140 replies to this topic

[UncleKulikov]

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

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.

Just because the technology exists doesn't mean that it should be implemented. Twitch shooters still use a single hit box for the torso, complexity should only be added if it brings something useful to gameplay.

This is because i'm curious, a good explanation would convince me: How would multiple torso hit locations improve the game?

[Redraider]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 04 November 2011 - 12:11 PM, said:

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

What makes that any less viable than point blank shooting the leg with an LBX? The distance?

[UncleKulikov]

Redraider, on 04 November 2011 - 12:29 PM, said:

What makes that any less viable than point blank shooting the leg with an LBX? The distance?

If you point blank shoot an enemy's leg with an LBX10 or 20, it should seriously damage it and knock the target around a bit.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

An LB 10-X ain't going to knock a 'mech around no matter where it hits.
And an LB 20-X is only going to do so when firing a solid shell.

Quote

What makes that any less viable than point blank shooting the leg with an LBX? The distance?

The distance.
By the time your LB-X is in range, your legs will have been popped.
Unless you play in dense terrain, then your legs will be kicked off by the other 'Mech.

[UncleKulikov]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 04 November 2011 - 12:40 PM, said:

An LB 10-X ain't going to knock a 'mech around no matter where it hits.
And an LB 20-X is only going to do so when firing a solid shell.

The head would disagree.

Also, from the trailer, each weapon impact jars the mech a bit based on the power of the shot. The PPC blast to the atlas knocked it's shoulder back quite a bit, and that does 10 damage on tabletop.

I think that mechanic should be carried into gameplay, so that when you are taking fire it is harder to aim from the weapon impacts.

The difference between an LBX20 and AC20 in that case would be a lot of smaller impacts, compared to one large impact.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

The difference between an LB 20-X and an AC-20 is that the LB-X can chose between cluster and solid shells.
Also, from what I gather, the trailer is defunct, and in BT, you only get to make a PSR if you take 20 or more damage in a single turn.
So that single PPC blast would be cosmetics only.

[Redraider]

UncleKulikov, on 04 November 2011 - 12:25 PM, said:

Just because the technology exists doesn't mean that it should be implemented. Twitch shooters still use a single hit box for the torso, complexity should only be added if it brings something useful to gameplay.

This is because i'm curious, a good explanation would convince me: How would multiple torso hit locations improve the game?

It would be very dependent upon other mechanics and not just hit boxes. I would be more than happy to discuss it but I am getting employer aggro.

[wanderer]

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?

Classic Battletech? Putting out multiple new sourcebooks, tech manuals and campaigns yearly. It's kept a respectable amount of new material sold for decades.

Mechwarrior? Owned by Microsoft, who hasn't been really interested in many new games lately.

[simon1812]

mekabuser, on 01 November 2011 - 01:24 PM, said:

The title sums it up for me. I started playing mw4 and now play mwll and imo the only thing that matters is that If my guass rifle hits at a glancing angle on the enemy mech,the game mechanics can register the appropriate damage.
To put it another way, I couldnt care less if the graphics are exactly the same as Mw4, I would hope that the first major release of a mw title in ten years would reflect the exponential increase in computing power. The power to "simulate" damage accurately.
It doesnt mean a **** thing how pretty something looks if your ac20 at point blank range does nothing.
NOTHING ruins immersion more in mechwarrior.
I know we got a good dev team here with passion, but I hope more than anything there is at least SoMeOnE ... who knows how important this one aspect is.
THoughts>?

-agree, but personally I would like the devs to fix the way small/medium pulselaser and machinegun/autocannon behave when firing, it was not right and it is something that was hard to cup with in every mechwarrior titlle I played.

