82 replies to this topic

[TWIAFU]

Vellron2005, on 25 October 2018 - 12:16 AM, said:

Lemme guess how this discussion is gonna go..

Assault pilots will say "great idea, let's do this thing"

Piranha and Assassin pilots, will be like "nah, you cray cray, it won't change anything"

And PGI will be like......

P.S.

Lights don't target just the back.. we've learned to counter that.. they go for legs now..

Must suck to be singled out as an easy kill.

Maybe you should start a campaign to add rear firing LERMS.

[Ruccus]

TWIAFU, on 25 October 2018 - 04:12 AM, said:

Maybe you should start a campaign to add rear firing LERMS.

Naw, just have PGI introduce A-Pods. Fire it off and if the light mech is too close it'd be like he was hit with a single arty strike shell.

It would discourage leg-humping while still allowing the backstabbers to core out a backside from 20 to 30m away.

[Throe]

[delete by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:38 PM.

[Tesunie]

Avlaen, on 24 October 2018 - 10:52 AM, said:

Allow back armour to be increased without losing front armour, Like in Table top/battle tech/earlier mech warriors.

I do not know if it's been mentioned yet in this thread at this time, but there is a huge discrepancy in the first paragraph.

1. In TT you still had a max armor for a location, and still had to distribute armor from front or rear, sharing the same pool, exactly like how MW:O does it now.
2. Battletech, refer to above line about TT. They are one and the same.
3. Earlier MW games did the same exact thing for as far as I can recall, where every component has a max armor value they can take, and you had to choose how much of that max to place on front or rear of torso sections, exactly like how it is done in this game.


So... what game are you talking about where you could have higher than max armor shared between front and back locations? It certainly is no Battletech related game that I know of... or maybe I'm just recalling it incorrectly?

[Throe]

[delete by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:37 PM.

[LordNothing]

if you have a piranha problem, you either need to improve your light fighting skills or adjust your builds to compensate. working on your skill just means putting yourself in a position where you can learn the right tactics (fighting piranhas), work on reaction times and situational awareness. but you get much more immediate results from refactoring your builds, and that can be through redistributing armor, going with a bigger engine, re-skilling for torso turn, using arm mounts, or bringing streaks or squirrel guns. some of those things might affect your chosen role to a degree but you cannot perform that role if a piranha ganks you.

[Horseman]

Tesunie, on 25 October 2018 - 10:19 AM, said:

So... what game are you talking about where you could have higher than max armor shared between front and back locations? It certainly is no Battletech related game that I know of... or maybe I'm just recalling it incorrectly?

HBS' BT game allows it.

[Lykaon]

Jackal Noble, on 24 October 2018 - 11:23 AM, said:

It’s called choice. That’s the beauty of it;
it’s your choice on how you want to distribute your armor.
It’s your choice if you want to let your game be dictated by a little freak 20 ton mech.
It’s your choice if you want to run the very mech which you fear.
It’s your choice if you want to run streaks and absolutely nullify it from the equation.
End of the day, everything has a cost and consequence. More back armor isn’t going to alleviate poor choices.

Choice is great I love choice I enjoy flexability of selection of options yet,the Piranha has,due to it's potency removed many choices.

Back armor? it's a must now before we had a choice now? not so much.

Choice on allowing a 20 ton freak to dictate the game? well no we don't have a choice. We either realize that there is a 20 ton mech with the capacity to pump out heat neutral 13-15 DPS that easily possesses the capacity to destroy mechs five times it's tonage or ignore it and lose those 100 ton mechs to a 20 ton ivestment by the enemy team. So our choice is do something and maybe preserve assets or do nothing and lose them...or the choice is win or lose?

Is it really a choice to "run the mech you fear" if that mech is measurably the best option? what other 20 ton (or even light mech of any weight) possesses the capacity that a Piranha has? The answer is no other mech. So the choice is take the best or use something less sutable or effective. The choice is take the best or don't.

It's a choice to run streaks? or is it a necessity ? Is it the best means of countering the 20 ton monsters? And since you MUST choose to either not do something about a PIR or actually do something then the second "choice" is do you do the right thing (streaks) or choose another less effective option?

At the end of the day the introduction of the Piranha has shifted our "choices" to specific choices to either do what it takes to counter play a PIR or risk losing a game because of the PIR. and what sort of choice is that really?

It's either play effectively or pray the PIR pilot stinks.

