59 replies to this topic

[Felio]

It just limits the builds you can do too much.

The Nova is the only one that can actually make use of all that extra space by boating twelve ½-ton lasers and filling the rest with DHS. God help you if you drop on Alpine.

Everything else is just gimped on purpose. Though admittedly, the derp whale can still bring a lot of firepower because it is 100 tons with a slow engine.

But messing around in Smurphy with things like the Hellbringer... I don't need another laser boat. A single AC/5 or AC/10 takes up too much weight to have any real firepower. The Gargoyle is cursed with both an XL 400 and standard structure. We've seen how weakly they intend to quirk mechs like the Summoner.

There are some good builds possible with the Mad Dog just because it has so many hard points. It does have a niche; it can bring both long and short-range missiles with a few lasers. But if it had Endo, it would be able to do at least one of those well. It struggles to bring enough firepower, ammo and heat sinks in the same build. It's not quite good enough that I would buy it. But at least it has a niche.

[FupDup]

If only Endo (and Clan FF to a lesser extent) wasn't nearly mandatory on the vast majority of builds...

[Joseph Mallan]

Man Some folks can't handle limits...

[mogs01gt]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 April 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:

Man Some folks can't handle limits...

You mean balance right.......

[Dino Might]

Funny thing is, if they took endo away from Scrow and Timby, they'd actually get more balanced, and then you could have the more global Clan buffs, or *gasp* knock back some of the IS buffs.

Technical readouts are only so important when we're going to strip out everything anyways and optimize the builds as best we can anyways.

Edited by Dino Might, 28 April 2015 - 10:55 AM.

[TercieI]

Yeah. Hellbringer and Dire Wolf. Both just garbage.

[FupDup]

Terciel1976, on 28 April 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

Yeah. Hellbringer and Dire Wolf. Both just garbage.

The Cauldron-Born will show us what an Endo + FF Hellbringer would be like.

If we hypothetically didn't have customization restrictions on Omnis, the Whale could actually fit Endo and use that tonnage to upgrade the engine, which would offset some of the critslot requirements (move some sinks to the larger engine).


TL;DR: Those mechs aren't powerful because of lacking these tech upgrades, they're powerful in spite of it.

[Mcgral18]

Contruction gimps the Terribad Clams. It is known.


Give Mr Gargles an XL375 and Endo, he suddenly has 31 tons of weapons; a full 50% more.

Remove 1.5 tons of hardwired equipment on the Myth Lynx, upgrade engine, move 178 Kph with 4 tons of pod space.



Those sound like pretty decent robots...PGI can't have that.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mcgral18, on 28 April 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

Contruction gimps the Terribad Clams. It is known.


Give Mr Gargles an XL375 and Endo, he suddenly has 31 tons of weapons; a full 50% more.

Remove 1.5 tons of hardwired equipment on the Myth Lynx, upgrade engine, move 178 Kph with 4 tons of pod space.



Those sound like pretty decent robots...PGI can't have that.

Cause Clanners don't make those kind of mods.

[FupDup]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 April 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

Cause Clanners don't make those kind of mods.

Or IS, for that matter. The engineers in BT aren't always good at building robots...

[Mcgral18]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 April 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

Cause Clanners don't make those kind of mods.

Yet IS robots can...which go against the same rules the Clams follow.

They are supposed to follow the same set of rules.

[Christof Romulus]

FupDup, on 28 April 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

TL;DR: Those mechs aren't powerful because of lacking these tech upgrades, they're powerful in spite of it.

Quite literally the sickest of all burns.

[Joseph Mallan]

FupDup, on 28 April 2015 - 11:01 AM, said:

Or IS, for that matter. The engineers in BT aren't always good at building robots...

I beg to differ. The Inner sphere had Upgrade kits that went out and House wide recalls to upgrade structure and armor. There is a planet in canon that can give mechs agility enough to do acrobatics, And then we have Techs like Shorty Sneed who can FrankenMech, GeoAvanti who upgraded from standard tech to Clantech on a Caesar in a dropship Mechbay.

Also the Mechs in CBT had factored in Bureaucracy in to the design process!

Mcgral18, on 28 April 2015 - 11:02 AM, said:

Yet IS robots can...which go against the same rules the Clams follow.

They are supposed to follow the same set of rules.

Sorry but what do you think those Canon Hero Mechs are???

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 28 April 2015 - 11:07 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 April 2015 - 11:06 AM, said:

Sorry but what do you think those Canon Hero Mechs are???

Are you talking about the Yen Lo Wang who has a STD200, 136(272) armour and a 4 ton Hatchet?

