109 replies to this topic

[davoodoo]

Pariah Devalis, on 18 November 2017 - 04:06 AM, said:

Just like being hit in the shoulder with a bullet is likely to make your arm cease to function effectively, if at all (unlike every action movie ever), a crushed/blown out side torso simply makes sense that the arm be disabled.

Sure but think of it as your body.

Side torso will include ribs, maybe a lung, part of intestines, kidneys and bones supporting your arm.

Getting a hole through your kidney would effectively mean your side torso is destroyed, but you can still move your arm just fine.

But even that aint especially true as upper arm actuator is the shoulder and it aint part of side torso at all for most designs.

Edited by davoodoo, 18 November 2017 - 04:30 AM.

[Pariah Devalis]

davoodoo, on 18 November 2017 - 04:27 AM, said:

Sure but think of it as your body.

Side torso will include ribs, maybe a lung, part of intestines, kidneys and bones supporting your arm.

Getting a hole through your kidney would effectively mean your side torso is destroyed, but you can still move your arm just fine.

But even that aint especially true as upper arm actuator is the shoulder and it aint part of side torso at all for most designs.

You can suffer a weapon crit in the side torso without losing the side torso. I've always interpreted side torso loss as "catastrophic damage" to the torso, as opposed to just having one section within that one section damaged. Further, the actuator might be physically located in the "arm," but it still requires wires to pass through the torso, and the weight of the arm still needs a solid foundation for support. If the wires are damaged, and/or if the base structure of the side torso is too badly mangled, it cannot support the arm, either by electronic function or by weight of arm alone.

[0111101]

Kotzi, on 17 November 2017 - 04:59 AM, said:

1. Still you need some restrictions, otherwise why not make 100 ton Atlas beeing able to move like a medium mech to make them viable?
2. You are contradicting yourself. Buffing arm mounted weapons increase time to kill?

Just leave that minimum of tactical part that we still have. I dont want one big hitbox. I want to be able to decide where to shoot and that it does make a different at which part of the mech you are shooting at.

On 1: nice straw man. I'll let that observation sink in without dignifying it with an actual response.

On 2: you completely missed the point. There's currently no reason at all to shoot off arms since going side torso will kill an XL mech outright or cripple the firepower of a standard/light/clan XL engine mech.

Whatever is on the arm goes when the side torso is blown, no ifs ands or buts about it in the current system. Barring an ammo explosion, or the shoulder actuator being crit out, why should the arm pop right off when the side torso is taken out of commission? The side torso is still in place when destroyed.

In practice you currently only have one hitbox for the arm+side torso (ignore arm completely to shoot at side torso) like you just bemoaned, unless you're deliberately choosing to shoot at arms for some bizarre reason.

Edited by 0111101, 18 November 2017 - 05:07 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

0111101, on 18 November 2017 - 05:04 AM, said:

Whatever is on the arm goes when the side torso is blown, no ifs ands or buts about it in the current system. Barring an ammo explosion, or the shoulder actuator being crit out, why should the arm pop right off when the side torso is taken out of commission? The side torso is still in place when destroyed.

In practice you currently only have one hitbox for the arm+side torso (ignore arm completely to shoot at side torso) like you just bemoaned, unless you're deliberately choosing to shoot at arms for some bizarre reason.

So leave the arm there, structure & armour as a shield, but keep the weapons disabled.

Or, at a push, allow weapons to fire without the benefit of anything outside the arm. No benefit of ammo or heat sinks not in the arm.

[Khobai]

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Getting a hole through your kidney would effectively mean your side torso is destroyed, but you can still move your arm just fine.

um no.

that just means your kidney suffered a critical hit

it doesnt mean your side torso is destroyed

your side torso being destroyed is literally that... your whole side torso is blown off/crushed/burnt to nothing.

and youre not moving your arm just fine in that situation.



but yeah some things should change in MWO:

STs should have at least twice the hitpoints of arms to encourage shooting arms more and help ISXL not suck.

Also shooting off both legs should no longer result in destroying mechs, only reduce their max speed severely to like 15%

Edited by Khobai, 18 November 2017 - 05:18 AM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Jay Leon Hart, on 18 November 2017 - 05:13 AM, said:

So leave the arm there, structure & armour as a shield, but keep the weapons disabled.

Or, at a push, allow weapons to fire without the benefit of anything outside the arm. No benefit of ammo or heat sinks not in the arm.

1.Leaving not functioning arm as a shield sounds interesting.

2.If an arm is not connected to the cooling system it means it shouldn't heat up the rest of the mech. But the components there should take heat damage instead. This could be an interesting mechanic, but its too complicated.

