306 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

1453 R, on 24 February 2017 - 12:56 PM, said:

A'ight. Let's discuss theory then.

Why would they even do this, if the intent was not to upend the table? If they were going to decouple engines from granting mobility but then give top-end engine mobility to everything anyways, why even bother with the process of dismantling a system most people already accept as being fine and take for granted, outside the idle wonderings of ultracomps, only to ensure that removing that system and replacing it with a time-intensive, labor-intensive, far less automated systems of alleged manual tune-ups only for everything to keep doing what it's already doing?

Why upset the applecart, sink a bunch of dev hours the company is always telling us are more precious than gold, into something you're not actually tumbling any apples over?

First, why is everything always all-or-nothing with you? Who says they are giving top-end engine mobility to everything? Who says everything is going to keep doing what it's doing? The point is to pull down the over-performers and buff the under-performers, same as always. KDK-3 comes down, KDK-1 goes up, etc.

Second, short answer: because the system we have now is broken.

Long answer: because allowing engines to buff mobility allows good 'Mechs to get gooder while bad 'Mechs can barely keep up. It also sets a moving target; it requires a quirk with a complex set of conditions to nerf a 'Mech with extremely powerful builds from taking advantage of a big engine to also be very agile and not also nerf all the other builds in the process. Locking agility to one value for a variant takes something of the middle ground. It nerfs the top end, buffs the low end, and in the middle is an anything goes affair like it already is. It's tighter, it's easier, it's more consistent.

PGI has to individually tune every 'Mech in the game already. Any dev would. That's the nature of having 300+ variants with differing geometry, hard-points, and other miscellaneous bits along with an open 'MechLab. PGI is trying to stabilize the foundation on which 'Mechs are built; it's currently way too lumpy.

[Y E O N N E]

Metus regem, on 24 February 2017 - 03:02 PM, said:

Please do. Don't get me wrong, I love some of the lore for BT, but wow does it ever need an update...

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 February 2017 - 04:08 PM, said:

So does some of the lore, there is a distinct lack of consistency (which shouldn't surprise anyone given the age of the IP) throughout the eras. Honestly, Dark Age felt like they were trying to do a soft reboot to capture the feel of the old school 3025 era, but failed pretty badly at doing that (especially with some of the mech designs that don't feel anything like the 3025 era for the most part and the other because it wasn't TT and was some weird clix system or whatever).

I want a hard re-boot. Mechanically, I'd toss out all of the technical fluff and start from scratch. Lore-wise, we can clean up the whole Clan nonsense to something a little more believable. How about instead of Kerensky running away because he's a nitwit and a coward and "sees no hope", Amaris is the one who runs away and Kerensky goes after him with the SLDF and, after centuries of fighting, they end up becoming what they despise in order to win? Sounds a lot more sympathetic to me.

[Bellum Dominum]

Wintersdark, on 23 February 2017 - 01:56 PM, said:

I'm not a tank guy, but are tank turrets geared directly to the engine? Or are they simply electric or hydraulic? I'm going to bet that tank turret speed is pretty much completely independent of the speed of the engine.

Tank turrets are electric motors today. the M1, and it's international counterparts, have indefinite spin due to the turret being so heavy coupled with it's design that it is not 'locked' to the main body in anyway. meaning instead of 350 degree spin the turrent can indefinitely spin clockwise or counter clockwise for hours if it wants.

However he wrote pivot not turret spin. I almost missed that as well. Meaning the tank tracks turning in opposite directions of each other enabling the body of the tank to spin or 'pivot' in place. Bigger engine he is right does help for that but it's honestly more transmission than anything.

Edited by Bellum Dominum, 24 February 2017 - 06:35 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Bellum Dominum, on 24 February 2017 - 06:34 PM, said:

Tank turrets are electric motors today. the M1, and it's international counterparts, have indefinite spin due to the turret being so heavy coupled with it's design that it is not 'locked' to the main body in anyway. meaning instead of 350 degree spin the turrent can indefinitely spin clockwise or counter clockwise for hours if it wants.

However he wrote pivot not turret spin. I almost missed that as well. Meaning the tank tracks turning in opposite directions of each other enabling the body of the tank to spin or 'pivot' in place. Bigger engine he is right does help for that but it's honestly more transmission than anything.

Yeah, I didn't miss his saying pivot.

My point was this is all about agility vs speed. Even in a tank pivoting, it's about gearing, because you're never going to be pivoting as fast as the tank is physically capable of spinning up the tracks. The twist for the tank is likening this to Mechs - the "mobility" being decoupled here is turn rate, but it's also torso twist speed, arm movement, twist and pitch range. These factors are determined by the chassis itself, it's myomer "muscles" and their ability to move the fixed amount of mass they need to move.

Mechs aren't running a kinetic engine with power take off driving things, the engine is purely providing the electrical power. It's just a reactor. That'll provide the raw power to push the mech to speed.

So, much like a tank, engine size is determining the distribution of power through acceleration and top speed (though gearing determines which you focus on) but your ability to get your guns on target has basically nothing whatsoever to do with the engine.

---

With that said, I'm leaving that discussion as is, because likening battle tech stuff to real life is fraught with peril, as battletech utilizes Super Space Magic more than any kind of realistic physics.

[Wintersdark]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 February 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

First, why is everything always all-or-nothing with you? Who says they are giving top-end engine mobility to everything? Who says everything is going to keep doing what it's doing? The point is to pull down the over-performers and buff the under-performers, same as always. KDK-3 comes down, KDK-1 goes up, etc.

Second, short answer: because the system we have now is broken.

Long answer: because allowing engines to buff mobility allows good 'Mechs to get gooder while bad 'Mechs can barely keep up. It also sets a moving target; it requires a quirk with a complex set of conditions to nerf a 'Mech with extremely powerful builds from taking advantage of a big engine to also be very agile and not also nerf all the other builds in the process. Locking agility to one value for a variant takes something of the middle ground. It nerfs the top end, buffs the low end, and in the middle is an anything goes affair like it already is. It's tighter, it's easier, it's more consistent.

PGI has to individually tune every 'Mech in the game already. Any dev would. That's the nature of having 300+ variants with differing geometry, hard-points, and other miscellaneous bits along with an open 'MechLab. PGI is trying to stabilize the foundation on which 'Mechs are built; it's currently way too lumpy.

Well said.

We've GOT manually tuned agility now via quirks, but it's a mess. % gains to turn rate, for example, makes a huge difference when you've got a big engine, but does basically nothing when you have a small engine, compounding the value of upgrading engines even more. It'd be so much easier with a consistent baseline. Instead of agility quirks making large-engined mechs super-agile and smaller engined mechs still mostly-clumsy, changes can be made to a chassis irrespective of build.

[Tarl Cabot]

Rogue Jedi, on 24 February 2017 - 10:04 AM, said:

^{in response to the thread title and the OP}
I have to ask, seriously?

even if engine rating no longer affects twisting, turning or arm speed do you realy want to be moving at 51 kph in an Atlas, or 55 in a marauder?

those speeds are way to slow (for me at least).
moving at 40-60 is rather slow and not ideal for tactical positioning and would give those slow Battmemechs a serious disadvantage against the Clan Omnimechs who would be able to dictate firing range to negate any firepower advantage the Battlemechs may gain by being stupidly slow.

some people may be happy to pilot a turret but many are not, so I do not think 255 is suficent for anything over 65 tons, it is bairly acceptable for the Jagermech if running a long range build, even 50 tonners usualy get a 275+ if I am piloting them.

This - who the frak is going to move as slow as a tortoise going uphill if they have other options? The bad thing is that the current Skill tree PTS allows all mechs access to more armor/structural points, Clan or IS but does nothing to the survivibility of the isXL engine.

