193 replies to this topic

[Xaks]

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.

If that is the case, why are you advocating using weapon grouping, while saying a mech with a balanced loadout (remarkably similar to the Shadow Hawk, a mech widely known for its versatility and overall toughness) would be utter trash?

These two points are kinda mutually exclusive.

[Felicitatem Parco]

This whole thread about how min/maxing is uncouth.. it makes no sense to me at all.

How many U.S. infantry soldiers wear ceramic ballistic plates on their entire legs and arms? None of them do. Our soldiers min/max - they put maximum armor in the center torso, rear torso, lower side torsos, and head because those are the most vital regions and the armor generates an acceptable amount of maneuverability loss. They wear practically no ballistic plate armor on their limbs because those areas are less vital and the armor would impede mobility.

Seems to me that anyone who opposes min/maxing has to agree that United States infantry soldiers, and the soldiers of most countries' armies, are dishonorable min/maxers.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 21 April 2012 - 07:13 AM.

[JoeKano]

Bushwacker to Brawler config. Charge!!!!!!

I cant say I recall stripping my side torsos,but yeh man them brawlers were fun!!

Make mine a Newcastle!!!

[Alfred VonGunn]

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

From wikipedia

Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones. This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields.

Starting this topic for a discussion of min-maxing as it relates to MWO.
Specifically what should be allowed to be min-max
ie Armor, Weapons/loadout, Engine.

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.

WHat game allowed you to have more armor on one arm then the other? That sounds just stupid from a balance(ie the over working of teh Gryos) point of view..

[Max Liao]

I know I'm in the minority on this, and frankly I don't care.

First off, I'm NOT against players min/maxing to give them the greatest chance of winning. However, I am against a game the promotes min/maxing and build-of-the-month character. (D20 tabletop gaming and WoW MMORPGs are examples.)

While math is king, it can be trumped by mitigating mechanics – e.g. prohibitive costs to modify and/or flaws that come with modifications. “Sorry dude, your targeting computer just can handle it.”

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If you don't want people trying to discover good loadouts, why even bother having the mechlab in the first place?

I would SO play this version of the game. With multiple dozens of 'Mechs from which to choose, my options would still be (nearly) limitless.

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I would think at some point in the BT universe people might figure out that an awesome's ppc arm is a little more valuable than its grabby hand arm and might decide an a-symmetrical armor layout to MATCH their a-symmetrical weapons layout would benefit them.

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Exactly. Do any of you doubt that in reality military personnel in the field would attempt to maximize the good and minimize the bad of the equiptment that they are given? This is just common sense people; there's nothing sinister here.

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Seems to me that anyone who opposes min/maxing has to agree that United States infantry soldiers, and the soldiers of most countries' armies, are dishonorable min/maxers.

This is what I love about the BattleTech universe: It makes for a great game, while throwing certain (common sense) historical trends out. (e.g. In history wars increased technology. In BT canon, it lowered it.) It's when people leave BT canon that the game becomes less BT/MW and more l33t pwnz0r, because the game canon 'reality' doesn't match real world reality in order to facilitate better game play.

Unfortunately, it's very hard to reconcile the difference between the people who see this as just an 'action game' and the people who are role-playing MechWarriors in the BattleTech universe.

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having to pick your mech before knowing the map is about the worst idea tossed out on these boards. Your environment is just as important with tactics as your mech is.

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Choose the 'Mech before even knowing where you're fighting? Um, no.

You're going to load your Awesome into the dropship and then ask, "Hey where we going? Oh a desert planet? Damn." I don't think so.

However, in BattleTech your 'Mech is assigned to you by the government, or it's a family hereditary item. While no Urbammech would be assigned to a field recon lance, an Urbie pilot could find himself out in rear guard if his unit (Lance or Company) was assigned to that. So it is VERY possible, and well within canon to have a mech not so suited to the terrain - a fire support lance in a city, a recon lance running across open terrain, etc.

You go where you're assigned by your military superiors. And no, just like real war, they don't always give you the perfect tool for the job.

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I don't see anything bad connected to min-/maxing. Isn't every one of us of looking for the most viable config for our mech of choice?

No. I'm a MechWarrior. I am issued a 'Mech and I'm ordered to take it into battle. A good l'il Capellan soldier.

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I will probably spend more time in the final MechLab than i do actually playing, so I hope for a lot of 'min-maxing' - that said, a bad pilot is a bad pilot;

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I'm with Garth on this.

I LOVE stripping down mechs and building loadouts. In fact that is probably one of my favorite parts of the old Table Top game as well as every mechwarrior game that had a mechlab. Hence why I created MechSpecs. It is not just a community service its also feeding a hobby of mine; min maxing machines!

You sadden me greatly.

