306 replies to this topic

[1453 R]

The Gargoyle, Linebacker, and Ice Ferret are going to get flat fig-all nada because they're Clan 'Mechs. Never mind that unlike Sphere 'Mechs, they can't back out of gigantic engines that now provide them extremely minimal gains. Clan 'Mechs are never allowed to have any edge beyond the baked-in tech imbalance Piranha can't/won't/hasn't dealt with.

Any 'Mech with a greater-than-average mobility profile, after engines are made pointless, is going to be a Sphere 'Mech.

As for hyperbole? All right - explain to me why you'd ever use a 400-rated engine in literally anything. Or a 375. Or really, as Widowmaker said, anything above a 350 at the absolute top end. At that level each five-point jump in engine rating costs multiple tons, for less than a f***ing kilometer per hour per bump. Those engines are already seen as wildly excessive in the current game, where they also buy increased mobility across the board.

Who would ever use such a thing in a game where going from a 350 to a 400 costs twelve tons for eight klicks?

[Wintersdark]

Bishop Steiner, on 21 February 2017 - 09:46 AM, said:

Internal Heatsinks and Speed say otherwise.

But boy howdy do I hope to see a bunch of 250 equipped Atlases and Kodiaks around.... that would make my life as a Medium Skirmisher SO MUCH MORE AWESOME!!!!!

Indeed. It's a huge buff to smaller mechs, and that's one that's very worth doing. Having SO MANY heavies be so fast and so agile is a huge part of way Heavy mechs are so dominant in the game.

[TercieI]

LOL. Yeah, speed isn't a key factor in mech design. Nope, not at all. LOL.

[Alistair Winter]

1453 R, on 21 February 2017 - 08:14 AM, said:

Why, exactly, are people excited about this?

Whenever we're discussing a basic concept, such as infotech, R&R, skill trees, mobility based on tonnage, or anything else, there's usually a number of ways it can be implemented in the game.

Usually, the number of ways such a concept can be implemented can be expressed like this:

∞

For this reason, people have different ideas of what it will look like in the game. You have assumed that the sweet spot for most mechs will be a 250 rated engine. Yet we have no idea how PGI will implement the benefits of having a big engine. For example, how do they define mobility? Arm movement? Torso movement? Turn rate? Acceleration? Hill climbing? It may not be all of the above. And if it is all of the above, how will they handle quirks to compensate for this? Also, how will they handle the tonnage-based mobility? Will it be a straight curve from 20 tons to 100 tons? Will it even be a predictable curve at all, or will PGI adjust the values for each tonnage individually?

We don't know. Granted, we're all making assumptions, whether those assumptions are positive and negative. I'm assuming that it will be a positive change because I think it's going to be relatively easy to come up with a solution that, broadly speaking, does more good than it does harm.

Also, some of us have suggested this solution for years (not even exaggerating, this is literally what I've been asking for) and it would be silly to say "Nah, they'll never pull it off" as soon as PGI says they're willing to test it.

[Wintersdark]

1453 R, on 21 February 2017 - 09:47 AM, said:

The Gargoyle, Linebacker, and Ice Ferret are going to get flat fig-all nada because they're Clan 'Mechs. Never mind that unlike Sphere 'Mechs, they can't back out of gigantic engines that now provide them extremely minimal gains. Clan 'Mechs are never allowed to have any edge beyond the baked-in tech imbalance Piranha can't/won't/hasn't dealt with.

Any 'Mech with a greater-than-average mobility profile, after engines are made pointless, is going to be a Sphere 'Mech.

As for hyperbole? All right - explain to me why you'd ever use a 400-rated engine in literally anything. Or a 375. Or really, as Widowmaker said, anything above a 350 at the absolute top end. At that level each five-point jump in engine rating costs multiple tons, for less than a f***ing kilometer per hour per bump. Those engines are already seen as wildly excessive in the current game, where they also buy increased mobility across the board.

Who would ever use such a thing in a game where going from a 350 to a 400 costs twelve tons for eight klicks?

Not many mechs at all. Some, though - laser boats in particular. So? Why is this a huge problem, when the same problem exists right now for smaller engines? How is it any different, except that anyone can choose to mount smaller engines and so few mechs can choose to mount large ones?

Again, because you haven't addressed this yet:

Before Clans were added, 300 was the engine of choice for heavies (and generally considered a "quick" engine), with an upper cap of 350 for assaults. This wasn't a problem then. But increased speed alone pushed that up, as IS mechs sacrificed weaponry to match speed with faster Clan mechs. We've already seen how important ground speed is, as a result. You REALLY think everyone's going to drop down to 250 rated engines?

