57 replies to this topic

[Orzorn]

Zakatak, on 13 March 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

Why don't we just make everything Hovermechs?

Idiots.

"Stop shooting my hover board! That's dishonorable!"

[MaddMaxx]

Zakatak, on 13 March 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

Why don't we just make everything Hovermechs?

Idiots.

LOL! Give the man/woman credit. At least he/she didn't wait until the Thread hit 6 pages...

Idiots indeed. LOL!

[Ranek Blackstone]

Heavier the limb, the less you get knocked about by enemy fire. The more mass you have, the harder it is to get you moving.

[SquareSphere]

Siilk, on 13 March 2012 - 10:15 AM, said:

... In other words, each option would be as appealing as other so it would be a pilot's decision which one to choose. It all would depend on his style of play and combat situation.

THANK YOU! I'm glad someone actually read my OP and understood what i was going for instead of bringing in their old rehashed ideas of "Legging good/bad"

[Wyzak]

if eough dynamic variables are influencing your ability to aim steadily and your crosshair is skittering around, you have options such as: slow to a crawl and get away from enemy fire so you can concentrate on a shot, or fire at the center of the opponents mass and hope that your aim will be deflected up towards the cockpit or down to the legs (or out to the weapons arrays.) Question is, will all those extras (recoil, knockback, running sway, overheating targeting computer causing reticle issues) be worth the computing/bandwidth overhead?

[EDMW CSN]

My stand on legging remains the same. If you sacrifice armor on ANYWHERE, just to squeeze another guns, heatsink or engine upgrade on the chassis, people will still shoot the weakest armored component first.

With MWO and a persisted online tracking, getting mechs crippled over and over again should have serious implications on your ingame wallet and encourage people to at least mount some armor on parts that you "might not need".

In MW4 when I see tarts with full alpha and their legs going red with just a blast from 3 medium lasers, you bet I am going to chip that thing right under you.


In the Mech Configuration, you have to gain something or lose something.

If you max out armor, please acknowledge you won't be as damaging as that glass cannon or as fast as that speedster.
if you max out cooling for alpha strikes, please acknowledge you are slightly under gun for your weight or have sacrifice a plating here and there to put more cooling.
If you max out the possible amount of weapons that you can safely carry, please acknowledge that you probably have razor thin armor on certain locations or lack sufficient cooling to keep up a steady stream of fire (alpha hide and cool off).

And people will exploit those weaknesses.

Edited by [EDMW]CSN, 13 March 2012 - 10:41 PM.

[Siilk]

You, people, get the wrong message here. No one wants to artificially eliminate legging. Legging should be in the game. But! It just shouldn't be an easiest way to disable a mech. Admit it, even with full leg armour, they are still weaker than CT and not that hard to hit as some people think they are. My opinion is legs should be neither invulnerable nor forbidden to shoot at. They just have to be as attractive to shoot at as any other mech part. Right now, CT(destruction) and legs(immobilizing) are most juicy targets. That's why I completely agree with SquareSphere as his suggestion would lower the attractiveness of shooting legs/CT simultaneously raising the benefits of shooting side torsos and arms. Legs still would be there to shoot at, they simply cease to be the most attractive target, alongside the CT.

I'm all for legging, I'm just opposed to both "we have to agree not to shoot legs, that's gaydishonourable" and "devs should make legs almost invulnerable, or everyone would shoot them". Both approaches are bad for the game as both are artificial and much less fun than actually making legs less attractive as a primary target without simply buffing them with "magic" armour.

To sum it all up:

* OP suggestion: the closer you shoot to the center of mass or ground anchor point, the less knockback you have. I.E.: arms=more shake, side torsos=less shake, CT or legs=(almost)no shake.

Perfectly logical(that's how it works in RL physics), makes arms and side torsos a bit more attractive to shoot at.

* My addition: Leg destruction is in no way fatal; mech should still be a threat, when it's legs are severed. I.E.: on leg gone(and fallen off, no eternal limping on immortal legs)=mech still can stand and somehow move around(try it yourself: bipedal creatures are perfectly capable of doing so), two legs gone=mech can orient itself upright, somehow turn itself around and maaaaaaaaaybe crawl as a turtle speed.

Again, perfectly logical + we have a lot of canon examples of mechs doing so. Makes legless mech a threat, turning leg destruction from "instant win" into "mech (semi)immobilized but still poses a threat", just as it supposed to be.

[Helmer]

I like the OP. Interesting idea, and works within game logic.

As long as its balanced correctly. As several other people pointed out , it would be unfortunate if you could never get a shot in due to the rocking effect of constant bombardment.

