232 replies to this topic

[Pht]

Nick Makiaveli, on 10 February 2012 - 08:19 PM, said:

Like I said early on, we need to define the terms.

AMEN.

Quote

If you bomb a factory to the point it is no longer working to produce mechs, couldn't you say it was destroyed? Yet the building could still be mostly intact, some of the machinery still functional etc.

Ok I get ya now. And that is what I mean when saying "destroyed" in one sense means weapons, ammo etc gone.

While I agree that in a sense, you could say it was "destroyed" - but what's been destroyed is the functionality of the side torso - not the side torso itself.

[Alex Wolfe]

Pvt Dancer, on 11 February 2012 - 04:59 AM, said:

MW4 obviously was apparently fruit-tastic to make that leap of keeping the weapons active when nothing is there to hold it on. Probably one of the reasons why the series was taking a nose-dive was because of stuff like that.

Some things you may want to take note of: a "side destroyed" (i.e. black) in MW4 meant that there is some damage to the side torso of the mech, with the outer "layer" of mechs' innards such as weapons destroyed, but the superstructure held. A completely trashed side torso (the "nothing for the arm to hold on to" from your example) in MW4 meant the mech being destroyed, as the damage which would be enough to shatter the mech's superstructure (and potentially sever the arm) was considered excessive enough to collapse the reactor/force eject. In short - once you strip the armor, you create an opening to the juicy insides and you're free to dig in, but the internal structure can take some punishment as well, before collapsing.

In fact, it's the MW3 reasoning that the moment the armor is breached, the structure of the mech is immediately obliterated which seems somewhat unreasonable and quite unfitting to a real-time first person game (vide MW3's legging, for one).

The game as a whole, despite all the "purist" hate it got, had quite good multiplayer balance partly as a result of those "fruit-tastic" mechanics that fit its gameplay, and its latest iteration still has an active playerbase, twelve years after MW4 first came out.

Prosperity Park, on 10 February 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Tell that to someone with a broken collar bone or broken ribs.

Not really a compelling example... Take it from someone with contact sports experience: you can move the arm fine with a certain level of trunk damage - as long as you're full of adrenaline or painkillers, i.e. don't feel pain. The reason why trunk damage hinders your arm movements is usually the pain that's telling your brain that you shouldn't move, lest you aggravate the wound.

Consequently, a machine doesn't feel pain, so it should be able to move unless the damage actually makes it unable to do so... and grievous damage to the superstructure was represented by the mech simply blowing up in MW4. Lighter damage/missing armor ("black" section) still left the internal structure operational, and arms in working order... just like your arms would be with a broken rib if you didn't feel pain.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 11 February 2012 - 02:51 PM.

[Revya21]

VYCanis, on 09 February 2012 - 04:02 AM, said:

a fair way of doing it would be modified damage transfer. Where further hits to hat destroyed torso are also transferring damaging the arm.

or possibly, destroying a side torso exposes a hitbox that is a direct pathway to arm internal damage, representing the mountings of the arm to the CT, kinda like a combination mech shoulder blade/collar bone

I like that idea but i think i should also be combined with a downgrade in functionality in the arm. Taking you "collar bone" analogy, if in a fight someone breaks your collar bone, i don't think that arm will be at full strength. This would also contribute to the frustration (for lack of a better term) of losing the side torso as many times i found myself ignoring such damage saying to my self "meh my main guns are on the arms". Also i don't support losing the ST to destroy the arm because i don't think that this would be the case 100% of the time and would be much more annoying than engaging.

[Pht]

Alex Wolfe, on 11 February 2012 - 02:30 PM, said:

Some things you may want to take note of: a "side destroyed" (i.e. black) in MW4 meant that there is some damage to the side torso of the mech, with the outer "layer" of mechs' innards such as weapons destroyed, but the superstructure held. A completely trashed side torso (the "nothing for the arm to hold on to" from your example) in MW4 meant the mech being destroyed,...

Actually, that's not how it worked. Once you had stripped all of the external armor off of a side torso in mw4, what you damaged after that was internal structure; and once that internal structure was destroyed, the damage that hit that side torso would transfer directly to the CT internal structure.

You can confirm this for yourself by having your friend go into the mechlab and make a mech with minimum FF armor; you make a server, he stands there and you shoot that section with a flamer (1pt of damage) - he should have his armor view set to the bars - once you strip away the remaining 3 points of FF armor, the stuff left on his bar represents the internal structure of that section.

