448 replies to this topic

[Alienized]

Tiantara, on 18 August 2019 - 06:40 PM, said:

- I have one question than... If enemy mech with less armor best for team to win, why team so afraid to support own longrange or flanking mech to lower enemy armor and so forward to deal damage solo at any cost? Why mostly team not use advantage of ATM\LRM on longrange (even when other side have no ECM mech at all and move on open space) and get pretty weakened mech to deal with? Why no matter what build and how long cool-down of weapon is, everyone run into brawl and drive all other to it? I don't even mention situation when all moved in brawl make bottleneck and often shoot each others back in friendly fire. Why mostly noone bother show enemy on map even if he has intense battle with him and really can get help from nearby mech? Is that also some part of tactic I don't understand?

it doesnt matter what sort of mech you play. flanker, harrasser, sniper, artillery, they all NEED TO MOVE and locate properly. especially as a sniper you are not supposed to stand still when your team is moving.
constant relocation is the key.

a lrm boat sitting at 800m to all enemies is just as bad, it has to move with the team to A: have a shorter flight time with lower chance to lose damage to a broken lock and B: get support if needed.

why there are so many brawls?
A: the maps
B: most mechs are usually mid ranged anyway.
C: if we take a look at the Lore, most mech engagements have been pretty close quarter combats and inefficient at range.
that shows at the alpha value of sniper mechs compared to those that fight closer.

[Prototelis]

Long range trading (game doesn't have sniping, IMO) is also less favorable because most long range trade setups are low DPS.

[Void Angel]

What I tell people about using their Assaults is not to think of them as damage sinks, but rather to view them in terms of combat presence. An Atlas, for example, really only does one thing well, and that is to take a licking and keep on kicking; this is... less effective than it used to be, perhaps - and you can do other things with it - but that's broadly what the 'mech is best at. On the other hand, a Stalker doesn't want to wade into the thick of things - it's devilishly hard to kill efficiently from the front, but if it starts getting hit from the sides, it's going to lose torsos fast; it's just how its hitboxes work. So, the Stalker wants to stay back a bit, even with a relatively short-range build.

But to maximize your effectiveness in either 'mech, you have to project combat power over the battlefield. You have to be Present, not just there. If you're playing a RAC build, or knife-range brawler, or even LRMs, you still have to use that weight of metal to project areas of threat where smaller, puny 'mechs don't want to go. It's kind of like "fleet in being," where the knowledge that you're there discourages many enemies from being more aggressive.

If you do that, you're going to share armor, which is good - but you're also going to be dealing more damage as well.

[Alienized]

Prototelis, on 19 August 2019 - 08:42 AM, said:

Long range trading (game doesn't have sniping, IMO) is also less favorable because most long range trade setups are low DPS.

closest we have to sniping might be the ECM lights/mediums with ppc's/long range ac's but most maps dont support that

[Prototelis]

Alienized, on 19 August 2019 - 08:55 AM, said:

closest we have to sniping might be the ECM lights/mediums with ppc's/long range ac's but most maps dont support that

It has almost nothing to do with the map. There are plenty of places to shoot from in every map.

Its because TTK is really long in this game, long range alphas are small, and in most cases the sustained DPS is too low to be worth it.

[Alienized]

Prototelis, on 19 August 2019 - 09:14 AM, said:

It has almost nothing to do with the map. There are plenty of places to shoot from in every map.

Its because TTK is really long in this game, long range alphas are small, and in most cases the sustained DPS is too low to be worth it.

well that too but look how FAST mechs have been made (which they should never been) its so much easier to REACH the snipers (polar/alpine excluded) that it barely makes sense.
should have mentioned that properly sorry.

[Prototelis]

Alienized, on 19 August 2019 - 10:03 AM, said:

well that too but look how FAST mechs have been made (which they should never been)

Disagree

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its so much easier to REACH the snipers (polar/alpine excluded) that it barely makes sense.
should have mentioned that properly sorry.

Once again, only relevant because TTK is so high and long range DPS is so low.

[Alienized]

Prototelis, on 19 August 2019 - 11:03 AM, said:

Disagree

Once again, only relevant because TTK is so high and long range DPS is so low.

