32 replies to this topic

[Inatu Elimor]

Should you improve the strong points or the weak ones? I believe in the end it' s the result that decides.
Thoughts?

[El Bandito]

It is better to build around the strong points. At least that's how I roll when it comes to mech building and corporate management.

Edited by El Bandito, 07 October 2017 - 12:25 AM.

[N0ni]

Firepower > Survivability.

The few points of armor and structure you gain is made irrelevant with MWO's current high damage alpha environment, so you'd want to go for putting out as high and as much damage as possible.

In a typical MMO you'd want to build on what you lack, so you don't get curb stomped by someone looking in your general direction. But MWO isn't your typical MMO, build on the strong points. (I.E. Hunchback 4G, build around what'll make that AC20 better.)

[Trenchbird]

Crippling overspecialization is the key to flexibility.

Wait, what?

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

With the way the skill tree bases things on percentages you'll get a whole lot of nothing trying to improve your weaknesses and a whole lot more improving your strengths. Always build to your strength, but know your weakness.

[Shifty McSwift]

Why did you buy one of the mechs with weak spots? There's a number of meta mechs that can pretty much do everything well.

And "firepower > survivability"?, meh, why not just take those min maxed paths through all trees? You can get basically everything you want for your guns from firepower as well as most of the armor based buffs and speed tweak if you want.

Edited by Shifty McSwift, 07 October 2017 - 01:06 AM.

[Paigan]

N0ni, on 07 October 2017 - 12:31 AM, said:

Firepower > Survivability.

The few points of armor and structure you gain is made irrelevant with MWO's current high damage alpha environment, so you'd want to go for putting out as high and as much damage as possible.

[...]

This has nothing to do with MWO, it's a general rule of any damage-involving system.
Damage means "processing power", while protection only works as a buffer to prolongue "being processed".
What you need is high processing power to process threats as fast as possible.
Avoiding death for a few more seconds doesn't help you with that.

Look at real life predators:
They are usually all attack and no defense. No tiger or such has evolved with a thick armor. They invest almost exclusively into striking as fast and as hard as possible.
Same with real life tanks, ships, jets. Much protection is usually not worth the effort, but bringing a bigger gun is.

[Appogee]

Dakota1000, on 07 October 2017 - 12:36 AM, said:

With the way the skill tree bases things on percentages you'll get a whole lot of nothing trying to improve your weaknesses and a whole lot more improving your strengths. Always build to your strength, but know your weakness.

This.

[Shifty McSwift]

Wait are we talking about 24 man deathmatch games involving mostly fire trading or the fricken evolution of predators?

And that processing power makes sense, but only to a certain point. Nobody is not shooting a gun, the base damage ranges aren't greatly increased by the skill tree after the fact either.

[YueFei]

Paigan, on 07 October 2017 - 01:08 AM, said:

This has nothing to do with MWO, it's a general rule of any damage-involving system.
Damage means "processing power", while protection only works as a buffer to prolongue "being processed".
What you need is high processing power to process threats as fast as possible.
Avoiding death for a few more seconds doesn't help you with that.

Look at real life predators:
They are usually all attack and no defense. No tiger or such has evolved with a thick armor. They invest almost exclusively into striking as fast and as hard as possible.
Same with real life tanks, ships, jets. Much protection is usually not worth the effort, but bringing a bigger gun is.

Tanks, ships, and jets actually invest quite a bit in defense. Tanks have a combination of armor and active defenses, while ships and jets are equipped with active defenses rather than armor.

Tanks devote roughly half of their mass to hull and armor. Keep in mind what the purpose of tanks is. They are meant to provide direct fire support to infantry. Hence they are designed with firepower, mobility, and protection. Line of sight being the double-edged sword that it is, tanks are thus built with heavy protection in mind.

With that being said, in MWO, a dead mech does zero DPS.

Taking your line of argument to its extreme, you may as well strap nothing but guns and heatsinks to your mech, and go into battle with 0 armor. Nobody does this, and for good reason.

[Skipmagnet]

Isn't that the concept that lead to the Direstar?

[Khobai]

Quote

Tanks devote roughly half of their mass to hull and armor.

yeah and tanks are also on their way out.

unmanned drones are the future.

tanks are too expensive to build, maintain, and transport. the USA has to maintain bases all over the world because its cheaper to do that than to keep shipping tanks overseas.

drones eliminate the human crew and are disposable, so they dont need the weight of all that armor, which eliminates most of the logistical costs too.

the future is going to be like an AWACs type aircraft controlling 4-6 aerial drones to provide air cover. the drones will defeat any conventional aircraft/ground vehicles simply through pure aggression and overwhelming numbers.

