413 replies to this topic

[MechWarrior319348]

FupDup, on 01 May 2016 - 02:58 PM, said:

No, Scarecrow does.

Scarecrow is the "he" that we have been talking about here.

The quote that I used was Yeonne Green's

in reference to

Ultimax, on 01 May 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

As I pegged Mr. Logical fallacy shouting science a few posts ago, he is basically agenda driven - he's just doing his best to hide it.

post #208

Edited by Gigliowanananacom, 01 May 2016 - 03:05 PM.

[FupDup]

Gigliowanananacom, on 01 May 2016 - 03:04 PM, said:

The quote that I used was Yeonne Green's

in reference to

Ultimax is referring to Scarecrow when he says "Mr. Logical Fallacy."

Yeo and Ulti are on the same side in this thread.

Edited by FupDup, 01 May 2016 - 03:06 PM.

[MechWarrior319348]

FupDup, on 01 May 2016 - 03:05 PM, said:

Ultimax is referring to Scarecrow when he says "Mr. Logical Fallacy."

Yeo and Ulti are on the same side in this thread.

OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH his post had a quote of Yeo above his comment. That mislead me.

[ScarecrowES]

FupDup, on 01 May 2016 - 03:04 PM, said:

--->

There are more quotes just like this one from you, but I'm too lazy to add them in here. The point in, your description up there does in fact convey a sense that you want this mech to suck.

I'd check your reading comprehension.

The Blackjack gets access to more firepower than any other 45-ton mech. In fact, it gets access to more firepower than most mediums period, and quite a few heavies.

The trade-off is, to get that firepower it has to go slow. And being a slow mech with weak armor and internals has a cost. It means you won't last long in a fight.

Except the Blackjack does last long in a fight. It will outlast mechs 20 tons heavier in a straight-up brawl. Why should it?

In the 45-ton category, it should die the fastest, because it's the slowest. And it's the slowest, because it has the most firepower. That's called balance. Getting the most firepower while also being able to be more survivable than most mechs in the game is the opposite of that.

So to spin this on its head, why do you insist that the Blackjack be outright superior to most other mechs?

[Y E O N N E]

ScarecrowES, on 01 May 2016 - 02:52 PM, said:

Aaaaand the Blackjack having more firepower than any other 45-ton mech and still being more survivable than any other 45-ton mech despite being slower AND smaller than any other 45-ton mech makes it... just as good as the others?

How is does that make ANY sense? You make a choice with the BJ... you trade speed for guns. When you go slow in a mech with no armor, you should die faster. The BJ doesn't.

There is a minimum level of durability you have to have to be competitive. The LCT-3S has more DPS than even an Oxide (17.69 vs. 16.86), and DPS is king in a light fight, but it doesn't work because it also doesn't have the durability. The BJ doesn't have the durability without the quirks, and getting bigger makes it require even more quirks...which also only work up to a point as mentioned with the Orion argument. The geometry is just not conducive to tanking and the only reason it works at all right now is precisely because the Blackjack is on the smaller side, making it that much harder to hold a burn on a single component or take that much less time to spin it out of line of sight.

And on top of that, the BJ also doesn't have the firepower over other Mediums to stay competitive without the quirks. Quirks can't compensate for lack of tonnage. So if it becomes squishier, it's just going to get overrun and nobody will take it. Already, the BJ-1X has been largely cast off (removal of duration quirk all but killed it) and the only thing keeping the BJ-3 in the running is the range on those LPLs and those LPLs being high up, but the Trebuchet and Shadowhawk are currently breathing down its neck because their increased tonnage is that compelling.

Having 'Mechs of one weight be better than 'Mechs of lower weights is bad design, especially when things like hard-points and shape make it impossible to be consistent with that philosophy.

[Pjwned]

ScarecrowES, on 01 May 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

Except the Blackjack does last long in a fight. It will outlast mechs 20 tons heavier in a straight-up brawl. Why should it?

In the 45-ton category, it should die the fastest, because it's the slowest. And it's the slowest, because it has the most firepower. That's called balance. Getting the most firepower while also being able to be more survivable than most mechs in the game is the opposite of that.

So to spin this on its head, why do you insist that the Blackjack be outright superior to most other mechs?

That is because of its overdone quirks, not because of its scaling.