Not gonna happen. Engine sizes WILL drop in regular usage, no doubt. But large engines aren't going to vanish - mostly because there's so many great Clan mechs that will remain great Clan mechs moving at very high speeds; which is exactly why speeds are where they are right now.

[Wintersdark]

Alistair Winter, on 21 February 2017 - 09:54 AM, said:

Also, some of us have suggested this solution for years (not even exaggerating, this is literally what I've been asking for) and it would be silly to say "Nah, they'll never pull it off" as soon as PGI says they're willing to test it.

I've been asking for this since the very start of Open Beta.

I'd have preferred them to be tested separately from the rest of the PTS stuff - much like how some stuff got tested inside the Energy Draw PTS that should have been tested separately - but I'll take what I can get.

[Wintersdark]

1453 R, on 21 February 2017 - 09:33 AM, said:

Save that in the new system, once the fight actually does happen the slow team wins it outright, because the slow team has twice the firepower of the fast team at no cost to defensive ability or agility. A 400-rated, 70kph Kodiak catching out a 250-rated, 43.5 Kodiak just gets outright shut down because he can't outmaneuver the slower Kodiak in an actual fight. He doesn't have any better ability to make use of cover than the slower Kodiak (both have exactly equivalent accel/decel, and thus get in and out of cover at the exact same rate), he has no better ability to twist and spread damage around than the Slodiak (exactly equivalent twist and turn rates). The two have the same potential armor, but the Slodiak has a massive edge in firepower that means that for any given engagement of [X] time, he's capable of dealing significantly more damage at no penalty.

The fast guy picks where the fight starts. The slow guy with double the punching power at no drawback whatsoever decides where the fight ends. And if this becomes the norm than there's not really any such thing as 'fast' or 'slow' teams - just teams that may or may not include a few poor schlubs who didn't get the memo, or a couple of guys who miss the days of mobility being a thing that can be attained in MWO and stick to their faster rides in fond, forlorn memory of the time when their expensive collection of large XL engines, or their hardlocked OmniMech engines, actually allowed them to win fights.

Again, not at no drawback whatsoever. Gotta lose the hyperbole if we're going to have any kind of meaningfull discussion here.

Post-decoupling disadvantages to smaller engines are:

Heat dissipation potential and speed.

If all fights where resolved by two teams setting up and trading in static positions, then you'd have a better point, but that is not the case. Speed still has a SUBSTANTIAL impact on fight resolution, even after a battle is well and truly engaged. Even now, a faster team can recognize that they are in an inferior position and correct that better than a slow team can. The fast team can choose a better engagement location (where they can get more out of less firepower and/or the OpFor cannot fully utilize their firepower), AND said slow team cannot correct their disadvantage, as they'd take more damage relocating.

Fast mechs can roll around a position better, estabilishing a crossfire. Once flanked, LRM's are a thing.

A fast mech can move from cover to new cover, faster. Sure, given constant acceleration values (again, PGI has specifically stated that "agile" mechs will have higher baseline agility stats) mechs will tend to get into and out of cover at roughly the same speed. Do you truly feel remaining trapped in a single location is not a disadvantage? A mech able to move from cover to cover faster can reposition and take less damage, while the slow mech remains locked where it is. When in the initial movement phase, a slow team will find itself locked in position very early on, as moving while under fire when you're rocking 50kph is going to hurt very, very badly.

Mobility wins battles every bit as much as raw firepower does.

In group play, you'll have fast and slow teams. Speed, then, will be extremely valuable in group play, for all the reasons shown above - those teams are only going to feature mixed speed when that's desired.

Quickplay will see mixed teams virtually all the time, of course, so you'll not have fast vs. slow teams (generally speaking). However, even now, speed is extraordinaly important in Quickplay not just because of agility but because being left behind is a death sentence. It's been a fact from the first days of Open Beta to today that speed is key to survivability in Quickplay. Having all the firepower in the world doesn't save you when your team simply moves away and you find yourself outnumbered.

There's a reason NASCAR became such a viable quickplay strategy. It wasn't because the NASCARing mechs where more agile.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Wintersdark, on 21 February 2017 - 10:01 AM, said:

I've been asking for this since the very start of Open Beta.

I'd have preferred them to be tested separately from the rest of the PTS stuff - much like how some stuff got tested inside the Energy Draw PTS that should have been tested separately - but I'll take what I can get.

You and a good chunk of comp players.

[Metus regem]

Wintersdark, on 21 February 2017 - 11:17 AM, said:

-stuff-

Long and short of what Winter typed:

"Fire power wins battles, mobility wins wars."

