193 replies to this topic

[Yeach]

Roland, on 05 June 2012 - 08:02 PM, said:

In many cases, putting armor into arms, even if they don't carry weapons, has value because those arms can be effectively used as shields.

Good pilots in mechwarrior didn't go down through a single armor panel... You'd continually twist your torso to expose undamaged panels to the enemy fire, hiding your damaged section while your weapons recycled. Thus, arms could help provide shielding for your torso. If you didn't put any armor in them, they'd only soak one shot. If they had full armor, they could soak a number of shots that would otherwise hit your torso panels.

It depended on the geometry of the chassis, and the type of fighting you were planning on doing, but it wasn't simply the case that it was always the best move to strip all your armor off of an arm just because it wasn't carrying weapons.

The Cicadcada has the same amount of armor as a Commando and a Jenner 64 points (I think)
How many shots do you think a Ciccada arms can soak?
And again how big are the Ciccada's arms?

But yes in general I agree with you about arms soaking damage; I did that all the time in Mechwarrior3 playing with a Cauldron-Born setup.
And for the upcoming Centurion, I am thinking I when moving into battle I would rotate the left arm to absorb incoming fire ie using that nice arm shield.

[Renan Ruivo]

Belisarius1, on 19 April 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

[...] 'mechs with 0 armour on an unused limb in MW4 was stupid, but it's also a forest-for-the-trees kind of issue.[...]

Oh?! Why was it stupid?

If i created a loadout that does not uses any slots on one of the arms, why should i be forced to waste tonnage on that arm?

Here's a better question. Considering MWO Mechlab will show all the parts related to the limb's inner working (actuators and whatnot) why not completely remove the arm if you're not going ot use it?


Actually this question, i believe, deserves its own thread since it detracts from the topic at hand ...

Edited by Renan Ruivo, 05 June 2012 - 08:12 PM.

[Tyzh]

Renan Ruivo, on 05 June 2012 - 08:11 PM, said:

Oh?! Why was it stupid?

If i created a loadout that does not uses any slots on one of the arms, why should i be forced to waste tonnage on that arm?

Because in reality letting the arm get blown off would never be beneficial. That sort of shenanigans is cheesy and detracts from the simulation feel of the game. (Ergo, stupid.)

[Renan Ruivo]

Tyzh, on 05 June 2012 - 08:21 PM, said:

Because in reality letting the arm get blown off would never be beneficial. That sort of shenanigans is cheesy and detracts from the simulation feel of the game. (Ergo, stupid.)

Which brings me to the question as to why we can't be allowed to outright remove the appendage we do not want. Some here say that it can be used as a shield. That is true, however if its a tight loadout i might wish to sacrifice that for something else.


Having a glass arm might be stupid, yes, however I don't see how being able to remove an arm breaks immersion.

[Roland]

Yeach, on 05 June 2012 - 08:09 PM, said:

The Cicadcada has the same amount of armor as a Commando and a Jenner 64 points (I think)
How many shots do you think a Ciccada arms can soak?
And again how big are the Ciccada's arms?

If the arm contains a trivial amount of armor, then the point is kind of moot, and it's silly to try and prevent someone from stripping that trivial amount of armor off of that arm if they want to.

Ultimately, if someone wants to make some crazy gimmick build, I say let them... that was one of the most fun parts of mechwarrior.

I remember in one planetary assault with AK, we had been beating them up pretty bad with a lance of primarilly infighting mechs, with a core of really tough bushwackers.

So they show up on the field with a bunch of uziels... generally, a pretty weak mech, especially compared to a bushwacker in any kind of prolonged engagement. Huge side torsos the size of a barn.

Once engagement started, one of these things jumps over me, and hits me with an alpha of two ERLL, and a bunch of streaks... And I die. Instantly.

See, the bushwacker was really tough, but from ABOVE, it wasn't too hard to get a headshot. The cockpit was actually pretty big from that angle. It just wasn't usually an angle you ever took fire from.

AK had made a mech SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to kill our bushwackers. See, it hit with the ERLLs, which defeated the 1 hit kill protection on the head. The CSTRKS then followed, and since they were on the same firing group, they'd hit the same location for the most part... bam.. instant kill. Not really super effective against most mechs, but quite effective against the bushwacker.

