14 replies to this topic

[Miollnir]

Why, Oh god, why?

While I’m waiting for hot mech action, I am currently playing WoT. As some of you know, there is this idea of light, medium, heavy (tank killer)and assault (heavy tank), plus artillery. You can also win points for scouting and stuff.

Still, nobody in his right mind is playing light tanks, and medium tanks are playable only at their max tech level. Light and medium are fast, agile, you win point by scouting, you are the bane of campers (artillery), so they should be fun to play, right?

Well, not that much, because:

• You will be one shot by any heavy tank, tank killer, and most medium tank
  
• You can’t damage anything else than artillery and light tanks.

So you will be killed very quickly most of the time, and you are useless in front of 2/3 of the tanks in the battlefield. Since dying means you will wait 5 to 20 minutes for the end of the game, you can now understand why it’s not a popular choice.

Problem 2 will probably be solved in MWO, since there is not test for penetration (kinky!), so even with an urby, you will chip at the armor of an Atlas, or even go for the kill if she’s badly damaged already.

But problem 1, being one-shot by anybody lucky enough to touch you, is still there. With a Jenner, you have at most 9 armor and 11 structure, which means that an hunchback can OS you, or take off one of your limb in one second. You will go down fast.

Yes I know, you don’t fight an hunchback or an Atlas mano-a-mano with a Jenner. You are fast, nimble, dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee…
Yeah, well, let’s get real, you will probably still go down fast, because of lack of madz skillz, surprise effect, or plain bad luck.

So, what to do? Well, I’m thinking, let’s give you another chance...

Enter the tonnage balance:

Let’s say that it’s a 100-points tonnage match. You can play:

• One Atlas (100t)
  
• One Catapult (65t) and one Jenner (35t)
  
• Two Hunchback (50t + 50t)
  
• Two Jenner (35+35t) and one Falcon (30t)

Let’s get some rules: you can play either 1 assault, 1 heavy and 1 light, 2 medium, one medium and one light, or 3 lights. And you can’t have more that 100t in total.
I know, you could have an Awesome (80t) and a Flea (20t). But the Awesome is an assault, so no, you can’t.

Let’s now say it’s a 50 points tonnage match. You can play:

• One Hunchback (50t)
  
• One Jenner (35t)
  
• One Falcon (30t) and one Flea (20t)

And a 35 points tonnage match will be light mechs only.

How does it (could) work:

At the beginning of the match, you select the mechs, and the order of respawn. For example, you can go Catapult then Jenner. So when your Catapult is down, you respawn in the Jenner. Or Jenner then Catapult.

In the first scenario, you have massive firepower in the beginning of the game, helping your team to take out the biggest target (like this badass black and red Atlas coming hot), and then use your Jenner to finish the game, capturing objectives or finishing damaged targets.

In the second scenario, you scout with your Jenner, marking targets, coordinating strikes, backstabbing wandering mechs… And when you get down, you come back with an heavy mech, which is bad news for the other team.

So IMO this kind of balanced match add 3 things (at least) :

• You can play a light scout without fear of seeing your game end after only 5 minutes (no fun in that!)
  
• When you are playing assault, you are the king of the battlefield, but don’t get cocky: you will be targeted A LOT, and when you’re down, it’s game over.
  
• One layer of strategy in an otherwise more tactical game : should I go light first, or last?

Of course, I have no idea whatsoever of the balance between mechs, so maybe this is stupid, because 2 medium will be overpowered, or 3 lights is crazy OP.
We will see in beta, in guess…

P.S : sorry for my English, I am Belgian (sort of like a French, but with good chocolate and a better attitude )

[Oderint dum Metuant]

As a fellow WoT player i disagree with your views. The problem in WoT is that not many people actually grasp what the tanks are there for, and as a consequence look only at kills and tend to play their respective tanks badly, you also do not have to wait till the end of any battle in WoT.

There is always 1-3 Light tanks in any pub game (pretty matchmaker is made to do this) They are scouts/Artillery hunters and require the most brains to play, the idea of stealth is lost on quite a portion of the tanks population and they rush out into open field zig zagging expecting to last longer than 30 seconds.

Mediums are not scouts, they are fast agile flanking forces they are built to flank the sides and attack the vulnerable side and rears of tanks, but they also require a pack to be effective.

Neither are designed to go toe-toe with Heavy/Tank Destroyers - Although mediums do excel at killing Tank destroyers in various ways once your behind/side on to them.

The same is true to an extent in Mechwarrior based games, effective scouts will be the ones doing their job and avoiding unfavorable fights, effective mediums wont be the ones trying to out gun an Atlas, they will be the ones flanking the sides and supporting their comrades in bringing the heavier mechs down.

As to you actually balancing mechanic im not a fan, it implies re spawn rewards rash behavior as you get 1-3 attempts.

[Thorn Hallis]

World of Tanks lacks real role warfare, at least in the way MWO will/might have. The goal of WoT is simply to get the biggest (tier) tank you can. Thats something MWO tries to avoid.

[RedHairDave]

dont even bring up WoT, its a sh@t game, with dev's that hate the players and only want their money.

[ASC]

The devs have already said that the balance will come from roles, and 'Role Warfare'.

In theory a well balanced force will beat a full assult mech force 9 times out of 10. of course we'll have to wait and see how well the balance works - and how much tweaking the devs have to do after we get our hands on it.

