193 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

infinite xÆr0, on 20 April 2012 - 12:52 PM, said:

there's a very simple way to prevent ppl from stripping out armor on arms that don't have any weapons, and that's to make those arms useful for other things, such as picking up objects (relevant to the victory conditions of a game type), or melee combat, or something else even. Other than that, min/maxing armor or engine size was NEVER a problem in previous MW games; weapon boats were always the persistent issue. However, now that you can't boat in this game, there's going to be much less of a problem with ppl min/maxing damage output.. that, and whatever slight armor boost players do get from redistributing it asymmetrically, is going to offer such little advantage that it's probably not even going to be noticeable in-game.

Not sure if you saw my previous post but min/maxing armor for engines was a huge problem in MW4, resulting in the typical speed of a medium 'mech brawler (including ones carrying an LBX/20 and LBX/10!) exceeding 105kph all of the time. Anything under 95kph was considered "really slow" for mediums. This changes the pace of the game greatly and pretty much tears all CBT style tactics straight out of it. I also don't see this being a problem at all in MWO, as it sounds like they've already solved the problem.

Weapon "boating" on the other hand is honestly a silly complaint. The bottom line is unlike table top, in a sim environment you want weapons that mesh well together. i.e. PPCs and Gauss have worked good in previous games; or Gauss and Lasers, etc. You tend to want to limit your design to 2 types of weapons if you can help it (or even 1) purely so that all the shots lead at the same speed, fire in the same way, etc. Sometimes this can include long/close range weapons - for example if I have 4 medium lasers on a third group on a 'mech centered around large lasers, I can use them when required, firing with the Large Lasers in a similar fashion.

For example taking a AC/10, Large Laser, SRM2 and LRM5 is going to leave you with a terrible 'mech. The AC needs lead time, the Large Laser doesn't, the SRM2s needs wildly different lead time and the LRM5 needs lock. It's a mess to pilot and vastly overly complicated and if you don't mod it to something far more direct in mechlab, I cannot possibly blame that on some "boating" boogeyman but rather a small crowd that wants horrendous designs to be effective purely because "they worked on Table Top."*

* I'd argue even then matching weapons are better; less about lead and lock type and more about having the same optimal range.

Edited by Victor Morson, 20 April 2012 - 01:04 PM.

[Xaks]

Wait, Wait.

Victor, so "min/maxing" is bad when others do it to take advantage of game mechanics and / or terrain by making medium mechs too fast.

But its OK for you run matching weapon groups, also taking advantage of weapon mechanics and network lag to match range and firing characteristics of weapon types?

Gotcha.

What was that 50-ish ton clan mech that looked like a heavy-lift Sikorsky helicopter chassis and like 11 ER medium lasers? You'll be rolling in one of those now, I guess?

[Rejarial Galatan]

Vexgrave Lars, on 19 April 2012 - 07:56 PM, said:

sotta say it just because AFBT and the AETC are in my city. GO USAF!

[Yeach]

First I want to apologize for making such a vague subject.
Second I am not against min/maxing from occuring; (see next point)

Third

Yeach, on 19 April 2012 - 05:34 PM, said:

Specifically what should be allowed to be min-max
ie Armor, Weapons/loadout, Engine.

Now in regards to

Yeach, on 19 April 2012 - 05:34 PM, said:

I'll start off with what I percieve as min-maxing that IMO should be taken out of MWO that was allowed in previous mechwarrior games.
"armor points could be adjusted so one arm could have less armor points than the other arm"

This allowed micro-management of min/maxing that could protect a percieved strong right arm (with max right arm armor) and reduce the armor to (or almost) zero for the "useless/ cannon fodder" left arm.

IMO when doing armor allocation, you should not be allowed this and should have "balance" armor loadout.

The reason I don't want this to possible has been somewhat answered in latter posts
Specifically as they related to what I would describe as lore and spirit of Battletech;

errorabbit, on 20 April 2012 - 07:47 AM, said:

Rather than being able to reduce an arms armor to zero, I'd have you remove the arm entirely. No mock target factor and it makes more sense from a fluff point of you... if you get everything of worth out of that arm, don't want to armor it, why would you even put those myomers and stuff on your mech to be blown up in virtually every battle?

Nick Makiaveli, on 20 April 2012 - 08:42 AM, said:

While I agree with your sentiment, I think the issue some of us have is there is a difference between min/maxing and munchkinism.
Tweaking is one thing. IE sacrificing some speed for DPS or vice versa. The examples of basically stripping an arm or torso of armor etc is using the weak points of the rules system.

