Bishop Steiner, on 10 November 2017 - 04:53 PM, said:
aka a halfassed attempt to shift the focus.
if they were only viable because of being broke as heck, I guess that speaks more about the pilots...since oddly I see people able to pilot em just fine now.
Crazy concept...less armor and firepower... only advantage is speed... takes more skill than average to do well in? And thus. being harder are much less represented than the usual path of EZmode most gamers embrace? Wow. Sorry you thought that lights running through whole teams almost unscathed (aka the old way) was the "right" way.
I didn't really use lights back then either, but I did have no issue legging them. If they seemed broken, its because you suck at aiming. No light would run through a halfway decent team unscathed.
And it's not shifting the focus, it's just an example of a medium that got bigger. Which were the "assault sized" mediums that got brought down significantly? Struggling to think of a medium as large as a Victor, let alone actual assaults. If anything, the mechs that really needed it were the Catapult and the Dragon, so that is good for them.
The Panther is just about as tall as the Awesome. Same with the Assassin and other low tonnage mechs.
I think everything below 100 tons needs to have a 45% reduction in volume.
I think there should a linear decrease in density as mechs get heavier, in other words the lighter a mech is the denser it is and therefore the smaller it would be.
This also makes some sense realistically, large/heavy machines are often made less dense in order to spread out ground pressure and so on, it would make sense that heavy mechs were less dense to avoid sinking too far into soft ground. Mechs should also probably be designed to have denser legs than torso to lower the balance point, but that doesn't matter in a game like this of course.
I think that kind of scaling would be much more immersive, with larger heavies and assaults and smaller lights/mediums. heavies and assaults could keep and get armour buffs if needed and lights could lose them to balance this, it's a lot better if the survivability of lights comes from speed and small size that from quirks.
Locationclimbing Mt Tryhard, one smoldering Meta-Mech corpse at a time
Posted 11 November 2017 - 08:06 AM
Gas Guzzler, on 11 November 2017 - 07:19 AM, said:
I didn't really use lights back then either, but I did have no issue legging them. If they seemed broken, its because you suck at aiming. No light would run through a halfway decent team unscathed.
And it's not shifting the focus, it's just an example of a medium that got bigger. Which were the "assault sized" mediums that got brought down significantly? Struggling to think of a medium as large as a Victor, let alone actual assaults. If anything, the mechs that really needed it were the Catapult and the Dragon, so that is good for them.
yeah, so "certain" people said about the Raven, then the Spider and then the ACH, and oh...oops all were proven to be broken. Not liek there wasn't tons of video of Lights even in comp matches taking chances and absorbing ridiculous levels of incoming fire... but believe what you want.
Bishop Steiner, on 11 November 2017 - 08:06 AM, said:
yeah, so "certain" people said about the Raven, then the Spider and then the ACH, and oh...oops all were proven to be broken. Not liek there wasn't tons of video of Lights even in comp matches taking chances and absorbing ridiculous levels of incoming fire... but believe what you want.
Initially before they updated the hit reg it was like playing Mechwarrior 3 on a dial up connection. It was terrible. No one could hit a Raven lol. After made that hit reg update (I cant remember the date), that exponentially cleaned that up. Lights were actually getting hit, and you saw a TON of light pilots dropped out. The fact that we have a few videos showing where they took a bunch of fire is the exception certainly not the rule.
The Panther is just about as tall as the Awesome. Same with the Assassin and other low tonnage mechs.
I think everything below 100 tons needs to have a 45% reduction in volume.
O.o; That's a terrible idea. On a side note, one the Panther and Awesome are not the same height and two... they are within the realm of canonical sizes... in terms of difference.
In terms of actual height, they are both about 2-3 meters too tall.
MWO scale, Awesome and Panther.
MWO height:
Awesome: Approximately 14.7 meters to top of head. (But other elements are even taller.)
Panther: Exactly 13 meters to top of head.
Battletech canonical scale, Awesome and Panther.
Awesome height: 12.2 meters (to top of head).
Panther height: 9.11 meters. (to top of head.)
So it is in the ballpark. The Awesome is skinnier and thus about a meter taller in the BT version.
