101 replies to this topic

[ScrapIron Prime]

PIranha vs Longbow isn't quite that cut and dried in Battletech.

- Assuming average pilots, that Piranha will run up to the Longbow and unload a dozen weapons needing 8's to hit... just under 50% of them will hit, all to random locations. Do that 3-4 times and the Longbow starts rolling for crits.

- On its turn, the Longbow is going to turn around and KICK the Piranha. It only hits on a 9 or so, but if it does hit, it does 17 damage... to a leg... which will rip it right off, as the Piranha's max armor + structure is 12 points. So if the Piranha comes in 3-4 times... crunch.

- If the Piranha plays it safe and circles at high speed to the rear of the Longbow at a somewhat safe range of 3 hexes... it will need 11's or 12's to hit. So at best 1 in 12 shots will hit... on random locations. Yawn.

Edited by ScrapIron Prime, 18 May 2022 - 02:48 PM.

[w0qj]

OK, besides moaning about (certain) Light mechs are OP:

I've also been spending massive amounts of time on other social media coaching new player(s) on the intricacies of MechBay mech designing... so much so that I might as well copy/paste it into Guides & Strategies forum section in the future...
https://mwomercs.com...ides-strategies

That certain player I've been coaching have already survived past this obnoxious
"F.... this MWO game, Light mechs are OP" phase, and is continuing to play MWO...

It's a game of percentage; the more players join MWO, the higher the chance of MWO players buying premium mech packs, MC, etc.

Let's stay positive in all of this!

Edited by w0qj, 18 May 2022 - 08:02 PM.

[-Mean Machine Angel-]

Useless LRM boats deserve to be food for my Mystlynx.I will feast on your bloated carcass and drink your tears for hydration.

[Novakaine]

Klaatu Verata Niksumthingidunno, on 18 May 2022 - 04:06 PM, said:

Useless LRM boats deserve to be food for my Mystlynx.I will feast on your bloated carcass and drink your tears for hydration.

Dude I said I was sorry for touching you with lurms it's a gift and a curse.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Klaatu Verata Niksumthingidunno, on 18 May 2022 - 04:06 PM, said:

Useless LRM boats deserve to be food for my Mystlynx.I will feast on your bloated carcass and drink your tears for hydration.

Show me on the armor diagram where the bad mech touched you.

[feeWAIVER]

ScrapIron Prime, on 18 May 2022 - 04:48 PM, said:

Show me on the armor diagram where the bad mech touched you.

considering it's lurms, probably a little bit all over.

[feeWAIVER]

w0qj, on 17 May 2022 - 05:53 PM, said:

It is MWO who wants new players (and returning MWO players) to come back into the game.

OP's opinion, and my own (above) personal experience serves as an indicator of the new player experience (or the lack thereof).

Again, it is MWO who wants new players. OP and I are simply reflecting this from new players' perspective.
MWO has been warned.

but what about the new players that fall in the love with the game by wrecking your overpriced assault boats with their affordable lights?

[ScrapIron Prime]

feeWAIVER, on 18 May 2022 - 05:55 PM, said:

considering it's lurms, probably a little bit all over.

[w0qj]

My own angle (and I think OP's also) is how to keep new players interested in MWO,
and how to avoid this obnoxious phase, "F.... this MWO game, Light mechs are OP"
with new players quitting MWO before they even get familiar with the good parts of MWO.

As long as new players constantly join+hang around to play in MWO, for whatever reason, I'm OK with that.
After all, that's the basic metric for a healthy online game, right?

feeWAIVER, on 18 May 2022 - 05:59 PM, said:

but what about the new players that fall in the love with the game by wrecking your overpriced assault boats with their affordable lights?

Edited by w0qj, 18 May 2022 - 07:58 PM.

[-Mean Machine Angel-]

Novakaine, on 18 May 2022 - 04:19 PM, said:

Dude I said I was sorry for touching you with lurms it's a gift and a curse.

Your LRMs never touch me,I am faster than the wind.I can catch them mid air and throw them back at you.

[Curccu]

Ihlrath, on 18 May 2022 - 02:17 PM, said:

I think I may not have made my point as clearly as I intended. The Piranha will win that fight against a longbow every time, however it won't do it in 2.3 seconds like a piranha will flatten you in MWO if you're a slow mover. It should win the fight, but my main issue is time to kill with everything has become so fast this isn't a mech game is a reskinned CoD clone.

Also I feel you on the boring ERLL junk.....