MW4 not only has ghost legs - completely destroyed legs - but also ghost side torsos, that hold up arms.

[Alex Wolfe]

Pht, on 11 February 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

Actually, that's not how it worked. Once you had stripped all of the external armor off of a side torso in mw4, what you damaged after that was internal structure; and once that internal structure was destroyed, the damage that hit that side torso would transfer directly to the CT internal structure.

You can confirm this for yourself by having your friend go into the mechlab and make a mech with minimum FF armor; you make a server, he stands there and you shoot that section with a flamer (1pt of damage) - he should have his armor view set to the bars - once you strip away the remaining 3 points of FF armor, the stuff left on his bar represents the internal structure of that section.

MW4 not only has ghost legs - completely destroyed legs - but also ghost side torsos, that hold up arms.

Thanks for the clarification. Well, what I mean was that the "frame" of the side torso held until the damage done through the hole in the ST armor destroyed the mech. There was no "destroyed side torso with nothing for arms to be attached to", only a mech with a hole in the side of its "chest", and if you dug deeper, the reactor gave way before the arm's superstucture did.

I.E. if you did enough damage to potentially obliterate the mech's superstructure, it means you did enough damage to destroy the mech, without the arm "falling off" or failing to work before that.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 11 February 2012 - 03:02 PM.

[Pht]

Alex Wolfe, on 11 February 2012 - 03:00 PM, said:

Thanks for the clarification. Well, what I mean was that the "frame" of the side torso held until the damage done through the hole in the ST armor destroyed the mech. There was no "destroyed side torso with nothing for arms to be attached to", only a mech with a hole in the side of its "chest", and if you dug deeper, the reactor gave way before the arm's superstucture did.

I.E. if you did enough damage to potentially obliterate the mech's superstructure, it means you did enough damage to destroy the mech, without the arm "falling off" or failing to work before that.

In mw4, the damage does not transfer from the side torsos until the entire structure of the side torso has been destroyed (the armor bar shows nothing). This is easily confirmed by doing what I mentioned previously.

So, once the armor bar shows nothing, the attached arm is ... I guess floating out there, Lots of things in mw4 did not make sense.

[MaddMaxx]

I just hope the Dev make it FUN and I will forgive them if the realism is off a tad but what is there doesn't mess with or even adds to that FUN.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 11 February 2012 - 03:27 PM.

[Alex Wolfe]

Pht, on 11 February 2012 - 03:22 PM, said:

In mw4, the damage does not transfer from the side torsos until the entire structure of the side torso has been destroyed (the armor bar shows nothing). This is easily confirmed by doing what I mentioned previously.

So, once the armor bar shows nothing, the attached arm is ... I guess floating out there, Lots of things in mw4 did not make sense.

Mechanics aside, that's precisely what I'm talking about. The mechanics are "transferring to CT", but what it reflects is "when the superstructure gives way, the whole mech gives way". You do enough damage to the side = dig deep enough into the torso = destroy the mech.

Conversely, MW4 doesn't recognize "destroying the side torso (the way arms are destroyed, with changes to the model) without destroying the whole mech". The arm isn't floating, it's attached to the side of the mech's "trunk" (albeit damaged) throughout the process. Catastrophic torso damage = mech destroyed (reflected through CT damage, which is basically the mech's "life bar"). Same way as it doesn't recognize "leg blown off" without destroying the mech (as a leg blown completely off would mean that a mech is useless and most likely ejected anyway). That mechanics really did work, since it prevented the easy 3 for 1 (getting the arm weapons, chest weapons and possibly a mech kill in one shot to the side) and easy legging kills.

It does make perfect sense to me - after all, if you bruise a man's ribs, he's in pain and uncomfortable but can still move his arms. If you obliterate his upper chest area with a sledgehammer... sure, he can't move said arm, but he's likely dead as well anyway.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 11 February 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Pht, on 11 February 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

While I agree that in a sense, you could say it was "destroyed" - but what's been destroyed is the functionality of the side torso - not the side torso itself.

I think we are dialing in on agreeing. If it's just the armor and dedicated systems that are destroyed then the arm MIGHT still be able to function. If the whole torso is blasted to splinters, then the arm should stop functioning if not fall off.

So I think this should be decided by game balance. Which goes back to the whole weapon convergence and FPS style targeting. Depending on how much control we have over what areas get hit as to how powerful it would be to get a two-fer.

[Pht]

Alex Wolfe, on 11 February 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

Conversely, MW4 doesn't recognize "destroying the side torso (the way arms are destroyed, with changes to the model) without destroying the whole mech".

