8 replies to this topic

[Dubbletwice]

Hello everyone,

What determines a "good" mech chassis?

Let's consider the chassis alone, by ignoring variables such as pilot skills or map terrain.

Some possible factors could include ...

• Speed / mobility?
  
• Hit boxes / armor capacity?
  
• Tonnage?
  
• Hard-point type - amount - location?
  
• Quirks?

How would you rate these (and other) factors in terms of what has the most effect?

Let's say you had to select three factors that have the MOST impact on the quality of a chassis.

What would they be?











note : this thread is inspired by a thread called "what determines a good player" by Armored Yoki

[El Bandito]

Hitboxes, hardpoints, and mobility are three most important aspects, followed by quirks for mostly IS mechs. Anything that is popular in FP is basically a good mech, which goes double for popular comp mech.

Edited by El Bandito, 06 January 2018 - 02:23 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Dubbletwice, on 06 January 2018 - 02:15 AM, said:

Let's say you had to select three factors that have the MOST impact on the quality of a chassis.

What would they be?

1. How close your weapons are in line with the cockpit, along the X-axis. Closer is better.
2. Hitboxes that spread damage well from the front and/or sides. Being short is good. Being tall is bad. Being slim is good. Being wide is bad. Shield arms are great.
3. Enough hardpoints to enable the 'mech to deal "enough effective damage" based on it's tonnage, after installing an engine to allow it to move "fast enough" for it's weight.

Edited by Jay Leon Hart, 06 January 2018 - 03:05 AM.

[Burke IV]

Mobility armour hitboxes in that order imo. Altho that is probably a very medium mech point of view. What use is heavy armour when all you can do is shuffle slowly out of the way? The best armour you can possibly have is not to be standing there

[Daggett]

There is no set order of factors to determine a good mech.

While of cause the ideal mech would do well in every factor you mentioned, the ones that are really important are defined by the role you want to play with it.

Some examples: A brawler don't need high hardpoints but good hitboxes and armor/structure quirks instead while a peek-a-boo mech rather wants those high hardpoints. A flanker however needs speed and a small profile.

So for a given chassis the question is not: "Is is good?" but rather "Which roles will this mech do better than most others, and in which roles will it suck?"

By viewing a chassis this way you can easily tell that the Fafnir for instance will probably not shine as a tip-of-the-spear brawler unless it gets massive quirks and torso twist speed. But it will likely work well as a second-line damage-dealing assault like the laser-vomit MAD-IIC.

So when i look at a new mech i first try to identify the roles it's variants can be used for with good effect. And if i find a role where it promises to outperform most existing mechs or if it even provides a new role / gameplay style i'll probably preorder it.

Edited by Daggett, 06 January 2018 - 10:23 AM.

[JediPanther]

Dubbletwice, on 06 January 2018 - 02:15 AM, said:

Hello everyone,

What determines a "good" mech chassis?

Let's consider the chassis alone, by ignoring variables such as pilot skills or map terrain.

Some possible factors could include ...

• Speed / mobility?
  
• Hit boxes / armor capacity?
  
• Tonnage?
  
• Hard-point type - amount - location?
  
• Quirks?

How would you rate these (and other) factors in terms of what has the most effect?


Let's say you had to select three factors that have the MOST impact on the quality of a chassis.

What would they be?

note : this thread is inspired by a thread called "what determines a good player" by Armored Yoki

If you're a light mech pilot like me you look for:


1. Hard points and hard point variation. I'm one of those types who hates having just one weapon type like the Oxide's all missiles or the 2c Fury's lol mg hard points. I avoid ammo depended light mech builds like the plage. Huggin taught me how much not having a single small laser makes when you run out of ammo with lots of enemies you could have damaged or killed.

Where the hard point is is just as important as the type. The supreme case in point is the Spider 5V with its two center torso only laser hard points. yeah you can do a measly bit of damage with it but there are literately two better mech variants and one with ecm and one more energy hard point so why not take one of the other two?

2. Speed. If you are under 120kph you are super slow. Expect to die to trollmandos,mlx-gs and achs a lot. Plus when you have those aww sheet moments where you mess up your positioning you can re position (usually) without taking a lot of damage or being one shot killed. No assault or 60-70kph heavy can do that on the IS side anyway.

3. Tons. Not really an issue if you're a dedicated light physo like me. I have all the locusts as well as other 35 toners. Yeah you can do more with the 'heavier' light mechs comparing a 35t to 20t but it just comes down to how you want to play. Some days I just load up lrm5s or 10s on the Rvn-4X. Other days I get lazy and decide to go full scout with a tag,narc,uav build.

4. Hit boxes. They matter more than you think. When any thing and every thing can kill you from any side your mech just gets put into collection status. Jenners. That's all I need say expect lights should be smaller than the rest of the three mech classes not as big or bigger.

5. Quirks. You'll a fool to buy any mech for quirks. Rvn-H and J7R-O were godly with their quirks then pgi noticed them and nerf nuked them. As pgi can nerf on a whim for any reason at any time never get a mech for its quirks. They can be nice but do you really see any Ember OP threads despite its massive rate of fire of 25% on its machine guns?

What I find funny how ever is that out of all the IS mechs I have the Rvn_H can out distance them all at nearly 1200m to my stalker's 1135m due to its missile range quirk added to the skill tree's range nodes for lrms.

[Nightbird]

My opinion:

1, 45% of overall score: Geometry/hitboxes. Side torsos that can be fully shielded by arms and the center torso depending on which way you turn. A center torso that can be fully shielded by both arms and STs. Bad geometry means a good pilots will be able to focus 100% of his damage to one ST or CT, killing you with minimum effort. Good geometry literally doubles or triples the damage you can take via good twisting before you lose weapons or die, it is FAR superior to any structure/armor quirks PGI gives out.