For example, stripping the arm of armor. So basically you are just taking off the arm before battle. If the game allowed it, people would just completely remove it to save even more weight. That works for MWO since the only use for a mech is to fight. But in the universe you might need that arm to help drag a damaged ally to cover. Or help load a salvaged mech onto a carrier for transport back to base. In other words, out of combat uses. Sure this is immersion/RP/story stuff, and some people care nothing for it, but then why even bother naming the mechs? Having hard points? Might as well play Robot Warriors and just make up anything you can dream of. Not knocking the game, I actually own the original book, but point is it isn't any where as sophisticated as BT and doesn't have a serious (ok semi-serious) sense of physics and the real world behind it.
Wow.....went completely /nerd rant there didn't I?

infinite xÆr0, on 20 April 2012 - 12:52 PM, said:

there's a very simple way to prevent ppl from stripping out armor on arms that don't have any weapons, and that's to make those arms useful for other things, such as picking up objects (relevant to the victory conditions of a game type), or melee combat, or something else even. Other than that, min/maxing armor or engine size was NEVER a problem in previous MW games;

I agree that min/maxing exists and will always exists; however I do want some items to be restricted/limited so that what I described above IN MY OPINION, goes against the spirit of Battletech;
which is leaving an arm with zero or one-point of armor.

I do want gameplay to reflect the percieve ideals in Battletech just not some flaw in the Battletech TT system (again IMO).

In related note for min/maxing this has been limited for weapons and we see this limiting factor as hardpoints

(more to add later)

[Rejarial Galatan]

Hey Yeach, way I see this is if I have a mech that has NOTHING of offensive value in it such as an arm that is nothing more than a limb with some armor, I am not going to fuss over adding armor to it, and in fact, I am most likely going to strip that arm down to a skin over the hardware inside it, actuators and structure, but otherwise, not worry if I lose the dumb thing. I have a better use of the weight the armor in the useless limb for example in other places like the other arm WITH offensive capability. Why force the rest of us to waste space when we can find more efficient use of the weight in question in my example?

[EDMW CSN]

Rejarial Galatan, on 20 April 2012 - 06:27 PM, said:

Hey Yeach, way I see this is if I have a mech that has NOTHING of offensive value in it such as an arm that is nothing more than a limb with some armor, I am not going to fuss over adding armor to it, and in fact, I am most likely going to strip that arm down to a skin over the hardware inside it, actuators and structure, but otherwise, not worry if I lose the dumb thing. I have a better use of the weight the armor in the useless limb for example in other places like the other arm WITH offensive capability. Why force the rest of us to waste space when we can find more efficient use of the weight in question in my example?

Well if your mech limbs are crippled it is going to cost you a lot more C-bills to repair and maintain the mech in a persistent universe.

This isn't your old style MW where you had no worries on paying bills for repairs, reloads and weapons. This is MWO. Basically MW2: Mercs and MW4: Mercs story games in an online mode.

Edited by [EDMW]CSN, 20 April 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[LackofCertainty]

wired, on 20 April 2012 - 07:56 AM, said:

People misunderstand what min/maxing does to a game.

It's not that it isn't viable. Surely, having a mech with all armor on one side of the torso and running circles around a guy sounds like an awesome idea... however it takes away from the feel of the game.

It is physically harmful to the experience of the game for everyone else, pretty much.

In roleplaying games, minmaxers are the characters who are one dimensional and are only there to roll and see how big of a number they get.

In wargames/cardgames/whatever, they are the players who run whatever is the build of the internet at the time, making them the BLANDEST army to play against.

References to real life minmaxing is missing the point. In real life, the trade offs for minmaxing are real and can have some real consequences. A good example is the use of Vtol craft: Minmaxing on mobility, but they tend to have FATAL accidents.

In a game, it's an extremely controlled environment. You don't care that the armor on your cockpit to the left is paper thin. Or that an arm you could use to brace yourself against structures will crumple if looked at cockeyed - it's not part of the game.

But really, if you want to minmax no one is stopping you. The only thing you are doing is minimizing on fun, and maximizing boring.