MWO should have flying attack drones. give the UAV an AC2 or something to make it more useful.

Edited by Khobai, 07 October 2017 - 02:50 AM.

[Shifty McSwift]

eyeballs, on 07 October 2017 - 02:38 AM, said:

Isn't that the concept that lead to the Direstar?

And the LRM smothered assault mechs too probably.

[Shifty McSwift]

Khobai, on 07 October 2017 - 02:40 AM, said:

yeah and tanks are also on their way out.

unmanned drones are the future.

What!? Are you trying to say that futuristic space-faring humans wouldn't be punching it out in small duels of manned robots?! My god man that's blasphemy!

Next you will be telling me your phone has better technological capabilities than my mechs cockpit!

[Khobai]

Quote

Next you will be telling me your phone has better technological capabilities than my mechs cockpit!

sad but true. battletech IP really needs an update beyond 80s technology.

the whole retrofuturistic thing was cute at first but now its just impeding the game.

[Inatu Elimor]

Paigan, on 07 October 2017 - 01:08 AM, said:

This has nothing to do with MWO, it's a general rule of any damage-involving system.
Damage means "processing power", while protection only works as a buffer to prolongue "being processed".
What you need is high processing power to process threats as fast as possible.
Avoiding death for a few more seconds doesn't help you with that.

Look at real life predators:
They are usually all attack and no defense. No tiger or such has evolved with a thick armor. They invest almost exclusively into striking as fast and as hard as possible.
Same with real life tanks, ships, jets. Much protection is usually not worth the effort, but bringing a bigger gun is.

The German tiger II was inferior to the lesser powerfull/armored Russian T34 because it could outrun the tiger.

[Inatu Elimor]

Shifty McSwift, on 07 October 2017 - 01:05 AM, said:

Why did you buy one of the mechs with weak spots? There's a number of meta mechs that can pretty much do everything well.

And "firepower > survivability"?, meh, why not just take those min maxed paths through all trees? You can get basically everything you want for your guns from firepower as well as most of the armor based buffs and speed tweak if you want.

Every mech has it weak spots. I can do 1000+ dmg with my Kingcrab OOOB but it is slow (all speedtweaks done) and because of that vulnerable.

[Shifty McSwift]

Inatu Elimor, on 07 October 2017 - 03:01 AM, said:

Every mech has it weak spots. I can do 1000+ dmg with my Kingcrab OOOB but it is slow (all speedtweaks done) and because of that vulnerable.

Well yeah in the very fundamental sense of it all, every mech has a point where it excels and/or has deficiencies, but there are a lot of mechs that minimise that to the point where they just outright perform better than others, when properly utilising their setup.

The meta in that sense tends to focus around mechs with well synergising hardpoint numbers and locations, a mechs basic frame shape and toughness, and an "acceptable" mobility rate, that allows decent combat results vs most to all targets. Some mechs can and do tick all those boxes, and some (most) just don't.

[Bombast]

Paigan, on 07 October 2017 - 01:08 AM, said:

Same with real life tanks, ships, jets. Much protection is usually not worth the effort, but bringing a bigger gun is.

It's not really true with tanks, though it is for planes (Basically impossible to put meaningful armor on without going all A-10 on the design table) and ships (Which are heavily armored, but following minmax rules about where).

Khobai, on 07 October 2017 - 02:53 AM, said:

sad but true. battletech IP really needs an update beyond 80s technology.

the whole retrofuturistic thing was cute at first but now its just impeding the game.

It did not 'need' to update. I think Alien Isolation proved that.

It's already been updated though. And it's really drained a lot of the flavor - Just another super tech franchise now. Lame.

Inatu Elimor, on 07 October 2017 - 02:55 AM, said:

The German tiger II was inferior to the lesser powerfull/armored Russian T34 because it could outrun the tiger.

Not really - The T-34 wasn't that much faster. Certainly not enough to make a major impact on in battlefield maneuverability.

The T-34 was superior because it wasn't a colossal boondoggle that broke down every 5 minutes.

[Sjorpha]

Specialisation is the strongest strategy in MWO, in almost every other game, and in real life too.

Do something very specific really really well is the key to success, no way around it.

Strongest branches of specialisation in MWO is firepower, range, minimal exposure and damage efficiency (as pinpoint as possible) I believe. Not sure in what order, but durability and mobility are weaker branches even if they are nice when you can combine them with still being great in one of the primary ones.

Edited by Sjorpha, 07 October 2017 - 04:17 AM.