478 replies to this topic

[Kubernetes]

Nightbird, on 26 February 2019 - 07:53 AM, said:

So.... you're saying you don't want volumetric scaling which would make assaults half the size they are today because you prefer PGI's not volumetric scaling... yet you don't like what you have today?

I'm saying scale for playability. A lot of mechs should be shrunk, like most of the 35 tonners. I don't care about adhering to any strict or correct scaling if it makes certain mechs unplayable.

All of this discussion about density and its logic with respect to mechs is counting angels on the head of a pin, because there is no logic. We're dealing with magic here. But it's a game, so let's treat it like a game.

[Karl Streiger]

Kubernetes, on 28 February 2019 - 12:46 AM, said:

All of this discussion about density and its logic with respect to mechs is counting angels on the head of a pin, because there is no logic. We're dealing with magic here. But it's a game, so let's treat it like a game.

Even considered from the game perspective to large mechs don't make sense - the size of a mech cuts always twice:

First because bigger size influence the available routes and cover
Second because size is a bigger hit-zone also the size has influence on the mobility so bigger mechs have more issues in rolling damage.
(could add a third point because of the terrain crossing ability that forces a Assault to stop cold on a sidewalk - while a light can sprint up a 90° wall for several meters)

next thing is that MWOs armor is based on table top and the increase in additional armor is not linear the 20ton Locust is far better armored as the Atlas when considering weight.

Additional the MWOx2 armor idiocy - highly increases the survivability of a light without increasing the survival rate of a bigger mech by far. (again bigger hitzone, slower target -> more hits

so when you put all those considerations into one pot - you need armor on mechs that is dependend on the size of the hit-area and modified indirect proportional to speed and mobility.

the general size need to be put in harmony with the map design

[Koniving]

Prototelis, on 26 February 2019 - 02:12 PM, said:

So what the **** is the point of all that salad?

T h e TLDR.

Basically if PGI didn't front load all the weapons and took a look at what the ten second time slices were supposed to represent rather than literal 1 shot 20 damage 1 shot 5 damage... Then scout mechs could be viable for combat as a secondary role as well as fight near front lines (with only 1 ton of armor) as a support role among peers or a swarmed without needing to be so damn fast or needing to have assaults the size of gundams (up to 19 meters tall) as opposed to the size of battlemechs (6 sometimes but usually 7 to 16 meters tall with tallest in Clan invasion era being 14.4 so the Executioner would be that instead of 19 and everything else much smaller).

The salad was explaining the details of it.

Basically picture if the m16a3 in CoD and BF did 30 bullets worth of damage instead of 1 and allowed you to carry 30 of those shots at 30x the damage of what a bullet should be..per reload.
That's what PGI did.
Is it any wonder 2x armor structure just isn't enough to withstand an 80 damage laser vomit that doesn't even overheat the mech?

Edited by Koniving, 28 February 2019 - 01:39 AM.

[Nightbird]

Kubernetes, on 28 February 2019 - 12:46 AM, said:

I'm saying scale for playability. A lot of mechs should be shrunk, like most of the 35 tonners. I don't care about adhering to any strict or correct scaling if it makes certain mechs unplayable.

All of this discussion about density and its logic with respect to mechs is counting angels on the head of a pin, because there is no logic. We're dealing with magic here. But it's a game, so let's treat it like a game.

Ok, but volumetric scaling would fix all your play-ability problems with size right? I mean, I assume you're not simply against logical solutions because you want an illogical solution to be implemented

Edited by Nightbird, 28 February 2019 - 09:24 AM.

[Kubernetes]

Nightbird, on 28 February 2019 - 09:21 AM, said:

Ok, but volumetric scaling would fix all your play-ability problems with size right? I mean, I assume you're not simply against logical solutions because you want an illogical solution to be implemented

I don't think it would fix all problems. There's an issue with humanoid vs torpedo-shaped mechs in that the latter can have much smaller frontal surface area. It may be consistent and logical, but in terms of playability it'd be bad to have Catapults and Stalkers that look half the size of their counterparts. Volumetric scaling is a good tool to have, but it shouldn't dictate every case.

Edited by Kubernetes, 28 February 2019 - 11:19 AM.

