70 replies to this topic

[Alexander of Macedon]

Problem with CTFs ain't the torso sizes anyways, it's the waist-height ballistics. You can spread damage pretty effectively if you twist, but those mounts (especially on the Ilya) mean that you're either running PPCs in the shoulders or you need to step completely out of cover to shoot.

[Tarogato]

Alexander of Macedon, on 05 May 2017 - 05:34 PM, said:

Problem with CTFs ain't the torso sizes anyways, it's the waist-height ballistics. You can spread damage pretty effectively if you twist, but those mounts (especially on the Ilya) mean that you're either running PPCs in the shoulders or you need to step completely out of cover to shoot.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest maybe that the waist-height hardpoints isn't necessarily what kills it. With most loadouts, the peek profiles of each of these two mechs is very similar, if not slightly better for the Cataphract:




Symmetrical Timber builds (like laservomit) were all the rage for the longest time before PPFLD came into the meta, and those have an undeniably worse peek profile than most CTF builds. Yet they were still loads better than the best CTFs.

[Koniving]

Tarogato, on 05 May 2017 - 05:58 PM, said:

Somebody's getting it!

"Low slung is bad." There's mechs far worse and yet are near the top of the meta. "Tiny side torsos is good." The tankiest mechs beg to differ on BOTH sides, instant hits in the community have had obnoxiously large side torsos but interlaced hitboxes., not clear-cut Left/Center/Right vertical lines.




With LFE, we'll see "Clan XL" on the IS, and the Cataphract is still going to be terrible. We could double its quirks and it would still be terrible (less than 15 ST armor vs 109 CT armor, both are destroyed at the same time by mechs aiming for the ST!).

And if small STs and a big CT were good, the Kintaro would have had the reputation of the best mech in the game the instant it came out.

(Wait, isn't that the Cataphract hitbox!? It is!)

NGNG: "Tired of stupid hitboxes."
Goes out of its way to point out how absurdly stupid the tiny ST concept is... and it even mentioned (by a different term), armor sharing and how the hitboxes just can't do it!
Intelligent Hitboxes
CarrionCrows makes several hitbox pitches, demonstrating that giant CTs and tiny STs are absolutely terrible (even in a pre-Clan era) because the CTs make the mechs easy as hell to kill regardless of engine. It even goes through many iterations of how to bleed over STs to better improve armor sharing so that mechs have a complete pool of all three torsos instead of just one torso (my god, the armor sharing concept again!)

Though CarrionCrows didn't realize it at the time, he future-proofed his hitbox designs for XL, STD, and LFE engines (and now that I look at it came up with something both similar to one of my two concepts and to PGI's final product, years before either). I quote the following:

Quote

Straight on of course the Jenner ct is at it's biggest, but this at least allows Jenner pilots to torso twist to start soaking damage in other locations.

So by this point probably a lot of people may not like this idea because they feel it will ruin a lot of their builds that rely upon XL engines.

Yes and No, The XL engine has always been a risk. A valid one because you save lots and lots tonnage by using it, but also and more to the point the Standard Engine will be a Valid choice as well.

The Combination of intelligent hitboxes and a Standard engine even a jenner could absorb an impressive amount of damage before finally going down. (Not HSR ghost damage either)

-----
The Cataphract needs a change, it needs better hitboxes. It needs intelligent hit boxes. And we need them now.

From Carrion Crow's intelligent hitboxes...


Note that the CT has a sort of bell shape where it's wider toward the middle and narrower toward the top (a rather simplified interlace of the hitboxes), which in turn is like an upside down version of the Timber Wolf hitbox (where it's wider at the top and narrow at the bottom). It's not dramatic, but it significantly reduces the CT's size while barely increasing the ST size, and the gap between the hitboxes is reduced to the point where Armor Sharing could occur through torso twisting, allowing you to spread damage across 3 sections rather than simply suffering as enemies easily pick out a single section and annihilate you.

Edited by Koniving, 05 May 2017 - 06:42 PM.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Tarogato, on 05 May 2017 - 05:58 PM, said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest maybe that the waist-height hardpoints isn't necessarily what kills it. With most loadouts, the peek profiles of each of these two mechs is very similar, if not slightly better for the Cataphract:




Symmetrical Timber builds (like laservomit) were all the rage for the longest time before PPFLD came into the meta, and those have an undeniably worse peek profile than most CTF builds. Yet they were still loads better than the best CTFs.

TBR arms aren't carrying anything beyond a cMLas or two in the arms unless you're running one with a cGauss. Your cLPLas/cERPPC are either just below the cockpit or on the excellent high TBR-A LT. Also, way to ignore the fact that the IM has one of its three ballistics in the even worse LA. If you're running the IM with two ballistics, you might as well run a 0XP instead, this ain't dual gauss meta.

It's also a lot less punishing for the TBR because the usual oversized cXL engine lets it poke and move quickly. A CTF isn't going over low-70s in speed unless you're using a massively oversized engine. In the case of the IM specifically a TBR, whether laservomit or PPFLD, is more forgiving-yes, in part because of the better hitbox mesh, but also because it spends less time getting in and out of cover and doesn't have to practically facestare to keep the damage going.

I suppose you're also going to say that the Enforcer 4R isn't held back because four of its five energy hardpoints are at waist level? That it's just a coincidence that pretty much every decent and in-meta IS 'mech has high shoulder mounts, and that the same has been true basically any point in time where poptarting wasn't in season? That's definitely nothing to do with why Battlemasters are the go-to for IS in FW?

IS 'mechs are slower and have a choice between being even slower or dying as soon as a ST pops. That's why hardpoint positioning is even more vital for them than in general. CTFs, as much as I love them, are **** right now in large part because their hardpoints are almost universally low and are spread across their entire barn-sized front. The only blessing they have is MWO's ludicrous perfect convergence, otherwise they'd never hit anything with more than or two weapons at a time.

You can see that particularly well when you get ignored, 800+ damage games are easy as pie. They have tremendous damage potential, but their need to expose everything to fire, mediocre speed, and blocky hitboxes mean that if they get shot at they fall apart. Can tank for ages with proper twisting (and the defense tree is going to only make that better, to the order of them having nearly as much armor as a 100-tonner), but you're not getting much damage out that way, and if you're running XL it's only a matter of time.

It's the same unfortunate truth for almost every IS 'mech. The good ones have high hardpoints and other beneficial advantages. The good non-meta ones generally have high hardpoints or great quirks to make up for their ****** geometry. The bad ones have ****** geometry and/or hardpoints with nothing making up for it.

I'm not denying that less clearly defined hitboxes on torsoes would help. It would. But it's a pittance compared to the other disadvantages a lot of old, ****** IS chassis have going on. Doesn't much matter if a 'mech tanks better if it still has to give the enemy team free shots anywhere they like to fire back (or time to burn and duck into cover before it can return fire), if it loses 75% of its weapons when an arm or ST goes, &c.

[Alex Morgaine]

Any more CTF torso death tests?

[Tarogato]

Alexander of Macedon, on 05 May 2017 - 07:51 PM, said:

I suppose you're also going to say that the Enforcer 4R isn't held back because four of its five energy hardpoints are at waist level?

Yes, of course I am. Because the ENF-4R is a monster left peeking mech. It doesn't expose very much to deliver all of its firepower, and it's arm is held tight and compact to its body so it doesn't fall off as quickly as say the arm of a WVR-6K or DRG-1N.




There's a reason why this was the best trading medium mech in the game before the HBK-IIC-A was introduced. It saw a lot of competitive play, and it still is used in competitive play today because it holds up.

Quote

TBR arms aren't carrying anything beyond a cMLas or two in the arms unless you're running one with a cGauss. Your cLPLas/cERPPC are either just below the cockpit or on the excellent high TBR-A LT. Also, way to ignore the fact that the IM has one of its three ballistics in the even worse LA. If you're running the IM with two ballistics, you might as well run a 0XP instead, this ain't dual gauss meta.

The Timber almost always has 20% or more of its firepower in an arm or both, so yes you need to expose. You running laservomit? Then you probably have 4 mediums in arms (at least 46% of your alpha). I play mine as a right peek at the moment, so it actually has 30% of its guns in the right arm. Running dakka? You'll have one of them in the right arm. Running gauss in any extent? It's going to be in the right arm. Running 3LPL or 4ERLL? You've probably got one of them in an arm. When a Timber exposes, it almost invariably exposes everything, at least on the right side. Sure, the left arm is usually empty, but the same is true for the Cataphract.

GaussPPC? Cataphract has nothing in left arm. UAC5+PPC? Nothing in left arm. Dual gauss? (more common than you think, actually) Nothing. Gauss ERLL? Nothing. AC20+LPL? Nope. What builds do have something in the left arm? The brawler builds like AC20+ML, or LB30, which don't care about peek profile. But also anything on the 4X (which is hampered more by speed and fragility than low mounts), and most builds on the Ilya like triple UAC5 (but really that's a DPS mech, not a peeking mech).

The fact that the Cataphract is weak has less to do with its low mounted weapons. The bigger problem is that it is a wide flat barn door that can't spread damage. If you want to talk about mechs with low mounts as their primary issue, look to the Black Knight, the ENF-5P, the Vindicators, and King Crab.

Quote

It's also a lot less punishing for the TBR because the usual oversized cXL engine lets it poke and move quickly. A CTF isn't going over low-70s in speed unless you're using a massively oversized engine. In the case of the IM specifically a TBR, whether laservomit or PPFLD, is more forgiving-yes, in part because of the better hitbox mesh, but also because it spends less time getting in and out of cover and doesn't have to practically facestare to keep the damage going.

Thank you for supporting my point - you're right. The TBR has better geo for rolling damge, and the CTF also goes slower. Bigger issue than the low mounts, for sure.

To be clear - are the low mounts a problem for the CTF? Yes of course they are, I absolutely agree. But can we fix them? No, not really. The low mounts are kind of a defining feature of the mech, you can't really change that, just like the protruding CTs on the Viper, Jenner, and Dragon. But the CTF being a flat wide barn door isn't as much a defining feature, as the source material suggests it could be thinner, and less flat. So why not go that route? Make it slimmer, it give it a more pronounced/rounded CT/cockpit area, so that it can actually roll damage and shield itself a little bit. Then see where it's at, especially after 3060 tech, and quirk it from there.

[Ultimax]

Tarogato, on 05 May 2017 - 05:58 PM, said:

Symmetrical Timber builds (like laservomit) were all the rage for the longest time before PPFLD came into the meta, and those have an undeniably worse peek profile than most CTF builds. Yet they were still loads better than the best CTFs.

Yes that's because the TBR LaserVomit at the height of it's meta could out-trade nearly every other non-TBR heavy, and many IS assaults - the few mechs it couldn't out-trade it could massively out maneuver (DWF, WHK).

"The best defense is a good offense" applies here. Yes the arms are a bit low, it also would shear your armor off while you tried to trade against it in something weaker.


When BKs got TankyBuffs & Fire power buffs, it quickly replaced the TBR for laser vomit having a similar alpha with a shorter range and much lower FaceTime - but massively superior tanking ability. This was the beginning of the end for TBR laser vomit (and clans also saw more nerfs here)


BK supplanted the TBR because it was a slim, fast, mech with tremendous firepower and buffs that made it's tanky shap even tankier - something the CTF will never be no matter how much they change it's STs.

Edited by Ultimax, 06 May 2017 - 05:51 AM.

[Koniving]

Alex Morgaine, on 05 May 2017 - 09:30 PM, said:

Any more CTF torso death tests?

I got really frustrated, because I kept getting simultaineous CT/ST losses with 15 armor on the STs and 109 armor on the CT. And each match had very poor combat results regardless of trying hard or not.

It doesn't matter what I put into my Cataphracts or which ones I use, XL or standard engine, fast or slow... If I run that armor configuration, I die from CT/ST loss simultaineously, where if I put more armor on the ST, it's exclusively by CT whether I claim I have an XL or an STD engine.


But on a side note, this mech is of the same tonnage, IS LARGER, does not have any armor buffs and yet for some reason it doesn't die anywhere near as quick despite only having a basic armor config and without torso twisting or any real attempts at trying to survive beyond shoot enemy and moving to get a better shot at said enemy... I'm getting these results without actually trying.

As you can see my loadout is crap, especially since I barely get to use my LRMs since I actually have been afk half of each match (because waiting for the match is kinda dull and forum browsing). Some of them I've managed to clutch my way in and save the day, some I just end up suffering terrible deaths. But I typically end up like these.



No twisting or anything. I'm slower than dogshit so mechs encircle me. Engines are still coupled so even if I wanted to my torso twisting ability is too damn slow to matter so I don't bother. I just try to keep the enemy in my crosshairs and attack. And yet I'm taking good abuse, losing arms despite these players being decent shots, and it's just amazing. Using an Archer, it just feels like a good game...

....and this is all I can think of...

Not-tiny ST hitboxes.
Close together hitboxes allow for easy damage spreading aka armor sharing...

Basically another embodiment of everything I've been saying that is great for mechs to live against enemy fire that foolish people are saying to be bad for mechs.


Just to make sure readers can see how awful this hitbox design is.

Edited by Koniving, 07 May 2017 - 03:38 PM.

[B0oN]

... all I see is people asking for more EZ mode buttons .
NOT every mech is EQUAL .

sigh

[Koniving]

The Shortbus, on 07 May 2017 - 03:41 PM, said:

... all I see is people asking for more EZ mode buttons .
NOT every mech is EQUAL .

sigh

Shortbus, I'm asking for a mech that has a good set of hitboxes for a tenable, viable mech that doesn't require 52 points of armor buffing because we wouldn't need it if they weren't lazy as **** about not updating a hitbox made in 2012.

No one's asking for an easy button. Hell I want the quirks gone, the mech doesn't need quirks or easy buttons, it needs a god damn hitbox update, we're not in the age of bad hit detection anymore, the giant CT that is as Wider than an Awesome's CT (I'm serious put their hitboxes overtop of each other) needs to go in favor of larger STs to reduce the CT (and yes that might make it easier to kill via ST, but that's fine if I can have a chance to spread the damage. That's just impossible to do with a CT that's wider than two torso reticules at 600 meters!)

Edited by Koniving, 07 May 2017 - 03:52 PM.

[oldradagast]

The Shortbus, on 07 May 2017 - 03:41 PM, said:

... all I see is people asking for more EZ mode buttons .
NOT every mech is EQUAL .

sigh

So, why are the crap mechs in the game then? Just to be false choices for new players? Or, maybe to act as "stoopid potatoes" for veterans to laugh at since they are smart enough not to drive a Cataphract in the game's current state?

Come on, man - you can do better than that.

Edited by oldradagast, 07 May 2017 - 04:05 PM.