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So Someone Asked The Chieftain A Mech Question...


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#41 Prototelis

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Posted 31 December 2019 - 09:26 PM

Yeah, still no one you should know about or feel ashamed for not knowing about.

#42 DarkFhoenix

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Posted 31 December 2019 - 09:48 PM

There is no chieftain only Baradul .

#43 Davegt27

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 03:50 AM

never heard of the Chieftain guy

but I thought Mechs did not use hyd actuators but some type of myomer ??

also I thought the reactors where 31 century tech ??

#44 Phoolan Devi

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 05:44 AM

I just laugh at the stat shamers for their delusion that their oponion counts more than the opinion of people with lower stats. It's just ridiculous!

#45 Anomalocaris

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 08:51 AM

View PostPhoolan Devi, on 01 January 2020 - 05:44 AM, said:

I just laugh at the stat shamers for their delusion that their oponion counts more than the opinion of people with lower stats. It's just ridiculous!


Yes, I never give more weight to the opinions of people that are good at something either. That's discriminatory! /s

Sarcasm aside, if this were a twitch shooter that depended as much on the reflexes and vision of youth as it did strategy and tactics, I'd concede at least a minor point to you. But in reality, MWO is pretty slow moving and doesn't require outstanding vision. Even a 50 year old with reading glasses, a 17" laptop and trackball can do pretty damn well as long as they pay attention (especially to positioning), learn the maps, learn basic builds (which enemies are likely to have IS XL engines for example) and bother to aim.

As much as we make fun of Russ for calling MWO a "thinking man's shooter", thinking is the primary determinant of success in this game, not reactions and reflexes. As such, when successful players like Ash or Vxheous talk about something in game, I'm going to give them at least a _little_ more attention/credibility than someone with a 200 match score average and a sub 1.0 WLR.

Just sayin....

#46 Bud Crue

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 09:40 AM

View PostAnomalocaris, on 31 December 2019 - 05:41 PM, said:


Response


Mischief's assertion is: "The idea that someone doesn't care about winning is an absolute literal lie. Also indicative of a need for some therapy". I am telling you that the sorts of people I mentioned exist. You know they exist. Jarl's is full of them: The long term players who are perpetually in the low percentages, who somehow fail to raise in tier, etc. Heck, this place still has a few who even comment now and again. I suspect you are right they they too enjoy winning, and get more pleasure from the game when they do. But we all have seen them in game, and have for years; players who do not care, and often -hell, always- conduct themselves in a manner that more often than not encourages a bad performance and consistently drive losses. They are real. I can't be 100% sure of their motivations, but their conduct sure suggests to me that they don't care if they win.

#47 Harambe McHarambeface Kerensky

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 10:50 AM

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 14 January 2020 - 11:36 AM.
unconstructive


#48 MischiefSC

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 11:28 AM

View PostBud Crue, on 31 December 2019 - 11:11 AM, said:


”the point of the game” is where your analysis fails for a large chunk of this community. I know and have known a LOT of people (and on many an occasion I am one of them) who are not playing to win or lose a given match but to “play” literally play, as in play with, their virtual toys with other people. You have mech dads and lore nerds and nostalgic TT folk that are here to socialize, who play intentionally bad builds, who team kill each other, play inebriated, and/or engage in all sorts of other conduct that does not lend itself to winning. And they do not care if any of that conduct results in a win. They are playing, and for them that is the goal.

Imho the problem has always been that this “game” was for the last several years the only decent place that they and others like them could come and play with their virtual stompy robots, and unfortunately it was (and remains) the same place that folks who actually treat the game as a competitive endeavor were forced to encounter one another. PGI trying to maintain an environment where both of these populations can viably exist has been their biggest mistake, and after the awfulness of the NPE, the primary reason that the population has been continuously dropping for years.


Except that doesn't change how your brain works. What you're talking about is one-offs and trying to normalize it as standard. Everyone does the things you're talking about - takes bad builds, plays drunk with friends. Every comp player has done it and still does it. That's not 14k drops consecutively. That's not even 1,000 drops. How your brain reacts to a game/challenge/competition/risk vs reward scenario is measurable chemistry. How and why people respond to that either in a risk taking, risk-averse or ego-preservation format also isn't some magical mystery unique to every individual. It's a pretty narrow set of responses and is predictable.

