LocationSomewhere where you'll probably never go to
Posted 09 July 2017 - 12:24 PM
W E N D I G O, on 09 July 2017 - 06:37 AM, said:
Don't get why there is a even discussion about the ff-indicator of a stealthed 'Mech on your own team. As was already said, observed ingame and done it only is a drawback for people who use it, for people who have teammates who use it and for even for people who don't have teammates who us it - because a stealthed 'Mech could be one of their team. There is not one advantage I could think of which keeping this as it was would add to the viability of this tech.
Thing I actually find worth discussing if really EVERY single 'Mech should have access to it. MASC is limited by lore, ECM is limited lore, Omnimech upgrades are limited by lore - why the heck will I have to potentially deal with 12 man drops of units in FP which are all stealthed?
Why?
PS: Well, I know why, PGI didn't think going Gauss+stealth in numbers of twelve could be a thing...
Probably expecting more changes like 5 years later.... after it gets released.
I think what Wendi was trying to point out is that is simply was not even an option for *every* ecm mech, only a select few like the Assassin if I'm not mistaken and therefore would be even more limited in usage and availability.
If that's the case, the discussion of availability of tech would be somewhat moot in the context of MWO or any BT/MW title that doesn't adhere to concept of scarcity.
Example: Has there ever been a battle in a BT campaign, book, or other lore authorized resource that would allow for the possibility to have half your allotment of mechs be Atlases? In Faction Play, this is not only feasible, its a reality when you have an IS 12-man... You can each drop 2 100 tonners and have 65 tons left for 2 other mechs. If I'm not mistaken that scenario would be incredibly unrealistic due to the scarcity of assaults, let alone Atlases... In the upcoming Fecom Civil War, I bet you we'll have 48-Atlas drops (24 on each side) being even less likely to have that many in a battle lore-wise.
My impression is that the available mech "population" was heaviest in the 40-65 ton range, these being the workhorses of the company.
I'll concede that I can only go off of TRO flavor text for my observations. I know several mech chassis are mentioned have dwindled down to a few hundred by 3025...
TL;DR,
If I read your point correctly, the general application of stealth armor to all ecm may be incorrect, but MW titles have a habit of not caring about Lore-based "realities" if it gets in the way of tech hype...
When you sad SNUB-PPC, I yeald Energy SHOOTGUN, close range, spread...
Why did you made it?
Sadly it's just a short range PPC.
No shotgun mechanic. No spread.
Nice thing is no ******** minimum range to do damage (PGI, it is a MINIMUM RANGE TO AVOID AN ACCURACY PENALTY!!! NOT a "Oops no damage range.")
Fox the Apprentice, on 09 July 2017 - 05:12 AM, said:
There was a crazy amount of team killing going on, even when you announced to your team that it was you. I was killed once right out of spawn by an idiot who was SOO CONFUSED as to how he killed a teammate...
Also, it has a very high cost to equip! It does not need any less capability.
Yeah, it's of minimal use right now, it doesn't need huge extra penalties.
This is not a persistent world rpg, it's an arena battle game. You can't force people to "deepen up" gameplay, they just won't. You can't force people to use comms, and arguing "you wouldn't have been teamkills if you just responded" is frankly stupid. Maybe they have audio off, just didn't hear you, or simply don't understand, or any number of other reasons.
Stuff just doesn't work that way.
If friendly IFF is disabled, it' will (and did, even on the 4v4 pts) lead to lots of friendly fire teamkills. That penalizes the players who DIDNT choose to bring stealth armor.
That whole "imposter" play sounds awesome in theory, but in random solo queue play it's incredibly stupid.
Like it or not, people need to consider what this game is, and how people actually react in random pickup play.
Just imagine in 12v12, when you don't even drop close together so you may not even get an opportunity to see your allies before you engage. It'd be a freaking mess.
What's funny is it (Stealth Armor) is basically doing the same thing MWO's version of ECM does but at a much higher cost.