But like all of MWO's scales, they are too tall. But any smaller and the way they designed the cockpits... couldn't hold some of the pilots. Rescaling them without redoing the shape of the cockpits and the mechs themselves... well you wouldn't be able to fit the pilots in them any more. Not that it matters, but its one of those things. You might notice you can't fit the pilot of the Mist Lynx into its mech.
This was before the rescale shrunk him.
If you're wondering why its like this... that's easy. The Mist Lynx is supposed to be....
10.6, as all mechs with endo steel are larger than their standard structure cousins. But we can't have that. You know. Lazy devs, cost issues, etc. Oh and boatloads of player customization that the users of these mechs would never have access to.
Keep in mind that scale puts the height at the tallest point, such as the antennae.
Side note: If you're wondering how "off" the MWO scale is in terms of height... the tallest mech until 3065+ (because after that I don't care anymore) is the Executioner. The tallest mech that exists.
14.4 meters tall.
In MWO...just over 18 meters at the tallest point.
O.o; That's a terrible idea. On a side note, one the Panther and Awesome are not the same height and two... they are within the realm of canonical sizes... in terms of difference.
In terms of actual height, they are both about 2-3 meters too tall.
MWO scale, Awesome and Panther.
MWO height:
Awesome: Approximately 14.7 meters to top of head. (But other elements are even taller.)
Panther: Exactly 13 meters to top of head.
Battletech canonical scale, Awesome and Panther.
Awesome height: 12.2 meters (to top of head).
Panther height: 9.11 meters. (to top of head.)
So it is in the ballpark. The Awesome is skinnier and thus about a meter taller in the BT version.
But like all of MWO's scales, they are too tall. But any smaller and the way they designed the cockpits... couldn't hold some of the pilots. Rescaling them without redoing the shape of the cockpits and the mechs themselves... well you wouldn't be able to fit the pilots in them any more. Not that it matters, but its one of those things. You might notice you can't fit the pilot of the Mist Lynx into its mech.
This was before the rescale shrunk him.
If you're wondering why its like this... that's easy. The Mist Lynx is supposed to be....
10.6, as all mechs with endo steel are larger than their standard structure cousins. But we can't have that. You know. Lazy devs, cost issues, etc. Oh and boatloads of player customization that the users of these mechs would never have access to.
Keep in mind that scale puts the height at the tallest point, such as the antennae.
Side note: If you're wondering how "off" the MWO scale is in terms of height... the tallest mech until 3065+ (because after that I don't care anymore) is the Executioner. The tallest mech that exists.
14.4 meters tall.
In MWO...just over 18 meters at the tallest point.
Don't forget the height of the locust...
Edited by ApolloKaras, 11 November 2017 - 06:42 PM.
ApolloKaras, on 11 November 2017 - 06:42 PM, said:
Don't forget the height of the locust...
The art somewhat lies. Also the blue prints aren't to scale (the assault mechs are smaller than the lights in those.
I've tried in many occasions to find the actual height of the Locust, and things like this doesn't help...
This is a 1980s photoshop, basically, taking a stock image of the Locust and slapping it on a background.
But the Locust is stated to be (and I need to find the person that quoted the book entry 'cause I want to read that book) 6 meters tall.
First figure is a 6 foot tall man.
Second, is the canonical scale of the Locust according to that book (and I know that many of BT's fictional narrators are unreliable; FASA even stated as much in the early 90s with the 1st Somerset Strikers Compendium's dev notes, but as the narration is not under stress, fear, etc. and is just a tech talking specs to a new pilot, I would like to believe the information is credible.)
Third is MWO's current height for the Locust.
Fourth is MWO's old height for the Locust.
Fifth is the BT canonical height of the Panther.
Sixth is MWO's current height of the Panther.
Though if I threw the Firefly into this equation, you'd probably **** yourself. It's barely above 5 meters tall. Just like in MW3. Fireflies are short, but their long, reasonably wide bodies are pretty understandably while they can pack 30 tons into such short bodies.
A nearly two hour tangent about weapons from the LBX, lasers, ACs, and even the Long Tom with BT references nd some video and picture comparisons for LBX and Autocannons and why the LBX is NOT a shotgun. Enter this pit only if you dare.
Spoiler
Side note: Did you know that the LBX wasn't described as a shotgun until the 1990s, or that being the wide spread comparison until Mechwarrior 2?
