Wintersdark, on 08 September 2015 - 05:45 PM, said:
Short form:
In theory it's awesome, but you're fudging what's really hard as "easy", calling your thoughts "specific" when they are in fact very general.
It's hard to get good values for things. It's not impossible, but it's very hard. Sure, you could compare, say, weapons very easily, but how do you value a given rating worth of weapons vs. a given rating of armor? How do you value base chassis before weapons? Hardpoint locations substantially impact mech effectiveness; mechs are not just bags of hardpoints. What about defensive factors? Hitbox sizes? Keep in mind, you can't just say "pixels in size" or such, because the formula for geometry needs to be balanced vs. weapons vs. engines vs. modules etc.
Then you fall into triage: Is it worth trying to make that work (with absolutely no garauntee of success) vs. just moving on with other things?
Thank you for your post. Again I must apologize for not reading the whole thread.
My choice of words may have not been the best suited as I was in a sort of "spew everything before I forget" moment.
I believe that this system is easy in that, once it is entirely conceived, the future of using it will be so. You have brought up points that I did not originally consider.
In regards to hard points, they themselves mean nothing. Only when a weapon is placed within it does it now have value, which then would be that of the weapon itself. There is value in the location of that hard point, I do agree. One would consider a weapon placed in a hard point based higher on the Mech as more valuable than that of one placed lower. I'm certain that a modifier based on a relative scale factor can account for this.
Defensive factors are those I had not really considered. Quickly thinking on this, scale of front and side versus, armor and tonnage come to mind as factors to process a value. Unfortunately hit box size is something I cannot attempt to consider without inside information from the devs. However, if this information is obtainable, the same thinking can apply. Essentially comparing hit box to armor and tonnage.
Now again, this is just my quick thought, I will have to put it down to numbers to see how this works.
My thought is to use the numbers we have to work out a solution. Try to produce an algorithm that uses these values in a logical way to provide a value that makes sense to compare against.
There definitely seems to be a lot to consider for this to work, but I believe it is worth trying. There is never guarantee of success in anything, but I certainly will not give up at the chance of potentially coming up with the solution to the match maker problem.
(My feeling is that too many systems in MWO were drawn up quickly to get it up and running without much consideration to the future of those systems. Hence why we have had to have a rewrite of several systems multiple times [Looking at you UI]. We need to spend the time to make something work right while considering the future changes to the game.)
It will take me a bit of time to come up with my algorithms as I'm quite busy with work lately. I do wish to post something that shows examples of the system to get some feedback.
Thank you again Wintersdark for your input. I sometimes get blinded by myself thinking I have the greatest idea. I hope no one is offended by this and I, in no way, mean to trample over anyone else's ideas or thoughts.
I look forward to further feedback.