11 replies to this topic

[smokingsuasage]

Hi new guy here, first let me say i love this game even though i have only played maybe 8 games at the moment. However i do have a bit of a bone to pick with the desingers.

I know this 8is a Sci fi game and we are using mainly weapons that havn't really been invented yet or if they have they are no where near perfected.

Mgripe is this i chose to use an assualt mech to see if it was something i wanted to buy when fininishing my cadet games so i chose the Direwolf nice mech two heavy projectile weapon 2 heavy pulse lasers and 3 er medium lasers , nice i thought could do some damage with this.

Started game unfortunately as we deployed my belly decided to do the **** fandango so off to the little boys room i go. When i got back team had obviously moved off to objective, no probs i thought just hit forward and catch up, sadly one of the enemy lights had slipped by my team and was coming for our base i saw him took aim and hit him with both guass rifles and pulse lasers lucky shot i know but sometimes it happens. Little bastrd survived ran behind me and pelted me with light mg and kiled me.

Now being an ex soldier with fronline experience even i know that light mg could not do that kind of damaged to a fully functional fully armoured undamaged behemoth like the direwolf however it would appear that light mechs can take out this mech with light mg.

Dont know why but i think the designers must have had thier heads up thier on arses when they decided this.

Gripe over now back to killing stuff.

[Gagis]

Battlemech-sized machine guns are in the range of 12,5mm to 20mm and not light in conventional terms at all. They are still largely ineffective against your armour but will do a lot of damage to internal structure. Mechs typically carry much less armour in their rear than they do in the front.

Light machine gun trades some damage for extra range compared to the standard machine gun. Its typically not worth the tradeoff.

Edited by Gagis, 11 August 2019 - 06:26 AM.

[smokingsuasage]

I get that and im not really complaining but how do you explan the fact i hit with all my weapons and i may as well just sneezed at him. I admit it was a very lucky shot but still

[Gagis]

Could be a particularly well armoured component, but most likely its just bad hitreg. MWO netcode has always struggled with hitreg against moving targets. One of the most significant problems in the game. Most people are just so used to it that they don't pay much attention to it.

[Tesunie]

smokingsuasage, on 11 August 2019 - 07:30 AM, said:

I get that and im not really complaining but how do you explan the fact i hit with all my weapons and i may as well just sneezed at him. I admit it was a very lucky shot but still

Most likely you nearly missed, your hit but the game didn't register the hit (happens sometimes), or you hit but our lag compensation program (Host State Rewind or HSR) determined that you wouldn't have hit somehow (possibly due to unstable ping, which can throw HSR for some loops sometimes). Happens to me fairly often, where I slam a stationary light mech with everything I've got and... and... nothing. Meanwhile, some players claim that every time they visually hit they deal damage where they hit... so ping stability can have a lot to do with this game's HSR system.

FYI: If all your weapons had hit, for their full duration (Lasers deal damage over time as the beams burn on their target, which can lead to partial hits or damage spreading over several sections of a target), that light mech probably would have either lost a component (leg, arm, or a torso section). With exception to an arm hit, anything else would have spelled death to most light mechs. (Some lights, such as the Urbanmech, have extra armor. They are one of the few exceptions to a light mech that could have survived a torso hit to the torso.) (This also presumes that said light mech took an IS XL engine, which produces death on a side torso lose. Most likely you sound like you were facing a Clan mech, like a Parana or Mist Linx. Clan XL engines can continue to survive even after a single side torso loss.)

This game is a complex game. Remember as well that it's an online game, so lots of things can go wrong between yourself and the games hosting servers. Failed hit registration and lag compensators fail can happen, and this isn't anything special to this game specifically. Unlike some games, this game has server side authentication. It makes for more secured gaming (harder to cheat), but can cause some interesting things that don't happen on self server games (which host their game on your computer, and everyone else must connect to your machine).

[Tesunie]

Gagis, on 11 August 2019 - 07:54 AM, said:

Could be a particularly well armoured component, but most likely its just bad hitreg. MWO netcode has always struggled with hitreg against moving targets. One of the most significant problems in the game. Most people are just so used to it that they don't pay much attention to it.

I find that this isn't specific to this game, and many online games suffer from this. Some are more obvious than others, and this game its just normally more noticeable. I have similar issues on games such as Warframe (where I can play solo, shoot a target in the head, and hit the wall behind my target) and Monster Hunter World (where I sometimes shoot a target, and my bullet "warps around the target" occasionally, and the monsters attacks are sometimes no where near where they are actually attacking), just to name a few. It's just a common problem in just about every online game I know of. Some get around it by having the client computers (that's us) tell the servers (the game itself) if we hit or miss. These systems produce better "hit reg", but come with other issues of their own, such as making it easier to cheaters to make the game 'think' they are always hitting, even when they couldn't possibly do so. Several games have had problems with "headshots from across the map" from cheaters.