In the 1980s, it originally described a flak gun with its first entry in the TRO 2750, and subsequent description soon after as a large projectile that fragments in proximity to the target into secondary munitions.
MW2 could not replicate this due to technical limitations, after all who had heard of proximity detonating projectiles that created new projectiles in its place in 1993 when MW2 began its production? Just doing true 3D was an entirely new concept as it was.
Effectively, it is describing an anti-air flak cannon / cluster missile.
Deriving from that, an LBX fires a projectile "much longer than shells from autocannons" which then release secondary munitions within a proximity to the target. These secondary munitions have the same explosive force of LRMs.
So combine the two, there's an LBX.
Which is funny how it is based on a flak cannon.
Know what autocannons really are?
Anti-aircraft/armor guns.
They are short shelled projectiles of various sizes which fire a reasonably large bullet that is supposed to first pierce the armor as far as it can; it is note worthy that they do not get very deep usually. It then pumps in a high explosive charge.
Despite the tank-like sound to this, the much more powerful [per shot] tank rounds of the 21st century are what "Rifles" (aka mech rifles) fire. Despite only lobbing a single shell, Rifles lack the armor piercing power and Light rifles in the 90mm range "bounce off" Mech armor without producing any damage what-so-ever, and 140mm Rifle shells (that's 20mm bigger than those fired by the M1Abrams) only do 3 damage to Mech armor. It takes a 190mm tank shell (Heavy Rifle) to do 6 damage to mech armor (or 9 to mech structure) in a single shot.
Meanwhile a 180mm Tomodzuru AC/20 delivers rounds one at a time but 4 to a cassette and one damage rating per cassette [meaning you have to hit with all 4 to get 20 damage]. That's 5 damage per shell.
I know, right?
Lets get an idea of what we're looking at. First up note this is incorrectly measuring bullets, when we say 120 meters we mean the diameter of the bullet. But the 138mm length here tells you that the bullets aren't as wide as we sometimes imagine.
This is a 30mm shell.
Which is supposed to be size of the Blackjack's GM Whirlwind/L AC/2 shells, which it fires 10 of these to net "2" damage per gun and can do this within 2 seconds with a 2.5 second cassette exchange rate (reload time). Meaning the AC/2 could churn 4 damage or 20 shells in about 9 seconds. Which you can do this in tabletop using the rapid fire autocannons TacOps rule. Thing is you risk overheating the barrel and firing chamber, which in turn can result in either a jam or the barrel warping during firing which could result in the AC exploding on you. The Russian translation says 30 caliber, but comparing 30 caliber to 50 caliber, and 30mm to 50 caliber I can tell you these things are much bigger than 30 or 50 caliber bullets. The weapon is defined as an autocannon.
The first gun here would effectively be a machine gun (can also imagine a rotary cannon like this).
The second would be a mech rifle / LBX.
The third is an actual autocannon. The protrusion is what BT calls a cassette, except they change out automatically instead of being filled. Cassettes also come in this form on some models, such as the Pontiac 100 on the Victor, which spurns 100 shells in "the blink of an eye," but takes 4 seconds to reload (requiring the arm to be locked in the upward position from the elbow to do so) or 7 seconds via the backup method, but that requires the left arm to take a cassette from the right torso backup port and manually insert it rather than running the cassette through the interior of the shoulder and bicep and requires a left hand to be functional.
There's also belt fed models. For some reason these typically either fire slower but don't have to worry about down times for reloading, or overheat faster, requiring the gun to stop being used or else the barrel would warp and potentially lead to a fired shell to explode in the barrel, subsequently risking a chain reaction in the ammo. (This is one of the many reasons for a three stage heat system I came up with, to accomodate for all these weapon-specific heat issues that don't affect the mech, just the weapon itself).
The third one in, according to its caption, is a 50 cal. I'm not personally sure.
Anyway... this is a 120mm tank shell.
Autocannon shells were described in one case as "thicker than my arm but not long enough to reach my wrist from my elbow." It was reasoned that they had to be short, "to feed them quickly enough to be effective with minimal risk of jamming." Because "any longer and you'd have to feed it along the outside of the 'Mech."
The Arbiter, the only canonical mech equipped with a Heavy Rifle, is known for having to manually insert its shells by hand.
