101 replies to this topic

[Gun Bear]

There will be boats, in any game where you can customize things you'll have people try to get as much of the best of everything as they can and toss it on their 'mech, any advantage people think they can get they will latch onto, it would have happened in the BT universe in real life (if it was real life) and it happens in tabletop and it would happen on LL if they had a mechlab... some of the canon designs are boats (You can't tell me the Awesome is not a PPC Boat or that the Longbow isn't a missile boat) in the end its player skill that matters most. A great player could use a stock Cicada to whoop up on someone if they needed too.

[Creed Buhallin]

neodym, on 11 May 2012 - 08:54 AM, said:

I predict massive medium laser boating

This is going to be pretty severely constrained by the hardpoint system. Medium Laser spam works so well in the tabeltop (and most previous MW games) because it's a very high damage-to-weight ratio, and there are no other real limitations. 12 tons of weapons means 12 medium lasers. Looking at the videos, it seems like you could max at around 6-8 or so for most designs. Some (like an eventual Nova) will obviously provide more, but trying to do this is going to lock you into a pretty limited selection.

[Felicitatem Parco]

The only "problem" with boats are when they "exploit" gameplay features, such as the ability to "Pop-Tart-Snipe" somone with ER Large Lasers in MW4:M because you had perfect targeting information from behind hills and instaneous munition impact with no need to adjust for lead or distance.

[Redshift2k5]

Pop tarting is kind of a different issue, which hopefully will be alleviated by more difficult to utilize weapon systems (those large lasers will act as a DoT and you've got to hold on the target during the firing time to concentrate your damage) as well as by maps that give you more places to get out of line of sight of snipers.

not to mention shorter weapon ranges than some other MW videogames, and stricter limits on which mechs you may or may not equip with jumpjets

[Kanatta Jing]

Garth Erlam, on 11 May 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

We’ve had an interested week haven’t we? We announced the Cicada (to quote Doxy: “Great looking Mech and the name fits it perfectly. Bet this mech will be one of the first to get focused fired due to it being extremely mobile and thus dangerous. “) and added dozens of screenshots. We were thanked in a delightful thread, and debate raged across the forum over weapon distances. With all that said, people still all want to be in, and hear about, one thing: The Beta.

So here is some Friends and Family Beta news.

We launched version 2.0.14 this week, which has a (mostly) functional Mechlab. Immediately everyone set about trying to break it – we had all large laser Atlas’, Machinegun/AC-2/Flamer Hunchbacks, and a Jenner that seemed to go Mach 1, but we thought we’d share the following with you:
Modified Hunchback HBK 4P:

• Replace the six Medium Lasers in the right torso with six Small Lasers
  
• Change the arms to - right arm: 2x Medium Lasers, left arm: 2x Small Lasers
  
• Remove all heat sinks and armour from left torso
  
• Max the armour of both legs
  
• Add heatsinks to legs/right torso/arms until you’re maxed (26 total heatsinks)

The idea of this ‘Mech is that you run extremely cool, able to constantly fire your small lasers as you close in on your opponent. The leg armour prevents legging, and the reduced left torso armour allows you to stack it over more important areas. It performs extremely well close up, though be wary of ranged opponents, who will simply keep outside your small lasers distance and pick you apart!

8 Small Lasers? Sounds like a boat to me.

[Kasiagora]

I have a friend who I'd play TT and MW games with all the time. He has a love for all things clan tech, and in video games he'd usually take a Mad Cat. If not that and we ran lighter weights he would always take the Black Hawk/Nova. The original 12 medium laser boat. I finally got so sick of it that I made a Bushwacker with an Ultra AC/20 and slapped him in the face with it repeatedly. Kind of satisfying when 20 points of damage had a chance to knock you down in MW3 and one moment you know he's trying to target you, the next he's staring at the sky.

It may not be the fun way to play, but boats can be countered or just beaten at their own game. I think one of the things that will help in this game is that there will be a wide variety of mechs in each lance so it won't just become a bunch of identical boats having a slug fest like some of the battles I saw in the MW2 online communities back in the day. That medium laser boat might just be getting the missile rain from a Catapult before he gets to see battle.

[Melissia]

I know I plan on missileboating with my catapult builds, and possibly my Raven's builds as well (unless I can fit a large laser on it).

[Deathz Jester]

I imagine flame boating will get annoying, assuming flamers are in the game, and assuming they do enough overheating of enemy battlemechs.

[Ashla Mason]

I remember using Inferno Jenners in MW2:GBL against warhawks. That was ridiculously good fun.

[Helmer]

Iron Harlequin, on 17 May 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

I imagine flame boating will get annoying, assuming flamers are in the game, and assuming they do enough overheating of enemy battlemechs.

If you watch the video here, at the 1:27 mark you can see a Hunchback using dual Flamers (Bryan Ekman was the pilot, I believe)

Also, there's Flamer concept art located here.

So it appears that Flamers are indeed in the game. Their damage/heat output are unknown at this time.



Cheers.

[Deathz Jester]

+1 Bryan
+1 Helmer for finding that post.

Flamespam ahoy!

Edited by Iron Harlequin, 17 May 2012 - 01:46 PM.