It shouldn't keep the quirks it has, except according to idiots it apparently should be bigger and thus rely even more on quirks.

Edited by Pjwned, 01 May 2016 - 03:15 PM.

[FupDup]

ScarecrowES, on 01 May 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

...it has to go slow. And being a slow mech with weak armor and internals has a cost. It means you won't last long in a fight...In the 45-ton category, it should die the fastest, because it's the slowest...

So, you do in fact want it to suck.

Thanks for clearing that up.


Also, you're strongly over-exaggerating the firepower that it has.

Additionally, its slow speed isn't because of firepower, its slow speed is because most of its Tabletop stock builds come with a small engine stock. The 1X variant is actually quite fast for its size, while having very similar firepower (if not identical or higher) as the slow variants. Speed and firepower are not mutually exclusive in the Battlemech construction rules.

[ScarecrowES]

Yeonne Greene, on 01 May 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

Having 'Mechs of one weight be better than 'Mechs of lower weights is bad design.

How? The mech with more speed, armor, and guns is inevitably better.

Battletech balances this by requiring heavier mechs mount heavier engines to reach the same speed as lighter mechs with lighter engines. A 65-ton mech that runs at 100kph has the same free tonnage as a 55-ton mech that runs at 100kph.

So you're making a trade-off when you build a mech between effective speed and firepower. Speed helps you survive, and firepower helps make sure other people don't. The lighter a mech is in its class, the more focused on speed it usually is to bring up the lack of survivability it has due to less armor and internals. The Blackjack goes the other way... it forsakes speed, and thus survivability, for even more guns.

So yeah... it's going to die faster. That's the balance you chose. If it didn't have it's structure quirks, it'd just die as fast as any other slower, lighter mech would.

[ScarecrowES]

FupDup, on 01 May 2016 - 03:16 PM, said:

So, you do in fact want it to suck.

Thanks for clearing that up.


Also, you're strongly over-exaggerating the firepower that it has.

Additionally, its slow speed isn't because of firepower, its slow speed is because most of its Tabletop stock builds come with a small engine stock. The 1X variant is actually quite fast for its size, while having very similar firepower (if not identical or higher) as the slow variants. Speed and firepower are not mutually exclusive in the Battlemech construction rules.

Nope, I'm saying if you've got a mech that's got more firepower than any mech in its tonnage class, and that mech sacrifices speed to get it, it shouldn't also get rewarded with higher survivability. It should be EQUAL to its peers. Not outright superior because it's not punished for its trade-off.

So, if expressing that, to you, means that it has to suck... then sure. It needs to suck. Exactly as much as all other 45-tonners suck. No more, no less. Or, another way of putting it would just be to say that it needs to be normalized with all other mechs in the game.

[oldradagast]

In the end, I somehow expect the Awesome to grow larger and the Stalker to shrink smaller after all this.

Didn't they also say the Grasshopper - the tallest mech in the game, or at least the most out of scale one height-wise - was going to get bigger? I just don't understand what is so difficult about getting this right...

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 30 April 2016 - 07:15 PM, said:

If I had to guess, the explanation for the Lolcust's downsize is that it's being compared to the Jenner. When we compare it to the Jenny, the Jenny has a somewhat similar physical size despite being almost double the mass.

That's not the explanation.

There are no explanations like that.

The locust would be downsided because it is way too big, by volume, for it's tonnage. The Jenner's size isn't relevant; mechs don't get directly compared with this, just scaled to be the right size vs. tonnage.

Is the Jenner too big? Too small? I've no idea. But it has no bearing on the Locust, which will be a fair bit smaller given (as you said) nearly half the tonnage.

oldradagast, on 01 May 2016 - 04:01 PM, said:

In the end, I somehow expect the Awesome to grow larger and the Stalker to shrink smaller after all this.

Didn't they also say the Grasshopper - the tallest mech in the game, or at least the most out of scale one height-wise - was going to get bigger? I just don't understand what is so difficult about getting this right...

Height is only one dimension.

With that said, it's been covered repeatedly that not all mechs are being scaled 1:1:1 - an already tall mech like the Grasshopper will likely get a bit thicker and not taller at all. It's height will keep it thinner than other mechs of it's tonnage, though.

[Sjorpha]

Ultimax, on 01 May 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

As I pegged Mr. Logical fallacy shouting science a few posts ago, he is basically agenda driven - he's just doing his best to hide it.





