112 replies to this topic

[ScrapIron Prime]

MechMaster059, on 22 January 2024 - 05:37 AM, said:

What is the point of posing a technical question you acknowledge "has little bearing on the playing of the game"?

Exactly. Draw the inference. Mind games with numbers don't help advance the play-ability of the game. State plainly, discuss.

[Rondoe]

I'm beginning to wonder if the OP is in need of some medication or a hug and a safe place...

[Luminios]

Okay, just for fun lets try to get more points.

1. Since you mentioned 60 seconds as your hint, I am assuming you are referring to the node in the consumable tree giving you 10 seconds UAV duration -> going from 60 to 70 seconds.

Do you think that node is useless because a UAV should get shot down long before a minute passes? Other than that there isn't anything that directly relates to 60 seconds, so the only other thing could be a node that requires 60 seconds of some action to get its value, but I don't think that would be a good hint at all, as that is not how people think about nodes for the most part. If that was the case you could add the Coolshot Cooldown to your list - it reduces the cooldown for coolshots from 50 seconds down to 37.5 seconds. How many times does having your coolshot 10 seconds earlier have an impact? Still, when it has impact, it has a lot of it.

2. Crit Chance Reduction is also pretty poor on light mechs as you have so little structure to begin with. Once you are open, you probably die before important equipment gets crit out vOv. Do I get extra points for finding more things you deem useless?

3. As it apparently wasn't enough to say that Navid already explained it better than I ever could - those are jump jet stats ordered from class V to class I. The stats are:

(Burn Duration x Initial Thrust) / (Base Heat x Tonnage) = ???

Initial Thrust is a flat value that just gets added once per JJ activation and not continously throughout the burn duration, so multiplying these values has no meaning and is completely arbitrary. I am assuming you were trying to get a total thrust for total cost, just mixing stats without further thought. Even if you were just looking at the MechDB Wiki you should have seen that JJ heat isn't just base heat and that initial thrust is only one factor in jump height.

The second line is:

(Base Heat / Burn Duration) = ???

The base heat is a value that is being generated per second with some additional value of heat being added for each JJ after the first. So since base heat is heat per second and burn duration is a value that is measured in seconds the unit you would reach is some sort of an acceleration of heat being generated - a stat that might be useful for flamers, but certainly not for JJs.

If those stats you are calculating were actually meaningful, it'd probably show how bad the heavier JJs are, and how it is weird for Class IV JJs to be "the best".

I don't know what type of stat you want to achieve with your first calculation, as heat and tonnage just aren't compatible values in that relation and burn duration and initial thrust don't interact with each other like that.

For the second calculation there is actually a formula on the MechDB wiki, assuming you want to know the heat a certain JJ generates over the entirety of its duration.

JJ_∆H = Base Heat + (numJJ-1) x Additional Heat

Just multiply that value with the Burn Duration and you got an admittedly useless value describing the heat generated by a certain mechs full burn.

If you want to have the formula for jump height after a certain time just ask.

4. Just going by the hint again - there are speed dependent agility stats as outlined on the wiki. acceleration, deceleration and leg turn rate. They all interact differently with your mechs current speed, with deceleration and acceleration staying the same past 66% of maximum speed. The graph in-game suggests a deceleration close to 0, but according to the wiki the constant value is the value displayed on the mech - E.g. 24.06m/s² for the CGR-N7. It is evidently not 5m/s² as the graph would suggest as that would lead to the Charger taking several seconds to come to a stop.

I hope the text on 3. sheds some light on why Navid didn't say much about it beyond it being JJ stats that make no sense. Several people have already said that balance doesn't follow some linear progression and can't just be read from a table, so maybe do what was asked and say what you think is the issue? You aren't smart for keeping it to yourself - to be honest, taking a closer look at the JJ stats in the configuration you posted has made me question your understanding of the game even more.



Also, these aren't even balance riddles as the things you see as the correct answers don't really relate to balance. It's an excercise at trying to retrace why you glue numbers together without realizing what they mean.

Edited by Luminios, 22 January 2024 - 07:12 AM.

[Willie Sauerland]

I am failing to understand
the issues being presented.

If one is purely concerned
with min/maxing all the things
then there are even more
"useless"
things about which to be concerned.

If one is simply complaining
because one can
then this should be sent to off-topic.
The trolls need to be fed.