They killed at least two of us before we realized what they had come up with, and that they were oneshotting us.

Forced us to totally redesign the lance for the next drop.. Was a brilliant move, and illustrated some of the awesome tactical gameplay and back-and-forth that was enabled by allowing folks to customize their mechs.

[PANZERBUNNY]

Renan Ruivo, on 05 June 2012 - 08:24 PM, said:

Which brings me to the question as to why we can't be allowed to outright remove the appendage we do not want. Some here say that it can be used as a shield. That is true, however if its a tight loadout i might wish to sacrifice that for something else.


Having a glass arm might be stupid, yes, however I don't see how being able to remove an arm breaks immersion.

From a game standpoint your avatar has hit boxes. From a lore point of view an armless Atlas running around on purpose would look stupid.

[Renan Ruivo]

PANZERBUNNY, on 05 June 2012 - 08:26 PM, said:

From a game standpoint your avatar has hit boxes. From a lore point of view an armless Atlas running around on purpose would look stupid.

The Longbow looks stupid.

Looking stupid != being functional. If i can create a functional loadout for an Atlas, to fulfill a specific role then you can call it stupid all you want. It will get the job done and will have the extra of causing my enemy to underestimate me.

Also, from a game standpoint, not all 'mechs have arm hitboxes. Removal of an arm would also cause that hitbox to be removed.

[Davers]

In TT this issue was handled through damage transfer. That way if you didn't armour your limbs then they would very quickly be shot away and damage would then be applied to your L/R torso. Since there is no damage transfer in MWO having unarmoured locations would seem like a great way to save weight, no matter how unrealistic that would be.

I would think they would deal with it kinda like they do ammo. I can have a machine gun in my head, and carry the ammo in my legs. It doesn't matter where I put it, the guns can use them, and all the guns (if I had multiple MGs) would draw from the same pool of ammo.

Maybe they should do something similar with armour. No matter where it is located on the mech's critical spaces, it all adds up to a pool that is distrubuted throughout the mech. The actual percentages of what went where would be by chassis- Jenners would not have the same percentage of armour going to an arm that a Commando would.

Either way, I am sure this whole discussion came up very early on in developement. Or maybe they are playtesting this right now? Either way I am sure there will be a good fix for this by the time we get to play.

Davers, on 05 June 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

In TT this issue was handled through damage transfer. That way if you didn't armour your limbs then they would very quickly be shot away and damage would then be applied to your L/R torso. Since there is no damage transfer in MWO having unarmoured locations would seem like a great way to save weight, no matter how unrealistic that would be.

I would think they would deal with it kinda like they do ammo. I can have a machine gun in my head, and carry the ammo in my legs. It doesn't matter where I put it, the guns can use them, and all the guns (if I had multiple MGs) would draw from the same pool of ammo.

Maybe they should do something similar with armour. No matter where it is located on the mech's critical spaces, it all adds up to a pool that is distrubuted throughout the mech. The actual percentages of what went where would be by chassis- Jenners would not have the same percentage of armour going to an arm that a Commando would.

Either way, I am sure this whole discussion came up very early on in developement. Or maybe they are playtesting this right now? Either way I am sure there will be a good fix for this by the time we get to play.

Wow, I said 'either way' twice in a row! What would my teachers say!

[Yeach]

Roland, on 05 June 2012 - 08:25 PM, said:

If the arm contains a trivial amount of armor, then the point is kind of moot, and it's silly to try and prevent someone from stripping that trivial amount of armor off of that arm if they want to.

Why? Mechs should have at least SOME armor on their arms... i would hope.

Looked it up; the Ciccada has 4pts of arm armor and 6 pts internal structure; torso has 9 pts (f/r armor) but can max out at 20 pts.

Roland, on 05 June 2012 - 08:25 PM, said:

Ultimately, if someone wants to make some crazy gimmick build, I say let them... that was one of the most fun parts of mechwarrior.

I remember in one planetary assault with AK, we had been beating them up pretty bad with a lance of primarilly infighting mechs, with a core of really tough bushwackers.