[mekabuser]

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

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.

this,exactly.As for ac 20 firing mach 20 wha??? yeah maybe thats what goes on in tt or tro or whatever but that doesnt translate to a pc game.Same with guass and ppc.Theres visible travel time that a hell of alot slower than anything RL because, well , we need to see the shell fly. The shell has drop , and the weapon is powerful and it requires skill to put it on target, especially a moving one. WHich reminds me that i need to go over to the .... suggestion section and squash the poll about randomness in shots, expanding reticules etc.. Anything that sez ;you cant whip your mech 45 degrees, and hit a moving target at 500m going 50 kph is rubbish.. Because SOME guys can, and NOT enough can that the last thing anyone needs is a mechanic that sez that particular shot is going to be MORE difficult because the TT rules say oh its so much more difficult to hit that shot ! 20 % variation in target location. .
If we were all AIM BOTS then that makes sense.. THe increase in difficulty reflected in dice rolls for combat variants are reflected in the actual SKILL level of players.
duh.
btw, mwll does ams pretty **** good btw. perhaps a hair op ,, later in game with multiple mechs fielding it, but nonetheless well done

Edited by mekabuser, 04 November 2011 - 03:22 PM.

[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.

Erhardt, on 04 November 2011 - 10:37 AM, said:

I'll check that out.

Yikes. Now I know why you're so cranky... they clowned you in that thread. You gotta get that hostility when confronted with differing opinions under control, man.

The tabletop rules obviously won't work in a realtime game and there are plenty of conventions and abstractions made to make it work in a turn-based environment that can/should be changed and even jettisoned altogether but your approach in that thread (much like this one) was way too harsh for your own good. Lighten up and you'll probably find people are more receptive your ideas when you're not going out of your way to be insulting or overbearing about it.

Edited by Erhardt, 04 November 2011 - 08:41 PM.

[CaveMan]

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

A simple AC fires shells at Mach 20 or more - far more many times faster than modern firearms.

Gauss rifles fire at speeds that'd make ballistics pointless.

Lolwut? Where did you get this information? Seriously, [citation needed], this is codswallop. If ACs were firing projectiles at mach 20 they'd be putting them into orbit. Not to mention that'd mean Gauss rifles were firing projectiles at mach 40 ("twice the speed of conventional autocannons") which would put them in lunar orbit. Also canon (real canon, anyway, maybe they changed it in the silly dark ages) states in several places that Gauss rounds go Mach 4-5.

Which, btw, means that a Gauss rifle round in Earth gravity would have dropped something like 2 meters by the time it reached its 660 meter Battletech range, or about 5 meters after 1 second. That's plenty enough drop for ballistics to matter.

Edited by CaveMan, 04 November 2011 - 09:35 PM.

[GreenHell]

I seem to remember that (in the old MW games) the Atlas "head" was actually considered part of the center torso, and to get a clean shot on the cockpit, you needed to hit the Atlas' "Left Eye". Which meant that the cockpit of the Atlas was even better protected than some light mechs.

[CrashMarik]

mekabuser, on 01 November 2011 - 01:24 PM, said:

The title sums it up for me. I started playing mw4 and now play mwll and imo the only thing that matters is that If my guass rifle hits at a glancing angle on the enemy mech,the game mechanics can register the appropriate damage.
To put it another way, I couldnt care less if the graphics are exactly the same as Mw4, I would hope that the first major release of a mw title in ten years would reflect the exponential increase in computing power. The power to "simulate" damage accurately.
It doesnt mean a **** thing how pretty something looks if your ac20 at point blank range does nothing.
NOTHING ruins immersion more in mechwarrior.
I know we got a good dev team here with passion, but I hope more than anything there is at least SoMeOnE ... who knows how important this one aspect is.
THoughts>?

I hope to the deity they are resolving things server side and not clientside. Its far too easy to hack things clientside and nothing can sink a game faster than punk kids with game hack tools littering up the place.

Cavadus, on 01 November 2011 - 06:50 PM, said:

They'll doom this game if they go with a lame *** translation of the TT rules. Piranha needs to take a page out of World of Tanks and implement something more robust and in-line with what can be accomplished in 2011/12.

I don't think a rip-off of MPBT: 3025 (beta) is going to make them any money. It would behoove them to actually, like, y'know... make a good PC game first and worry about some board game rules meant to be calculated by hand written thirty years ago later. They'll doom the game and the IP if they don't put some work into weapon and ballistics models.

Yeah I mean those lame TT rules have only kept the franchise going into its third decade and spawned 3 really great and successful games and one game that ignored them that was awful. EGA, VGA, and 3025 all produced really excellent combat engines that were great because they managed to capture the fun inherent in the table top game.

P.S. I like the way you lumped any implementation that is faithful to the source material as being a ripoff

Edited by CrashMarik, 04 November 2011 - 10:30 PM.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

CaveMan, on 04 November 2011 - 09:31 PM, said:

Lolwut? Where did you get this information? Seriously, [citation needed], this is codswallop. If ACs were firing projectiles at mach 20 they'd be putting them into orbit. Not to mention that'd mean Gauss rifles were firing projectiles at mach 40 ("twice the speed of conventional autocannons") which would put them in lunar orbit. Also canon (real canon, anyway, maybe they changed it in the silly dark ages) states in several places that Gauss rounds go Mach 4-5.

Which, btw, means that a Gauss rifle round in Earth gravity would have dropped something like 2 meters by the time it reached its 660 meter Battletech range, or about 5 meters after 1 second. That's plenty enough drop for ballistics to matter.

I can't be arsed to look it up at the CBT forum, but the math has been made before using the speeds/ranges/times from AeroSpace (one turn=60s there). A Gauss slug goes *much* faster than Mach 5.
Its moments like these that one would press the Cray button, except I don't think he's on here.

Edited by Alizabeth Aijou, 05 November 2011 - 01:53 AM.

[CaveMan]

Okay, Battletech's physics are screwy, but Aerotech's are just plain off the wall. That's the last place I'd be looking for a physical verification of how equipment works. Need I remind you that a 20-ton aerospace fighter and a 100-ton aerospace fighter burn exactly the same amount of fuel when accelerating at 1g, despite a 500% difference in mass?

Not to mention mach 20 is 6600 meters per second. If muzzle velocities were that high, weapons would have 10 times the range they do, crappy targeting systems or no. You could eyeball an autocannon shot out to 1000 meters, no problem. Just be careful not to be hit by your own rounds when they circle the planet and come back down from orbit.

This is to say nothing of the recoil involved. A 125kg Gauss slug that was projected to Mach 40 over a 4m barrel would require an acceleration force of 2.72 giganewtons and a total impulse of 1,650,000 kg-m/s. Thanks to the law of conservation of momentum and Newton's third law, your 100-ton BattleMech would be accelerated in the opposite direction by 16m/s. I.e., it would fly backward by 6 hexes.

Edited by CaveMan, 05 November 2011 - 02:08 AM.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

Yeah, the maths do state that a Gauss Rifle has a minimum muzzle velocity of 6.000m/s.
Have fun with the remaining maths.

[GreenHell]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 05 November 2011 - 02:17 AM, said:

Yeah, the maths do state that a Gauss Rifle has a minimum muzzle velocity of 6.000m/s.
Have fun with the remaining maths.

They do not go mach 17.6... That's ridiculous. They'd be in orbit!

[Alizabeth Aijou]

Trust me, they do.
Cray and the other mathheads @ CBT forums did the math.
They also did the maths to see if a 'mech could survive orbital re-entry (only the Great Turtle can, btw, if its lucky).

[ice trey]

I've heard a lot of things being said, a lot of folks say things about wanting to veer away from the classic hit-points based system and start turning the game into some sort of realistic ballistic trajectory somesuch.

To that I say: No. Quite simply - No.

Mechwarrior is a part of the Battletech franchise. It will always be a key component of the Battletech franchise, and it should always stay true to the Battletech franchise. Battletech always stays mostly the same - in order to retain balance and never render anything obsolete, and so there's only so far a Mechwarrior game can stray before it's just not Mechwarrior, anymore.

The hit locations and armor points are an intrinsic part of Battletech - and getting rid of them is a big step from making a Mechwarrior game that just -isn't- mechwarrior.

Honestly, if you want these sorts of things, and dislike the concepts that link this game to the established tabletop game that's 25 years going strong, than you shouldn't be playing Mechwarrior. There are many other mech games - Hawken, Armored Core, Front Mission Online, the list goes on - that you should try playing, instead.

But Mechwarrior is Battletech, and the further it strays from that franchise, the less popular it ends up being. The only reason MW4 is still as popular as it is, is because of Mektek's support. On it's own, it would have never stood the test of time for any reasons beyond compatibility with later Windows OS'es