[Phyrce]

Avlaen, on 24 October 2018 - 11:47 AM, said:

Only if people sacrifice weapons to do so, which means it would be safer for them

In a 1v1 scenario this might be valid, even then an assault is not droping 5 tons of weapons, maybe 1 ML or something like that. You are giving an unintended nerf to lights and a buff to assaults who can maximize tonnage used on armor and still carry a punishing payload. Not to mention the ability to now expose your back there by taking 3x as long to kill an assault. It would drastically decrease the balance of the game and dramatically raise TTK for skilled pilots.

[Roughneck45]

What if machine guns had the same jam bar that RACs have. Instead of a bar for each weapon, there is one for all of them, and the more machine guns you had the faster it would fill.

Not letting machine guns crit outside of their optimal range could be a good idea too. Nothing more frustrating than hearing a few bullets hit from 400m out and losing your big gun.

Negative HSL quirks could be a thing too.

[MischiefSC]

FFS the Piranha is 10x more likely to get 1-shot in passing by any heavy in a given match than that he'll catch an absolute incompetent assault who can't back into a wall all alone.

Go look at the leaderboards and look at weight classes. Lights are already inherently inferior by a good margin. Lights need a significant buff. If you then want to dial the Piranha down to match other lights, great. However lights in no way, shape or form need a nerf.

Edited by MischiefSC, 25 October 2018 - 03:48 PM.

[TWIAFU]

Bush Hopper, on 24 October 2018 - 11:25 PM, said:

Let's be honest, most heavy and assaults are pissed at the PIR because...
1. They are lol-tunnelvisioning and let a PIR in their back
2. Then they give it an incredible amount of free uptime on their unprotected back

To be honest, how many times have we, a general 'we', spectated a Heavy/Assault pilot flailing about trying to fire on a fast mover under max zoom? Firing lasers like they were swinging a lightsaber...

I mean Jesus, just watched it happen AGAIN! and the assault had the balls to complain about everything else at fault but himself, he trumped it up real good, and refused honest to goodness advice to help.

So, next drop saw him again and this time I cored him out in an Urbie and even got to tell him 'told you so'.

[Vxheous]

The Piranha doesn't need nerfs. Is it a strong light compared to almost every other light? Yes. Is it insanely fragile that anyone that can aim can blow it in half with 1 alpha, or those that can't aim can streak nuke it with 1 alpha? Also Yes. People that complain should go and play a piranha over a bunch of matches. For every match that Im getting 600+ damage and a bunch of kills with it, I also get sub 200 damage games where someone nuked me within 10-15 seconds of engaging. We need more light mechs that can be like the piranha, not less. The piranha forces opposing teams to have to be wary of their flanks/back and can exert pressure on opposing team just by being in the general area.

Edit: Fixed spelling mistakes from clumsy phone typing.

Edited by Vxheous, 25 October 2018 - 05:08 PM.

[DrxAbstract]

Just so we're clear, whenever I see a PIR darting around the immediate area and I'm driving one of my direct fire builds with AC10/20s I absolutely will take a couple shots at them before returning to my primary target simply because any shot that connects is going to take something off. The only other Light I even remotely consider doing this with are Locusts... Granted it's my personal opinion, but it speaks volumes about the fragility of a Mech if I only feel the need to pop off a couple shots at them to remove them from the threat list.

Not so much Wolfhounds or Urbies--those things get my full attention until they stop twitching simply because they're so damage resistant, not so much a real threat to me personally but God help whatever noobies are alive at the end of the match with one of those still running around.

[Mystere]

Samial, on 25 October 2018 - 03:28 AM, said:

Just nerf it and be done with it.

Just shut down the servers and be done with it.

[MischiefSC]

Vxheous, on 25 October 2018 - 05:03 PM, said:

The Piranha doesn't need nerfs. Is it a strong light compared to almost every other light? Yes. Is it insanely fragile that anyone that can aim can blow it in half with 1 alpha, or those that can't aim can streak nuke it with 1 alpha? Also Yes. People that complain should go and play a piranha over a bunch of matches. For every match that Im getting 600+ damage and a bunch of kills with it, I also get sub 200 damage games where someone nuked me within 10-15 seconds of engaging. We need more light mechs that can be like the piranha, not less. The piranha forces opposing teams to have to be wary of their flanks/back and can exert pressure on opposing team just by being in the general area.

Edit: Fixed spelling mistakes from clumsy phone typing.

