153 replies to this topic

[LouHannoe]

...Perhaps the novels can shed some light on this?

From By Blood Betrayed:

Quote

[color=#333333]"You and your friends killed Ben," Harley said, but he was beginning to sense that something was wrong here.[/color][color=#333333]
"No, Harley. Ben isn't dead. You know that. Listen to my voice. I am Ben."[/color]

[color=#333333]With those words the[/color] Timber Wolf[color=#333333] stepped into Harley's line of sight. It had been battered badly. One of the long-range missile racks mounted on its left shoulder was nothing more than scrap, charred and burned beyond salvage. Long scars from laser, autocannon, and PPC fire had turned the green paint job into a sickening burned and cratered mix.[/color]

I think the description would have mentioned a missing arm while describing the damage, implying that the whole rack can be destroyed without the loss of the attached limb.

This could mean either the rack is not the side torso, or that it can be blown off before the rest of the torso goes. Discuss.

Edited by LouHannoe, 18 June 2013 - 01:06 PM.

[Skylarr]

LouHannoe, on 18 June 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

...Perhaps the novels can shed some light on this?

From By Blood Betrayed:


I think the description would have mentioned a missing arm while describing the damage, implying that the whole rack can be destroyed without the loss of the attached limb.

This could mean either the rack is not the side torso, or that it can be blown off before the rest of the torso goes. Discuss.

Or the that the Mad Cat had taken so much damage to its Side Torso that most of the exterior armor was gone and that the LRM launch had received several Crits. The Novel are suppose to follow TT rules. Since the Side Torso was not completely destroyed the Arm was still useful.

Or maybe the author was using a floating crit system and decided that the launcher was destroyed from Crits, but, there still was SIde Torso armor left.

[Strum Wealh]

LouHannoe, on 18 June 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

...Perhaps the novels can shed some light on this?

From By Blood Betrayed:


I think the description would have mentioned a missing arm while describing the damage, implying that the whole rack can be destroyed without the loss of the attached limb.

This could mean either the rack is not the side torso, or that it can be blown off before the rest of the torso goes. Discuss.

The launcher itself could have taken a critical hit without destroying any of the other items in the torso section (the XL engine, the Medium Pulse Laser, or the LRM ammo, assuming we are talking about the primary configuration) or wholly destroying the internal structure in that location (thus leaving the arm attached).

Such a hit might have even been a through-armor critical hit, which would have even left (the bulk of) the armor in that location intact, while destroying only the launcher itself.

So no, that passage from By Blood Betrayed provides no support for the launchers being anywhere other than where they should be - in the side-torsos.

[EmperorMyrf]

It's all going to come down to how the Madcat is modeled. But assuming it stays true to the same general shape its always had, what if the hitboxes of the ears were split into all of the nearby components?

Hits to the outside panel of an ear score as an arm, and shots to the inside panel score as CT. Shots to the direct front face (and front half of top face) are scored as side torso, and likewise for the rear. If the pilot twists out his incoming damage, then he will be splitting its damage across potentially 3 sections per ear. Then there would have to be no special code added for extra pod components, no re-distribution of armor needed for any extra components, criticals are assigned all the same and so on.

Then also, the geometry of the ears could be made in such a way that the outside panels stick out just a hair farther forward than the front panel, making shots to a ST more difficult from any direction but straight ahead.

[Koniving]

Old topic, but from the hud glitches we know the icon has already been made where the shoulder pods count as two separate things to destroy from the arms.

Edited by Koniving, 18 June 2013 - 05:08 PM.

[Lima Zulu]

Koniving, on 18 June 2013 - 05:08 PM, said:

from the hud glitches we know the icon has already been made where the shoulder pods count as two separate things

It could be fake.

[Skylarr]

So if we run values with the idea that the Missile Pods will have there own armor values then armor will have to be stripped from the Torsos to protect them.