[Cochise]

Legging is legging because people leg because it is an effective tactic. I think MW4 handled this the best way regardless of whether it is outside canon or not, it just makes for better gameplay and at the end of the day, gameplay takes precedent over everything else.

Over at MWLL they don't want to implement the MW4 solution so you have people being BANNED from servers because they go after the legs FIRST. Whenever you have to start banning people because a viable tactic is not liked by the game population, that means something in the game needs to be fixed. Not a specific tactics and people be banned. That is called "broken". I hope MWO take a more creative path to solving this issue.

I like the MW4 solution, it's simple and effective and if you want to strip some armor off the legs to beef up something else, the choice is left up to the player to manage that area of vulnerability. The power to manage that should be with the player. If there are no options, they get frustrated as in MWLL.

[SnowDragon]

From the Q and A Blog:

"[DAVID] To destroy a BattleMech, you have to destroy the head, destroy the center torso, or destroy both legs. You, the MechWarrior, can never die."

We can be killed by destroying both legs. Not cool. Better I guess than dying to a single leg though...

Edited by SnowDragon, 14 March 2012 - 06:14 PM.

[Siilk]

Cochise, on 14 March 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Legging is legging because people leg because it is an effective tactic. I think MW4 handled this the best way regardless of whether it is outside canon or not, it just makes for better gameplay and at the end of the day, gameplay takes precedent over everything else.

MW4 solution is actually worst of all up to date as it's completely artificial. Gameplay balance was mediocre at best and all what they achieved was legs being more armoured than CT because of "magic" armour buffs, not to mention spontaneous mech explosion, when legs are destroyed.

Cochise, on 14 March 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Over at MWLL they don't want to implement the MW4 solution so you have people being BANNED from servers because they go after the legs FIRST. Whenever you have to start banning people because a viable tactic is not liked by the game population, that means something in the game needs to be fixed. Not a specific tactics and people be banned. That is called "broken". I hope MWO take a more creative path to solving this issue.

Server rules and bans are completely up to server owners, it's not under control of dev team in any way. As for MWLL solution itself, it's way better than what was done in MW4 as it's much more logical. It's not perfect, mind you, but it has a lot of potential.

Cochise, on 14 March 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

I like the MW4 solution, it's simple and effective and if you want to strip some armor off the legs to beef up something else, the choice is left up to the player to manage that area of vulnerability. The power to manage that should be with the player. If there are no options, they get frustrated as in MWLL.

Clearly, you're speaking about things you haver only vaguely knowledge. Not only that, but it seems that you haven't really read OP suggestion(or a thread for that matter). The suggestion was to make leg as appealing to attack as any other part of the mech, there was nothing about "banning legging" or "making them invulnerable".

[LordDeathStrike]

SnowDragon, on 14 March 2012 - 06:09 PM, said:

From the Q and A Blog:

"[DAVID] To destroy a BattleMech, you have to destroy the head, destroy the center torso, or destroy both legs. You, the MechWarrior, can never die."

We can be killed by destroying both legs. Not cool. Better I guess than dying to a single leg though...

if your armor is done right each leg has the same armor as the ct (unless you screwed with it, then its your own fault) so taking out 2 legs = killing the center 2x, now taking out 1 leg should radically cripple the mech speed wise (limping as it drags the broken leg barely able to move or stand) so thats a good tactic for capping maps where you dont wanna go toe to toe with that atlas but can get some shots off on his leg with long range fire pot shots so your lance mates can move in and finish him at their leisure. but at the same rate by the time you really mess that leg up, you could have been stealthy and shot him in the back twice to win, or wittled down his frontal torso.

hell personally im gonna use the zoom skill and aim for your neck area, if i get lucky ill hit your head, if i miss, it still hits the ct.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

But FD's designs don't have necks

[MaddMaxx]

LordDeathStrike, on 15 March 2012 - 01:27 AM, said:

if your armor is done right each leg has the same armor as the ct (unless you screwed with it, then its your own fault) so taking out 2 legs = killing the center 2x, now taking out 1 leg should radically cripple the mech speed wise (limping as it drags the broken leg barely able to move or stand) so thats a good tactic for capping maps where you dont wanna go toe to toe with that atlas but can get some shots off on his leg with long range fire pot shots so your lance mates can move in and finish him at their leisure. but at the same rate by the time you really mess that leg up, you could have been stealthy and shot him in the back twice to win, or wittled down his frontal torso.

hell personally im gonna use the zoom skill and aim for your neck area, if i get lucky ill hit your head, if i miss, it still hits the ct.

I believe a Leg has the same armor as a R/L Torso and not the CT. Tests done here to verify. 3025 era, 2nd Edition rule set selected.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 15 March 2012 - 05:40 AM.