Bolded the part where you're being a typical elitist jerk who is lying about the issue. I play DnD regularly, and we have one guy in our group who is the very last word in min-maxing. He also is one of the players in our dnd group of whom I can remember every single character he has ever made, because he loves roleplaying as well, and roleplays his min-maxed stats and comes up with unique characters as well. You insinuating that anyone who min-maxes is a bland person who hates roleplaying makes you sound like a whining child who is upset that someone made a stronger character/mech than you.

Min-maxer is not the opposite of roleplayer.

A lot of people like to whine about min-maxers because they either:
1. Don't want to put in the work to min-max themselves.
2. Want an excuse for why they lost. (Oh, I only lost cause you're a dirty min-maxer)


There is a big difference between min-maxing and cheating. A cheater uses an exploit or bug to win. A min-maxer tweaks the system they're given until they have the optimal weapon/vehicle/mech for their playstyle.


As long as the systems are balanced so that players can't cheat, then min-maxing and the sharing of mech designs won't be a bad thing. In fact it'll be a nice bit of extra interaction for the community, along the lines of LoL characters guides. The LoL devs always release an example of how -they- play a champion when a new one is released, so that it gives less skilled players ideas on how to utilize the new character. I'd like to see MWO do the same thing. It'll be a way for people new to the franchise who don't know much about what makes a mech "good" a way to learn builds. They'll be able to look up the flavor of the month mech build and try and see why it's a popular design, and then incorporate some of the design ideas into their own mech of choice. That sounds pretty much ideal to me.

Edited by LackofCertainty, 20 April 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[Rejarial Galatan]

Ok, while this is not ENTIRELY about MWO, It is a wonderful example of Min/Maxing and how it can be bother wonderful and just purely put-the-fear-of-god into you wickedly awesome.

I shall not name names here, BUT, I play a Live Action Role Playing game Called: Vampire: Requiem. SOME of you may instantly recognize this game because you play it too. In my domain, we have a player who knows the rules better than the Venue Story Teller and the Domain Story Teller I think. He makes characters on a min/max scale that is just frightening. Not saying this guy makes a TON of characters, but I am SAYING the FEW he DOES make would whip the butts of even the BEST balanced characters. Why? He builds them to win a fight if the character is forced into it. I saw a scene in our game <a scene is similar to a scene in a play or movie or tv show for clarification> where combat broke out, and his character was attacked by 10 or so characters. HIS character came out of the fight at about mid health while others were missing limbs or were flat out torpored <think coma>.

[Yeach]

Well I am just going to go over the other topics for min/maxing
-Boating as already covered in many other threads; Min/maxing still exists but is restricted by Hardpoints

Other examples of min/maxing the upgrading the engine which you could in Mechwarrior3.
Some forum people like Pht and Major Tom disagree about being allowed to upgrade/downgrade engines by the small 5 increments but only to be allowed upgrading dictated by mech speed.

In order to prevent the scenario I brought up; my proposed solution would be requiring a MINIMUM amount of armor on each limb/body part.
Maybe make the minimum can be at least half internal structure points.
For example using a stock Jagermech (internal structure on arm is 10 pts; has 6 pts stock and meets the criteria of min of 5 pts);
Or you should not be able to subtract armor on an existing mech design; add armor yes. (example - mechcommander 2)

Anyways I'm not saying min/maxing shouldn't be possible.. just want to find ideas to curb the ultimate / non-Battletech spirit/lore-like munchkinish types from happening.

[Yeach]

Something like prevention of being able to make a Hunchback with 2 PPCs, upgrade in speed; reduction of armor in the arm to zero (because no weapons are there . (if possible)

Actually I am in favour of not being able to modify the armor or engine of a mech.
http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

[LordDeathStrike]

if you min your armor, you are screwed.

you cant max the engine, you can only swap engines if you buy new ones, and smaller mechs can only hold up to X size engine. sorry no ultra fusion 550 xxl in your locust or dasher.

mixing weapon types with different ranges and fireing styles works because you dont stack said weapons, youll never fire an srm and lrm at the same time, the lrms need to go srm max range before they even arm the warheads in 3049. the srms are unguided rockets unless you use streak 2s. ac 10 recycle time is such that you can lead a target with it, shoot it, then line up your large laser, zap it, then lead again in time to fire the ac again.

boating wont happen like mech 4, simply due to weapons of the era, most mechs dont carry more then 2 of the same weapon outside of the obvious builds that come stock with 4 med lasers. (im talking like lrm 20, ac 20, ppcs with the exception of the awesome having 3, ect)

[Gigaton]

Victor Morson, on 20 April 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

Anyway that has been my only problem with minmaxing in MechWarrior, ever.

