12 replies to this topic

[Catra Lanis]

Premises

I'm a tier five player. Before I quit last time I was close to enter tier two but that was in the old system. Based upon what I've seen I think I'm fairly representative of the casual scrub player in tier five-three, and to clarify we're talking about pug queue only.

My personal goal due to OCD is to keep every mech at a K/D ratio of 1.0 or better. That's why I've shied away from lights. I'm not good with them and I know how easy it's to end up in the red and need 100 matches or more to claw yourself back. My Victor-9K took 40 matches to get from 1.0 to 0.87 and then another 800 to go back to 1.0 (thanks Arctic Cheetah). This is also the reason I play question mark mechs on my alt.The only exception are the Ravens. I like them for some reason. I played these mechs with kills as metric rather than match score which may have affected my playstyle.

I also put 30 GSP in the Arctic Cheetah and the Piranha respectively to speed up things. The other ones I leveled from 0.

COM-2D 2xSRM4 1xMPL

I thought I was going to hate it, fearing a K/D of 0.6 or worse once it was leveled. To my surprise I felt at home in it even if it was a bit too twitchy for my taste (why does it sound like my 1 cylinder dual sport on idle though?). It's fast, agile and has great hitboxes. I kept to the outside of the battle waiting for the opening. It takes a bit of patience but as long as you don't get greedy... I felt I could have ran into a bunch of mechs and literally facerolled and still had a chance of getting out, if not unharmed, then at least alive. It's not OP though, because the ability to soak up damage is offset by mediocre firepower even for a light.

ACH-E 3xMPL 6xCLMG

Here is the mech that made me take a pause. Now that it's been toned down it's not that special though. I played it like a Huggin with better hitboxes and lasers instead of SRM4s. It's a good solid mech, it handles pleasantly but why and how I can't put my finger on. Maybe because it's less hyper than the COM-2D. While it's nothing special it doesn't need any extra help either. It's not a bad mech. It's just...bland.

JVN-11A 7xML

This was an odd one, I didn't gel with it. It felt like a medium with no armor and I played it as such. Like the RVN-2X I used it as a support mech. Tagging along with the main group. It has good firepower and shone a bit more in prolonged fights on maps like River City and Mining. It's not a solo mech in my opinion.

PIR-2 8xER Micro 4xSPL

It has good hitboxes, not as good as the COM-2D but good enough. What it has, is firepower. The first match I played I come up on a Dire Wolf. I just walked up behind him, aimed, pressed the trigger and down he went, he probably had little rear armor since he was 100% but still. The next was a Stalker with slightly yellow armor. Same result. Next match I went off on my own. Yet another Dire Wolf. This time he saw me and I had to waltz around a bit. I actually felt sorry for him if he was a real beginner. He'd probably waited 7 minutes to take his shiny new mech out and here comes the ”veteran” in his unhittable lolzorz trollmech and 2 shots him. This mech is ridiculous. It absolutely doesn't need any help at all. Just park behind an assault. Take a couple of extra seonds to line up the shot, pull the trigger and it's a fair chance the might assault will simply keel over.

So what's my opinion?

I feel that lights are not implemented in a good way. Someone said in another thread that people want to pilot big stompy robots and not flit around in Iron Mans armor and that's what some of them feel and look like. It doesn't feel like mass and inertia is there. The Raven 3L for example is fast but still feels like a mech, albeit a small one because it can't turn on a dime or stop from 146 kph like it's run into a wall. Still people want better acce/deaccel and tighter turning radius.

I don't think we should lean to much on lore either. Lore might say a mech can do a handstance or that there was a mech called Indy who could do 600 kph in a straight line. It doesn't mean it's a good ideo to put it in a game or a good justification to make some of the top performers even more agile.

In the 2D it felt like a random shooter. The only thing that reminded me that I was supposed to be in a 25 ton war machine was the HUD and that I couldn't see my hands holding a rifle.

I have no solution but if a borderline steering wheel guy can hold his own in these mechs then they don't need any help. My suggestion is leaving mechs like the PIR-2 and COM-2D alone and buff only those that are severly underperforming.

