32 replies to this topic

[VoodooLou Kerensky]

I dunno A Ebon Jaguar (Cauldron Born) in Mech 4 can hold 2 Clan LBX 20's, 1 LBX 10 and ER Medium full armor and goes 86kph. In an urban enviroment Id say thats pretty nasty. Granted blow the 'arms' off and there goes the 2 LBX 20's but thats most Mechs.

[IONTIGER]

Give me a puma with twin erppc and i will be happy. To avoide heat build up just chain fire the weapons.

[Brakkyn]

Isn't this mistakenly assuming you can play as a Clanner?

[CaveMan]

VoodooLou Kerensky, on 24 December 2011 - 02:15 AM, said:

I dunno A Ebon Jaguar (Cauldron Born) in Mech 4 can hold 2 Clan LBX 20's, 1 LBX 10 and ER Medium full armor and goes 86kph. In an urban enviroment Id say thats pretty nasty. Granted blow the 'arms' off and there goes the 2 LBX 20's but thats most Mechs.

Just goes to show how badly MW4 got things wrong... 'Mech would be at least 10 tons overweight! And that's considering the EJag is already a walking weapons pod. ES, FF, XL, and not much armor, stock. Where did they get that tonnage from? Is the 'Mech wearing anti-gravity boots?

Edited by CaveMan, 24 December 2011 - 02:01 PM.

[Adian HDragon Vordermark]

Eegxeta, on 21 November 2011 - 05:04 PM, said:

Everyone says that Clan tech is so great, Clan tech is better then IS. Actually it is not much better at all. If you sit down and think about it Clan tech is designed for battles that take place where having superior range and damage is important like in open field combat. So Clan tech is better used in areas with little or no obstacles like fields and open terrain. IS tech is designed for battles that take place where having superior fire rate and low heat is important like in close quarters combat. So IS tech is better used in areas with many obstacles like in a city where the advantage of long range weaponry can be disregarded by a simple alley side step. So toe to toe an IS mech would win but in a range fight Clan has full superiority.

I noticed this as I specialize in close quarters combat with mechs. So this is from someone who has first hand experience on this. I also noticed that the key to low heat design is don't use Clan tech.

This is why we can have players be Clan because it all comes down to range. The Clans were planing on coming back and most likely didn't build large sprawling cities so they wouldn't have ever trained in that environment. The Inner Sphere is full of populated worlds with cities and most fighting was done to get cities because they give tactical advantage. That is a good explanation on the reason for the differences.

I have made some replies to this type of thread, so I offer my posts here in a link. For those who want to look at them. You will see that there is a little bit of redundency developeing here.

http://mwomercs.com/...h/page__st__160
http://mwomercs.com/...de/page__st__20

[Adian HDragon Vordermark]

Eegxeta, on 26 November 2011 - 07:54 AM, said:

This is from personal experience in MW4. I'm good at fighting really close to the opponent I have ran into the opponent a few times and in this setting I needed speed and using clan weapons (mostly the beams and missiles) was just not practical because I ended up using too much weight on heat sinks. I'm not saying the Clan tech does less damage at a short range I'm saying that Clan tech is less efficient at a short range where you can't spend a whole lot of weight on heat sinks. I have never found the Clan tech to be more heat efficient every time I used clan tech an fought at short range I was running in the red zone and couldn't fire my weapons even when they were ready because I would have overheated. For all you TT players I have never played TT. If nobody agrees with me then MWO this is how you can balance the Clan tech with IS tech so people can play Clan and the people screaming about balance will be satisfied.



In MW4 I have found that the damage is the only advantage of the Clan ERPPC but when you add the massive heat the weapon generates that is its downside add it is a downside I could never afford to have.


True but who would use LRM at short range the SRM deals more damage at less weight and you don't need to spend time locking on.

I used IS tech to make my short range brawler mech it only ever needed about 4 weapons, it had plenty of armor, it was also fast it had a max speed of about 100 mph and most important I was extremely heat efficient and used no heat sinks what so ever. It was powerful I was destroying mech left and right. Makes me wish MW4 still worked on my computer. It stinks how in just stopped working after one update.

Malavai Fletcher, on 26 November 2011 - 11:02 AM, said:

The IS have RAC's and X-Pulse lasers,combined on a mech and staggered into 4 groups(avatar did this very well,2RAC 2's,2large X-pulse lasers,a RAC and pulse laser in each group,another group for both RAC's another group for both pulse lasers) you allways had a weapon to fire that would knock the other pilot about.Tiny alpha strike damage but probably the most disruptive mech i played with,the clans had nothing to compare with this.

One thing I would like to add, and you may not agree with me. Remember that MW4 was NOT a good simulation of Battletech, nor was in intended to be. I used the name and the look of mechs, but it was in no way a good representation on ANY Battletech game I ever played. There is no Placement limits on Mechs like in MW4 and of course Heat Sinks USED crits, not just tonage when added. And as far as the weapons, none of the LRMs or PPCs used had the proper ranges or damages that were correct in any battletech criteria.

As far as the X-Pulse, and RAC's etc... there were none of those in the Clasic 3048 era at all. And those that were, were introduced much later in the game, as FASA was selling rights to Wiz Kids anyways, and those were introduced to facilitate the Wiz Kids timelines, NOT FASA's.

I remeber one time being able to actually talk to a MS programmer in charge of the game itself, and although I argued about the Battletech mecanics with him, he even said that the simulation of Battletech was NOT the point of MW4 at all, and the game only used the term Battletech in name only. So, please keep this in mind. Im not sure if MWO is going to be a re release of MW4 type games, but if its truely a FASA re release, you may want to make sure when mechanics are going to be added.

Anyways, this is just a FYI, See you all on the battlefield:)

Edited by Adian HDragon Vordermark, 25 December 2011 - 08:51 AM.

[Battlefinger]

I just read "This is from personal experience in MW4" and kind of gave up. Although the game is heavily fun, it's probably the least canon to actual mechstuffs. I loved the days of MW2 the most, but people that have just picked up MW4 don't have a realistic (well, realistc as you can get with science fiction) perspective on what the tech is behind mechwarrior. The tech they used in MW4 was subject to balancing alterations by the developers and numerous tweaks and adjustments so that people could play however they wanted and still have it be a viable option (which didn't really work out either, but still...) whereas clan tech really is blatantly better. The Inner Sphere didn't rely on advanced tech to take on the clans, they had to work with what they had and use tactics, exploiting the clans ideas of honour and outnumbering them or taking them on in unfamiliar environments. There are things that make Inner Sphere and Clans just as equal and viable, but it doesn't lie in equaling their technology, as clans have that beat. At least until the Inner Sphere starts salvaging it anyway.

[Oswin Aurelius]

Hey, at least he didn't start bringing up Mechassault gameplay.

[Rear Admiral]

I think it has been made pretty clear by now that MW4 should NOT be used as an example of what MWO should, could, or would do. It was HORRIBLE HORRIBLE game that has no place in the battletech pantheon. In fact, anybody citing it as an example of battletech immediately disqualifies their statement on the basis of lack of credibility.

And, for the record, the clan guns/mechs are superior in every conceivable way to the equivalent IS stuff. The ONLY reason the IS was able to compete w/ the clans is because they took advantage of clan cultural rigidity.

I understand what the OP is saying about range and how some (but not as much as you think) of the clan technological advantage can be mitigated by fighting at close range, but its just simply not an accurate way to describe IS vs Clan. Let me say it again: the clan tech is superior in EVERY way to IS stuff. So why would their superiority disappear at close range? It doesnt.

The IS was able to fight the clans by upgrading their mechs and exploiting the clan fluff, ie zellbrigen and clan honor. Thats how the clan balances vs IS. How are they gonna enable these things? If they are gonna set the game in 3050era clan invasion, then zellbrigen and clan honor system needs to be enacted. There is no way to balance Clan vs IS tech, because it is not, by its very nature and intention, balanced. The balancing is in the rules of engagement.

[Sug]

captain kickass, on 25 December 2011 - 09:05 AM, said:

I just read "This is from personal experience in MW4" and kind of gave up.

Agreed. MW4 is an awful example to cite. Every time I died in that game I felt like I should be putting another 50 cents into my computer to keep playing.


Clan tech isn't SUPPOSED to be balanced. That's the point. It's 300 years ahead of the Inner Sphere. At the start of the invasion the only way for the IS to have an advantage was overwhelming numbers and 'dishonorable' combat. A clan mech should be worth, in combat, at LEAST two IS mechs of the same weight class.


Microsoft balanced Clan tech by making it awful.

