52 replies to this topic

[Nema Nabojiv]

Shadowhawk has the same mobility stats as the Griffin and Bushwacker. The only thing differs is torso twist angles but that seems to be fair considering high weapon mounts.

I dont know what you dont like about them except horrible cockpit. Maybe you meant Shadow Cat?

Edited by Nema Nabojiv, 28 January 2018 - 10:36 AM.

[Jackal Noble]

If you're saying they're easy to CT core, that means one thing - XL friendly.

I only own one shawk and it's the ppc var and its got some dust .

[Y E O N N E]

Nema Nabojiv, on 28 January 2018 - 10:16 AM, said:

Shadowhawk has the same mobility stats as the Griffin and Bushwacker. The only thing differs is torso twist angles but that seems to be fair considering high weapon mounts.

I dont know what you dont like about them except horrible cockpit.

Even the Griffin these days has garnered complaints about sluggishness in the brawl role. Being unable to spread the damage as well as the global nerfs to SRM4s and Artemis have knocked it out of the running. It's Bushwacker all day every day, Jump Jets be damned.

Peaking, the BSW presents less of a target than either the GRF or the SHD.

We are talking about 'Mechs that bring, at most, two PPCs or two UAC/5 to peak. This isn't a case like the HBK-IIC-A where it slaps in 64 points of laser vomit or the HBK-IIC where it has things like dual Gauss, dual UAC/10 and lasers, or dual LB-20X. It's pretty modest. And TBQH, even the HBK-IIC is too sluggish, it just has some unholy firepower to make itself useful to an outsized extent.

Unless you want to count MRM-vomit as qualitatively comparable to lasers or ballistics which...I don't.

JackalBeast, on 28 January 2018 - 10:26 AM, said:

If you're saying they're easy to CT core, that means one thing - XL friendly. I only own one shawk and it's the ppc var and its got some dust .

It is pretty XL friendly, no ragerts running XL on it. But...it has problems getting out of its own way and any firepower you want in the arms goes poof the moment a fight starts.

[xe N on]

Cathy, on 28 January 2018 - 10:08 AM, said:

Normalisation, is a very bad thing, it's why cars look basically the same, it's why aircraft look the same, it kills creativity, and makes life very grey and dull.

Yeah, lets have air crafts look like machines from Leonardo da Vinci I think that would give the flight some ... let's say individual character ... and a very final one.

Creativity don't necessary means that thing looks different. Creativity means that you e.g. use a shark skin texture to a air plane hull to reduce air drag.

The real revolutions aren't often that obvious.

There are even examples where standardization was a creative idea. 60 years ago somebody invented the standard iso-container for shipping goods. That revolutionized the way shipping is done completely.

Edited by xe N on, 28 January 2018 - 12:05 PM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 11:30 AM, said:

Unless you want to count MRM-vomit as qualitatively comparable to lasers or ballistics which...I don't.

I am of course. 40 damage at 400 meters out of just one hardpoint is nothing but great. MRMs brought about every single medium with a missile hardpoint out of mediocrity. It gets boring after some time, but so does every other thing you boat on too many chassis.

[Y E O N N E]

Nema Nabojiv, on 28 January 2018 - 12:08 PM, said:

I am of course. 40 damage at 400 meters out of just one hardpoint is nothing but great. MRMs brought about every single medium with a missile hardpoint out of mediocrity. It gets boring after some time, but so does every other thing you boat on too many chassis.

40 damage at 550 meters*

But the thing is, it's splattering all over a target, without even the potential to focus onto a component the way lasers can. It might be good for damage farming in QP and, sure, it might have brought a medium chassis up to mediocrity, but it doesn't have the same kind of battlefield impact that being able to plant 60+ points onto a CT from 440 meters does.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 12:15 PM, said:

40 damage at 550 meters*

But the thing is, it's splattering all over a target, without even the potential to focus onto a component the way lasers can. It might be good for damage farming in QP and, sure, it might have brought a medium chassis up to mediocrity, but it doesn't have the same kind of battlefield impact that being able to plant 60+ points onto a CT from 440 meters does.

Its 40 splat with way less exposure than 60+ alphas, so Im fine with it.

[Y E O N N E]

Nema Nabojiv, on 28 January 2018 - 12:30 PM, said:

Its 40 splat with way less exposure than 60+ alphas, so Im fine with it.

Irrelevant, it doesn't have the same impact. Take a 50 ton medium that isn't worth as much as other 50 ton medium? Congrats, you've shorted your team a 50 ton medium.

[YueFei]

Frankly I dunno how anyone survives in a Shadowhawk if they aren't using instant-fire weapons.

Don't MRMs stream out over like half a second or so? A Shadowhawk with 0 investment in mobility skill tree can still turn+twist 73 degrees in half a second. Having to stare at someone for an extra half second when you could move enough to nearly fully occlude your torso seems unhealthy.

I'm using instant-fire weapons as it is and it's a struggle to avoid getting hit in the face.

[Void Angel]

I haven't noticed any issues with my 2H, but then, I haven't done Scouting for a while, either.

