179 replies to this topic

[Alexander of Macedon]

Curccu, on 25 March 2018 - 04:51 AM, said:

Ohhh yes people have called it OP, read more post and you will see. If you could put 12MG's to Direwolf would it become the best assault in the game (again).

The problem isn't even just the 12x MG loadout, it's combining that with the speed and hitboxes/lag-shield of a 20-tonner. Locusts are okay because the good ones all run fairly hot, so they have to stop firing and/or back off sooner or later. PIRs have even smaller profiles and run cold with the MG build.

Basically it's both in combination. MG boating isn't nearly as dangerous on 'mechs that will get shredded if they facestare for 5+ seconds.

Still not OP, just annoying if they're ignored and left to peel taters.

[Bud Crue]

Curccu, on 25 March 2018 - 04:51 AM, said:

Ohhh yes people have called it OP, read more post and you will see. If you could put 12MG's to Direwolf would it become the best assault in the game (again).

Lets keep in mind our definitions here and who we are dealing with. If a single build of a chassis is "over performing" relative to PGI's "internally established target values" then they may deem that build, that variant, and possibly that entire chassis as being OP. Look no further than what they did to the Kodiak and the Night Gyrs. A few select builds may or may not have been over performing and yet ALL of them were nerfed fairly dramatically (i.e. Kodiak 5 or 2 were not and never were over performing, and yet they suffer for the sins of the 3).

Worse is what they may do to the weapons in question. They already nerfed machine guns after the 8mg Cheetah and Mist Lynxs were dominant for a brief period (see December 2017 patch). Why did they nerf machine guns - a weapon that individually is objectively one of the most insignificant weapons in the game? It was nerfed because 2 mechs could boat them effectively such that they "over performed" over others using lesser numbers of those weapons. In other words they nerfed all machine guns on every mech because two mechs were "over performing" with those weapons.

So yeah, looking at historical precedent of how PGI determines over performance, the Piranha is almost certainly "over performing" by the seemingly abstract if not random analysis that PGI traditionally uses to determine such things. They may indeed nerf the 12mg variant. They may trash the whole chassis when it is out for c-bills. They may -again- hit all machine guns everywhere because of it. They may even ding your 12mg Dire, all because of this one variant being "OP".

[Alexander of Macedon]

Bud Crue, on 25 March 2018 - 05:11 AM, said:

They may trash the whole chassis when it is out for c-bills.

That's pretty optimistic. I would have gone with "will".

[Jman5]

A lot of back and forth, so I decided to actually get some hard numbers and look at all my games from the month of March to see how well the Piranha is actually doing.

I split them into four categories by damage and here is what I saw:

• BAD (sub 200 dmg): 9
  
• AVERAGE: (200-499 dmg): 23
  
• GOOD: (500-999 dmg): 6
  
• HEROIC: (1000+ dmg): 0

The average damage was just 335. In fact I went a step further and looked at Locust numbers which didn't do all that worse at 291 damage. (about 45 damage difference). When you consider the piranha is a Pay-2-Play Clan mech while the Locust is a free IS mech, the piranha players are probably on average more experienced than the locust players, so the difference is probably negligible if you adjust for skill.

When PGI looks at their spreadsheets this is probably something close to what they are going to see. A well performing Light, but otherwise somewhat average compared to all the other mechs in the game.

[mogs01gt]

Iron Heel, on 23 March 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

Debunked in post #49.

Stop with the fake facts!!

umm you sound like trump. Machine guns were infantry online and MLs did barely anything to assaults. go read the novels. I dont give a crap about battletech manuals. They had to make adjustments to the weapons so that mechs could function in the TT game.

Edited by mogs01gt, 25 March 2018 - 02:50 PM.

[dario03]

mogs01gt, on 25 March 2018 - 02:48 PM, said:

umm you sound like trump. Machine guns were infantry online and MLs did barely anything to assaults. go read the novels. I dont give a crap about battletech manuals. They had to make adjustments to the weapons so that mechs could function in the TT game.

Didn't TT come out first?

[Yosharian]

I mean the stats don't lie folks, here are mine:

40 wins
22 losses
1.82 win/loss ratio

81 kills
22 deaths
3.68 kill/death ratio

average damage: 467

Pretty good, right

oh wait, these stats are for my Cougar... one of the weakest lights in the game ;-(

(Disclaimer: I don't actually own a Piranha)

I'm not against the Piranha being nerfed but let's not pretend that a single 1k damage game is good evidence on which to propose nerfs, hell even average damage isn't that good of a metric, you have to look at a mech's performance across a variety of stats to really determine its carry potential.

[Gattsus]

Darian DelFord, on 21 March 2018 - 07:12 PM, said:

So here is a video of a match I had about 3 hours ago. In it I scored over 1k damage. Now there are many pilots on here who say that it is OP and no light should be able to score that high and it must be an OP mech. People see scores like this and lets face it.... they lose their crap and come to the forums and scream NERF NERF NERF.

So with that said.... here is the video.....Judge..... just flat out OP..... or Skill and luck?

much skill man~
situational awareness, self/opposite mech knowledge, well played sir, wp~

[mogs01gt]

dario03, on 25 March 2018 - 06:01 PM, said:

Didn't TT come out first?

but then terminology changed either in TT or in lore. In the first book "Decision at Thunder Rift" the author specifically uses the term heavy-caliber machine guns.