[Khobai]

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1.Leaving not functioning arm as a shield sounds interesting.

thats a bad idea

because then destroyed but still attached arms would transfer damage inward

its actually better that the arm is physically removed from the mech

I mean assaults are bad enough now... imagine if their arms stayed attached and continued to transfer damage inward when they got hit instead of being blown off. assaults would be way worse off.

especially assaults with massive arms like the king crab

Edited by Khobai, 18 November 2017 - 05:32 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Khobai, on 18 November 2017 - 05:30 AM, said:

because then destroyed but still attached arms would transfer damage inward

I mean assaults are bad enough now... imagine if their arms stayed attached and continued to transfer damage inward when they got hit instead of being blown off. assaults would be way worse off.

especially assaults with massive arms like the king crab

The arm would fall off once it was destroyed, just not once the side torso was destroyed. No damage transfer possible, just an extra side shield.

Edited by Jay Leon Hart, 18 November 2017 - 05:41 AM.

[Tarogato]

0111101, on 18 November 2017 - 05:04 AM, said:

In practice you currently only have one hitbox for the arm+side torso (ignore arm completely to shoot at side torso) like you just bemoaned, unless you're deliberately choosing to shoot at arms for some bizarre reason.

1. Arms, by default, are weaker than torsos. Even some quirked arms are still weaker than their side torsos.
ex. MLX, COM, ACH, UM, VND, PXH, IFR, ENF, NVA, GAR, EXE

2. Some mechs' arms are just huge and easy to target.
ex. MLX, COM, IFR, PXH, NVA, DRG, CPLT, GAR, EXE

3. Some mechs have weapons in their arms such that they side peek with the arm, which means their arm is the first and last component you see as they expose and return to cover, and you have more time to shoot it compared to any other component on their mech
ex. PNT, VND, CN9, ENF, WVR, DRG, GAR, EXE



Then the counter examples - mechs that may have significant weapons in their arms, but the arms are somewhat safe, tucked out of harms way, or just small, so there's really no reason to bother aiming at them.
- LCT, RVN, KFX, BJ, CRB, MAD, STK, NSR, KGC, MAD-IIC, SNV



Still plenty of reason to aim for arms. But it depends on the mech, loadout, and situation.

[Khobai]

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Still plenty of reason to aim for arms.

no theres really not

because for only a few extra points of damage you can get a 2 for 1 special and take off both the side torso and arm, and taking out the side torso often contributes towards killing the mech

again thats why side torsos should have at least twice the hitpoints of arms

Quote

But it depends on the mech, loadout, and situation.

no it really doesnt.

if your objective is to take out an undamaged arm the best way to go about it is to take out the corresponding side torso

it only requires minimally more effort but comes with substantially more benefits

Quote

The arm would fall off once it was destroyed, just not once the side torso was destroyed. No damage transfer possible, just an extra side shield.

I still think arms should fall off if the corresponding side torso is destroyed. if the internal structure of the side torso is destroyed there is nothing left for the arm to remain attached to. that makes perfect sense to me. Plus its how its always worked in virtually every iteration of battletech/mechwarrior.

but side torsos should be at least twice as hard to kill as arms since MWO allows aiming for side torsos. That would also make ISXLs much better.

Edited by Khobai, 18 November 2017 - 11:27 PM.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 18 November 2017 - 11:15 PM, said:

-
Plus its how its always worked in virtually every iteration of battletech/mechwarrior.
-

Actually, it didn't work that way in MW3 or MW4...

(I can't comment on MW2 or MW1 since I haven't played them).

[Khobai]

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Actually, it didn't work that way in MW3 or MW4...

it did work that way in TT, MW2, MW3, and MWO that I recall. It worked that way in mechcommander too.

but in MW4 it didnt work that way, thats true

[James Argent]

Seems like the people asking for this are more acquainted with Voltron than they are Battletech. Battlemech arms don't work without sufficient structural integrity to support the arm using it as a pivot point against which the myomer bundles can contract/extend. We're talking literal tons of pressure here...try it once and the arm will rip itself off by itself. And there is no reason to believe that the control systems for the arms would be in any way more survivable in the torsos than those for the torsos themselves.

[0111101]

Khobai, on 18 November 2017 - 11:15 PM, said:

For as many holes as Taro just poked in my point I'm still gonna jump in on the defense here and say that there are exceptions like he pointed out - the Crit Lynx is an excellent example. Huge hitbox, low health, easier to take out than a leg or side torso on that thing and successfully doing so dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the mech with less effort than it takes to kill it outright.

I will gladly point to this one, the Ice Ferret, and sometimes the Dragon, Arctic Critter, Nova, and Catapult as mechs that I may shoot the arms off of. The ones I denoted with "sometimes" depends on whether I have enough alpha strike to pull the arm off in one shot, or if positioning dictates that it is the only component I can reliably put damage on. 9 times out of 10 though I am going for the CT or ST (Ice Ferret, Dragon, Catapult, Nova) or the leg (Arctic Cheetah, Nova.) The rest just take arm damage from me incidentally through a combo of their torso twisting and my own lapse in proper aiming.