When in reality, Stealth Armor does what MWO's ECM does at the higher cost...but actual ECM alone doesn't do a fraction of the stuff it does in MWO... and the things it does actually do would have been incredibly useful in "Info warfare". (such as producing fake targets and misleading 'where' they are on the minimap versus their actual location, without actually interfering with lock on capability).
considering how often i see team mates accidently shoot each other all ready, i think it would be pretty terrible to remove friendly IFF. a fair percentage of players cant really aim or simply refuse to use comms, rendering most of your points in regards to how to minimise team damage moot, if players all ready shoot each other with little regard, stealth armor will naturally exacerbate the problem. player skill wont simply increase because of 'deeper' gameplay, look at all other attempts to 'deepen' gameplay, from various info war changes to incursion, none of it matters ultimately because people just want to shoot mechs.
What is more realistic based on the average play you see, that players will stop, use text or comms and ask 'are you on my team?' or that players will simply shoot at what they see to be an enemy with ecm?
Obviously calling in chat "I'm the pink Raven, i'm on your side, don't shoot me!" isn't enough in todays gamer generation...
Anyway, considering ECM alone already does a lot more than ECM/Stealth combined do in TT, i'm not sure why they chose to implement it in the first place.
Obviously calling in chat "I'm the pink Raven, i'm on your side, don't shoot me!" isn't enough in todays gamer generation...
It might be... if it's done at the beginning of the match, but in the heat of battle? I doubt you'll remember to say it and I doubt they'll be able to react effectively.
Same reason the argument of "Oh I'll remember to turn off my ECM before engaging in a brawl so my teammates won't shoot me." is unlikely to catch on...
Nice thing is no ******** minimum range to do damage (PGI, it is a MINIMUM RANGE TO AVOID AN ACCURACY PENALTY!!! NOT a "Oops no damage range.")
if i remember the lore correctly the minimum range on a ppc is to prevent damage on your own mech and does not fire if a mechwarrior pulls the trigger on less than 90m distance, which makes sense if you think about what a ppc really is and what its shooting with. also, the minimum distance made it differently than the other energy weapons and made it counterable in a brawl. why the ER PPC has no mimimum range i will never understand, but since i am never using them i dont care either.
cant wait for the snub nose tho, want it on my spider
as for the stealth armor: communication is key, allways was. i got shot a few times by my own team when i was in a light and they did not see the blue reticle over my head. happens. but stealth armor could work as intended if you react accordingly.
if i remember the lore correctly the minimum range on a ppc is to prevent damage on your own mech and does not fire if a mechwarrior pulls the trigger on less than 90m distance, which makes sense if you think about what a ppc really is and what its shooting with. also, the minimum distance made it differently than the other energy weapons and made it counterable in a brawl. why the ER PPC has no mimimum range i will never understand, but since i am never using them i dont care either.
In the TT game, it just made the weapon less accurate within 90 meters.
There was however, optional rules to exchange the accuracy penalty for damage to the PPC when it fired at that range, as happened in the lore.
1) If I were one of the stealth mechs, I would turn off stealth to a) reduce my generated heat during the brawl and let my friendlies know who to shoot. I see no problem here.
3) This is what some of us want, more flavor to the game. Use comms with the "friendly" to make him identify himself. If he shoots you, shoot back and let everyone know that stealth chassis is the enemy. If he doesn't respond, shoot him; he should have identified himself or, al least, press the "Help" button to show his coordinates.
How does Lore implement this? If not stated in Lore, use our own technology to define it. Please refer to link https://aviation.sta...ach-other/14376 for a quick read on how comms during Stealth works. It seems they have a predefined flight path and no comms is active during the mission.
o7
Edit: typo
Lots of words but very little justification - how will it "improve flavour" for the person getting shot or the one team killing as you're basically tipping the game massively in the other teams favour? That's even before we get to the massive flaw in your argument - language barriers....
Example: Has there ever been a battle in a BT campaign, book, or other lore authorized resource that would allow for the possibility to have half your allotment of mechs be Atlases?
