64 replies to this topic

[Hawk819]

BlueDevilspawn, on 04 October 2024 - 06:55 AM, said:

No A or D, at least for now. The use of normal JJs makes them potentially able to obsolete the current Summoner line and that's not something we want to do. The Grand Summoners are ground bound or require substantial investment into the E torsos.

As for the E itself, none at the moment but you can still run the stock E loadout by putting both torsos onto the variant with Energy CT. You'll have 12.5 tons of pod space.

Well, can we at least have the arms. All it is is two Energy Hardpoints each in the Arms. Please!!!!

[CFC Conky]

The news mechs will be DOA!

Sorry, couldn't help myself, I miss those back-in-the-day discussions about new mech packs.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[BlueDevilspawn]

Hawk819, on 04 October 2024 - 08:29 AM, said:

Well, can we at least have the arms. All it is is two Energy Hardpoints each in the Arms. Please!!!!

The stock -E has an ERPPC in each arm and an ERSL in the CT, that's it. 3 E total across RA, LA, and CT. Existing variants can provide the same hardpoints so there was no point in adding them. The E torsos were the valuable pieces.

[Remover of Obstacles]

kalashnikity, on 04 October 2024 - 07:58 AM, said:

Indeed, I would rather streaks targets legs more on a light, this appears to be geared towards making streaks more viable vs bigger mechs.

I am not sure this is enough to see widespread streak usage, but it is a few percent point step in the right direction to make it move viable against heavier targets. That could mean one more short range mech for the sniper turrets to farm.

Considering many lights have armor/structure quirks on everything that is the head, having a larger percentage on torsos helps. On certain lights you would need to do over 60 damage to take off an arm, so all that streak damage to arms is not really helping.

More damage to legs would be great, but I understand the desire to avoid instantly (well, after a couple seconds of getting a lock plus travel time, otherwise known as two salvos of MAG/AP Gauss) legging lights.

[Hawk819]

BlueDevilspawn, on 04 October 2024 - 09:34 AM, said:

The stock -E has an ERPPC in each arm and an ERSL in the CT, that's it. 3 E total across RA, LA, and CT. Existing variants can provide the same hardpoints so there was no point in adding them. The E torsos were the valuable pieces.

Sorry. I wasn't clear with my post. That's my fault.

I meant, the arms for the Thor II D. Again, I apologize. The D has two energy hp in each arm. Can we at least have the arms for the Thor II D?

[Ttly]

Huh, C-ERPPC heat buff. That's pretty unexpected. Now if only it can get some velocity buff to at least bump it to 1800.
Linebacker getting ammo quirks, wowzers. Someone finally took notice of its issue of not having free tonnage because cXL 400 is just that heavy, now it gets to actually play as a heavy pretending to be a medium without being too gimped as before.
Why can't the Assassin or Vulcan gets as much/more quirks as the Vindicator does then?
There's still a lot of underpowered stuff in this game just sitting around.

Black Lanner changes, really a bunch of whatever, generally a buff but nothing game changing.
Same deal with the Banshee.

King Crab (on all vars) and Kodiak (only on the 3) agility buff because someone realized assaults running larger XL engines with bad accel/decel and twist rate just feels awkward to play with how slippery moving can feel like due to the higher max speed, and how you can't track targets that well with the low twist speed.
Oh also the Trial DWF-B gets changed to C-AC5 instead of C-LB5 I guess.

MAD2C buffs, kind of a nerf to the D so it doesn't work as well with HAGs I guess but kind of deserved, seeing the same 2HAG30 2ERLL ECM all the time gets boring, at least it'll "only" be 2C-Gauss instead. Maybe those players would just jump over to the NTG-H bandwagon.

The Kodiak changes are, well at least you'll see less of those 4C-UAC5 Kodiaks?
Oh also +100% thrust on a 100t JJ assault, cool.
Also KDK-5 being a better KDK-1 if you don't use missiles instead of just being some weirdly underquirked variant.

Specter buffed to be tankier (exchanging structure quirks for armor quirks) more general quirks over only specific weapon ones, MG ammo quirk with RoF buff too, suppose you can squeeze in 2 large lasers just fine on it now, even run stealth armor like this without being underquirked/pigeon holed into pulse lasers as before.
Oh and some wing kits buff I guess.

