27 replies to this topic

[Jhereg KnT]

I have two main pet peeves with any Battletech/Mechwarrior game.

1. 'Mech size disparity

2. The use of the Stackpole effect

1.
It seems too common that developers think that the tonnage of a 'mech is indicative to its size.

This indeed not the case; while there are differences in 'Mech height ( range basically 10-15 meters) its seems that developers tend to make lights small, meds a bit bigger , heavies larger and assaults huge.

It is just really sad to see a Jenner that only come up to the shin of an Atlas....

Please make 'mech their correct size, look at the original blueprints from FASA as a marker and work carefully from there.

2.
The Stackpole effect : ok so if you don't know what it is based upon the work of Michael Stackpole, the very good scifi writer and Battletech novel writer. Basically Stackpole with the use of artistic license had 'mech reactors go critical and detonate in a nuclear mushroom type of explosion, dramatically damaging the surrounding 'mechs and environment. Sound and looks great ( PGI used it in the Mechwarrior teaser last year) unfortunately it is totally wrong since 'mechs use fusion reactors which ( at least by known scientific principles) do not behave like that MW3-MW4 were all guilty of this MW4 being the worst all 'mechs just exploded into scrap when destroyed.

Please do not use the Stackpole Effect in this game. MPBT never had this problem why does every Mechwarrior game suffer from this?

[Phytochrome]

Rather than Stackpoling every 'mech that dies, it'd look more interesting (to my eyes, at least) to have them collapse into heavy-metal ragdolls* following that critical gyro/engine/cockpit shot. Spectacular explosions could result from hits to ammo magazines, as happens in the Battletech wargame.

*With articulation appropriate to that mech, obviously.

EDIT: I'm also really interested in the scale at which the mechs will be presented in-game. I wonder if the concept art released so far has the mechs scaled as they will be in the game? If so, the size comparison between the Hunchback, Jenner and Atlas looks good (Hunchback coming up to Atlas' "armpits"). I hope that's the game scale being reflected there, because it looks just right and gives a powerful contrast between the Hunchback's bulkiness and the Atlas' tremendous size and physical power.

Edited by phytochrome, 01 November 2011 - 08:15 AM.

[uebersoldat]

hahahaha I love your post.

But seriously..

1 - agreed
2 - Explosions are prettier. It's a hollywood thing. You think you can hear anything in space? Yet look at how many space movies and games insert an atmosphere so that sound vibrations can be heard in the void of space

[saber15]

jhereg_knt, on 01 November 2011 - 08:07 AM, said:

It seems too common that developers think that the tonnage of a 'mech is indicative to its size.

This indeed not the case; while there are differences in 'Mech height ( range basically 10-15 meters) its seems that developers tend to make lights small, meds a bit bigger , heavies larger and assaults huge.

It is just really sad to see a Jenner that only come up to the shin of an Atlas....

Please make 'mech their correct size, look at the original blueprints from FASA as a marker and work carefully from there.

The size differences is for balance. In MWLL, most of the units are about the same size as their TRO drawings, and this makes several units nigh-useless. The Osiris is nearly twice the size of the Shadow Cat, the Uziel is larger than some heavies, and the Harasser hovertank is huge despite its lack of armor. I wouldn't want the Jenner or other lights to be larger just to adhere to the TRO drawings, because it'd make them pretty terrible due to their ratio of size versus speed versus armor.

Edited by saber15, 01 November 2011 - 08:16 AM.

[CoffiNail]

If you think MW3 and MW4 are bad, you should see the crit explosion in MWLL

I would love to see mechs the right size, but do you really want a light that is 3/4 of the size of the Assault... you make for a pretty big target with none of the armor to help.

aww ninja'd by square

Edited by CoffiNail, 01 November 2011 - 08:17 AM.

[SquareSphere]

CoffiNail, on 01 November 2011 - 08:16 AM, said:

aww ninja'd by square

Wait whut? I'm sure they'll tone down crits in MWO but if they excluded them completely it was be kinda of sad as it's always (recently) been part of the MW flavor. That being said, the Rangers will find a way to crit.

[Jhereg KnT]

I think the arguments concerning targeting can be easily rectified by instituting "cone of fire" targeting instead of the pinpoint accuracy you have in previous games. This would make much more sense , none of us , nor our 'mechs are pinpoint accurate. With the shots I've seen online in MW2-4 and MPBT you would think we are all better than Natasha Kerensky, Gray Noton and Justin Xiang put together

[John Clavell]

Yeah one thing Battletech is about is that limited mechs and resources means salvage is important. The Clans obviously being very good at this. Mechs should not explode unless. I think for immersion the odd reactor going critical and ammo explosions are cool.