[Coralld]

From my experiance with BT and MW games, not to mention the actual readouts on clan weapons compaired to IS, the clan weapons and tech is in fact better in every way out side of heat buildup in which case they are more or less the same. But sense clan have double heat sinks at this point in time to the IS single heat sink, the clans had a HUGE advantage. It was only by blunting the clans and revers engineering clan tech were the IS able to compete with Clan tech but it took them around two decades to do so.
HOWEVER!! the IS did have a uper hand in close quarter fights, but not by much. This was do to the fact that the Clans were not use to urben warfare where as the IS was, and it was in these fights where Clans really took heavy loses. So you are about half right.
Another advantage IS had over Clans was in the way of tactics. IS warfare was very flexable where Clan was not. Basic clan tactic was to directly attack their enemy head on and then break up the enemy lines into more 1 on 1 fighting which clans normally win against the IS, but the IS figured this out quickly and adopted a wing man tactic, this way it was a 2 on 1. Not to mention IS would use information warfare as well, and use misinformation on the Clans to disrupt them as much as possible, would also set up ambushes, which were very affective, because, once again, Clans were not use to that kind of fighting. Even later on in the story line Clans continued to have a difficult time in dealing with these IS tactics even though they have been fighting with them for so long. Clan never really used IS tactics because it is seen as dishonerable. But like Dunken Fisher says, "when you win, you can debate morality later." Also, Clan had a hard time exicuting IS ambush and information warfare, not saying they can't, its just not as smooth or as succesfull as when IS does it.

I agree, the original MW4 Merc was rather meh, but when Mektek got their hands on it and came out with updates and all that goodness I found MW4 Merc was a good mix of BT and MW and by my persenal opinion better then MW2 and 3.

[Shadowstarr]

captain kickass, on 25 December 2011 - 09:05 AM, said:

I just read "This is from personal experience in MW4" and kind of gave up. Although the game is heavily fun, it's probably the least canon to actual mechstuffs. I loved the days of MW2 the most, but people that have just picked up MW4 don't have a realistic (well, realistc as you can get with science fiction) perspective on what the tech is behind mechwarrior. The tech they used in MW4 was subject to balancing alterations by the developers and numerous tweaks and adjustments so that people could play however they wanted and still have it be a viable option (which didn't really work out either, but still...) whereas clan tech really is blatantly better. The Inner Sphere didn't rely on advanced tech to take on the clans, they had to work with what they had and use tactics, exploiting the clans ideas of honour and outnumbering them or taking them on in unfamiliar environments. There are things that make Inner Sphere and Clans just as equal and viable, but it doesn't lie in equaling their technology, as clans have that beat. At least until the Inner Sphere starts salvaging it anyway.

Coralld, on 25 December 2011 - 10:54 AM, said:

From my experiance with BT and MW games, not to mention the actual readouts on clan weapons compaired to IS, the clan weapons and tech is in fact better in every way out side of heat buildup in which case they are more or less the same. But sense clan have double heat sinks at this point in time to the IS single heat sink, the clans had a HUGE advantage. It was only by blunting the clans and revers engineering clan tech were the IS able to compete with Clan tech but it took them around two decades to do so.
HOWEVER!! the IS did have a uper hand in close quarter fights, but not by much. This was do to the fact that the Clans were not use to urben warfare where as the IS was, and it was in these fights where Clans really took heavy loses. So you are about half right.
Another advantage IS had over Clans was in the way of tactics. IS warfare was very flexable where Clan was not. Basic clan tactic was to directly attack their enemy head on and then break up the enemy lines into more 1 on 1 fighting which clans normally win against the IS, but the IS figured this out quickly and adopted a wing man tactic, this way it was a 2 on 1. Not to mention IS would use information warfare as well, and use misinformation on the Clans to disrupt them as much as possible, would also set up ambushes, which were very affective, because, once again, Clans were not use to that kind of fighting. Even later on in the story line Clans continued to have a difficult time in dealing with these IS tactics even though they have been fighting with them for so long. Clan never really used IS tactics because it is seen as dishonerable. But like Dunken Fisher says, "when you win, you can debate morality later." Also, Clan had a hard time exicuting IS ambush and information warfare, not saying they can't, its just not as smooth or as succesfull as when IS does it.

I agree, the original MW4 Merc was rather meh, but when Mektek got their hands on it and came out with updates and all that goodness I found MW4 Merc was a good mix of BT and MW and by my persenal opinion better then MW2 and 3.

might be slightly off the topic but...

What these guys said. aside from the tech, I feel the clans wouldn't hold much of advantage at all if clan players followed clan tactics. not that expect a clan player to do so. I know I wouldn't.

While i feel mw:o could have mechanics to reward a clan player to using clanner tactics, in the end player play to win and if clanners can't win with clanner tactics then they will fight like everyone else. I'm not saying this is wrong, yet it plays a significate role in how the IS held back the invasion.

-ss

[Marxman]

I dont think its much of a problem either. In a realtime game there are many ways to balance things out. The easiest thing would be toning Down the Advantage of Clantech .
Ill go step by step.
Range: Having X hexes more Range makes Sense in a Boardgame. How much distance a Hex might represent in MWIO is up to debate and can be adjusted. So having X amount of Range advantage might translate into 100 or 200 Meters. That still enough for First Strike ability but its easy to bridge that gap in a mobile battle. So having Clan ranges be a bit more but not to the extent of the boardgames Clan ER weapons compared to the IS versions.
And maybe the additional Range comes at a price: It could be damage dropoff, maybe accuracy suffers. Mabe the Targeting Systems need longer to track the target at extreme Ranges. Or maybe damage is spread all over the target.