The fact that the game is either won or lost is never irrelevant to how people play. The absolute reality (and the one some people really like to avoid because it makes them uncomfortable) is that winning is always better than losing, but trying to win and failing stings worse than sandbagging and then saying 'I didn't win because I didn't really try' so out of fear of the sting some people lean heavily on the 'I didn't win because I didn't try'.

The other big slice of this is the fact that this game is PvP 12 v 12. When someone says "I don't care if I win or lose" that's false in a brain chemistry sense. You get more dopamine on a win. What they're actually saying is 'I'm less bothered by losing because I'm not going to invest in the effort/risk of winning'. They are absolutely also saying 'I'm making a choice that negatively impacts up to 23 other people and doing it consistently, making the game less fun for them so I am less bothered by losing'.

We're not talking about derping around with your buddies in tabletop in a basement, this is a PvP game. Having played FW since it started in every single faction and on every big teamspeak I can say for certainty that the guys derping or playing poorly were a giggle once in a blue moon but in general were a PITA.

Not trying to go all debbie downer here but it's worth bringing to light that the 'I don't care if I win' thing is a lie. It has always been a lie. It's a comforting lie and we as humans need comforting lies, it's part of how we protect ourselves. Some people just don't have the emotional energy to invest in the ego risk of trying to win and still losing or just working on GIT GUD. It's absolutely okay to be bad at stompy pretend robbits. Just be honest about it and realize that you're impacting the fun of up to 23 other people. It's okay to be selfish sometimes but if you're selfish all the time you're an *******.

#49 Bud Crue

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 12:28 PM

View PostMischiefSC, on 01 January 2020 - 11:28 AM, said:

Except that doesn't change how your brain works. What you're talking about is one-offs and trying to normalize it as standard.


It's not a standard, but it certainly is more than a one-off. If it's the latter, then this game has apparently attracted an awful lot of these "one-offs". There is unquestionably a lot of people who play this game in a provocatively bad way. I don't claim to know why they do this in every case, but it is clearly, demonstrably, not to win. You may insist that their brain chemistry is flawed, or that they are lying to themselves or whatever, and maybe you are right but there sure are a heck of a lot of them playing this game.

#50 MischiefSC

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 02:09 PM

View PostBud Crue, on 01 January 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

It's not a standard, but it certainly is more than a one-off. If it's the latter, then this game has apparently attracted an awful lot of these "one-offs". There is unquestionably a lot of people who play this game in a provocatively bad way. I don't claim to know why they do this in every case, but it is clearly, demonstrably, not to win. You may insist that their brain chemistry is flawed, or that they are lying to themselves or whatever, and maybe you are right but there sure are a heck of a lot of them playing this game.


The vast majority of drops that people make they would be happier winning than losing. However if you really try to win and lose it stings more than if you don't try. So if you don't try you have to justify why you lost. Then you get that Catch-22 of then saying the people who do try and put in the effort to understand what wins and why and how and as such win more often are being 'mean' and are 'tryhards', literally trying to portray trying hard as a bad behavior. Some people on this forum have even tried to equate it with bullying. They do that because by internalizing justification for not trying as a 'good' thing they equate actually trying as 'bad'. Essentially trying to create a moral component to raise up losing above winning. So they hamstring themselves from really being able to work on getting better and winning more because they've demonized everything involved in doing so.

People do that in games, jobs and life in general. One of the biggest hurdles to success at anything is generally your own ego.

It's not flawed brain chemistry it's emotional self defense. It's fine to suck at MWO. It's a silly computer game. It means NOTHING save what we want it to mean. Some people take pride in it, that's cool too. However it is a social thing so people intentionally sandbagging on the regular to salve their pride and justify why they're unwilling/unable to do what wins is pretty selfish and crappy to the other players.

