Then you and I will get along just fine. I run the ERPPC sniper Lynx build and that thing is severely underrated. Mist Lynx as a whole is underrated, due to people trying to shove them into roles they don't belong in. Make it a long-range direct fire support mech (SNIPER) and you will work wonders my friend.
I believe you. On the IS side, I have a soft spot for the Cicada 3C, basically a single ERPPC running around at ~150 kph. Your alpha is a big fat 10 points, but use that speed to maintain good (and safe) firing positions and keep firing the thing like a madman. You'll never overheat. You can rack up surprisingly good damage figures.
In the Battletech universe, where over 70% of all mechs in the universe are Light and Medium...
Everyone still thinks Locust pilots are crazy.
----
Edit:
To pre-empt any confusion:
Don't use this as a 'scaled' image, since it clearly isn't. I imagine the Locust was 'added' into the image after the background was made using 80s to early 90s computer tech. Also the Locust, while considered an exceptionally tall and lanky mech in Battletech, has never been depicted as taller than 10 meters and often a bit shorter than this.
The Locust in MWO is 9.3-9.5 meters tall. (Making it one of the few mechs PGI has close to source, even if this one seems fatter; I also believe they have the Urbanmech pretty close, too.)
as for the Jenner IIC, there is no other chassis able to move 160kph with a 72 point alpha strike(although 5 SRM4 is better than 6SRM6) and it also has Jumpjets, it is one of the most effective chassis in the game for destroying slower (below 95KPH) Mechs, the other variants are not quite as effective but are still as dangerous as the best other Light Mechs, the only thing preventing it from being the best Light Mech is the inherent durability of the human shaped Lights like the Spider, Firestarter and to a lesser extent Arctic Cheetah
160 kph??? XL315 puts you at 156.7, and you need an XL255 to pack 6SRM6. Which is 127 kph.
You can pull of a 295/300 with 5SRM4 I'd suppose (147/149)
I otherwise agree, a brutal mech, firepower wise. Not so tanky, however.
160 kph??? XL315 puts you at 156.7, and you need an XL255 to pack 6SRM6. Which is 127 kph.
You can pull of a 295/300 with 5SRM4 I'd suppose (147/149)
I otherwise agree, a brutal mech, firepower wise. Not so tanky, however.
Forward armor to be 2 rear, rest front. It'll tank like a sonuva gun.
Went and checked for a quirk,none. (Needed to because Summoner has a quirk that gives it more speed than the engine gives).
Speed tweak's accounted for by you, so yeah. Just rounded up I guess?
This said I was able to pull 6 SRM-6, 4 tons of ammo, nearly max STD armor, and an XL 265 engine.
But yeah, not very practical.
adjust your field of view to at least 90 that fixes it !
Until you hit any kind of bump while moving you're treated to a 2 second out of body experience while you sail uncontrollably across the sky. Also sometimes you lose time and end up in a strange place or facing and you have to take a moment to figure out where the frack you are. Your perception of distance gets messed up and you'll charge at a giant enemy only to pass right through them and find yourself in an *** kicking contest with a wall.
Koniving, on 08 June 2016 - 02:53 AM, said:
"Locust pilots are the weirdest."
Well, piloting a locust IS almost exactly like being high as balls.
Locationclimbing Mt Tryhard, one smoldering Meta-Mech corpse at a time
Posted 08 June 2016 - 07:08 PM
Koniving, on 08 June 2016 - 02:53 AM, said:
"Locust pilots are the weirdest."
In the Battletech universe, where over 70% of all mechs in the universe are Light and Medium...
Everyone still thinks Locust pilots are crazy.
----
Edit:
To pre-empt any confusion:
Don't use this as a 'scaled' image, since it clearly isn't. I imagine the Locust was 'added' into the image after the background was made using 80s to early 90s computer tech. Also the Locust, while considered an exceptionally tall and lanky mech in Battletech, has never been depicted as taller than 10 meters and often a bit shorter than this.
