228 replies to this topic

[pbiggz]

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 07:44 AM, said:

No because if you buff every mech in the game equally you are not changing the disparity between lower tier mechs and higher tier mechs.

Whereas if you ONLY buff lower tier mechs, and dont buff higher tier mechs, the lower tier mechs actually get better in comparison.

The potential that higher tier mechs might get a round about buff is not enough of a justification for not buffing jumpjets, a change that would make the game more fun for everyone, and buff literally hundreds of variants that currently get no use. Get it through your head. Its a boogeyman.

There's always going to be metamechs. It doesn't matter what you do or don't buff. If you primary justification for not doing a balance change is that there will be a meta then you don't actually have a justification, you're just fearmongering because the proposed changes don't directly effect the playstyles you like.

[Khobai]

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 07:50 AM, said:

The potential that higher tier mechs might get a round about buff is not enough of a justification for not buffing jumpjets, a change that would make the game more fun for everyone, and buff literally hundreds of variants that currently get no use. Get it through your head. Its a boogeyman.

a top tier mech like the summoner getting 25% better jumpjets isnt a roundabout buff. thats a direct buff. its the direct result of buffing jumpjets across the board via cauldrons proposal .

a roundabout buff is a buff thats unintentional or a secondary/indirect result of a primary buff (or in some cases a nerf). in this case the primary buff is buffing jumpjets and the summoner is a primary beneficiary of that. its definitely not a roundabout buff in any shape or form.

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 07:50 AM, said:

There's always going to be metamechs.

absolutely. and theres no reason to make them stronger.

when you already have an established hierarchy of mechs the only mechs that should receive buffs are the ones at the bottom. thats how you reach a better balanced game.

thats why buffing mobility on top tier mechs didnt make a whole lot of sense either. And many people were opposed to that as well. they questioned why certain top tier lights got further mobility buffs when they clearly didnt need them since they were already top tier performers.

Edited by Khobai, 25 June 2021 - 08:23 AM.

[pbiggz]

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:08 AM, said:

a top tier mech like the summoner getting 25% better jumpjets isnt a roundabout buff. thats a direct buff. its the direct result of buffing jumpjets across the board via cauldrons proposal .

a roundabout buff is a buff thats unintentional or a secondary result of a primary buff (or in some cases a nerf). in this case the primary buff is buffing jumpjets and the summoner is a primary beneficiary of that. its definitely not a roundabout buff in any shape or form.



absolutely. and theres no reason to make them stronger.

when you already have an established hierarchy of mechs the only mechs that should receive buffs are the ones at the bottom. thats how you get a better balanced game.

And the summoner should have better jumpjets. Every mech that can mount (or is forced to mount) jumpjets should have better jumpjets. It doesn't matter if they're meta or not. We're talking about making a piece of equipment that was deliberately made irrelevant, relevant again. That's going to cause a disruption in the meta. It doesn't mean its not worth doing. Simpering about skill trees and targetted buffs and nerfs is what got us into a balance hell to begin with.

There isn't any weapon, or equipment in this game, that should ever be not worth taking. End of story.

Edited by pbiggz, 25 June 2021 - 08:23 AM.

[1453 R]

Here's a better take: the meta comes and the meta goes. The Dragon Slayer was once the king of the battlefield - now it's Tier 6 ultratrash. There are actually factually izero good builds for the Dragon Slayer.Hell, the friggin' AWS-8Q was once the Bogeyman nightmare monster of the battlefield. Now people forget it's even in the game. Veagles and Summoners are meta now. Summoners have historically been absolutely awful, nobody uses them - only the Cauldron's recent weapons updates have brought them back into the game. I guarantee you that this time next year, both the Vapor Eagle and the Summoner will both be Tier 6 Ultratrash, just like the Dragon Slayer.

If you skip the 'good' 'Mechs for jump jet fixes, and then later shifts in the meta leave those 'good' 'Mechs behind? They will now be stuck with sh*tty worthless awful terrible no-good very-bad jump jets for no good f*cking reason. Then you'll have to go back and quirk their jump jets to make them better again, constantly chasing The Meta. it's more work for a less effective solution, and it still doesn't fix the problem that jump jets are bad.