Below are some numbers:

Edited by Catra Lanis, 12 June 2021 - 11:35 AM.

[RickySpanish]

I don't think Commando or Piranha are in line for any buffs, as you said they're on the rather strong side of their class right now. By the way, you say you're not good with Lights, but the stats you showed are pretty damn good. Lights aren't exactly a forgiving class to play either.

[martian]

Catra Lanis, on 12 June 2021 - 11:32 AM, said:

ACH-E
While it's nothing special it doesn't need any extra help either. It's not a bad mech. It's just...bland.

I would call it ... adequate. Not magnificent, but not as bad as some other light 'Mechs.

Catra Lanis, on 12 June 2021 - 11:32 AM, said:

Lore might say a mech can do a handstance...

Sure, but only when piloted by a MechWarrior who knows what he is doing, and usually when piloting a specially modified 'Mech.

There is a difference between olympic gymnast and average human, you know.

Catra Lanis, on 12 June 2021 - 11:32 AM, said:

... or that there was a mech called Indy who could do 600 kph in a straight line.

The fastest 'Mechs, that I know about, go approximately 400 km/h.

[YueFei]

Catra Lanis, on 12 June 2021 - 11:32 AM, said:

I feel that lights are not implemented in a good way. Someone said in another thread that people want to pilot big stompy robots and not flit around in Iron Mans armor and that's what some of them feel and look like. It doesn't feel like mass and inertia is there. The Raven 3L for example is fast but still feels like a mech, albeit a small one because it can't turn on a dime or stop from 146 kph like it's run into a wall. Still people want better acce/deaccel and tighter turning radius.

I don't think we should lean to much on lore either. Lore might say a mech can do a handstance or that there was a mech called Indy who could do 600 kph in a straight line. It doesn't mean it's a good ideo to put it in a game or a good justification to make some of the top performers even more agile.

I don't get where people think Light mechs stop/start on a dime. Sure, relative to bigger mechs they accel/decel quickly, but relative to real life warbirds? The accelerations aren't Looney-Tunes scale. A 20-ton Locust accelerates at 2.6 g's, and decelerates at 5.1 g's. An F-14 Tomcat (1970s technology) could mass over 30 tons and could comfortably pull 7.5+ g's.

Look, nobody likes to admit it, but at some point we gotta be honest with ourselves here: our aim just sucks.

[RickySpanish]

YueFei, on 12 June 2021 - 02:16 PM, said:

I don't get where people think Light mechs stop/start on a dime. Sure, relative to bigger mechs they accel/decel quickly, but relative to real life warbirds? The accelerations aren't Looney-Tunes scale. A 20-ton Locust accelerates at 2.6 g's, and decelerates at 5.1 g's. An F-14 Tomcat (1970s technology) could mass over 30 tons and could comfortably pull 7.5+ g's.

Look, nobody likes to admit it, but at some point we gotta be honest with ourselves here: our aim just sucks.

A Jet Fighter doesn't move on legs though. I imagine trying to pull heavy acceleration on a bipedal machine would just dig trenches in the ground.

[Nightbird]

I don't think you've played lights enough to draw any conclusion from your numbers. For one, you get worse WLR from the better lights and better WLR from the worse lights. This could be luck, or you used them at different tiers. Chassis stats aren't terribly useful when you've had an account for 7 years.

RickySpanish, on 13 June 2021 - 05:28 AM, said:

A Jet Fighter doesn't move on legs though. I imagine trying to pull heavy acceleration on a bipedal machine would just dig trenches in the ground.

A jet fighter can only manage about 2Gs of acceleration from its engines, anything over that is from the wings and air dynamics.

Edited by Nightbird, 13 June 2021 - 10:31 AM.

[YueFei]

RickySpanish, on 13 June 2021 - 05:28 AM, said:

A Jet Fighter doesn't move on legs though. I imagine trying to pull heavy acceleration on a bipedal machine would just dig trenches in the ground.

