140 replies to this topic

[Lori Black Widow Carlyle]

ice trey, on 03 November 2011 - 05:18 PM, said:

I'm more concerned with the shape and size of hit boxes.

For example, if you took some designs, say - a Bushwhacker, it was very tough to kill, because unless you were hitting it right on the nose, you'd be hitting the side torsos.

On the other hand, if you decided to use a Sunder, the left and right torsos were too small an area, meaning that almost every shot saturated your center torso, shortening your in-game lifespan quite significantly.

Attention must be paid to torso location hitboxes - to make sure they're all equally balanced. Nothing seems more stupid than having a 'mech completely pristine in every location but the center torso, which after a volley or two is three damage points from total destruction.

I hope by saing "equalliy balanced" you actually mean "as close to the existing design/IP as possible", because I like the rest.

Devs defnitely need to show some love to hitboxes' details.

Even if that's not the best example of the issue, due to JM6-S' design you need to destroy its whole left or right torso in order to headshot, if aiming from side and its torso's not turned. On other hand you might be lucky and trigger an ammo explosion. If aiming straight frontal you need to go for the tummy to hit the cockpit. Stuff like that.

[Russ Bullock]

Some really good thoughts in this thread.

[Gaius Cavadus]

Lori Black Widow Carlyle, on 03 November 2011 - 06:22 PM, said:

I hope by saing "equalliy balanced" you actually mean "as close to the existing design/IP as possible", because I like the rest. Devs defnitely need to show some love to hitboxes' details. Even if that's not the best example of the issue, due to JM6-S' design you need to destroy its whole left or right torso in order to headshot, if aiming from side and its torso's not turned. On other hand you might be lucky and trigger an ammo explosion. If aiming straight frontal you need to go for the tummy to hit the cockpit. Stuff like that.

Which is why the LT/RT/CT/LA/RA/LL/RL/RRT/RLRT/RCT system needs to be trashed so we can have true locational damage and not an oversimplified approximation.

[Tsen Shang]

cavadus, on 03 November 2011 - 05:09 PM, said:

Because following thirty year old board game rules makes so much more sense, amirite?

Heh. The fact that it's still around says a lot about it actually. The system is archaic, yes. It also works better than a lot of other games that have come and gone and are still long gone.

Lets go ahead and fix something that isn't broken.

[Rain Man the Excellently]

CaveMan, on 01 November 2011 - 11:04 PM, said:

Count me in with the "tabletop damage model" crowd. A Gauss rifle should do 15 points of damage, the enemy's head should have 9 points of armor and 3 points of structure, and that is that.

I'm much more concerned about the way hits are detected. If the game boils down to who can pay for the fastest internet, it will be hosed!

I agree with CaveMan here. Keep the numbers small and focus on the netcode and hitboxes.

[CaveMan]

wanderer, on 03 November 2011 - 03:03 PM, said:

...except that Battletech doesn't even remotely use realistic -armor-. It's made from handwavium and protects well at thicknesses that would best be described as "minute". Besides, WoT and the like don't have to take silly things like someone dumping a charged particle beam into their armor, which basically makes a mockery of anything we used today. Or a laser, for that matter.

"Realistic" armor simulations are LOLWUT when it comes to Battletech.

This.

An Atlas (based on the 12m height given in the original source material, not the 20m tall version from mw4!) has, conservatively speaking, something like 200 square meters of armor coverage, or about 2200 square feet. Based on its 19 metric tons of armor, or about 19 pounds of armor per square foot. Either BattleTech armor has the approximate density of foam packing peanuts, or it's covered in steel plate about 0.45" thick. Even if 'Mech armor is made entirely out of carbon nanotubes, it would be just 2" thick or so.

And remember this is the most heavily armored 'Mech in the game.

[Gaius Cavadus]

Tsen Shang, on 03 November 2011 - 06:49 PM, said:

Lets go ahead and fix something that isn't broken.

Too bad many, if not most, of the TT rules are beyond broken.

I don't even know why CBT fans bother with the video game titles in the MechWarrior franchise. Seriously, if all you want to do is play MegaMek what's stopping you?

Why ruin your only hope of revitalizing this completely stone-cold dead franchise by continuing the exact same stale gameplay which buried it in the first place?