[pbiggz]

MechMaster059, on 21 January 2024 - 08:31 PM, said:

Not much. No one wants to put forth even a minimal effort to answer the questions. Luminios is the only person with 1 solid correct answer.

They'd all rather wait for me to give the answers so they can pounce upon me and tell me I'm Tier 3 so I don't know what I'm talking about.

Nobody has time for this. Make your point or don't.

[ScrapIron Prime]

pbiggz, on 22 January 2024 - 09:42 AM, said:

Nobody has time for this. Make your point or don't.

Basically my point, yes. I took a look at his questions. 1, 2, and 4 might be subjective, might not. But question 3 involves numbers that don't match anything publicly facing on MechDB, which means I'd have to dig up potentially outdated spreadsheet info from some forum post to correlate the numbers he's using. And I'm at work, that's not what I'm being paid to do.

Honestly, the longer the OP teases about these points of his without just coming out and discussing them, the less receptive the audience will be.

[Heavy Money]

Just give it time. When the big reveal comes, the points will *still* be irrelevant, and we'll be stuck explaining to OP that no, there isn't some secret major improvement to the game that we didn't already know about hiding here.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Heavy Money, on 22 January 2024 - 11:58 AM, said:

Just give it time. When the big reveal comes, the points will *still* be irrelevant, and we'll be stuck explaining to OP that no, there isn't some secret major improvement to the game that we didn't already know about hiding here.

Oh he might have relevant points, but he's not selling them well. This coming from me, who has been called ignorant on these boards several times in the past couple weeks. (Amazingly not a Code of Conduct violation!)

[foamyesque]

Heavy Money, on 22 January 2024 - 11:58 AM, said:

Just give it time. When the big reveal comes, the points will *still* be irrelevant, and we'll be stuck explaining to OP that no, there isn't some secret major improvement to the game that we didn't already know about hiding here.

I admit to curiousity regarding this assault movement thing that apparently they alone have noticed and that apparently only exists with the Charger chassis specifically.

Edited by foamyesque, 22 January 2024 - 01:24 PM.

[MechMaster059]

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

Okay, just for fun lets try to get more points.

AWESOME POST Luminios. Seriously. I will answer your post point by point.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

1. Since you mentioned 60 seconds as your hint, I am assuming you are referring to the node in the consumable tree giving you 10 seconds UAV duration -> going from 60 to 70 seconds.

Do you think that node is useless because a UAV should get shot down long before a minute passes?

BINGO! You just upgraded from ½ to 1 full point!

It's worse than just the UAV HIGHLY LIKELY to be shot down before getting the benefit of the node. Look at its position in the skill tree. It blocks the rest of the UAV nodes and acts as a 1 point skill tax to get to them. Why? Notice the Coolshot and Salvos trees don't have a weird node sitting at the front of them like that.

Skill points are too valuable to just throw away. As a result, I'm not specced into the UAV tree on any mech I own, not even my NARC Raven-3L.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

...you could add the Coolshot Cooldown to your list - it reduces the cooldown for coolshots from 50 seconds down to 37.5 seconds. How many times does having your coolshot 10 seconds earlier have an impact? Still, when it has impact, it has a lot of it.

The Coolshot Cooldown node is underpowered and a problem, yet it's not total junk.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

2. Crit Chance Reduction is also pretty poor on light mechs as you have so little structure to begin with. Once you are open, you probably die before important equipment gets crit out vOv. Do I get extra points for finding more things you deem useless?

I consider crit chance reduction a required skill. I get at least 3 points on nearly all my mechs. Though they have reduced usefulness on light mechs, they're still worth getting on all other classes of mechs and even some light mechs with structure quirks.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

3. As it apparently wasn't enough to say that Navid already explained it better than I ever could - those are jump jet stats ordered from class V to class I. The stats are:

(Burn Duration x Initial Thrust) / (Base Heat x Tonnage) = ???

Correct! You win another ½ point.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

Initial Thrust is a flat value that just gets added once per JJ activation and not continously throughout the burn duration, so multiplying these values has no meaning and is completely arbitrary.

I'm not sure I follow you here. The thrust value determines the strength of JJ lift does it not? The Lift Speed nodes boost initial thrust to make the mech jumpier. That's all that matters, so no, including initial thrust in the normalization calculation is not arbitrary.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

I am assuming you were trying to get a total thrust for total cost, just mixing stats without further thought. Even if you were just looking at the MechDB Wiki you should have seen that JJ heat isn't just base heat and that initial thrust is only one factor in jump height.

The second line is:

(Base Heat / Burn Duration) = ???

The base heat is a value that is being generated per second with some additional value of heat being added for each JJ after the first. So since base heat is heat per second and burn duration is a value that is measured in seconds the unit you would reach is some sort of an acceleration of heat being generated - a stat that might be useful for flamers, but certainly not for JJs.

I didn't know the heat value shown on jump jets was just a base value. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'll be sure to check the MechDB Wiki in the future. Can I ask you a serious question? Where in the game UI is this information available? This is a chronic issue with the game. Precise information is not available within it so I was left to assume total JJ burn heat was (heat / duration) x #JJs. Very odd that Class II JJ's have the worst additional heat value.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

...it'd probably show how bad the heavier JJs are, and how it is weird for Class IV JJs to be "the best".

Close enough, another 1 point for figuring out the major problem with JJs! Class II are underpowered and Class I suck. Don't tell me Class I JJ's don't suck. You know they suck. PGI knows they suck which is why they gave my MAD-4HP +15% thrust and +15% duration quirks. (Guess what? I still didn't mount any Class I's on my 4HP) They're too heavy for what they give.

I consider Class IV JJs to be right where they should be. There is a minor problem and a medium problem you didn't identify.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

I don't know what type of stat you want to achieve with your first calculation, as heat and tonnage just aren't compatible values in that relation and burn duration and initial thrust don't interact with each other like that.

It doesn't matter how they interact. What matters is that the numbers on top are "good" and the numbers on the bottom are "bad". The normalization value is a ratio of "good" vs "bad". A normalization value is a tool to help find outliers within sets of related numbers. They show Class I JJs to be a clear outlier. They're significantly worse than the other JJs.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

For the second calculation there is actually a formula on the MechDB wiki, assuming you want to know the heat a certain JJ generates over the entirety of its duration.

JJ_∆H = Base Heat + (numJJ-1) x Additional Heat

Understood.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

Just multiply that value with the Burn Duration and you got an admittedly useless value describing the heat generated by a certain mechs full burn.

Um... that's not a "useless" value. That shows how hot a given class/configuration of JJs are. I can assure you if PGI doubled or tripled those heat values you'd notice the difference.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

If you want to have the formula for jump height after a certain time just ask.

Yes, please tell me the formula for jump height. I'd like to know that.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

4. Just going by the hint again - there are speed dependent agility stats as outlined on the wiki. acceleration, deceleration and leg turn rate. They all interact differently with your mechs current speed, with deceleration and acceleration staying the same past 66% of maximum speed. The graph in-game suggests a deceleration close to 0, but according to the wiki the constant value is the value displayed on the mech - E.g. 24.06m/s² for the CGR-N7. It is evidently not 5m/s² as the graph would suggest as that would lead to the Charger taking several seconds to come to a stop.

Another home run Luminios! You win a whopping 2½ additional points! Congratulations on answering the hardest question!

So let me get this straight... the graph showing a mechs acceleration/deceleration curve is utter bunk? Am I reading you right?

Try it yourself. Get one of the Chargers, bring it into the Academy and run up to the bridge on the left behind where all the mechs are standing. Run down this bridge at full throttle with your torso rotated 90 degrees to the left.(My N7 runs at 89.2kph with skills) The moment you get past the first spire/bridge support slow down to a complete stop. You will see that it takes around 2 seconds just to go from 100% down to 66% throttle and from there your speed will drop dramatically faster. Try this with 6 points into Hard Break. It has almost no effect reducing the time of the 100% --> 66% portion of the throttle, then suddenly your speed will drop very quickly because those additional Hard Break points kick in. The 66% throttle issue also seems to work in reverse. If you're backing away from danger at full throttle it takes around 1.5+ seconds to get from -100% to -66% throttle before you can then fully slow down to a stop, turn, and get into cover. Just devastating if you're being fired upon.