Flea top speed based on lore: 119 with masc activated. base speed: 97.
whats it in game?
170 ish with masc?


we play a game that has background it stands on. on some points it completely lost its roots (full customization)
but some didnt change much (pure weapon stats).

time to kill isnt really high, just look how fast a 2 uac10/2uac5 shreds through mechs.
some weapons on the other hand just arent compatible with fast killing like large lasers. its kinda obvious that long range
weapons cant kill faster (especially those that need heat) as they need most energy to get as far as they do without losing damage.
imagine the power of a large laser shortened to 300m instead of 600m.
whole different story.

so in theory, its kinda "normal" that those weapons need longer to kill at range while it should do more damage up close.
(or it wouldnt matter as the energy used/damage done is the same from 0m to the range it should be able to deliver its full damage potential.... *thonking*)
but anyway. you would be able to kill alot faster with long range weapons if mechs would not been made faster (especially lights/meds) because your aim would be alot better.

not to mention all the hitbox/hit detection errors that also come into play.
now, removing all the offensive quirks? then we have a really long TTK, especially playing some IS mechs.

also remember: A piranha shouldnt be able to kill mechs. it was a anti infantery mech and completely useless against mechs.
Flea were not able to kill anything.

some range loudouts CAN kill fast, mainly heavy and assault mechs tho are able to do that because of a heavier weapon loadout possibility (ultraviolet, quad er ppc warhawk etc.)
not sure those should be classified as sniper mechs tho.

which leads me to..... there is no sniping in mechbattles.
simply cant be achieved the way i think about sniping as in killing mechs FAST without beeing seen.
(yeah sorry drifted a bit off here, just let the thoughts go around)

just a question: what do you understand as "sniping"?

[Prototelis]

Alienized, on 19 August 2019 - 11:32 AM, said:

time to kill isnt really high, just look how fast a 2 uac10/2uac5 shreds through mechs.

And look at how much of that you can spread and soak through 4 center mass hitboxes. In any other shooter you'd be dead before you even had a chance to react.

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some weapons on the other hand just arent compatible with fast killing like large lasers. its kinda obvious that long range
weapons cant kill faster (especially those that need heat) as they need most energy to get as far as they do without losing damage.

Because they have low DPS on average. This is a pretty good tradeoff for being able to apply damage at long range. High damage long range weapons would encourage an extremely static meta.

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imagine the power of a large laser shortened to 300m instead of 600m.
whole different story.

Those are called Large, heavy large, and large pulse lasers.

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you would be able to kill alot faster with long range weapons if mechs would not been made faster (especially lights/meds) because your aim would be alot better.

If long range weapons had DPS on average to compete with short range weapons speed wouldn't matter. Thanks for proving my point.

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not to mention all the hitbox/hit detection errors that also come into play.

Not going to say it doesn't happen because it does; but usually when those videos are posted and analyzed its clearly a miss.

This however is the nature in all online games.

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now, removing all the offensive quirks? then we have a really long TTK, especially playing some IS mechs.

Some of those offensive quirks are what makes some IS mechs more viable.

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also remember: A piranha shouldnt be able to kill mechs. it was a anti infantery mech and completely useless against mechs.

100% false. Machine guns in TT do as much damage as an AC2, but have bonus damage against infantry. The PIR sees a lot of play in Solaris rules because if this.

Flea were not able to kill anything.

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some range loudouts CAN kill fast, mainly heavy and assault mechs tho are able to do that because of a heavier weapon loadout possibility (ultraviolet, quad er ppc warhawk etc.)
not sure those should be classified as sniper mechs tho.

One of those has high DPS, the other does not. Outliers are good for gameplay.

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just a question: what do you understand as "sniping"?

In the context of video games, more or less what you described with the caveat of being able to do so with some level of concealment.

Edited by Prototelis, 19 August 2019 - 12:40 PM.