If I had to choose, I personally like how PGI has it, even with it's problems. Server authentication keeps a lot of worst for cheats out of the game. In a PvP environment, I think that's very important.

[Gagis]

Yes, server authentication is good. The implementation they have now is just not very good. IIRC it has some hard to maintain legacy code from IGP even. They'd need to rewrite it to get it up to modern standards, but that'd require a fairly substantial investment.

[Tesunie]

Gagis, on 11 August 2019 - 08:21 AM, said:

Yes, server authentication is good. The implementation they have now is just not very good. IIRC it has some hard to maintain legacy code from IGP even. They'd need to rewrite it to get it up to modern standards, but that'd require a fairly substantial investment.

An investment into a game already 7+ years old, that no longer is making enough money to sustain itself (not to mention expand PGI's endeavors), etc. I don't blame PGI for not doing "a total overhaul of the game" at this point in it's life/income. They would almost be better off doing a MW:O2 at that point, trying to import what game models (mechs) they can into the new game on a possibly "better" platform (like Unreal Engine from what I've heard).

At this point, as much as I might enjoy this game, you'd have to consider if it would be worth it. I don't think it would be worth PGI's investment to do such an overhaul. Best to leave at least that portion of the game untouched and do what you can elsewhere.

[smokingsuasage]

Well it aint put me off just feels a little annoying and embarrasing when a little fella can take out a undamaged assualt never happened in the board game lol well off to kill a few more and earn more credits

[Tesunie]

smokingsuasage, on 11 August 2019 - 09:18 AM, said:

Well it aint put me off just feels a little annoying and embarrasing when a little fella can take out a undamaged assualt never happened in the board game lol well off to kill a few more and earn more credits

In this game, they wanted to create a cycle of "effectiveness" to the weight classes. In part this is because it's a PvP game, and the other part is the less effective need for scouting (what most light mechs where known for). So they devised that it should go like this: Light>Mediums>Heavies>Assaults>Lights
The idea is that light mechs should be able to get behind assaults easier to tear out their back armor, meanwhile medium mechs should on average be agile enough to swat light mechs away and "give chase" or at least be nimble enough to get and keep their guns on the light mech target.
Meanwhile, as Medium mechs are more able to target light mechs via better weapon tracking on them, heavy mechs should be able to track medium mech and have enough armor and weapons to threaten most medium mechs.
Then while heavy mechs are taking on the mediums who are (in theory) chasing the lights, the assaults have enough armor and weapons to threaten heavy mechs and still be able to track the slower heavy mech.

Now, that may be the underlining system, but obviously that is not the case. Medium mechs can take down assaults. Assaults can take down lights. But, a well placed and skilled light pilot can take down many different mech classes by out maneuvering them and getting into their weaker back.

I would also recommend, as you are a new player, to be hesitent to use assaults at the moment. They are one of the more difficult classes to use because they are so slow. They need to have key positioning, and if things go wrong they are unlikely to survive long enough to get back to safety if they are mis-positioned. I would recommend sticking to mediums or more likely heavy mechs as you learn the game. Mediums are fast enough to relocate when needed, but heavies can have enough speed to relocate as well. Heavy mechs have better armor, but medium mechs can track targets better. Avoid light mechs and assaults. Light mechs are hard due to their low health and need to "always be on the move" and need for dodging skills. Assaults are slow and can't reposition if things go south, and often get left behind, leading to needing better spacial and positioning awareness to effectively use.

However, as a new player, I'd also recommend experimenting and "trying all the things". See what you like and work from there. As for starting mechs, I'd recommend the Huntsmen, as it can do nearly anything, or the Hunchback (either IS or Clan are good ones). I'm more of a medium mech pilot myself, so I don't have many heavy mech suggestions for you...

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

However, as a new player, I'd also recommend experimenting and "trying all the things". See what you like and work from there. As for starting mechs, I'd recommend the Huntsmen, as it can do nearly anything, or the Hunchback (either IS or Clan are good ones). I'm more of a medium mech pilot myself, so I don't have many heavy mech suggestions for you...

Just wanted to quote it again to like it. Mediums and many heavies are in place where they have enough armour to survive long enough while having the armement to dish out the damage, but even more important the mobility, the speed to get in an out of a location most of the times. Also like Tesunie, I am primarily a med pilot.

For lights, heck, for majority of the mechs, many would say the scaling is too extreme, never mind that there is no actual physical attacks, or enough on the legs to make a real difference. If there were lights would not be trying to hug assaults, it would be hit and runs because a legged light is soon to be dead light.

[Rain Dark Sky]

I've killed many an assault using a light mech. Face to face fighting, or more rarely via backstabbing.

Lights are great.

A dire whale is slow, and easy to take advantage of in a light.

You might try stacking 8 ER micros in the arms for such encounters.