The players who are really good at this game are generally good people like everyone else. Sure there's some self-important prats and such but every team at every skill level has that. Every unit in the game has a couple people that make everyone else groan most the time. As an example (not to call anyone out) Vxheous used to be in a FW unit called AWOL. I played with them a lot, a really nice group of guys. He played with his significant other, we ran brawling, did suicide charges in the gates of Boreal Vault (they even had a Teamspeak tag for 'Spartan' for the guy going in first and getting rekt). I absolutely know that he's a nice guy, a casual guy and wants everyone to have fun. He moved on to full comp play with EMP, played with some of the best players in the game and his range trade game is in the top fraction of a fraction of a percent of the player base. He knows from experience playing with and against the best players what builds work and why, what positioning works and why, what behaviors work and why. He absolutely knows how to brawl, run stock builds, whatever. Yet he and players like him get ragged on for giving good advice and for playing what works and doing what wins by people who literally don't know or understand any of that and are not only unwilling to put in the effort to learn but unwilling to accept the realities of it when it's pointed out by people who already know and have demonstrated it.

Not being great at the game is okay. Losing because of that is okay. Not having the emotional ***** to give to GIT GUD at MWO is okay. Derping on the regular to sandbag your team because of that is not okay. Demonizing people who are good for putting that effort in is not okay.

That's another $20 copay, everyone keep on their meds and we'll see you all next week.

#51 Phoolan Devi

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 02:22 PM

View PostAnomalocaris, on 01 January 2020 - 08:51 AM, said:


Yes, I never give more weight to the opinions of people that are good at something either. That's discriminatory! /s

Sarcasm aside, if this were a twitch shooter that depended as much on the reflexes and vision of youth as it did strategy and tactics, I'd concede at least a minor point to you. But in reality, MWO is pretty slow moving and doesn't require outstanding vision. Even a 50 year old with reading glasses, a 17" laptop and trackball can do pretty damn well as long as they pay attention (especially to positioning), learn the maps, learn basic builds (which enemies are likely to have IS XL engines for example) and bother to aim.

As much as we make fun of Russ for calling MWO a "thinking man's shooter", thinking is the primary determinant of success in this game, not reactions and reflexes. As such, when successful players like Ash or Vxheous talk about something in game, I'm going to give them at least a _little_ more attention/credibility than someone with a 200 match score average and a sub 1.0 WLR.

Just sayin....


I think I failed to bring my point across, so I'll try it again.

Ofc, when it comes to topics as tactics, positioning, strategy etc pp an opinion/statement of a good player is more valuable/helpful than the one of the bad player.

BUT when it comes to game mechanics, game modes, improvement of FW etc pp both opinions have equal value, since those have nothing to do with skill or performance.

Btw, I agree 100% with @MischiefSCs post! But is has nothing to do with value of opinion or stat-shaming. From my point of view, stat-shaming is a sign of weakness!

Edited by Phoolan Devi, 01 January 2020 - 02:23 PM.


#52 R79TCom1 Night Lanner

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 05:41 PM

View PostDavegt27, on 01 January 2020 - 03:50 AM, said:

never heard of the Chieftain guy

but I thought Mechs did not use hyd actuators but some type of myomer ??

also I thought the reactors where 31 century tech ??


'Mechs can have shoulder, upper, lower, and hand actuators that are controlled by myomer bundles. Think of their arms as similar to a human arm with the actuators as the joints and the myomer as the muscles: shoulder = shoulder; upper = elbow; lower = wrist; hand = finger joints.

Also, in the BattleTech universe fusion technology will be achieved in 2021 with fusion engines happening sometime later. The first BattleMech, the Mackie, was built in 2439 and had a fusion engine, so they were available long before the 31st century.



#53 justcallme A S H

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 04:58 AM

View PostPhoolan Devi, on 01 January 2020 - 05:44 AM, said:

I just laugh at the stat shamers for their delusion that their oponion counts more than the opinion of people with lower stats. It's just ridiculous!


You aint Phoolan no-one.

Within MWO it is extremely evident that low skill users comment incorrectly at almost every turn on balance, functionality, mechanics within the game.

So when one makes incorrect and obviously wrong statements - of course their opinion counts for little because it is not based on any facts whatsoever.

#54 Dee Eight

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 08:26 AM

View PostDavegt27, on 01 January 2020 - 03:50 AM, said:

never heard of the Chieftain guy

but I thought Mechs did not use hyd actuators but some type of myomer ??

also I thought the reactors where 31 century tech ??


