48 replies to this topic

[Felbombling]

Looking forward to March, when the announced inclusion of Thunderbolt Missiles should arrive. I was quite excited to read this, as the only other time I can think of when Thunderbolt Missiles were part of a BattleTech game was waaaaaay back in perhaps the second MechWarrior title. I could be wrong. What I remember of them was two points. 1) They were hard to come by, it seemed. 2) They had black contrail smoke, which easily identified them on the battlefield.

I am throwing this post together in the wee hours of the morning for peace of mind. I wanted to get out there my gentle suggestions for the design team and the Cauldron folks as they plan for and implement my all-time favorite weapon system. This has been a long time coming, so please bear with me.

• Please go with realism when it comes to the weapon geometry that is summoned when a Thunderbolt Missile occupies a missile weapon port. If you're not going to model a new representation of the weapon on the various Mechs and hardpoints, at least summon the Narc missile geometry. I don't think anyone wants to see a Thunderbolt 20 represented by twenty missile tubes, etc.
  
• Please armor the missiles to ward off some value of AMS fire. I don't think players will be interested in mounting Thunderbolt 20s or 15s if they continuously get swatted down by AMS.
  
• A distinguishing exhaust flame and contrail would be nice, as they are a new weapon. Black smoke seems to fit the bill, as my memory serves of the first iteration back in the Microsoft days. Red or orange exhaust flames might be a nice addition.
  
• As far as sound goes, something to give the feel of a beefy, heavy missile would be nice. Fidelity is important in a game like MechWarrior: Online, as you already know.
  
• Lastly, it might be fun to have initial thrust animations for the missiles as they leave the launcher, then the actual flight animation. Just thinking about modern missile systems and how they often have a two-stage launch sequence, with the first stage being the ejection from the launcher. The second, actual flight system then kicks in mid-air, sending the missile to target. Plenty of examples of that on YouTube with regard to anti-tank missiles like the Javelin.

Alright, that's my two cents on the topic. I'd love to see other ideas or thoughts on the new system. Discuss!

Edited by Felbombling, 25 January 2024 - 03:20 AM.

[Curccu]

Cauldron discord is way better place for you to be heard in this and all matters really.

[JediPanther]

Useless addition to the game with the new missile nerfs. Even with max velocity skills a stock urbie can doge them.

[pattonesque]

JediPanther, on 25 January 2024 - 07:57 AM, said:

Useless addition to the game with the new missile nerfs. Even with max velocity skills a stock urbie can doge them.

oh dang they've released the Thunderbolt's stats already? Do they need buffs?

[1453 R]

If Thunderbolt missiles can be knocked down by a single unboosted AMS, they're gonna be dead on arrival. I hate using that term because it's stupid, but Thunderbolts are gonna interact very weirdly with AMS. A single large warhead means AMS is either 100% ineffectual if it fails to stop that warhead or is a 100% hard stop to the Thunderbolt user if it can. I cannot imagine a single unskilled AMS being allowed to swat Thunderbolt warheads for free and hard-stop the whole weapon system. It's either gonna require both Overload nodes, more than one AMS, or both.

That said, beyond the AMS issue? Thunderbolts are gonna be real interesting. You get PPFLD-style Big Whacks to whatever you hit, but you get no control over which structure component you hit. It's honestly the most Tabletop-y thing they'll have introduced to the game. A lot will depend on the tracking strength and cycle rate of the launchers and whether the DPS is worth the loss of fine control over impact point. If the tracking strength is good enough then Thunderbolts become an attractive alternative to autocannons for players with shaky aim (and, of course, Sk1lh@rds will complain endlessly about N0 Sk1l L0k w34p0nz, but who gives a rat about them), since the missile is less likely to hit what you want but way less likely to just miss outright. And of course cycle rate will determine if they do enough DPS to be worth bothering with.

