Wintersdark, on 17 October 2015 - 05:14 PM, said:
While I'm fine with the theory behind what you're saying, the reality is that a lot of this ground clutter is both unrealistically problematic and really against the theory behind mech movement. The only advantage to a bipedal design like a battlemech is that it's able to (reasonably) rapidly transverse broken terrain.
That large mechs are suddenly stopped by tiny (and often not really visible at all) objects quite silly... particularly when they easily transversed them at higher speeds.
In a great many cases, you'd have no reason to think that a given obstacle would stop you, as much larger things are easy to step over on other maps.
It is not really unrealisitc and is a huge problem in several modern vehicles where vehicles specialised at conquering it's doctrined terrain can handle it. To a degree MW:O is very light on ground clutter to certain aspects. For eg Viridian bog should have way more trees and roots. So much that some passages could only be accessed by say a locust or a light mech (such as seen on some certain planets in BT journals which I think Viridian bog is based of...).
Lets look at bipedal walkers in real life currently... They are not good at all at climbing up steep degrees (for a walker, for cars or wheeled vehicles it's unnoticed unless you are in a semi... and you got mommentum carrying you most of the way and switching gear..)
We also got the fact that there is a huge force of the Gyros torque fighting the force of a slope trying to tilt or push you away. etc... The Legs in a mech do not really pull up high enough for some chassies to 'climb' over terrain.. sure in BT I would imagine something like an atlas possibly using it's hands to help climbing a more steeper surface but it's tedious, disables your use of weapons, and not practical for handless mechs or mechs which the arms being say a delicate gauss rifle...
This is why jumpjets is in BT. These guys are designs to make all these problems basically vanish the same way a hovercraft can go on bogs and water without issues while barely a dozen tanks in history can prevent the problem of sinking... or I should say "Attempt"...
I do say this is not true for ALL objects. for instance the roots on some flora and certain objects shouldn't hold a mech back- this is true and PGI is slowly working through it in the revamp, medium to small rocks in Caustic valley, Stalagmites I think some of them are... not to sure as it's obviously not a cave BUT I know some appear near gassy/ volcanic areas.
They already stated that most roots in viridian bog in the revamp will be crushable and so on and on and on...
But remembering that a huge mech is not like a big tank or truck, it doesn't like going up or down slopes to much and momentum is a bit more complicated then say a truck. If you stop accelerating or maintaining a speed in a mech you quickly slow down as the legs have tons of friction, in a truck if you just stop the throttle you will keep rolling for a long time... it's complicated...
However I should mention the hillclimb module does help a lot as well as jumpjets do help (even 1 jumpjet on the direwolf will help getting over some obstacles however personally I would go big (in quantity) or not do much with jumpjets especially in a 60 tonner+
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