33 replies to this topic

[CK16]

Let's thinks on this a bit here, right now then only "BV" value we have is based on tonnage. Some how this is what is limiting our drop decks and our groups. This is fine and simple to follow however....it does bring up some important discussion topics....

Should all mechs really be worth the same as others by tonnage? Should tonnage be really the value set?

Why should say a Direwolf that in all honesty costs a crap ton of Cbills be worth the same "BV" as an Atlas straight up front. Even after they get "Meta-fyed" the Direwolf still will end up costing more to the Atlas. Or say an Urbanmech, one of the Cheapest mechs in the game be worth the same as a Clan Light of same tonnage? When the Clan Light costs almost 3 times as much!

The tonnage "BV" system is a bust, and honestly no if I am saving more Cbills for the "better" mech, yea it better be better then the Walmart special cheapo mech.

Do I have an answer as to how to fix this? No, not really...but if everyone insist that all mechs are created equal then the price needs to reflect this...both in game price and real money price.

Edited by CK16, 27 July 2016 - 06:41 AM.

[Metus regem]

CK16, on 27 July 2016 - 06:40 AM, said:

Let's thinks on this a bit here, right now then only "BV" value we have is based on tonnage. Some how this is what is limiting our drop decks and our groups. This is fine and simple to follow however....it does bring up some important discussion topics....

Should all mechs really be worth the same as others by tonnage? Should tonnage be really the value set?

Why should say a Direwolf that in all honesty costs a crap ton of Cbills be worth the same "BV" as an Atlas straight up front. Even after they get "Meta-fyed" the Direwolf still will end up costing more to the Atlas. Or say an Urbanmech, one of the Cheapest mechs in the game be worth the same as a Clan Light of same tonnage? When the Clan Light costs almost 3 times as much!

The tonnage "BV" system is a bust, and honestly no if I am saving more Cbills for the "better" mech, yea it better be better then the Walmart special cheapo mech.

Do I have an answer as to how to fix this? No, not really...but if everyone insist that all mechs are created equal then the price needs to reflect this...both in game price and real money price.

CK, as for the costs on Clan mechs, be thankful they are as low as they are right now....

TT costs for a Timber Wolf Prime: 24.2m C-bills
MW cost for a Timber Wolf Prime: 15.2m C-bills (63% of the cost)

TT cost for a Dire Wolf Prime: 29.4m C-bills
MWO cost for a Dire Wolf Prime: 17.8m C-bills (60% of the cost)


On the flip side, that 29.4m C-bills for a fully TT tuned Dire Wolf, a walking juggernaut of death and destruction, could buy you any one sets of the following:

3 AS7-D Atlas
or
4 MAD-3R Marauder
or
8 CN9-A Centurion
or
19 LCT-1V Locust

In practice how ever, it should take 2-3 Atlas mechs to kill that Dire Wolf, provided the Dire Wolf can stay out of CQB...


Anyways I am getting way off topic here, In MWO it's going to be hard to truly balance our mechs due to a few things:

Lack of True Role warfare, meaning that Light mechs really need objectives to complete, and I do not mean stand in the box....

Perfect weapon accuracy, this just kills several mechs, especially those that could gain a lot by running IS XL engines, but can't due to hit boxes.

Too open ended customization, it really should be much more limited.

[Mcgral18]

Never, ever use stock robots in a balance discussion.

You are going to XL an Urbie, which will increase that Cbill cost, and mount a 180, not a 60



A 30 ton mech should roughly equal a 30 ton mech, yes.

[Davers]

3 Atlas? Nah. Take a bunch of fast mechs with SRMs. Force piloting checks every round until it falls down and maximize you chance of TACs (through armor critical). Dead Dire Wolf. EZ PZ.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Metus regem, on 27 July 2016 - 07:22 AM, said:

CK, as for the costs on Clan mechs, be thankful they are as low as they are right now....

TT costs for a Timber Wolf Prime: 24.2m C-bills
MW cost for a Timber Wolf Prime: 15.2m C-bills (63% of the cost)

TT cost for a Dire Wolf Prime: 29.4m C-bills
MWO cost for a Dire Wolf Prime: 17.8m C-bills (60% of the cost)


On the flip side, that 29.4m C-bills for a fully TT tuned Dire Wolf, a walking juggernaut of death and destruction, could buy you any one sets of the following:

3 AS7-D Atlas
or
4 MAD-3R Marauder
or
8 CN9-A Centurion
or
19 LCT-1V Locust

In practice how ever, it should take 2-3 Atlas mechs to kill that Dire Wolf, provided the Dire Wolf can stay out of CQB...