[RedDragon]

I'm quite optimistic the Devs will work something out so lights and mediums are worth piloting. They have many uses e.g. for information warfare (only they can mount advanced electronics), for artillery spotting or just to reach places heavies and assaults can't go to / need a lot of time to reach. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop could be a great tactical advantage that's only doable with light mechs. Or reaching that important bridge and destroying it before the enemy's heavies can cross it. If done right, lights and mediums will have their share in tactical usefulness.

[Victor Morson]

I am still pretty convinced that if they decided not to implement some sort of tonnage/battle value limiting system that Mediums will be the red headed stepchild of MWO without any doubt. The lights are vital for scouting, a few heavies might be alright for fast moving snipers (and that's about it) and assaults are clearly better at everything else.

In particular, the mediums provided to us aren't exactly speed demons. There's almost nothing to justify taking a Hunchback over an Atlas - similar speed, but the Atlas has nearly twice the firepower and armor.

Thankfully, it does sound like they'll be doing something with this in the matchmaking system.

[AlanEsh]

Thorn Hallis, on 23 April 2012 - 02:54 AM, said:

World of Tanks lacks real role warfare, at least in the way MWO will/might have. The goal of WoT is simply to get the biggest (tier) tank you can. Thats something MWO tries to avoid.

Yeah I'm with you on this.

WoT is Bigger = Better for the most part, and it sucks for it. MWO will need to differentiate the roles better than WoT has, or it won't be long on my list of games I'm playing.

[Fresh Meat]

The devs have said over and over, shoot the big ones in the back!

[Victor Morson]

Angelicon, on 23 April 2012 - 07:51 PM, said:

Yeah I'm with you on this.

WoT is Bigger = Better for the most part, and it sucks for it. MWO will need to differentiate the roles better than WoT has, or it won't be long on my list of games I'm playing.

There needs to be a tonnage/battle value balancing system, and it sounds like there will be one in the matchmaking.

Long story short is mediums never need to be as good as assaults in 12v12 brawls - something almost impossible to do while staying even remotely close to BattleTech - but if you're limited by overall maximum tonnage and can only bring a couple assaults out to play, mediums more than have a role.

[Pht]

Miollnir, on 23 April 2012 - 01:53 AM, said:

But problem 1, being one-shot by anybody lucky enough to touch you, is still there.

You seem to be falsely presuming that WoT and MWO will be the same when you don't have a good reason to make that presumption. We none of us have solid information on how MWO handles damage vs armor and how easy/hard it is to hit any target under any given situation.

[Miollnir]

Pht, on 24 April 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

You seem to be falsely presuming that WoT and MWO will be the same when you don't have a good reason to make that presumption. We none of us have solid information on how MWO handles damage vs armor and how easy/hard it is to hit any target under any given situation.

I will quote myself:

Miollnir, on 23 April 2012 - 01:53 AM, said:

Of course, I have no idea whatsoever of the balance between mechs, so maybe this is stupid, because 2 medium will be overpowered, or 3 lights is crazy OP.

We will see in beta, in guess…

So, yeah, thx

[Hayashi]

Pht, on 24 April 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

You seem to be falsely presuming that WoT and MWO will be the same when you don't have a good reason to make that presumption. We none of us have solid information on how MWO handles damage vs armor and how easy/hard it is to hit any target under any given situation.

This. Please stop pasting WoT on MWO, they're developed by completely different people, are completely different machines, and have a completely different target gamer audience.

If you treat MWO like WoT, you're going to be disappointed by the idea of MWO you get, since you are not impressed by WoT, that isn't news any more. For all we know, MWO could be perfect even now, at the FF Beta phase. Or perhaps, MWO is really badly done, and makes WoT look good. Point is, we don't know a thing about game mechanics at this point.

Just wait until the beta comes out (open or closed, depending on your luck), and AFTER you play that, we can start talking balance, based on actual knowledge about any shortcomings that may exist. From their track record the devs will be more than happy to do so.

Why tweak something before you even know what it is? That's like making cookies and adding more sugar without even testing the first batch.

[Pvt Dancer]

The difference is this... in WoTs, armor thickness is equal or greater that armor penetration. WoTs also has glancing shots and the like.

In MWO, all weapons do damage to every target. There is no such thing as glancing shots. You hit, you do damage. Do enough damage to a location to destroy armor, you mess a Mech up bad. Mechs also have 11 locations to spread armor to, with a maximum amout you can place due to Internal Structure. So even a 100 ton mech with 19 tons of armor (the max it can have) is 304 points, divide that among 10 locations (head can only have a max amount of 9pts of armor, no matter the tonnage) minus 9 for head armor is 29.5 points of armor per location (so 5 locations at 30 and 5 at 29).

The lightest mech we have, right now, in game, is the Commando. The max damage it can do in a /single/ salvo is 25pts of damage if all weapons hit and all missiles hit.

A 25 ton light mech can penetrate a 100 ton mech in two salvos (in a single location). A 25 ton mech can kill any mech in the game with a head shot (9 armor, 3 internal structor) as long as it can do at least 12 damage in a salvo.

That is the difference between MWO and WoTs.

[Victor Morson]

Actually there are TacOps rules for glancing blows. Doubt we'll see them in MWO, but just saying.