[Nightbird]

Kubernetes, on 28 February 2019 - 11:18 AM, said:

I don't think it would fix all problems. There's an issue with humanoid vs torpedo-shaped mechs in that the latter can have much smaller frontal surface area. It may be consistent and logical, but in terms of playability it'd be bad to have Catapults and Stalkers that look half the size of their counterparts. Volumetric scaling is a good tool to have, but it shouldn't dictate every case.

I got your point. I think the shape advantage of small front surface mechs will be much easier to resolve than what we currently have, but that's a discussion we'll never have anyways since PGI will never rescale again.

[Prototelis]

Koniving, on 28 February 2019 - 01:36 AM, said:

T h e TLDR.

Basically if PGI didn't front load all the weapons and took a look at what the ten second time slices were supposed to represent

THIS ISN'T A BOARD GAME. None of the mechwarrior games worked this way, in fact the two previous games had hitscan instant lasers.

[Koniving]

Prototelis, on 28 February 2019 - 01:10 PM, said:

THIS ISN'T A BOARD GAME. None of the mechwarrior games worked this way, in fact the two previous games had hitscan instant lasers.

You...didn't read a thing did you?

My point is PGI took the board game at face value, then added artificial firing rates.

Basically play Battlefield where you have 30 bullets of damage per shot.
That's what PGI and every Mechwarrior game has ever done...

20 damage is 20 damage per shot. For an equivalent to real life, PGI is taking Battletech's "an M16's ENTIRE 30 shell magazine does 5 damage in total" and saying "each shot is 5 damage."

But if they didn't take the BOARD game as the BOARD GAME and looked UNDER THE SURFACE to what is intended to happen in real time, which I explained in great detail, weapons are doing "20 damage" in 4 to 5 seconds, while firing dozens of bullets. Lasers are doing 0.5 to 4 damage per shot, in multiple shots in 4 to 5 seconds..

Basically, I'm saying if they looked at the lore rather than the damn board game, they'd be using M16s with bullets that do 1 bullet's worth of damage, and have a magazine do a magazine's worth.

You argue against the tabletop, but you're actually completely missing that I'm arguing against it and pushing the material behind it, and you're blindly for the board game instead. O.o;

[Prototelis]

Koniving, on 28 February 2019 - 01:20 PM, said:

You...didn't read a thing did you?

My point is PGI took the board game at face value, then added artificial firing rates.

Your point is to make it more like the board game, and that point is stupid. The fluff exists to inform the board game, not the other way around. One of the biggest things holding this game back is randomly adhering to aspects of both that have no place in an action game.

None of what you are describing is fun.

Edited by Prototelis, 28 February 2019 - 01:25 PM.

[Khobai]

making lights bigger would be a nerf to lights, and they really dont need a nerf

so logically to fix the scaling assaults need to be smaller

at atlas for example should only be like 3 times bigger than a jenner. because the jenner is 35 tons and the atlas is 100 tons. Certainly at MOST the atlas should be 4 times bigger than a jenner. Instead of being like 6 times the size of a Jenner like it is now... it needs a 25%-33% volume reduction.

Edited by Khobai, 28 February 2019 - 01:32 PM.

[Verilligo]

Koniving, on 28 February 2019 - 01:20 PM, said:

You...didn't read a thing did you?

My point is PGI took the board game at face value, then added artificial firing rates.

Basically play Battlefield where you have 30 bullets of damage per shot.
That's what PGI and every Mechwarrior game has ever done...

Well, not entirely. Basegame MW4 fairly heavily rebalanced the stats on a lot of weapons. In some cases not entirely successfully, so you ended up with pretty garbage small and medium lasers, but they weren't afraid to abandon TT values.

[Nightbird]

The locust is the only mech scaled correctly to the environment anyways so yes, everything else scaled down would be the right way to do it, but won't happen.

Edited by Nightbird, 28 February 2019 - 01:37 PM.

[Prototelis]

Nightbird, on 28 February 2019 - 01:28 PM, said:

The locust is the only mech scaled correctly to the environment anyways so year, everything else scaled down would be the right way to do it, but won't happen.