Quote

Mad Cat

Armor Factor: 230 points................................12

.......................................Internal.............Armor..........MWO
......................................Structure............Value..........Value
Head................................3.......................9...................18
Center Torso..................23.....................36.................72
Center Torso (rear).......9
R/L Torso.......................16.....................25..................50
R/L Torso (rear).............7
R/L Arm..........................12.....................24..................48
R/L Leg..........................16.....................32..................62

Since they will stand out above the Mech they will most likely. How much armor should be stripped and placed on the Missile Pods. Omnis should not be able to increase the amount of armor they carry or be able to redistribute the existing armor. An Omnis weakness was always its rear armor.

[Kenyon Burguess]

sorry, clanners aren't special and shouldn't get special mech modifications that the other mechs don't enjoy. ive pointed it out in several posts before, the madcat is a deathtrap. large ct, large side torsos, large pit. the missles are on top of the mech and will be exposed to fire before the mech even clears a hill with its arm weapons. good luck with that in a word of ppc boats

[ripper vtol]

sorry if i missed it but.

1. I agree that they should be part of the Torsos, no good reason to change it.

2. What does it matter, clan XL's only have 2 crits in the side torso so you need to either destroy both sides, one side and center, or just center

So I guess I just dont get what the argument is, blow out the side and its still coming for you

[Viper69]

ripper vtol, on 27 June 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

So I guess I just dont get what the argument is, blow out the side and its still coming for you

They are worried that the large hitbox will make it easy to take out their side torso and by extension that arm. Cry me a river, the hunchback and catapult both have large hitboxes and those were not altered from table top. Nobody really aims for those except people who are XL hunting or looking to take out a 4ps laser cluster or a AC20. Anyone worth their salt aims for center torso or head so really having them as part of the torso wont mean anything. The Timberwolf is going to have an easily punched through and targeted CT/head area. If your opponent is targeting your missile pods/side torsos you should thank him, not *****.

[ripper vtol]

Thanks Viper69, I did find a post on page 2 or so were the 2 crit XL point was brought up and promtly ignored so i guess logic is just not welcome here. Your right aim center mass unless you have a real good idea hes running an IS XL, or its a Hunch 4P cause its fun to watch them run around with 2 MED

[Vermaxx]

LRM pods are part of the torsos, because the mech has both ears and arms. This makes the side torsos MASSIVELY EASY to hit, but harder to de-ear than a Catapult. I wouldn't even call this a massive downside, since Clan XL engines cannot die to a single side torso destruction.

[Cervantes88]

If you make the missile pods part of the side torsos (most giant XL target ever ?), or the CT, it's going to be a gimp mech instantaneously.

If you make it a separate hitbox, it will become OP as **** as it would have additionnal armor.

I believe the best solution is either :

- count them as arms (count the whole arm+pod as the arm hitbox), which would make sense in the current state of the game (it would give it good torso twisting abilities against LRMs, but not super strong because it would still have an easy-to-shoot nose).

- don't give them any hitbox at all. As in : don't count them as a damageable part of the body. Count the actual arms as the arms, the sides as the side torsos and the center as the CT, like a catapult or a stalker with hunchback-like arms.

[FupDup]

Cervantes88, on 28 June 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

If you make the missile pods part of the side torsos (most giant XL target ever ?), or the CT, it's going to be a gimp mech instantaneously.

If you make it a separate hitbox, it will become OP as **** as it would have additionnal armor.

I believe the best solution is either :

- count them as arms (count the whole arm+pod as the arm hitbox), which would make sense in the current state of the game (it would give it good torso twisting abilities against LRMs, but not super strong because it would still have an easy-to-shoot nose).

- don't give them any hitbox at all. As in : don't count them as a damageable part of the body. Count the actual arms as the arms, the sides as the side torsos and the center as the CT, like a catapult or a stalker with hunchback-like arms.

Or split the armor and slots between the side torsos and pods.

Edited by FupDup, 28 June 2013 - 08:07 AM.

[nemesis271989]

I support this !!!

Dihm, on 10 January 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

Eh, having it as a separate hit box/pod gives the Timber Wolf free armor, that seems like cheating. No free armor for Clans please. It's part of the side torso.