Very well, then don't call this game MechWarrior. Call it Design-a-'Mech Fightin' Squads. Because in the BattleTech universe modifications are NOT common. They are the anomalies, or the modification came out of necessity and with a boat load of drawbacks.

Show me how good of a PLAYER (not builder) you are by taking the stock 'Mech and winning. I've said so many times, ANYONE can make a better 'Mech than the stock 'Mechs. It's such a tired concept. The trick is using the stock/issued 'Mech and succeeding.

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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.

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.

You, sir, are my best friend of the day.

[Gauge]

Max Liao, on 29 May 2012 - 02:26 AM, said:

(Snipped to save space)

Well, I think you're right that you're probably in the minority...

Basically, I think it's sort of like Pandora's box. When you put rules for custom mechs in almost every incarnation of your universe, people not only come to expect it, they come to associate it with the lore, even if that isn't necessarily true. People grew to love BT in part because they got to redesign the mechs. I know it's something close to my heart, even if it doesn't fit the fluff (and I love roleplay aspects too).

As far as maps go, and whether or not people should know where they'll fight before they choose their ride... hrm. I can see both sides on the issue. Maybe a compromise where you know what planet you'll be going to, and it'll have associated terrain likelihoods? So you'll know there's a 60 percent chance of forest, 30 percent chance urban, 10% chance of desert. I don't know, just a thought.

[Shivus]

Real life != vidya, although even real life isn't perfectly min/maxed. The M1 Abrams is a powerful tank, but has a critical shortcoming of requiring solid logistical support as it guzzles gas like nothing else. Similarly the F-22 and F-35 are far more expensive and complicated to build than an F-15 or F-16.

As to min/maxing in game, solo MMO's are not the same as team based MMO's, and min maxing cannot be seen in the same light between the two.

A few points of MWO that seem to me at least to negate most issues of min maxing:

Team based: Unlike other MMO's in which min/maxing could be considered a rampant and gamebreaking issue, team based min/maxing takes on a whole new spectrum of balance. This balance is dictated by team tactics and strategy. Team A could min/max each mech down to a specific role, a catapult with everything stripped sans the LRM's and loaded with extra ammo for example, and I entirely expect high level organized play will do this in some form, though likely not to such an extreme degree. At any rate, running a pure LRM boat catapult leaves it completely vulnerable to any base variant jenner or cicada that races past the front line purely to interdict and occupy support mechs. Where a standard catapult could defend itself, a min/maxed LRM boat catapult would be a sheep ripe for slaughter.

Arm weapon tracking: If the videos are any indication, utilizing the independent tracking of your arms will be a critical part of hitting small fast mechs in big heavy lumbering assaults, as consequence, arms will likely be a prime target of opportunity in said fast light or medium mechs. Stripping all the armor off your arms just to make your torso tougher may improve overall longevity, but depending on the skill of the opponent, may result in the hilarious situation of watching a jenner dance about an atlas with impunity.

Heat: Or rather the lack of coolant flushes. This simple change drastically reduces the viability of laser or PPC boats. If it's possible to min/max a golden balance between heat sinks and energy weapons to not immediately shut down every time you fire, or to maintain a half decent rate of fire between groups or overridden shutdowns, it's likely the engine and armor has to take a significant downgrade to do so in a way that makes the quantitative increase in damage a viable trade. Glass cannons could be viable, but vulnerable. And if they're excessively unreliable as consequence of that vulnerability the community will discard them in short order.

Overall I feel like there will be min/maxing, but not in the evil or game breaking way many are thinking of. People will find a mech and configuration that they perform well in, and then they'll push that to the absolute maximum that they can. However that mech won't save them if the rest of the team can't exercise basic teamwork, as this is a team based game, and the overall ability of the team will trump a collection of individual laser, PPC, or LRM boaters any day of the week. Believe me, I've seen enough of teams pulling off perfect defeats despite having every advantage in WoT to know it's all too common.

Edited by Shivus, 29 May 2012 - 03:29 AM.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Tadakuma, on 20 April 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

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)

This. One day I hope to see a Mechwarrior/Battletech game where people will have to use the actual canon designs as presented in the various Tech Readouts rather than making their own Ubermechs. A game where, yes, the mechs are not optimized to the Nth degree due to in-universe reasons which don't necessarily have an in-game effect, but would in a "real" world. Here's your mech. It has known variants, you can pick those as well. No, you cannot redesign the mech from the ground up, because you don't own a mech factory or employ the engineers and techs necessary to make said changes without severely compromising the machine's ability to function.

I'd really like to see that, some day. It's not like there aren't enough canon mechs and variants that a person couldn't find _something_ to fit their style.

[Leanansidhe]

Min Maxing is the proccess of not loosing, complaining about "those" min maxers is the proccess of sucking at min maxing.