This I can agree with. I also generally agree that everything above it should be scaled down a bit, with another mobility pass. As long as that doesn't give an already bigger advantage to bigger weight classes (through either mobility or scale) I'm all for it. (edit; I don't really care if its scientific, accurate, or follows the random in the TROs.)

Edited by Prototelis, 28 February 2019 - 01:31 PM.

[VulcanXIV]

I'm quite pleased that this thread is still kicking, it needs to be after all. This is one of many incredibly important issues in this game right now and it deserves to be discussed until the day it's fixed.

[Karl Streiger]

Verilligo, on 28 February 2019 - 01:27 PM, said:

Well, not entirely. Basegame MW4 fairly heavily rebalanced the stats on a lot of weapons. In some cases not entirely successfully, so you ended up with pretty garbage small and medium lasers, but they weren't afraid to abandon TT values.

Yes of course, like MechCommander they used the TT balues as base and scaled them accordingly...
Ok MW4 had the issue of pin-point as well but they also changed the armour as it deemed necessary.

Well what konving tried to say - MWO is like that NASA project that splashed on Mars.
Somebody gives you blueprints and you simple take the values ignoring that one are metric the other imperial

However it worked in Closed Beta, almost. But the a couple of reasons didn't survived long into open beta

[Nightbird]

R E X I OS, on 25 February 2019 - 12:51 PM, said:

Nightbird you know those cars in Solaris city? Well a flea/locus or any similar sized mech seem almost the same size compared to those cars at least the torso and arms.

You think you can compare one of those cars with one of those light mechs?
I'm always woundering how small in size those mechs are compared to objects around them.

I didn't want to do a car because those are 2 tons and have a lot of empty interior space for people and cargo. It's also hard to picture 10 cars versus 1 mech.



Here is the flea versus a 18 wheeler on Solaris city. The head of an 18 wheeler is 15 Tons IRL, and has plenty of room for 2 in the cabin, so you can see the flea is a bit too large even for the weight.

[Nightbird]

Scaling of the 'tiny' Warhammer IIC

[VulcanXIV]

Nightbird, on 01 March 2019 - 05:57 PM, said:

Scaling of the 'tiny' Warhammer IIC

The outrage is clearly due to it being smaller than the IS warhammer. It's proven that proper scaling is debatable as a counter-point like you're using if the scale we're arguing about doesn't even exist.

volumetric scaling is desired, but it doesn't exist. We still hold things on a mech-to-mech basis because we have to pick and choose what PGI will bother fixing. In this case, it's much more likely that they actually feel a twinge in their soul upon getting called out for messing up a brand new mech, rather than rescaling the ancient firestarters and phoenix hawks.

[Karl Streiger]

VulcanXIV, on 01 March 2019 - 07:26 PM, said:

volumetric scaling is desired, but it doesn't exist. We still hold things on a mech-to-mech basis because we have to pick and choose what PGI will bother fixing. In this case, it's much more likely that they actually feel a twinge in their soul upon getting called out for messing up a brand new mech, rather than rescaling the ancient firestarters and phoenix hawks.

Well the large firestarter got a rescale he became bigger.

It's the problem with the masses - instead the futile attempt to look for a proper universal scale they should have looked on chassis to chassis base.

For example the Catapult got needed reduced size but other mech like the compact scaled Zeus were utterly destroyed by making them bigger.
The Mr. Gargle on the other hand kept his performance (was not that great to start with) primary because of the mobility of a medium and also because of the form and geometry

[Nightbird]

Karl Streiger, on 01 March 2019 - 10:48 PM, said:

Well the large firestarter got a rescale he became bigger.

It's the problem with the masses - instead the futile attempt to look for a proper universal scale they should have looked on chassis to chassis base.

For example the Catapult got needed reduced size but other mech like the compact scaled Zeus were utterly destroyed by making them bigger.
The Mr. Gargle on the other hand kept his performance (was not that great to start with) primary because of the mobility of a medium and also because of the form and geometry

To be fair, without some sort of universal, mathematical scale, such as uniform density scaling or something else, you end up in the realm of opinions. One person says it should be bigger, another says smaller, and with everyone's opinion needing to be respected, there is no right or wrong... and that is how we got where we are today.

You may disagree with some of the scaling that exists today, but it is someone else's opinion (at PGI) that they should be that size.