62 replies to this topic

[Horseman]

Eider, on 11 January 2022 - 03:09 AM, said:

weird how everyone in this community is in constant denial, personally i hate stealth armor as it has no draw backs. What? its suppose to stop heat dissipation? yea it doesnt just slows it down.

It slows it down enough that mechs can't deal much damage while in stealth.
Further, you clearly forget about the constraints it puts on the mech loadout.
The slot requirements outright prevent you from using certain weapons with it completely and force you to decide between skipping others and sacrificing substantial tonnage for a Standard Engine. Not only that, but blocking slots in your legs means that any explosive ammo you have must now be distributed in your torso/head/arm locations which tend to be more exposed to enemy fire.
"No drawbacks", my ***.

[Axeman1]

Groups vs pugs is one of many reasons this amateur publisher lost money on mw5 and won't develop new things for mwo till the plug is pulled. Coms vs randoms wins every time and it's obvious and very noticeable.

[Der Geisterbaer]

pattonesque said:

I'd say stealth tends to be most useful on smaller mechs, which can afford to take both endo and ferro and need to give up ferro to take stealth

But that's the thing: On those smaller mechs ferro usually doesn't provide that much tonnage in the first place. IIRC within the Light class you'll see something between 0.2t to 0.8t of weight reduction on a fully armored mech at the expense of still two more crit slots than stealth armor. You'll have to go up to a 45t (=Medium) mech to see at least 1t of weight reduction. So if - according to your own words - stealth tends to be "most usefull" on smaller mech anyways and the effective tonnage gains are what they are while the crit slot cost of ferro is still higher than stealth amor I still wouldn't subscribe to your initial claim that Stealth truly falls out of favour with higher tier players due to raw tonnage/crit slot considerations.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Horseman, on 12 January 2022 - 02:36 AM, said:

Heavier mechs will usually take extra heat sinks instead of ferro.

So you practically confirm that the choice against stealth armor on heavier mechs is not driven by tonnage considerations. Note that I mainly objected to the notion of tonnage gains via ferro that would come with an even higher crit slot cost. Had the original statement been that it's mainly the crit slot cost (and/or the fixed slot locations) that get's Stealth shelved in higher tiers I would have had little reason to call that into question.

[Horseman]

Axeman1, on 12 January 2022 - 03:07 AM, said:

Groups vs pugs is one of many reasons this amateur publisher lost money on mw5

... "groups vs pugs is one of the many reasons they lost money on a single-player game"
LOL. Do you even logic, bro?

Der Geisterbaer, on 12 January 2022 - 05:13 AM, said:

So you practically confirm that the choice against stealth armor on heavier mechs is not driven by tonnage considerations. Note that I mainly objected to the notion of tonnage gains via ferro that would come with an even higher crit slot cost. Had the original statement been that it's mainly the crit slot cost (and/or the fixed slot locations) that get's Stealth shelved in higher tiers I would have had little reason to call that into question.

Pretty much.

Edited by Horseman, 12 January 2022 - 05:25 AM.

[1453 R]

Der Geisterbaer, on 12 January 2022 - 05:07 AM, said:

But that's the thing: On those smaller mechs ferro usually doesn't provide that much tonnage in the first place. IIRC within the Light class you'll see something between 0.2t to 0.8t of weight reduction on a fully armored mech at the expense of still two more crit slots than stealth armor. You'll have to go up to a 45t (=Medium) mech to see at least 1t of weight reduction. So if - according to your own words - stealth tends to be "most usefull" on smaller mech anyways and the effective tonnage gains are what they are while the crit slot cost of ferro is still higher than stealth amor I still wouldn't subscribe to your initial claim that Stealth truly falls out of favour with higher tier players due to raw tonnage/crit slot considerations.

Most of a ton is a big deal on light 'Mechs that often have fewer than ten tons of payload space. Flipping the Ferro button and gaining a ton could be the difference between having just enough space to cram in the ammo for a weapon system you need and having to give up the entire configuration as untenable. Stealth armor taking up what amounts to the same space as Ferro, but doing so in fixed locations that makes it more difficult to build around whilst providing no weight reduction means it's a big loss in the 'MechLab for capabilities high-level players with keen awareness and perception mostly ignore/nullify anyways.

It's only in lower tiers that stealth really messes with things, since low-tier players ignore anything without a red Dorito over it. High-tier players have (mostly, sorta, enoughish) made the switch to "anything without a blue Dorito is a bad guy" ever since Stealth Armor was introduced, and thus shoot stealth bugs without issue or problem.

[Der Geisterbaer]

1453 R said:

Most of a ton is a big deal on light 'Mechs that often have fewer than ten tons of payload space. Flipping the Ferro button and gaining a ton could be the difference between having just enough space to cram in the ammo for a weapon system you need and having to give up the entire configuration as untenable.