[100mile]

Vexgrave Lars, on 19 April 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

I love it when people call out my tribe... the min maxers, power gamers, munchkins.

Since you asked!

If you get "out-mathed" and "out-built" and then lost a match...especially to a lesser driver then you deserve it.. All the name calling in the universe "munchkin", "min-maxer" still leaves you a loser at the end. The heart of the act of war is to WIN, right? Why would you short change yourself ? If your role playing, is your role an over emotional incompetent hipster love-in flower girl at designing your mechs weapons load out, and balancing your combat needs and enhancing your battlefield value, to the game, your lance, and company mates? If so , again, you get what you deserved and tragically, they too will pay for your incompetence!

Damage curve analysis and Weight to armor to speed mechanics have been under scrutiny forever, since before the first counter ever hit a table. Tell ya what.. lets all drive exactly identical urban mechs.. so its all 100% fair, and you can feel equal. Please do the world a favor, and simply try harder to be better, and think for your own benefit, and your teams.

Because a lot of us already do, have, and will continue to, refine the art of playing Mechwarrior down as close as the rules will allow to a razors edge. Its a game of numbers from mechlab to retrieval, your betting your odds against luck and your wit, and you better load your dice.
Good Luck with your crusade Quixote.

Of course.. I know I'm a monster.. so is my whole tribe.

Punisher 1, on 19 April 2012 - 07:36 PM, said:

I think people worry too much about these sort of things when we have yet to even test the game. However I will set my mech and skills up to maximize my ability to minimize your ability to win.

exactly...

[Spooky]

I always find such min-maxing discussions silly. No one will willingly create a Mech configuration that is bad, except for lulz. Everyone will try to create something, that they think is 'best'.

If developers do not want players to find the "optimum" configuration, or they are unable to balance the weapon properties in such a way, that there can't be only very few extremely powerful configurations, they should not include the ability to create your own configurations in the first place.

[Squidhead Jax]

Spooky, on 29 May 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:

I always find such min-maxing discussions silly. No one will willingly create a Mech configuration that is bad, except for lulz. Everyone will try to create something, that they think is 'best'.

If developers do not want players to find the "optimum" configuration, or they are unable to balance the weapon properties in such a way, that there can't be only very few extremely powerful configurations, they should not include the ability to create your own configurations in the first place.

Exactly. I'm much more concerned with out-of-balance elements requiring anyone optimizing a build to take only A, B, or C than the drive toward optimization in general.

Unless A, B, and C are all PPCs. Then that's A-OK.

[Arkada]

The ultimate min maxing will be when Merc companies start putting together the right mix of mechs on the field and the pilots learn to play their proper roles. Obviously some mechs will excel on certain maps. But when the scouts scout and the Support mechs concentrate support fire on the right targets and the strike or medium mechs bring the hammer down on the enemies flank with co-ordinated focused fire. Thats the beauty of min maxing a 12-0 victory over another team that on paper had better mechs.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Having thought about this a little more I've come to the conclusion that there's no reason both the people who feel customizing their mech until it's just about perfect in their eyes (even if it may have little in common with the original design) and the people who would like to play a game where people drive recognizable designs from the TROs can't both have their way.

Game modes.

You have the basic, regular, everyday, standard MWO game mode with full mechlab customizability (within the limits of the Mechlab, naturally). Wanna min-max that Atlas as much as you possibly can? Go for it. Have fun. More power to you.

And then there's a "Canon Tech" game mode where modified designs are not allowed. A game mode where you would run mechs as described in the TROs, built-in weaknesses and all.

Heck, take it even further and add a "Historical Mode" as well for fights set in the past rather than 3049. Wanna fight a battle in the War of 3039? Cool! These were the mechs available at the time, so you have to use one of those. How about defending Capellan space against Davion aggression in the 4th Succession War? Nifty! Wanna help General Kerensky kick the collective posterior of Stefan Amaris' and his goons during the fall of the Star League? Go for it!

And what's more, that would be a reason to grind c-bills to afford even more mechs than you would otherwise bother to have (or buy with real money, giving MWO lots of sweet, sweet cash) since, hey, you'd have your standard mech for a certain chassis, and then your mechlab modified one so you wouldn't have to spend money on changing it back and forth every time you decided to play in another game mode.

Eh. Just an idea, but I think it could possibly work.

Edited by Steinar Bergstol, 29 May 2012 - 07:21 AM.

[Vexgrave Lars]

Please.. oh please... keep your math out of my role playing game! There are no numbers here!!!

Tragic..

Munchkins Small people with big ideas! I love you all.

[PANZERBUNNY]

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

From wikipedia

Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones. This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields.

Starting this topic for a discussion of min-maxing as it relates to MWO.
Specifically what should be allowed to be min-max
ie Armor, Weapons/loadout, Engine.