This is a very true thing, as ever since WWI, combat has become more and more about mobility. To write off ground speed, is to go back to trench warfare thinking. Trench warfare and defensive emplacements are good, until the enemy gets behind you, then your ****ed.

[Bluttrunken]

1453 R, on 21 February 2017 - 08:14 AM, said:

Why, exactly, are people excited about this?

You don't like the change and you open a thread throwing around assumptions as if they were facts.

Wait for a PTS update and check it there then come back here with something to back up your claims.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

I would be flabbergasted if PGI decoupled speed from engine size, I can see torso twist, turn speed, acceleration/deceleration, arm speed, and basically anything that isn't raw velocity being decoupled however and tied to the mech itself. I can also see a small fraction of engine rating still impacting acceleration/deceleration as engine power for accelerating and engine breaking being a thing, but, without knowing the details we are guessing.

I really would like to test this separately from skills that are also impacting these aspects but, I think just going into private lobbies on the PTS and toggling off skills will be more than enough to for this. I am just more miffed that I know PGI will run an event at the same time as the PTS so like 20 people will hop on the PTS and then PGI wonders why nobody hops on the PTS when they are handing out items worth real money on the live server.

Edited by Moonlight Grimoire, 21 February 2017 - 11:45 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

1453 R, on 21 February 2017 - 09:33 AM, said:

Save that in the new system, once the fight actually does happen the slow team wins it outright, because the slow team has twice the firepower of the fast team at no cost to defensive ability or agility.

The fast guy picks where the fight starts. The slow guy with double the punching power at no drawback whatsoever decides where the fight ends. And if this becomes the norm than there's not really any such thing as 'fast' or 'slow' teams - just teams that may or may not include a few poor schlubs who didn't get the memo...

Does that mean Urbies with STD60s are going to become the new meta, because that I want to see...

[Wintersdark]

Moonlight Grimoire, on 21 February 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

I would be flabbergasted if PGI decoupled speed from engine size, I can see torso twist, turn speed, acceleration/deceleration, arm speed, and basically anything that isn't raw velocity being decoupled however and tied to the mech itself. I can also see a small fraction of engine rating still impacting acceleration/deceleration as engine power for accelerating and engine breaking being a thing, but, without knowing the details we are guessing.

I really would like to test this separately from skills that are also impacting these aspects but, I think just going into private lobbies on the PTS and toggling off skills will be more than enough to for this. I am just more miffed that I know PGI will run an event at the same time as the PTS so like 20 people will hop on the PTS and then PGI wonders why nobody hops on the PTS when they are handing out items worth real money on the live server.

There's no chance speed will be decoupled from engine size; that would leave engine size as literally irrelevant aside from massive tonnage for some extra heat sink slots.

I don't know how acceleration is calculated today, nor if it will be decoupled completely or not. I'm *assuming* it would be decoupled, but acceleration in particular may well not be. Really depends on how acceleration is calculated and PGI's goals. I'd *prefer* it not be decoupled, as one would assume acceleration in particular is strongly related to the engine itself, but whether it is or not doesn't impact my feelings on the overall thing.

[1453 R]

Metus regem, on 21 February 2017 - 11:27 AM, said:

Long and short of what Winter typed:

"Fire power wins battles, mobility wins wars."

This is a very true thing, as ever since WWI, combat has become more and more about mobility. To write off ground speed, is to go back to trench warfare thinking. Trench warfare and defensive emplacements are good, until the enemy gets behind you, then your ****ed.

We're not fighting wars. We're fighting battles. Critters getting behind you are significantly less of a threat because unlike what everyone else seems to think, the mediums and lights are losing as much if not more of their mobility and agility in this exchange. They're as "guilty" of the vicious, wicked sinful sin of Installing Bigger Engines as heavies and assaults, and often do so to a greater extent since it's both easier and more critical for them. Restricting all medium 'Mechs in the game to stock Blackjack movement profile is a massive favor for assault guys looking to avoid getting flanked, ne?

If you think you'll be able to just nimbly and agilely outmaneuver larger 'Mechs with your mediums in an environment where engines buy you diddly, recheck your thought processes.

Wintersdark, on 21 February 2017 - 11:17 AM, said:

Again, not at no drawback whatsoever. Gotta lose the hyperbole if we're going to have any kind of meaningfull discussion here.

Post-decoupling disadvantages to smaller engines are:

Heat dissipation potential and speed.

Whereas the post-decoupling disadvantages to larger engines are:

Literally everything else.