[Solis Obscuri]

Max Grayson, on 11 May 2012 - 08:48 AM, said:

Using the above examples and the rest of the information provided and the vids you guys put out. Now correct me if i miss understand, but the hardpoint system combined with different aimpoints for weapons on the arms vs weapons on the torso will play the most significant role as far as the effectiveness of boating.

for example you can cleary see in one of the vids provided that the lasers on the torso have a different aim point then lasers on the arms, i can only then deduce that the most effective weapon combinations are the ones that are the easiest to line up all weapons in said group on the target.

In the example you provide of 8 mediums lasers vs 3 ppcs the damage out put of the 8 medium lasers is greater then that of the 3 ppcs all things considered equal (range and heat not withstanding). However, i can easily see where a 3 ppc config is supperior over the 8 med laser IF its faster and easier to line up all 3 PPCs then it is to line up all 8 medium lasers exspecially if some of the lasers are in the torso and you have to wait for the torso to catch up to the arm aimpoints

I would expect the PPC version to be much better in situations outside 270m, and the MLas version to be somewhat better inside 270m, and much better inside of 90m.

Garth Erlam, on 11 May 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

We launched version 2.0.14 this week, which has a (mostly) functional Mechlab. Immediately everyone set about trying to break it – we had all large laser Atlas’, Machinegun/AC-2/Flamer Hunchbacks, and a Jenner that seemed to go Mach 1, but we thought we’d share the following with you:
Modified Hunchback HBK 4P:

• Replace the six Medium Lasers in the right torso with six Small Lasers
  
• Change the arms to - right arm: 2x Medium Lasers, left arm: 2x Small Lasers
  
• Remove all heat sinks and armour from left torso
  
• Max the armour of both legs
  
• Add heatsinks to legs/right torso/arms until you’re maxed (26 total heatsinks)

The idea of this ‘Mech is that you run extremely cool, able to constantly fire your small lasers as you close in on your opponent. The leg armour prevents legging, and the reduced left torso armour allows you to stack it over more important areas. It performs extremely well close up, though be wary of ranged opponents, who will simply keep outside your small lasers distance and pick you apart!

To me, this really highlights the problems with getting rid of damage transfer between torso segments, and not losing limbs when side torsos are destroyed.

[Wolfe Ryatt]

Solis Obscuri, on 17 May 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

To me, this really highlights the problems with getting rid of damage transfer between torso segments, and not losing limbs when side torsos are destroyed.

It does feel kinda gamey doesn't it? What will stop players from doing this on every Mech? Leaving segments w/o armor and loading up armor elsewhere. It feels off to me.

[Corbon Zackery]

From what I seen in the vids the Developers are in the learning phase. Sure you can plug in a old xbox and play some mech games to get the feel of driving a mech.

But veteran players like me who have run mechwarrior 3 and played the table top game will have a edge in constrution and skill. By the end of mechwarrior 3 I had my joystick set up to torso twist me left and right and used the keyboard for turning left and right. I would start a engagment by shooting the mech in the leg to knock it down then moved past with a torso twist to keep firing my weapons as he got back up. Not saying its going to go down like that nor am I bragging.

I also know how to set up my mech even if they keep the hard points. A developer might put to much ammo in his mech he might like Small lasers?

What a developer will have in a advantage is range of weapons, where to go on the map.

As in all first person shooters 99% of the time people do poor simply because they don't know the map, the angles, where to hide, how far you can press fwd.

Even still 3 poor mech pilots can still beat on great pilot. I do think that the developers are thinking big with huge battles. When lance on lance might be more fun. If they get mutiple objective maps up and running were you have to capture and hold 5 points with your team will have a great multi-person experiance.

Thanks

[Paradat]

Alpha strike just means all weapons available firing at the same time. The "to hit" roll would still be one for each weapon. So most Alpha strikes will be distributed accross the Mech inlcuding some that miss.

[Garth Erlam]

Iron Harlequin, on 17 May 2012 - 01:45 PM, said:

+1 Bryan
+1 Helmer for finding that post.

Flamespam ahoy!

Thomas had a Jenner with six flamers, it was hilarious.

[ak12546]

im happy to hear that boating will not be a problem!

[SuomiWarder]

I do know that I saw a post that said the developers had tried missile boats, small laser boats, and other mixes to see how they affect game play. SO we should assume they have tried very combination of stuffing the same weapon into a config as possible.

[Wolfe Ryatt]

Paradat, on 17 May 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

Alpha strike just means all weapons available firing at the same time. The "to hit" roll would still be one for each weapon. So most Alpha strikes will be distributed accross the Mech inlcuding some that miss.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is any 'to hit' roll (besides missiles, that is). In none of the MMO FPS games I've played has there been a to hit roll. Your own skill determines if there is a hit. Now I can see there being a critical hit check with each hit to mimic the TT version.

[Weatherman]

I think this should be a very real concern. I have seen games seriously unbalanced because the developers relied too much on their idea of fun and fluff and didn't anticipate the fact that a lot of gamers are min-maxers. Warhammer 40k is a great example of this, but Battletech has always had this problem.

While I expect the hardpoint system to help curb some of this, I do think the developers should take a long hard look at the designs that will likely be fielded by players instead of what would be fluffy or fun in their opinion.

Seeing the kind of commitment the developers have to this game, I don't have many worries when it comes to this as I believe they are going to take that style of gaming into account as they build MWO.