[Xetelian]

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 10:12 AM, said:

All normalization means is you have a standard you are comparing to. It doesn't mean you can't have wildly varying values, it just means that to get those there's going to be, ahem, some give and take elsewhere.

Normalization is good and necessary to make a fair game.

I'm not the most educated on this topic but my opinion is that normalization has its place in some things but they've done wrong by most mechs with the desync.

[Nema Nabojiv]

YueFei, on 28 January 2018 - 12:33 PM, said:

Frankly I dunno how anyone survives in a Shadowhawk if they aren't using instant-fire weapons.

Don't MRMs stream out over like half a second or so? A Shadowhawk with 0 investment in mobility skill tree can still turn+twist 73 degrees in half a second. Having to stare at someone for an extra half second when you could move enough to nearly fully occlude your torso seems unhealthy.

I'm using instant-fire weapons as it is and it's a struggle to avoid getting hit in the face.

IDK what is it so insta-firing you can put in SHawk so it will do better than MRM40 or UAC10, but I guess its a pretty good state of balance when you have a choice between low risk low reward and high risk high reward weapons on a same mech.

I had a good time playing loyalty Griffin which is very simillar to Shadow Hawk and I honestly dont understand what people want from it. Its a 55 tonner, it moves like one and it has good hardpoints, and some variants even got buffed somehow in the last patch, I haven't tried them since then but -25% uac jam chance seems solid.

[Y E O N N E]

Xetelian, on 28 January 2018 - 12:52 PM, said:

I'm not the most educated on this topic but my opinion is that normalization has its place in some things but they've done wrong by most mechs with the desync.

Normalization wasn't the problem, it was the specific execution. The point of engine desync should have been to take the best-performing 'Mechs of a given weight class, use their mobility as the baseline, and then increase the mobility on 'Mechs that are underperforming. But that's not at all what happened.

[YueFei]

Nema Nabojiv, on 28 January 2018 - 12:58 PM, said:

IDK what is it so insta-firing you can put in SHawk so it will do better than MRM40 or UAC10, but I guess its a pretty good state of balance when you have a choice between low risk low reward and high risk high reward weapons on a same mech.

I had a good time playing loyalty Griffin which is very simillar to Shadow Hawk and I honestly dont understand what people want from it. Its a 55 tonner, it moves like one and it has good hardpoints, and some variants even got buffed somehow in the last patch, I haven't tried them since then but -25% uac jam chance seems solid.

Well I have AC20 and SRMs on mine, which are instant firing.

That's a fair attitude you bring towards things (risk vs reward), but given the Shadowhawk's hitboxes, I think it (and some other 55 tonners) could use accel/decel buffs. That way, even with longer duration weaponry, you can spread incoming fire.

To put things in perspective, the Dragon which is 5 tons heavier has 77% better accel and 26% better decel than the Shadowhawk and Griffin.

I don't think a 30% to 50% accel/decel buff for the Griff and SHawk would make them OP, but more fun and survivable.

[Nema Nabojiv]

YueFei, on 28 January 2018 - 01:15 PM, said:

To put things in perspective, the Dragon which is 5 tons heavier has 77% better accel and 26% better decel than the Shadowhawk and Griffin.

Dragon and Quickdraw. But those two were really bad for a long time and so they got mobility and armor quirks to compensate. And being heavy means they are getting matched by another heavy in the opposing team, so they kinda need some redeeming qualities.
55 tonners were never as bad as those two in their weight class, hence no godlike quirks. As a matter of fact, most 55 tonners are pretty good for a medium mech.

[YueFei]

Nema Nabojiv, on 28 January 2018 - 01:36 PM, said:

Dragon and Quickdraw. But those two were really bad for a long time and so they got mobility and armor quirks to compensate. And being heavy means they are getting matched by another heavy in the opposing team, so they kinda need some redeeming qualities.
55 tonners were never as bad as those two in their weight class, hence no godlike quirks. As a matter of fact, most 55 tonners are pretty good for a medium mech.

Just to make sure we aren't talking past each other, my position is that different tonnage mechs should be competitive, and it should not be the general case that heavier is better. My position also is that the goal should be to make all mechs viable. That's a win/win, because:

• It balances the game, and increase variety, which competitve players want. And a large portion of non-competitve players want this, too.
  
• It ensures that more of the game's assets are used by players, so that the work of PGI's artists and engineers doesn't just collect dust in players' mech bays.
  
• It increases the chances of new player retention, because even if McMechN00b buys a brand new mech at random based on the fact that he thinks it looks cool, as long as 90+% of mechs are viable, then even a randomly-purchased mech has a 90+% chance of being viable. As opposed to the opposite situation where 80+% of mechs are sub-par, and then McMechN00b randomly buying a mech has an 80+% chance of using a disadvantaged robot on top of struggling to learn how to play the game, which just increases the chances that he'll get seal-clubbed, and eventually quit the game.

For me, it's really that last point#3 which PGI should wake up to. It's in the interests of their bottom line to balance the robots because that gets more people staying to play the game (not just trying it for a few months and quitting in disgust), and gets more people buying more of the robots being offered.