Some industrial mechs use hydraulic actuators but most do not and battlemechs exclusively use myomer bundles. Most Battletech players don't know all the technology in the game universe. For example.... There are four kinds of engines used in 'Mechs in the Battletech universe. Battlemechs themselves almost exclusively used fusion engines but some have used Fission engines also. Industrial mechs can use Fusion, Fission, ICE, and Fuel Cells engines.

#55 Mister Maf

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 02:20 PM

He did say "upwards of" 70 tons, which is correct. Even considering the myomer actuators and even if we assume mechs are plated with magic future space armor that's hyper weight-efficient, the point remains that a tank is a much more efficient package to mount that same armor on.

#56 Nightbird

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 02:39 PM

I always thought of it more as tanks were cheap, had way less mobility, carried less as a % of their weight in armor, and couldn't really spread damage by twisting. That been said, they are way stronger than what is portrayed in MW5 and other MW games.

#57 Mister Maf

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 08:41 PM

View PostNightbird, on 02 January 2020 - 02:39 PM, said:

I always thought of it more as tanks were cheap, had way less mobility, carried less as a % of their weight in armor, and couldn't really spread damage by twisting. That been said, they are way stronger than what is portrayed in MW5 and other MW games.

Tanks carry much more of their overall weight in armor than a mech would, and the entire concept of damage spreading by torso twisting being necessary really just proves Chieftain's point—mechs are a very big target with insufficient armor protection for their role. A main battle tank by design doesn't need to twist around to spread damage because most of its armor is loaded onto a relatively small front profile, and armored tactics are designed around keeping that sturdy front pointed at the enemy. This lets it keep its sights on target without wasting time wiggling its turret from side to side while the loader services the weapon, forcing the gunner to reacquire the target from scratch all over again. A 20 foot tall mech designed to walk around in the open must be armored on all sides (thinner armor distribution for the weight compared to a tank's frontloaded armor, especially considering the humanoid shape has more surface area to cover) and more of the mech's overall mass would be taken up by the structure and powerplant (less tonnage to allocate to armor overall before the weight starts overtaxing the powerplant).

Basically the tanks in Battletech/MechWarrior should be as tough as if not tougher than most mechs, but should be easy to destroy by flanking them to shoot them in the sides or rear. They would operate in platoons and employ tactics that keep their heavily armored front pointed towards the enemy battlemechs from range to maximize their chances. Realistically most militaries would employ specialized anti-mech equivalents to tank destroyers that just mount the biggest armor-piercing gun possible on an armored chassis and put them behind their tanks—BattleMechs would have a really hard time dealing with such a thing head-on.

Edited by Mister Maf, 02 January 2020 - 08:48 PM.


#58 Prototelis

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 08:48 PM

bUt MuH lUoRe

#59 Nightbird

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 08:51 PM

View PostMister Maf, on 02 January 2020 - 08:41 PM, said:

Tanks carry much more of their overall weight in armor than a mech would, and the entire concept of damage spreading by torso twisting being necessary really just proves Chieftain's point—mechs are a very big target with insufficient armor protection for their role. A main battle tank by design doesn't need to twist around to spread damage because most of its armor is loaded onto a relatively small front profile, and armored tactics are designed around keeping that sturdy front pointed at the enemy. This lets it keep its sights on target without wasting time wiggling its turret from side to side while the loader services the weapon, forcing the gunner to reacquire the target from scratch all over again. A 20 foot tall mech designed to walk around in the open must be armored on all sides (thinner armor distribution for the weight compared to a tank's frontloaded armor, especially considering the humanoid shape has more surface area to cover) and more of the mech's overall mass would be taken up by the structure and powerplant (less tonnage to allocate to armor overall before the weight starts overtaxing the powerplant).

Basically the tanks in Battletech/MechWarrior should be as tough as if not tougher than most mechs, but should be easy to destroy by flanking them to shoot them in the sides or rear. They would operate in platoons and employ tactics that keep their heavily armored front pointed towards the enemy battlemechs from range to maximize their chances.