The Locust in MWO is 9.3-9.5 meters tall. (Making it one of the few mechs PGI has close to source, even if this one seems fatter; I also believe they have the Urbanmech pretty close, too.)
well, lets also recall, the early FASA first ed art was....far from consistent. I've seen Battlemaster pictures where the pilots looked cramped in the cockpit, lol.
well, lets also recall, the early FASA first ed art was....far from consistent. I've seen Battlemaster pictures where the pilots looked cramped in the cockpit, lol.
and even with the later art, there was no real consensus on mech size (...or often even shape...) with art basically being 100% artist's "rule of cool" with no thought whatsoever to things like scale or even physics at all.
and even with the later art, there was no real consensus on mech size (...or often even shape...) with art basically being 100% artist's "rule of cool" with no thought whatsoever to things like scale or even physics at all.
Rule of cool at work (WizKidz)
-- Note: This spoiler and its details were added after the fact, the stuff below is written as if this isn't here. But this fits the topic up here better than the one below. -- Two images that fit a certain scale set by the first novelist -- which makes great sense for the Shadowhawk due to its armor and purpose but doesn't make much sense for the Wolverine which has about three times the armor.
Spoiler
Wolverine; tank weight isn't mentioned.
Shadowhawk.
The artist's signature is on the bottom SHK image; William H. Keith Jr. Drawn or at least published in 1987.
Note that if we go by the 1980s up until Mechwarrior 3, the tallest mech was the Executioner at 14.4 meters, which "was physically imposing even beside an Atlas.". For comparison, the MWO Centurion is 14.7 meters tall.
Just a thought. I personally go with the 8 to 14.4 scale, and while the SHK difference between Unseen days like above and Reseen days have a huge scale difference, I chock that up to the reseens being the SHK-5 series, while the old SHK-2s are quite small and poorly armored, the 3 is moderately armored and the 5s are heavily armored and as such, I view the 5s as much larger.
Though not quite MWO large.
Heh. I prefer to imagine the SHK 5s being between William Keith Jr's scale and MWO's scale, maybe 12 meters tall which is just a bit shorter than a Timber Wolf in BT at 12.6 and Summoner at 12.4... MWO's Timber Wolf is 15+ meters and the Summoner is slightly taller.)
Ironically, while the art team slacked toward the late 80s / early 90s, FASA's Battletech in the 80s was so deeply rooted into the sciences of physics and scale that there were levels of damages from infantry to vehicle to naval/capital class damage. Details like the PPC's minimum accuracy range which was shared between autocannons and Gauss rifles (which Paul says makes no sense) is tied into their weight making them slow to swing around and track fast things at close range; suggesting that if weapons did converge that it wasn't quick, though at the time these rules were written most mechs carried ppcs and autocannons in separately mounted "handguns" and other detachable weapons akin to what inspired them. Very few examples existed where weapons weren't, SHK was depicted as tiny (55 ton scout with the armor barely suited for general purpose light mechs) and the Marauder had its AC mounted on a turret.
Pre-unseen "original" Battletech art. Wolverine Phoenix Hawk Another Phoenix Hawk Griffin and Hatchetman/Axman (heavy and obvious Patlabor [Mechbay is literally ripped from Patlabor; tech uniform is article for article identical to Patlabor pilot uniform] and 08th MS Team [Griffin body structure and joints] influence here!) Note: Griffin is holding a Large Laser in "gun" form. Also interesting; fits W.H. Keith Jr's scale.
So anyway then things get added by upstarts who then say "the awesome thing about this er ppc I'd like to put into the game that there is no minimum accuracy range", well how did that happen did it get lighter? "Uh no.". Then what happened? "Uh...thought it would be cool". Which led to revisions of the lore.
Admittedly it probably happened after the mass change in art styles which planted weapons inside mechs rather than handheld to distinguish them away from the sources that inspired them.
So ACs kept minimum accurate range, though it was chocked up to the realistic abstraction that the mech would have to do more to align the weapon to a target up close than one far away (at 300 meters, have two objects 5 inches apart; aim at one then the other with your finger. Pretty small effort right? Now stand 3 feet away. How much farther did you have to move your hand to point at the second object from the first?) So whether arm-mounted or torso mounted, the very minor minimum accurate ranges more or less stuck though I would think the torso ones would be more difficult to adjust for. (And I'm not sure why, but Megamek with all the compatible official rules turned on gives minimum accurate ranges to torso mounted autocannons but not arm-mounted; which may explain the general Clan preference of arm-mounted ACs despite the removal of an actuator on Omnimechs, and also would support my theory that to align the torso AC to the target the torso would have to adjust to bring the weapon to bare on the crosshair rather than the weapon magically 'adjusting' on its own to converge with the crosshair. Many iterations of the past required pilots to select a weapon group before pulling the trigger rather than having separate triggers, with weapons pre-adjusted to work together with the crosshair.).
