90 replies to this topic

[Fetladral]

When myomer snaps it does throw off the gyro till it can rebalance? take into account the new weights and proportions? not sure what term to use. many of the books it mentions pilots leaning forward or planting a foot forward when they are taking a lot of AC bullets to keep from being knowcked down or over though i'm not sure how that would be implemented into a game where there might be lag telling the mech to slow and "dig in" so it doesn't get knocked over. I know an atlas was overheated and shut down in one book don't remember which one and it was knocked over by AC fire because the pilot couldn't do any movements to counter it like leaning forward or planting the feet.

Edited by Fetladral, 26 March 2012 - 12:01 PM.

[Ezekial Karn]

Howlin Wolf, on 26 March 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

This sounds balanced. Hope its canon. I love the idea of lightning strikes on PPCs also.

Thanks Ive been playing Btech and mechwarrior tabletop for neigh on 18 years or more now and have been over that time developing balanced tech rules for my own games I have run. So looking at this and saying here is how you can do this and keep a balance isnt so hard for me. I just hope a Dev sees what I have said and takes it into consideration if they havent already thought of this themselves.

[Ezekial Karn]

Fetladral, on 26 March 2012 - 12:00 PM, said:

When myomer snaps it does throw off the gyro till it can rebalance? take into account the new weights and proportions? not sure what term to use. many of the books it mentions pilots leaning forward or planting a foot forward when they are taking a lot of AC bullets to keep from being knowcked down or over though i'm not sure how that would be implemented into a game where there might be lag telling the mech to slow and "dig in" so it doesn't get knocked over. I know an atlas was overheated and shut down in one book don't remember which one and it was knocked over by AC fire because the pilot couldn't do any movements to counter it like leaning forward or planting the feet.

In an instance like this it would be a piloting roll for taking to much fire in one round which is simulated by the mech being bounced around. Things like that can cause a pilot to loose controll and his mech could crash and topple. However in a Real time game it is a bit more difficult to simulate this so getting hit by a big shell sure is gonna jostle you but depending on how large the mech is should determine how much you get knocked around. This was the benifit of quad's they were extremely stable platforms for their weapons and thus gave a +2 to piloting rolls in table top. Quads also could stop and go hull down making them far more difficult to hit if they were in a cratered hex. The drawback was their limited firepower and space for equipment / weapons and the lack of the ability to torso twist.

The move the mech takes that you are talking about sounds much like a failed piloting roll as it stoped his forward movement the only thing is that he made his piloting roll to avoid taking falling damage. Thus he would have to make another pilot roll to get his mech out of its crouched position and moving again.

[Blaze32]

Duncan Jr Fischer, on 20 March 2012 - 12:24 AM, said:

I can't see why there should be any knockback from lasers unless they instantly vapor out considerable mass of armor, causing some imbalance (which is not so common for lasers), but there positively should be a knockback from kinetic weapons. Kinetic weapons impact should be stronger, I guess. PPC hit effect is similar to lasers (little to no knockback) but has to interfere with HUD and maybe poke a pilot's view inside the cockpit rather than shake the mech itself. That's my opinion.

did you see the video it made everything go fuzzy and wiggled the cockpit around remember it is a particle projection cannon it fires mass at your opponet. The words particle and cannon to me say it needs knockback who agrees.

[Insidious Johnson]

there will be both KB and KD. Just not in beta at the moment, so I'm told. Also, so there never needs to be anything else posted, ever, Everything will be in the game, just not right now in this part of beta.

[Fire for Effect]

Romeox, on 20 March 2012 - 12:23 AM, said:

I do not undersatnd why Lazzors should knockback your enemy. Lasers are beams of light resulting to melt the enemys armor because of the heat they produce. There s no kinetic energy involved which could knockback the enemy mech. Would you "knockback" when i ´d show you a lamp ?

If the lamp would remove a few tons of your weight dripping to the ground yes...

[Toshogu]

Gabriel Amarell, on 20 March 2012 - 12:05 AM, said:

Like many of you I’ve loaded up Mechwarrior 4 and been playing through it again: 1 because I like it, even with all its flaws it’s still a fun title, and 2 not as “training” per-se for MWO but as a way of getting back into mech piloting in general. While doing this I noticed something that I never noticed before, when your mech is being knocked around by enemy weapons fire it makes targeting really problematic. In MW4 it doesn’t seem to make any difference what kind of weapon it is, they all seem to have at least some degrees of knockback. Now, by knockback, I mean that being hit by a weapon causes your mech’s torso to turn and pitch away from where it was pointed prior to the weapons impact, consequently forcing you to readjust the angle to get the retackle back on target.