[Mana211]

I'd like to see legging result in an immobile mech just like tracking a tank doesn't destroy it but does make it immobile.

I'm OK, if the mech falls down, or is just stuck in the current pose. Heck an immobile target shouldn't be too hard to finish off. Espescially if you have superior weapon range or superior speed.

[Solis Obscuri]

This really strikes me as a poorly conceived attempt to use one exploitable game mechanic that doesn't exist yet (knock/rolling) to counter another exploitable mechanic that doesn't exist yet (EZmode legging), that resulted in another game due to exploiting the 'mechlab to min/max weapons loadouts (stripping leg armor).

That isn't intended as a dig, it's just my perception of a fundamental problem with the assumption. Especially since it appears the devs have no intent to make a 'mech with one damaged leg unusable, though it may be rendered immobile:

Bryan Ekman, on 15 March 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

We have two test cases.

• Destroy and remove the limp a la arms. (mech disabled)
  
• Cripple and make the mech limp. (mech intact)

We haven't decided which yet.

The combined "stock" armor and structure of both of 'mech's legs should be adequate if it's unmodified, anyway - generally it will exceed the total frontal armor of the all three torso sections, even on 'mechs with relatively poor leg armor like the QKD-4G, WHM-6R, and VTR-9B (And I never understood the Victor's armor layout - why such terrible coverage on the limbs for an assault 'mech designed for DFA maneuvers which has almost all its weapons tonnage devoted to extended close fire support with an arm-mounted AC/20?)

[Pht]

Thomas Hogarth, on 13 March 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

On legging, I cautiously agree. The problem with legging doesn't reside with legging, but rather the frailty of the HTAL layout of armor borrowed from TT when combined with fire with a degree of accuracy not envisioned when the HTAL layout was created. With the current setup of MWO, it looks like this has been moderately negated, but we will see.

Yep. If the balance of the parent system isn't followed - it works as a system, pull any one part out and the rest falls down on itself - yeah ... there's nasty consequences.

Quote

On knock/recoil, I couldn't disagree less. Modern tanks

Battlemechs aren't modern tanks... this is a false comparison... in colloquial terms, apples to oranges.

Quote

Leaving modern-day comparisons out of it and looking at the issue from a strictly game viewpoint, it would be incredibly immersion breaking to not have large weapons knock you about a bit.

"You" the pilot, or "you" your mech? Yes, pilots react to incoming fire; they get rattled and jostled and such, your vision can blur... all that jazz, because their mass is so much less than the mass of their mech's mass. KE that would just distribute through your mech "hits" you and you get vibrated and pushed against the command chair and restraints - but at the level of the 'mech's mass ... it's negligble.

"You" the mech? ... there is no "knock" reaction to incoming weapons fire that affects the 'mech such that it's aim is thrown off.

Citing the 20 point of damage rule doesn't work, because that rule is in reference to losing a lot of armor very quickly, causing an unbalance in the same way that cutting a heavy backpack of of someone instantly would. It doesn't represent getting knocked around - it represents your mech falling away from the large amount of weight it just lost nearly instantly.

Quote

It factors into accuracy-ruining mechanic, and it just feels right.

It only "feels right" because there are still lingering expectations driven from FPS gameplay that leech into the expectations in an armored combat sim game set in the BTUniverse.

Quote

However, there is a piloting modifier if you take a relatively low amount of damage(20pts) wherein you might fall.

20 points of damage in TT is not relatively low. 20 points of damage is a LOT in relation to armor values and what kind of damage that 20 points can do to a mech.

... and while the novels don't always get their stuff straight, the majority don't ever have knock that affects a mechs ability to aim. The kind of KE required to overcome mech grade armor, weapons systems, gyro systems, and pilot-neurohelmet interface systems requires enough incoming fire to instantly slag any mech.

Jehan, on 13 March 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

MW4 already managed to find a good enough solution for the legging problems.

The mw4 system was totally irrational in relation to legging.

It literally had mechs limping around on ghost legs... legs that were not there somehow managed to still hold mechs up.

We might as well propose that the BTU makes all incoming weapons fire warp and go around legs... it makes just as much sense.

[Caballo]

MaddMaxx, on 13 March 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

Legging was made as bad as many remember as much due to the Full Mech Lab abilities of those games. When you hit Heavy weight classes and Mega pinpoint damage output took legs out with 2-3 shots. Cripple with the first, kill with the next 1-2. Hopefully the MWO weapons tracking influence will help alleviate some of that.

First time i agree with this guy.

Anyway, as long as lasers need to be aimed directly at the same point for an amount of time to make the full damage in this iteration, the problem is already minimized. (that leads me to think about a large laser cutting an arm like a knife through butter )

Plus i like the idea of different kickback effect for different points hitted with inertial weapons. it's got a lot of sense.

Edited by Caballo, 15 March 2012 - 05:12 PM.

[Strum Wealh]

Pht, on 15 March 2012 - 04:55 PM, said:

"You" the pilot, or "you" your mech? Yes, pilots react to incoming fire; they get rattled and jostled and such, your vision can blur... all that jazz, because their mass is so much less than the mass of their mech's mass. KE that would just distribute through your mech "hits" you and you get vibrated and pushed against the command chair and restraints - but at the level of the 'mech's mass ... it's negligble.

"You" the mech? ... there is no "knock" reaction to incoming weapons fire that affects the 'mech such that it's aim is thrown off.

Citing the 20 point of damage rule doesn't work, because that rule is in reference to losing a lot of armor very quickly, causing an unbalance in the same way that cutting a heavy backpack of of someone instantly would. It doesn't represent getting knocked around - it represents your mech falling away from the large amount of weight it just lost nearly instantly.

-----

It only "feels right" because there are still lingering expectations driven from FPS gameplay that leech into the expectations in an armored combat sim game set in the BTUniverse.

-----

20 points of damage in TT is not relatively low. 20 points of damage is a LOT in relation to armor values and what kind of damage that 20 points can do to a mech.

... and while the novels don't always get their stuff straight, the majority don't ever have knock that affects a mechs ability to aim. The kind of KE required to overcome mech grade armor, weapons systems, gyro systems, and pilot-neurohelmet interface systems requires enough incoming fire to instantly slag any mech.

There is also the issue of physics, specifically conservation of momentum and kinetic energy.

Take, for example, a Gauss Rifle round fired from a Yellow Jacket gunship.

We know both the projectile mass and the muzzle velocity - 125 kg (1/8 of one metric ton) and 748.638 m/s (Mach 2.2), respectively.

Momentum of Gauss Rifle Slug: p = m*v = (125)*(748.638) = 93,579.80 Newton-seconds

Assuming the target is a 20-ton (20,000 kg) light 'Mech:
v_mech = (p_gauss)/(m_mech) = (93,579.80)/(20,000) = 4.68 m/s = 16.85 kph
That is, a stationary 20-ton 'Mech in a frictionless or very-low-friction environment (e.g. on ice) would be hit with enough force to send it backward at as much as ~17 kph, and a 20-ton 'Mech running directly at the firing platform and being hit head-on by the Gauss Rifle slug would have its speed reduced by as much as ~17 kph.


Assuming the target is a 100-ton (100,000 kg) assault 'Mech:
v_mech = (p_gauss)/(m_mech) = (93,579.80)/(100,000) = 0.94 m/s = 3.38 kph
That is, a stationary 100-ton 'Mech in a frictionless or very-low-friction environment (e.g. on ice) would be hit with enough force to send it backward at as much as ~3 kph, and a 100-ton 'Mech running directly at the firing platform and being hit head-on by the Gauss Rifle slug would have its speed reduced by as much as ~3 kph.

Though, given that 'Mech armor is ablative, a fair amount of energy would be absorbed by the shattered material and the momentum effect may be lessened.

However:
Kinetic Energy of Gauss Rigle Slug: KE = 0.5*m*(v^2) = (0.5)*(125)*((748.638)^2) = 35028678.44 Joules = 35.03 Megajoules
As a point of reference, "one megajoule (MJ) is equal to one million (10^6) joules, or approximately the kinetic energy of a one-metric-ton (1000 kg, 2204 lbs) vehicle moving at 160 km/h (100 mph)".

Still, 'Mechs (lighter machines more-so than heavier ones) are likely going to react (see "knockback") when something like that hits it.
And then there is also the loss of the armor material.

Moreover, there is the recoil on the attacking platform from actually firing such a weapon...

[Pht]

Strum Wealh, on 15 March 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

There is also the issue of physics, specifically conservation of momentum and kinetic energy.

If you're going to appeal to modern physics (which is more apples to oranges) ... than if mechs fired upon took knock, the mechs that fired upon them would take even more KE in recoil; which they don't.

Nor do we have a way for accounting for the capability of the 'mechs gyro systems, or the fact that 'mechs actually change stance to not fall over (they lean into oncoming fire, for example), and there's no way to calculate the ultimate capabilities of the neurohelmet interface.

That line of reasoning is a loosing game.

It really boils down to, do we respect the lore and the BTUniverse, or do we disrespect it for some irrational feeling of "what's fun for me?"

I can tell you, MW as a video game genre would never had been made if someone who really understood what it would be like to be a mechwarrior didn't think that it was a cool thing.