PPCs ended up having this tacked on Field Inhibitor which degraded the weapon's performance and caused a delay between the trigger squeeze and the actual shot (Dude can you just say charge up?) while the ER PPC instead has greater heat which is ironic because part of solving the "exploding" issue was they reduced the field inhibitor to bare bones and threw in more on-board heatsinks (btw part of the weight on MWO's weapons is on board heatsinks called "Cooling Jackets" or in the case of the PPCs, BattleTechnology -- an early attempt at a magazine-style Tech Manual nearly 20 years before the Tech Manual was made -- very expressly states that a good 3 and a half tons of the typical PPC is occupied by heatsinks, cooling systems and pumps attached directly to the weapon with another half ton of cabling to feed power to it; in the case of hand-weapon mounted PPCs, roughly one ton of heatsinks is dropped in exchange for the weapon's housing and the energy feed connections come from the handle or the bottom of the weapon intended to feed through the Mech's hand or wrist port).
The art team, especially after the mass loss of 'Unseen Art', really took the cake of whiskey tango foxtrot, but FASA kept to its science roots right up until it was passed on to Wizkidz. Even if the physics of the mech leg designs were pretty wonky at best.
---
FASA Co-founder Jordan Weiss worked with PGI for MW5, which never took off (as PGI states, issues with Microsoft; exclusive platform, massive profit potential losses, other issues), in which this was made. Notice the PPC charge up?
Completely lost. Remnants of this could have been seen in closed beta with a 'glitch' where the PPC particle originates as stationary and steadily accelerates to speed; something the actual weapon did in MWO which I really enjoyed but at the time hit detection and lack of lag compensation (you could hit accelerate and it did this a second later on a ping of 50; imagine a ping of 300) made this an unattainable pipedream to keep.
JW's involvement with MWO is barebones minimal, the most recent reference of him assisting PGI was 2011.
The reason I mention him though, as former co-founder of FASA, is he brings his passions with him. Currently, this article about the new dropship created for Battletech, (scroll down to Argo Dropship) reminded me of the attention to detail FASA once had back in the 1980s when they had field trips to actual military bases to watch tanks/MLRS/etc. actually be put to use to help conjure their tabletop game.
Fun facts about Battletech - Tabletop and the Catapult!
Spoiler
(The Catapult is, in fact, an analog of the American Multiple Launch Rocket System; even Battletech range rules of 30 meters per hex *30 feet blasting range* and BT's 180 meters minimum accurate range (180 meter minimum engagement range) came from the MLRS. The missile bay doors are meant to represent the anticipation of seeing the MLRS raise its launcher, the squat, small design is meant to solidify its role as an artillery support mech -- though in the late 80s a second version of the Catapult by the same name was given stilted legs; these legs longer and thinner, were meant to be a version more adept to use in canyons and other situations where the lack of height from the squat-Catapult would impair its ability to lob missiles indirectly. The weird protrusions on the legs are meant for when when the Stilted Catapult goes to fire, it would squat to brace itself against the recoil of the weapon.)
Squat Catapult.
Its funny that these look like the oldest Catapult entries I found from the mid 1980s, but they're newer. Kinda tells me this was preferred over the Stilted versions of the late 1980s/1990s (which I'm not entirely certain, but I wonder if the stilted version got introduced to BT and popularized by the Mechwarrior 1 game because until seeing that I could only find it in early 90s publications.)
The pose is atrocious but so was the original art. I can't find the screen but the Catapult Mechbay art shown in the very first Mechwarrior PC game is the Stilted version.
See what I mean about the knees though? It ws done like this for both bracing itself to fire and to help it get back up. Even so with legs this long, it brings about other issues. (Note the actual art didn't quite have the legs this thick).
Detail is awful, but the thickness of these legs are a little closer to the art I saw.