Of course, if you look at PGI previous history when they did the first Skill Tree castration, it was across the board then they added accel/decel quirks to SOME mechs Just food for thought..

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 28 February 2017 - 04:18 PM.

[Wintersdark]

1453 R, on 24 February 2017 - 11:38 AM, said:

What am I supposed to do?

Just sit here with a picture of a secretary smile stapled to my face, nod along and go "yeah, yeah, this is just peachy-keen perfect, just implement as-is in the next patch Piranha, we don't even need to test anything!" like literally every-goddamn-one else?

This is getting annoying. Are you 12? Who is this "everybody" you keep referring to? This is like arguing with my wife when she's mad because of something I did in a dream she had. NOBODY HAS SAID THIS! It's going to the PTS. We're going to TEST IT. If the values aren't good, we'll bring that up. PUBLIC TEST SERVER!

Quote

I get on one day, I see this "we're taking mobility away from engines and putting it nowhere!" post, and a half a dozen "Yay no more movement!" threads, with not one single f***ing individual so much as even just intellectually considering the possibility that excising movement benefits from the thing that makes you move might not actually be the best idea ever spawned by man.

But we've said that? Sure, if the agility levels they use are bad, then that's a problem... But it's an easily noticed, reported, and fixed problem. Much like many of the first set of PTS problems that we just had, and that have been changed for the upcoming PTS.

Quote

Yes, I got het up over it. I. Like. Moving. Before the Clans I was a fairly dedicated medium pilot, with exactly three things above that bracket - two Phoenix chassis and Victors I got to lulz it up and configure as 385XL Supa Mids because that used to be a cool thing you could do. Even now, I prefer my Vipers and my Stormcrows and even my Sad Bad Adders to a number of Clan heavies and most Clan assaults. But here Piranha is, telling me "we're taking all that awesome movement you really love in your lower-weight machines and we're flushing it straight down the crapper with no compensation. Take all those 1% arm speed movement nodes in the Skilltree if you want to pretend to get your agility back. Choices Ho!", and every single cotton-picking one of you is telling me to shut up and be happy about it.

Because you're being a bloody idiot. The write up just says mobility will be decoupled from engines, and will be set per chassis instead. This DOESN"T MEAN EVERYTHING WILL BE LESS AGILE. There's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to assume that.

Hell, everything could end up, overall, MORE agile. It's every bit as likely.

But either way, we're going TO TEST IT FIRST. So if there's a problem, it can be addressed.

Quote

Ahem:

NO.

At no point am I okay with "shut up and just let it happen". I'm going to fight to be able to move like I'm in a Viper while I'm in a Viper until I can move like a f***ing Viper when I'm in my f***ing Vipers. I did not beg Piranha for that 'Mech like a shameless robo-ho, then buy its Collectors pack practically the first moment I could, so they could turn around a few months later and turn it into an undertonned, poorly armed, oddly-shaped STOCK GODS-BE-DAMNED CENTURION!

Why would you even think this would happen? Why WOULDN'T the Viper be a very agile mech out of the gate? That's it's whole *thing*. This is essentially exactly like the phoenix hawk example given.

Why aren't you up in arms that when they add IS SSRM4 and SSRM6's, they're going to all autotarget Clan Head hitboxes rather than random ones? I mean, that's completely possible. It's unlikely, but it's possible. Then everyone who bought clan mechs can just "dump them in the trash" because suddenly IS has magic "you die now" buttons.

If that DID happen, intentionally or no, we'd scream then, then they could fix it.



Your whole argument is 100% based on absolutely unfounded speculation about what you think the baseline values will be. That's it.

Edited by Wintersdark, 24 February 2017 - 08:32 PM.

[Bellum Dominum]

but Wintersdark speculative hysteria rules today don't you know that?

[PraetorGix]

This probably shows how much of a lousy pilot I am, but TBH I never chose engines for the agility, only for the end speed. Agility in a KDK is nice but for me it means nothing if I take 3 hours to get to the fight. OP looks at this as a nerf to the agile mechs, I see it as a buff to the slower moving ones, specially Omnis, except poor Timby and Scrow of course.