So they show up on the field with a bunch of uziels... generally, a pretty weak mech, especially compared to a bushwacker in any kind of prolonged engagement. Huge side torsos the size of a barn.

Once engagement started, one of these things jumps over me, and hits me with an alpha of two ERLL, and a bunch of streaks... And I die. Instantly.

See, the bushwacker was really tough, but from ABOVE, it wasn't too hard to get a headshot. The cockpit was actually pretty big from that angle. It just wasn't usually an angle you ever took fire from.

AK had made a mech SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to kill our bushwackers. See, it hit with the ERLLs, which defeated the 1 hit kill protection on the head. The CSTRKS then followed, and since they were on the same firing group, they'd hit the same location for the most part... bam.. instant kill. Not really super effective against most mechs, but quite effective against the bushwacker.

They killed at least two of us before we realized what they had come up with, and that they were oneshotting us.

Forced us to totally redesign the lance for the next drop.. Was a brilliant move, and illustrated some of the awesome tactical gameplay and back-and-forth that was enabled by allowing folks to customize their mechs.

This thread is not against customization or tactics but nice story.

Edited by Yeach, 05 June 2012 - 09:35 PM.

[DrMarijuana]

KInda like Chrome hounds

[Shandiir]

MinMaxing should be very limited as this is the Inner Sphere. Once Clan Mechs com in then that should be a large change.

[Furniture]

Personally, I don't care if people minmax their customized designs. It's inevitable. I may personally use stock designs, but I won't cry if somebody turns their mech into some sort of missile/laser/PPC boat and kills me. The best solution for people who are worried about people abusing the mechlab in a way that is unlike the canon mechs is to simply offer some sort of "hardcore" gametype where only the stock variants can be used. They had this option in previous Mechwarrior games. I seem to remember in MW3 there being an option to turn off customization in a MP match.

I think that it is fine to have a mode like that for tournaments, or for the people who are really into the lore, and want to be fighting a DRG-1N or 1G Dragon, and not Frankenmech #21245. Just having the option won't hurt anybody, and it will allow both opinion camps to play in their personal ideal conditions. Everybody wins.

[Renan Ruivo]

In 9 pages i don't know if this specific point has been discussed or not, but the problem with "min/maxing" are not what the players can do but rather how balanced everything is. If the game is balanced, min/maxing won't affect anything because it will be a matter of personal choice.

However if the game is unbalanced, then "min/maxing" will mean that, for instance, there is only ONE way to properly load a Jenner, and no point in using different loadouts or even different light 'mechs. Because the Jenner has been min/maxed and its the king of the hill when it comes to scouting.


Its not the player's fault, its the game designer's for not predicting how the player would use the Jenner.


The same thing has happened on EVE Online with "supercapital ships". The devs simply assumed that the extreme cost of building one (over US$2.000,00 in RL cash to build a Titan class ship) would prevent the players from hoarding them. So they gave the Titans an extremely effective AoE weapon that would cause the ship to be stuck in the system and unable to fire said weapon again for 30 minutes.

One year and a half later one alliance had dozens and dozens of Titan class ships, and they would jump one in, apply AoE, warp off, jump another, apply more AoE, warp off, rinse and repeat till everything is dead. From that point on, it didn't matter all the other things that a Titan could do. The sole point of having Titans was so that you fit them for quick deployment and AoE damage, which could decimate battlefields with little to no effort. They were min/maxed in a way that the devs did not deemed possible.

[Suicidal Idiot]

Cruxshadow, on 29 May 2012 - 10:33 AM, said:

What is the difference between min/maxing and optimization?

Optimization is when you carefully and prudently analyze what you have, what you will face, and what you wish you had last time your butt got kicked. Then you modify to suit your playstyle and your opponent's expected playstyle, so that you can become an effective member of your team.

Min/maxing is when your evil opponent optimizes.

[Suicidal Idiot]

LordDeathStrike, on 29 May 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

actually ild be wearing armor on my limbs too, but thats cause i dont wanna be a limbless torso if an IED goes off next to me. /sarcasm pwns

Asked your exact question to a guy who has spent a lot of time over in IED country. 130° heat means that you can only carry so much. Also remember, whoever runs slowest from cover to cover in a fire zone is dead.