Less firepower. Less armor. Less ammunition. Heat dissipation - since the larger engine doesn't actually offer increased dissipation, merely increased potential dissipation that comes at a tonnage premium, which you're already paying for the larger engine in the first place. So the increased cooling potential of the larger engine comes at the cost of decreased cooling potential of a heavier engine.

Weight is a fixed thing per 'Mech. Anything you spend on engine, you can't spend on (Not-Engine). Reducing what engine weight buys you by 'bout two thirds of what engine weight currently buys you (Speed and a handful of heat sinks vs. Speed, accel, decel, turnspeed, twist speed, handful of heat sinks) makes post-decoupling Engine investment objectively drastically inferior to pre-decoupling Engine investment.

On top of the stated issue of there being no way to sacrifice elsewhere to get any of that mobility back. You want to unlock it from engines? Fine. PUT IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!! Let me fiddle with my movement systems! Gimme myomer or actuator adjustments! Give me something that lets me rejigger my mediums to act like F***ING MEDIUMS again instead of kneecapped heavies, even if I have to give up tonnage or space or whatever for it!

Wintersdark, on 21 February 2017 - 11:17 AM, said:

If all fights where resolved by two teams setting up and trading in static positions, then you'd have a better point, but that is not the case. Speed still has a SUBSTANTIAL impact on fight resolution, even after a battle is well and truly engaged. Even now, a faster team can recognize that they are in an inferior position and correct that better than a slow team can. The fast team can choose a better engagement location (where they can get more out of less firepower and/or the OpFor cannot fully utilize their firepower), AND said slow team cannot correct their disadvantage, as they'd take more damage relocating.

Fast mechs can roll around a position better, estabilishing a crossfire. Once flanked, LRM's are a thing.

A fast mech can move from cover to new cover, faster. Sure, given constant acceleration values (again, PGI has specifically stated that "agile" mechs will have higher baseline agility stats) mechs will tend to get into and out of cover at roughly the same speed. Do you truly feel remaining trapped in a single location is not a disadvantage? A mech able to move from cover to cover faster can reposition and take less damage, while the slow mech remains locked where it is. When in the initial movement phase, a slow team will find itself locked in position very early on, as moving while under fire when you're rocking 50kph is going to hurt very, very badly.

Mobility wins battles every bit as much as raw firepower does.

Except we will have significantly less mobility. Everyone seems to be happy about that because they assume, like Metus does, that mediums and lights are somehow immune to the effects of losing the vast majority of their movement profiles when it's all sliced away from the engines.

Spoilers: they aren't. Your Centurions are going to be just as infuriating sluggish and half-crippled as your Fatlasses or Fattlemasters are. Everything is losing the lion's share of their agility, not just Big Things. As such, Big Things that can carry forty tons of murder and just erase whatever lands in front of them with a single blast get to worry significantly less about being trapped in a bad position or dicey cover, or being outmaneuvered or overrun by Fast Things, because the Fast Things will take ten seconds to get themselves cranked around 180 the same as the Big Things and won't be able to fancy-dance their way in and out of sightlines or cover to avoid forty-ton Murder Button alphas from Big Things.

Why the fisking frogfondling fizzbears would a Dire Whale be scared of a Phoenix Hawk when the Phoenix Hawk is not any realistically more agile or maneuverable than the Whale is, outside of raw straight-line drag race footspeed? That footspeed isn't going to let the Phoenix Hawk dodge a Giga Drilling no matter how much of it the Pixhawk has.

Wintersdark, on 21 February 2017 - 11:17 AM, said:

In group play, you'll have fast and slow teams. Speed, then, will be extremely valuable in group play, for all the reasons shown above - those teams are only going to feature mixed speed when that's desired.

Quickplay will see mixed teams virtually all the time, of course, so you'll not have fast vs. slow teams (generally speaking). However, even now, speed is extraordinaly important in Quickplay not just because of agility but because being left behind is a death sentence. It's been a fact from the first days of Open Beta to today that speed is key to survivability in Quickplay. Having all the firepower in the world doesn't save you when your team simply moves away and you find yourself outnumbered.

There's a reason NASCAR became such a viable quickplay strategy. It wasn't because the NASCARing mechs where more agile.

And here I thought everybody was screaming about how NASCAR was a horrible way to play MWO.

Winter, man...when this hits, my beloved Viper is going to be as ham-hocked and stumble-footed as a stock f***ing Whitworthless, if stock f***ing Whitworthlesses existed in MWO. That is f***ing donkey balls and I refuse to stand for it. 'Mechs that invest a great deal of tonnage into mobility systems - and since 'mobility system' and 'engine' are synonymous in this game, that's what we have to invest in - deserve to be able to outmaneuver 'Mechs that make no such investment. Especially when that investment is HARDLOCKED and cannot be un-invested!