Ditto for me. That's the reason I only criticised all-or-nothing asymmetric armouring (and unarmoured arms) as what I consider to be powergaming/munchkinism, and made some suggestion on how to discourage it as mainstream build and make it a bigger tradeoff. Even without XL engines you can use the method to squeeze some additional combat power out, for what I feel to be too small tradoff (especially assuming no damage transfer).

Looking at some of the replies, it seems I'm some kind of overprotected flower girl for not wanting this to become prevalent build.

Rejarial Galatan, on 20 April 2012 - 06:27 PM, said:

Why force the rest of us to waste space when we can find more efficient use of the weight in question in my example?

Because it would encourage or force everyone to go for designs that are made like that. Why use a 'mech that doesn't have hardpoints to make it assymmetric, when you can just pick a 'mech of similar weight that can pull it off? This will be bigger issue the more different 'mechs we get into the game, since then there will be more types from which to choose the only good one.

Going asymmetric in armour needs to be real tradoff in combat capability. It should not some kind of extra bonus that you get if you happen to use Awesome. Otherwise, why use symmetric 'mechs?

[EDMW]CSN, on 20 April 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

Well if your mech limbs are crippled it is going to cost you a lot more C-bills to repair and maintain the mech in a persistent universe.

"You don't balance stuff by making them more expensive to use/harder to grind" is one of the basic rules of good MMO design. It needs combat capability tradoff.

Edited by Gigaton, 20 April 2012 - 09:10 PM.

[trycksh0t]

Couldn't care less how they min/max their armor/weapons/whatever. If they want full armor on their Centurion's right arm and none on it's left, or more armor on the Atlas' left torso...doesn't matter. The head maxes out at 9 + 3 internal, my Gauss Rifle still works .

[LackofCertainty]

Gigaton, on 20 April 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

"You don't balance stuff by making them more expensive to use/harder to grind" is one of the basic rules of good MMO design. It needs combat capability tradoff.

100% truth here. I am annoyed constantly by people who suggest that sort of junk.



Back on topic, the thing about this situation is that I don't really see it as a problem, because there is already a trade-off. Actually, a couple trade-offs.

First, there's all the crit space that's being wasted. If you don't armor an arm, then you can't put anything in it, or it'll be wasted. That means no dumping extra heatsinks in there, or carrying ammo in there or anything else. You can dump all your extra stuff elsewhere, but that's likely to make your other locations very cramped.

Second, one of the things arms do is protect the torso they're attached to, simply by existing. They are meatshields for the torso. If a person puts 0 armor on their left arm, then their left arm will die in 1 shot most likely, and leave their left torso that much more exposed. They could theoretically do the same thing to their left torso, but the left and right torso act as meatshields for the CT, so that's even more of a losing proposition.

Finally, they're not even necessarily gaining anything by doing so. There is a limit to how much armor can be loaded onto a location. Granted, they may be able to reach max armor on their "important" locations for less weight, but a person who loads on a couple extra tons would be able to max armor in those locations and still protect their other arm. (and the juicy critical slots within) You'll save a couple tons for extra ammo/modules, but you have fewer safe spots to store those extra tons of ammo/modules. (and also make the crit slots you already have in your other side torso more vulnerable without the arm to meatshield for it)

Whether or not it's balanced is something we really can't know until we see the game. If crit slots are a dime a dozen this might need a second look, but as long as crit slots are valuable this whole discussion becomes a non-issue.

Edited by LackofCertainty, 20 April 2012 - 09:42 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Xaks, on 20 April 2012 - 01:47 PM, said:

Wait, Wait.

Victor, so "min/maxing" is bad when others do it to take advantage of game mechanics and / or terrain by making medium mechs too fast.

But its OK for you run matching weapon groups, also taking advantage of weapon mechanics and network lag to match range and firing characteristics of weapon types?

Gotcha.

What was that 50-ish ton clan mech that looked like a heavy-lift Sikorsky helicopter chassis and like 11 ER medium lasers? You'll be rolling in one of those now, I guess?

The problem with the engine min-maxing in MW4 was specifically exploiting a game design problem with the armor that made destroyed sections extremely durable, in particular if you were moving fast enough to generate a lag shield.

These things don't exist with weapons. That's why I say MWO engine min-maxing is already fixed, because from the sounds of it if you do the exact same thing here you'll be dead in 30 seconds.