And no - the stupid jump jet skill tree being a skill tax on anything with jets is not the answer. Same as "just take the mobility tree if you wanna be agile!" clearly wasn't the answer for overly stodgy 'Mechs, as we just saw with the mobility pass. Letting things be good and worthwhile as a baseline, and then using skills to choose what to specialize and be better in, is the correct method. Not "you suck at everything, use the skilltree to determine what you suck slightly less at."

Edited by 1453 R, 25 June 2021 - 08:25 AM.

[pbiggz]

1453 R, on 25 June 2021 - 08:24 AM, said:

Here's a better take: the meta comes and the meta goes. The Dragon Slayer was once the king of the battlefield - now it's Tier 6 ultratrash. There are actually factually izero good builds for the Dragon Slayer.Hell, the friggin' AWS-8Q was once the Bogeyman nightmare monster of the battlefield. Now people forget it's even in the game. Veagles and Summoners are meta now. Summoners have historically been absolutely awful, nobody uses them - only the Cauldron's recent weapons updates have brought them back into the game. I guarantee you that this time next year, both the Vapor Eagle and the Summoner will both be Tier 6 Ultratrash, just like the Dragon Slayer.

If you skip the 'good' 'Mechs for jump jet fixes, and then later shifts in the meta leave those 'good' 'Mechs behind? They will now be stuck with sh*tty worthless awful terrible no-good very-bad jump jets for no good f*cking reason. Then you'll have to go back and quirk their jump jets to make them better again, constantly chasing The Meta. it's more work for a less effective solution, and it still doesn't fix the problem that jump jets are bad.

And no - the stupid jump jet skill tree being a skill tax on anything with jets is not the answer. Same as "just take the mobility tree if you wanna be agile!" clearly wasn't the answer for overly stodgy 'Mechs, as we just saw with the mobility pass. Letting things be good and worthwhile as a baseline, and then using skills to choose what to specialize and be better in, is the correct method. Not "you suck at everything, use the skilltree to determine what you suck slightly less at."

This x1000

the absolute quivering fear people like khobai express when anyone suggests anything remotely like making things actually good again is exactly the mentality that inspired Paul Inouye to systematically nerf into the ground every mech and weapon that ever operated above the curve.

Its also the attitude of someone who's never been educated, or worked in game development. The cauldron fixes are quick and effective, the fixes Khobai is proposing are labour intensive and questionable at best, requiring a great deal of time and care, all in the service of making sure things Khobai personally doesn't like aren't too stronk or he might be upset.

[Khobai]

1453 R, on 25 June 2021 - 08:24 AM, said:

And no - the stupid jump jet skill tree being a skill tax on anything with jets is not the answer

the entire point of a skill tree is to force hard choices on players.

and its not a skill tax if the skill nodes are worth the points. I already said the jump jet skill tree needed buffs to make it more worthwhile to put points into.

instead you would rather pretend the skill tree doesnt exist and get the jumpjet buffs for free. so you dont have to make any hard choices like taking points out of firepower or survivability to put into jumpjets.

I would rather fix the existing skill tree to be more functional so that it forces players to make hard choices about how to allocate their skill points. rather than giving everything to players for free so they can continue avoiding to have to make hard choices.

1453 R, on 25 June 2021 - 08:24 AM, said:

Here's a better take: the meta comes and the meta goes. The Dragon Slayer was once the king of the battlefield - now it's Tier 6 ultratrash.

And it will continue to be "tier 6 ultratrash" as long as its not significantly buffed and the top tier mechs keep getting buffed.

just because the dragon slayer is bad doesnt mean it needs to stay bad forever.

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 08:22 AM, said:

And the summoner should have better jumpjets. Every mech that can mount (or is forced to mount) jumpjets should have better jumpjets.

So dont force non-S variant omnimechs to have locked jumpjets. I have already suggested that.

Besides I would argue the summoner doesnt need better jumpjets anyway. Its already a top tier mech.

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 08:22 AM, said:

the absolute quivering fear people like khobai express when anyone suggests anything remotely like making things actually good again is exactly the mentality that inspired Paul Inouye to systematically nerf into the ground every mech and weapon that ever operated above the curve.

I have nothing against making things good again.