Unless you are letting that piranha to shoot your back CT freely no fattie will fall to piranha even in 10 seconds, Watch DATAs extremely biased video MLX vs Bowser in ranged mechs, it takes for him quite a long time to kill bowser in fatties

w0qj, on 18 May 2022 - 07:46 PM, said:

My own angle (and I think OP's also) is how to keep new players interested in MWO,
and how to avoid this obnoxious phase, "F.... this MWO game, Light mechs are OP"
with new players quitting MWO before they even get familiar with the good parts of MWO.

As long as new players constantly join+hang around to play in MWO, for whatever reason, I'm OK with that.
After all, that's the basic metric for a healthy online game, right?

Maybe part of the problem is veterans dragging new players with their group to something else that T5 games that they should be playing... there cannot be competent light pilots in T5 (they won't stay there more than few games at least).

[Curccu]

ScrapIron Prime, on 18 May 2022 - 02:46 PM, said:

- If the Piranha plays it safe and circles at high speed to the rear of the Longbow at a somewhat safe range of 3 hexes... it will need 11's or 12's to hit. So at best 1 in 12 shots will hit... on random locations. Yawn.

But it has more than 12 weapons so it will hit each turn, what chances that longbow has to land any damage?

[ScrapIron Prime]

Curccu, on 19 May 2022 - 06:16 AM, said:

But it has more than 12 weapons so it will hit each turn, what chances that longbow has to land any damage?

At those odds, it has a pretty good chance to run out of ammo before the Longbow runs out of armor. Hitting once a turn for 2 points will take a LONG time to grind through rear torso armor of 10/12/10 on random hit locations. It has 16 turns worth of ammo.

It HAS to get closer to inflict meaningful damage. at a range of 1 hex each weapon hits 41 percent of the time (again assuming dead average conditions), and at 2 hexes 16 percent of the time. But at either of those ranges, the Longbow can close the distance and kick it... 28 percent of the time, and that kick will rip a leg off AND deplete all the armor on one side torso.

At that point, assuming the piranha can stand back up, it gets one last chance against the longbow's frontal armor hitting with roughly 2/3 of its weapons (which will not be enough to grind front armor) before the Longbow kicks it with an 80% chance of hitting and crushing the other leg. (The piranha has a 16 percent chance to stand up. if it cannot, it can only fire one arm mounted laser, while the Longbow stomps on it with a 96% chance to hit, and a single hit will destroy any component location on the piranha. Crunch and repeat.)

Basically... machine guns are not devastating weapons for light mechs in tabletop battletech, because you need to be in melee range to hit with them. They annihilate vehicles and infantry, not mechs.

Edited by ScrapIron Prime, 19 May 2022 - 08:34 AM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

You are however slightly misrepresenting those kick attacks as well as some other aspects of such a TT fight:

Your Longbow can only kick the enemy mech should it end up in tje three hexes directly in front of the legs (leg position counts). That leaves three other hexes where the enemy mech can position itself at range of 1 without exposing itself to a kick and only two of these would allow for attempts to punch with a singular arm. Due to the Longbow's lack of certain arm actuators those punch attempts will probably end up equally high or higher than what that enemy mech has to cope with. Whether or not a PIR-1 could reasonably well maintain a position in the side or rear arc(s) of the Longbow when actually attacking is largely a matter of who wins the initiative and the TNs will be very dependant on what gunnery skills the PIR-1 pilot is assigned. With a good enough gunnery skill the PIR-1 can easily stay at 2 hexes distance and still hit reasonably well ... and the of course the map you're playing on will possibly complicate things even more.

When comparing the Battle Values of a Longbow vs. a PIR-1 we're talking a value difference of about 60% in favour of the Longbow. TT matches are usually not played at such drastic differences and this is where things are likely to end up like Wolfpack scenarios in MW:O: That PIR-1 is very likely to be accompanied by stuff that is worth the BV difference and in some cases you might even talk 2 PIR-1s vs. 1 Longbow because in that scenario the overall BV value difference (this time in favour of the PIR-1s) is within a range that could be considered "fair enough" - particularly once the Longbow gets something like a singular Savannah Master as "sidekick".