Whilst a mech under high acceleration would definitely tear up the ground, you can get mechs with ground pressure comparable to passenger vehicles. E.g., 20 ton mech, with two feet each one 2 square meters, for a ground pressure of about 15 psi while on one foot. That's less than most wheeled vehicles, which are typically in the 25 psi to 30 psi range. For reference, an F1 race car can decelerate at 4+ g's via that kind of ground pressure (actually 5 to 6 g's, but 1 g is due purely to aerodynamics).

What players complain about is their perception that a 20 to 30 ton war machine "has no inertia" due to how quickly it accelerates and decelerates, because they imagine that a 20 to 30 ton war machine could not possibly withstand the stresses or generate the forces required. But that perception is almost entirely due to people's intuition not matching up with reality (which, to be fair, happens all the time), because most people don't even realize that warbirds weigh as much as they do, and pull even higher accelerations without ripping their own wings off. Most people probably think warbirds weigh like 5 tons or something.

[Catra Lanis]

YueFei, on 13 June 2021 - 10:48 AM, said:

Whilst a mech under high acceleration would definitely tear up the ground, you can get mechs with ground pressure comparable to passenger vehicles. E.g., 20 ton mech, with two feet each one 2 square meters, for a ground pressure of about 15 psi while on one foot. That's less than most wheeled vehicles, which are typically in the 25 psi to 30 psi range. For reference, an F1 race car can decelerate at 4+ g's via that kind of ground pressure (actually 5 to 6 g's, but 1 g is due purely to aerodynamics).

What players complain about is their perception that a 20 to 30 ton war machine "has no inertia" due to how quickly it accelerates and decelerates, because they imagine that a 20 to 30 ton war machine could not possibly withstand the stresses or generate the forces required. But that perception is almost entirely due to people's intuition not matching up with reality (which, to be fair, happens all the time), because most people don't even realize that warbirds weigh as much as they do, and pull even higher accelerations without ripping their own wings off. Most people probably think warbirds weigh like 5 tons or something.

You are talking about G-load during banking, looping etc. That's not the same at all. If the F-14 could go from 2300 km/h to 600 km/h in 1.6 seconds that would be a better analogy, and yes I know very well the mass range of a fighter. A 20 ton machine will slide even if you assume the joints, legs and bushings would handle the stress. Mechs don't have ground effect like F1 cars and they don't operate on a surface with soles made for maximum traction on that surface alone.

[LordNothing]

conservation of momentum is completely off with regards to jump jets though. granted mechs expose a huge frontal cross section and drag is going to be high, but this is less of a problem at mech speeds as drag is proportional to the square of velocity. a streamlined jet in the high subsonic flight regime is going to have more drag than a non-streamlined mech going at what is effectively driving speed. a 737 (spent a lot of time on these in the last 3 months, the 737-700s i was on have a mtow of about 85 metric tons, equivalent to an assault mech) will decelerate really fast after it touches down with full flaps, spoilers and reverse thrusters, but then when it gets down to mech equivalent speed, it can coast for a very long time and relies on wheel breaks to stop. the spoilers and flaps are retracted at this point because they don't provide any useful deceleration at these low speeds.

[Dogstar]

Catra et al are you aware that in the tabletop rules for Battletech mechs can skid and fall if the pilot fails a roll when moving too fast?

MWO has insane grip and agility, most light mechs can run in tiny 10m circles at top speed and never once slip or slide. Try it yourself with the 3rd person camera drone and you'll see how ridiculous it looks.

[HammerMaster]

Dogstar, on 14 June 2021 - 12:17 PM, said:

Catra et al are you aware that in the tabletop rules for Battletech mechs can skid and fall if the pilot fails a roll when moving too fast?

MWO has insane grip and agility, most light mechs can run in tiny 10m circles at top speed and never once slip or slide. Try it yourself with the 3rd person camera drone and you'll see how ridiculous it looks.

It IS ridiculous and just another angle of how PGI missed the boat on cherry picking rules rather than GETTING OUT THE DAMN BOOK AND MAKING IT HAPPEN PROPERLY.

[Y E O N N E]

Actually, being able to drift a Locust would be pretty hilarious.

[Dogstar]

Y E O N N E, on 14 June 2021 - 06:18 PM, said:

Actually, being able to drift a Locust would be pretty hilarious.

It would be pretty damn cool wouldn't it.