[Feral Clown]

Void Angel, on 19 August 2019 - 08:53 AM, said:

What I tell people about using their Assaults is not to think of them as damage sinks, but rather to view them in terms of combat presence. An Atlas, for example, really only does one thing well, and that is to take a licking and keep on kicking; this is... less effective than it used to be, perhaps - and you can do other things with it - but that's broadly what the 'mech is best at. On the other hand, a Stalker doesn't want to wade into the thick of things - it's devilishly hard to kill efficiently from the front, but if it starts getting hit from the sides, it's going to lose torsos fast; it's just how its hitboxes work. So, the Stalker wants to stay back a bit, even with a relatively short-range build.

But to maximize your effectiveness in either 'mech, you have to project combat power over the battlefield. You have to be Present, not just there. If you're playing a RAC build, or knife-range brawler, or even LRMs, you still have to use that weight of metal to project areas of threat where smaller, puny 'mechs don't want to go. It's kind of like "fleet in being," where the knowledge that you're there discourages many enemies from being more aggressive.

If you do that, you're going to share armor, which is good - but you're also going to be dealing more damage as well.

Are you actually suggesting mechdads think about their mechs profile and hitboxes?!?!?!?

OMEGALUL

[Kubernetes]

Tiantara, on 18 August 2019 - 07:19 PM, said:

- ~_~ yeah... in statistic it counts and make my numbers worse. But there nothing I can do.

This explains everything.

[Void Angel]

As an interjection: we have to distinguish between "this is how it was in the books/tabletop/rulebook sidebars or whatever" and "this is how it should be in the game," otherwise, we'll go insane. Because often, the primary sources disagree with each other. Take the Pirhana-2, for example: sure, those bazillion micro lasers are going to shred infantry - but the two ER Heavy MLs are not going to have trouble with any other Light Battlemechs, especially on the Inner Sphere side. So my advice is to treat the original sources like you should treat real-world military manuals - look for applicable principles and overall style, then take the specifics with a grain of salt.

Which actually suggests a point to me: Associating snipers with one-hit kills from concealment is natural given the real-world source, but to translate that into "a game of armored combat," we have to look at what a sniper does, rather than how he does it. Snipers on the real-world battlefield are a psychological weapon. They don't kill enough people to really turn the tide of a battle: it takes too long for them to move in and set up; they need to reposition after a kill or two; they have to duck patrols and pay attention to routes of egress. So they don't really kill very many people, on the scale of modern warfare - but their ability to kill behind enemy lines, in what the enemy thought was relative safety, is devastating to morale. Even their standard practice of preferentially eliminating officers and noncoms is secondary to this primary purpose; if you can only kill a few guys, make it the guys who know the most.

So to translate "sniping" into Mechwarrior, you have to consider the psychological elements of the specialty, not just their ability to kill unprotected personnel with precision rifle fire. I'd suggest that this makes snipers' purpose in MWO to use long-range, high-damage weapons to damage, distract, and discourage enemies from being as aggressive as they ought - or in the case of more mobile snipers, to prevent the enemy from completely focusing on the team's main body. How effective this may be in the modern meta is another discussion, but I think this is the definition we should use.

Feral Clown, on 19 August 2019 - 01:19 PM, said:

Are you actually suggesting mechdads think about their mechs profile and hitboxes?!?!?!?

OMEGALUL

Actually, no; though I advise that, as well. I just want people to understand that being seen can be a powerful asset, and one that the Hiders in the Back aren't utilizing properly - it's like the concept of threat in chess, a little.

Edited by Void Angel, 19 August 2019 - 05:20 PM.

[Prototelis]

My advice is to reboot battletech so the lore of its technology isn't primarily informed by arbitrary board game mechanics. **** is *** backwards.

[Void Angel]

Yeah, but if you reboot it, is it Really Battletech any more? Lore is fine, so long as we understand that loving the old stuff isn't a suicide pact with a new game - but that concept has been foreign to a lot of people in these forums.

[Y E O N N E]

Void Angel, on 19 August 2019 - 05:23 PM, said:

Yeah, but if you reboot it, is it Really Battletech any more? Lore is fine, so long as we understand that loving the old stuff isn't a suicide pact with a new game - but that concept has been foreign to a lot of people in these forums.

Lore has holes and I could write a more compelling Clan origin story with my pinky.

If it has the elements of a dark age, high-tech feudalism, 'Mechs, Clan invasion, and treacherous human stories...it's BattleTech.