The Grand Summoner is eeeh whatever, finally another fast heavy omni that has both the clan-endo and clan-ff armor right? Even a variant with MASC. Regrettably at the cost of the original's notably large +structure quirks and jump jets but hey, you can finally stick in more weapons and stuff on it and it gets some armor quirks instead.
The P variant seems like a wannabe Orion-2C with its eHSL+1, but the engine weight isn't really going to let you squeeze that much weight for the ballistic hardpoints at the same time, or squeeze in as much cDHS.
The B is just like the regular Summoner-B minus the jump jets! this time with ATM and spread quirks, seems like it'll be the go to probably, just because of the +atm range pushing the 500m (the 2 damage per missile range) damage bracket into like 575m without skills on top of velo quirks. Not having JJs on its own sucks though, as JJs+LRM with T.Decay combo can be decent for damage farming.
The C is UAC variant, your usual ballistic variant with -40% jam, more than the Orion IIC-C's 25% I guess, also a bunch of cooldown and velocity quirks.
And the T or the Talon is uhh, 8 ballistic hardpoints, MASC, 2 energy hardpoints? Kind of a head scratcher.
Oh and I guess they introduced Improved JJs now with the E pods for this thing. Wonder how much improved it is.

kalashnikity, on 04 October 2024 - 07:58 AM, said:

Indeed, I would rather streaks targets legs more on a light, this appears to be geared towards making streaks more viable vs bigger mechs. Still, looks like a realistic change, and mechs like Piranha don't have much torso anyways. .

Most lights have as much ST armor+structure as they do legs, prioritizing ST hits would also mean the missiles would fly higher and not hit cover/ground as much thanks to the jank direct trajectory of them, not to mention instagibbing IS XLs, going for the STs over legs/arms is fine, still generally a buff even if it's more "twistable damage" since again, direct trajectory means you can guarantee them to hit the arms in some cases (though this is still preferable to the current's leg tracking shots hitting the ground and doing zero damage instead).

Edited by Ttly, 04 October 2024 - 01:54 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Ttly, on 04 October 2024 - 01:25 PM, said:

Why can't the Assassin or Vulcan gets as much/more quirks as the Vindicator does then?

Because the Assassin and Vulcan have better hitboxes, mounts, and speed all while having JJs? I think the Assassin could use some gentle bumping up but yeah, this comparison is a bit whack. The Vindicator has been a bit of a running joke in QP pretty much since it was added to the game...

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 04 October 2024 - 04:37 PM.

[GargoyleVine]

Moadebe, on 04 October 2024 - 05:02 AM, said:

I DO appreciate the thanks. Lets me know that people do appreciate these posts, and I'm not just posting into the wind with these. So thank you for the thank you.

ya brother nice to see an MWO info post on the MWO site !! thanks

[Tiy0s]

"I wonder how improved the Improved Jumpjets will be"

The same burn duration but a little under double the thrust power and a little over half the heat. Makes them snappier and more responsive. The plume/flame of the jumpjet is also bright red instead of blue.

Since the Grand Summoner can only carry them in increments of 4(4 or 8 depending on how many STs you have), expect to be launched into the stratosphere.

[Hauptmann Keg Steiner]

BlueDevilspawn, on 04 October 2024 - 06:55 AM, said:

The Argent is the -008, modified. King Crabs don't have jump animations in MWO so the variant was modified and launched as a Legend.

They sure modified the heck out of it; going from 2 LAC2s + 2 ERMLs to 4 LAC5s + 3 MPLs is definitely beefier. Also the extra arm ballistic hardpoints means you could pull a Juggernaut and mount 4 AC20s if you hate having speed, armor, ammo, and the ability to not explode on alpha strike.

...maybe I'll get it someday.

[MayhemMatador]

Tiy0s, on 05 October 2024 - 10:19 AM, said:

"I wonder how improved the Improved Jumpjets will be"

The same burn duration but a little under double the thrust power and a little over half the heat. Makes them snappier and more responsive. The plume/flame of the jumpjet is also bright red instead of blue.

Since the Grand Summoner can only carry them in increments of 4(4 or 8 depending on how many STs you have), expect to be launched into the stratosphere.

I love to see the Devs hopping in like this and sharing info/insight with us!

What are you guys going to do to address the Flea-19 with the magshots? friggen terror in the bottom half of the tiers, and just how broken/OP it is was addressed over on No Guts NO Gal. Take it from someone who drops with regular-joe players who make up over half your player base that build is a real problem. It is favored by some folks who seem to have a lot of input into the game design for whatever reason but the ball is being dropped here, that build specifically.

Be it being run by seal clubbers or just straight up in drop groups for lances of them it is very UNBALANCED and needs to be fixed.

