193 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

Prosperity Park's stance on Min/Maxing:

"Minimize the FAIL Maximize the WIN."

Min/maxing only becomes a problem when game features can be exploited in unintended and dishonorable ways, with the understanding that typical Legging, Disarming, Head-Shot'ing, and Sniping are all perfectly undishonorable.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 29 May 2012 - 11:33 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

The dev's have included a mech lab which allows extensive (apparently) customisation based on hardpoints with the canon limitations of weight and critical spaces. Whether you approve of customisation or not it is in the game and people will use it. This has been discussed endlessly since the forum opened. We will have to play the game as it is made. This means that the majority of players will "optimise" their chassis to suit what they prefer and consider "best". I'm not sure how many "stock" mechs we will see in the game, but this is part of the devs vision of what the game should be. I know that I will be using the lab not long after first logging in to the game ie after playing a couple of matches first to see how it plays.

[Rejarial Galatan]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 30 May 2012 - 12:06 AM, said:

The dev's have included a mech lab which allows extensive (apparently) customisation based on hardpoints with the canon limitations of weight and critical spaces. Whether you approve of customisation or not it is in the game and people will use it. This has been discussed endlessly since the forum opened. We will have to play the game as it is made. This means that the majority of players will "optimise" their chassis to suit what they prefer and consider "best". I'm not sure how many "stock" mechs we will see in the game, but this is part of the devs vision of what the game should be. I know that I will be using the lab not long after first logging in to the game ie after playing a couple of matches first to see how it plays.

With you on this! My guess, at first, we will see a lot of stock mechs out there, atleast in the more expensive tiers if they give us just enough to buy say an atlas for example

[Draco Argentum]

Savant, on 19 April 2012 - 11:47 PM, said:

I think your doing it wrong, all that equipment requires heavy and usually immediate maintenance after each outing.

The Iowa class is heavily min/maxed. The bow and stern are very poorly armoured to save weight. She was designed to stay afloat with the bow and stern shot off. Coincidentally unarmoured non-vital sections are what the OP was complaining about.

Gigaton, on 20 April 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

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.

I always thought of this as one of the flaws with the normal rules. Why wouldn't I put all the weapons in the armoured torso and the things that don't help in battle in the arms? You should be forced to spread them out more.

[Rejarial Galatan]

arent we forced to 'spread' it out by virtue of the hard point/critical system?

[docmorningstar]

Rejarial Galatan, on 19 April 2012 - 07:33 PM, said:

A good example of min/maxing: a designer of a fighter jet looks at his design and says to himself: how can I make this the best fighter I can to give its pilots the best chance? he then hits on the idea: MAXIMIZE FIREPOWER while MINIMIZING WEIGHT. MAXIMIZE AERODYNAMICS AND SMOOTH AIRFLOW while MINIMIZING DRAG. MAXIMIZE THRUST/SPEED/PERFORMANCE while MINIMIZING FUEL EXPENDITURE TO ACHIVE SAID MAX. MAXIMIZE ALL POSITIVE ASPECTS while MINIMIZING ANY/ALL NEGATIVE ASPECTS. VIOLA the best fighter that the designer could design given his/her current tech at the time

Yeah - but in 'reality' every factor requires a tradeoff against some other factors, all governed by 'reality' - something decidedly lacking in a game world. IRL, the things that govern usefulness are really, really hard to numerically quantify. In a game world, we tend to have *much* simpler values, making it MUCH easier to min/max.

Example is DPS. DPS isn't just a game related concept; there are debates all the time IRL about the caliber of a service rifle vs the firing mode/rate vs the ammunition capacity vs supply capability vs maintenence vs manufacturing capability vs robustnes vs weight vs accuracy vs.... tons and tons of factors. in a video game we COULD model all of those things and come up with a 'real' balance, but we typically DON'T. We get something like X damage per shot, Y shots per second. D-P-S. the rest of the factors tend to be totally superflous.

in 'reality' we don't put all the equipment on one side of a military vehicle because asymmetric loads = uneven wear (also, symmetrical equipment tends to be cheaper to build and maintain...) Since we don't have a 'your design is badly engineered' factor in game to counter min/maxing, sometimes we just have to make rules to enforce that.

I agree that we should require armor to be balanced, if only to prevent the abuse of a system that can't counter those factors because modeling them is too hard.

[docmorningstar]

Here is how you curtail gamey min/maxing - by gamey, I mean min/max setups that 'abuse' the rules to come up with a truly 'best' configuration.

1. Balance combat by BV (or something BV-like) - this recognizes the fact that a hunchie 4G and a 4N are just not the same beasts...but means that you can play one, if you want, without 'wasting' space on your team.
2. ALSO Balance combat by tonnage (to provide a counterweight for designing towards perfect BV efficiency)
3. Balance customization through an upfront cost: make it pricey to fiddle with the configuration, and people will modify their gear 'slowly' delaying the rush to perfection (and also delaying the horde of the latest 'perfect build')
4. Balance customization through a long-term cost: once you have all non-standard gear on your mech, any damage requires custom repairs.

Now we have to balance BV (representing damage/armor/speed) - Tonnage - Cost to buy - Cost to own

That is a MUCH better balance

Finally, PGI can be constantly running statistical analysis programs on the result of combat so the can see whether certain weapons are 'overpowered' - if a particular weapon is overpowered, they can slightly up the BV cost of that weapon until it now contributes 'properly'

PS - if anyone is reading this from PGI, I would seriously LOVE to help work out an automated routine to analyze for effects of unbalanced weapons and 'adjust' the BV accordingly

Edited by docmorningstar, 01 June 2012 - 06:36 AM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I don't see any need to balance Min/Maxing because you can't add your left arm's armor to the right arm, or anything like that. Each bodypart has a maximum armor capacity that cannot be exceded, and so you can't go past 100% in any respect by min/maxing.

