67 replies to this topic

[Jackal Noble]

What is the real (purported) reason as to why quad mechs are not in this game?
Is it
A. Impossible to implement due to inherent flaws within the game's core design.
B. Impossible due to staff inability to overcome said inherent flaws within the game's core design.
C. They are just silly.
D. "They are just silly" used in deflection rather than admit culpability; it's far easier to just leech the life out of a corpse god.
E. All of the above, except C.

Quads are cool. Stop the quadrophobia. Don't make quadraholics go elsewhere for their quadxotic needs.

[w4ldO]

engine, balance, canon

[Khobai]

im sure quads will be in the game eventually

"would you like to buy a quadpack?"

the answer will still be no though

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Quads are circus mechs.

[Lupis Volk]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 12 March 2018 - 12:43 AM, said:

Quads are circus mechs.

*cough* Urbie *cough*

[Anjian]

Quads require inverse kinematics to look and work properly. MWO has stepped away from IK for a long time now.

Other than the cool arachnophobic factor it may impose on, quads add little value to game play. In fact they can be annoying on your own team. The large leg and foot factor may mean they may get in the way of your advance or retreat. You want to fall back but suddenly something is stopping you --- the quad mech is blocking your retreat path from behind. So you get vaporized. Or if the quad mech chooses to advance, he may just plow all the team mechs ahead of it, rendering them as human shields into the line of fire. Or if he decides to camp, and the thing just blocks yours and your team's path of advance.

Another game, War Robots, had all the game engine and code to install quad mechs and they did, with two examples. But after implementing quad mechs, they never added anymore, with everything since then has been bipeds. The upcoming mobile game Battle of the Titans has the best implementations of quad (or more exact, hexa) mechs to date, but these might post balance issues as they crawl up to high places bipeds can't reach then shower and snipe firepower from there.

One problem I may see for a quad mech in MWO is that from the top, it has a larger hit area than bipeds. That makes AWS or two a must since it will be targeted with LRMs.

Edited by Anjian, 12 March 2018 - 12:54 AM.

[Juodas Varnas]

Woo, Quadmechs!

[TELEFORCE]

Anjian, on 12 March 2018 - 12:53 AM, said:

One problem I may see for a quad mech in MWO is that from the top, it has a larger hit area than bipeds. That makes AWS or two a must since it will be targeted with LRMs.

I would think that quads sitting lower than comparable bipeds would allow them to use cover more effectively and make it easier to avoid LRMs.

[Black Ivan]

Won't happen said PGI long ago

[FupDup]

Lupis Volk, on 12 March 2018 - 12:48 AM, said:

*cough* Urbie *cough*

Urbie Quad confirmed.

[Battlemaster56]

FupDup, on 12 March 2018 - 03:19 AM, said:

Urbie Quad confirmed.

I'll buy four!!!

[Athom83]

FupDup, on 12 March 2018 - 03:19 AM, said:

Urbie Quad confirmed.

I mean... there is a Locust Quad.

[Curccu]

Lupis Volk, on 12 March 2018 - 12:48 AM, said:

*cough* Urbie *cough*

Urbie with normal max engine size math and without those epic quirks would be totally useless.

[evilauthor]

JackalBeast, on 12 March 2018 - 12:16 AM, said:

What is the real (purported) reason as to why quad mechs are not in this game?
Is it
A. Impossible to implement due to inherent flaws within the game's core design.
B. Impossible due to staff inability to overcome said inherent flaws within the game's core design.
C. They are just silly.
D. "They are just silly" used in deflection rather than admit culpability; it's far easier to just leech the life out of a corpse god.
E. All of the above, except C.

Quads are cool. Stop the quadrophobia. Don't make quadraholics go elsewhere for their quadxotic needs.

F) Staff laziness. Quads move differently from bipedal mechs and also have alterations to their MechLab layout. Implementing all that stuff would take lots of time and money.

That said, the interesting things about Quads are that they're...
a) Horizontal, and should stand about waste high to a biped of similar tonnage. You thought it was hard aiming at lights in an assault when they were hugging your legs? Imagine trying to aim at a light quad which is shorter than THAT.
Effectively only have Torso weapons.
c) Cannot Torso Twist, but can side straddle. Combined with b, this means a Quad would play more like a classic FPS than the bipeds do.
d) Getting a "leg kill" on a Quad pretty much requires destroying all four legs. Anything less will only slow the Quad down, perhaps in more, smaller increments than it would for a biped.

edit:
e) Fewer crits, because the arms of a quad are legs now. And you can't mount weapons in legs in MWO, which is going to invalidate some TT lore designs.

Edited by evilauthor, 12 March 2018 - 08:25 AM.

[Antares102]

Juodas Varnas, on 12 March 2018 - 01:03 AM, said:

Woo, Quadmechs!

For how many days are you going to live in this thread Juodas?

Anyway on topic, I guess PGI (=Russ) has decided that quads will never be in this game.
Aside from circus reasons implementing them might really be quite some technical/balance effort.
If you hated poptart/side poke mechs think about hull down/up hill poke quads.

Edited by Antares102, 12 March 2018 - 09:56 AM.

[Koniving]

JackalBeast, on 12 March 2018 - 12:16 AM, said:

What is the real (purported) reason as to why quad mechs are not in this game?
Is it
A. Impossible to implement due to inherent flaws within the game's core design.
B. Impossible due to staff inability to overcome said inherent flaws within the game's core design.
C. They are just silly.
D. "They are just silly" used in deflection rather than admit culpability; it's far easier to just leech the life out of a corpse god.
E. All of the above, except C.

Quads are cool. Stop the quadrophobia. Don't make quadraholics go elsewhere for their quadxotic needs.

Technical issues, canon (pretty damn rare, only 3 or 4 examples of combat capable models in the current timeline).

The technical issues...
Quad mechs have forward AND rear mounted weapons and often have turrets mounted on either the top (fluff only), the left and the right side. These turrets can shoot anywhere in that arc, much like an arm, which includes behind the mech. These weapons could track and shoot independently of each other and do so simultaneously.

In other words the only way to pull that off would be to have auto aiming turrets mounted on the Quad mechs.
Lets not forget the lack of picture in picture, issues with effectively using weapons if you have to switch from left, right, and front views. And that PGI hasn't implemented a single rear weapon, instead focusing them on the front.

MWO's current balance, furthermore, would basically make quad mechs worthless in terms of meta, as if you can't focus all your firepower on a single point and alpha 100+ damage, your design's effectively "a trash mech" among the meta-biggots out there. So none of the competitive scene would even use them. As that's PGI's primary target consumer....

We'll never see Quads.

[Imperius]

Not against any mechs coming to MWO.

I’ll say the reason is the development time it would take making it work for like 6 mechs isn’t worth the investment.

[Metus regem]

Aside from Russ having extreme dislike of them?

FrakinCode is an issue....

Staff commitment is another...

Still at least LAM's don't have the issue of extreme dislike from the head guy, just his fear.

[Anjian]

TELEFORCE, on 12 March 2018 - 02:26 AM, said:

I would think that quads sitting lower than comparable bipeds would allow them to use cover more effectively and make it easier to avoid LRMs.

Not from missiles coming at the top, like the trajectories of the missiles in MWO.

In any case, if a quad has a high climbing ability, it can also abuse peaks.

Programming for four legged movement should not be hard, it should be part of any game developer's suite, since the same algorithms are used to depict movement of animals, dogs, cats, spiders, crabs, dinosaurs, dragons, monsters and demons, that are used in the game.

[TheArisen]

My understanding is there aren't enough of them to justify the cost of implementation. Also they would require inverse kinematics.