I just dont see the need to make top tier mechs better.

besides youre the one thats against making things good again. You want to keep bad mechs bad while keeping top tier mechs on top.

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 08:22 AM, said:

Its also the attitude of someone who's never been educated, or worked in game development. The cauldron fixes are quick and effective, the fixes Khobai is proposing are labour intensive and questionable at best, requiring a great deal of time and care, all in the service of making sure things Khobai personally doesn't like aren't too stronk or he might be upset.

cauldrons fixes are only effective if all you care about is keeping top tier mechs at the top. which is all cauldron cares about because they dont use any mechs that arnt top tier mechs.

and yes of course balancing every mech in the game requires more effort than just keeping the top tier mechs on top.

also cauldron is doing quirk passes on every mech anyway. so what youre saying about it being more labor intensive doesnt really make any sense since thats getting done anyway. so why not use that extensive quirk pass as a way of balancing out the mechs better so top tier mechs and "6th tier ultratrash mechs" arnt as far apart in power level?

Edited by Khobai, 25 June 2021 - 09:23 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Wid1046, on 25 June 2021 - 07:29 AM, said:

There are more than two groups of opinions in this thread and it looks like you've grouped a couple sets of opinions together. As I see it there are four main groups:
1) Group 1 thinks that Navid's proposal is great as is and should be implemented that way.
2) Group 2 wants things to stay the same.
3) Group 3 wants Navid's proposal to make their preferred weight class have the best jump jets.
4) Group 4 thinks that Navid's proposal is better than what we have, but while it brings some utility it doesn't really bring as much 'fun' as they'd like and are trying to find ways to further buff jump jets without making them overpowered.

Group 2 and Group 4 are very different.

The jump jet shake ideas aren't coming from people who want to nerf jump jets (although the idea has been co-opted by Khobai to wreck jump jets, but he appears to be on his own), they're coming from people who want jump jets to be much more fast and powerful without being broken. Navid's proposal is an improvement and won't wreck anything, but it isn't as fun as having jump jets be twice as fast (for example) and jump even higher. If the Executioner for instance could blast off twice as fast and twice as high, that would be hilariously fun, but it would also allow it to pop-tart far better than Navid's proposal. This is why people are talking about having screen-shake last for a half-second or so after pop-tarting; to balance out even better jump jets. With a period of screen-shake after you let go of the jump jets you'd still be able to pop-tart, you'd just have to jump a bit higher to have enough hang time to shoot. You'd go up faster, but with the delay due to screen-shake people could still return fire. How long the screen-shake would last could be balanced to make it so that there would still be about as much time for enemies to return fire on a pop-tarting mech as there is now.

There was discussion of making screen-shake last until the mech hit the ground, but I think that was mostly a trade-off people were willing to make in exchange for uber-powerful jump-jets and they'd be just as happy with the half-second or so idea if it means mechs can return fire to pop-tarting mechs for about as much time as they would in Navid's proposal.

Edit: if people who were arguing for the screen-shake to last until the mech hits the ground aren't happy with the half-second or so of extra screen-shake please correct me. That was my interpretation, but I don't want to put words into people's mouths.

Sorry I should have been more precise. What I should have said is "I see the relevant debate as...". To me the various discussion points you cite are not relevant to the "debate" at hand. They are all either irrelevant or merely tangential to the fear expressed on page 1 that the proposed improvements would lead to a return of the dreaded days of the poptarting Dragon Slayer.

1) Whether or not we see the proposed changes as "great" is not relevant. I mean, I like em, but who cares? That's just my opinion.
2) I am dismissive of the notion that some prefer maintaining the status quo. If this were likely then I don't think a thread entitled "Lets Debate - The Jump Jet Overhaul" would be a thing.
3) I don't see any one in here seriously arguing this or providing evidence that making one class blatantly superior to another has merit, or provided evidence that such a thing would be advisable or otherwise good for the game.
4) Here we can have a debate, but the mechanisms being proposed by some are, like doing nothing, not on the table as far as I am aware. For example, neither PGI nor the Cauldron have proposed doing anything with screen shake, so I am ignoring this as being relevant to the main discussion of what the proposed JJ changes might do to the game.

