155 replies to this topic

[Quxudica]

Arguably one of Battletechs most iconic mech designs, it's silhouette is easily recognizable. Even people, of a certain age, that don't have a clue what BT is are likely to have seen the design in passing.

As such I can't help but make note of the statement the chassis makes about the state of the game currently, or more precisely the state of mech design. The effective builds for this weapon platform have a striking thing in common, something seen in many other mechs as well; it's most distinguishing feature - it's arm cannons - are best used by completely ignoring them save as empty shields, with the mechs primary weapons stuffed like sardines into the torso. The mech itself, if designed for MWO's battlefield, would be far better served if instead of those intimidating guns it just had a couple tall shields on its side.

It's a shame really, and a direct result of the lack of limitations placed on where weapons can be mounted in a mech. Oversized cannons and ppcs get stuffed into ports meant for machine guns and small lasers. Sure at least these days the weapons have some physical representation on the model when strapped somewhere they logically shouldn't fit, but that doesn't change the fact that the physical design of many chassis makes no real sense given the combat environment they exist in.

Those long, shiny artillery barrels on the Warhammer serve only to house a couple medium lasers at best if you want to run the chassis to suit MWO's gameplay and that's just kind of depressing. Even the mechs laser vomit builds are best focused on the torso emitters. The arm canons are just.. kind of there, providing no particular benefit beyond some expendable padding.

[C E Dwyer]

Looks rather cobbled together by someone that didn't have a picture of it, and had it described to them down the phone.

The 'new' Reseen are very hit and miss

Aced the look of the Rifleman and Archer,

The re design of the Marauder I can understand, but both the Whammy and the Pheonix Hawk's arms are really bad, in the case of the PXH the modular weapons spoil it, the whammy it's just a very poor design, which then gets abused by the meta..

[Tristan Winter]

The problem isn't how the mechs are designed, or where the hardpoints are located. The problem is that the game is balanced in such a way that high torso mounts means everything. Why?

Well, all the mechs - even heavy mechs and assaults - are so agile that the benefit of equipping weapons in the arms is negligible. The ability to aim arm weapons independently of the torso doesn't make up for the lack of pinpoint damage, the dangers of losing your arms or the lower hardpoint location of arms vs torso on many mechs. Basically, if you can rotate your torso 120 degrees in 0.1 seconds, the option to have weapons in the arms doesn't really matter. Quite often, it's just a liability. People prefer to use arms as shields instead.

In addition to the problem of super agility on all mechs (and the availability of really high hardpoints on some mechs), there's the fact that humanoid mechs can't raise their arms in MWO, like they can in lore. If a Victor could raise its arms to fire all weapons at eye-level, it would be a huge improvement in many cases. Instead, most humanoid mechs have elbows locked at their hips like a gunslinger.

I puke in my mouth every time I see a Warhammer, Mauler or Timber Wolf without any weapons in the arms, but that's the game PGI made. If our mechs could actually move like humanoid robots instead of simply battle tanks on legs, things would be better. Imagine if you could crouch down and extend your arms to fire your weapon like a sniper.



TL;DR - MWO needs more gundam.

[Single Mom]

Tristan Winter, on 09 November 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

TL;DR - MWO needs more gundam.

Anime logic: We couldn't pile enough armor onto this massive fighting robot, so lets design a lightly armored, articulated appendage and use it to wield a shield of an appropriate amount of armor.

[1453 R]

Notice that modern-day fighting vehicles are generally low-slung and as flattened as they realistically can be, with all the shooty bits on top.

This isn't a MWO problem (not entirely, anyways), it's a physics-of-war problem. The more of your machine you can hide behind something that isn't you to take enemy fire, the more likely you are to survive an engagement.

Giant arm cannons that require you to expose half the 'Mech to fire are going to leave you dead against someone with a shoulder-mounted gun he needs to expose very little of his 'Mech to fire. Stance alterations the way Tristan suggests would help, but even then - your Shadow Hawks and Marauders and what-have-you with their main weaponry in more heavily armored shoulders and also closer to their centerline for easier aiming will have the edge.

It's sort of fundamental to armored combat of any sort, simulated or otherwise. Cover is king, and the more of you there is in it instead of out of it, the better off you are.

Thus, Warhammers with high-mount torso cannons instead of d!ck-height arm mounts. Iconic? No. Better for your survival rates? Absolutely.

[FupDup]

Single Mom, on 09 November 2016 - 01:37 PM, said:

Anime logic: We couldn't pile enough armor onto this massive fighting robot, so lets design a lightly armored, articulated appendage and use it to wield a shield of an appropriate amount of armor.

It's pretty funny since the surface area of that shield is probably larger than the whole frontal torso. The whole torso could've been made out of that stuff...

[Metus regem]

Single Mom, on 09 November 2016 - 01:37 PM, said:

Anime logic: We couldn't pile enough armor onto this massive fighting robot, so lets design a lightly armored, articulated appendage and use it to wield a shield of an appropriate amount of armor.

Not all of them do that...


