205 replies to this topic

[Goombah]

Generally, I think most mechs would end up dealing as much damage to themselves as to their opponent in any general form of collision, several tons of metal slamming into more tons of metal is just going to leave a pile of crumpled scrap, like two cars driving headlong into each other. Outside of some form of specialized melee weaponry, thats hopefully cheap compared to guns considering its going to be beaten and broken every time you use it. An other thought is how they would be balanced with other weapons in a manner that makes the game fun while making the melee weapons also useful and fun, especially considering the enormous long range LRMS gauss and lasers have, would they really be practical in all but a handful of situations? Enough to bother programming, balancing and tweaking them to make them fair but usable? Something like my experience with Flamers in MW4, they work well, and are a lot of fun, but not really practical at all in too many situations, and rarely got used.
However, we are talking about giant 50 ton war machines running at full speed into other big metal things. Big metal things that big tend to knock other things over, like trees, buildings, tanks, other mechs. Anything that big could definitely push, stumble or knock over something else.
Perhaps in stead of strictly a different form to cause damage, when you could just as easily deal damage with a machine gun a laser, or really, a barrage missle from a miles away. Ramming, Clubbing with weapons (and probably breaking them) and Punching and Grabbing with mechs with articulated hands could be used to disable, knock over, hold down, or temporarily stun (in as much as being clobbered will throw off the direction your aiming). While in such a disadvantaged state, you or others could naturally take advantage of the situation, firing while your opponent is down, or giving someone else an opportunity to, or even saving someone else from being shot. If you let someone sneak up on you that badly, there should be a reprocussion, likewise you should have some advantage for getting into that range and blind siding someone.

A high mass mech ramming someone should knock them over, taking them a few seconds to stand back up.
Perhaps kicking out someones legs could do the same, or stumble or slow them, if not necessarily do a lot, if any, damage.
A mech with hands could potentially grab and hold an other mech, and even if it doesn't do any damage, your ally could shoot them while you're holding them down.
Clubbing an other mech with your auto cannon, even if it doesnt do any damage, would probably spin their torso, throw off the pilots aim, and lose any target lock a guided weapon might have. Not because the pilot is stunned, but because the machine is physically being moved.

I think something along these lines would let melee combat exist, without the necesitation to balance melee weapons with the predominantly long and mid range weaponry found in the game, would likely prevent melee from ever being over-powered, so no one will have to cry foul over instant kill backstabs or totally hax energy swords ruining the game, or on the other side of the coin being mostly if not entirely useless for the majority of the game, and at the same time give a more visceral feel to combat, and allow atlases to punt elementals and kick over jenners at the very least.

I shudder to think of light weight kamakazi viking mechs with no heatsinks or ranged weapons, optimized for speed and armor running around at 150/kph lopping off or crippling assault mech legs. It sounds stupid and would be completely suicidal in life, but if you CAN do it, people WILL do it in an online game, even if its just to **** people off or because its funny. We could end up seeing zergling rushes =P

[Stahlseele]

i think somebody on the CBT boards once built a light mech that could run through an atlas(physically move through) without taking too much damage, while the atlas would be basically in 2 halves afterwards . .

[Phades]

Goombah, on 05 November 2011 - 05:06 AM, said:

Generally, I think most mechs would end up dealing as much damage to themselves as to their opponent in any general form of collision, several tons of metal slamming into more tons of metal is just going to leave a pile of crumpled scrap, like two cars driving headlong into each other. Outside of some form of specialized melee weaponry, thats hopefully cheap compared to guns considering its going to be beaten and broken every time you use it. An other thought is how they would be balanced with other weapons in a manner that makes the game fun while making the melee weapons also useful and fun, especially considering the enormous long range LRMS gauss and lasers have, would they really be practical in all but a handful of situations? Enough to bother programming, balancing and tweaking them to make them fair but usable? Something like my experience with Flamers in MW4, they work well, and are a lot of fun, but not really practical at all in too many situations, and rarely got used.
However, we are talking about giant 50 ton war machines running at full speed into other big metal things. Big metal things that big tend to knock other things over, like trees, buildings, tanks, other mechs. Anything that big could definitely push, stumble or knock over something else.
Perhaps in stead of strictly a different form to cause damage, when you could just as easily deal damage with a machine gun a laser, or really, a barrage missle from a miles away. Ramming, Clubbing with weapons (and probably breaking them) and Punching and Grabbing with mechs with articulated hands could be used to disable, knock over, hold down, or temporarily stun (in as much as being clobbered will throw off the direction your aiming). While in such a disadvantaged state, you or others could naturally take advantage of the situation, firing while your opponent is down, or giving someone else an opportunity to, or even saving someone else from being shot. If you let someone sneak up on you that badly, there should be a reprocussion, likewise you should have some advantage for getting into that range and blind siding someone.

You left out DFA. And i think you are over reacting to a couple very specific instances of "oops, we didn't think of that".

But seriously, if an arm is hardened like if you were to put your hand in a sap glove and strike something like another person's head even in a metal helmet, i guarantee that the target of the attack will take some damage while your hand will take negligible damage. You gotta remember about issues such as pressure per square inch in order to determine the actual force and damage inflicted versus the tensile strength of the impacting force behind it. Your argument is akin to stating well I have a bad*** tank and your DU round is going to hurt its self more than it will my tank, which of course is totally silly. I mean hell, even regular machine guns do damage to the mechs and small arms fire from infantry, your armor is going to give way before the IS gives from the assailant. If the IS gave out on the assailant, which in turn causes catastrophic damage like you are implying, then no buildings could exist as they do in real life due to the amount of weight weighing down through a single line of force and even multiple lines of force.

I do agree though that some forms of attack, like charging and pushing should be more about knocking the opponent on the ground in order to reduce the number of guns able to fire for a period of time (think crowd control in rpg style games). DFA is like charging in a sense, but you are really hoping to hit head in the process. Kicks are about crushing the leg joints and permanently flooring them. And once floored you BBQ them with a flamer or other means.

[Kell Aset]

Brixx, on 05 November 2011 - 04:06 AM, said:

Stunning a mech? Maybe kicking him out of balance but nothing you wouldn´t achieve with a bunch of rockets aswell. But stunning in general... its a mech. And if the pilot resists the explosion of 20 rockets a little punch won´t stun him either.

Well, it worked in Front Mission games. In last one, Front Mission Evolved mostly melee weapons there can stun enemies(yet not always) tho ranged weapons also can but that is bit rare, maybe it is like that for good of the balance in game, to make it more fair for melee users? no idea.
Anyway I must say I so much adore to use melee weapons in multiplayer of FME, nothing is more fun than hitting big enemy mech with big brass knuckles, pilebunker or baton heh, food for the thought.

Edited by Kell Aset, 05 November 2011 - 08:50 AM.

[Phades]

Kell Aset, on 05 November 2011 - 08:44 AM, said:

Well, it worked in Front Mission games. In last one, Front Mission Evolved mostly melee weapons there can stun enemies(yet not always) tho ranged weapons also can but that is bit rare, maybe it is like that for good of the balance in game, to make it more fair for melee users? no idea.
Anyway I must say I so much adore to use melee weapons in multiplayer of FME, nothing is more fun than hitting big enemy mech with big brass knuckles, pilebunker or baton. heh, food for the thought.

The original table top had pilot consciousness as a factor, but it could be triggered by many different things. I think it would be hard to implement correctly and still be fun for the player. Knockdown, shut down, and legging for control purposes i am cool with. Blackout for the player randomly, I'm not so sure about.

[infinite xaer0]

@OP
none of those options. I only want to see charging and DFA.

[Charity]

I reckon it'd be awesome to smack someone in the cockpit with my autocannon, and then firing one off. point blank fire would pwn them c;

[Barsov]

Where is the "Ram" option? It must be some kind of mechs physical impact and collision system. Include DFA.

