Bishop Steiner, on 04 June 2016 - 09:54 AM, said:
I've yet to see how it's "not" fair.
All things being equal, military vehicles of the same role and mass tend to be the same general size and even shape. Optimized. Choosing to over and undersize units "for balance", especially for a company with as many issues with balance as PGI has had, is just opening pandora's box. Especially since we've seen a mechs' effectiveness shift with the Meta.
They don't. This has been gone over ad infinitum. A T90 is not appreciably different in shape or size to an Abrams (you can go look up the dimensions yourself) but weighs a whopping 15-17 tons less. There are whole host of reasons why this could be. Denser materials used could be one. More densely packed volume could be another. Doesn't matter. Bottom line: that particular analogy you are trying to use disintegrates under scrutiny, so stop using it.
The effectiveness of a 'Mech shifting is more to do with the quirks and equipment changing. Poptarting went away because JJs got nerfed, PPCs got nerfed, and Clan vomit gave you the same damage on a component (~35, the rest often spread) at the same ranges with far greater agility. The change in solution to the metagame had nothing to do with hit-boxes. The 'Mechs that had terrible hit-boxes and/or hard-points continued to be ignored unless they received some massive quirks that pushed them way over (i.e. Quickdraw, Blackjack, Black Knight, Atlas).
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I've yet to see one objective post to recommend a realistic alternative to volumetric scaling.
The re-scale itself wasn't a realistic request, which is exactly why PGI is copping out using volume. They know what the correct way to do it is, but they are not willing to spend the time and resources to do it because the returns are small.
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The less variables to juggle in balance the better. Once one has a realistic and hard, baseline for things like scale and hitboxes out of the way, balance becomes easier. It's easier to determine based on stock hardpoint which units need inflation or not. And it's far easier to determine which units legitimately need quirks to compensate at this point because yet one more variable is gone.
Moving to a universal standard doesn't remove the variable. The only way it would is if all 'Mechs were the same shape, which they obviously aren't. You yourself said you don't want hit-boxes to be a balance factor. I'm here to inform you that they are required to be. There's no escaping it, it's the nature of the game.
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When we can get to the point that the only real variables are Hardpoint Inflation (and location of inflated hardpoints) and Quirks, we'll be in a far better place then scaling mechs on a subjective scale, that shifts which each meta. I get some people spent a lot of time and effort working up different scale attempts, etc, and those went a long way toward finally breaking PGI down on the need to rescale at all. But we need to stop the narrative that silhouette, or pixel counts, etc, are actualyl "better" because they are not.
What makes you think the scale will shift with each meta? It won't. There is an absolute superior shape and ratio of sizing among the component parts. What's good at redirecting PPFLD will be even better against lasers. Some 'Mechs are blessed with these shapes, some are not. The objective of the re-scale always should have been to take those 'Mechs with the inferior geometry, and adjust that geometry in specific areas as far as you can without destroying the identity of the 'Mech and
then adding in durability or agility quirks to push them to the same level of survivability as those 'Mechs graced with optimal geometry. Sometimes that results in a universal shrink/enlargement. Sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time, it will likely involve a combination of universal size alteration and a specific tailoring.
And no, we don't need to stop that narrative, because it remains the correct one.
YOU. DO. NOT. SHOOT. AT. VOLUME. FULL STOP. YOU SHOOT AT FLAT OBJECTS.
If you're going to try to pull real-world military vehicles into this (which I remind that you were already doing incorrectly), even they don't optimize for an infinite number of angles. They very deliberately pick front/back, side, and top, and prioritize them according to expected usage. And to boot, what are the oblique angles but amalgamations of the cardinal ones anyway? If your cardinal angles each have a good silhouette, your oblique ones will, too.