Fortunately the Cauldron can play with just about all of those values post-launch so even if Thunderbolts release in a sorry state, they can be tuned up as we go. Frankly I'll be real interested to see how Thunderbolts play with light 'Mechs in the Mosh Pit. They could be a new go-to flyswatter weapon, given the concentrated punches. Score a lucky Thunderbolt hit against a leg or an IS shoulder and the light is in a real perilous state. Plus you can send the warheads from way further out and most light 'Mechs won't be able to spare the weight for AMS even if AMS is really good against Thunderbolts. Could be an interesting wrinkle in the twigweight game plan.

[Vonbach]

If couldron has any input on T bolt missiles expect them to be dead on arrival.

[1453 R]

Mm. I see things didn't change around here in my year-odd gone. Are people still accusing the Cauldron of the Most Evil Perfidy Ever because weapons that can deal damage from further away than 270 meters still exist?

That said, can't wait for the folks who pull all but one point of armor off their face to get headchopped by a random Thunderbolt hit, hueh. The salt will be real.

[Ihlrath]

I mean... lore wise it was a pretty unwieldy weapon system in the field and more suited to Solairus Arena fights. If you managed to get hit on the weapon system it did damage to the mech it was mounted on and added like 15 heat scale which is more than PPC firing adds. So... are they just using the name?

[pattonesque]

1453 R, on 25 January 2024 - 04:26 PM, said:

Mm. I see things didn't change around here in my year-odd gone. Are people still accusing the Cauldron of the Most Evil Perfidy Ever because weapons that can deal damage from further away than 270 meters still exist?

That said, can't wait for the folks who pull all but one point of armor off their face to get headchopped by a random Thunderbolt hit, hueh. The salt will be real.

I took like a year and a half off and people still run away from fights, fail to left click, and then whine about how cauldron man bad. it's almost refreshing

[Meep Meep]

pattonesque, on 25 January 2024 - 07:14 PM, said:

I took like a year and a half off and people still run away from fights, fail to left click, and then whine about how cauldron man bad. it's almost refreshing

Well not even cauldron is of a set piece. The infighting over changes and features is legendary. A few cauldron members were griping hard in a stream last night about it over their proposals being rejected by the majority.

[pbiggz]

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2024 - 07:33 PM, said:

Well not even cauldron is of a set piece. The infighting over changes and features is legendary. A few cauldron members were griping hard in a stream last night about it over their proposals being rejected by the majority.

I said this in another thread and got nothing but sass but i fully stand by it. These people (as in MWO players/BT fans) don't ******* know what they want. You can't ask them. You can't survey them. They don't understand what their own problems are in this game so how could they possibly know. But any time someone who does actually get it tries to explain it to them/fix a problem they're greeted with nothing but the shrill screaming of 40something year old men, because this game is the worst game ever made and it must be fixed at all costs, but if anyone makes any changes you get:

Vonbach, on 25 January 2024 - 04:07 PM, said:

If couldron has any input on T bolt missiles expect them to be dead on arrival.

and i don't know about you but i find this constant bad faith griping about every little change and the implicit suggestion that the people making this game are conspiring against "the real fans" (the real fans being an exclusionary, mostly older, non-competitive counterculture gaggle who hate and resent pretty much everyone) to be pretty ******* tiring.

Edited by pbiggz, 25 January 2024 - 08:12 PM.

[RickySpanish]

They should have an obscenely long indirect fire lock on time, a fast direct fire lock on time, a long cooldown, hit a random arm or torso component and be immune to AMS. There you go problem solved.

[1453 R]

1.) Lock time is universal to the 'Mech. it's why Artemis is a chassis-wide upgrade rather than a piece of equipment attached per launcher the way it should be - Thunderbolts having "fast direct fire lock time" would simply mean players equip a single Thunderbolt-5 to their LRM machines to gain the benefit. And we can't be having anything that makes LRMs better in our sKiLc0r3 game, can we?