2, 45% of overall score: Hardpoint choice/location. Do you have adequate hardpoints to adapt your mech to a role? (Brawler/midrange/sniper/etc) If no, just forget about the mech. If yes, then the higher up and less spread out they are, the less of your mech you have to expose to take a shot and the less convergence issues you'll experience with missiles and ballistics.

3, 10% of overall score: Cockpit location. If you are looking out the top of your mech, you can keep your mech from getting into a bad situation. A cockpit at the bottom of your mech (like the archer) means you die before ever seeing the fire line set up for you. Life or death for mechs of all sizes.

0% of overall score: Quirks. Only bad mechs get quirks, (not to say all bad mechs get quirks, but good mechs never get decent quirks) and PGI NEVER gives enough quirks to make them average (not good, average), PGI only ever gives enough quirks to make a mech not as far below average as they would be without quirks.

Edited by Nightbird, 06 January 2018 - 09:53 AM.

[Lozruet Gravemind]

Dubbletwice, on 06 January 2018 - 02:15 AM, said:

Hello everyone,

What determines a "good" mech chassis?

Let's consider the chassis alone, by ignoring variables such as pilot skills or map terrain.

Some possible factors could include ...

• Speed / mobility?
  
• Hit boxes / armor capacity?
  
• Tonnage?
  
• Hard-point type - amount - location?
  
• Quirks?

How would you rate these (and other) factors in terms of what has the most effect?


Let's say you had to select three factors that have the MOST impact on the quality of a chassis.

What would they be?











note : this thread is inspired by a thread called "what determines a good player" by Armored Yoki

Top three, and Ill elaborate on why i put them in what order, is Hitboxes/Geometry, Hadpoint type/quantity, and last is Speed/Mobility.

Hitboxes/Geometry are most important simply because if your easy to hig, Broad side of a barn design, huge CT or ST hitboxes, etc then doesnt matter how good of weapons or other factors you have because a newbie will be able to drill components and neutralize any weapons of or equipment in that area.

Hardpoint type and Quantity is due to whatever the latest "Meta" is. If the current meta is brawling ballistics and you only have 1 or 2 ballistic hardpoints your going to suffer. Conversely if its a Laser Vomit Meta and you have upwards of 7+ Laser Harpoints you are all set to rock.

Speed/Mobility simply because MWO is more a Twitch shooter now than any other kind. Yes you dont die in miliseconds like CoD or Battlefield but its still about getting on target as quick as possible and getting out of bad spots as quick as possible.



Lets take a look at the newest Mechpack, the Fafnir, and while I dont think it will be HORRIBLE as some have said I dont think it will be a ZOMG good/Meta mech

First is its Hitboxes. Purely from all of the artwork that ever has been for the Faf the thing has really really REALLY massive side torsos. Meaning it will never see a XL engine ever, and anyone who does put one in it is an idiot.

Next is its Hardpoints. While it has what I find to be good Hardpoints it doesnt have them in "Meta" numbers. Ballistic+Energy is kind of hot right now and the best it does is 2B+5E. Compare that to the same weight and same tonnage Anhililator that just came out and you can do 4B+7E.

Last is its mobility. Since the engine desync its going to have your standard 100 ton twist and other agility numbers. Add in that 2 of the other 3 IS 100 tonners, King Crab and Atlas, have a max 360 rating to the Fafnirs 325 and its almost the slowest IS Assault, with exception of the Anhililator. Which the Ani makes up for by bringing huge amounts of firepower to the field.

Take all three of these and the Fafnir, currently, on paper is not looking like a good mech. Now there are ways for PGI to help make it not SO bad which I will outline.

First is it should have a larger/faster torso turn than other 100 tonners. It was designed in a way that it has to be able to twist just to get its guns to bear, as its arms do not swing left or right at all. If a Atlas has lets say a 50 degree torso turn angle and turns at 90 degrees per second the Faf should get at 90 or 100 degree turn angle and a 120 degree per second turn rate. This would allow the Faf to actually fight.

Second is it has to be Quirked to make up for its Hitboxes and Hardpoints. First it has to ABSOLUTELY have ST Armor quirks as I said before because those things are going to get drilled. Next because it can bring only around half the weapon loadout of other 100s, the Ani and KGC in particular, it needs range/heat/cooldown quirks. Hell I have been wanting a true "RACzilla" since the Civil War tech, give it a -20/30 percent to RAC Jam chance and my theory build of 2 RAC 5s and 5 ER Mediums could actually work.

Last they could bring it in line with the other 100 tonners and up its max engine to a 360. Of course the issue here is that upping the engine means less room for weapons on a already weapon starved 100 tonner. So I can stand working with the 300 or 325.

[FupDup]

IMO the order of importance is:

1. Hardpoints, including both type and location (high vs. low, clustered vs. spread out).

2. Durability, usually hitboxes but sometimes strong enough quirks can suffice.

3. Mobility, for getting around and stuff. This is ranked lowest because good positioning and teamwork can basically invalidate a low mobility weakness (see Dire Whale meta back in the day, some assaults that still carry pretty hard), mobility is mostly for fun, convenience, and dealing with the random uncoordinated mess that is the puq queue.


This does vary by weight class though, with the obvious exception being that lights need mobility way more because their durability and firepower will typically be fairly low regardless of their engine size. Mediums also need mobility more than fatties but it's not quite as drastic (slow 81 kph mediums can work well if they have other strengths).

Edited by FupDup, 06 January 2018 - 12:10 PM.