You combine this with the fact that Class II JJs are underpowered (The CGR uses Class IIs) and it dawned upon me when looking at that accel/decel curve that the Charger would never be the "Fast Assault" mech I had hoped it would be. Yes, its top speed does indeed make it fast, but it still has the VERY clunky handling of a typical assault mech. Since Hard Break doesn't work to slow it down when you need it most, the only solution is to throttle down the mech to around 70-80% when operating in closed terrain like the buildings in River City or Vitric Station. Kinda defeats the purpose of making it a "fast" assault mech doesn't it. I was going to write a post advocating for all variants of the Charger to be given +10% accel/decel quirks but it wouldn't matter. Their accel/decel beyond 66% throttle is so trash that +10% wouldn't be noticeable.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

I hope the text on 3. sheds some light on why Navid didn't say much about it beyond it being JJ stats that make no sense.

That's very generous of you to credit Navid A1 with understanding what those numbers meant anywhere near to the degree you did.

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

Several people have already said that balance doesn't follow some linear progression and can't just be read from a table...

This is a throw away line that can be said in response to any balance post. It's also a straw-man argument because I'm not "reading from a table".

Luminios, on 22 January 2024 - 07:07 AM, said:

Also, these aren't even balance riddles as the things you see as the correct answers don't really relate to balance. It's an excercise at trying to retrace why you glue numbers together without realizing what they mean.

Pretty sure trying to make skill nodes and mech equipment more useful falls under game balance.

=====

I want to thank you Luminios for putting in the effort to answer these questions. Your new total score is: 6 BUT WAIT, you know what I'm gonna do for you Luminios? Since you were the 1ST and ONLY person to get a question completely correct, I'm going to award you an addtional SUPER-WHAMMY-ULTRA-BONUS-POINT bringing your total score to 7!!!

I hearby declare Luminios to be the new Lead Cauldron Balancer!!!

=====

Well Navid A1, you had a good run buddy, we laughed, we cried, but in the end, Luminios was the better man so I'm going to have to give him your job as the Lead Cauldron Balancer. Please be gracious in defeat and lets not have any problems OK?

foamyesque, on 22 January 2024 - 01:24 PM, said:

I admit to curiousity regarding this assault movement thing that apparently they alone have noticed and that apparently only exists with the Charger chassis specifically.

The problem is more pronounced on the Chargeer due to its high top speed compared to other assault mechs.

[Ihlrath]

ScrapIron Prime, on 22 January 2024 - 12:24 PM, said:

Oh he might have relevant points, but he's not selling them well. This coming from me, who has been called ignorant on these boards several times in the past couple weeks. (Amazingly not a Code of Conduct violation!)

I mean... I think you make more sense than most and don't act like a clown shoe. So... I mean there's my two cents.

[pbiggz]

MechMaster059, on 22 January 2024 - 03:49 PM, said:

noise

a word of advice from a reformed (or reforming) poster; being mean to people for no reason doesnt make them agree with you.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

This reads less like a design challenge and more like a "gotcha" on knowing all the bugs or fat-fingered stuff that aren't significantly impactful to the overall gameplay.

Should be titled "tier 1 gold champ bug hunt challenge", I was honestly expecting something a bit more interesting.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 22 January 2024 - 04:33 PM.

[MechMaster059]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 22 January 2024 - 04:32 PM, said:

... insert boilerplate response contradicting and diminishing MechMaster059 here...

Not surprised at all that you don't care about dead skill nodes, crappy jump jets, or sub-par mechs.

Such things are way too granular for you to notice.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 22 January 2024 - 04:42 PM, said:

Not surprised at all that you don't care about dead skill nodes, crappy jump jets, or sub-par mechs.

Such things are way too granular for you to notice.

Or maybe you care about minute stuff that really doesn't have that large of impact on the game and man did you take a leap on that last one. Yes, I totally don't care about my pet mech (the vindicator) that has been awful pretty much it's entire life time in this game.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 22 January 2024 - 04:47 PM.

[dario03]

MechMaster059, on 22 January 2024 - 03:49 PM, said:

AWESOME POST Luminios. Seriously. I will answer your post point by point.


BINGO! You just upgraded from ½ to 1 full point!

It's worse than just the UAV HIGHLY LIKELY to be shot down before getting the benefit of the node. Look at its position in the skill tree. It blocks the rest of the UAV nodes and acts as a 1 point skill tax to get to them. Why? Notice the Coolshot and Salvos trees don't have a weird node sitting at the front of them like that.

Skill points are too valuable to just throw away. As a result, I'm not specced into the UAV tree on any mech I own, not even my NARC Raven-3L.

This gets into the opinion of what is good/bad though. I see UAVs live their full time fairly often so while they can be shot down, its not a for sure thing. And if they are not shot down then that node does make the uav better. So it's also situational, but a lot of nodes are. If you really want to you could argue any node is, why take survival when you could take firepower? Best defense is a good offense and if you don't get focused the extra firepower lets you do damage faster for a better score. Why take range on a long range mech? You might end up only engaging at mid range.
Those are a bit of a stretch but something like capture assist isn't. Why take capture assist? What if you end up on a mode where they don't apply? Yeah the nodes don't block other nodes but there is 4 of them so if you take all of them and end up on a mode that isn't conquest/assault they do nothing, and you wasted 4 nodes. Even on assault they don't do much because it just doesn't go to cap win that often, I would say I see uavs live full life more often than I see assault end on cap (especially if we don't count the winning team just not wanting to hunt down the last guy thats running/hiding).

[MechMaster059]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 22 January 2024 - 04:47 PM, said:

Or maybe you care about minute stuff that really doesn't have that large of impact on the game...

So where does Quicksilver draw the line on what has an impact? So we just ignore dead skill nodes, year after year? No biggie?

Everything adds up. Odd that you just accept the Vindicator should suck.

(I have more funny faces than you! HA)

[MechMaster059]

dario03, on 22 January 2024 - 04:51 PM, said:

...I see UAVs live their full time fairly often...

Huh? What? I'm in Tier 3 and I struggle to shoot them down before my teammates do. They rarely last beyond 30 seconds. Even if they do make it past 60 seconds how much benefit is a measly +10 seconds more? That's only a 16.6% improvement whereas the Salvo node gives -20% AoE compression and the Coolshot node gives -25% cooldown. What are the odds the UAV last through the entire bonus 10 seconds?

That UAV node is WORTHLESS. Swap the 2nd +20% UAV vision radius boost with it so people can safely ignore it without screwing up the UAV skill tree.

Edited by MechMaster059, 22 January 2024 - 04:59 PM.

[dario03]

MechMaster059, on 22 January 2024 - 04:59 PM, said:

Huh? What? I'm in Tier 3 and I struggle to shoot them down before my teammates do. They rarely last beyond 30 seconds. Even if they do make it past 60 seconds how much benefit is a measly +10 seconds more? That's only a 16.6% improvement whereas the Salvo node gives -20% AoE compression and the Coolshot node gives -25% cooldown. What are the odds the UAV last through the entire bonus 10 seconds?

That UAV node is WORTHLESS. Swap the 2nd +20% UAV vision radius boost with it so people can safely ignore it without screwing up the UAV skill tree.

A lot of single nodes don't do much. The issue is for the quiz/game you said this was a dead node. It's not dead, it's situational, and there are other nodes that are at least as situational.
So while I have no issue with your suggestion for a fix to what you see as an issue, it doesn't really fit as a question in your quiz. Like others pointed out earlier, the first question doesn't really have a single answer. I would argue capture assist is more situational than uav duration. You can always carry uavs in qp/fp, but you can't always use capture assist.
So like I said before, this thread would have been better as say you found some issues, explain issues, offer suggestions.

Edited by dario03, 22 January 2024 - 05:13 PM.

[MechMaster059]

dario03, on 22 January 2024 - 05:07 PM, said:

A lot of nodes don't do much. The issue is for the quiz/game you said this was a dead node. It's not dead, it's situational,

Nope. Doesn't matter the game mode, the class of mech, or playstyle. Against even Tier 4 players a UAV is HIGHLY LIKELY to be shot down before reaching 60 seconds aloft. In Tier 3 it's a freak occurrence to see them fall down from running out of time. FREAK OCCURRENCE. EXTREMELY RARE.

dario03, on 22 January 2024 - 05:07 PM, said:

...capture assist is more situational...

If you have capture assist and you're standing in the assault mode base or conquest mode bases it works however limited and situational that may be.

+10 UAV duration ALMOST NEVER works, and for those FREAK OCCURRENCES where it does work, it gives little benefit.

Apples and Oranges comparison.