Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to improve the plots and take as much as possible into account.
I think the biggest single flaw so far is that some Clan mechs are underestimated a bit. It's one of the more tricky parts to get right because clan-tech affects different chassi differently... also I think that JJ is overestimated a bit as well, think I will try to reduce JJ to 0.1x, 0.25x, 0.5x and 0.75x for Assaults, Heavy, Medium and Lights respectively. If I do that I think there is room for increasing the impact of clan-tech a bit, that should put DWF and SCR in a slightly better position, without overestimating the clan mechs that can fit JJ. Another problem that is impossible to really take into account is some mechs that can equip JJ's but with their current state probably won't waste tonnage on JJs.
Also, like someone said, it's impossible to describe the mechs by a single Tier value, and that is very true. PGI started the Tiering though so it's sort of the name of the game for this experiment... therefore I tried to give + for both sniping- and brawling properties. Mechs that can only do one or the other will score worse than those that can do both, so it's more of an allrounder score.
Mawai, on 13 April 2015 - 12:25 PM, said:
The only comment I would have ... I hope PGI has used some sort of similar formula for determining the quirks in the first place
Also, it is difficult to assess whether personal bias plays a role. Unless you have extensively played every mech, criteria such as hit boxes has to be based on hear say from players who have played them ... which then becomes a question of whose opinion do you listen to ... and how you choose to weight each factor.
P.S.
Looking at some of the rankings ... I wonder how objective it is ... for example the Stalker-4N is the highest ranked Assault mech. It is very effective in CW and has quite nice large laser quirks ... but most decent Dire Wolves would beat one in a 1:1 fight (my opinion ... others may feel differently). The same goes for several other assaults ... unless they decide to run at the Stalker across an open field armed with only short range weapons.
Similarly, although the HBK-4G has been amazingly improved by quirks ... I think it is still outclassed by the Stormcrow in almost every way ... and I pilot both.
Finally, no matter how well quirked the LCT-1E might be ... and I have seen folks perform miracles in a locust ... it is still a 20 ton mech that can be one-shotted or legged by almost everything. In terms of tier ranking I don't think it can really be ranked above any firestarter, jenner or raven in terms of effectiveness as a light mech.
So ... I think one aspect that could be added to your evaluation is tonnage. I don't think you mentioned a factor based on actual tonnage ... which might go some ways to eliminating some of these oddities. (Add a factor for every 5 tons above the minumum weight of the weight class).
I am not so sure PGI has done this... at least not from the start, they based the initial quirk pass on some Tier ranking list from "competitive players" if I remember it right. That list, imo, was gernally good but had a few errors, especially ranking Thunderbolts as Tier 5, Flame as Tier 3, Cataphracts and Victors as Tier 1. Also, PGI didn't really follow their own guidelines, even though Firestarters were Tier 1, the -A and -S got really powerful quirks initially and so did some of the Stalkers.
I havn't played all mechs as you say, I have guessed the performance of some of them based on shooting them only (Trebuchets, Commandos, Urbies, and the Resistance mechs). This is a serious disclaimer so I will be happy to receive all kinds of input try to take it into account.
About Stalker vs Direwolf, I'd prefer to sit in a STK-4N in a terrain duel. I would only pick the DWF if it was a duel on a soccer-field...
it's a very relevant point though, in some circumstances the DWF is a complete monster and in other situations it's rather helpless...
The LCT-1E was a surprise to me as well. It is a monster until it gets hit though, but maybe Lights should be rated higher for durability... these all-or-nothing mechs are hard to get right.
RAM, on 13 April 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:
Very interesting. Could you do a single consolidated graph of all mechs? Thanks!
RAM
ELH
I could always mash them together, but not sure how right that would be. I didn't make any effort to align the scores between the classes, but I will defiantly see how it looks.
Jman5, on 13 April 2015 - 12:57 PM, said:
I think you should consider removing the "unquirked" bars from your graph. It's already rather dense with so many mechs, and the 2nd light blue bar is just making it harder for us to interpret without adding a whole lot IMO.
I would also suggest separating the images and making them bigger. There are so many mech values it can be hard to read.
Another suggestion is to label your Y axis because as others pointed out it's a little counter intuitive that lower = better. Also normally people sort their X axis from worst to best instead of best to worst. Not a big deal, but it does reinforce the confusion.
Many good suggestions, thanks!
Kiiyor, on 13 April 2015 - 02:02 PM, said:
Nice SCIENCE, but as it's anecdotal, I have a couple of anecdotal opinions:
DireWolf #1. Everything else #2 or lower.
There is no mech better than a StormCrow.
Yes, of course this is not real Science, I am just an old man trying to keep up with the Forums lingo. I have yet to see real science on these boards.
It is an attempt to be systematic about my biased views though.
Brizna, on 13 April 2015 - 03:01 PM, said:
I think in your effort to make it objective and scientific you left out something that matters a lot. How well the different qualities of a mech (hitboxes, quirks, hardpoints...) mix together to make a whole mech. I.e: Warhawk has in theory very nice qualities but they don't match each other well making most builds weak.
In the same way Mist Lynx has no single quality that impresses and a few that literally suck but with the quirks it makes a surprisingly decent mech.
Of course if you added that you'd be back where you started, completely subjective charts, and that's exactly where most of the interest of these charts lies in comparing a mech's true permfromance on the battlefield (subjective as it is) with its theoric performance based solely in stat. Very interesting read and I thank you very much for sahring your work. PGI would do well in looking at them very closely to see where some mechs failed.
The hardpoints etc should be taken into account, I have weighted hardpoint locality quite heavily to reflect that it doesn't matter how much hardware you're packing if you fire 50% of it into the terrain. The warhawk that you mention scored high on hardpoint capacity, but scored low on hardpoint locality and hitboxes. The Mist Lynx scored low on hardpoints, perhaps I was a bit harsh to it. The problem is that it can equip ECM, but because of hardpoints it's a real option to pick a weapons arm instead of the ECM... I did that on 2 out of 3 MLXs when I skilled them. Making the model reflect that doesn't work so I gave them a low score on hardpoints and the ECM bonus and that may not describe SPL/MPL builds not using ECM very well... a general clan-tech boost will move it slightly up in the list though.
Telmasa, on 13 April 2015 - 04:40 PM, said:
Cool stuff.
I really feel like mechs like the Dragon-1N would be higher up the list though if you were able to account for quirked DPS...which, since you can't assume what build a mech has, I can understand why 'superquirk' mechs were places as low as they were.
Also, I don't like the 5-tier system at all. I'd far rather see performance-by-tonnage, i.e.:
Locusts: 20-25 ton bracket; these are the mechs Locusts should be pretty competitive with.
Commandos: 20-30 ton bracket
Spiders: 25-35 ton bracket
Firestarters: 30-40 ton bracket
Cicadas: 35-45 ton bracket
Blackjacks: 40-50 ton bracket
etc. etc. Whether you'd include clan mechs or do a separate listing for them, I wouldn't be able to really say.
Yeah, the DRG-1N ended up slightly lower than I had thought, but only slightly so. It's still a Dragon with it's main weaponry in one low slung arm that requires you to have full face time. When I played the quirked version I ended most games against competent players without that arm, trying to contribute with a single ERLL, so performance was very much all or nothing. I could do 1500 dmg and 5 kills in one game, followed by 120 dmg and a few assists in the next because someone on the other team knew their stuff... Those are tricky.
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