It matters because the bigger the mechs are, the easier they are to destroy.

Surely, you can't actually be that dense to not understand that.


Lets take this to absurd shall we, PGI scales all mechs to be consistent volumetrically but PGI also decides that Commandos will be as large as the current Atlas is. All other mechs will get larger to be consistent with this new paradigm - making the Atlas absolutely gigantic compared to its current size.


All mechs would be consistent volumetrically but mech survivability would go down because everything is easier to target.


So yes, the definition of small and big matters because they are targets on a screen that we shoot at. The amount of pixels they take up has an enormous impact on the game.


If this were the new battle tech game being made by HBS, then yes it would be irrelevant - but its not, it is a FPS.

Why are you insulting me (calling me dense), I didn't insult you. Childish behavior.

It may matter if you take things to extremes, it doesn't matter is you dont, which they won't.

So if they scale whatever mech a little up or a little down doesn't matter, because no mechs are gonna be scaled in any extreme direction no matter which mech they started with. And we already know they aren't using the most extreme examples as starting points.

I'm interested in plausible scenarios, and yours isn't. Invoking a random principle of "only scale down!" is as stupid as when people say "don't nerf, only buff!" in balance discussions.

[Wintersdark]

Yeonne Greene, on 01 May 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

There is a minimum level of durability you have to have to be competitive. The LCT-3S has more DPS than even an Oxide (17.69 vs. 16.86), and DPS is king in a light fight, but it doesn't work because it also doesn't have the durability. The BJ doesn't have the durability without the quirks, and getting bigger makes it require even more quirks...which also only work up to a point as mentioned with the Orion argument. The geometry is just not conducive to tanking and the only reason it works at all right now is precisely because the Blackjack is on the smaller side, making it that much harder to hold a burn on a single component or take that much less time to spin it out of line of sight.

Good thing locusts are shrinking; that'll help push up their durability.

And while the Blackjack is going to grow, we don't yet know by how much. Thus, it's not really worth OMG PANTS ON FIRE panic. A volume increase of 1-2% won't even be visible, after all.

[Impyrium]

Good lord you people... the resize will be released and half of you are going to look silly after you realize that no preconceptions from now are going to be valid, nor are the vast majority of size changes going to be noticeable!

[Wintersdark]

Sjorpha, on 01 May 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

I'm interested in plausible scenarios, and yours isn't. Invoking a random principle of "only scale down!" is as stupid as when people say "don't nerf, only buff!" in balance discussions.

This.

While I respect the notion of "just scale down to the most dense mech's density" leading to increased TTK (thus, ALL mechs except the smallest:tonnage shrink, none grow), shrinking all the mechs does have a cost - it makes big stompy robots less big and stompy. It's not a bad idea, and it would increase TTK simply by dint of making mechs smaller targets. It's not something done willy-nilly, though.

But, that's not happening.

Mechs are staying at, as a group, the same average size. Some getting smaller, others bigger, maintaining the current sizing.

What I'm curious about is: How many weak mechs are going to get weaker/strong mechs stronger(Negatively impacted, from a balance standpoint) vs. weak mechs stronger and strong mechs weaker(postively impacted, from a balance standpoint)?

I'm willing to bet a basic mech pack that it'll be a net positive change, in terms of number of mechs positively vs. negatively impacted.

Dingo Red, on 01 May 2016 - 04:13 PM, said:

Good lord you people... the resize will be released and half of you are going to look silly after you realize that no preconceptions from now are going to be valid, nor are the vast majority of size changes going to be noticeable!

A huge number are just a couple percentage points.

Given how it was shown early in the thread that a full 100% increase in volume wasn't extreme, it stands to reason that most of these changes are going to have very little in game impact.

[Impyrium]

Wintersdark, on 01 May 2016 - 04:19 PM, said:

A huge number are just a couple percentage points.

Given how it was shown early in the thread that a full 100% increase in volume wasn't extreme, it stands to reason that most of these changes are going to have very little in game impact.

I think a lot of people are just worried because they're thinking in a closed way. They're bringing the size of a 'mech up... that must be a nerf! And then they compare it to the current game's balance. Which doesn't make sense to me.