The coming patch leaks show nothing but a very small cooldown increase on the magshots that will impact the flea-19 less than any other mech even tho it is the biggest magshot problem child. That .2 of a second addition to cool down isn't going to do the trick, its already rocking 15% cooldown, stacked ammo buff, +15% range, +35% velocity, and the mags weigh nothing. If you are going to have a mech that small with that great of hitboxes, speed, armor buffs, boat 8 magshots you have to do something to balance it out man, it is seriously out of hand and cancerous in Soup, like stage 3 cancerous.

You guys have done some truly great stuff the last year, you have me spending money on fun new stuff every month, please don't jeopardize that kind of positive progress by ignoring your regular-joe players and letting something like the Flea-19 Magshot boat slip through the cracks, and like I said go check out the feed back on NGNG they are much better than most of us and they know its a problem.

Fingers crossed you will pay attention to us guys who play on the lower tier and like to have fun and pay money to support the game as much as the top meta guys.

Edited by MayhemMatador, 05 October 2024 - 12:52 PM.

[1453 R]

MayhemMatador, on 05 October 2024 - 12:48 PM, said:

I love to see the Devs hopping in like this and sharing info/insight with us!

What are you guys going to do to address the Flea-19 with the magshots? friggen terror in the bottom half of the tiers, and just how broken/OP it is was addressed over on No Guts NO Gal. Take it from someone who drops with regular-joe players who make up over half your player base that build is a real problem. It is favored by some folks who seem to have a lot of input into the game design for whatever reason but the ball is being dropped here, that build specifically.

Much like LRMs, light 'Mechs are unfortunately very difficult to balance. In T4 or T5 where nobody can hit spit monkey squat, an even semi-competent light 'Mech can be a terror machine. In T1 and much of T2, light 'Mechs are total nonfactors because their mobility doesn't mean jack against players that can easily and effortlessly clip them. Making light 'Mechs dangerous enough to merit use in T1/T2 makes them nightmares in T4/T5; making them reasonably in T4/T5 makes them laughingstocks in T1/T2.

The FLE-19 is offensively very powerful for its size, as Fleas tend to be, but even with its armor quirks it comes apart very quickly under fire. Twenty-ton 'Mechs melt like wax the moment something connects with them. As well, T4/T5 FLE-19 pilots are no better at hitting stuff while moving at Flea speeds than other pilots are at hitting the Flea while it's moving at Flea speeds. Generally they have to slow down to land accurate fire and only do so if they feel they have a safe window to do it in. Keep mobile and aggressive, and even if you don't hit the little bugger you'll spoil his aim and make it much harder for him to henpeck you to death.

MayhemMatador, on 05 October 2024 - 12:48 PM, said:

Be it being run by seal clubbers or just straight up in drop groups for lances of them it is very UNBALANCED and needs to be fixed.

Man, c'mon. You seem like a reasonable sort. Please don't tell me you buy all this grouped-players-are-evil nonsense too.

MayhemMatador, on 05 October 2024 - 12:48 PM, said:

The coming patch leaks show nothing but a very small cooldown increase on the magshots that will impact the flea-19 less than any other mech even tho it is the biggest magshot problem child. That .2 of a second addition to cool down isn't going to do the trick, its already rocking 15% cooldown, stacked ammo buff, +15% range, +35% velocity, and the mags weigh nothing. If you are going to have a mech that small with that great of hitboxes, speed, armor buffs, boat 8 magshots you have to do something to balance it out man, it is seriously out of hand and cancerous in Soup, like stage 3 cancerous.

Magshots and AP Gauss (admittedly, mostly AP Gauss) have revitalized a sizeable number of fringe lights and mediums that simply didn't exist before those weapons became available. Hitting Magshots hard enough to render the FLE-19 useless would also remove all of those other resurgent designs from the game as well. The .2s cooldown is a 10% total DPS hit, and the FLE-19's generic cooldown doesn't claw it back. Not a lot, but perhaps enough.

I can also say, as a low-end Soup pilot who bought an FLE-19 during a sale recently because it was the next best thing to free to obtain and kit out? The 'Mech is good, and fun, but if you malf up once - one (1) time, uno occasions, a sole occurence of error - you're cooked. The armor buffs only really give the FLE-19 a bit of extra padding against incidental grazes and chip damage. One singular solid hit and you're either dead or crippled. It's not quite as made-of-tissue-and-dreams as the Piranha, but only the Piranha is softer.