And yes... True clanners never go melee. )) If seriously never understand why I need a primitive hatched when I already have ER PPC? This is 3049 but not 3025. Moreover making melee weapons system just add more headache for devs. So my vote is "No melee weapons except rams and DFA".

[TheRulesLawyer]

Physicals should be in before the clans. Only freebirth scum would use them, right? I want to kick to force a PSR on the clanners and stomp them to death.

[ChargerIIC]

Definite vote for charging. One of my best memories was being allowed by my MPBT instructor to mount a CGR-1A1 against a lance of other recruits in lights. I crested a hill and blew the first mech with my charge and took a second out with my poplasers before they knew what was going on.

After that it was on..

[Pht]

Punch.

You don't fall on your face if you mess up, like you do with a kick.

Edited by Pht, 09 November 2011 - 06:54 PM.

[Damocles]

http://mwomercs.com/...bat-could-work/

[Dunwich Child]

stahlseele, on 03 November 2011 - 11:16 AM, said:

Because this:

This. I'm all about punching mechs in the face.

[Karl Streiger]

Prefer kicking it is always a good finishing move - to stomp on your fallen foe and it causes a PSR

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Where mechs have hands then the punch has always been a legitamate (IS) move, and less likely to cause balance problems than a kick. The problem is that it's difficult to implement in the game unless built in from the beginning and may well need extensive mod's to the game engine - it's like adding a whole new game on top of the existing one.

[driftrobot]

True a kick might be a bit risky for balance but it would be an interesting game mechanic.. Knock downs
enemy mech is going for the kick but you hit it high up with a heavy salvo which causes the enemy mech to fall over.

How about a stomp?
nothing like an Atlas putting its foot down on the tanks below

[John Dragon]

Is it just me or do melee attacks in video games tend to be op? The only thing that should be done with this i think is a melee attack as a finisher move. A mech is critical and knocked down, a finisher icon appears by the mech and you press the designated key and u stomp on him. Even that seems a little cheesy to me

[Zakatak]

Why is DFA not included in the poll?

Didn't you guys know that a Jenner can take out a Timber Wolf in a single strike?

[Lorebot]

Zakatak, on 11 November 2011 - 09:04 PM, said:

Why is DFA not included in the poll?

Didn't you guys know that a Jenner can take out a Timber Wolf in a single strike?

Honestly I'm not sure why it's not there, but we've gotten confirmation that rudimentary melee style attacks will be in the game. Only as a part of the physics engine though. Charging, Knockdowns, Death From Above, etc... will all function based upon the game's physics engine to provide basic physical attacks.

Sadly Melee weapons, punches, stomps, etc...will need to wait for future implementation, though I don't see a reason why we should all be quiet about it. The more we talk about it the more ideas get pitched and the more ways there are for the devs to choose from, and it'll remind them about how much we all want this to be in the game so they spend some time on in asap after launch.

I needs me an Axman or a Hatchetman before the Clans come knocking....

[Dragorath]

xdaikatanax, on 01 November 2011 - 05:43 PM, said:

Well, I've been a loooooong time fan, and I'd die happy if someone finally included melee combat in a MechWarrior game. Those fists/hatchets/etc on those 'mechs aren't just for show, and can really do some damage in the board game (try kicking a Jenner using an Atlas). Some of those with fully articulated hands can actually grasp things, exponentially increasing their effectiveness in the field. Even those without fully articulated hands could still bash things with weapon pods if necessary.

That having been said, what physical attack could you see using most often? Punch? Grasp? Stomp? I've put up a few, but there's likely more that I didn't think of. Also, I excluded DFA, since that's more or less already incorporated into previous games. I think a kick would be very effective, but the use of melee weapons a la Hatchetman would also be great.

I fully agree. Charge would be good for noobs which are crashing into an Atlas *muhahhaa* But it would be also nice for everyone. If your arms are gone, your weapons are destroyed, no back up and you can't flee... I don't want to be the playball than.