Remember that Einstein quote about stupidity? Well, it applies here.

Unless of course you hardcore BT fans are totally cool with one game every twenty years. If that's your goal you've succeeded perfectly. MWO will release, flop, and then it can be 2021 before another completely unknown gaming studio attempts another franchise title.

Edited by Cavadus, 03 November 2011 - 08:10 PM.

[Erhardt]

Cavadus, on 03 November 2011 - 08:05 PM, said:

Too bad many, if not most, of the TT rules are beyond broken.

Care to expand on that?

Cavadus, on 03 November 2011 - 08:05 PM, said:

Why ruin your only hope of revitalizing this completely stone-cold dead franchise by continuing the exact same stale gameplay which buried it in the first place?

I'm not trying to be snarky here, but how long have you been playing? The franchise didn't go cold on account of gameplay.

Cavadus, on 03 November 2011 - 08:05 PM, said:

MWO will release, flop, and then it can be 2021 before another completely unknown gaming studio attempts another franchise title.

There are a LOT of reasons MWO may flop. The lack of a damage model the likes of which DARPA would fund isn't going to be one of them.

[wanderer]

Cavadus, on 03 November 2011 - 08:05 PM, said:

Too bad many, if not most, of the TT rules are beyond broken.

I don't even know why CBT fans bother with the video game titles in the MechWarrior franchise. Seriously, if all you want to do is play MegaMek what's stopping you?

Why ruin your only hope of revitalizing this completely stone-cold dead franchise by continuing the exact same stale gameplay which buried it in the first place?

Remember that Einstein quote about stupidity? Well, it applies here.

Unless of course you hardcore BT fans are totally cool with one game every twenty years. If that's your goal you've succeeded perfectly. MWO will release, flop, and then it can be 2021 before another completely unknown gaming studio attempts another franchise title.

Psst. There hasn't been an even remotely close-to-the-tabletop sim for ages. What a lot of us want is something closer to the Battletech online game that EA canned, despite happy reviews. If we wanted another version of MW4, I'd be playing MW4 mods.

So tell me. Where have you seen a game that actually tried to duplicate the TT game in a first-person, real time sim format?

Cause I've been here since the first Battletech online games. I haven't seen one yet that made it past beta. I've been looking for one for years, but Microsoft kept making robot arcade games instead.

[Gaius Cavadus]

wanderer, on 04 November 2011 - 08:11 AM, said:

So tell me. Where have you seen a game that actually tried to duplicate the TT game in a first-person, real time sim format?

Guess you missed MechWarrior 3 in your fifty-year BattleTech career. Mw3 was pretty **** close to CBT in almost every respect besides obvious things that TT rules don't address like rate of fire.

And Mw3 went over so well that FASA Interactive became insolvent, was purchased by MS, and now they own the entire MechWarrior franchise.

Oops!

And MPBT: 3025? You really wanna bring that up? A game that was so terribad that they canned it in beta because it was wontonly obvious to everyone who spent one match playing it that it was simply that bad?

Yeah dude, that's a great example of how awesome your ideal TT translation to a real time simulation would pan out: so bad they just deleted it before even going live.

lolololololololol

@ Erhardt: I did expand on it. I created an entire thread called "TT Rules Detrimental to Gameplay". If you click on my username and then go to threads created by me you'll find it.

In regards to how long I've been playing, I've been around the board game but never found anything like that very much fun. My first real exposure came with Mw2 in 1995. Played all games sans the Mech Assault, bought some source books, and have read probably seventy CBT-era novels.

Lemme guess, you've been playing BattleTech since 1943 too, right?

How long someone has been interested in BattleTech has nothing to do with this discussion so back your clumsy and transparent ad hominem train up.

Is anyone around here actually so elitist that they think the length of one's relationship with BattleTech actually counts for something? This is 2012. BattleTech has been dead for a decade. No, just because you and your brother and the guy across the street play a match in your garage once a month and bought some GamePro source material two years ago doesn't mean this IP is doing well.

Bleh, I don't even know why I bother responding to the CBT purists. Irrational as always and willing to do anything to ruin any hope their beloved IP has of making it in the 21st century...