MayhemMatador, on 05 October 2024 - 12:48 PM, said:

You guys have done some truly great stuff the last year, you have me spending money on fun new stuff every month, please don't jeopardize that kind of positive progress by ignoring your regular-joe players and letting something like the Flea-19 Magshot boat slip through the cracks, and like I said go check out the feed back on NGNG they are much better than most of us and they know its a problem.

Fingers crossed you will pay attention to us guys who play on the lower tier and like to have fun and pay money to support the game as much as the top meta guys.

Like I said - any hits to Magshot and AP Gauss hard enough to render the FLE-19 useless the way you're hoping would basically remove the weapons from play. Hell, the FLE-19 is already the ONLY 'Mech that makes effective use of Magshots. There are exactly three other 'Mechs that can carry more than four Magshots - the Blackjack Arrow, the new Tournament Cicada, and the Catapult Ferroblast. I own all three; none of them are good. At least not with Magshots. Arrow has some crazyballs machine gun quirks and can be a ridiculous little buzzsaw with machine guns and X-Pulse lasers, but the Cidada is vastly too fat to get away with even half the ridiculousness the FLE-19 does. Even in T4/T5, people can hit Cicadas fine. Ferroblast is decent-ish, in low tiers, but again - it's a big fat heavy 'Mech, and you feel it when you drive the thing. Its momentum makes the agile poke-and-fade attacks the FLE-19 excels at impossible, Ferroblast simply cannot accel/decel quickly enough for that. You end up having to do weird drive-bys and hope you don't get taken out while you reposition for another strafing run.

Edited by 1453 R, 05 October 2024 - 06:54 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Cut fle19 mag ammo bonus in half and retool the quirks so mags are unbonused. Done.

Edited by Meep Meep, 05 October 2024 - 11:38 PM.

[BlueDevilspawn]

Hawk819, on 04 October 2024 - 01:20 PM, said:

Sorry. I wasn't clear with my post. That's my fault.

I meant, the arms for the Thor II D. Again, I apologize. The D has two energy hp in each arm. Can we at least have the arms for the Thor II D?

I can ask though for future addition... probably too late for launch.

[Hawk819]

BlueDevilspawn, on 06 October 2024 - 12:18 AM, said:

I can ask though for future addition... probably too late for launch.

Sounds good. I mean, it's only two energy hp in each arm. Plus, it'll allow us to do better builds.

I wanna remake the Summoner H. 2 ER Large, 2 Heavy Large, Heavy Medium, 2 SRM 6/Artemis IV FCS (x2 Ammunition), TC (x3), and Active Probe. If there's room in one torso, then a micro pulse, or Heavy Small, could round things out.

[Moadebe]

Meep Meep, on 05 October 2024 - 11:37 PM, said:

Cut fle19 mag ammo bonus in half and retool the quirks so mags are unbonused. Done.

Really this would probably be the main option. Just target Mags on the individual mech itself. I know we are going for a homogenization of the mech quirks across the board by making them more generic, but for this instance it might be needed so as not to affect other mechs as much.

Mags and AP have brought a good variation to lights and mediums. Especially mechs who suffer from a lack of hardpoints in a lower weight bracket. I would hate to see those mechs fall back down in a world where hardpoint inflation keeps pushing the time to kill down.

[Ttly]

Tiy0s, on 05 October 2024 - 10:19 AM, said:

"I wonder how improved the Improved Jumpjets will be"

The same burn duration but a little under double the thrust power and a little over half the heat. Makes them snappier and more responsive. The plume/flame of the jumpjet is also bright red instead of blue.

Since the Grand Summoner can only carry them in increments of 4(4 or 8 depending on how many STs you have), expect to be launched into the stratosphere.

Uhh, is it really fine for them to be 2 slots 2 tons each?
(test build, used HGR ammo and CASE as weight/slot filler to get to the same tonnage as the preview here)
I mean it could've gotten like +50% JJ thrust pod quirks on each E pods with regular JJs (1t 1slot each) instead of these new heavier JJs that has like what? +80% more thrust each since you mentioned almost double, I mean for double the weight and slot too? In most cases jump height above 50 is already overkill/a waste anyway too.
And most people would probably only run the E RT pod (already 8 tons of iJJs) at most as is if they want JJs, as the RT just doesn't have a lot of decent options.
Lore accuracy aside, it just seems rather underwhelming.

Also, are people really arguing over reducing ammo quirks (even if only on the FLE-19)? Reducing ammo isn't gonna reduce how deadly a vehicle is, it just lowers their "potential damage in a match" and it's rather eyeroll inducing how some vehicles (mostly on the light-medium end) are just straight up gimped by having to use a slower-lighter engine just so it can squeeze worthwhile amount of damage (in QP) worth of ammo, unless they're fine with being limited to only being able to carry like only 400 damage (assuming they don't miss) worth of ammo or something, which is also one of the issues being addressed on this same patch if only for the Linebacker which otherwise just has not much free tonnage.