The Excalibur pictured above uses a bracer style shield so that it can use both hands to use it's GU-15 rifle, as well as using that bracer to store extra magazines for the GU-15.

[Quxudica]

Tristan Winter, on 09 November 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

The problem isn't how the mechs are designed, or where the hardpoints are located. The problem is that the game is balanced in such a way that high torso mounts means everything. Why?

Well, all the mechs - even heavy mechs and assaults - are so agile that the benefit of equipping weapons in the arms is negligible. The ability to aim arm weapons independently of the torso doesn't make up for the lack of pinpoint damage, the dangers of losing your arms or the lower hardpoint location of arms vs torso on many mechs. Basically, if you can rotate your torso 120 degrees in 0.1 seconds, the option to have weapons in the arms doesn't really matter. Quite often, it's just a liability. People prefer to use arms as shields instead.

In addition to the problem of super agility on all mechs (and the availability of really high hardpoints on some mechs), there's the fact that humanoid mechs can't raise their arms in MWO, like they can in lore. If a Victor could raise its arms to fire all weapons at eye-level, it would be a huge improvement in many cases. Instead, most humanoid mechs have elbows locked at their hips like a gunslinger.

I puke in my mouth every time I see a Warhammer, Mauler or Timber Wolf without any weapons in the arms, but that's the game PGI made. If our mechs could actually move like humanoid robots instead of simply battle tanks on legs, things would be better. Imagine if you could crouch down and extend your arms to fire your weapon like a sniper.



TL;DR - MWO needs more gundam.

I get what you are saying and I do agree. That said I still think the issue could be addressed, within the confines of the game MWO has become, if there were limitations on what weapons can be mounted where (beyond the amorphous and next to meaningless "critical slot" system). If the Warhammer could only mount a ppc or large lasers in its arm, the arms might become more useful. If taking a big gun on a mech required that mech to have a slot for that size of gun, chassis roles would become more defined and the issue of "every mech is built like an assault" might dissipate.. well a little anyway.

The Warhammer has giant artillery sized canons on its arms because that's where it's supposed to mount giant artillery sized weapons (using a little hyperbole here since LLs and PPCs/etc are what effectively count as "big sticks" in MWO). It'd just be nice if iconic chassis features were actually important to the function of the mech, and not just there because that's what it's expected to look like.

Edited by Quxudica, 09 November 2016 - 01:54 PM.

[CK16]

MechWarrior and Battletech have always seemed more tanky then Human like...they are not fast agile machines really. You are still moving 20 to 100 tons...that's alot of weight. They should feel klunky. Gundam and Mechwarrior just don't feel the same to me. Some extra movements sure. But see MW4 style crouching ect was not fast to get into or get our of. Gundam style = CoD....just no...just no...

[Quxudica]

CK16, on 09 November 2016 - 01:53 PM, said:

MechWarrior and Battletech have always seemed more tanky then Human like...they are not fast agile machines really. You are still moving 20 to 100 tons...that's alot of weight. They should feel klunky. Gundam and Mechwarrior just don't feel the same to me. Some extra movements sure. But see MW4 style crouching ect was not fast to get into or get our of. Gundam style = CoD....just no...just no...

This is a misconception. In the Lore of Battletech, mechs can be almost as agile (as in range of movement, not necessarily speed of movement) as a flesh and blood human. Some chassis are better than others of course, and it's very much dependent on the pilots skill, but a mech can jump, crawl, kneel, scramble, go prone and all other manner of maneuvers not found in MWO if the pilot is good enough. It's certainly true that a Battletech mech is absolutely not a Gundam, at all. there are major differences, but this idea that every BT mech chassis functions like a clunky giant old tank with legs just isn't accurate. The reason for it is almost certainly technological - the early Mechwarrior games ran on machines in an era where such things weren't feasible.

Edited by Quxudica, 09 November 2016 - 02:01 PM.

[Metus regem]

Quxudica, on 09 November 2016 - 02:00 PM, said:

This is a misconception. In the Lore of Battletech, mechs can be almost as agile (as in range of movement, not necessarily speed of movement) as a flesh and blood human. Some chassis are better than others of course, and it's very much dependent on the pilots skill, but a mech can jump, crawl, kneel, scramble, go prone and all other manner of maneuvers not found in MWO if the pilot is good enough. It's certainly true that a Battletech mech is absolutely not a Gundam, at all. there are major differences, but this idea that every BT mech chassis functions like a clunky giant old tank with legs just isn't accurate. The reason for it is almost certainly technological - the early Mechwarrior games ran on machines in an era where such things weren't feasible.

There is a piece of lore floating around that talks about a pilots doing hand-stands with Atlas class Battlemechs during a military review... I just can't remember if they were Star League forces or Steiner forces doing it...

[DaZur]

This is easily remedied by utilization of "iconic quirk" (yes, I just made that up)...

In a nutshell, utilizing the original iconic hardpoints with the de jour weapon nets some quirked advantage to that weapon (Kind'a like the Clan rule-of-eight XP bonus).

The quirk would obviously have to be significant enough to deter the min/max tendencies so prevalent in an open customization environment that MWO has.