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.

Not sure why people are so against Min/Maxing. For those who don't understand what it is, Min/Maxing is getting the Maximum potential with the minimum amount of changes/effort/whatever. You are tooling your rig to the best you can witht he points etc you are given.

So why all the crying scrubs about it?

Should people pruposefully make rigs in the mechlab that are underwhelming so people without the creativity or insight to do it themselves don't /QQ at the end of a map and rage quit?

I have a feelin the mechlab will give us a fraction of room to mess around with mechs that the TT gives players.

This is simple doom and gloom speculating.

[Felbombling]

I think it comes down to this for people who want game balance/immersion into the game world... no crazy whacky stuff. Does the pilot of an F-18 have the option to throw in the massive Gatling cannon from the A-10 Warthog? Can the A-10 be modified to reach mach 2 at the whim of the pilot?

PGI has done a good job of putting checks and balances in place thus far. If the heatsinks work the way they're intended, I doubt you'll see many crazy energy boats. If they make the cost of modifying a Mech prohibitive, I don't think we'll see a new load out for each map or scenario. I look at Mechs and think, "Ugh... I don't want that weapon, I'd rather have this." I also look at Mechs like the Cataphract and wonder if the main weapons are not concentrated too heavily to the right side. Even with a standard engine, I could be stuck with two medium lasers if the wrong torso gets blown to bits. Fact of the matter is that some people are way better than others when it comes to the Mechlab, and it would be a shame if people were put to a huge disadvantage due to this fact. I know the hardcore modification crowd would have no problem with this... survival of the fittest and all, but I still think a victory earned through skill is much sweeter than one earned through shrewd calculator input.

[Darth JarJar]

Vexgrave Lars, on 19 April 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

I love it when people call out my tribe... the min maxers, power gamers, munchkins.

Since you asked!

If you get "out-mathed" and "out-built" and then lost a match...especially to a lesser driver then you deserve it.. All the name calling in the universe "munchkin", "min-maxer" still leaves you a loser at the end. The heart of the act of war is to WIN, right? Why would you short change yourself ? If your role playing, is your role an over emotional incompetent hipster love-in flower girl at designing your mechs weapons load out, and balancing your combat needs and enhancing your battlefield value, to the game, your lance, and company mates? If so , again, you get what you deserved and tragically, they too will pay for your incompetence!

Damage curve analysis and Weight to armor to speed mechanics have been under scrutiny forever, since before the first counter ever hit a table. Tell ya what.. lets all drive exactly identical urban mechs.. so its all 100% fair, and you can feel equal. Please do the world a favor, and simply try harder to be better, and think for your own benefit, and your teams.

Because a lot of us already do, have, and will continue to, refine the art of playing Mechwarrior down as close as the rules will allow to a razors edge. Its a game of numbers from mechlab to retrieval, your betting your odds against luck and your wit, and you better load your dice.
Good Luck with your crusade Quixote.

Of course.. I know I'm a monster.. so is my whole tribe.

All that and modest too, eh? Tell you what, do what you will in the mechlab, crunch your numbers, etc. You still will have to deal with the SKILL of the other pilot, and no amount of sliderule and pocket-protector work will help you then!

[enc0re]

Steinar Bergstol, on 29 May 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

Game modes.

You have the basic, regular, everyday, standard MWO game mode with full mechlab customizability (within the limits of the Mechlab, naturally). Wanna min-max that Atlas as much as you possibly can? Go for it. Have fun. More power to you.

And then there's a "Canon Tech" game mode where modified designs are not allowed. A game mode where you would run mechs as described in the TROs, built-in weaknesses and all.

I'd be all over that. In the table top I've always found it more fun if everyone plays with flawed designs. It makes for more flavor and excitement. I imagine that would carry over to MWO.

For example if I see a Rifleman I'm going up against, I want to know that OMG it has a lot of guns, but you know what? If I can get behind it, its rear armor is paper thin. A mechlab takes that away because you/ll never be able to tell from the looks of a mech what its strengths and weaknesses are.

Edited by enc0re, 29 May 2012 - 08:53 AM.

[Havoc2]

/sarcasm on


I'm against min/maxing

We should all be forced to take stupid useless stats that don't fit our playstyle and use weapons that we really don't prefer so that way everything is fair!

Oh wait, some people might actually be better at those weapons than me! THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!

*runs away crying with face in hands and little pig-tails flopping in the wind.

/sarcasm off

Min/maxing is cutting the fat off to save space by getting rid of things that you don't need/want so you have more space for things that you do want/need.

If anyone wants to take a stock design that has 2 of the 5 weapons that are utterly useless to their playstyle because "it's cannon" go right ahead. Don't cry because it's not fair that everyone else can customize their ride to their strengths and you don't want to.