Wil McCullough, on 19 August 2019 - 02:26 AM, said:

The blackjack is subpar in a flanker role because it has the frontal profile of johnny frigging bravo. It has symetrical high arm mounts which makes it good for ridge peeking. Use it in that role.

You're also not supposed to tank damage in a blackjack. It's a medium which means it has tonnage problems. You stick a standard engine in there, you're either packing too small an engine to keep up or have too little tonnage left over for firepower.

The Blackjack is sub-par in a flanker role because it's slow more than anything else. The BJ-1X can run flank just fine.

~~Carry on~~

[Void Angel]

Right; you should take note of my use of capitalization. And crowd-built game universe would have holes - heck, look at the Star Wars fiction. My point is that there really isn't an MWO reason to reboot the lore - unless we're talking about an alternate-history sort of thing played out via a revamped Faction Warfare. But, show me the Faction Warfare first; I suspect they've been having video game designers work on that, and it may be a mistake... what they really need is a board game designer.

[Prototelis]

Void Angel, on 19 August 2019 - 05:34 PM, said:

Right; you should take note of my use of capitalization. And crowd-built game universe would have holes - heck, look at the Star Wars fiction.

A key point you're ignoring about the EU is that it was curated a lot better than battletech lore ever was. Lucasarts actually put effort into maintaining their canon.

[Y E O N N E]

Void Angel, on 19 August 2019 - 05:34 PM, said:

Right; you should take note of my use of capitalization. And crowd-built game universe would have holes - heck, look at the Star Wars fiction. My point is that there really isn't an MWO reason to reboot the lore - unless we're talking about an alternate-history sort of thing played out via a revamped Faction Warfare. But, show me the Faction Warfare first; I suspect they've been having video game designers work on that, and it may be a mistake... what they really need is a board game designer.

I would not want PGI to reboot the lore. I'd rather let myself do that, or some central party that can do the whole thing from Star League to post-Invasion eras.

Star Wars lore is also terrible. Even moreso with Disney involved, now. Yuck. As far as I'm concerned, anything after the Clone Wars series in terms of creation date is non-canon, and most of the old Expanded Universe was also tripe.

As for Faction Warfare, they have a zillion examples of how that game-mode should work and they ignored every single one of them. It should have been a respawn-enabled Conquest-style game mode where control of territory on maps earns resources that your faction can spend on various advantages (turrets, support buildings, different 'Mechs, team perks...lots of options). Each victory within a combat window would add a point to the winning faction, and the members of the dominant faction would gain some perk (and the underdog faction would gain some other perk). They could have picked some iconic battlefields from the existing lore to build the maps around.

Instead, what we got was basically Quick Play with more chokepoints and a limited number of respawns. Head, meet desk.

[Void Angel]

Prototelis, on 19 August 2019 - 05:36 PM, said:

A key point you're ignoring about the EU is that it was curated a lot better than battletech lore ever was. Lucasarts actually put effort into maintaining their canon.

Right; and it still has odd holes and discrepancies (not to mention just really bad fiction.) The thing about Battletech lore in MWO is that some people are emotionally attached to it, while the rest of us may remember it fondly, but don't really care. I think it'd alienate more people than it would enthuse, and in any case we'd need writers and the like... there might be issues with the license, I dunno. The important bit is to realize that enjoying the lore isn't a suicide pact with MWO.

If we had an MWO-specific historical reboot, it would need to be in support of an already-completed Faction Warfare revamp. But good luck holding our breath for that.

Edited by Void Angel, 19 August 2019 - 05:47 PM.

[Void Angel]

I was thinking more of the strategic overgame than the individual maps. I would love some way for faction loyalists to elect a controlling body for their faction, and then actually play out the Succession Wars and/or Clan Invasion that way. If you included catch-up mechanics for underpopulated factions, you might be able to prevent things like the MercStar "It's Not Technically Prohibited" Alliance from hijacking that system, and then off you go - see how it works. But it should act like a board game, with planetary battle outcomes standing in for rolls of the dice. That would both hearken back to Those Golden Hours of Yesterday so beloved by the True Fans of BattleTech, and provide a potentially deep strategic playground to incentivize guild membership. Heck, you could even use a hex map for the conflict areas!