11 replies to this topic

[Mole]

That was your excuse for not putting in the Flea like you promised, PGI. Can I have my Flea now? Please?

[Revis Volek]

Mole, on 16 June 2015 - 09:48 AM, said:

That was your excuse for not putting in the Flea like you promised, PGI. Can I have my Flea now? Please?

actually you are incorrect

There "excuse" (reason) was because it will go too fast and would be a issue for HSR.

Why not use the SEARCH function this has been talked about already...same reason i cant have my fire moth.

Edited by DarthRevis, 16 June 2015 - 09:57 AM.

[GeistHrafn]

DarthRevis, on 16 June 2015 - 09:56 AM, said:

actually you are wrong

There "excuse" (reason) was because it will go too fast and would be a issue for HSR.

Why not use the SEARCH function this has been talked about already...

Repeatedly!

[Aleski]

For a mole, you don't know how to dig in order to find the info? That's odd.

HA HA HA!!!

[SpiralFace]

I will actually be VERY surprised if the Flea doesn't make its way out in by the end of summer (although none of us know the state that that mech is in.)

The big issue with it is going to come down to what can it do that the Locust can't already do?

Locust can already go 170 kph, the ceiling as far as speed isn't going to change, and with 10% speed being the main selling point of light masc, I don't think it will make much of a difference to really see it going any zippier then the locust already goes naturally.

I hope they can at least raise the ceiling a bit to 180 or 190 with MASC to give the Flea a bit of a purpose as an alternative to the locust.

[MoonUnitBeta]

SpiralFace, on 16 June 2015 - 09:59 AM, said:

I will actually be VERY surprised if the Flea doesn't make its way out in by the end of summer

Be prepared to be surprised i guess.

Is that even possible?

[Greenjulius]

DarthRevis, on 16 June 2015 - 09:56 AM, said:

actually you are incorrect

There "excuse" (reason) was because it will go too fast and would be a issue for HSR.

Why not use the SEARCH function this has been talked about already...same reason i cant have my fire moth.

Ya beat me to it. The game has a lot of trouble with hitreg when things go too fast. ~170 is apparently the range where it tops out.

Has anyone tried to fight a commando running at 171 in circles? Some time back, I watched a team take 3 minutes to kill a disconnected commando who was stuck running endlessly in a circle. The only thing that allowed us to kill it was my Atlas running into it and getting it stuck momentarily. One of the funniest things I've ever seen.

[Elizander]

Just put this MASC thing on my Pretty Baby and no one will get hurt...

[SpiralFace]

MoonUnitBeta, on 16 June 2015 - 10:02 AM, said:

Be prepared to be surprised i guess.

Is that even possible?

They have said in the past that the model was done (albeit before they started doing dynamic geometry,) so I'm under the assumption they have at least the model done. Concept has been out for forever. (before the locust even.)

Additionally addressing others, the speed thing would not be a factor for the Flea now. it only goes about 90 KPH stock, which would put it at firestarter engine cap levels, which should be within the threshold for light masc, since they only get a 10% speed boost and not the full 30% canon value from TT.

[1453 R]

KisumiKitsune, on 16 June 2015 - 01:44 PM, said:

Well, they could just give the flea a smaller engine cap, and make it so it only ends up going 171kph with MASC on. This would give more tonnage for weapons than the Locust has, while allowing you to use MASC in clutch situations when you really need the speed. Also would end up making the accel / decel and turn rate nuts if you properly applied it. It'd probably just end up being a more skirmish-ey Locust, with an emphasis on getting in fights and using insane agility while in there with slightly more firepower, while still being overall slower.

Ahhh, but there's other factors in play which cement the fact that the Flea is awful!

For one, the Flea comes stock with a STD 120-rated engine. Now, a 120-rated engine requires six external heat sinks, which means that the stock build is pretty much flat incapable of utilizing both Endo and Ferro. Taking into account 10% speed increase from M.A.S.C. and using the Lolcust as a base, looks like an engine rating of 170 is about as high as it can get. Let's assume for a moment that PGI is generous and gives the Flea a 175 top rating. W/M.A.S.C. and Tweak, that yields a maximum theoretical top speed of 171.5, which is riding the upper bleeding edge of hat HSR can (theoretically) handle. How much does that weigh?

175XL: 5.5t
M.A.S.C. I: 1t
3x external HS: 3t
-9.5t total for 171kph in short bursts, 155 by default.