So, again the issue of debate, as I see it, was stated concisely on the third post of this thread: will the proposed changes to jump jets that the Cauldron has submitted to PGI return the game to a state where the "poptarting Dragon Slayer" or anything like it, will dominate the game to an extent that was once possible. More broadly: would the Cauldrons proposed changes be detrimental to the game?

My view is that the proposed changes will not be detrimental, not return the game to a state where one mech or type of mech is utterly dominant over all other options. The current poptarts that we have are not dominating in the manner of the "Poptarting Dragon Slayer" of old, and that because of in game mechanics, like ghost heat, which have been introduced since the bad ole poptarting days, ensure that even if mechs like the Dragon Slayer have the ability to poptart to the extent or better than they did back in the day, that such mechs would be, at best, merely more viable and yes, hopefully more fun than they are now.

[1453 R]

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 08:29 AM, said:

...
Its also the attitude of someone who's never been educated, or worked in game development. The cauldron fixes are quick and effective, the fixes Khobai is proposing are labour intensive and questionable at best, requiring a great deal of time and care, all in the service of making sure things Khobai personally doesn't like aren't too stronk or he might be upset.

Absolutely. Fixing the base underlying problem and then handling edge cases is always going to be easier than wading in and applying a specific custom fix to every last single piece of code touching the issue. It doesn't even take real training in programming to understand this - fixing a broken system is easier than fixing all the fiddly, wrong results of a broken system independently.

Who f*ckin' cares if poptarts get better at poptarting? Everybody will be better at everything with better jets, except grounded 'Mechs who may actually feel a pinch of pain at not having jump jets. Exactly the way they're supposed to, at least in situations where jets are supposed to be good. If poptarts get bad again, shoot the bloody poptart. It's the same as the Piranha Problem - shoot the problem and it stops being a problem.

[Curccu]

Xhaleon, on 24 June 2021 - 11:06 PM, said:

Being 100% accurate in the air really isn't kind of how Battletech is supposed to work.

FTFY

[Kubernetes]

1453 R, on 25 June 2021 - 08:24 AM, said:

Here's a better take: the meta comes and the meta goes. The Dragon Slayer was once the king of the battlefield - now it's Tier 6 ultratrash. There are actually factually izero good builds for the Dragon Slayer.Hell, the friggin' AWS-8Q was once the Bogeyman nightmare monster of the battlefield. Now people forget it's even in the game. Veagles and Summoners are meta now. Summoners have historically been absolutely awful, nobody uses them - only the Cauldron's recent weapons updates have brought them back into the game. I guarantee you that this time next year, both the Vapor Eagle and the Summoner will both be Tier 6 Ultratrash, just like the Dragon Slayer.

I'm gonna take issue with some of these statements. With the recent weapons pass the DS isn't half bad. And Summoners have historically been good (I'd say since the first quirkening), but they weren't widely used because they require excellent piloting for max effect-- it's the furthest thing from a newbie ride.

[1453 R]

I'd legitimately love to know what one can do on the Dragon Slayer that one can't do infinitely better on basically any other 'Mech. The Dragon Slayer was the first assault 'Mech I ever got back in Ye Olden Dayes of MWO Past, the big gangly hunk of **** has something of a soft spot in my heart. I never really poptarted with it, I just liked the idea of a faster, more maneuverable assault 'Mech bullying lighter designs with its armor and presence. It's a Victor so of course that never really panned out, but a younger, dumber Rei had dreams. I even own the ******* XL385 that's the biggest engine all the other Victors can mount, just because I wanted to try and find some way to make a fast, aggressive flanker/striker assault 'Mech work. Ah well. C'est la vie.

[pbiggz]

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

the entire point of a skill tree is to force hard choices on players.

and its not a skill tax if the skill nodes are worth the points. I already said the jump jet skill tree needed buffs to make it more worthwhile to put points into.

instead you would rather pretend the skill tree doesnt exist and get the jumpjet buffs for free. so you dont have to make any hard choices like taking points out of firepower or survivability to put into jumpjets.

I would rather fix the existing skill tree to be more functional so that it forces players to make hard choices about how to allocate their skill points. rather than giving everything to players for free so they can continue avoiding to have to make hard choices.