Damage: Damage potential on the open filed translates to damage vs rate of fire. So Clantech can have longer recycle times, or a short delay before recycle begins. or something of that sort. So basicly the lighter Clan weapons could have longer recycle times. And there is still the option off reduced accuracy through recoil forces or lighter/weaker actuater/myomer used to move the weapons. And firing long range Weapons at short ranges might cause the Hud to flicker or some risk of damage to the weapons. So they might not have a minimum Range but a risk of the weapons doing something unwanted to your mech/systems.
And the ammount of damage a weapon does still could be adjusted if proven to be to big of a balance issue.

Heat: So in CBT clan Double Heatsinks are just as good as IS DoubleHeatsinks but the Clan version takes less Space. Since we dont know jet how much customisation is possible its not much to worry about yet. If we cant change the ammount of heatsinks the ammount of heat a mech dissapates can just be set and we assume the heatsinks to be fixed. So any mech could have the heatdissapation it needs to be balanced for gameplay use. So we might never get to see how many sinks arei nstalled and dont have to care about their size, techlevel or whatever.
If we do get to change the heatsinks on mechs , then there are other ways to balance them. Make Clan DHS a little less effective. Let them act as 1.5 standart Heatsinks, or give them some delay before cooling down the mech. Something along those lines.
Or let them have a distinct disadvantage when it comes to detection. Maybe they lead to a stronger IR-siganture of the target, or their electronics are less well shielded so you can detect a unit carrying them easier. Same could be done with high powered energyweapons. In a sense - you want to be stealthy? then stay away from clantech.

There are many ways to tone clan weps down enough to have a balanced game. And the mentioned ones are by far not the only options.
IS weapons might be beter suited to work in conjunction with other types of weapons. So maybe lasers and PPCs of IS tech might be set to hit the same spot or part of the mech, while clan mechs might not have this feature, so they are forced to use weapongroup after weapon group th achieve accuracy, thus limiting rate of fire and thereby damagepotential, and alphaboating might be less of a problem.

And we dont know yet how much skills influence the effectiveness of weapons. So the IS might have some stuff that might level the playing field, maybe their skills revolve abround teamwork while clanskills make teamwork harder to to. Might be not a good example but ane skill could be called "warrior class arrogance" -if you skill up your accurycy is better and maybe reaction times are lower but you tend to ignore whats on the radar of your teammates or you have problems to target an enemy that is already targeted by a teammate of yours. so that combining fire is harder for clanners. That would fit their duel style way of doing battle quite good imho.

And then theres economics. How long does a weapon lasts in the field, how expensive is it to buy and maintain. How easy is it to get a replacement. Can i just swap in another weapon of a different type on my mech or has it to be the same type wich might be hard to get once destroyed-shall i risk to field that weapon?
Do i have to finetune the weapons for battle and if yes is it just a mouseclick or a timeconsuming thing to do. If i dont adjust the weapons for the climate on this planet may it fail after a few shots, or is it more easily damaged than the good old standart IS equivalent. Is this planets atmosphere dense enough to distort energyweapons or will i get a lock with my sensor settings i preset before launch?
Is there a standart setting that might give average performance everywhere, or a safe mode where my expensive clan weapons are just as reliable as IS weapons but are only slightly better? Do i have to skill up to get the full potential out of my weapons and if so might something else suffer from me doing so?
risk vs return so to speak.

Im not a gamedesigner but there are dozens of ways to level the playing field to a degree where the IS can compete on mostly equal terms if done right.
I think the clan tech should be some nothes better than IS tech individualy, but the teamwork stuff should be in the hands of the IS. So a clan mech still is more of a threat than a similar sized IS mech, but only to a degee where skills and tactics can still beat the clanner .



Superior yes, but maybe 10 to 15 percent and only when it comes to tech in a one vs one situation.
As i said, there a many ways to do it right and only playtesting will show what realy works and what needs tweaking. Its not much use to argue too much about clan vs IS yet. I like the clans and some of their mechs are in my top ten list of mechs. Id love to get my hands on a warhammer IIC with ATMS and PPCs, but it will have too wait. Im a big Wolfs Dragoon fan and therefore a do like clans and IS alike. For me at the end its the fun that counts for me the most. Having a clanmech mean steamrolling all IS opposition without effort wouldnt be fun for me, and being beaten by an equally skilled opponent just because he has a clanmech wouldnt be fun for me either.