But we it would also be great to have a salvage system from Mechs which are captured or crippled after taking the field from an opfor.

[goon]

Sizing and other things are more of a gameplay element, among other means it dictates the threat level of an opponent, but since they are going for a more true to Battletech approach they will most likely follow the established lore.

and I guess mechs exploding would be a more clear indication of the fact that you've killed them, to provide a big payoff for the player fighting it, and to provide pretty eye candy. I think it would be kinda dull if mechs just fell over, and plus you'd have a bunch of people who have never played a mechwarrior game going "did I get him?" and shooting at the wreck.

[John Clavell]

Not everything from the TRO's and rules are good for a real time action/sim computer game. Some things don't translate well. And many of the old TRO Mech art is pretty rubbish to say the least. I'd like to see some variation in size across the tonnage ranges. But overall smaller tonnage mechs should be smaller and less bulky by design. It helps reduce their overall signature and makes them a bit harder to hit, that helps offset the lack of armour.

[Amarus Cameron]

Square I imagine you would find a way to crit to almost anything lol

[Mr Smiles]

I agree, lighter 'Mechs should be just about as large (within a range of a few meters).

It is true that this makes them just as easy to hit, with less armor. However, I would point out that in the BattleTech tabletop game, that's still very true: it's just as easy to hit a stationary Atlas as it is a stationary Locust. However, once they began moving, the Atlas... was still basically stationary, while the Locust could run circles around you, twisting and dodging and generally making it so you couldn't possibly hit it without extreme luck or a lot of planning trying to trap it.

I honestly believe that we can get something similar into play here. Make weapons fire in a cone (I see someone already suggested that), have a really slow refire rate, _AND_ a short windup period after you hit the trigger before it releases. Also, don't give strong indications as to where the bullet hit--no tracers for bullets, no green lines in the air for lasers, etc. Gritty and realistic. And make it so that the huge speed of a smaller 'Mech really is massive compared to the lumbering pace of a larger 'Mech. Give bullets a travel time, maybe.

The result of all of that? If you're in a medium 'Mech, you might see an Atlas lumbering down the street, and it's almost trivially easy to stay at the limits of its range while peppering it with lasers and LRM shots, because even at its maximum speed its basically immobile, an easy shot (though with your cone of fire, half of your shots will miss and you can't quite aim for any one spot on its body--another thing that is a factor in the tabletop game). And when you see a Jenner bolting across the city park or across a plain, none of your shots will land because he'll find it way too easy to twist this way and that to dodge them.

The Jenner dodges easily. The Atlas can't, but he can absorb volley after volley like a man. THIS is the way to do it. Don't make the Jenner shorter, just make it faster and the handling of its dodging easier.

I always hear, when people bring up the tabletop game, 'ugh, this is Mechwarrior, not Battletech, this isn't a board game'. But citing the game is EXACTLY what we need here. In the game, your 'Mechs weight DID NOT MATTER for the purpose of aiming at it. Which means that each 'Mech was the exact same size (as we want it here), just as easy to aim at when stationary, and only when they started moving did the lightness actually come in handy for avoiding getting shot, and the heavy's need for armor become apparent.

P.S. Also, smaller 'Mechs are typically thinner. Think of Team Fortress 2, where while the Heavy is very slightly taller than a scout, the scout is really only difficult to hit because his hitbox is THINNER, not because he's shorter.

I think a combination of making speed/dodging matter, plus making lighter mechs thinner and shorter (but only shorter within the canon range of 10-14 meters!) would be perfect.

Edited by mr. smiles, 01 November 2011 - 09:07 AM.

[CoffiNail]

problem with Real Time is weapons like lasers are accurate, and you can hit a fast moving light mech with little trouble.

[Aleksandr Miuri]

I'm not sure how I feel about the size argument here; some good ideas on both sides. I'm usually one to take the side of "more canon = more good!", but it would definitely take some of the use out of light mechs, which tend to get pounded very quickly in the Battletech video games already.

Cone of Fire? Well, I can see the point of it, it would make the game play more like the board game, but the thing is, the firing rules in CBT are in place because you aren't the pilot. You're playing a tactical commander; you're giving orders to your pilots but you have to essential take a risk that they'll be able to perform an action, in this case hitting a target, weigh the odds, and hope they can do it; you aren't in control of them. In Mechwarrior, we are the pilot. It's not about luck, it's about our skill level. We shouldn't be a tactical commander who just happens to be watching the action from a first person perspective; we're in control. We shouldn't be worried about losing because a random number generator decides that our shots hit in a part of the "cone of fire" that isn't actually over our target.