The point of the skill tree is to give players options for enhancing the performance of their mechs in certain ways. It is not a tax meant to justify reducing baseline performance. A mech with fully specced out jumpjets should soar above mechs that don't have any points invested, but baseline jumpjets STILL NEED TO BE GOOD, which is something you cant seem to get into your head.

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

And it will continue to be "tier 6 ultratrash" as long as its not significantly buffed and the top tier mechs keep getting buffed.

just because the dragon slayer is bad doesnt mean it needs to stay bad forever.

So you're contradicting yourself. You're using the old poptart meta as a boogeyman to scare people away from backing real changes, but then admitting here that buffing baseline jumpjet performance across the board wont make the old mainstays of that meta overly powerful. So we here can all accept that your argument is at least not well thought out, though I think personally that you are being dishonest, and you know it.

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

So dont force non-S variant omnimechs to have locked jumpjets. I have already suggested that.

Besides I would argue the summoner doesnt need better jumpjets anyway. Its already a top tier mech.

Changing omnipods is something PGI has thus far been unwilling to do, and you know that, which means really, you just never want these buffs to happen period. You don't care why or how. Whatever post-hoc rationalization you can come up with works for you I guess

You're also building up the summoner as a strawman because it's one of the few heavy mechs that can still jump. Its also only top tier in a few very specific loadouts. An 8/8 pod summoner prime for example, is practically unplayable, so will giving it more ups actually hurt anyone? No. But you have the hate on for this ephemeral meta that you despise so you're trying to get everyone to laser focus on the one mech that might prove your point, if of course you're willing to be slightly dishonest.

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

I have nothing against making things good again.

Yes you do. Damn near every post you make on these boards is moaning about how this or that partial unnerfing will make something so overpowered you don't even wanna play the game anymore. You hate buffs.

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

I just dont see the need to make top tier mechs better.

This is a boogeyman. A made up straw man you're using as a post-hoc rationale for doing what you personally want, and not doing what you personally don't want.

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

besides youre the one thats against making things good again. You want to keep bad mechs bad while keeping top tier mechs on top.

Unnerfing jumpjets literally helps hundreds of underused variants to be more relevant. The jumping direwolf. The Cataphract 3d, IS highlanders, the non-meta summoners. Timberwolves. That's just scratching the surface. You'd levy a tax on these mechs just to be able to match the baseline performance of, say, your brawlers, just because you don't like the double ppc summoner.

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

cauldrons fixes are only effective if all you care about is keeping top tier mechs at the top. which is all cauldron cares about because they dont use any mechs that arnt top tier mechs.

and yes of course balancing every mech in the game requires more effort than just keeping the top tier mechs on top.

also cauldron is doing quirk passes on every mech anyway. so what youre saying about it being more labor intensive doesnt really make any sense since thats getting done anyway. so why not use that extensive quirk pass as a way of balancing out the mechs better so top tier mechs and "6th tier ultratrash mechs" arnt as far apart in power level?

This is a whole bag of assertions that you are personally making without any justifications. In my opinion, the cauldron buffs could go even further.

It's been a very long time since i've seen someone so committed to the nerf what I don't like and buff what I do like act. Its not a good look kid, and nobody here should ever take it seriously. Its disgustingly dishonest.

Edited by pbiggz, 25 June 2021 - 09:52 AM.

[Khobai]

again its not a tax if the skill nodes are worth putting points into. I already said the jump jet skill tree needs buffs.

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 09:51 AM, said:

The point of the skill tree is to give players options for enhancing the performance of their mechs in certain ways. It is no a tax meant to justify reducing baseline performance. A mech with fully specced out jumpjets should soar above mechs that don't have any points invested, but baseline jumpjets STILL NEED TO BE GOOD, which is something you cant seem to get into your head.

And I feel baseline jumpjets are already fine for most mechs. the only mechs theyre not fine on are assaults and especially the assaults that pay 2 tons per jumpjet. Thats the only time jumpjets really dont feel like theyre worth it.

Certainly a 40m jump is sufficient for anything a Summoner needs to do. Ive never once thought the Summoner needed to jump any higher than that nor expected it to for only 5 tons. I can CERPPC jumpsnipe just fine with that amount of jump distance. 40m of jump distance for 5 tons is entirely reasonable.