Or the Yen Lo Wang with a 215STD, 336 armour, and is missing the 4 ton hatchet?

[Joseph Mallan]

FupDup, on 28 April 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

The Cauldron-Born will show us what an Endo + FF Hellbringer would be like.

If we hypothetically didn't have customization restrictions on Omnis, the Whale could actually fit Endo and use that tonnage to upgrade the engine, which would offset some of the critslot requirements (move some sinks to the larger engine).


TL;DR: Those mechs aren't powerful because of lacking these tech upgrades, they're powerful in spite of it.

Except on TT the Dire Wolf couldn't use a 375XL engine It had to be a 100, 200 300 or 400 rate engine. Nothing else. SO that Dire would have to give up a lot of room to have a bigger engine.

[FupDup]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 April 2015 - 11:09 AM, said:

Except on TT the Dire Wolf couldn't use a 375XL engine It had to be a 100, 200 300 or 400 rate engine. Nothing else. SO that Dire would have to give up a lot of room to have a bigger engine.

In the world of TT, a 300-rated engine was the optimal engine for a 100 tonner, so in its case it had the best engine that the rules let it fit there.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mcgral18, on 28 April 2015 - 11:09 AM, said:

Are you talking about the Yen Lo Wang who has a STD200, 136(272) armour and a 4 ton Hatchet?

Or the Yen Lo Wang with a 215STD, 336 armour, and is missing the 4 ton hatchet?

Yes Yen Lo Wang does not have a 215 Standard engine on TT.

The weapons had been replaced with a Von Ryan Gauss Rifle in place of Autocannon and Spitfire Medium Pulse Lasers, two on arm, one on torso and one on back. Additionally Mech was refitted with new generation of Triple Strength Myomer which did not burn when exposed to gas, the Miata 200 extralight engine, and three additional, switchable Heat Sinks[2].

or as of right now it was:

The Yen-Lo-Wang, named after the Chinese god of death, is a custom Centurion that was originally used by Justin Xiang-Allard in 3027 during his "exile" on Solaris VII and his Solaris Championship run.[1] He modified the 'Mech originally with an Assault Autocannon and placed Titanium "nails" on the 'Mech's hand actuator. He used the 'Mech later during his career with House Liao's Maskirovka during the Fourth Succession War.

No Hatchet at this time!

FupDup, on 28 April 2015 - 11:11 AM, said:

In the world of TT, a 300-rated engine was the optimal engine for a 100 tonner, so in its case it had the best engine that the rules let it fit there.

Not disputed.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 28 April 2015 - 11:16 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 April 2015 - 11:15 AM, said:

Yes Yen Lo Wang does not have a 215 Standard engine on TT.

It had a 200; No Canon Hero has an off MP*tonnage engine.

The Wang isn't completely cannon; it lacks the 4 ton hatchet, converted into Engine and armour.


All Clam robots follow TT rules. They are worse for it.

[TercieI]

FupDup, on 28 April 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

TL;DR: Those mechs aren't powerful because of lacking these tech upgrades, they're powerful in spite of it.

Of course, but...yeah, sorry, I read the subject and not the text of the OP. Oops. It's actually an interesting point that I hadn't thought of that in addition to the SCR and TBR being better because of the upgrades, their great flexibility also comes from having the upgrades. Huh.

Edited by Terciel1976, 28 April 2015 - 11:45 AM.

[Koniving]

FupDup, on 28 April 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:

If only Endo (and Clan FF to a lesser extent) wasn't nearly mandatory on the vast majority of builds...

Had PGI not given excessive amounts of freedom to BattleMechs (the IS mechs), it wouldn't be a problem at all.
But between pinpoint FLD, instant convergence, twist by mouse (as opposed to twist by keyboard), high thresholds, higher than normal heat dissipation (provided you have up to 17 DHS and the elite skill Cool Run and a 250 engine minimum, the +15% to dissipation makes your heatsinks greater than 2.0 per DHS), and triple or greater front loaded damage firing rates, everything relies on that customizability to make the fastest, glitchiest thing possible.

Then, there's also the size issue... Which kinda plagues the game. I'm not saying BT scales are necessary (though I would really love the variety it would bring as opposed to "Oh well they're 55 ton sized"), but they are unreasonably huge. Had PGI put tanks in, to make them proportionate with the mech sizes in MWO, the 35 ton tanks would need to take up two lanes, and 100 ton tanks wouldn't be able to fit between buildings on the typical River City roads! Many of the 'Mechs that are highly disadvantaged in MWO wouldn't be that way had their scales been closer to canon. And some of the 'really good' 'Mechs with features such as Ferro + Endo Steel... would be less advantaged compared to now, as BT universally depicts 'Mechs with Endo Steel or Ferro to be larger, and 'Mechs with both to be significantly larger.