Why is nobody else willing to let 'Mechs with less guns and more move actually have more f***ing move?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 21 February 2017 - 12:00 PM, said:

Winter, man...when this hits, my beloved Viper is going to be as ham-hocked and stumble-footed as a stock f***ing Whitworthless, if stock f***ing Whitworthlesses existed in MWO. That is f***ing donkey balls and I refuse to stand for it.

Again, nothing but a giant ball of worthless assumptions based on some weird fear that PGI is somehow going to make Vipers feel like an assault. I love the Viper and Cicada to pieces and I'm not even worried about that ever happening, so the question is why are you?

So seriously, why do you devolve into hyperbolic nonsense in EVERY argument, especially to such the extreme you are doing right now.........

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 February 2017 - 12:08 PM.

[Deathlike]

Slow Fatlases and Dire Wolves are easy targets to shoot at (though the latter can fight back more effectively than the former).

The difference between a STD 250 and a STD 255 is usually just a small detail. However, if you're a Medium (let alone a light), trying to decide between an XL280 and XL300 is pretty significant in the grand scheme of things. A difference of ~10kph (regardless of speed tweak) is a significant enough mobility difference to take notice (some could argue the Stormcrow has too big an engine, but then again, it's still strong for the mobility it provides). Even the Night Gyr has an obvious major differentiation than the Timberwolf, and their differences are literally dependent on what role is required of them (specifically speed/agility). Remember... these are locked... when they are unlocked like the IICs, then the value becomes more obvious.

It's also why the HBK-IIC (at least the PPC designs on the A) literally is going to be more agile (in general) than the non-IICs they are based off of (like Orions and their IIC counterparts).

Edited by Deathlike, 21 February 2017 - 12:08 PM.

[Pjwned]

Alright, have fun with your slower mechs with less space available due to extra heatsinks outside of the engine rather than inside.

Maybe people will consider taking a STD engine ever too, I mean wow wouldn't that really be something.

[Deathlike]

Pjwned, on 21 February 2017 - 12:08 PM, said:

Alright, have fun with your slower mechs with less space available due to extra heatsinks outside of the engine rather than inside.

Maybe people will consider taking a STD engine ever too, I mean wow wouldn't that really be something.

People actually increase the engine size just to fit the extra DHS due to crit limits. This most commonly happens with IS mechs, but it isn't strictly limited to that.

It's actually why people aim @ the 25-base rated engine first before tweaking upwards or downwards based on tonnage/crit availability.

[SuomiWarder]

I've never really felt that one should be able to run around a standing assault faster than they could turn in place anyway, so I'm not particularly concerned.

And yes, lights are in my 90+ mechs and in fact I like mediums. So I know that I am going against my own advantages here.

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 21 February 2017 - 12:12 PM, said:

People actually increase the engine size just to fit the extra DHS due to crit limits. This most commonly happens with IS mechs, but it isn't strictly limited to that.

It's actually why people aim @ the 25-base rated engine first before tweaking upwards or downwards based on tonnage/crit availability.

Exactly. Particularly for hot mechs (read: energy based), a larger engine is extremely valuable.

Despite:

Quote

Less firepower. Less armor. Less ammunition. Heat dissipation - since the larger engine doesn't actually offer increased dissipation, merely increased potential dissipation that comes at a tonnage premium, which you're already paying for the larger engine in the first place. So the increased cooling potential of the larger engine comes at the cost of decreased cooling potential of a heavier engine.

In practice, mechs that needs the increased dissipation are ones that run lighter loadouts: Specifically, energy boats. These mechs are mounting multiple comparably light weight weapons which require lots of DHS.

I'll admit, back when the initial push to larger engines happened, I argued this with you(Deathlike) - that the added weight wouldn't be worth the slots - and I was totally wrong. Practice and some time in the mechlab proved it hands down.

Hot weapons are, generally speaking, lighter and physically smaller. These mechs have tonnage to spare, and DHS (particularly IS side) are extremely light per slot used.

Even without the agility, I wouldn't consider running an energy boat with a smaller engine.

But I *WOULD* consider running a ballistic mech with a smaller engine which I won't do now, because the loss of agility is too severe. I'm very happy to see that as an option.

So, right there, where ever the agility baseline is, there's reason to use larger vs. smaller engines in addition to the (very important) ground speed.


Editted to clarify the "you" above.

Edited by Wintersdark, 21 February 2017 - 12:21 PM.