Well, probably every random scenario where the Random 'Mech Assign Table for the Lyran Commonwealth/Lyran Alliance is involved.
if i remember the lore correctly the minimum range on a ppc is to prevent damage on your own mech and does not fire if a mechwarrior pulls the trigger on less than 90m distance, which makes sense if you think about what a ppc really is and what its shooting with. also, the minimum distance made it differently than the other energy weapons and made it counterable in a brawl. why the ER PPC has no mimimum range i will never understand, but since i am never using them i dont care either.
cant wait for the snub nose tho, want it on my spider
as for the stealth armor: communication is key, allways was. i got shot a few times by my own team when i was in a light and they did not see the blue reticle over my head. happens. but stealth armor could work as intended if you react accordingly.
The 1980s lore is..
Edit: Quick side note (the megajoules is quickly corrected later to be megawatts and the number from "5" to 50, due to a typo. Additional side note: Large Lasers hit the 5 megawatt range, meaning a PPC delivers 10 times the power of a large laser per shot... as such large lasers are often depicted as much weaker than PPCs within the lore, requiring several shots to get an amount of damage that rivals the PPC. Suddenly PPCs sound powerful and deadly, worthy of the tonnage and weight versus a multi-shot large laser delivering 8 damage for 8 heat over several shots, or the large pulse 'laser machine gun' delivering dozens to hundreds of shots to deliver 9 damage for 10 heat.)
Basically, "It's god damn heavy and hard to move it quickly." (In comparison, lasers are not 'completely' where their crits are, with much of the weight running in tubes, etc. going to the reactor/engine and in heat pumps connecting to the various heatsinks. This is why ballistics also have minimum accurate ranges, 'they are heavy'.)
(LRM minimum range lore is basically: We fire up and over things, not directly at things, as such our missiles will most likely fly over the target instead of hitting it.)
In both cases: No zero damage range.
That lore changed as new people joined the team between second and third editions, and the addition of Clan tech. "ER PPC" and AC/20 made the whole thing not make any sense. AC/20 technically was easy; when you're firing up to 100 shots, one or two misses from having to swing the weapon around doesn't really matter. The rule was generally made for arm-mounted weapons anyway as such torso mounted weapons like the AC/20 were meant to be exceptions. But explaining the ER PPC was about impossible...
Thus:
1990's+ lore: It has a field inhibitor to prevent explosions within the highly volatile weapon, blah blah, degrading the power up sequence blah.
In the novel Warrior: En Garde by Stackpole rests the only instance where the PPC field inhibitor "degrades the performance of a PPC into little more than a light show." This is probably the version you're thinking of.
Beyond this, "degrades the performance" is actually more reminiscent in that it doesn't 'fire' as soon as you pull the trigger but (depending on the brand) may take up to 2 seconds to fire (Lord's Light mounted on Panthers is the specific model that takes 2 seconds to charge up before firing). As such when a target is up close, the time between pulling the trigger and the time it actually fires could afford the enemy to dodge or deflect your shot.
PGI had thought of doing this for the original Mechwarrior 5 several years before making MWO, as showcased in this predesign video attempting to demonstrate and capture their vision of Mechwarrior with the help of former FASA co/owner and Battletech creator Jordan Weisman.
Despite being black and white, note the bar getting brighter for each PPC as you hear the 'whine' of it charging prior to firing. Notice the 'omph' it packs, compared to the DPS style lasers and DPS style autocannon. The lore proper way of doing it (rather than the simplified tabletop way). I think that would have been a great game. Also notice the SRM technique?
Shame the LRMs end up behaving like MRMs.
Later in the tech line, PPC Capacitors further this charging capability to permit a 'gradual overcharge' in order to help IS PPCs compete with Clan ER PPCs.
Just wanted to say, while I don't always agree with how you feel things should be in MWO (lagely due to what kind of game MWO is vs. what you wish it could be), I always appreciate what you bring to these discussions. It's great to see the background of things from a "nonpartisan" viewpoint - that is, including novels, tt, and the variations that have happened thanks to the totally inconsistent lore.
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W E N D I G O, on 09 July 2017 - 06:37 AM, said:
