70 replies to this topic

[Kaeb Odellas]

I wouldn't mind seeing catastrophic ammo explosions have a mild AOE damage effect as a result of shrapnel and mech bits flying everywhere, similar to an artillery shell, but that's about the limit.

[Gorgo7]

No. Explosions as an animated ending but no damaging explosions from mechs.

[Koniving]

Thinking on it though.. a Stackpole related to excessive damage dealt to a mech which in turn does massive crit damage to the engine... actually might be an interesting deterrent on massive pinpoint front loaded damage (like twin Gauss + twin Clan ER PPCs).

Imagine the result. A semi close range attempt with a Dire Wolf's twin Gauss and twin ER PPCs hits an Awesome in the CT or ST. The torso loses armor. The engine gets massively crit. The safety systems on the engine fail to kick in. A hydrogen fuel rod (yep the Fusion engines are powered by several fuel rods) is ruptured. A large explosion (more hydrogen based than nuclear) erupts, causing the mech to explode from the inside and large chunks of it are hurled outward towards other things (to include the Dire Wolf).

Meanwhile, other weapons that won't do such excessive damage (like instantly doing more damage than the engine has health in a single shot; a single crit of a single Gauss Rifle is 15 damage, the engine at last report has 15 health. 30+ damage in crit damage? Boom! Meanwhile, an AC/20 only does 20 crit damage on a single crit, not enough to trigger the stackpole. The other weapons, including high crit yielding MGs and LBX's, probably won't cause stackpoles [but might on extreme cases].

I think it's seriously worth considering. It could quite possibly change metas (some for the better, some not so much).

On a side note: I seriously think if you have 16 tons of ammunition you should freaking explode. I'm not joking when I tell you I'm more likely to explode from a single ton of ammo with no heatsinks nearby sitting in a side torso, than that same side torso loaded to all 14 slots with ammo.

[Rizzelbizzeg]

Deathballs are bad? I thought that was the right way to play. What is the right way to play if deathballs are bad?

[AztecD]

in MW3 if you overheat bad enough your mech had a mini-nuke explosion.

Heck even the MW3 intro has a TW going critical and wiping out the damaged atlas 1:50
http://youtu.be/YR_ym3Gj2vE

[Dutch334]

Rizzelbizzeg, on 15 January 2015 - 03:22 PM, said:

Deathballs are bad? I thought that was the right way to play. What is the right way to play if deathballs are bad?

What is the point in having lances? Why scout? with a death ball it's just who has the most armor and meta builds, and coordinates fire better. It's just more interesting (from my perspective) to see more tactical gameplay. Stackpoles aren't the only solution, but it would add more depth to the game play without totally nerfing the death ball if that's how your team really wants to play

[Slepnir]

Actually on TT engine detonation does very minimal damage, as they are designed to scram and shutdown for obvious safety reasons, now propper ammo explosions are an entirely different matter.

mech without case can literally destroy every mech or vehicle within 90m in every direction if it is stll carrying enough ammo to cook off(with case it's just a 90m cone out the rear torso location).

The damage is in 3rds, point of source 30m full damage, 60m 2/3 damage, 90m 1/3 damage.

damage is equal to all unspent explosive ammo (gauss ammo does nothing) applying all its damage as above.

It makes MG ammo very scary on TT.
our record for 3025 era daisy chaining ammo explosions is 17 mechs destroyed in one turn.

Edited by Slepnir, 15 January 2015 - 04:41 PM.

[Budor]

I would totally bring 1 djihad mech full of MG ammo for my dropdeck. With the friendly fire in place teammates could detonate it at will. Imagine the lols, sigh.

[Tywren]

As a TT player of Battletech i 100% support stackpole booms. First off it's cannon from a lore angle (the term stackpole gets it name from one of the authors of the books), and secondly there where advanced rules for it. So i say GO 4 IT!

[LordKnightFandragon]

Harathan, on 15 January 2015 - 01:40 PM, said:

You're joking right? This was a joke?

I can see what hes on about, cuz to not Deathball beside your buddies for the mutual support = absolute certain death.

If TTK was slower and mechs didnt get absolutely melted in seconds, people would be more apt to wander in smaller groups, as smaller groups could do more and not just get melted. Right now, everyone death balls for the mutual support of their own sides super TTK.

[Kjudoon]

huh... cant get the quote function to work.

anyway, why deathball? simple the maps are too small and there is no role warfare making victory by kill the easiest form of win.

want to fix this? make all maps 5 times the size of sulphurous rift or alpine peaks minimum where transit time is something you need to gamble on. then scouting matters because if you cant find the enemy and bring your slow heavy firepower in you could go all match and lose an objective without ever firing a shot.

that makes the bloodlusters freak out... but not everything should be arena combat. in fact winning a match without firing a shot or taking a point of damage is the perfect success from a military pov.

[Dutch334]

Kjudoon, on 15 January 2015 - 05:21 PM, said:

huh... cant get the quote function to work.

anyway, why deathball? simple the maps are too small and there is no role warfare making victory by kill the easiest form of win.

want to fix this? make all maps 5 times the size of sulphurous rift or alpine peaks minimum where transit time is something you need to gamble on. then scouting matters because if you cant find the enemy and bring your slow heavy firepower in you could go all match and lose an objective without ever firing a shot.

that makes the bloodlusters freak out... but not everything should be arena combat. in fact winning a match without firing a shot or taking a point of damage is the perfect success from a military pov.

Was going to suggest this as well. Bigger maps are another part of the solution, and not all of them need to be filled with objects. Alpine is fun enough with open fire lanes, and without roots and pebbles to get stuck on.

[Mirkk Defwode]

Stahler, on 15 January 2015 - 01:36 PM, said:

How do we stop death balls in CW and public drops? Do what MW4 and MWLL did. Have mechs blow up at death. Personally I like MWLL's mechanic where it didn't happen everytime, only on engine hits and I think there was a percentage chance even then that it would happen so it wasn't too often but spectacular when it did, and enough that grouping up in a tight formation, while still advantageous, carried some risk. Thoughts on this?

In MW4 mechs going critical was a method to do asset clean up, the engine wasn't built to have a ton of high poly and textured bipeds running around, so to free up memory that was being used they would destroy the mech upon being defeated and exchange the model for a low poly generic one and a standard "Scorched" texture that was reused over and over again.

Limitation of the technology at the time.

MWLL the mechs going critical is actually drawn from Tabletop rules and fiction, then tuned a bit, but it was based on a critical hit over the value of the HP remaining on the engine that would cause a containment break and the explosion. It was effectively a cool effect for doing "overkill" damage to a mech.

[Kjudoon]

Stahler, on 15 January 2015 - 05:43 PM, said:

Was going to suggest this as well. Bigger maps are another part of the solution, and not all of them need to be filled with objects. Alpine is fun enough with open fire lanes, and without roots and pebbles to get stuck on.

Be of good cheer. The previous town hall meeting russ talked about going back and revisiting all these maps. They even talk about it briefly in one of the Devlogs. Imagine river city four times the size of Alpine. Or caustic valley being a REAL valley instead of a single mountain in a gulch.

[Dutch334]

Mirkk Defwode, on 15 January 2015 - 06:12 PM, said:

In MW4 mechs going critical was a method to do asset clean up, the engine wasn't built to have a ton of high poly and textured bipeds running around, so to free up memory that was being used they would destroy the mech upon being defeated and exchange the model for a low poly generic one and a standard "Scorched" texture that was reused over and over again.

Limitation of the technology at the time.

MWLL the mechs going critical is actually drawn from Tabletop rules and fiction, then tuned a bit, but it was based on a critical hit over the value of the HP remaining on the engine that would cause a containment break and the explosion. It was effectively a cool effect for doing "overkill" damage to a mech.

regardless of the reasons or the how, it worked well, especially in MWLL. Those booms could really send people running

[JimboFBX]

Most mechs don't blob close enough for an explosion to matter unless the thing is huge.

Explosions just punish brawlers, even if it only inflicted heat or was an emp blast.

Now if the initial explosion was an emp blast and the smoldering corpse radiated heat... might be interesting

[HARDKOR]

Bring back the MW4 explosions plz.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

People not corresponding TTK to death ball only tactics are blind.
Just look lately whats happened to game play after introduction of quirks.
There is nothing except deathball now, all fall just in a second or 2.

[Karl Streiger]

AztecD, on 15 January 2015 - 03:48 PM, said:

in MW3 if you overheat bad enough your mech had a mini-nuke explosion.

funny is - you could cause a Nuke on a enemy Mech - but i spend a lot of time in MW3. The moments i caused an catastophical explosion on the target was quiete seldom - maybe 1 for 200-500 kills.

Even in TT - you can play with "nuke" effect - and still the chance of a mech going nuke must be near 1 out of 100.
To prevent dead balling - the chance have to be bigger.
To prevent suicide - the chance have to be smaller.

Deathballing has multiple causes - map design + 12 on 12 + pin point weapons able to do snap fire + focus fire - on first red mech that comes in to LOS.

[Joseph Mallan]

Blacksoul1987, on 15 January 2015 - 01:38 PM, said:

Deathball is a symptom of high TTK.

Deathballing is the rudimentary form of a battle formation. It lets the ball bring the most damage to bare while allowing incoming fire to be spread over multiple targets.

Id say it is an advancement over the gone to the 4 wins formation We normally see.