A fun note: MWO's Shadowhawk is depicted as larger than the height references of Atlases in the years 3015 to 3027. o.O; Ever wondered why the TRO 3025 Atlas head was so huge? For the D-DC it had to be large enough to fit a pilot on either side of the head, each with a viewport through the eyeballs. The typical Atlas, however, has the viewport through the nose.


Depicted for scale is a 55 ton tank from crysis, a scaled mech (9.63 meters tall, exactly the height of the Dougram which the Shadowhawk's original art was also used for in the anime by the same name), and PGI's 55 ton Shadowhawk (the tallest of all 55 ton 'Mechs currently).

It's noteworthy to mention that in comparison, the BT 5-series is much larger than the 2-series (as the 5 series universally features structure or armor upgrades and things like full head ejection systems -- making them large enough to fit the entire cockpit inside the head unlike the 2-series). It is unknown whether the 3K is 5-series height or 2-series height, but as it is based on the 2K it stands to reason it is probably in between.

(And Dragons, while their heads are almost exactly the appropriate size in MWO (as it would and does fit exactly as much of the pilot as it is supposed to and depicted as doing in many pieces of FASA-created BT art), the rest of their body is quite enlarged. The belly bulge on the torso as well as the really bulky limbs (when considering that many mechs of the same weight class and similar classes are much thinner), is partly because of the Dragon's rather small stature despite its weight.)





<.<; How very, very different this game could have been. Quite possibly, "balancing" the Clans might not have been ~quite~ as necessary. Some, yes. But a Nova (50 tons) at 8.3 meters tall with standard structure and armor wouldn't have as many problems as Viper (40 tons and just as wide) at 9.1 meters tall with endo and ferro. The Warhawk at 85 tons (ferro + endo steel) being 12.1 meters tall with more girth and surface area than the Dire Wolf (100 tons, endo steel only) at 12.3 meters tall.

Sigh. I ranted again. Honestly this game's been so disappointing and the more and more I learn about BT, the worse this game seems to get because it's nothing like it. Just going through the stuff in BT -- the earlier stuff in the late 80s early 90s especially when it tried really hard to have a 'Real Robot' genre basis with influences from a number of anime in the same genre, you could easily create a game or simulation with a "Star Citizen-esque" / Mass Effect quality to it and you wouldn't even need more than one planet to do it. Of course, that'd be creating a game out of BT or even just the two Mechwarrior RPG books I've got.

So badly I want to sit down and actually design a BT game. I've already been working on an MW game's on paper design and gone into advanced details like fully functional BattleMech heads (and the advantages / disadvantages that 'Mechs with and without them will have against one another), Quad-Mechs, and even what functional purposes Agro and Industrial 'Mechs would have in such a game (as well as how to functionally distinguish them). Something about the thought of a Cattlemaster going into battle with a hoe has its charm.

While all of the above has been worked towards a first person simulation, lately I've had an urge for a Front Mission / Megamek-esque style of game as a testing bed and wonder if PGI/Microsoft or if Catalyst Games would have the rights to a simultaineous-turn style tactical game or something Mass Effect-ish set in the BT universe...

(Btw, I've started playing Crescent Hawk's Inception (A Battletech PC Game). Despite the graphics being almost unbearable, they're fantastic for the game's age and absolutely baffling level of depth! There is more depth and content in this tiny game than MWO + MW3 combined. Then again something similar can be noticed about the Front Mission series, going from FM-5 or FM-E backwards to FM-2, combat gets more and more realistic, to the point that in FM-2 the Wanzers manuever around the environment during the combat phase and take potshots, dodge, and even destroy environmental objects, where in FM-3 they stare each other down, shoot and at least try to dodge even if they are going to fail at doing so. In FM-4 dodge attempts are only depicted if successful, and they stare each other down. The machines at least move in a realistic manner. In FM-5 the realism was completely lost in many of the combat animations of normal gameplay where melee attacks always have a 'booster' accelerant charge as if they had actually pulled away and charged for their next melee attack when in fact they didn't move from the last attack. Games in general seem to be getting more and more dumbed down in order to facilitate some really bad "high budget" trends that seem necessary in this day and age).

*Sigh.* Maybe I'm getting old.

Edited by Koniving, 28 April 2015 - 12:56 PM.