Long story short, ACs don't necessarily fire bullets, but they don't fire actual tank shells either. At the very least they are shortened shells which they can fit quite a bit of, because even going by the GM Whirlwind/5... That's about 60 shells in a ton for the biggest AC/5 you can get. Imagine what a 30 to 40mm AC/5 would need. The Shadowhawk carries an 80mm and needs between 6 or 7 shots to net 5 damage. Considering the largest AC/2 is 90mm, I think it is somewhat safe to say that AC/2s don't deliver the damage of two LRMs or one SRM per shot.
One neat thing though, is if you go back to LBX... notice how it is said the shell is longer? It makes me wonder if LBX and Rifles are related.
---
Straying from ACs...
Anyone ever wonder why they would bother with PPCs?
7 tons to do 10 damage, when you can use 2 lasers to do 10 damage with just 1 ton?
Or 3 tons to do 5 damage when you can rival it with 1 ton to do 5 damage?
There's a few reasons. The first is lasers didn't do damage in a single shot, like autocannons it took several shots. (This can be further proved by the power outputs, which are far too weak to do devastating damage to armor in a single shot. However if you make multiple shots of the durations stated, you can achieve some noteworthy damage within several shots and time for the laser to cool in between, as sustaining laser drilling at these power levels would eventually destroy the lenses being used.)
The medium laser described would need something around we'll say 5 shots. So 1 damage per shot. Compared to 1.67 damage per shot from a 3 round burst on the GM Whirlwind/5 AC/5 of a Marauder, to the 1 damage of an LRM, or the five damage in a single shot from a Light PPC.
Sure, you wouldn't be able to even think about shooting that Light PPC again for 10 seconds... but when you compare the largest AC/20 in the IS delivering 5 damage in a 4 shot cassette from the Chemjet Gun or the largest IS mech-mounted AC/20 at 180mm with 4 damage per shot with 5 shots per cassette... is it hard to see what IS PPCs are called dubbed Siege Cannons, and the Awesome is a Siege Mech worthy of the name "Awesome"?
Nothing else produces 10 damage in a single shot... until you dig into the Gauss Rifle and later Heavy PPCs... or the Ebon Jaguar's 203mm UAC/20, which has shells so big it requires 2 barrels to complete a single volley of 2 shells to net 20 damage, or Ultra fire at 4 shells to net 40 damage.
Battletech's weapons might even start to make a bit more sense.
Another fun thought.
A Gauss Rifle has 8 shells per ton.
A Long Tom artillery cannon has 5 shells per ton.
Yet PGI thinks a Long Tom does this?
(It should be noted a Long Tom has a blast radius of 75 meters [2 hexes outward from a central hex, hence 60 + 15 to get to the middle of the impact hex = 75 meters]. It also had a maximum damage, if you got 19 mechs in its blast radius, of 270 damage.)
MWO's did this:
Quote
Long Tom Strike: Maximum amount of Damage that can be dealt to a single 'Mech is now 1650 DMG (150 DMG per Component).
Long Tom Strike: Blast radius is 300m.
Side note, Shadow Hawk drawn to scale. Note this is a 1st or 2nd gen model as the ones after didn't exist as of the year this was drawn.
Haruko's attempt to rescale MWO's Shadowhawk to that scale.
Which brings me to another fun fact...
Look at the Shadowhawk models. 1, 2....3... 5...
The 5th gen are the largest. They need the size to fit double heatsinks and XL engines.
Spoiler contains a detailed example of another mech with scale differences between its models in lore to accommodate DHS.
Spoiler
(Worth noting, also, is Hunchbacks have the original Komiyaba Type VII chassis which cannot be upgraded to DHS or XL engines due to its small size; in fact it is so small the drum on its back is where it stores ammunition! Not inside the mech but on its back! That's why the hunch is so big. But then the Crucis Type V chassis was used to make the remade "classic" hunchbacks completely incompatible with existing refit kits to force consumers to buy their mechs from Kali-Yama Weapons Industries and their new line. Now if you wanted a 4H design, etc., you had to buy them direct rather than using some free market do-it-yourself refit kit., which is what all non-4G Hunchbacks were before 3030-ish.