Of course pinpoint accuracy isn't right either; it's made quite clear that hitting difficult shots in a Battlemech is, well, difficult! It takes a legendary pilot to pull it off reasonably often. If it's as simple as laying a nice, stable crosshair over our target and firing, and being guaranteed a hit, it's not accurate, it's not as much fun, and it also makes things very difficult for the little mechs.

IMO, the only good way to handle this is to make aiming difficult, but controllable, not random. Ideally, this could get wonderfully complex. Imagine attacking in a Mechwarrior game where dozens of variables affected your aim; variables that you could compensate for, but only with experience, and with time getting to know your mech. Say the mechs arms had weight and could only adjust so quickly; perhaps your mechs heavy arms didn't track well vertically. The mech's position and movement are taken into account; you're trying to make a turn on slippery sand, barely keeping your stumbling mech on its feet and bouncing your arms around; maybe the model of mech you're piloting needs to shift its arms while its turning just to keep balance, offsetting its aim somewhat. The heavy duty autocannon in your particular mech doesn't have a great muzzle velocity; shells drop quickly with distance. Your mech has less than stellar recoil compensation; fire that gauss rifle and it's going to take a little while before it gets everything lined back up again. The ground you're standing on is too soft, damage to your mech affects its balance, your modified weapons don't aim quite where the originals did, the planet's gravity or weather changes your aim. I could list a hundred more variables. The thing is that they aren't purely random though; a player who got to know the game and their machine could take them into account and still pull off some great shots; shots that would be all the more amazing because it wouldn't be "oh look, JimBob17's RNG decided he hit someone in the head, lucky!" but "Wow, that guy knows how to use his weapons, I'm glad he's on our team!"

Obviously that's a lot to ask of a developer, and I don't really expect to see it in any mech game any time soon. It would make for great combat though, where skill really matters, practice would be rewarded, and even little details like being familiar with your own mech would matter. Maybe someday?

Edited by Aleksandr Miuri, 01 November 2011 - 09:27 AM.

[omegaclawe]

Cones of fire, being random, and not controllable by a player, are bad. It removes a significant degree of skill from the game. Alternatives are recoil, or having the weapons not converge on the reticle (i.e. just go the same direction of the reticle). Valve added random cones of fire to Counter-Strike: Source (among other things), and it more or less made the game less competitive; 1.6 is still more popular. In fact, they've removed such random features in Global Offensive, as a result.

More skill, less randomness, plz.

[Jhereg KnT]

omegaclawe, on 01 November 2011 - 09:30 AM, said:

Cones of fire, being random, and not controllable by a player, are bad. It removes a significant degree of skill from the game. Alternatives are recoil, or having the weapons not converge on the reticle (i.e. just go the same direction of the reticle). Valve added random cones of fire to Counter-Strike: Source (among other things), and it more or less made the game less competitive; 1.6 is still more popular. In fact, they've removed such random features in Global Offensive, as a result.

More skill, less randomness, plz.

You if assume that the CoF is static you have a point , however I do not make that assumption.
Depending on the weapon, range and the pilot skill (similar to the way WoT currently does it) as well as your own eye hand coordination/pilot skill determines the CoF.
This is not random; it is more realistic to actual combat, regardless to the weapon.

Edited by jhereg_knt, 01 November 2011 - 09:47 AM.

[FaydeShift]

I personally think the stackpole effect is a little more realistic. If a engine goes critical, should it not affect a 'mech with it's immediate range?

I think there should be a few different ways a mech can be destroyed. If the cockpit is destroyed, the mech should just sort of fall down (ragdoll style maybe?). If the engine explodes, then there should be a fairly decent explosion of some kind (though not some weird animation like MW4), but ultimately retains a good portion of it's chassis. If an ammo explosion happens, I think that's when you should see some fireworks and the mech really blows up.
Sadly though... I worry that this game will be more arcade-ish and still lack a good critical hit system.

[Asmudius Heng]

Death should be based on how you die. What shot destroyed the mech - explosions for engine crit hits, but not for head shots, and not from attrition damage that might conk out the engine but does not critically penetrate it.
Makes it more interesting when you dont know exactly what is going to happen.

The nuclear hug once you were out of weapons in MW4 was funny but got a little old

[Raj]

I'm of two minds on mech size. Having it be accurate to canon is good but the devs have said they intend to make urban combat an important part of the game. I think this may actually make a smaller mech size more important. Using WoT as an example, if you take a small scout tank into a town you just have to hope that nothing bigger is coming the other way because at that range they aren't likely to miss.

On the other hand I can remember the battletech cartoon and the size of the Mauler in it used to drive me nuts.

Edited by raj, 02 November 2011 - 03:05 AM.

[Skoll]

I don't see the Stackpole Effect going anywhere, seeing as it's a staple of the games now.