I would be perfectly fine with just buffing assault jumpjets and then buffing the jumpjet skill tree so its actually worth putting points into. that solves all of the problems without overbuffing top tier mechs and still allows top tier mechs to get better jumpjets with a tradeoff. So if you want your top tier summoner to jump better you have to tradeoff points from another skill tree. It fixes the problem of having a defunct jumpjet skill tree too.
.

Edited by Khobai, 25 June 2021 - 10:20 AM.

[Wid1046]

Bud Crue, on 25 June 2021 - 08:38 AM, said:

Sorry I should have been more precise. What I should have said is "I see the relevant debate as...". To me the various discussion points you cite are not relevant to the "debate" at hand. They are all either irrelevant or merely tangential to the fear expressed on page 1 that the proposed improvements would lead to a return of the dreaded days of the poptarting Dragon Slayer.

1) Whether or not we see the proposed changes as "great" is not relevant. I mean, I like em, but who cares? That's just my opinion.
2) I am dismissive of the notion that some prefer maintaining the status quo. If this were likely then I don't think a thread entitled "Lets Debate - The Jump Jet Overhaul" would be a thing.
3) I don't see any one in here seriously arguing this or providing evidence that making one class blatantly superior to another has merit, or provided evidence that such a thing would be advisable or otherwise good for the game.
4) Here we can have a debate, but the mechanisms being proposed by some are, like doing nothing, not on the table as far as I am aware. For example, neither PGI nor the Cauldron have proposed doing anything with screen shake, so I am ignoring this as being relevant to the main discussion of what the proposed JJ changes might do to the game.

So, again the issue of debate, as I see it, was stated concisely on the third post of this thread: will the proposed changes to jump jets that the Cauldron has submitted to PGI return the game to a state where the "poptarting Dragon Slayer" or anything like it, will dominate the game to an extent that was once possible. More broadly: would the Cauldrons proposed changes be detrimental to the game?

My view is that the proposed changes will not be detrimental, not return the game to a state where one mech or type of mech is utterly dominant over all other options. The current poptarts that we have are not dominating in the manner of the "Poptarting Dragon Slayer" of old, and that because of in game mechanics, like ghost heat, which have been introduced since the bad ole poptarting days, ensure that even if mechs like the Dragon Slayer have the ability to poptart to the extent or better than they did back in the day, that such mechs would be, at best, merely more viable and yes, hopefully more fun than they are now.

Some of my previous post was to summarize what my interpretation of the whole discussion was including points that I don't agree with. Unlike my previous post I'll just focus on the opinions that you and I have. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your point of view.

We both seem to agree that Navid's proposal will not be detrimental, not return the game to a state where one mech type or another will be dominant, and not break pop-tarting and make it overpowered. We both seem to agree it is an improvement over what we have now. The two areas that I think we disagree on is:
1) Whether jump jets be even more fun than in Navid's proposal if they were far faster and more powerful than what he suggested.
2) Whether greatly buffing jump jets beyond what Navid proposed would require additional balancing.

Navid's proposal is better than what we have, but it also limits the lift speed of heavier mechs and doesn't increase their max jump height by all that much over what we have now. Faster is generally more fun for most things including blasting yourself into the air by venting the power of your fission engine. I find moving slowly due to a controlled nuclear explosion to be a bit of a let down, so I'd like jump jets to be buffed to be faster and more powerful.

In regards to the second point, I do think that if the jump speed of mechs was dramatically increased it would reduce the amount of counterplay against pop-tarting mechs. Right now (and with Navid's proposal) you just shoot them, but if jump jets were significantly faster that would be harder to do, which is why I think that - if we make jump jets significantly faster - we'd need to also add a bit of a delay to when those pop-tarts can properly aim after releasing their jump jets. They would still be able to pop-tart, but they would have to jump a bit higher to get enough hang-time to be able to shoot, which would give the enemy an opportunity to shoot back. That delay should (in my opinion) be tuned so that people still have about as much time to shoot back as they would during Navid's proposal.

[pbiggz]

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 09:52 AM, said:

again its not a tax if the skill nodes are worth putting points into. I already said the jump jet skill tree needs buffs.

if the baseline performance is so bad you have no choice but to put points in it then its literally a tax. Its a cost you must pay.