The way I see it, 'mechs should be scaled correctly as the first step. And then 'mechs should be rebalanced from that point via quirks or whatever. Scale itself shouldn't be messed with for the sake of balance, because it's a factor, not a balancing tool. Same reason we don't adjust the tonnage on 'mechs.

But yeah. I think the overall re-sizes of 'mechs will be fairly unnoticeable and only those few extreme cases will get buffed.

[Y E O N N E]

ScarecrowES, on 01 May 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

How? The mech with more speed, armor, and guns is inevitably better.

Battletech balances this by requiring heavier mechs mount heavier engines to reach the same speed as lighter mechs with lighter engines. A 65-ton mech that runs at 100kph has the same free tonnage as a 55-ton mech that runs at 100kph.

So you're making a trade-off when you build a mech between effective speed and firepower. Speed helps you survive, and firepower helps make sure other people don't. The lighter a mech is in its class, the more focused on speed it usually is to bring up the lack of survivability it has due to less armor and internals. The Blackjack goes the other way... it forsakes speed, and thus survivability, for even more guns.

So yeah... it's going to die faster. That's the balance you chose. If it didn't have it's structure quirks, it'd just die as fast as any other slower, lighter mech would.

First, you do not fundamentally understand how the game works. Watch this trick:

Here's a Blackjack at 87.1 kph.

Here's a Jester at 87.1 kph.

Would you look at that, the Jester has more free tonnage! Because that's how BattleTech works. Higher mass of the 'Mech gives you more room for equipment at any speed. Period. Even an Atlas at 69.3 kph on a 400-size engine has more free tons than a JagerMech at 69.3 kph on a 260-size engine.

You go ahead and pick any engine combo that results in two different weight 'Mechs having the same speed, and this will remain true. And it gets even more lopsided when you start accounting for Clan equipment. The only exception is using the biggest STD engines...which nobody would do because the opportunity cost is way too high.

And what trade-off am I making? The BJ-1DC caps out at around 42 points for a practical alpha. That's also where the BJ-1X caps out (though I'd argue 36 is more realistic for the 1X for burn duration reasons). The BJ-1DC is strictly inferior to the BJ-1X because it's slower and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. And for other mediums, the Sparky can bring the same guns at the same speed with better cooling and more natural armor and structure...and even jump jets. And its hard-point placement is not awful. The Storm Crow or Hunchback IIC...even gaudier.

I mean, damnit, the Jester can run faster than 4 out of 5 Blackjacks, have jumpjets, and still carry the same firepower with vastly superior cooling. So, tell me again how I'm trading durability for speed and firepower. Being hard to kill for its weight is the only thing keeping it afloat, and the only thing making it hard to kill for its weight is the smaller size in concert with the quirks.

What you do not comprehend is that it doesn't matter how big or small a 'Mech is relative to the rest because the shooting mechanics of the game make the level of effort required to hit a component of a given size at a certain speed absolute. It currently takes about as much effort to kill a Firestarter as it does an Atlas. It has always taken about as much effort to kill a Firestarter as it has to kill an Atlas. This is good. That means the size and speed of the Firestarter are enough to make it comparable to the sheer hit-points on the Atlas. That's how it should be for all 'Mechs. Without the small size and quirks, the Blackjack is far and away too easy to to hit and thus too easy to kill. A lot of other 'Mechs share this same problem, even 'Mechs that are heavier.

Even PGI recognizes this to some extent, since they said they will re-do quirks if they have to. So, while they might be able to keep the Blackjack as good as it currently is, it's not going to satisfy your ridiculous notion that lighter 'Mechs should be worse and the numbers on those quirks will be stupendous because they used the wrong damn metric to increase or decrease the size of the 'Mech.

Silhouettes are what matters. You do not ever shoot at a 3D object, you shoot at a 2D one. Fact. The oblique angles are proportional combinations of the Front-Rear and Side angles. Fact. You spend more time shooting at a 'Mech's front or rear. Extremely probable enough to be considered fact in this discussion. What matters is how many pixels I have representing my torso sections from the front and side, what the ratio among the three sections is, and what the width of each section is. Volume...does not look at any of that.

Wintersdark, on 01 May 2016 - 04:11 PM, said:

Good thing locusts are shrinking; that'll help push up their durability.

And while the Blackjack is going to grow, we don't yet know by how much. Thus, it's not really worth OMG PANTS ON FIRE panic. A volume increase of 1-2% won't even be visible, after all.