Pretty much exactly. And doing good in the Piranha is 10x the work that doing good in a good heavy is. I don't consider that hyperbole either; I mean it's literally 10x more likely that I'll do a great match in a heavy than a light and for converting effort to reward the heavy is just dramatically superior.

Even a 'good' match in a light is only a mediocre match in a heavy.

Go to the leaderboard/Jarls, sort by w/l.

Strip out everyone under 200 matches.

Of the top 100 players for win/loss, 6 spend over 25% (as in the majority of their time) in lights.

So 6% of the top 100 players for winning matches do so in light mechs.

13% did so in mediums.

The remaining 81% of players spent the majority of their time in heavies and assaults.

That? That's bad game balance. I get that bad players want their enemies slow, clumsy, predictable and easier to hit. However they're the ones already losing to lights and, well, everyone who isn't also as bad as they are anyway. Making lights not suck again (like back when lights were a useful part of your toolbox you took on purpose not because you were forced by game mechanics) isn't going to change how the game plays for bad players.

Edited by MischiefSC, 25 October 2018 - 06:07 PM.

[Tesunie]

Throe, on 25 October 2018 - 10:43 AM, said:

I believe the MechWarrior game for SNES allowed one to take armor values beyond "maximum". The only thing that mattered in that game was your total weight, and you could go over the weight rating for a 'Mech. The downside was that taking a 'Mech that was overweight had pretty severe heat and movement penalties, so it was a dumb thing to do. I think the "normal" weight range for the first 'Mech was either 20-30 or 20-40 tons, but even within that range, your movement speed would change based on actual weight:engine size.

It's probably also worth mentioning that 'Mech HP in that game was just a single pool too though There were no front/rear or component locations, and no differentiation between armor and structure either(although there was a "buffer" of base HP even if the armor value you took into battle was 0, so this could be thought of as "structure").

Most folks who are into it don't consider the game canon MechWarrior anyway, so this is largely irrelevant.

See. I didn't start to play until MW2. Not to mention the most likely culprit for the odd health behavior in a SNES game, probably limitations within the game's design and the limitations within the hardware. All other MW game I know of has had armor values that must be split between front and back, and there are more of those type games than ones like the SNES (MW:2; 3 and 4, excluding their extensions). So it's still kinda a false statement to say "like previous MW games", when only the first (on a SNES to give it date) didn't observe the same system as MW:O for armor.

Horseman, on 25 October 2018 - 11:03 AM, said:

HBS' BT game allows it.

I... don't have that game. Want it, but don't have it. It's also more of a strategy game than a first person shooter style game. That's about as far as that argument goes.

---

So, overall, TT doesn't do it.
MW titles didn't do it (minus the first one on SNES).
The BT title (only BT game title that I know of) does it.

So that's still two out of three...
(Or is it two out of four out of six? )

[Horseman]

Tesunie, on 25 October 2018 - 06:25 PM, said:

I... don't have that game. Want it, but don't have it. It's also more of a strategy game than a first person shooter style game. That's about as far as that argument goes.

I never said I agree with the notion, just that I've seen some fools expect it in MWO before "because HBS game did it".

Tesunie, on 25 October 2018 - 06:25 PM, said:

So, overall, TT doesn't do it.
MW titles didn't do it (minus the first one on SNES).
The BT title (only BT game title that I know of) does it.
So that's still two out of three...
(Or is it two out of four out of six? )

That's two out of twenty one, by my count.
Mechwarrior 1 through 4, MW2 GBL, MW2 Mercs, MW3 Pirate's Moon, MW4 Mercs, MW4 Black Knight, MWO make ten games in the Mechwarrior series.
MechAssault adds another three. (13 total)
Crescent Hawks' Inception, Crescent Hawks' Revenge and HBS BT make three more. (16 total)
NetMech and MPBT Solaris add two more (18 total)
Mechwarrior Tactics (defunct) and Tactical Command are another two (20)
Then you have the SNES action game.

[Vyx]

What if: MGs didn't do damage to mech armor at all, only structure?

I've never understood how small arms fire does any damage to a tank.

[Judah Malganis]

Quote

Posted Today, 12:00 AM

What if: MGs didn't do damage to mech armor at all, only structure?

I've never understood how small arms fire does any damage to a tank.

Because it's not small arms. It's more akin to 20-30mm rounds. They do AC2 level damage in tabletop.