[edit]
A third aspect that is neglected in your analogy is the fact that in MW:O we don't usually see stock mech builds so the comparison against a TT match where you stipulate stock builds is a bit "off". Just consider the PIR-1 actually being armed like it regularly is in MW:O: With three heavy small lasers instead of those stock medium lasers. In such a setup a PIR-1 can easily draw out the match against the Longbow at ranges of 1 and 2 hexes in the rear arc until it manages to open up the armor and then proceed to go in for the kill with all machine guns firing.
[/edit]

You are however correct when stating that such a fight could easily end up being a very long drawn out (and potentially "boring") match.

With enough "luck" on either side the thing will equally end up as does in in MW:O:

• A successfull attack from behind with enough of its weapons will grant a PIR-1 the opportunity to take out the rear armor in one go and with enough luck on crit rolls it could be a One Turn Kill
  
• A full "alpha" of the PIR-1 with enough hits might force a fall of the attacked mech from where things can and will get ugly for the attacked mech.
  
• If the previous two things don't happen the PIR-1 is likely forced into a prolonged fight where it has to "sand down" the attacked mech
  
• If during such an engagement the attacked mech manages to land a reasonable counterattack - particularly a melee attack - the PIR-1 faces instant death or being crippled to such degrees that it won't survive another round.
  
• If the PIR-1 is caught by its intended prey with weapon fire before it can properly engage it's likely to die rather quickly without doing much harm.

As for machine guns not being "devastating" weapons? Well, with the sheer number of attacks that a PIR-1 can have in a singular round in which using its machine guns is reasonable in terms of opportunity cost and TN probabilities the chances for scoring "center torso critical" or "head" as hit locations after a successful attack are reasonably high that I have seen more than enough matches being won with an increased number of machine guns (not just on canon PIR-1s) because the attacked units either suffered "unlucky" streaks of criticals to their center torso with subsequent hits to gyros and / or reactors or repeated hits to the head that simply knocked out the attacked mech's pilot.

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 19 May 2022 - 11:37 AM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Agreed. It complicates things in a forum discussion to factor in initiative and battle value. Even with that, I'm glossing over the effect of movement and cover each turn and just carte blanche assuming the Piranha runs into light woods while the longbow has cover and walks/spins in place, etc.

An even fight in terms of battle value would be TWO piranhas versus the Longbow, and then that longbow is toast... possibly at the cost of one Piranha.

Edited by ScrapIron Prime, 19 May 2022 - 01:01 PM.

[Ihlrath]

feeWAIVER, on 18 May 2022 - 05:55 PM, said:

considering it's lurms, probably a little bit all over.

LRMs.... the creepy uncle of MWO.....

[Kanil]

I have no idea how you expect a 3/5 'mech to ever even get to try to kick a 9/14 'mech. Even if the Piranha loses init, it just walks backwards three hexes and is now immune to kicking.

Obviously it's going to do more than that for to-hit purposes, but really the Longbow is never, ever going to be able to even attempt a kick on the Piranha. There's just too much of a speed difference.

Edit: I mean ultimately these are silly comparisons and 1v1s like this just don't happen in TT... but the Longbow is never gonna be able to kick the Piranha, ever. If it wins, it's probably just gonna be due to hitting 3 MLs in a row to a leg.

Edited by Kanil, 19 May 2022 - 02:18 PM.

[Novakaine]

[ScrapIron Prime]

Kanil, on 19 May 2022 - 02:05 PM, said:

I have no idea how you expect a 3/5 'mech to ever even get to try to kick a 9/14 'mech. Even if the Piranha loses init, it just walks backwards three hexes and is now immune to kicking.

Obviously it's going to do more than that for to-hit purposes, but really the Longbow is never, ever going to be able to even attempt a kick on the Piranha. There's just too much of a speed difference.

Edit: I mean ultimately these are silly comparisons and 1v1s like this just don't happen in TT... but the Longbow is never gonna be able to kick the Piranha, ever. If it wins, it's probably just gonna be due to hitting 3 MLs in a row to a leg.

You do know the range and hit numbers in Battletech, right? If the Piranha backs up 3 hexes its MGs are out of range. If it backs up 2 hexes it's MGs have such high hit numbers it will do basically nothing. So it has to be closer than that. Where the longbow can move I to kick range.

[Kanil]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 May 2022 - 02:55 PM, said:

You do know the range and hit numbers in Battletech, right? If the Piranha backs up 3 hexes its MGs are out of range. If it backs up 2 hexes it's MGs have such high hit numbers it will do basically nothing. So it has to be closer than that. Where the longbow can move I to kick range.

Who says the Piranha has to shoot at the Longbow every single turn?

Also, it's got lasers.