48 replies to this topic

[Destoroyah]

Looking at the new weapon geos how would you rate them from a scale of 1 to 10. I didn't include the cent cause it was a definite improvement over the plug, though the black part plague is another issue all together.

Awesome - 6/10 I don't own this mech but from what I've seen most of the changes weren't to bad but the PPCs could of been handled better to help keep to iconic look of the mech.

Cicadas - 9/10 I was generally satisfied with the changes as they didn't mess with the aesthetics that much. Though I do abmit the top mounted PPC on the 3C was a surprise but still made the mech look interesting.

Dragons - 7/10 I was generally pleased with the weapon exection, but the missles were just done bad. Only one variant had 2 missles. Instead of doing the one side fill with the other side as filler space for extra tubes like in the case of a SRM6 it should of been a even split on both sides and in the case of the 2 missle hardpoint varient the split rule would be applied to the first launcher with the second launcher negating it and it just being one launcher on each side instead of getting one tacked in the middle as is the case with 2 SRM4s or LRM5s.

Commandos - 2/10 The commandos were horribly done. For one oversized energy hardpoints which was ok for the 2 energy hardpoint areas but is overkill for the single energy hardpoint sections. Second the missle hardpoints were way overdone. the Chest launcher just looks bad on a commando and the wrist launchers too. A commando is not going to have more then 6 tons of missle weapons as is. To be frank the original commando setup looks was pretty close to how it should of generally looked in the first place. Just a little creativity would of been needed to figure out how to handle the 1D's second chest launcher and the 2D's Second arm launcher.

Now this is my rating not including the black weapon part plague which effects more then just the the mechs listed and would easily knock 2 off all the ratings cept 4 for the dragon as having the whole arm be affected is just ridiculous.

Edited by Destoroyah, 08 July 2015 - 11:35 AM.

[Juodas Varnas]

They're all hideous and i hate it

[mad kat]

Bloody Awful, no joking someone needs sacking!

Awesome 1/10
Dragon 5/10
Commando 2/10
Centurion 8/10
cicada 3/10

Edited by mad kat, 08 July 2015 - 11:45 AM.

[Trev Firestorm]

Mostly Crap. There is a lot of laziness involved in all of these.

Awesome torso missile changes are mostly good (the third launcher hardpoint is a bit awkward though) the arm boxes look good if you don't look too closely at say an srm6 in it, the PB second arm hardpoint looks cool as well (but like the other arm box only makes sense with large # of tubes). PPCs look stupidly undersized.

Cicadas... wtf is with the asymmetry on variants that were previously symmetrical and holy crap did they screw up the X5's launchers, sure lrm20s look good now but everything smaller looks like crap AND sacrifice the unique look (and got rid of the fun srm6 stream effect)

Dragons arm would be cool if the second hardpoint worked the same way the third did, that is it adds to the model instead of being a stupid flat empty bit like on the centurion

Centurion arm change... still not an improvement, give us back the gun arm and leave this thing for the AL variant. The new tacked on geometry is hideous and still makes no sense with the offset barrel when you have only one AC in the arm.

Commando I don't even... take it away.

[Tennex]

Dragon is the worst one by far

Edited by Tennex, 08 July 2015 - 12:01 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

Awesomes - 2/10.
Lasers look fine, given the standard practice of turning laser weapons into small cubes. LRMs look very good. The PPCs look horrid. Really, really bad. A lot of people expected them to be worse, which kind of cushioned the blow. But objectively speaking, they're really, really bad.

Cicadas - 5/10
Ballistics look just as expected. We could go on about the pencil thickness on the barrels or the short and stubby gauss rifles, but let's not. The assymmetry is a huge turn-off, reminds me of the Cataphract 4X, but even worse in this case.

Here's the rub. The CDA-3C with its shoulder-mounted energy slot is a very nice touch. But it illustrates that every variant can potentially have unique hardpoint locations on the same component. If you put a PPC on the CDA-2A's side torso, it's below the cockpit. If you put a PPC on the CDA-3C's side torso, it's above the cockpit. This means that there's no reason why the single energy hardpoint in the CT of the CDA-2B can't be centered. No reason, except they're trying to reduce the workload and don't think those aesthetical concerns are significant.

Commandos - 3/10
Naturally, the PPCs look way too small on the Commando as well, but let's focus on the most important bits. The lasers and the missile launchers. When all the black hardpoint slots are used, both the missile launchers and the lasers look good. But most Commandos will have those really ugly and pointless empty slots, because PGI didn't think the Commando's deserved the same kind of dynamic geometry as other mechs. The end result is fugly, except that the Death's Knell looks pretty good, IMO.