Interesting to me, is that in addition to superior accuracy while stationary, did Catapults have to 'set up' and crouch to lob their LRMs. If so, was it imagined that Griffins would take a knee to fire LRMs? They were "Sniper" mechs after all. How many hidden little details in the 1980s and early 1990s art can we find that support the vision that LRM mechs had to brace themselves to fire more accurately? BT supports this simply by not having accuracy punishments if you haven't moved, though BT also includes Hull down and Prone positions for shooting as well.
But yeah. Back to unpopular mechs. What should I roll in today? That is in order to figure out what's wrong with it since going in order is far too time consuming at this point. Want something I have yet to address or something I need to address better.
Trebuchet - Really big hitboxes and not much meta build because theye are more like a generalist with lrms and lasers while moving fast Centurion - It was supposed to be a tanky medium which uses its arms to shield itself from damage, and it was good at that until clans came out. People waited until centurion turned its torso to shoot, but now they just destroy the shield arm in seconds and keep shooting until there is nothing left.
Treb -- has some of the smallest torso hitboxes on a medium mech. But, their verticality and "Straight Laced" nature makes it very difficult to spread the damage. While most mechs that bob up and down can spread damage by merely walking, the Treb is just too vertical. By straight lace I mean updown left side, LT, updown middile, CT, updown right side, RT. It's not like a Kintaro or Atlas or Victor or Firestarter where there is some CT on the sides and some side torsos on the center so that vertical movement can cause damage spread. Instead its set up like the Awesome and the current Cataphract... This is where it has problems. They're not big, they're too "straight forward" or too obvious.
Cent. -- This mech lost its tanky nature not because of the Clans but because of hitbox changes, fixing massively oversized remnant arm-hitboxes after the arm has been removed which reduced damage by (at the time 50%; now it's 60%). In addition to "fixing" these, later on the Clans received numerous buffs and changes that 'improved' them from the initial release, allowing laser vomit to 'become a thing'. This hasn't helped.
Locationclimbing Mt Tryhard, one smoldering Meta-Mech corpse at a time
Posted 09 June 2016 - 09:22 AM
Koniving, on 09 June 2016 - 02:25 AM, said:
Rule of cool at work (WizKidz)
-- Note: This spoiler and its details were added after the fact, the stuff below is written as if this isn't here. But this fits the topic up here better than the one below. -- Two images that fit a certain scale set by the first novelist -- which makes great sense for the Shadowhawk due to its armor and purpose but doesn't make much sense for the Wolverine which has about three times the armor.
Spoiler
Wolverine; tank weight isn't mentioned.
Shadowhawk.
The artist's signature is on the bottom SHK image; William H. Keith Jr. Drawn or at least published in 1987.
Note that if we go by the 1980s up until Mechwarrior 3, the tallest mech was the Executioner at 14.4 meters, which "was physically imposing even beside an Atlas.". For comparison, the MWO Centurion is 14.7 meters tall.
Just a thought. I personally go with the 8 to 14.4 scale, and while the SHK difference between Unseen days like above and Reseen days have a huge scale difference, I chock that up to the reseens being the SHK-5 series, while the old SHK-2s are quite small and poorly armored, the 3 is moderately armored and the 5s are heavily armored and as such, I view the 5s as much larger.
Though not quite MWO large.
Heh. I prefer to imagine the SHK 5s being between William Keith Jr's scale and MWO's scale, maybe 12 meters tall which is just a bit shorter than a Timber Wolf in BT at 12.6 and Summoner at 12.4... MWO's Timber Wolf is 15+ meters and the Summoner is slightly taller.)
Ironically, while the art team slacked toward the late 80s / early 90s, FASA's Battletech in the 80s was so deeply rooted into the sciences of physics and scale that there were levels of damages from infantry to vehicle to naval/capital class damage. Details like the PPC's minimum accuracy range which was shared between autocannons and Gauss rifles (which Paul says makes no sense) is tied into their weight making them slow to swing around and track fast things at close range; suggesting that if weapons did converge that it wasn't quick, though at the time these rules were written most mechs carried ppcs and autocannons in separately mounted "handguns" and other detachable weapons akin to what inspired them. Very few examples existed where weapons weren't, SHK was depicted as tiny (55 ton scout with the armor barely suited for general purpose light mechs) and the Marauder had its AC mounted on a turret.
Pre-unseen "original" Battletech art. Wolverine Phoenix Hawk Another Phoenix Hawk Griffin and Hatchetman/Axman (heavy and obvious Patlabor [Mechbay is literally ripped from Patlabor; tech uniform is article for article identical to Patlabor pilot uniform] and 08th MS Team [Griffin body structure and joints] influence here!) Note: Griffin is holding a Large Laser in "gun" form. Also interesting; fits W.H. Keith Jr's scale.
So anyway then things get added by upstarts who then say "the awesome thing about this er ppc I'd like to put into the game that there is no minimum accuracy range", well how did that happen did it get lighter? "Uh no.". Then what happened? "Uh...thought it would be cool". Which led to revisions of the lore.
Admittedly it probably happened after the mass change in art styles which planted weapons inside mechs rather than handheld to distinguish them away from the sources that inspired them.
So ACs kept minimum accurate range, though it was chocked up to the realistic abstraction that the mech would have to do more to align the weapon to a target up close than one far away (at 300 meters, have two objects 5 inches apart; aim at one then the other with your finger. Pretty small effort right? Now stand 3 feet away. How much farther did you have to move your hand to point at the second object from the first?) So whether arm-mounted or torso mounted, the very minor minimum accurate ranges more or less stuck though I would think the torso ones would be more difficult to adjust for. (And I'm not sure why, but Megamek with all the compatible official rules turned on gives minimum accurate ranges to torso mounted autocannons but not arm-mounted; which may explain the general Clan preference of arm-mounted ACs despite the removal of an actuator on Omnimechs, and also would support my theory that to align the torso AC to the target the torso would have to adjust to bring the weapon to bare on the crosshair rather than the weapon magically 'adjusting' on its own to converge with the crosshair. Many iterations of the past required pilots to select a weapon group before pulling the trigger rather than having separate triggers, with weapons pre-adjusted to work together with the crosshair.).
PPCs ended up having this tacked on Field Inhibitor which degraded the weapon's performance and caused a delay between the trigger squeeze and the actual shot (Dude can you just say charge up?) while the ER PPC instead has greater heat which is ironic because part of solving the "exploding" issue was they reduced the field inhibitor to bare bones and threw in more on-board heatsinks (btw part of the weight on MWO's weapons is on board heatsinks called "Cooling Jackets" or in the case of the PPCs, BattleTechnology -- an early attempt at a magazine-style Tech Manual nearly 20 years before the Tech Manual was made -- very expressly states that a good 3 and a half tons of the typical PPC is occupied by heatsinks, cooling systems and pumps attached directly to the weapon with another half ton of cabling to feed power to it; in the case of hand-weapon mounted PPCs, roughly one ton of heatsinks is dropped in exchange for the weapon's housing and the energy feed connections come from the handle or the bottom of the weapon intended to feed through the Mech's hand or wrist port).
The art team, especially after the mass loss of 'Unseen Art', really took the cake of whiskey tango foxtrot, but FASA kept to its science roots right up until it was passed on to Wizkidz. Even if the physics of the mech leg designs were pretty wonky at best.
---
FASA Co-founder Jordan Weiss worked with PGI for MW5, which never took off (as PGI states, issues with Microsoft; exclusive platform, massive profit potential losses, other issues), in which this was made. Notice the PPC charge up?
Completely lost. Remnants of this could have been seen in closed beta with a 'glitch' where the PPC particle originates as stationary and steadily accelerates to speed; something the actual weapon did in MWO which I really enjoyed but at the time hit detection and lack of lag compensation (you could hit accelerate and it did this a second later on a ping of 50; imagine a ping of 300) made this an unattainable pipedream to keep.
JW's involvement with MWO is barebones minimal, the most recent reference of him assisting PGI was 2011.
The reason I mention him though, as former co-founder of FASA, is he brings his passions with him. Currently, this article about the new dropship created for Battletech, (scroll down to Argo Dropship) reminded me of the attention to detail FASA once had back in the 1980s when they had field trips to actual military bases to watch tanks/MLRS/etc. actually be put to use to help conjure their tabletop game.
Fun facts about Battletech - Tabletop and the Catapult!
Spoiler
(The Catapult is, in fact, an analog of the American Multiple Launch Rocket System; even Battletech range rules of 30 meters per hex *30 feet blasting range* and BT's 180 meters minimum accurate range (180 meter minimum engagement range) came from the MLRS. The missile bay doors are meant to represent the anticipation of seeing the MLRS raise its launcher, the squat, small design is meant to solidify its role as an artillery support mech -- though in the late 80s a second version of the Catapult by the same name was given stilted legs; these legs longer and thinner, were meant to be a version more adept to use in canyons and other situations where the lack of height from the squat-Catapult would impair its ability to lob missiles indirectly. The weird protrusions on the legs are meant for when when the Stilted Catapult goes to fire, it would squat to brace itself against the recoil of the weapon.)
Squat Catapult.
Its funny that these look like the oldest Catapult entries I found from the mid 1980s, but they're newer. Kinda tells me this was preferred over the Stilted versions of the late 1980s/1990s (which I'm not entirely certain, but I wonder if the stilted version got introduced to BT and popularized by the Mechwarrior 1 game because until seeing that I could only find it in early 90s publications.)
The pose is atrocious but so was the original art. I can't find the screen but the Catapult Mechbay art shown in the very first Mechwarrior PC game is the Stilted version.
See what I mean about the knees though? It ws done like this for both bracing itself to fire and to help it get back up. Even so with legs this long, it brings about other issues. (Note the actual art didn't quite have the legs this thick).
Detail is awful, but the thickness of these legs are a little closer to the art I saw.
Interesting to me, is that in addition to superior accuracy while stationary, did Catapults have to 'set up' and crouch to lob their LRMs. If so, was it imagined that Griffins would take a knee to fire LRMs? They were "Sniper" mechs after all. How many hidden little details in the 1980s and early 1990s art can we find that support the vision that LRM mechs had to brace themselves to fire more accurately? BT supports this simply by not having accuracy punishments if you haven't moved, though BT also includes Hull down and Prone positions for shooting as well.
Gotta say...don't get people thinking the Cent isn't tanky. It's not a std zombie anymore... it's just a super tanky XL carrier which means it is either faster/harder hitting or both now. Can't think of many mediums that spread damage better than my Cents, probably why they are my second most run chassis to this day. Also I was probably largely unaffected because I always felt the ZombieCent was a waste of potential, and that having more firepower to deliver early in the match far outweighed running around as a stick with 2 MLs at the end of a losing match. I did play against the Comp teams pretty regularly back then (though would not remotely claim my old to be comp itself, lol) and honestly can't remember seeing a ZombieCent carry the team to a win on single time.
I can say my XL YLW and CN9-D has done so, a lot.
Otherwise, pretty much agree with your post.
But yeah. Back to unpopular mechs. What should I roll in today? That is in order to figure out what's wrong with it since going in order is far too time consuming at this point. Want something I have yet to address or something I need to address better.
Treb -- has some of the smallest torso hitboxes on a medium mech. But, their verticality and "Straight Laced" nature makes it very difficult to spread the damage. While most mechs that bob up and down can spread damage by merely walking, the Treb is just too vertical. By straight lace I mean updown left side, LT, updown middile, CT, updown right side, RT. It's not like a Kintaro or Atlas or Victor or Firestarter where there is some CT on the sides and some side torsos on the center so that vertical movement can cause damage spread. Instead its set up like the Awesome and the current Cataphract... This is where it has problems. They're not big, they're too "straight forward" or too obvious.
Cent. -- This mech lost its tanky nature not because of the Clans but because of hitbox changes, fixing massively oversized remnant arm-hitboxes after the arm has been removed which reduced damage by (at the time 50%; now it's 60%). In addition to "fixing" these, later on the Clans received numerous buffs and changes that 'improved' them from the initial release, allowing laser vomit to 'become a thing'. This hasn't helped.
Hey Bish took me forever and a day to find your comment in that quote, but yeah. Zombie cent was fairly effective back in the day but it wouldn't cut it these days.
I do well enough with mine in XL engines too though I miss great CB things like the Centurion charge where a line of centurions would get together, throw the shield forward by twisting right, left so the arm cannon could shoot around the shield and then advance at 64.8 kph in a line of 4 centurions, lrms lobbing from open missile doors and when the shield was destroyed just hit center torso and fire lasers, cook as a button even with the shs back then.
9
Requiemking, on 28 May 2016 - 05:49 PM, said:
