy to hit to make XL engines viable in assaults. But then maybe the same people who say that also say its a good move to put 10 armor on your extra large rear side torsos? That could be interesting.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

I Zeratul I, on 21 October 2014 - 01:26 PM, said:

Like I said above, those banshee armor stats come courtesy of McGral18's *Wubshee* build.

And also as I said before would you recommend running 10 rear side torso armor in a 95 ton banshee with a 300 standard engine? What type of engine would you recommend that banshee run with its 10 rear armor?

I've said multiple times that I run XL's in all assaults, except stalkers. Many say that makes no sense. They say: side torsos are too easy to hit to make XL engines viable in assaults. But then maybe the same people who say that also say its a good move to put 10 armor on your extra large rear side torsos? That could be interesting.

I suspect Mcgral, like most people, doesn't bother shifting the armor when they link smurfy.

Yes, I recommend 10 or less armor in the back even with a 300 engine. Getting shot in the back is typically the result making a mistake. You have enough to survive one mistake. If you keep getting shot in the back after that no amount of rear armor is going to save you.

I've heard Banshees run XL engines decently. Not fond of the XL is assaults but it would depend on the build.

Edited by Rouken, 21 October 2014 - 01:47 PM.

[Pjwned]

I've often thought about how generally useless it is to shoot off an arm (notable exception being the kit fox, probably some others too) because the side torso is often just as durable and shooting it off destroys the arm as well.

That's not to say that arms don't get shot off though, particularly when you have something like a Centurion or a Shadowhawk, but in the case of those 2 mechs it's often the shield arm that gets shot off because it's literally useless except for soaking damage.

Edited by Pjwned, 21 October 2014 - 02:06 PM.

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

Rouken, on 21 October 2014 - 01:42 PM, said:

I suspect Mcgral, like most people, doesn't bother shifting the armor when they link smurfy.

Yes, I recommend 10 or less armor in the back even with a 300 engine. Getting shot in the back is typically the result making a mistake. You have enough to survive one mistake. If you keep getting shot in the back after that no amount of rear armor is going to save you.

I've heard Banshees run XL engines decently. Not fond of the XL is assaults but it would depend on the build.

The default armor values on smurfy for the banshee M are 20/60.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...588199796c9a8ad

Wubshee's 26/54 distribution isn't a default stat.

Inner sphere assaults / direwolves take so many hits to the rear. Almost every game. Its difficult for me to imagine someone recommending 10 armor or less covering assault rears. Especially on maps like mining collective that are in high rotation where its easy to encircle someone and hit them from all sides at once.

Especially if its an inner sphere assault with a (relatively) small standard engine that has a slow turning radius and low top speed. Sometimes, you need a little extra back armor to live just long enough to finally get that pesky light mech that snuck up behind you into your sights.

I don't really know what to say. I only wish that Fup Dup, you and anyone else who runs single digit up to 10 rear armor in an assault were on the opposing team more often. It seems like everytime I'm putting alphas into an assaults back, they always have at least 20 armor on the back panels, sometimes more. Why can't I have the easy targets?

Pjwned, on 21 October 2014 - 01:49 PM, said:

I've often thought about how generally useless it is to shoot off an arm (notable exception being the kit fox, probably some others too) because the side torso is often just as durable and shooting it off destroys the arm as well.

That's not to say that arms don't get shot off though, particularly when you have something like a Centurion or a Shadowhawk, but in the case of those 2 mechs it's often the shield arm that gets shot off because it's literally useless except for soaking damage.

Exactly.

Edited by I Zeratul I, 21 October 2014 - 03:22 PM.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

I Zeratul I, on 21 October 2014 - 03:20 PM, said:

The default armor values on smurfy for the banshee M are 20/60.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...588199796c9a8ad

Wubshee's 26/54 distribution isn't a default stat.

Inner sphere assaults / direwolves take so many hits to the rear. Almost every game. Its difficult for me to imagine someone recommending 10 armor or less covering assault rears. Especially on maps like mining collective that are in high rotation where its easy to encircle someone and hit them from all sides at once.

Especially if its an inner sphere assault with a (relatively) small standard engine that has a slow turning radius and low top speed. Sometimes, you need a little extra back armor to live just long enough to finally get that pesky light mech that snuck up behind you into your sights.

I don't really know what to say. I only wish that Fup Dup, you and anyone else who runs single digit up to 10 rear armor in an assault were on the opposing team more often. It seems like everytime I'm putting alphas into an assaults back, they always have at least 20 armor on the back panels, sometimes more. Why can't I have the easy targets?



Exactly.

Using max armor on smurfy gives it 54/26.