2.) We don't know if they'll be able to indirect lock at all. Or rather, we don't know if they'll be able to make any effective use of indirect locks. They could fire straight as an arrow and have no real ability to do anything but direct fire anyways, which'd make all the different-lock-times bit moot.

3.) A weapon that fires and is guaranteed to do fifteen or twenty damage to a single component probably won't fly. Streak-style bone targeting feels like the wrong call here. Thunderbolts could be considered the prototype for Arrow IV systems later on in a pie-in-the-sky sense, the first time individual missile tracking has mattered. I'm figuring they'll work more like ATMs - flat-firing lock missiles that hit whatever they hit and can be juked or evaded the way you juke or evade LRMs or ATMs.

4.) Making missiles immune to the Anti Missile System - a piece of equipment already generally held to be a poor use of weight and space unless it can be boated - seems counterproductive. That said, maybe it does need to happen given the all-or-nothing nature of the system. Tabletop says Thunderbolts were particularly vulnerable to AMS, but frankly this could be an area where MWO needs to diverge sharply from tabletop? Dunno. Suppose we'll find out in testing and iteration.

[Curccu]

Battlemaster56, on 26 January 2024 - 05:13 AM, said:

[redacted]

I was just giving OP info how his balance ideas/wishes would have most chances to seen by people doing the calls on balance.

I could say that you are trying to stir some drama now not me?

edit.
My last 3 posts (not including this thread), drama stirring?
https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6527365
https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6527294
https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6527286

PS. Don't get butthurt if people disagree with you or your ideas specially if you act very often like all knowing arrogant di**.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 28 January 2024 - 10:58 PM.
quote clean-up

[Felbombling]

Thanks for most of the replies and conversation, gang. I don't post often these days, but I felt I needed to in this case. New weapon introduction must be a hard numbers crunch, but it is the little details that matter, too. While I appreciate the post telling me to go to the Cauldron Discord to make certain my ideas are shared, I also targeted PGI on the design/artwork side of things. As I've been gone from the forums for awhile, can I assume that the Cauldron has more or less taken over any and all aspects of the new weapons being introduced, or are PGI staff still involved with final say and artwork and implementation?

[w0qj]

I'm looking foward to MWO's interpretation of the Thunderbolt missile weapon

[1453 R]

It's off topic for this thread (y'know, like two thirds of the thread) but I'm also seriously keen to see how Magshots/AP Gauss are implemented. Depending on how they work, they could be a gigantic game changer for a huge number of 'Mechs. Even if the numbers aren't awesome, I can't imagine them being just new-sounds versions of machine guns, they have to be single-shot weapons you aim, fire, and then cycle like a more typical Gauss or autocannon. That's gonna open up entire new playstyles for fast skirmishers with massed ballistic hardpoints, and could allow 'Mechs with a smattering of ballistics but no real decent way to use them (TBR-Prime So8 immediately comes to mind for me) to add weapons that don't have great throughput but which better match their normal combat cadence.

They're going to have lower DPS than machine guns, and likely lower damage per ton of ammo, simply because machine guns are spread-y face-staring point-blanky weapons whose only advantage whatsoever comes from being heatless and having good DPS. Magshot and AP Gauss, if they're going to differentiate from machine guns, need to be fire-and-twist weapons that let light 'Mechs utilize more defensive maneuvering - or, as the update says, let heavier units have a better chance at poking and engaging light 'Mechs.

Gonna be incredible to finally have OPTIONS for ballistic weapons other than machine guns for light 'Mechs.

[Novakaine]

DOA.

[Battlemaster56]

Well back on topic what gonna break thunderbolts gonna be it's missile hp in the end of the day anything else is secondary it can be to bloated innhp making ams useless but not to little that it is dead in the water.

[pattonesque]

Novakaine, on 26 January 2024 - 10:08 AM, said:

DOA.

wait did they release the Thunderbolt missile stats yet? what makes you say they're DOA? too few HP? low velo?