Doesn't matter, it's all CT. Easy to hit by Oxides and the like at the ranges where the Locust's most sustainable weapons can do their work. They would have to make it obscenely small. Like...almost man-sized.

As for how much, it's the principle. They are using the wrong measure, period, to determine the necessary size for each 'Mech because, as I said above, you are never shooting at a 3D object. You are always shooting at 2D ones. Simply making the Awesome smaller uniformly won't help it without becoming obscenely small, it needs to have reductions in very specific dimensions (width). Dragon, too (also width, which from pictures we know didn't happen).

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 01 May 2016 - 05:14 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Yeonne Greene, on 01 May 2016 - 04:31 PM, said:

As for how much, it's the principle. They are using the wrong measure, period, to determine the necessary size for each 'Mech because, as I said above, you are never shooting at a 3D object. You are always shooting at 2D ones. Simply making the Awesome smaller uniformly won't help it without becoming obscenely small, it needs to have reductions in very specific dimensions (width). Dragon, too (also width, which from pictures we know didn't happen).

Good thing they aren't just making the Awesome smaller uniformly.

But the fact remains, even in the case of the Dragon, simply being smaller is going to extend TTK for that mech to some degree - as per Ultimax's posts. Unless it's an imperceptible change, at any rate, but we know that doesn't apply to the Dragon, which is getting fairly substantially shrunk.

But, yeah, the Dragon's problem is one of fundamental geometry, and that's going to have to be compensated for in quirks.

But at least it won't have poor geometry AND be too big for its tonnage anymore. That's an improvement.

[Y E O N N E]

Wintersdark, on 01 May 2016 - 04:38 PM, said:

Good thing they aren't just making the Awesome smaller uniformly.

But the fact remains, even in the case of the Dragon, simply being smaller is going to extend TTK for that mech to some degree - as per Ultimax's posts. Unless it's an imperceptible change, at any rate, but we know that doesn't apply to the Dragon, which is getting fairly substantially shrunk.

But, yeah, the Dragon's problem is one of fundamental geometry, and that's going to have to be compensated for in quirks.

But at least it won't have poor geometry AND be too big for its tonnage anymore. That's an improvement.

The Dragon shrink is not enough to offset those massive side torsos and the fact that PGI altered the CT to also be part ST. Which makes it even easier to remove that ST. We have a 'Mech whose hard-point types and mass dictate XL but whose geometry mandates a STD engine because it can't possibly go fast enough to offset the geo deficiencies in the side torsos and even if it could...it would have worse quality and quantity firepower than a Locust.

Oh, and most of its firepower is low-slung.

That's fantastic, that is.

What PGI is doing is using a metric that reduces the amount of work they have to do. They are directly remodeling the CPLT and AWS because those have been cried about directly for ages, but the rest? Path of least resistance. They have never, ever shown that they want to spend the time and money to analyze what makes something good or bad and ultimately change things in the way that both solves the core problem and preserves the core conceit of what it means to be a MechWarrior/BattleTech title (tidbit on the last part for others reading this: it has nothing to do with adhering to TT rules and values). I don't know why this is: management deficiencies, lack of employees, lack of employee skill/talent, not enough revenue. Some of these reasons are legit and understandable, some are not, but...the problem still persists regardless.

MWO's largest problems are at the conceptual level.

Edit: And using NGNG to test their stuff...is not any real test at all. They should give it to the comp teams to play with. We'll give them a real answer and because we're not on the payroll, we have no reason to sugar-coat it at all.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 01 May 2016 - 05:01 PM.

[Ultimax]

Wintersdark, on 01 May 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

With that said, it's been covered repeatedly that not all mechs are being scaled 1:1:1 - an already tall mech like the Grasshopper will likely get a bit thicker and not taller at all. It's height will keep it thinner than other mechs of it's tonnage, though.

If it gets thicker, and remains the same height, then it will become unarguably worse off than it is now.

It's height already makes it an easy target if you aren't careful. It's head already lets you aim for CT when it's shielding.


Balance will be worse off if that mech then becomes thicker and therefore easier to hit.

It won't, but PGI will (if the GRH is even lucky enough) just slap even more structure quirks onto it to fix their new blunders.

Edited by Ultimax, 01 May 2016 - 05:09 PM.