This discussion actually wasn't even about armoring limbs, it was after I offered to make him armor to cover his GROIN. He replies that he'd already sprung for, and wears, dragon skin



and he couldn't afford to be slowed down by any more weight.

That coming from a 230 lb man who runs 50 mile mountain ultrathons, and is very attached to the equipment in his groin. Also note that the Dragon Skin vest in the video doesn't have a groin flap either. I don't understand it, but I've never spent time dodging bullets.

[Zerstorer Stallin]

So after viewing the video of the mech lab you are going to be able to custom make mechs. Its a done deal. I think with laser weapons doing a DOT like damage, and the AC/missle weapons having a chance to knock over mechs it might fix alot of the problems you saw in past games that did lead to laser boating. People are going to look for the "best" load outs. Its going to happen. We can only hope that MWO strives to make all weapon types viable.

[errorabbit]

PANZERBUNNY, on 05 June 2012 - 08:26 PM, said:

From a game standpoint your avatar has hit boxes. From a lore point of view an armless Atlas running around on purpose would look stupid.

There are a lot of canon mechs with an asymmetric design, there are a lot of canon mechs without real humanoid arms. I can't see what is so stupid about an armless Atlas or a a one-armed one or anything like that from a design/canon perspective.

From the game standpoint: As far as I got it, you can shoot off arms in MWO, and they will fly away. I would be surprised and disappointed if I could still hit the arm hitbox and make damage to the mech if its just flown off. I would be equally disappointed if my shots wouldn't travel through the destroyed arm hitbox (where the arm was before) and hit something behind it.
So I would guess they already have the capability implemented that you can just take off the arm and arm hitbox.
It wouldn't be a giant stretch to implement taking the arm off in mechlab.

I still don't expect it being made possible, but it'd be cool IMO.

[Meth0s]

Mix/Maxing is a part of putting together the best team possible. As for things such as stripping armor, sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Novacat's left torso in MW4 often had half of its armor (or more) stripped by the top players, as people rarely killed a novacat through anything other than the CT (it was just so easy to hit form back or front). And if it for some reason got hit, then you just guarded it. Leg armor was regularly stripped because people didn't expect to get hit. This is why good teams often would check the legs of tehir opponents. You leg them a couple times, and they start adding armor to their legs which means less heat sinks/weapons/speed/ammo/electronics. Then you just checked them every once in a while to keep them honest.

Sometimes you would strip away arm armor, because nothing was in them, and you really needed that tonnage. Most thanatos light gauss players would strip that right arm down to .2 or so (this way it tended to last two small shots). Head armor was usually reduced to .1, rear armor was reduced to .1 (unless you were brawling).

[Asmudius Heng]

Min-Maxing will always exist in any competitive game.

It is the developers job to make sure the game has enough balance and counter tactics to maximise the variety of game play styles and tactics that can be viably used.

With a game with so many weapons and mechs and maps and so forth this will be challenging, but the idea is that the spirit of the tabletop game should be taken into account so that is is at least somewhat reflected in the computer game.

I am a min-maxer i guess because i play for fun, but also to win.

However I hate it when a game is so dominated by a few weapons or designs or tactics that there is no challenge or variety ... for the sake of the longevity of this game the Devs gotta get it right - it is also in their best interests to continued payment from players. Players LEAVE games which become stale ...

Anyway probably all been said - blah blah blah ... I am guessing the Devs are clever enough at LEAST to know about the implications of players leaving en masse from a F2P title so am sure they will get it mostly right.

... oh and guess what. If they get it wrong it is easy to patch things and adjust based on comprehensive data they will be tracking in great detail.

[Roland]

Suicidal *****, on 05 June 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

Optimization is when you carefully and prudently analyze what you have, what you will face, and what you wish you had last time your butt got kicked. Then you modify to suit your playstyle and your opponent's expected playstyle, so that you can become an effective member of your team.

Min/maxing is when your evil opponent optimizes.

This sums it up perfectly.
There's really no reason for anyone to try and prevent the customization that is being described in this thread, other than certain posters seemingly fear that it will negate their own customizations somehow.