On light mechs you will only see a max of ca. 0.8t tonnage gain (on a fully armored 35t mech) at the expense of 2 additional crit slots. Lights with less weight will see even less tonnage gain (on LCT-PBs and FLE-20s it's only 0.2t) => You'll be hard pressed to come up with a configuration on an ECM capable mech where leaving out Stealth armor in favour of ferro will make or break the configuration. Even if you find one there will be many more where the tonnage gain is negligible

1453 R said:

Stealth armor taking up what amounts to the same space as Ferro, but doing so in fixed locations that makes it more difficult to build around whilst providing no weight reduction means it's a big loss in the 'MechLab for capabilities high-level players with keen awareness and perception mostly ignore/nullify anyways.

Now I'm going to have to pull the "reading comprehension" card as well as the "not following context" card: I already stated in two prior comments that I would ascribe the tendency to forgoe stealth armor in higher tiers rather to the fixed crit slot requirements and - to a lesser degree - the slot requirement itself instead of what pattonesque originally wrote:

"it's that too. but ultimately even when it's off stealth uses up tonnage/slots that could go to other things"

I particularly objected to the tonnage aspect there because the weight classes that - by pattonesque and others words - can make best use of stealth do not actually gain that much tonnage from ferro and with a lower raw crit slot requirement on stealth armor that statement also doesn't work out.

1453 R said:

It's only in lower tiers that stealth really messes with things, since low-tier players ignore anything without a red Dorito over it.
High-tier players have (mostly, sorta, enoughish) made the switch to "anything without a blue Dorito is a bad guy" ever since Stealth Armor was introduced, and thus shoot stealth bugs without issue or problem.

Makes me "wonder" why I wrote this in an earlier comment:

"=> I'd say it's neither really a matter of tonnage nor (raw) crit slot requirements but rather the fixed crit slot location requirements that make stealth less worthwhile in the longer run (and the higher tiers where people are less reliant on target locks and/or red diamond/rhombus indicators above mechs [regardless of lock-on weapons usage])."

So I guess: Thanks for "not fully reading but commenting"?!

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 12 January 2022 - 05:42 AM.

[1453 R]

...buddy.

Light 'Mech players will fidget with their engines and buy bizarre weights nobody's ever seen before in their life and which will never, ever be useful for any other configuration on that 'Mech or any other just to trim a half-ton here or there. Hell, they do that **** for assault 'Mechs. You can give me the sass all you want about how weight just doesn't matter and ferro is just oh-so-pointless, but usage doesn't really bear that out. Light 'Mechs are super tonnage sensitive, to the point where I've seen players abandon builds that would have to turn Ferro off as being unworthy of considering due to the weight tax.

[Captain Caveman DE]

maybe you guys should fork this one off to a new thread, like
"stealth OP, needs nerf. part 813"


and on that: stealth is only "really" a problem on the smallest of buggers, namely the flea and the lolcust.
they're fast and tiny in the first place, stealth just makes it harder to kill them by a fair margin.
that is: if piloted correctly.
which means in 8of10 cases it's not an issue, sorry.

on anything else (stealth atlas, stealth fafnir, stealth thana) it's just a case of: lol.
so much for overpowered, sorry.

Edited by Captain Caveman DE, 12 January 2022 - 05:59 AM.

[R Valentine]

I almost never use ECM, and I almost never feel like the presence of ECM was the reason I lost or won a game. Having ECM is usually better than not having it, but being able to hit what you aim at and placing your mech somewhere that isn't completely stupid is exponentially better. ECM is a force multiplier, but if your force is 0 then outcome will be the same with or without it.

[Der Geisterbaer]

1453 R said:

...buddy.

I'm not your "buddy".

1453 R said:

Light 'Mech players will fidget with their engines and buy bizarre weights nobody's ever seen before in their life and which will never, ever be useful for any other configuration on that 'Mech or any other just to trim a half-ton here or there.

Note that I am pretty much an "Light Mech" only player myself and this wasn't about attempts of carving out another half a ton here or there but rather about what I saw as an incorrect statement about the reasons why stealth armor gets "abandonned" at higher tiers with a particular focus on a particular claim that it was about tonnage/crit slot requirements. Fact of the matter remains: For the mechs that supposedly get the most benefit out of Stealth armor - namely Lights - you're predominantly talking about upgrading a weapon from something like a small laser to a medium laser or completing a full ton of ammo where you had a half one before. In any case where your build manages to add 2 more crit slots when compared to Stealth armor and still has additional slots to add ammo or a truly larger weapon then "crit slots" certainly weren't the limitation to begin with.

1453 R said:

Hell, they do that **** for assault 'Mechs.

And yet the consensus seems to be that ferro usually isn't worth their while there in terms of tonnage and slot cost. So how is that going to play out in terms of the "tonnage/critslots better used for other things" there?

1453 R said:

You can give me the sass all you want about how weight just doesn't matter and ferro is just oh-so-pointless, but usage doesn't really bear that out.

Interestingly enough I'm not giving you any "sass" at all and you're now strawmanning since I haven't said that weight doesn't matter or ferro being "oh-so-pointless" (that's something others will readily claim). You were the one that came in here giving me "sass" after not reading the thread in its entirety and even saying things that I had said before.

1453 R said:

Light 'Mechs are super tonnage sensitive, to the point where I've seen players abandon builds that would have to turn Ferro off as being unworthy of considering due to the weight tax.