Yes, *it does* recognize side torso destruction. I tested the armor and transfer system after the ares special mistake @ mektek as one of their beta testers.

When the armor bar representing the side torso has had all the external armor removed, what is left represents the internal structure - the bones that hold everything. When that section of the armor bar is gone, the internal structure that it represents is gone. Mw4 is the same game that has 'mechs walking around on legs that don't exist either... the side torso is not the only place they did it.

Nick Makiaveli, on 11 February 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

I think we are dialing in on agreeing. If it's just the armor and dedicated systems that are destroyed then the arm MIGHT still be able to function. If the whole torso is blasted to splinters, then the arm should stop functioning if not fall off.

I do know that in the lore if the structure is still there, the 'mech can control and otherwise access everything in the arm via lines that are woven into the structure of the bones specifically just for that kind of situation. The reference is in TechManual, somewhere after page 31 in the "lecture."

[Alex Wolfe]

Pht, on 11 February 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

Yes, *it does* recognize side torso destruction. I tested the armor and transfer system after the ares special mistake @ mektek as one of their beta testers.

Umm... emphasis on

Alex Wolfe, on 11 February 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

MW4 doesn't recognize "destroying the side torso (the way arms are destroyed, with changes to the model)".

By "destruction" I mean in a "physical" sense, not game mechanics. In the visual/common sense terms. There is no condition such as "side torso blown off" in the game, in the same manner as there is "arm blown off" or "limping leg". There only exists the normal side torso model, the torso with some damage textures, and the "mech destroyed" model. You cannot physically wreck a side without wrecking the mech first.

What I'm aiming at is, regardless of the mechanics, as long as the mech remains operational, there exists a physical frame for the arm to be attached to.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 11 February 2012 - 06:01 PM.

[Kraktzor]

Zerik, on 10 February 2012 - 06:19 AM, said:

While I have already summed up my 2 cents on the matter in other posts, I might also add...
Assuming when a side torso is 100% destroyed and gone the arm stays there and continues to, along with the 'Mech's other weapons, tear into my own 'Mech; why not from the very beginning just focus all fire on the much easier to hit center torso? After all, I kill it, and everything on the enemy 'Mech dies. And it should be a simple matter if I have the weapons precision to take out a side torso as quickly as many seem to fear.

Thank you, I was waiting for someone to mention that. I can't understand why everyone seems to think that such precise targetting of a moving enemy Mech is going to be so easy.
Besides in the TT rules, a destroyed (disabled, crippled, whatever) side torso disables the corresponding arm, it doesn't destroy (as in damage) it. Only very high damage weapons (Gauss Rifles, PPCs) or explosive weapons such as missile will actually blow it off....or a critical hit.
Also, if your ammunition in your torso goes off, and you don't have CASE, your screwed anyway, cause the damage from that explosion (and it tends to be a lot) will follow the transfer rules, going directly to the CT internal structure completely bypassing the armor.

[Dagrum Darkforge]

I think if torso is completely destroyed then yes your arm falls off how would it stay on if there was nothing there. Also think should take a butt load of dmg to take out entire torso section so the arm falls off. Have to take down armor then components in section then internal frame thats a lot to cut up. Should be easyer to take out arm on its own than to take out torso would keep ppl from takeing easy two for one shots unless a full lance was hammering one spot on your mech but then your boned anyway

[Yeach]

MaddMaxx, on 09 February 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Well then perhaps the Right and Left Torsos should be sub-divided such that there is an Upper and Lower, with the Lower carrying the Crit space and any Ammo bins required on that side of the Mech, with the upper carrying the Support and wiring structure for the arm itself, as well as any weapons mounted on it. Eazy peezy

Many have asked for MORE Hitboxes. The thread thought, although BT based, seems to reduce that #. (shrugs)

With some more thought, something like this would be an ideal solution.
With the TT rules, I can understand how the armor section may be large; ie after the armor has taken enough his, the entire armor section sheds off revealing the criticals sections inside.
The criticals inside the mech are more all over the place; in TT if you roll a consequtive hit to the side torso you are hitting the NEXT available critical; realistically if you shot at the same place you are hitting an already DESTROYED section and as mentioned before you are not going to damage it further.

The solution is a small hit box that attaches the arms to the torso.
If this area is hit, the arm will drop from the side torso and all weapons in the arm would hence be unusable.
Similary a small hit box could also be made connecting the legs to the CT; shooting off this part would separate the leg from the torso like MW2.

The hit boxes should be small similar to a head hit-box so it would be difficult but possible task to do.

Edited by Yeach, 12 February 2012 - 04:33 PM.

[Mourning Shadows]

This thread has degraded into a circle strafing match, round n round we go, till somone loses a leg and gets flanked...

[nubnub]

Keep it simple, loose your side torso you loose the arm. Loose your middle torso loose your head. Could you imagine the complaints about hacking etc. if sometimes the arm is/isn't lost??? Poll speaks for itself

[Valcoer]

ok here it is. its only my oppinion but I think it is a well qualified oppinion.

If destroyed means there is nothing left of the torso then you loose the arm. if destroyed means everything inside is damaged and non functional then you loose complete functionality of the arm as the circuits that control the function of the arm pass through the torso.
so either way you loose functionality of the arm however in the first case you have to pay to replace the arm. in the second case you only have to pay for replacing the torso its attatched to. I prefer the second case where the torso still exists but the contents are beyond useability and the arm does not fall off the mech and can still be used as armor to shield the remaining portions of the mech much like the leg falling off when destroyed in mpbt solaris meant you still had use of your weapons you werent destroyed and if a mech happened to walk into your available firing arc from the prone position you could still shoot him. unlike in mech warrior 4 where the leg remained attatched while damaged and destroyed the mech when destroyed.

[MaddMaxx]

nubnub, on 13 February 2012 - 03:46 AM, said:

Keep it simple, loose your side torso you loose the arm. Loose your middle torso loose your head. Could you imagine the complaints about hacking etc. if sometimes the arm is/isn't lost??? Poll speaks for itself

If we take the Centurion Prime. The K.I.S.S. principle leaves it with 2 Hit boxes worth hitting. LT/CT which then loses the corresponding RA/LA.

Assuming ammo is not carried in the arms, as you lose the appropriate Torso, so goes your ammo (wait? no matter, arm is done anyways) so put ammo on arm, no wait, Torso goes ammo goes with arm.

Ok lets put weapons in CT. Ok, but available crit space is limited (real limited). LRM in CT (so it is full) where does its ammo go. LT/RT/LA/RA

Where to put the AC10 (7crits) LT/RT/LA/RA? Lose LT/RT AC10 gone. Place in LA/RA Lose LA/RA/RT/LT, AC10 gone. Lasers? LT/RT/RA/LA? damn.

Please, someone design a Centurion that does not lose 50%+ of its fire power after losing a Torso section?

P.S. Just looked at the Centurion Art. RA AC/10, LT LRM10, CT 2x ML's. It becomes obvious why so many want unlimited Custom.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 13 February 2012 - 09:04 AM.

[TheBossHammer]

Mason Grimm, on 09 February 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

Well in the TT rules I believe the arm goes with the torso however for "video game" purposes they could do this.

Torso reduced to 0 = arm on that side nonfunctional but still attached
Torso reduced < 0 = arm and torso both gone, cored out and blown out

Tricky bit of planning to implement something that is both fun and functional.

This is awesome too. The only suggestion I would make is that there should be a threshold where the first case happens; say something like:

Torso reduced to X = arm on that side functional and still attached, but maybe would start swaying and be harder to aim?
Torso reduced to 0 or lower = arm and torso both gone, cored out and blown out

Where X is some small number, say like 5 (using the Mechwarrior 4 scale here, played Mechwarriors 2 and 3 before I was old enough to comprehend the math behind armor ). Otherwise the first case would barely ever happen, and wouldn't be that bad for the player at all. And again, given that the game is built on the bloody CryEngine3, I would assume that damage of this scale would blow off half of the Mech, so shots wouldn't bend into the center torso magically, it's just that there wouldn't really be a left/right torso to shoot at

In any case either version finally solves the god-awful MW4 issue of hitting a cored right/left torso killing the Mech, while simultaneously giving players a reason to keep shooting at the side torsos. Also, suddenly light Mechs don't die when an assault Mech alpha strikes their side torso and are useful in a fight that isn't 1v1 (because killing a Daishi with a bloody FireMoth by running circles around it is cheese and you all know it)

Edited by TheBossHammer, 13 February 2012 - 09:36 AM.

[SilentObserver]

Valcoer, on 13 February 2012 - 03:54 AM, said:

ok here it is. its only my oppinion but I think it is a well qualified oppinion.

...snip ...

Well you did put it in bold. So i'm convinced.