That said, I'm not opposed to them increasing the number of hit boxes for all mechs, as long as they keep the armor ratio constant across everything.

Also if explosion of missile pod/ammunition etc. happens, your all torso and arm must fly away - the same way as Atlas and other mechs.

Then if PGI decide to add more hit-boxes they will need to re-design almost all mechs that we have now. Look at HunchBack (obviously it is shoulder weapon), Atlas also got missle pod that is internal (part of a torso) and additional that is hanging under an arm so it will need to get it's own hit-box then.

I hope PGI will not go for additional hit - boxes.

[Strum Wealh]

Well, we'll almost-certainly know one way or the other on or before October 15th (or whenever the Project Phoenix 'Mechs are made available) - either the LRM launcher on the Thunderbolt will be considered part of the Right-Torso (as it is listed on the Project Phoenix page), or it won't.
(And, to a lesser extent of prominence, the same could be said of the SRM launcher on/in the Left-Torso of the BattleMaster.)

Edited by Strum Wealh, 28 June 2013 - 09:47 AM.

[Gevurah]

I've been fairly certain this hud bug was not so much graphical artifacting as an engine issue where clients were entering a debug/test mode in a non test environment.

Note in the bottom left the image. That's clearly not a graphical artifact. That's clearly an intentional graphic which plainly shows separate hitboxes in what appears to be a mad-cat style layout.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that PGI has probably been planning the clans longer than people give them credit for by a longshot; that they have this stuff in game ready to deploy minus in game tweaks/changes to bring it up to a solid foundation for deployment.

[Rasako]

Mason Grimm, on 10 January 2012 - 05:48 AM, said:

Normally I try not to post twice in a thread with only one respond in between but when someone throws down the Logic Gauntlet™ I just have to rear my ugly bald head!

Say we do it how you want; we make sure that the weapon pods are separate hitboxs and don't affect the torso at all because "they are disconnected". That means, due to their size, they probably get less armor than the torso right?

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

You have been hit while sneaking around a hill because someone saw your bulky pods moving in the distance. Now what are you going to do? Your reloads have just suffered an ammo explosion since the "pod" was wiped out. This damage transfers inwards, as per core rules (and even logic dictates you cannot ignore this rule).

Now what does your logic tell you?

"But but but but the clans have CASE and that protects the rest of the mech since only the section with the ammo is destroyed (to paraphrase this rule)". Great, so now you have created a weapon system with no negative drawbacks to it's use. Essentially an "I win cause I can sneak around anywhere and still have my missiles fire without worrying about taking any damage rendering me combat ineffective" button.

It is what it is. This is how the mech was designed.

People will still play the machine becaue they love the look of it or they want to be Aiden Pryde or whatever their reasons are. The mech is still effective when used in it's proper roles.

who the hell in their right mind would put their ammo in the ear boxes? just put it in the legs like every other nonretarded pilot that plays this game

[Nebelfeuer]

Thing is as soon as you make separete pod hitboxes these designs will alway have an advantage regardless of the amor distribution since an attack that has more damage potential then is needed to destroy them would not transfer to another component. It also would be hard to justify why some attacks are able to damage a component when they are only hitting parts of amor that are there in order to prevent damage to that component(eg thunderbold shoulderprotectors or centurions arms) - where would you draw the line?

The only solution that is fair to every design is to treat them all the same.

[Pinselborste]

the madcat should get seperate hitboxes, but they should share crit space with the side Torso and should take away 10 armor from the side Torso. also they shouldnt have case so ammo stored there would damage the side Torso.

the hunchbacks hunch doesnt even come Close to the size the Missile launchers are and it also doesnt stick high above the rest of the mech.

or, they could have a design that allows the Missile racks to be inside the Torso, and come out before firing, like the bay doors some mechs have, just with a way longer time to be ready. this would also mean the clan mech would have a downside.

Edited by Pinselborste, 28 June 2013 - 11:38 AM.