I still remember all of the QQ posts from the MW3015 trailer about UAVs over on MekTek and DSC. Y'all are ridiculous and yet you still wonder why we went a decade without another MechWarrior.

My head...

Edit: Anyways, this is my last post in this thread and I won't be responding to an replies. And as wel all know he who posts lasts wins the entire universe or so the internets go so some of you should feel really good about yourselves.

Edited by Cavadus, 04 November 2011 - 10:08 AM.

[Erhardt]

Cavadus, on 04 November 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

@ Erhardt: I did expand on it. I created an entire thread called "TT Rules Detrimental to Gameplay". If you click on my username and then go to threads created by me you'll find it.

I'll check that out.

Cavadus, on 04 November 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

In regards to how long I've been playing, I've been around the board game but never found anything like that very much fun. My first real exposure came with Mw2 in 1995. Played all games sans the Mech Assault, bought some source books, and have read probably seventy CBT-era novels.

Lemme guess, you've been playing BattleTech since 1943 too, right?

*Sigh* I was there for the very beginning in 1984, but this is not at all what I was implying. Actually I was only talking about the PC games but apparently I should have been more clear. Recall I said the first time around, I was N-O-T trying to be snarky? Just trying to wrap my head around the way you were seeing things, and I think having a long view of the video game history gives perspective.

The PC game franchise went cold because of Microsoft's horrifc mis-management and inexplicable wrong-headedness regarding growing the franchise (they did the same to Shadowrun and Crimson Skies). Every installment of the IP had expansions created... that doesn't happen when something's gone stale so I wondered if you had enough of that perspective to see that. You've got the time in, but you have a... unique... understanding of why it hasn't been updated as it should have been.

Cavadus, on 04 November 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

How long someone has been interested in BattleTech has nothing to do with this discussion so back your clumsy and transparent ad hominem train up.

Seriously? I made it clear the first time around I wasn't attacking you, but trying to understand your point of view. If you're not interested in honest attempts at a conversation, fine, but don't haul off assuming I'm making an ad hominem attack on you because I don't instantly capitulate to your view of things. If you're just looking for somebody to knock that chip off your shoulder, I've got better things to do.

Cavadus, on 04 November 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

Is anyone around here actually so elitist that they think the length of one's relationship with BattleTech actually counts for something? This is 2012. BattleTech has been dead for a decade. No, just because you and your brother and the guy across the street play a match in your garage once a month and bought some GamePro source material two years ago doesn't mean this IP is doing well.

Bleh, I don't even know why I bother responding to the CBT purists. Irrational as always and willing to do anything to ruin any hope their beloved IP has of making it in the 21st century...

Jeezus, persecution complex much?

Cavadus, on 04 November 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

I still remember all of the QQ posts from the MW3015 trailer about UAVs over on MekTek and DSC. Y'all are ridiculous and yet you still wonder why we went a decade without another MechWarrior.

If it'll make you feel any better, I personally thought that was pretty cool. *shrug* I'm not wondering about a decade's absence, though. Again, see above; the reason is already known.

Edited by Erhardt, 04 November 2011 - 10:40 AM.

[Tsen Shang]

Simple explanation of different views: Some of us want the Mechwarrior franchise (which is based entirely on the Battletech tabletop game) to stay based on the Battletech tabletop game instead of spinning off and becoming something wildly different than its roots. That already happened with MechAssault and it was crappy.

I'm ok with mapping out each mech physically so the locations of internal items are placed such that when a mech gets hit with a round in a specific location, a specific something gets damaged. That's cool. Weapon extended range? That's fine! There are rules for that in max tech. In fact there are a lot of rules in max tech for a lot of things you're talking about. I sincerely hope that dice aren't used for to-hit rolls in Mechwarrior, but things like armor sloping in a game that wasn't designed at ALL for that is asinine.

Cadavus, you continually tell us that our opinions are stupid and unwarranted, but you refuse to see that in your own arguments. Where is this holier-than-thou attitude coming from that makes you think you know more about EVERYTHING than we do? I've got a game catalog at the moment of over 200 games! That's RECENT games, not even including things that came out over 5 years ago! That gives my perspective on games at least a LITTLE weight. I know what works and what doesn't, what's fun and what isn't. Grow up. You aren't the Dalai Lama.

[wanderer]

Cavadus, on 04 November 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

Guess you missed MechWarrior 3 in your fifty-year BattleTech career. Mw3 was pretty **** close to CBT in almost every respect besides obvious things that TT rules don't address like rate of fire.

And Mw3 went over so well that FASA Interactive became insolvent, was purchased by MS, and now they own the entire MechWarrior franchise.

Except that MW3 was made by Zipper Interactive, not FASA. Not only did it go over well, you might know them better as the guys who do the SOCOM series on Playstation these days as part of Sony.

FASA Interactive/FASA studios did MW4. That'd be the one that became insolvent, purchased by MS, and now they own the rights to all the electronic Battletech gaming (that they then licensed out to Smith & Tinker)

Oops!

Quote

And MPBT: 3025? You really wanna bring that up? A game that was so terribad that they canned it in beta because it was wontonly obvious to everyone who spent one match playing it that it was simply that bad?

Yeah dude, that's a great example of how awesome your ideal TT translation to a real time simulation would pan out: so bad they just deleted it before even going live.

Wow. Do you even know your history? EA canned -all- of their MMORPG startups pretty much simultaneously. Considering the two predecessors did **** well in the stone ages of MMORPGing, I'd have hazarded that MPBT: 3025 would have as well. It simply was the victim of EA overextending itself in too many directions.

Quote

lolololololololol

Yeah, that's basically what I did when I saw you posted this.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

pursang, on 01 November 2011 - 11:55 PM, said:

Glancing hits would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. It will likely just be a hit-scan based damage model.

Word.
The velocities of the weapons in question is simply too high to apply real ballistics to it.
A simple AC fires shells at Mach 20 or more - far more many times faster than modern firearms.
Lasers, since they're light, would be pretty much lightspeed.
Gauss rifles fire at speeds that'd make ballistics pointless.
Additionally, BattleMechs have ablative armour, which must be gone before a hit will go to the internals.

Only missiles would be something other than hitscan.
Wonder how they'd implement AMS/LAMS, though...

[Erhardt]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 04 November 2011 - 11:22 AM, said:

Wonder how they'd implement AMS/LAMS, though...

I imagine something pretty easy... maybe an animation of exploding missiles as the AMS takes them out for visual flair, and on a working level, a percentage damage reduction for the actual hit. *shrug*

Obviously, that's my simple, pie-in-the-sky-effective-but-convincing video game engine in action, rather than the "more real than real" hyper-physics engine being called for by some.

[Redraider]

Erhardt, on 03 November 2011 - 12:17 PM, said:

I don't follow... why would we need 6 sections for the Center Torso?

Because its the natural evolution of a game to get more realistic. The hitzones in the old board game were added to give a sense of realism to the game, then the electronic versions came along and managed these same hit zones but even then the technology mainly allowed for updated graphics and not extensively improved hit detection. Now the technology exists to create a more realistic version of the game in which a shot that hits your left torso doesn't damage the entire torso armor plate equally just like they wouldn't in real life. It rewards players for aiming and will reduce the "leg whip" tactics.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

And it'll be MechWarrior 3 all over again, with people sniping off a 'Mechs leg to disable/destroy it.

[Redraider]

Tsen Shang, on 03 November 2011 - 06:49 PM, said:

Heh. The fact that it's still around says a lot about it actually. The system is archaic, yes. It also works better than a lot of other games that have come and gone and are still long gone.

Lets go ahead and fix something that isn't broken.

If it's such a perfect system, why isn't it dropping a new title every year?

[Erhardt]

Redraider, on 04 November 2011 - 12:09 PM, said:

Because its the natural evolution of a game to get more realistic...

Ah... gotcha. I guess depending on how intricately they're going to model what happens after armor is penetrated, that makes pretty good sense. We'll have to see.

[Tsen Shang]

Redraider, on 04 November 2011 - 12:16 PM, said:

If it's such a perfect system, why isn't it dropping a new title every year?

Niche market, bro. Stompy mechs aren't mainstream and never have been. It's the most popular stompy mech game and has been since it came out.