That extra funding could then allow them to actually achieve some of the more ambitious goals they've advertised, which would then please a great number of old veterans who were really looking for more than just an arena instant-action-style video game.

(Edit:) Um, it seems that numbered lists don't render properly? It shows up as a bulleted item list, but in the editor it shows up correctly as a numbered list. Anyone have the same problem or know the solution?

OK, so I edit this because I realize I digressed a bit from addressing your specific point. What I mean is that, I think where the Dragon is now is in a good place (I dunno about the Quickdraw), considering that we actually saw the Dragon get used in MWOWC 2017. So my position is that other mechs ought to be brought up to that level. I think that agility is a fantastic place to give mechs buffs, because it raises the skill ceiling for those mechs, it's not just passive durability from armor/structure quirks, the player has to actively use that agility to survive.

Another example I'll throw in is the Atlas. I calculated the minimum agility it would need to spread incoming damage, assuming you also put in maximum skill tree points for agility. It would be something like 44 deg/sec turn rate, 22.5 acce/decel, and torso twist to 90 deg/sec. If you put in full skill tree investment, it would end up at 55 deg/sec turn rate, 28 acce/decel, and torso twist speed to 112 deg/sec. It could occlude its torso sections in a little over half a second, and juke fast enough to make incoming fire land on an adjacent hitbox instead of the intended hitbox. That basically requires doubling the current accel/decel values, and increasing turn rate by about 35%, and increasing torso twist speed by about 50%.

Edited by YueFei, 28 January 2018 - 03:41 PM.

[Sunstruck]

YueFei, on 28 January 2018 - 02:21 AM, said:

I just started playing a Shadowhawk-2D this month. My previous ride was almost exclusively the Hunchback-4SP, and that's my reference point for comparison.

The Shadowhawk seems to get cored out CT much more easily than the HBK-4SP. And that's the case even though the HBK-4SP I run uses Medium Lasers + SRMs, so the Lasers have a duration where I'm facing the enemy. The HBK-4SP tends to lose the side torsos first before dying.

In contrast, the Shadowhawk is equipped with AC20 + SRMs, so it's instantaneously fired, no duration. There's less facetime with the enemy using this loadout. Yet it gets CT cored quite a bit more compared to the HBK-4SP.

I've found that in order to compensate, I have to leg turn simultaneously with the torso twisting to help speed up the twisting, and I can't hesitate at all to do it. If in doubt, I'm better off just turning aside immediately (maybe without even shooting back) and presenting my shoulders, because if I delay for a split second, the Shadowhawk tends to collect the hits to the CT. Unlike mechs with protruding torsos, wiggling back and forth in a Shadowhawk does not displace the CT hitbox, so you have to be twisted near 90 degrees to occlude the CT in order to protect it. Damage does not tend to get distributed to the side torsos.

I imagine that any Shadowhawk build which runs lasers, or burst-firing ACs, or any loadout requiring significant facetime, would struggle a great deal with defending itself.

Are the hitboxes outlined here still accurate for the Shadowhawk:
http://mwomercs.com/...x-localization/
??

Yes the Shadowhawk does have a larger CT but you need to use the jump jets and poptart more with it. I use an Ultra 10 on the Grey Death with some srms and er med lasers and its nice at burst damage pop tarting. Still you want to put a lot into the survival tree. The hunch sp used to be my main scouting mech so I have a lot of time in both chassis, its more of a brawler. The shadowhawk imho is better as skirmisher, the jump jets are key with it.

[Sunstruck]

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 11:30 AM, said:

Even the Griffin these days has garnered complaints about sluggishness in the brawl role. Being unable to spread the damage as well as the global nerfs to SRM4s and Artemis have knocked it out of the running. It's Bushwacker all day every day, Jump Jets be damned.

Peaking, the BSW presents less of a target than either the GRF or the SHD.

We are talking about 'Mechs that bring, at most, two PPCs or two UAC/5 to peak. This isn't a case like the HBK-IIC-A where it slaps in 64 points of laser vomit or the HBK-IIC where it has things like dual Gauss, dual UAC/10 and lasers, or dual LB-20X. It's pretty modest. And TBQH, even the HBK-IIC is too sluggish, it just has some unholy firepower to make itself useful to an outsized extent.

Unless you want to count MRM-vomit as qualitatively comparable to lasers or ballistics which...I don't.



It is pretty XL friendly, no ragerts running XL on it. But...it has problems getting out of its own way and any firepower you want in the arms goes poof the moment a fight starts.

The bushwackers hitboxes are loreish in that it was designed so that it had a slim forward facing profile, and was based on the ebon jag if I recall. BUT the side profile is much worse than a shadowhawk or hunchback, everything goes straight to the LT or RT. Theres no shame in running a bushwacker, I love mine, they run almost the same in MWO as they did in MW4.

[Khobai]

scaling is the problem IMO.

why are those mediums still the size of heavies?

they completely bungled the rescale pass on medium mechs. it needs a do over.

[Y E O N N E]

And the Shadowhawk in particular has always been huge.