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Catipult And Mech Sizes


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#1 FallenShaw

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Posted 14 December 2017 - 06:13 PM

This maybe in the wrong section but I'm not allowed to post a new topic in the general discussion part sadly. However I did wanna discuss this issue that seems to bother me with you guys. Namely with the Catipult Mech Size being too small I feel.

Ik Ik, alot of you will argue its fine, but here me out. It stands pract dead even in height with a 45 ton medium mech. A short one at that. I'm talking about the Shadow Cat of course. Now yes the catipult is builkyier but still, its what 20 tons heavyier. Also the ears on it bother me in looks. Now in judging height of the mech i'm not counting ears. But the acutal body of the mech not just pgi's shoot me targets. Its body and the Shadow Cat are prac even across and up and down. So I'd like to propose a change that being increase the catipults, Mech hieght by 10% while also decreasing the ears size both ways by 10%

It will still be the same height as before counting ears, but will be slightly taller on the body. The decrease in size on the ears across is to help shape stability and of course the up and down to rebalance the increase of mech's body. My Purposed change will also carry over 2 benifits 1 being a double edged sword. 1st benifit is smaller ear hit boxes, no harmful side effects, 2nd Catipults will be able to peek and shoot slightly better over a ridge though I doubt anyone will notice the improvement. That being said it will also be increasing the center and side torso hitboxes along with its legs very slightly. So it wouldn't really be a buff or debuff overall.

My change to the catipult mech scale, is not meant to buff it, nor nerf it. I actually find it one of the more balanced mech's in the game. But When you place it side by side with a lighter mech, or look at the ears.... Its really ugly. It just looks stunted in growth compared to other mechs. And while I know the ears are meant to be a weak point 10% isnt gonna really hurt you hitting them. They are still bigger than the center torso after all. If you can't hit them then, well , Thats a player aim problem. They are god aweful to look at though, and the 10% reduction i feel will make them look like they actually belong on the mech instead of two sticky notes that read shoot pgi made them into.




PGI, don't get me wrong you do some great artwork designs, and the rescale for the most part was needed. However you didn't really complete the rescale balancing well. There are more than just the catipult that need some slight minor tweaks. I doubt you'll pay attention to my post, or that players will rally behind me, however in the future try to fully complete a task you set forth on. Half assing it never gets the job done. But I am thankful mwo is still up and running most games don't last this many years. Playerbase isnt what it was but, thats to be expected. Though I will say take league of legends way of thinking when you deside to upgrade to a new mwo. Rework all of it, but leave Mwo running. Ik there are alot of features a new mwo game could have that weren't done years ago, but they can still be added to this. I just hate seeing a good game die off, seen way to many.







PS: PGI, you could learn alot from looking at the failures of other games. Take what EA Sports has done to starcraft 2, command and conquer, and even league of legends soon. Yes League is still number 1 in playerbase but within the next 2 years that'll change i believe. They adopted the same failing strat of devoplement EA got blizzard todo with Starcraft 2. Hence why it went F2P to try and get some players back. They follow the simple plan of dumbing down games. Make them easyier more newplayer friendly and faster. Only if you do that, then you have to take away from the games mechinaics that player skill and wisdom spent years to learn and perfect. Casual games never last its the competitve aspect of games that keep people coming back time and again. Otherwize the game might as well be minesweeper. Each and every step taken to make things easyier for newplayers when it comes to game mechinanics decreases the difference in player skill vs another. I'm all for teaching newbies how to play, but never for changing the game its self to help them. Its just a flawed way of thinking. The more complex you make a game the higher quailty it is. That in turn = the longer and higher the playerbase last. Keep that thought in mind for future developements. League has decreased its quaility bringing matches to an all time low, starcraft 2 is dying out, and desprate, command and conqure is dead. World of tanks warships ect... dying as well. All these games did the same thing, and all have ties to ea sports, even if they were a 3rd party. They also all were successful in their time due to the competitve nature of their games. A trait that MechWarrior shares as well. Sorry for the rant but if PGI reads this maybe it'll save them from some future errors in judgement.

#2 Koniving

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Posted 14 December 2017 - 06:34 PM

To post in other subjects: play the game for at least 25 matches.

There's a lot to comment on... and give me time and I will.

But for now.
MWO's original model was 15 meters tall.
MWO's current model is just shy of 14 meters tall (so barely shorter than most 50 and 55 ton mechs, though with still nearly 30% more volume).
The canonical height of the two types of Catapult in Battletech are 8-9 meters (shunt-legged) and 11-12 meters (stilt-legged).
(Also worth noting the tallest mech until 3065 is 14.4 meters... MWO's tallest mech is 17.6 meters, and most of its 45 ton mechs are just shy of 14 meters.)