And while it's true that Light mechs are indeed tonnage sensitive and in some cases leaving out ferro will indeed leave certain build ideas on the cutting floor this is still about the alleged situation where such a build directly competes against a potential Stealth armor build ... in mechs that will gain only that half a ton of anything at the expense of costing at least two additional crit slots => Try as you might but pattonesque's original statement about why he thinks that Stealth builds are abandonned in higher tiers in favour of other builds still cannot be boiled down to either the tonnage or the slot aspects of this statement "stealth uses up tonnage/slots that could go to other things" - particularly not when it comes to Lights - because either the tonnage or the raw slot requirement are negligible there.

But alas, it would appear that this has become an off-topic discussion about an overall minor detail with you jumping in without having actually read what was written and now going down fallacy lane. So I strongly suggest that we leave it at that.


******************************

Captain Caveman DE, on 12 January 2022 - 05:58 AM, said:

maybe you guys should fork this one off to a new thread, like
"stealth OP, needs nerf. part 813"

No need to fork this off - unless you really want to because I'm "done" here after this posting - but since we're already nit-picking: Such a fork would not have been about "Stealth OP" but "Reasons why higher tier players use less Stealth builds than lower tier ones".

Captain Caveman DE, on 12 January 2022 - 05:58 AM, said:

and on that: stealth is only "really" a problem on the smallest of buggers, namely the flea and the lolcust.
they're fast and tiny in the first place, stealth just makes it harder to kill them by a fair margin.
that is: if piloted correctly.
which means in 8of10 cases it's not an issue, sorry.

on anything else (stealth atlas, stealth fafnir, stealth thana) it's just a case of: lol.
so much for overpowered, sorry.

Sorry, so much for you making a comment in line with what the sub-discussion was about that are trying to comment on or the original topic (which was about imbalanced numbers of ECM mechs).

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 12 January 2022 - 09:59 AM.

[pattonesque]

higher-tier players use stealth less because:

1. higher-tier enemies use their eyeballs
2. stealth requires a tonnage/heat investment that isn't worth the tradeoff. Even a difference of a single ton on any mech is significant

[LordNothing]

i have a lot of stealth builds and none are even remotely effective.

[Meep Meep]

LordNothing, on 12 January 2022 - 03:01 PM, said:

i have a lot of stealth builds and none are even remotely effective.

No luck with the classic 4x med laser stealth locust or flea? Those things are a hoot to play and can rack up some impressive damage numbers if you don't get wiped by someone looking in the right direction at the wrong time early in the match.

Give this a spin. I was having great fun in it running the flanks. Once you get cool run and max heat nodes unlocked you can fire all day long from stealth or at least as long as is practical before having to run to cover. Out of stealth its pretty much unending pewpew.

CDA-3M

Edited by Meep Meep, 12 January 2022 - 03:22 PM.

[LordNothing]

Meep Meep, on 12 January 2022 - 03:19 PM, said:

No luck with the classic 4x med laser stealth locust or flea? Those things are a hoot to play and can rack up some impressive damage numbers if you don't get wiped by someone looking in the right direction at the wrong time early in the match.

Give this a spin. I was having great fun in it running the flanks. Once you get cool run and max heat nodes unlocked you can fire all day long from stealth or at least as long as is practical before having to run to cover. Out of stealth its pretty much unending pewpew.

CDA-3M

im not saying they arent fun mechs, but they dont really seem to perform that well in the scoring department.

[Meep Meep]

LordNothing, on 12 January 2022 - 03:20 PM, said:

im not saying they arent fun mechs, but they dont really seem to perform that well in the scoring department.

Match score or damage total? If you play them to their strengths especially on an objective heavy map like conquest yeah the match score isn't going to be very impressive. Damage output is going to be down to the map and how skilled the other side is on snooping out stealth mechs sniping their flanks and rear. But I play mechs for the enjoyment of the fight and don't really care all that much about match score so eh. YMMV

[LordNothing]

Meep Meep, on 12 January 2022 - 03:26 PM, said:

Match score or damage total? If you play them to their strengths especially on an objective heavy map like conquest yeah the match score isn't going to be very impressive. Damage output is going to be down to the map and how skilled the other side is on snooping out stealth mechs sniping their flanks and rear. But I play mechs for the enjoyment of the fight and don't really care all that much about match score so eh. YMMV

fun for me involves running as many kinds of mechs as possible. including stealth, or even more rarely, lerm boats. i got enough mechs to run one for every day of the year, and some spares. but i dont think id run one for events that need match score or damage, because it would take forever.

Edited by LordNothing, 13 January 2022 - 01:58 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

I think the greatest problem is the lack of PSR balancing between teams after the bucket of 24 players has been filled.

[Alex Morgaine]

My MAD-4H's secondary weapons are 45lrms. It's primary are small pulse lasers.

It has non missile weapons, therefore totally not a missile boat

[ScrapIron Prime]

Alex Morgaine, on 17 February 2022 - 05:25 PM, said:

My MAD-4H's secondary weapons are 45lrms. It's primary are small pulse lasers.

It has non missile weapons, therefore totally not a missile boat

And think how much more damage it would do if they were ER Mediums instead. Lurms AND lazors, instead of Lurms OR lazors.