[Metus regem]

DaZur, on 09 November 2016 - 02:04 PM, said:

This is easily remedied by utilization of "iconic quirk" (yes, I just made that up)...

In a nutshell, utilizing the original iconic hardpoints with the de jour weapon nets some quirked advantage to that weapon (Kind'a like the Clan rule-of-eight XP bonus).

The quirk would obviously have to be significant enough to deter the min/max tendencies so prevalent in an open customization environment that MWO has.

It doesn't need to deter, just reward playing a more lore correct build, and it doesn't need to be a massively game altering quirk, just a little additive.

[NoiseCrypt]

Arm mounted weapons have been "high risk" in every single Mech Warrior game. The most optimal configuration has always been to stuff all the weapons in the CT > Legs ( in games that allowed that) > ST .
Personally I wouldnt mind if they combined the arms with coresponding side torsos.

[Yosharian]

Quxudica, on 09 November 2016 - 01:01 PM, said:

Arguably one of Battletechs most iconic mech designs, it's silhouette is easily recognizable. Even people, of a certain age, that don't have a clue what BT is are likely to have seen the design in passing.

As such I can't help but make note of the statement the chassis makes about the state of the game currently, or more precisely the state of mech design. The effective builds for this weapon platform have a striking thing in common, something seen in many other mechs as well; it's most distinguishing feature - it's arm cannons - are best used by completely ignoring them save as empty shields, with the mechs primary weapons stuffed like sardines into the torso. The mech itself, if designed for MWO's battlefield, would be far better served if instead of those intimidating guns it just had a couple tall shields on its side.

It's a shame really, and a direct result of the lack of limitations placed on where weapons can be mounted in a mech. Oversized cannons and ppcs get stuffed into ports meant for machine guns and small lasers. Sure at least these days the weapons have some physical representation on the model when strapped somewhere they logically shouldn't fit, but that doesn't change the fact that the physical design of many chassis makes no real sense given the combat environment they exist in.

Those long, shiny artillery barrels on the Warhammer serve only to house a couple medium lasers at best if you want to run the chassis to suit MWO's gameplay and that's just kind of depressing. Even the mechs laser vomit builds are best focused on the torso emitters. The arm canons are just.. kind of there, providing no particular benefit beyond some expendable padding.

Maybe if MWO had better maps with more play around high/low terrain, people would need arm-mounted weaponry.

[Tristan Winter]

I didn't say I wanted MWO to be a carbon copy of Gundam. Sometimes people will get stuck on a single picture or a single tongue-in-cheek comment, for no reason.

Alright, f*ck it.

Let's talk about gundams in MWO.

[Alteran]

From what I've seen, the design and location of the arm is completely inconsistent throughout all techs.

Look at the placement and design of the Ebon Jag. The barrel mounts are just under cockpit level for AC's and top mount PPC's and Lasers. Around waist level for the bottom mount laser.

Look at the Timber Wolf next; with their low slung arms, all weapon mounts are at hip level or below.

1453 R otherwise nailed it. Blow an arm off and you've still got your torso. Blow the torso and you lose it all on that side. So in MWO, you torso twist as much as you can to spread out damage and hope your arm goes first, protecting your heavy damage weapon in the torso.

In the case of the Warhammer, I put my ER PPC's or LPL's in the torso's.

Edited by Alteran, 09 November 2016 - 02:24 PM.

[Mcgral18]

DaZur, on 09 November 2016 - 02:04 PM, said:

This is easily remedied by utilization of "iconic quirk" (yes, I just made that up)...

In a nutshell, utilizing the original iconic hardpoints with the de jour weapon nets some quirked advantage to that weapon (Kind'a like the Clan rule-of-eight XP bonus).

The quirk would obviously have to be significant enough to deter the min/max tendencies so prevalent in an open customization environment that MWO has.

Component specific quirks


How about 100% PPC velocity to arm mounted Hammy PPCs?
Limit of 1 per arm?


I'm not sure if PGI's framework would permit that.

[Tarogato]

Yosharian, on 09 November 2016 - 02:13 PM, said:

Maybe if MWO had better maps with more play around high/low terrain, people would need arm-mounted weaponry.

Maps with elevation changes are *exactly* what makes arm mounted weapons a liability. Low mounted weapons can't hill peak. The more elevation changes your map has, the worse it is for mechs that have arm-mounted weapons. If you want to encourage arm-mounted weapons, you need to make completely flat maps (such as a dense urban environment) where the height of your mounts does not matter, and you need to nerf torso mounted weapons (such as reducing twist range, twist speed, pitch range, etc)

Edited by Tarogato, 09 November 2016 - 02:35 PM.

[GenghisJr]

So basically the complaint is because of customization mechs are built for performance and survivability. i think the issue is that the original creators of BT could not foresee the evolution of the game and so had no way of realizing arm mount weapons were a liability. The same can be said of pop tarting, It makes perfect sense to pop tart once you have played this game and understand how to use cover, it may not have been realizable for the original creators because they viewed JJ's as a mobility boost. -I never played TT, just my thoughts