You do get bursts of truly physics-defying accel/decel when M.A.S.C. is up, but I honestly doubt people could really handle that level of performance. Not without crack-fueled Unreal Tournament skills, at least.

Now, moving over to the Locust:

190XL - 6t
3x external HS - 3t
-9t total for permanent 169.3kph.

You lose two KPH total from the Flea w/best engine the devs could possibly give it, but net an extra half-ton - which is, as any Locust/Commando pilot will tell you, a big damn deal at this point. The Locust gets accel/decel quirks which more or less give it M.A.S.C. by default, it doesn't have any chance of breaking its own legs unless it takes belly flops off of Mount Doom, and it has at least two variants which do everything the Flea does weapons-wise as well.

Now, the argument is that the Flea could use its M.A.S.C. to downgrade its engine to, say, a 150 and then use M.A.S.C. to make up the advantage, thus taking bigger weapons. A'ight, let's do that.

150XL: 4t
M.A.S.C: 1t
4 external HS: 4t
-9t total, 133.6kph default footspeed, 147kph M.A.S.C. max speed. Nine tons for 147kph in short spurts. The Locust uses the exact same nine tons to hit 169.3 permanent footspeed. No armament weight gained.

IN FACT! You actually lose armament weight in most cases. A Locust w/190XL, Endo, Ferro, and DHS has 8 slots left for weapons. A Flea, forced to carry four external DHS as well as M.A.S.C., would have four slots for non-required, non-structural gear. This is not sufficient for most of the heavy-gunz builds people would want on the Flea, necessitating the loss of Ferro armor. This cuts an extra ~half-ton (0.46t, assuming maximum armor and thus maximum weight savings) from your free weight, meaning you're essentially paying 9.5t for your 150XL build.

You pay the exact same tonnage for a 150XL build that you do for a 175XL build. To get significantly poorer performance.

Why?

Now sure, the math gets somewhat better below a 150 engine rating - droping down to a 145XL w/extra heat sink nets you back that half-ton you lose to STD armor, but at that point you're carrying 5+ external heat sinks which cuts significant;y into your heat management due to the TruDubs issue, and you're still paying the same 9t for your increasingly slow 20-tonner. In fact, the only place where smaller engine+M.A.S.C. starts pulling ahead?

125XL: 2t
M.A.S.C.: 1t
5 external DHS: 5t
Ferro pentalty: 0.5t
-8.5t total; the first time the Flea w/M.A.S.C. has pulled ahead of the Locust. It does so by going 111.4kph, before M.A.S.C.. It is all of five klicks faster than its stock top speed of 106.9, a speed which 'Mechs three times its size can, and do, easily reach or exceed.

You would be a 20-ton 'Mech moving at the same speeds as a STORMCROW, with a one-fifth uptime of moving eleven KPH faster than that and having accel/decel 'bonuses' which the Locust matches by dint of having quirks and also an engine seventy points higher-rated, and your reward for all this M.A.S.C. Math and engine finagling?

An extra half-ton of equipment weight over a bog-standard 190XL Locust.

And Locusts aren't even that good.

WHY do people want the Flea, again? It's ugly, it's categorically worse than the Locust, and it's not even cute or possessed of a storied history like the UrbanMech. I mean, really...just let the poor thing sit in its forgotten corner in peace.

Edited by 1453 R, 16 June 2015 - 02:43 PM.

[Whatzituyah]

1453 R, on 16 June 2015 - 02:40 PM, said:

Stuff

I read what you said in that long line of text and you made very good points. But breaking a promise really hurts someone and by your logic the concept art area should be forgotten because its in the media area of the forums.

[1453 R]

Whatzituyah, on 16 June 2015 - 02:48 PM, said:

I read what you said in that long line of text and you made very good points. But breaking a promise really hurts someone and by your logic the concept art area should be forgotten because its in the media area of the forums.

Times change.

If we didn't have the Locust, then the Flea would have had a place. Ironically, the same place it had in TT - being a somewhat crappy replacement for the Unseen Locust. And also another thing the Dragoons hold over everyone else's head but hey. Anyways. The fact is that we do have the Locust, our very own Reseen bug 'Mech to bug people with, and the presence of the Locust - which Piranha did not account for when previewing the Flea - pretty much invalidates the Flea's reason to live.

Russ himself has stated that the Flea is dead to him, and his team has no enthusiasm or desire to introduce it. For my part, I'd rather they put their time and effort into things they are enthusiastic about. Or at least things we don't already have a 100% superior edition of.