I look very-much forward to the armor Mins that will lead to quick kills on my record.

[Rejarial Galatan]

min/maxing is a fact of gaming experience. going to happen like it or not. Some one once said, min maxing is the basics of optimizing your machine. Minimize your tactical weaknesses and maximize your offensive capability. The heart of a min max ideal, is to reduce the crap you dont use, and maximize the stuff you do use

[Leanansidhe]

This thread

[Agent KI7KO]

I wouldn't worry about it.

If Min/Maxing becomes a problem, devs will just lower it's effectiveness.

It *IS* a purely online game with planned content updates, after all.

[Rejarial Galatan]

min maxing is the nature of upgrading gear. You want to stop it from happening? eliminate the Mech Lab. Eliminate variants. Give us all stock battle mechs that we cannot change. AT ALL.

[Teralitha]

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

The only form of minmaxing that I ever felt damaged any MechWarrior game was in MW4 when people discovered that they could reduce and almost eliminate their side torso armor (amongst other things such as rear armor and leg armor) for the sole purpose of boosting their engines to insane levels. Within a month the game went from the strategic stand off fights with fast moves into Quake like brawls that dominated the game to the start of the Hardcore era and was one of the major factors that got me burnt out on MW4 before it's time. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think it was unfair or unbalanced, but the game's pace went from strategic to frenzy because of it - it felt like another game from that point onward. (Major props to any House Jurai player that happens to read this - you guys figured this out months in advance and were a terror because of it. In fact I think my house adopted the idea from you and then it spread to others.)


Simply put, high firepower fast moving brawlers will be a niche in MWO but I simply cannot see the dominance of it with the systems outlined so far. If someone tries to recreate the concept behind the brawling-Bushwacker odds are they're going to have an ammo explosion and light up before they ever even get into gun range. My major hope is that brawlers will have to move up with fire support and terrain again - flank and maneuver, rather than just blitzing straight up the center to their targets. They simply won't be able to have the firepower/speed needed to avoid doing this if they have to worry about their armor.

What you called a 'strategic standoff' in mw4 was nothing more than whole teams of laser boats shooting each other from range. HJ being an IS unit, didnt have tons of clan tech, so we used what we had to come up with a real strategy to counter the laser boat camping strategy. It worked well, and we also modified it as time went on to make it better. It wasnt just an all out brawling blitz every game, as you put it. It was a real tactic devised to defeat the flavor of the month tactic that everyone thought was the way it was always gonna be.

[UncleKulikov]

Rejarial Galatan, on 01 June 2012 - 07:43 PM, said:

min/maxing is a fact of gaming experience. going to happen like it or not. Some one once said, min maxing is the basics of optimizing your machine. Minimize your tactical weaknesses and maximize your offensive capability. The heart of a min max ideal, is to reduce the crap you dont use, and maximize the stuff you do use

If the weapons are balanced appropriately, a min maxed mech will still be fair.

[Guru Zeb]

Another kelly girl thread ........... quite simply whining for the great devs in the sky to minimise someone else's
gaming style and maximise the OPs ........ *sigh*

[PANZERBUNNY]

Will people who refuse to use mechlab and experiment, choosing to stick with stock designs be at a disadvantage....yes. Slightly. Can they still blow me up? Absolutely.

I'm assuming this is just another thread that wasn't totally thought out before posting.

[Holski77]

How do you min/max a medium mech?

[Roland]

Quote

The only form of minmaxing that I ever felt damaged any MechWarrior game was in MW4 when people discovered that they could reduce and almost eliminate their side torso armor (amongst other things such as rear armor and leg armor)

Er....
Reducing their SIDE armor? You mean side torso armor?

That really wasn't too wise... because damage transferred from a dead side torso into your CT internals... i.e.... you died if you got shot in a side torso.

Lots of folks stripped their leg armor.. although this was generally most prevalent in folks who hill sniped.

But still.. that was the reason why we tended to leg so many folks.. because so many folks stripped their legs down. Generally, it was a risk that they took, and it tended to backfire on them when they went up against us.

I don't seem to remember getting a chance to fight the HJ guys in many league fights though... I seem to remember their team was made up mostly of Aussies, right? I know that at one point Stalker joined up with them, and stalker knew his stuff when it came to tactics. We fought against him and the AK guys a number of times, and they were some of the best fights we ever had. Real nail-biters.

Sounds like the HJ guys fought similarly to us in many respects though... the best answer when fighting folks who want to engage in a long range stand-off is to deny them the long range standoff.

[Yeach]

Holski77, on 05 June 2012 - 07:07 PM, said:

How do you min/max a medium mech?

For the Cicada
Step 1. Remove all the armor from both arms (since they don't carry hardpoints)
From the armor points saved either
Step 2a. Get better weapons
Step 2b. increase the armor on other portions of the mech (where it would be more important)..

In other words what is the advantage to having armor in the arms of a Ciccada?

Yes the topic was too vague.. it should have been what mechanics / rules should be used to minimize uber/munchkinistic min/maxing.. maybe have a minimum amount of armor that HAS to be devoted to armor on the arms or something to that effect (ie minimum armor points has to equal half internal structure points or more)

[Roland]

Yeach, on 05 June 2012 - 07:55 PM, said:

In other words what is the advantage to having armor in the arms of a Ciccada?

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.