From the books glossary:
Locust: A light, non-humanoid scout BattleMech designed for extreme speed and maneuverability. Weighing 20 tons, it has a top running speed of 130 kph. It is armed with one medium laser and a pair of heavy machine guns.
Crusader: A heavy BattleMech, weighing 65 tons, with a top speed of 65 kph. It is heavily armed even for a 'Mech, mounting a laser, a heavy machine gun, and massed LRM batteries in each arm, and six SRM launch tubes on each leg.
Phoenix Hawk: A medium BattleMech weighing 45 tons, with a top speed of 100 kph. It mounts one medium laser and a heavy machine gun integral to each arm, and carries a heavy laser in an arm rifle mount. It is a particularly useful blend of speed and maneuverability in BattleMech combat

I think Im getting hung on lore terminology vs TT.

[dario03]

mogs01gt, on 26 March 2018 - 10:01 AM, said:

but then terminology changed either in TT or in lore. In the first book "Decision at Thunder Rift" the author specifically uses the term heavy-caliber machine guns.

From the books glossary:
Locust: A light, non-humanoid scout BattleMech designed for extreme speed and maneuverability. Weighing 20 tons, it has a top running speed of 130 kph. It is armed with one medium laser and a pair of heavy machine guns.
Crusader: A heavy BattleMech, weighing 65 tons, with a top speed of 65 kph. It is heavily armed even for a 'Mech, mounting a laser, a heavy machine gun, and massed LRM batteries in each arm, and six SRM launch tubes on each leg.
Phoenix Hawk: A medium BattleMech weighing 45 tons, with a top speed of 100 kph. It mounts one medium laser and a heavy machine gun integral to each arm, and carries a heavy laser in an arm rifle mount. It is a particularly useful blend of speed and maneuverability in BattleMech combat

I think Im getting hung on lore terminology vs TT.

Well I'm guessing its a description difference since IS heavy machine guns didn't come out till 3068, so after some TT and novels. But regular machine guns were on some mechs in the base game of TT which irl was 1984/85. Also it looks like infantry rules weren't added till 1986.
So I think they are referring to regular machine guns, and the terminology change was in the novel. Unless TT had originally called them heavy and then changed at some point, but even then I still think they are talking about regular MGs and its just a name change.
The important part is it looks like TT machine guns predate novels and infantry rules.

[Brain Cancer]

Given, at that point there wasn't the light/-/heavy MG designations for Battletech, just the one standard MG.

They're "heavy" relative to what you'd see an infantryman carrying- that is, HMGs are classically defined as MGs that use a caliber larger than the standard infantry round (.50, 12.7mm or bigger vs 7.62 or the like used in infantry guns).

Much later (Thunder Rift is one of the first novels, period) Battletech added light/-/heavy to MG choices, but that's relative to the standard Battlemech-sized MG. The infantry-killing bonus (for MGs and flamers) didn't show up until later editions, despite being described as anti-infantry weapons.

[Nightbird]

Given that IS mech machine guns start at 500lbs, they're slightly heavier than what infantry carry

Literally the difference between a house cat and a tiger.

[dario03]

Nightbird, on 26 March 2018 - 12:25 PM, said:

Given that IS mech machine guns start at 500lbs, they're slightly heavier than what infantry carry

Literally the difference between a house cat and a tiger.

What if you're a baller and keep a tiger in your house? Asking for a friend.

[Brain Cancer]

Nightbird, on 26 March 2018 - 12:25 PM, said:

Given that IS mech machine guns start at 500lbs, they're slightly heavier than what infantry carry

Literally the difference between a house cat and a tiger.

Yeah, that includes the whole system built around it so it's a remote-controlled and aimed gun. By comparison, a battle-armor carried version of the same gun is actually 100kg, instead of five times that.

[DeadEye COTP]

All you have to do is pay attention to who uses them and it's painfully obvious it is more or less the best light in the game currently. Many of the top players in the game are running it exclusively as their light. It's not even how quick it destroys heavy/assault mechs - try facing one in a light mech and watch how fast it deletes your legs holding down a button as you try to get past the lag shield with lasers or srm's and actually have to aim while doing it.

[Nightbird]

DeadEye COTP, on 30 March 2018 - 03:17 PM, said:

All you have to do is pay attention to who uses them and it's painfully obvious it is more or less the best light in the game currently. Many of the top players in the game are running it exclusively as their light. It's not even how quick it destroys heavy/assault mechs - try facing one in a light mech and watch how fast it deletes your legs holding down a button as you try to get past the lag shield with lasers or srm's and actually have to aim while doing it.

Been running the cheeta all season solo dropping in QP for my light mech, I have a few drops in the piranha but I find it too situational.

You're welcome to look up my stats on the leaderboards for lights and compare them to the piranha pilots, though I personally don't know any top light pilots running them exclusively like you say.

[Grus]

ive had games just like this in my 4mpl commando. so sometimes you just have a good game.

[dario03]

DeadEye COTP, on 30 March 2018 - 03:17 PM, said:

All you have to do is pay attention to who uses them and it's painfully obvious it is more or less the best light in the game currently. Many of the top players in the game are running it exclusively as their light. It's not even how quick it destroys heavy/assault mechs - try facing one in a light mech and watch how fast it deletes your legs holding down a button as you try to get past the lag shield with lasers or srm's and actually have to aim while doing it.

Even if we assume this to be true there is still more to it.
Mainly is that because its overpowered or a bunch of other lights are under powered?
I would lean toward the latter since there are plenty of bigger mechs that can put up Piranha like numbers or better without being as situational and being focused instead of ignored. Also some lights are just not that great.

[Variant1]

the piranah is not op, it has paper armor and nto much tonnage to work with. Now for the vid its a combination of 2 things:enemy being potato and your team already striping the enemy armour for you to finish them off. From my experience the piranah is played similar to a locust, getting behind enemies and striping the weak rear armor. The best way to deal with piranahs is have some one watch the backs or having a light hunter protect the group