Edited by Ttly, 06 October 2024 - 10:15 AM.

[CaseIH188]

Tiy0s, on 05 October 2024 - 10:19 AM, said:

"I wonder how improved the Improved Jumpjets will be"

The same burn duration but a little under double the thrust power and a little over half the heat. Makes them snappier and more responsive. The plume/flame of the jumpjet is also bright red instead of blue.

Since the Grand Summoner can only carry them in increments of 4(4 or 8 depending on how many STs you have), expect to be launched into the stratosphere.

I think the grand summoner will outright replace most builds of the current summoner in one form or the other. After seeing what the improved jump jets will be like, despite being ton-intensive, I think some jump jet quirk buffs would have been in order for the standard summoners.

Ground bound grand summoners will simply outgun all current summoner builds (not to mention the hero with the MASC/SC), and the full improved jump jet builds will make the standard summoner pop tart builds obsolete.

[BlueDevilspawn]

The Grand Summoner was designed to supplement the Clan 70 tonner line with something that could carry more gun (vs SMN), was faster (vs NCT), and wasn't as squishy (vs. Sunspider).

The OG Summoner is a structure beast and with 5 locked JJ and a humanoid shape one of the most agile and tanky (if piloted correctly) mechs out there in its weight and performance class. Due to the lore use of FF, it relies heavily on quirks to be viable in a PVP first person shooter. Giving it tonnage back through ES while providing options (e.g., with none JJ legs and a single JJ CT) would've made it outright superior and obsolete the original SMN.

So, the philosophy behind the GS was a tanky 70 tonner (armor quirks instead of structure, humanoid shape) with speed. To balance it against the agility of the OG SMN, none of the booster pack variants will have JJ. If you want the JJ, you're forced to commit 8 tons and slots to a single torso of 4 iJJ. This gives you roughly the full agility package of regular SMN, but you only get a 0.5 tonnage advantage while losing 7 slots to ES and 8 slots to the iJJ, plus one torso worth of potential high mounts.

So, you are forced to choose between agility, gun, tankiness. That is balanced because you're forced to make that trade off. Otherwise, you get a superior SMN (and that's not what we're trying to do) or a more tonnage efficient Timby-S (which has 1 CT JJ) for drop decks in EQ or Faction.

[Ttly]

BlueDevilspawn, on 06 October 2024 - 12:34 PM, said:

The Grand Summoner was designed to supplement the Clan 70 tonner line with something that could carry more gun (vs SMN), was faster (vs NCT), and wasn't as squishy (vs. Sunspider).

The OG Summoner is a structure beast and with 5 locked JJ and a humanoid shape one of the most agile and tanky (if piloted correctly) mechs out there in its weight and performance class. Due to the lore use of FF, it relies heavily on quirks to be viable in a PVP first person shooter. Giving it tonnage back through ES while providing options (e.g., with none JJ legs and a single JJ CT) would've made it outright superior and obsolete the original SMN.

So, the philosophy behind the GS was a tanky 70 tonner (armor quirks instead of structure, humanoid shape) with speed. To balance it against the agility of the OG SMN, none of the booster pack variants will have JJ. If you want the JJ, you're forced to commit 8 tons and slots to a single torso of 4 iJJ. This gives you roughly the full agility package of regular SMN, but you only get a 0.5 tonnage advantage while losing 7 slots to ES and 8 slots to the iJJ, plus one torso worth of potential high mounts.

So, you are forced to choose between agility, gun, tankiness. That is balanced because you're forced to make that trade off. Otherwise, you get a superior SMN (and that's not what we're trying to do) or a more tonnage efficient Timby-S (which has 1 CT JJ) for drop decks in EQ or Faction.

Isn't it more comparable to the Orion 2C actually? Barring the iJJ pods. The ON2C moves at around the same speed thanks to its +top speed quirk, has similar armor points from being a 75t even if less armor quirks than the Grand, and if the regular Summoner is anything to go by, worse accel/decel sitting at 24/25 instead of Summoner's 40/31 though obviously it's not locked to cXL 350 either so it can actually mount more firepower by sitting at cXL 300 or 325 instead, at mostly less quirks than it and obviously being an battlemech instead of an omni.

Edited by Ttly, 06 October 2024 - 01:08 PM.