[PraetorGix]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 February 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

same as always. KDK-3 comes down, KDK-1 goes up, etc.

Uhm, sorry to meddle here, but KDK-1 going up is absolutely NOT an example of "same as always" on PGI land. It's more of an example of "never" I'd say, right there with the Jenner IIC-2...

[Y E O N N E]

PraetorGix, on 24 February 2017 - 10:27 PM, said:

Uhm, sorry to meddle here, but KDK-1 going up is absolutely NOT an example of "same as always" on PGI land. It's more of an example of "never" I'd say, right there with the Jenner IIC-2...

The point is what's the same as always. That's the intent. PGI has always intended to buff underperformers relative to overperformers, they just aren't usually successful at it. We have a new guy, though, and so far he's at least been slightly better than when everything was left up to Paul.

[Wintersdark]

PraetorGix, on 24 February 2017 - 10:18 PM, said:

This probably shows how much of a lousy pilot I am, but TBH I never chose engines for the agility, only for the end speed. Agility in a KDK is nice but for me it means nothing if I take 3 hours to get to the fight. OP looks at this as a nerf to the agile mechs, I see it as a buff to the slower moving ones, specially Omnis, except poor Timby and Scrow of course.

This is the case for most people, with an exception.

While rarely will you use an engine specifically for the agility, the agility issue crops up with regards to how low you'll go. This, because the handling differences once you start getting slower become very noticable.

Keep in mind, if drop your Medium to slow Assaults speeds, it'll also twist and turn exactly like a slow assault. That becomes substantially worse, because the Medium lacks the armor to eat damage it can't twist as effectively, AND doesn't have speed to simple avoid the damage.

In terms of mobility/agility, there's basically a point where the value of agility changes enormously. Once you're "good enough" then more agility is largely unnecessary (unless you specifically want it), but dip below that point and you're suddenly having a hard time getting/keeping your guns on your target. With the whole Agility|Engine link we have now, this forces a (pretty high) minimum engine size. And an important part of this is that that very minimum engine size is way, way above the stock engines in mechs. That's one of the reasons stock builds are so bad.

[Bellum Dominum]

Honestly I'd say all but lights will benefit from this change.

[FupDup]

Bellum Dominum, on 25 February 2017 - 06:56 PM, said:

Honestly I'd say all but lights will benefit from this change.

How wouldn't light benefit? Mainly, the slow lights like Urbie, Cute Fox, and Badder won't have inferior agility to some medium mechs anymore.

This also has the fairly likely potential to reduce the agility of upper class mechs, which most definitely would help lights if it happened.

[Bellum Dominum]

FupDup, on 25 February 2017 - 07:46 PM, said:

How wouldn't light benefit? Mainly, the slow lights like Urbie, Cute Fox, and Badder won't have inferior agility to some medium mechs anymore.

This also has the fairly likely potential to reduce the agility of upper class mechs, which most definitely would help lights if it happened.

Because no one who is even just barely adequate in a light is going to build one to be slow unless they are just in a silly mood. I once made a raven that had a top speed of like 50kph just to be silly... I'd never make a light that can't go it's top speed (or very close to it's top speed) as a serious build. You give up way too much defense as a light to not move as fast as possible.

As far as assaults losing mobility yeah that would help a little but honestly light vs assault mobility as it is right now already favors lights so it's not enough of a win to really call it much of a benefit for lights. It isn't hurting lights at all either don't get me wrong. Other areas of the system will be of benefit to lights. Largely being able to decide what my 'weapon quirks' are instead of being stuck with something that forces me to basically only have one weapon mounted ie ppc quirks on lights.