[Wid1046]

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 09:55 AM, said:

if the baseline performance is so bad you have no choice but to put points in it then its literally a tax. Its a cost you must pay.

Please don't misinterpret me as agreeing with Khobai, however most mechs have things in the skill system that they must invest in to be any good. There aren't any laserboats that don't need to invest in heat management, there aren't any brawlers that aren't made miles better by having survival, there aren't any ECM mechs that don't require the ECM nodes, and there aren't any back-stabbers that don't require mobility. Most sections in the skill tree system are powerful enough that they make a massive difference if you invest in them. The jump jet section is currently terrible and should be made better, just not at the expense of baseline jump jets.

Edit: reread your point. Realized that what you were arguing isn't what I thought you were arguing and that you probably agree with me. Feel free to disregard this post.

Edited by Wid1046, 25 June 2021 - 10:06 AM.

[pbiggz]

Khobai, on 25 June 2021 - 09:52 AM, said:

And I feel baseline jumpjets are already fine for most mechs. the only mechs theyre not fine on are assaults and especially the assaults that pay 2 tons per jumpjet. Thats the only time jumpjets really dont feel like theyre worth it.

I would be perfectly fine with just buffing assault jumpjets and then buffing the jumpjet skill tree so its actually worth putting points into. that solves all of the problems without overbuffing top tier mechs and still allows top tier mechs to get better jumpjets with a tradeoff. So if you want your top tier summoner to jump better you have to tradeoff points from another skill tree.

But why? I cant see any reason for you to be so committed to not buffing baseline performance on a clearly underperforming piece of equipment, a change that would lift hundreds of underused or unused variants out of the muck, except that you personally don't like that some mechs that might benefit from that performance increase are top tier, and I'm, sorry but that's not a good enough excuse not to do it.

[Kubernetes]

1453 R, on 25 June 2021 - 09:39 AM, said:

I'd legitimately love to know what one can do on the Dragon Slayer that one can't do infinitely better on basically any other 'Mech.

I've run with 2PPC + Gauss or 2HPPC +LGauss. Not huge firepower, but it's been working well. For an 80-tonner the Victor has some sweet mobility -- on the level of an average 60-65 tonner.

[pbiggz]

Kubernetes, on 25 June 2021 - 10:20 AM, said:

I've run with 2PPC + Gauss or 2HPPC +LGauss. Not huge firepower, but it's been working well. For an 80-tonner the Victor has some sweet mobility -- on the level of an average 60-65 tonner.

Mechs as undergunned for their weight as the old victors absolutely need the mobility. Baseline jumpjets would benefit them greatly. I personally haven't found a build I like on the dragonslayer. I wish I could, because I used to run that thing all the time and its been collecting dust for half a decade now.

[Khobai]

pbiggz, on 25 June 2021 - 10:10 AM, said:

But why? I cant see any reason for you to be so committed to not buffing baseline performance on a clearly underperforming piece of equipment, a change that would lift hundreds of underused or unused variants out of the muck, except that you personally don't like that some mechs that might benefit from that performance increase are top tier, and I'm, sorry but that's not a good enough excuse not to do it.

Ive already said certain underperforming mechs should get jumpjet buffs via quirks rather than through baseline buffs.

the only baseline buffs needed are for assault mechs because they truly get screwed on jumpjets.

again ive never once played a summoner and felt like 40m of jump wasnt good enough. Its absolutely fine for the summoner. especially if the jumpjet skill tree gets buffed so its actually worth putting points into.

I also dont like the idea that lights will get more free tonnage by being able to remove half their jumpjets and still jump the same distance they can now. I dont think cauldron has fully considered the implications of that since it allows a lot of lights to run heavier loadouts while keeping the same jump capability they currently have. its going to lead to lights always running only 1-2 jumpjets and rarely more than that which is stupid. Especially since battletech construction rules require mechs to take max jumpjets or none at all which MWO doesnt enforce but probably should if light mechs are allowed to abuse running only 1-2 jumpjets.

I see so many potential balance issues with blanket buffing jumpjets across the board.

Edited by Khobai, 25 June 2021 - 10:47 AM.