[Gigaton]

LackofCertainty, on 20 April 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

First, there's all the crit space that's being wasted. If you don't armor an arm, then you can't put anything in it, or it'll be wasted. That means no dumping extra heatsinks in there, or carrying ammo in there or anything else. You can dump all your extra stuff elsewhere, but that's likely to make your other locations very cramped.

Except with large caliber ballistic boats, crits are not a problem whatsoever with 3025 tech, only hardpoints are. With lostech, the unarmoured arm and side torso can serve as crit dump for endo-steel and ferro fibrous crits, meaning you won't lose any effective crit space at all for using one of those.

Edited by Gigaton, 20 April 2012 - 10:21 PM.

[trycksh0t]

LackofCertainty, on 20 April 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

Finally, they're not even necessarily gaining anything by doing so. There is a limit to how much armor can be loaded onto a location. Granted, they may be able to reach max armor on their "important" locations for less weight, but a person who loads on a couple extra tons would be able to max armor in those locations and still protect their other arm. (and the juicy critical slots within) You'll save a couple tons for extra ammo/modules, but you have fewer safe spots to store those extra tons of ammo/modules. (and also make the crit slots you already have in your other side torso more vulnerable without the arm to meatshield for it)

This was the exact point I was going to make, that I forgot to mention earlier, each location can only support a maximum amount of armor.
For Example: An Atlas can not have more than 34 points of armor on an arm, ever. As for freeing up weight, it's not all that efficient. Stripping one of the arms completely nets you a whopping 2 tons. On a 50-tonner like the Centurion, it's 16 points for an arm, and stripping that barely frees up 1 ton. I really don't see an issue here. If they want to have an unprotected area, that's just less metal to get through.

[Tadakuma]

I have never had it confirmed to me, but I have always assumed that the original battlemechs designs from the TRO 3025 and TRO 3050 were designed with deliberate flaws.

They were fundamentally unoptimised designs. Even the powerhouse designs in the 3025 readout are flawed on some level.

For example, if you look at the base warhammer variant (WHM-6R) it is under armoured and it has a tonne of MG ammo sitting in the centre torso, Eliminating the MGs and adding two tonnes of armour makes for a vastly better and more survivable mech.

Things like this happens so often in these readouts that I have to assume that it was part of a deliberate design choice and that it was done for balance and game play reasons. The fact is that even minor tweaks to existing designs can make a massive change to the effectiveness if designs.

It is one of the reasons why I wish it was acceptable to the community to release a game without a Mechlab. What we have received is a nice compromise and I can accept it, I just wish that it wasn't possible to change the engine for speed purposes.

(edited for grammar)

Edited by Tadakuma, 20 April 2012 - 11:19 PM.

[Soviet Alex]

trycksh0t, on 20 April 2012 - 10:50 PM, said:

This was the exact point I was going to make, that I forgot to mention earlier, each location can only support a maximum amount of armor.
For Example: An Atlas can not have more than 34 points of armor on an arm, ever. As for freeing up weight, it's not all that efficient. Stripping one of the arms completely nets you a whopping 2 tons. On a 50-tonner like the Centurion, it's 16 points for an arm, and stripping that barely frees up 1 ton. I really don't see an issue here. If they want to have an unprotected area, that's just less metal to get through.

Bang on target. Although I played so little MW4 that I don't remember the problem, I've read a lot of posts about how damage transfer in the game was broken. That's why people didn't armour empty limbs. In Battletech, damage transfer isn't broken, so people don't strip the armour from empty limbs. As long as damage transfer in MW-O isn't broken, people are unlikely to leave arms unarmoured, because you gain more vunerability than the freed-up tonnage is worth.

[Belisarius1]

Victor Morson, on 20 April 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

The problem with the engine min-maxing in MW4 was specifically exploiting a game design problem with the armor that made destroyed sections extremely durable, in particular if you were moving fast enough to generate a lag shield.

These things don't exist with weapons. That's why I say MWO engine min-maxing is already fixed, because from the sounds of it if you do the exact same thing here you'll be dead in 30 seconds.

Your mistake here is even calling that min-maxing, Victor, honestly. The problem wasn't the fact that players could adjust their mech speed, the problem was the netcode that made fast 'mechs difficult to hit.

If your game is broken, min-maxing can be an issue. If the game is well designed, it's an important part of being a good player.

Edited by Belisarius†, 21 April 2012 - 01:09 AM.