Oh and as far as mech agility/mobility (torso twist and such) the Urbie and Kitfox definiately stand toe to to with any medium (Urbie technically is superior with it's 360 twist) the adder I'll give you has issues but I am not sure that it is as much in terms of mobility as it is what I mentioned earlier... bad 'quirkening'

Edited by Bellum Dominum, 25 February 2017 - 08:32 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Bellum Dominum, on 25 February 2017 - 08:23 PM, said:

Because no one who is even just barely adequate in a light is going to build one to be slow unless they are just in a silly mood. I once made a raven that had a top speed of like 50kph just to be silly... I'd never make a light that can't go it's top speed (or very close to it's top speed) as a serious build. You give up way too much defense as a light to not move as fast as possible.

No light is choosing to go slow, but many cannot go fast.

After this happens, Urbanmechs will have the same twist and turn speeds as Arctic Cheetahs. Adders, Kit Foxes, Panthers all flat out gain regardless of build. Now, it's true that most of those are "agile enough" but more agility is always good.


Mediums as the ones that really benefit. They'regenerally not fast enough to rely on speed for evasion, and they have to make really hard choices between speed and firepower.50 tonners in particular CAN carry a substantial load out but only if they're not screaming fast. A fast twist speed helps the immensely to spread damage.

[Bellum Dominum]

Wintersdark, on 25 February 2017 - 08:47 PM, said:

No light is choosing to go slow, but many cannot go fast.

After this happens, Urbanmechs will have the same twist and turn speeds as Arctic Cheetahs. Adders, Kit Foxes, Panthers all flat out gain regardless of build. Now, it's true that most of those are "agile enough" but more agility is always good.


Mediums as the ones that really benefit. They'regenerally not fast enough to rely on speed for evasion, and they have to make really hard choices between speed and firepower.50 tonners in particular CAN carry a substantial load out but only if they're not screaming fast. A fast twist speed helps the immensely to spread damage.

Oh yeah. Like I said I'm in no way saying these changes will hurt lights what so ever and of course some will see a bit of a benefit. My stated opinion was more in regards to overall the most benefit will be seen by the other weight classes and I'm perfectly fine with that.

[L3mming2]

Wintersdark, on 23 February 2017 - 01:56 PM, said:

I'm not a tank guy, but are tank turrets geared directly to the engine? Or are they simply electric or hydraulic? I'm going to bet that tank turret speed is pretty much completely independent of the speed of the engine.

im not talking about the turret, i am talking about how fast the tank can turn/ accelerate...

[Wintersdark]

L3mming2, on 26 February 2017 - 02:20 AM, said:

im not talking about the turret, i am talking about how fast the tank can turn/ accelerate...

I get that, but the turret is relevant when talking about agility in MWO, as it directly correllates to twist speed, and that's an important part of mech agility.

As to turning.... I understand how tanks turn, but they're basically never turning with 100% engine power to the treads.

Acceleration? (I still think acceleration in MWO should remain coupled to engine, but the for Devil's Argument) Acceleration is as much a factor of gearing as it is engine size. You can have a small engined vehicle massively out-accelerate a large engine vehicle, simply because it's geared for power at low speed rather than a high max speed.

Of course, Mech's are mechs, and as I said likening mechs to real world things is fraught with peril because Battlemechs run on Battletech 80's Space Magic, not any kind of real physical laws.

[Bellum Dominum]

Wintersdark, on 26 February 2017 - 09:31 AM, said:

I get that, but the turret is relevant when talking about agility in MWO, as it directly correllates to twist speed, and that's an important part of mech agility.

As to turning.... I understand how tanks turn, but they're basically never turning with 100% engine power to the treads.

Acceleration? (I still think acceleration in MWO should remain coupled to engine, but the for Devil's Argument) Acceleration is as much a factor of gearing as it is engine size. You can have a small engined vehicle massively out-accelerate a large engine vehicle, simply because it's geared for power at low speed rather than a high max speed.

Of course, Mech's are mechs, and as I said likening mechs to real world things is fraught with peril because Battlemechs run on Battletech 80's Space Magic, not any kind of real physical laws.

Yup used to love embarrassing 5.0 liters in my 2.2