Will read and feedback on the rest later.

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Posted Image
The Shadowcat is barely over 12 meters tall in MWO, which is two meters shorter than the Catapult. A better comparison would be the Blackjack or the Vindicator. It is also 0.75 meters shorter than an Ebon Jaguar.


Sadly the rest isn't really worth commenting on, personal opinions about the design of the Catapult and some kind of rant about EA sports (which makes it sound like the person is under the impression that EA Sports owns Blizzard? I think he means became E-sports. Not "Electronic Arts Sports" as written. Sadly E-sports is what kept several of these games alive for so long. MWO's got a pipe dream about fitting in that category because that implies it is a highly skill based and balanced platform which it is neither due to weapons so heavily tweaked out of proportion to compensate for including nothing that the weapons were designed to fight (i.e. infantry, lighter armor, aircraft, etc.). But overall the rest isn't worth commenting on.

Edited by Koniving, 14 December 2017 - 07:32 PM.


#3 Rogue Jedi

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Posted 15 December 2017 - 04:27 AM

Initially the catapult was somewhat oversized, a while back PGI went through and resized every mech so each ton of Mech mass is realy represented in terms of volume.

The catapult has within 0.5% the same volume as the other 65 ton Mechs, 3.25 times the volume of 20 ton Mechs, 65% the volume of a 100 ton Mech and is accurately scaled to every other Mech in the game.
Catapult is less tall than some lighter Mechs because of its body shape, humanoid Mechs should be taller than bird shaped Mechs because bird shaped Mechs like the catapult are longer.

Think of it this way, which is bigger a 5 meter tall tower with a 1 meter square base or a 3 meter cube? The 1x5m tower has a volume of 5 cubic meters while the 3m cube has 9 cubic meters volume. Would you then say the cube cannot be bigger than the tower as the tower is taller?

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 15 December 2017 - 11:02 AM.


#4 Koniving

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Posted 15 December 2017 - 04:28 AM

Note: This post is very image heavy with modest lore and much scale discussion. Spans from BT sizes in general, Atlas, Mist Lynx, Thunderbolts, dropships, approximately when BT's scales went from realistic and somewhat regulated to a certain rule set to "GIANT ROBOTS OF DOOM" (aka when Wizkidz took over) and the mishaps that led to the Catapult's current situation including multiple concept arts with editor notes insisting that the mech be made to be considerably larger in terms of scale... which also led to the slight shrink in MWO's rescale.
Spoiler

Ah damnit. I said I wouldn't go on that tangent (and I could keep going for weeks so I'll cut it there.)

Also recommend this thread be moved to something like Battletech discussion, general discussion, or possibly offtopic since we know PGI isn't gonna do yet another rescale that'd actually require major remodeling of the mechs.
A bit later if my photoshop still likes me, I'll do a scale transition of the current scale of mediums and heavies in maybe 3 to 5 different gif animations. Like this one. Remember this one is from the OLD scale.

Edit: Forgot the endtag for the spoiler. Fixed.
Quick edit: Shaw's suggested remodeling wouldn't be a big deal. However a canonical size remodeling of just the Catapult would be, and then it'd throw everything else out of whack and thus everything else would need it., Even the guys at Harebrained Schemes had to make concessions to the scale aschanging PGI's models to the known scales of lore isn't possible without breaking them. This is also why they didn't bother with fixing it for MW5 Mercs either. (And why when they started using canonical measurements for barrel sizes the MWO ACs shrunk so drastically that players cried about it.)

Edit 3:
You can see Harebrained schemes did rein it to approximately the minimum canon size for their concept art, however.
Posted Image
They just couldn't actually get the model to be that small.
Shunt-legged Catapult smallest known height compared to 5'6" female (assumed height of pilot depicted above).
Height to tallest point means the ears.
Posted Image
(See links in my first post for the difference between "Shunt-legged" and "Stilt-legged" Catapults. Shunt-legged models are typically deployed to flatlands, urban environments, etc. Stilt-legged are intended for more mountaineous and canyon-filled terrrain where height is more important. Both mechs weigh the same and the difference is "Hollis Mark I" and "Hollis Mark II" chassis skeletons. (The Stilt-legged design never appeared in a TRO as far as I know)
Also worth noting... Mech-eating dinosaurs.
I went to compare weights, and this was made back when the belief that T-rex was 20 to 30 tons was still common, if insanely exaggerated.
Posted Image
https://www.thoughtc...s-weigh-1091921

Still, nothing like roaming on a planet and suddenly being attacked by a dinosaur that gnaws your arm off.(

Crap, added a bunch more stuff.)

Edited by Koniving, 15 December 2017 - 07:55 AM.






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