The reason for the incompatibility is because the Hunchback grew slightly in physical girth with more hollow space, and the drums subsequently was reduced in size so that it only held a single ton, with another inside the mech itself. The 5M which was the first model with the Crucis Type V chassis completely removed the drum altogether, protecting the ammo inside with an armor using CASE. This also allowed it to carry double heatsinks. Since the Komiyaba Type VII skeleton Hunchbacks were incompatible with double heatsinks due to being too small [you'd have to mount them on the exterior just like the ammo drum and that's just stupid], this also added more incentive to buy Kali-Yama Weapons Industries' new "classic" Hunchback line, as they could be upgraded to double heatsinks without having to change or rework or reshape anything.
Anyway notice the SHKs are in the 5s for decades, then suddenly a 3 comes out after 3070. Why a 3 when there's already so many 5? Easy. It was made using an SHK-3's chassis, which is important because 3s were bigger than 2s but smaller than 5s.
So there are scale differences among even a single "Mech" when you consider its centuries of variants.
Want another good one? There are two types of Catapults. There's no official term differing them but I call them stunted-leg and stilt-leg.
Stunted leg.
Stilted leg.
Stilted leg appears in Mechwarrior 1989 in both background artwork to some scenes as well as the Japanese remake in 1993. Stunted leg is what we see in most Mechwarrior games and art.
Always wondered about it but the universe doesn't go into detail about it. Then I played MGSV: The Phantom Pain... and I heard a tape that made me think "Holy ****, that's why!" Wait for "Why was it so important for it to walk upright?"
And there's the reason for the Stilt leg models. Meanwhile the Shunted leg models are better for flatter terrain.
Quote
Ocelot: I don't see the benefit of having it stand taller. Huey: On terrain with significant differences in elevation like Afghanistan, you need a body that's vertically adaptable. That also lets it attack from long range while using mountain ridges for cover. So making it walk upright was the most important factor in giving it superior height capability. As the name suggests, that was the whole point of Sahelanthropus. But I was being pushed for results. Having the AI mounted externally would've been the fastest way to get it working. I just needed more data so it could maintain it's balance.
Keep in mind, the height difference between the two is a fair bit taller though the leg armor is stretched thinner due to longer legs with the same amount of overall armor stretched out.
Viktor Drake, on 09 November 2017 - 04:17 PM, said:
Just looks at the scale comparisons and I want to know what PGI is smoking becuase it is obvious something is way, way off. The Thanatos makes the Night Gyr looks like a medium mech in comparison. It is about the same height but everything is thicker from the front profile and from the side profile there is even more of a huge difference, hell it is at least twice as thick from the side as any of the other mechs it is compared against.
Seriously someone hit the bottle quite hard before they "volumetrically" scaled the Thantos so all I got to say is....
PGI, YOU GOT 4 DAYS TO GET THIS THING BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD AND SCALED CORRECTLY!!!
QFT: Your Scale of the Thanatos is way too big, anyone can see that. Fix it now.
There is no point in showing BattleTech Blueprints, that's not how MWO's rescaling of the mechs was handled. MWO rescaled based on Mass=Scale and the Thanatos is coming in at about 82 tons. The rescale created winners and losers, but unless PGI is doing another full rescale they need to abide by their own scaling rules.
The Thanatos has strengths and weaknesses in it's box-like torso, but will never escape being prone to side torso destruction in any game version. At the current scale it will be a pile of poo.
Scout Derek, on 09 November 2017 - 05:43 PM, said:
What were you expecting? Skinny Thanatos? The damned thing is supposed to be like that. Can't see why some of you are complaining about a mech that looks pretty similar to the original.
In a world where every mechwarrior is curiously bad at their job and where shots land is a literal roll of the dice every time, the Thanatos' design is acceptable.
Here in reality though, where mechwarriors actually bother to aim before they pull their triggers, that thing is going to get carved up like a thanksgiving turkey, one bulky ST at a time.
The Lighthouse, on 11 November 2017 - 11:39 PM, said:
Yeah.... that scaling of BT alone really makes the case why Lore/TT is not going to work well for FPS video games.
Try that 25 mech which is about as tall as Maddog... It was never going to work really.
Not in a game with this much freedom.
Small mechs tend to have standard structure/armor and is light on it. SHK 2D is short and has half a ton more armor than a stock Locust. That's 4.5 tons of armor. The 3s are taller and the 5s (which have more armor than most medium and heavy mechs and some assaults at 10.5 tons of armor) are pretty big.