Dragons - 5/10
Again, by now we're numb to how tiny ballistics look in the game. The ballistic arm looks fine, compared to the ballistic arms on many other mechs in the game. If you think the Dragon has it bad, put a CUAC5 in a Nova's arm and tell me how that looks. Did the huge barrel-shaped hardpoint slots disappear? Nope, still there. But what really surprised me was the asymmetrical missile geometry on the Dragon. I don't understand why they thought that was good enough.

EDIT: Looking at Tennex' pictures above made me sad. I guess I would be more upset if I was a Dragon pilo.

Ultimately, these are some of the least popular mechs in the game, and not even PGI seems to care about them at all. It really, really shows when you look at the treatment they got.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 08 July 2015 - 12:12 PM.

[The Mech behind you]

Err let's say the Cicada got away with it the best. But one thing about the Cicada went really bad. Those that complain about the high PPC on the 3C. If you think that's bad then put one PPC into the LT and one into the RT on the 3M and check it. The only word that comes into my mind when looking at that mess is ...why?

Edited by Norman Kosh, 08 July 2015 - 12:16 PM.

[C E Dwyer]

Its a typical PGI thing

Light pilots would cry if they put large mech weapons on, and then found out they got hit twice as easily.

So they make the weapons look microscopic on the mechs that were designed to take them, and then no body is happy

[zagibu]

Commando: 6/10 The huge box for 1 laser is unfortunate. The missiles on the RA aren't great either, but I don't really have a suggestion on how to improve them.

Cicada: 9/10 Very well done in my opinion, but it's also not a complicated setup.

Dragon: 6/10 In general, I am content, but there are two things that detract from the good result: Firstly, the huge support structure on the right arm for the energy arm variant is not a good solution. The CN9 proves it can be done better. And secondly, the missile hardpoints don't look that good, although I guess it's the best that can be done with the current system. Also, the barrel diameter is still too small, but it seems you have decided on that globally, so it's not a variant-specific complaint.

Awesome: 8/10 Only minor complaints, it's overall good.

[Tyler Valentine]

They are really bad. I honestly thought the Awesome was a joke when i first saw it. Big step backwards.

[Cyborne Elemental]

Awesome 4/10 (only low because of PPC nipples)
Dragon 4/10 (still want that right arm pod up to the shoulder)
Commando -9001/10 (just ... why?)
Centurion 8.5/10
cicada 5/10

Commando got it the worst, totally unnecessary change for an already fragile light.

Edited by Mister D, 08 July 2015 - 01:39 PM.

[stjobe]

I think I've made my point rather clear about how I feel about the Commando changes in the thread I posted yesterday: What have you done to my Commandos? Go have a look at the marvel that is "variable geometry", PGI-style (hint: Lazy, shoddy, uninspired, and aesthetically void of merit).

As for the other 'mechs, they're all bad in several ways.

The Cicada... Really? Asymmetry can be nice - if it's done well. Not if it looks like someone fscked up using the alignment tool.
The Dragon? Come on, that nose launcher is just atrocious, and that great big black slab of an arm - that incidentally is just as big, black, and slabby if it has zero weapons in it - is a joke.
The Awesome? Good LRM re-placement, but those PPCs... Too small.

Finally, the Centurion's new new gun arm - well. It's a beefier-looking arm, that still holds too small a gun. Not to mention the fact that the lazy-arse implementation means it, like the Commando arms, show empty hardpoints that doesn't even exist on the 'mech.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for variable geometry, in principle. It's good to see what weapons you have on your 'mech, and what the enemy has on his. But the way PGI is going about it is just bass-ackwards; it's lazy, it's uninspired, and more damning - it's destroying the beautiful 'mech models.

Edited by stjobe, 08 July 2015 - 01:29 PM.

[ShadowWolf Kell]

Norman Kosh, on 08 July 2015 - 12:16 PM, said:

Err let's say the Cicada got away with it the best. But one thing about the Cicada went really bad. Those that complain about the high PPC on the 3C. If you think that's bad then put one PPC into the LT and one into the RT on the 3M and check it. The only word that comes into my mind when looking at that mess is ...why?

Only have Cicadas on the list and noticed that right away. My 3M isn't happy. My K2 is pointing at it and laughing in my mech bay.

Edit - I take that back, I have the gift Centurion also, but honestly never used it. I like my SHDs too much due to the mobility.

Edited by ShadowWolf Kell, 08 July 2015 - 01:33 PM.

[Coralld]

What bugs me the most is the removal of the X5 SRM6 ripple fire effect, I liked the ripple effect, it made the SRM6s about as accurate as SRM2s which was great. Now I'm sad.

The Cent looks better but I still want the right arm to be the old BFG look.

Commando looks the worst.

I don't own an Awesome but from what I saw, I can only shake my head.

The Dragon ballistic arm looks... Ok? The one with the missiles looks horrible.

[Revis Volek]

COMMANDO - 2/10

DRAGON - 7/10 (would have been a 9 has the missiles been addressed properly)

(NOT SO)AWESOME - 3/10

Cicada - 8/10

I actually LOVE the Dragons arm! Only thing i like from this new modeling stuff to tell you the truth...and the Cicada.

Edited by DarthRevis, 08 July 2015 - 02:07 PM.

[Allen Ward]

Just terrible. The weapons ignore camo patterns/color. They often break a nice pattern design and make it look bad. The dragon arm is out of this world. It looks like the whole mech is going to tumble over by sheer weight. And putting lasers or Ac5s into it looks very sad. Stupid idea.

Awesome right arm shows 2 hardpoints all the time, although some variants only have 1 hardpoint there. The PPCs are done badly. Torso and arm mounted. This used to be the most terrifying weapon in BT (it caused fear by mentioning it's name alone), now it looks like some bad tubing job.

Putting tons of LRM5s on a mech that actually mounts an LRM15 or LRM20 is an insult.

[mad kat]

This latest patch is proof that either pgi have no idea what theyre doing or that they simply cant be arsed. Or both.

If im right in remembering the mess which is now the awesome theyve litterally just deleted the lrm racks from the model and put them in the shoulder pads leaving the broken geometry below 'as is'. Now ill check my blender file tommorow just to be sure.

[FireDog]

Coralld, on 08 July 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:

What bugs me the most is the removal of the X5 SRM6 ripple fire effect, I liked the ripple effect, it made the SRM6s about as accurate as SRM2s which was great. Now I'm sad.

I second the opinion on the X-5 Cicada. That tight, 1,2 3 knock effect would give me just enough time to get off my med laser burn. Now we just have a big wide pattern and a single knock. Well at least there is less face time with SRMs only.

As for the CDA-3M's new asymmetrical look... I guess an artist got involved vice an engineer. Sad when that happens. Over all look is nice but its former symmetrical weapon set up was so much better, both in appearance as well as in function.

Edited by FireDog, 08 July 2015 - 05:52 PM.

[kapusta11]

Small weapons = 0/10, has been talked to death.

[tredmeister]

I agree with all of the above! The dynamic hardpoints are a good idea, badly implemented. A few of the changes came out (slightly) better that I feared, but many of the configurations do look rather absurd. (missile ports on the AWS arm shield? Really?)

I am also not too thrilled with the coloration on all of the new ''dynamic'' hardpoints either. On all of the original mechs, the uncolored metal pieces were a matte gunmetal gray (almost a parkerized color), which looked good when I was running a camo pattern, or when running the standard (default) pattern with our units (bright) colors. Now, all the new pieces are a shiny blue color, which just looks bad with all my camo paint jobs. Awesome now has both colors, as the underarms and side panels are still gunmetal gray, and the new overlapping parts are a shiny blue...

Spoiler

I first noticed this trend with the Centurion dynamic hardpoints. Most of the old versions parts (left) were camo, and the bits that showed were the matte gunmetal gray. The new version (right) is covered with that shiny blue metal all over... Does this look better to you?

Spoiler

My Cicadas and Commandos are now suffering from the same problem as well...

Spoiler

Lastly, my Dragons right arm(s) used to be camo. Now the entire lower arm is just shiny metal. It looks like he lost the lower arm in battle, and just had a new one attached that someone forgot to paint. Is this going to be fixed?

Spoiler

I have plenty of mech bays and I do not use premium time, so the only thing I really spend MC on is camo. I usually buy the full unlock so I can switch back and forth between jungle or desert camo, and the default pattern in team colors for comp matches. Now most of the paint jobs I paid for just look terrible! Perhaps I should just paint all my mechs a shiny dark blue and forget about buying camo from now on...

Edited by tredmeister, 08 July 2015 - 08:56 PM.