[lazorbeamz]

0111101, on 18 November 2017 - 05:04 AM, said:

On 1: nice straw man. I'll let that observation sink in without dignifying it with an actual response.

On 2: you completely missed the point. There's currently no reason at all to shoot off arms since going side torso will kill an XL mech outright or cripple the firepower of a standard/light/clan XL engine mech.

Whatever is on the arm goes when the side torso is blown, no ifs ands or buts about it in the current system. Barring an ammo explosion, or the shoulder actuator being crit out, why should the arm pop right off when the side torso is taken out of commission? The side torso is still in place when destroyed.

In practice you currently only have one hitbox for the arm+side torso (ignore arm completely to shoot at side torso) like you just bemoaned, unless you're deliberately choosing to shoot at arms for some bizarre reason.

Exactly. Right now side torso is pretty much the same component as an arm. makes damage model very shallow.

Some mechs also have only one component - legs. Like those crabs

Edited by lazorbeamz, 19 November 2017 - 05:32 AM.

[Jun Watarase]

Most past MW games had this problem where arm mounted weapons were junk and everyone just put weapons in the torsos. I mean, if you are going to lose the arm when you lose the torso, then you may as well put them all in the torsos.

Arm mounted weapons in MWO are usually a liability. Arms basically fall into two categories : either they come default with no lower actuators and are pretty small/high up (jagermech, blackjack), or they come with lower actuators and are usually a decent size (cyclops, warhammer).

The latter is more common and people dont like putting weapons in them because the arms can be easily shot off and you cant use them to shield torsos. ACW with arm mounted missiles vs ASN with torso mounted missiles is a great example..

Seperating arm/torso destruction wont fix it entirely, but would make it harder to disarm mechs with large side torsos and encourage people to put weapons on arms. Heres an example : Marauder. It has no shield arms and torso twisting simply makes it easier to shoot off a side torso. Once a side torso is gone, your arm mounted lasers are gone too. Its basically two birds with one stone.

If you had to actually aim for the arms to take out the lasers as well, the marauder would be able to remain combat effective for longer since it would still have some lasers left after losing a side torso.

On most mechs, taking out the side torso is basically a no brainer...not only is it a bigger target, but you take out all the weapons on that side with it.

But we will still have the problem where humanoid profile (cyclops, warhammer, grasshopper) with shield arms is seriously OP. You have to shoot through the arms when they are shielding with them. In a brawl, if your opponent is doing that, either they are a ballistic boat and dont care about heat or they will hit heat threshold after taking out your arms and you can freely torso twist back to kill him. Mechs with no shield arms (either because most or all of their weapons are arm mounted so shielding with them is a bad idea, or because they have large torso) are a massive disadvantage.

I once ran into a KGC that was out of ammo and only had 3 MLs left. I was in a HGN with 4 MLs and the side with my missiles had been destroyed. He was torso twisting, but it didnt matter because I could just shoot his torsos from the side anyway. I easily won because I had shield arms and he didnt.

[Khobai]

I just think STs just need double the armor/structure that arms have.

that way if you want a 2 for 1 special you have to chew through twice the hp

I mean that seems fair to me


so if a hunchback's arm has 48 armor+structure then a hunchback's side torso should have 96 armor+structure (instead of only 72). CTs should also get a corresponding increase of 33% more health.



I also think legging a mech shouldnt destroy the mech. Losing one leg should reduce you to 40% speed and losing two legs should reduce you to 15% speed. And it would knock you down and make you super easy to knockdown again, if they ever readd knockdowns.

Edited by Khobai, 19 November 2017 - 12:23 PM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Khobai, on 19 November 2017 - 12:15 PM, said:

I just think STs just need double the armor/structure that arms have.

Yes, lets double hp again and then complain about 72 dmg alphas some more.

[Khobai]

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Yes, lets double hp again and then complain about 72 dmg alphas some more.

i didnt say double the hp of STs, just give them double what arms have

its only a 33% overall increase and only to torso sections, not that big of a deal

the point is to make STs a bit tougher to make them less attractive to always shoot at which also helps ISXL not suck. Because lets face it ISXL is !@#4ing terrible and it mostly has to do with how easy STs are to destroy.


and yeah large lasers and medium lasers are gonna get linked for ghost heat soon, im not too worried about the 72 damage laser vomit alphas dominating for much longer. that nerf is coming down the pipeline. gonna be a nice christmas surprise for clans when their last good combination of weapons is nerfed. lol.

Edited by Khobai, 19 November 2017 - 12:49 PM.

[Tarogato]

Khobai, on 18 November 2017 - 11:15 PM, said:

again thats why side torsos should have at least twice the hitpoints of arms

So, you want to nerf mechs that rely on arm weapons? This change is a net buff to torso weapons, which are already preferable to begin with.



Btw, I almost missed that you replied to me because you didn't include the post ID in your quote, and that's what notifies people that they've been replied to.