As a comparison, the 80 ton Victor K has 12.5 tons of armor. Only 2 tons more armor for a mech 25 tons heavier. A Uziel 2S has only 8 tons of armor. The Catapult C1, K2 and the Hellbringer only have 10 tons of armor. The Marauder IIC only has 11.5 tons of armor. The ever superior Warhawk has 13.5 tons of armor in addition to four cannons that deliver 15 damage each in a single shot, each.
There it makes a lot of sense.
This may be one of the reasons why MW5 is going to feature "Granular" customization over every facet of your mech, weapon variants, etc... but no actual "Mechlab", no structure/armor changes... They want every variant to mean something and to be unique from each other in MW5...
A lot of "obsolete" wouldn't be happening in MWO if not for this freedom to customize. And adherence to the somewhat wild scales.
This said... I wonder how MW5 is going to justify a Shadowhawk 2D that's got 4.5 tons of armor and yet is as tall as it is in this game.
I mean... the Locust has up to 4 tons of armor...
the canonical SHK 2D height is less than 3 meters taller than the Locust and yet its over twice its height (which the 5M would be with all of its armor, expanded room for DHS and XL engine... The cost of bulkier yet lighter equipment in BT lore is being Bigger and Easier to Hit. The 2D is still at least tank size, as we know tanks don't run around with DHS and XL engines and endo steel structure all that often. The 5M's grown by over 2 meters in combined height and girth and a bigger caliber AC [Ultra, yes I know]. There's also a 550 year difference between the original SHK 1st and second generations and the significantly larger and bulkier 5th generation so scale is very understandably going to change when the skeleton, the factory, etc. all change and room is made to fit the bulky stuff with an additional 6 tons of armor to harbor it.)
To put 6 tons into perspective, this is 6 tons.
This has been added, just in armor... With the original size that clearly wouldn't work. Let alone the additional internal space that could allow a person to slip in under the lower arm actuator in order to mess with the laser weapon, something impossible in the 2D's scale.
To think of all the complaints on the thread where that was shown from the PCGamer interview. "No mechlab!" "But what about mah customizations to make variants worthless!" "What I can't put endo steel on mechs before its invented, what kind of stupid **** is that?" Etc.
In a world where every mechwarrior is curiously bad at their job and where shots land is a literal roll of the dice every time, the Thanatos' design is acceptable.
Here in reality though, where mechwarriors actually bother to aim before they pull their triggers, that thing is going to get carved up like a thanksgiving turkey, one bulky ST at a time.
Guess it released at the right time, at least.
Actually, in reality we have targeting computers in tanks that can handle the tank moving 40mph at an angle to a target tank going 30mph a different direction, with winds up to 20mph, and temperatures of 100F and 90% relative humidity, and multiple ammo types, but when the gunner aims, he just puts his sights right where he wants the round to hit and pulls the trigger and the computer moves the gun barrel to 'fix' for all the variables before firing.
Actually, in reality we have targeting computers in tanks that can handle the tank moving 40mph at an angle to a target tank going 30mph a different direction, with winds up to 20mph, and temperatures of 100F and 90% relative humidity, and multiple ammo types, but when the gunner aims, he just puts his sights right where he wants the round to hit and pulls the trigger and the computer moves the gun barrel to 'fix' for all the variables before firing.
Bishop Steiner, on 11 November 2017 - 08:06 AM, said:
yeah, so "certain" people said about the Raven, then the Spider and then the ACH, and oh...oops all were proven to be broken. Not liek there wasn't tons of video of Lights even in comp matches taking chances and absorbing ridiculous levels of incoming fire... but believe what you want.
Cheetah broken?
Because it was launched with GodQuirks?
Its hitboxes have always been form fitting...unlike the Raven
The Raven, which spawned in an era of terrible hitreg, had its hitboxes EXTENDED BEYOND THEIR BOUNDARIES, to make it easier to hit
Which have never been scaled back, because hitreg works presently.
RIP Legs
Spider did have a couple broken spots, but you don't hear much crying from such a weak robot, anymore
3
Bishop Steiner, on 10 November 2017 - 04:53 PM, said:
