Yeach, on 19 February 2012 - 08:51 PM, said:
Not sure about the center-location; only that it holds 2 medium lasers or pulse lasers at most.
similarly how even the Avatar omnimech has 2 medium lasers for all its config.
OmniMechs can still have weapons and equipment that are hardwired into the 'Mech as "fixed equipment".
Such items are built into the frame and structure and, like the weapons of a normal (non-OmniTech) BattleMech, require significant time and expense to replace (relative to the switching-out of OmniTech pods) and are often considered unremovable.
Examples of such fixed equipment include the Medium Lasers on the
Avatar and the Flamer on the
Adder/Puma.
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MaddMaxx, on 20 February 2012 - 08:05 AM, said:
Almost every one of the Boats on Sturms list show that BT/TT provided drawbacks to their designs, even when seen as a Boat.
Agreed.
Also, the canon timeline includes technologies that further attempt to mitigate the use of boats/near-boats:
- AMS (3040), LAMS (3054), Reactive Armor (3063), and iNarc launchers (and, most notably, their Nemesis Pods; 3062) are specifically intended to reduce the usefulness of missile weapons (and, thus, missile boats).
- Reflective Armor (3058) is intended to reduce the damage inflicted by all energy weapons, while Laser-Inhibiting warheads (3053) further reduce the damage output of all laser weapons (for a time) and the Blue Shield Particle Field Damper (3053) further reduces the damage that can be inflicted by PPCs (for a time).
- The various FF armor variants (allowing a 'Mech to carry more armor per ton, so it can be faster with the same degree of actual protection; 3040 onward) and Hardened Armor (each individual armor point is twice as durable, but twice as heavy, as a point of Standard Armor, allowing a 'Mech that carries the maximum number of armor points of hardened armor to have effectively double the normal maximum protection; 3047) are about as close as it gets to dedicated anti-ballistic measures.
MaddMaxx, on 20 February 2012 - 08:05 AM, said:
And not surprisingly almost every design has more than 1 type of weapon on-board. Customization eliminates that if allowed.
I for one do not want to have to build like everyone else to compete. It killed MW before and will do so again. Yes, I may be over reacting but it has been along time. A long time indeed.
Partially agreed.
It's not just MW - it's affected other customizable mecha games as well:
- "Dual rifle" builds are usually explicitly banned from Armored Core tournaments.
- There was a time during the life of Chromehounds where one was effectively non-competitive if one wasn't using a "double-double" on Naqa legs with a covered 'pit. The subsequent nerfing of the double-doubles led to the creation of "gators", "a-wings", and "shino karts"/"mario karts" - more standardized "you must use this/there if you want to be competitive, much less win" builds.
The same idea plagued MW4 - short of being disallowed by the server settings, one either used one of the "proven builds" (2PPC/2Gauss on a
Gladiator,
Wildcat,
Black Knight,
Mad Cat Mk.II,
Behemoth II,
Marauder II, or
Daishi, or 6-7 CERLL on a
Supernova,
Nova Cat, or
Daishi, or a Gauss/(LB-X/Ultra)AC-10/(LB-X/Ultra)AC-20 boat on an
Annihilator or
Daishi) or accepted being relegated to effectively an non-competitive, second-rate player.
In fact,
here is an article that makes that same point, with CH as an example...
Quote
The state of the game has players in two virtual leagues. Matches between low-ranking players typically involve Hounds of greatly varying design, many of which correspond to the six envisioned "role-types." High-ranking players, however, usually compete with a handful of designs — all of which are intended to gain every conceivable advantage in gameplay.
Now, it takes a little brilliance to arithmetically determine the shortest distance between game mechanics and assured victory. But when that éclat is imitated for purposes of winning at any cost, the game is reduced in variety and scope. There are terms for this, most of them pejorative. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, these opportunists are known as "Minmaxers," and in BattleTech, "Munchkins."
-----
What some members of Chromehounds' online community call "evolution" is a social example of emergence — a group of individuals coordinating complex behaviors that culminate in an unforeseen collective. In Chromehounds, a few months of design experimentation resulted in a combination superior to most others. It was witnessed by others, examined and copied, and improved. A power law arose. Players who selected one of several high-performing designs won more matches — and could easily attain top ranking — than those who stuck with one of thousands of other, less powerful builds. Winning was vital. Case in point: an early paramount, the ungainly Double-Double, quickly disappeared when a patch qualified its power. Why? Because hardly anybody ran it for fun.
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The Kingdom of Sal Kar, one of three contending belligerents in the alternate-reality Balkans, proffers expensive but lightweight and efficient military technology. Soon players discovered that its spindly, legged chassis were markedly more difficult to hit, yet weren't much less durable or sturdy than other, more massive parts. Naqas, inverse legs resembling snapped toothpicks, were judged as the most effective — and so highly competitive players started to use them, and only them. Since the Naqas are so elusive to fire, area-effect weapons were preferred as long as they were practical to equip and easy to use. What about bipedal, treaded, hover, wheeled and quad-legged chassis? Or the half-dozen other inverse sets? Rejected for Hounds that look like bomb-throwing fleas, ubiquitous in higher-ranking matches.
IMO, the tendency to hyper-optimize/min-max hasn't killed MW as a franchise and probably wouldn't outright kill MWO as a game, but it would make it more stagnant and less interesting than it might otherwise be.
Your thoughts?
Edited by Strum Wealh, 20 February 2012 - 11:20 AM.
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