Moot points. First of all, mobility, tanks can't fight in 0 G, in forests, in cities (against JJ units), on volcanos, and many other places that threaded vehicles cannot get from A to B on. If you have 300 tons of space in a dropship and you want units that can fight anywhere with maximum efficiency, you never consider tanks.

Second, BT armor works by ablation, so massing armor at the front of the tank only reduces the about of guns that can be mounted. If a lean profile can take as much damage as a barn door, but the barn door can mount 3 times more weapons, guess who wins. IRL the opposite is true, but in BT is false.

As far as speed, mylemar + fusion is lighter than threads + ICE + transmission so mechs have a lot better HP to weight ratio to tanks. Again, expensive toy compared to antique sort of comparison.

#60 Mister Maf

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 09:41 PM

View PostNightbird, on 02 January 2020 - 08:51 PM, said:

Moot points. First of all, mobility, tanks can't fight in 0 G, in forests, in cities (against JJ units), on volcanos, and many other places that threaded vehicles cannot get from A to B on. If you have 300 tons of space in a dropship and you want units that can fight anywhere with maximum efficiency, you never consider tanks.

Second, BT armor works by ablation, so massing armor at the front of the tank only reduces the about of guns that can be mounted. If a lean profile can take as much damage as a barn door, but the barn door can mount 3 times more weapons, guess who wins. IRL the opposite is true, but in BT is false.

As far as speed, mylemar + fusion is lighter than threads + ICE + transmission so mechs have a lot better HP to weight ratio to tanks. Again, expensive toy compared to antique sort of comparison.

This completely handwaves the problem of focused ground pressure distributing the entire weight of the chassis into two footprints which would in fact heavily reduce a mech's mobility in just the types of terrain tanks are designed to do well in. Mechs would quite literally get stuck in the mud. Furthermore tanks are perfectly capable of traversing forests and crushing trees and the like—you just don't want to drive them around in forests because it's a low-visibility zone susceptible to infantry ambush, and the same would be no less true for mechs in both forests and urban areas.

Now, on planets and moons with less gravity than Earth, the pressure distribution problem is alleviated, but now we're looking at mechs mainly as specialized low-G environment machines.

As for dropship tonnage, even if we hold your initial assertion to be true—that a mech is the most versatile fighting platform for the weight—that doesn't cover the full picture. Mechs are also extremely logistically taxing—they take up a huge amount of space just for the vehicles themselves before even getting into the service bays and the lack of interchangeable parts between variants. Space is money in space, and for the tonnage a dropship designed to land a conventional expeditionary force can field a much larger fighting force just for all the space and weight saved on the more efficient logistics associated with...anything that isn't a BattleMech. Hence, if you're Commander John Davion planning an attack on Steiner High-G Marsh Planet #17, you aren't going to mobilize your dropships that carry two lances each of mechs each that will all get bogged down; you're going to mobilize your dropships that carry a much larger fighting force actually suited to the environment—which is probably also not tanks either!

As for ablative armor, myomer/fusion engine weight savings and so on, that largely comes down to how much disbelief you want to suspend in a discussion about the real practicality of the bipedal armored fighting machine as a concept. Personally I have a hard time believing in myomer and associated technologies as anything more than space magic handwavium to make the mechs operate in the easy weight range of 20 to 100 tons for tabletop pen and paper bookkeeping, and in real life we know that ablative armor is only useful against certain types of munitions and thus use it as only one part of layered compound armor designs.

If we are holding ourselves to these lore restrictions, then yeah, you're right—traditional MBT designs basically break down because they aren't consistent with reality, much like many things in Battletech. But I think the question is more grounded in reality than lore and the Chieftain just happened to cite Battletech in his response as an example instead of any other number of popular media portraying mechs. Also, if the weight-saving technology that makes mechs practical exists, it seems silly to think that they wouldn't be applied where relevant to other more conventional designs as well.

I also feel like it's worth mentioning that the mechs presented in Battletech and really basically anywhere have an inefficient hull design for deflecting damage. The sloped frontal hull employed by modern main battle tanks allows for much greater effective armor thickness for the tonnage than the flat surfaces on the front of a BattleMech or AT-ST or Gundam or whatever you like.





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