Anyways I am getting way off topic here, In MWO it's going to be hard to truly balance our mechs due to a few things:

Lack of True Role warfare, meaning that Light mechs really need objectives to complete, and I do not mean stand in the box....

Perfect weapon accuracy, this just kills several mechs, especially those that could gain a lot by running IS XL engines, but can't due to hit boxes.

Too open ended customization, it really should be much more limited.

I agree with about 90% of what you said but I always laugh when people bring up this so called perfect weapons accuracy? I mean I don't know about you but I see people missing all the time and there isn't a match that goes by where every shot I fire hits exactly the point on the enemy mech I want it too. Sorry, perfect weapons accuracy doesn't exist.

The Table Top system where you roll a die to determine hit location is to simulate exactly what we have going on in game which is to say, someone trying to hold a C-ERLL on target and drifting off the CT to hit the ST instead. Or someone firing a SRM group at the enemy mechs CT only to have it twist just as you fire and you hit him in the shoulder instead. I mean that is like saying in Table top that, damn I was hoping to roll a 6 so I could core out his CT but ended up rolling a 4 which hit his undamaged arm instead.

The hitbox issues you state are more about a game that built around miniatures and die rolls to simulate hits, rather than any sort of consideration that the miniatures would have to take into account things like ballistics and line of sight and none of these mechs have true, military viable structures or designs. Basically they are art that is cool to look at, not designs that minimize frontal profiles and other vulnerabilities while mounting firepower in places that would allow these mechs to engage the enemy while minimizing exposure. Some models just get luckier than others.

Point is, the game doesn't exactly translate well from a Table Top game to a FPS computer game and there isn't much PGI or anyone can do to fix certain issues if they want to keep in Battletech.

On the other hand, there is alot of stuff that PGI did screw up that really frustrates me like JJs being so dumbed down, especially on assaults. I mean a 4 JJ 100 Ton Assault mech should be able to jump the same distance as a 4 JJ light mech especially considering that the Assault uses 8 tons of weight for those 4 JJs while the light only uses 2 ton. Also it is frustrating that a mech with 25 double heat sinks has trouble managing the heat generated by 1 ER PPC and 4 Medium Pulse Lasers. With that limited weapon loadout and 25 Double HS, the heat meter shouldn't even blip.

[Moldur]

Oh ok. OP is saying, why are drops based off tonnage, when equivalent tonnage mechs vary in cost. This is also assuming that cost has got to be at least a little bit indicative of the worth of the mech.

Is that right?

Edited by Moldur, 27 July 2016 - 09:06 AM.

[Davers]

Moldur, on 27 July 2016 - 09:05 AM, said:

Oh ok. OP is saying, why are drops based off tonnage, when equivalent tonnage mechs vary in cost. This is also assuming that cost has got to be at least a little bit indicative of the worth of the mech.

Is that right?

MWO's economy makes no sense so basing anything on it is bad. I can put an expensive XL engine on an Atlas but that doesn't make it a better mech.

[CK16]

Yet I think many are missing the point. For all the cry for level mechs....why are prices not leveled then as well? CLan packages still cost quite a bit more real cash then IS packages (the old 4 packs)....Why do people insist that 2 mechs should be the exact se performance yet cost for buying and refitting are not the same, in fact pretty off in alot of cases.

[Metus regem]

CK16, on 27 July 2016 - 11:56 AM, said:

Yet I think many are missing the point. For all the cry for level mechs....why are prices not leveled then as well? CLan packages still cost quite a bit more real cash then IS packages (the old 4 packs)....Why do people insist that 2 mechs should be the exact se performance yet cost for buying and refitting are not the same, in fact pretty off in alot of cases.

Okay, let me try it this way then...

A lot of the Clan Mechs come with all the goodies (read taxes) already installed, for example a Locust 1V seems like a cheap investment for a light mech, when looking at it against a Mist Lynx...

LCT-1V
MLX-PRIME

But the thing is, that Locust requires a bunch of upgrades, so the true cost of a Locust 1V is more along the lines of this:

LCT-1V

As you can see, after the "mandatory upgrades" are done to it it runs very, very close to the same cost (actually in this case more) than the roughly equivlent Clan mech... Now some time ago, when the Clan mechs were first introduced, the price for them was based off of how much MC would it take to buy one of these mechs, if you used the MC to C-bill conversion.

[Aiden Skye]

They should not be of the same use, but different mechs should be good at different things in their class. There should be no jack of all trades and master of all chassis, just as there should be no waste of space useless mechs in the game.

[Hotthedd]

Viktor Drake, on 27 July 2016 - 09:03 AM, said:

I agree with about 90% of what you said but I always laugh when people bring up this so called perfect weapons accuracy? I mean I don't know about you but I see people missing all the time and there isn't a match that goes by where every shot I fire hits exactly the point on the enemy mech I want it too. Sorry, perfect weapons accuracy doesn't exist.

Actually the weapons are all perfectly accurate in MW:O, it is the aim that can be off. But since every shot of an aimed weapon goes exactly to the point at which the crosshair is aimed, regardless of distance, or number of weapons fired at once, we have the very definition of perfect accuracy.

Viktor Drake, on 27 July 2016 - 09:03 AM, said:

Point is, the game doesn't exactly translate well from a Table Top game to a FPS computer game and there isn't much PGI or anyone can do to fix certain issues if they want to keep in Battletech.

Actually there are a few things PGI could do.
Make the damage translate as it did in TT. Weapons do the stated amount of damage per 10 seconds, not necessarily per shot. (Heat also per ten seconds)
Reticle bloom based on the number of weapons fired simultaneously, and based on the 'mech's heat level.
Reticle sway when walking and running.
Reticle jitter while jumping.

Doing these things would allow PGI to get rid of most of their band-aid fixes as well.

[Baulven]

Honestly until role warfare becomes a thing you have binary viable non viable. Expecting people not to take best in weight or class is kind of silly until that is addressed.

[Requiemking]

One thing that could be done is to add (or reinstate, I don't recall if this was in game before) a deal-of-the-week type system. Two chassis (One clan, one IS) would get randomly selected, then all variants of said chassis would be half off for the rest of the week. So, for example, one week the Locust and the Dire Wolf would be half off, then next week it would be two different mechs. the point of this is 1) make getting good mechs easier and 2) lower the difficulty of entering the Clans. The reason I'm suggesting this, despite it being so random, is because, at this point, Clan mechs are actually underperforming for their cost. Why spend six million C-bills on an Arctic Cheetah when I can afford a fully upgraded and meta built Locust 1V for less? Plus, PGI is never going to lower the prices for Clan mechs, so why not put one of them on sale every week? Hell, throw in the IS mechs so that the IS whiners don't cry.

[Revis Volek]

Add DHS tax, Endo Or Ferro and a large engine to that Atlas plus your loadout and modules


they cost about the same....


You argument is based on some seriously incorrect information.

Edited by Revis Volek, 27 July 2016 - 01:33 PM.

[Albino Boo]

All mechs should not be of the same use. If you have choice, there has to be a bad choice otherwise it's not really a choice.

[CK16]

Revis Volek, on 27 July 2016 - 01:31 PM, said:

Add DHS tax, Endo Or Ferro and a large engine to that Atlas plus your loadout and modules


they cost about the same....


You argument is based on some seriously incorrect information.

Yet what about the refit cost to make the Direwolf use able then? Or you going to tell me that it's fine stock?

[davoodoo]

Lack of perfect accuracy was simulated by mw1 and mw2 where crosshair was as big as upper half of light or medium mech and it was a dice roll where the hit lands. Point at general direction of enemy and fire away until it hits the ground.

On the other hand look at direwhale, 48.4kph, big bulky target, it can spin, it can maneuver, but ill still put 10/10 laser alphas into its ct at 500m, maybe ill have a bad day or be drunk and my score will drop to 8/10.

CK16, on 27 July 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Yet what about the refit cost to make the Direwolf use able then? Or you going to tell me that it's fine stock?

deduct resale gains from previous equipment.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...577694a74e92aba
14.5mil, 5mil more expensive than stock
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...f269f9709a7963a
20mil, 2.5mil more expensive than stock

Edited by davoodoo, 27 July 2016 - 02:20 PM.

[Bilbo]

davoodoo, on 27 July 2016 - 02:11 PM, said:

Lack of perfect accuracy was simulated by mw1 and mw2 where crosshair was as big as upper half of light or medium mech and it was a dice roll where the hit lands.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but my shots always went exactly where I pointed them in the mw2 trilogy.

[Hotthedd]

davoodoo, on 27 July 2016 - 02:11 PM, said:

Lack of perfect accuracy was simulated by mw1 and mw2 where crosshair was as big as upper half of light or medium mech and it was a dice roll where the hit lands.

In MW1, the crosshair was the size of a large pixel (and exactly the same as a BattleMaster's head. MW1 had chain fire only to simulate the spread of multiple weapons.

[Metus regem]

CK16, on 27 July 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Yet what about the refit cost to make the Direwolf use able then? Or you going to tell me that it's fine stock?

I keep one stock, and with some discipline it's not half bad, provided you can manage that many weapon groups.

group 1

2 ERLL

Group 2

2 ERLL

Group 3

2 UAC/5
4 MPL

Group 4

1 LRM 10


Although I do admit I do drop two DHS to add Artemis and an extra ton of UAC/5 ammo....