When I noticed how troublesome it was when used against me I decided to see if it might hamper the cpu generated opponents and sure enough it does. I loaded up Large X-Pulse lasers because they fire rapidly (2.25 sec recycle) and have decent damage per shot (7 dmg/shot) figuring the amount of damage might translate into how much knockback the weapon has. I took my Large X-Pulse toting Awesome for a spin to test my theory and the result was better than I had expected.

Set on chain fire with 4 of the weapons (and 24 heat sinks) I was able to pepper the enemies continuously and it interfered with their targeting significantly. The results got me thinking if I were to take a defensive role in MWO (assuming knockback is similar to MW 4) it might be worth it to load up weapons that fire rapidly and have decent knockback rather than going for the most “powerful” weapons.

It seems to me that knockback effect and the resultant interference with targeting might really be useful in a defensive role, and perhaps in the scout role, if the AC-2/AC-5 were relatively rapid fire with decent knockback they might really let a pilot utilizing them hamper the effectiveness of an opponent, and doing this might partially offset their glairing deficiencies. I would still argue that the AC-2/AC-5 need to be made smaller and lighter, or they need to fire more rapidly, but that’s another topic.

If Energy weapons (PPC not withstanding) had no knockback, and ballistic/missile weapons did, and if knockback truly interfered with targeting as much as it did in MW 4 it could add a defensive element to the game that I think would be great. I know Piranha has already announced knockback, but I for one hope that ballistic weapons really knock you around and make it hard to stay on target, I think it would add weight to some of the smaller weapons that are not traditionally very useful (small AC’s SRM-2, LRM-5?)

knockback occurs mostly with the bigger weapons. but you ended up with recoil as the trade off. But this is what allows for a mauler to pick apart an atlas. 2xlbx20 and you can keep the atlas rocking. Hit an atlas in the chest with both at the same time and @ an upward angle, you knock him on his ***.

[White Nitro]

knockback wise, laser are almost unoticeable, exept the larger ones. Only ppc seriously kick you hard beacause its a big bubble of heavy particule at super hight velocity.

Mech are so heavy that even machine gun seem to be just a nuisance more then a threat. As for balistic weapon goes, the higher the caliber, the higher the knockback, altho they seem to kick less then ppc.


Then. you also got the missiles, and they can not only do decent knockback, but doi cascade of knocback, the missile will hit the target in chain making it impossible for the other mech to aim for a relative long moment.

In past game, I could chain fire 2 set of SRM and keep my target missing, beacause I could fire constantly as SRM pods reload very fast.

[Fire and Salt]

People complaining about knock back breaking the game LOL.


First its a problem that everyone uses alpha strikes, next its a problem that everyone does the exact opposite and uses chainfire or damage over time.






I used to use a 4x cuac5 Thor. It would knock the hell outta people, and they would complain. Then I'd use alpha strikes to the ct and they'd complain...

Yet, few people used knockback effectively against me... Why? Its called cover, use it. When cover is available the alpha strike mech us going to have the advantage...

why? Step out for 1 shot then take cover. Now its your 40 point alpha strike vs the knockbackmechs 20... both have an equal chance of getting that first shot off, but if the alpha strike mech takes cover, then the knockbackmech's fast weapon reload is wasted.



Not to mention the fact that any non-alphastrike based design has the disadvantage of spreading the damage around...

Edited by Fire and Salt, 05 July 2012 - 06:27 AM.

[Fire and Salt]

Basically I think that people like to whine about any tactic that is used to kill them.


Failing to realize, of course, that if I didn't leg them, I would've just cored them.
Or, if I didn't knock them around, I would've just killed them faster by using an alpha strike design.
Or, if I didn't overheat them with flamers I would have just killed them outright using weps with more damage.




As in previous mw games, if 2 tactics are equally viable, I will always choose the one that is more likely to **** off the whiners.

Edited by Fire and Salt, 05 July 2012 - 06:25 AM.

[Antagonist]

CBA reading through all the posts at 2 AM, so here goes:

Getting hit by a laser would generate knockback.

A laser does damage by superheating and evaporating whatever it touches, be it armor, that PPC you won't ever fire again or that piece of exposed internal structure.

To make a long story short, these evaporated gases will apply a force on their surroundings - one side of which will be your mech. That is the cause for the knockback of lasers.

(Also, while photons don't have mass, they do have inertia, which means a big enough laser would even have noticeable recoil - and of course, a small bit of kinetic energy imparted on its target by the beam itself...)