136 replies to this topic

[Lefty Lucy]

Captain Midnight, on 03 December 2012 - 01:12 AM, said:

I was thinking the D-DCs would be streak brawlers using their ECM to enable EZ-mode streak usage in those missile hardpoints.

Yeah, the "invisible wall of steel" could work. Might be hard pressed against snipers, but other than caustic the maps have plenty of cover.

[Zylo]

Lefty Lucy, on 03 December 2012 - 01:10 AM, said:

TAG has a 450 meter range.

Good luck TAGging a fast team of Ravens and Cicadas with that 450m range.

[Lefty Lucy]

Zylo, on 03 December 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

Good luck TAGging a fast team of Ravens and Cicadas with that 450m range.

Then just hug your D-DCs and turn on ECCM.

[Zylo]

Lefty Lucy, on 03 December 2012 - 01:17 AM, said:

Then just hug your D-DCs and turn on ECCM.

This would pretty much force this team build to stay on base, making them easy targets for any sort of snipers. If they strayed too far from base a fast team with cap modules would just base cap to win.

While the 7x DDC + 1x Streak A1 might work vs pug teams it's probably not going to be as effective as a well balanced and organized team.

[Pr8Dator]

It'll only work if teams MUST HAVE 500 tons so that you won't have a full Jenner or full Raven team.

[Kobold]

Pr8Dator, on 03 December 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:

It'll only work if teams MUST HAVE 500 tons so that you won't have a full Jenner or full Raven team.

Why not?

[HC Harlequin]

How hard is this? Ever since mankind gained both cavalry and artillery capability (horses and archers) the mixing of infantry/artillery/cavalry have been pretty much standardized. So bring some LRM's.. bring some scouts, bring some alpha strike brawlers, bring a sniper and a streak cat..

[Teralitha]

Enemista, on 03 December 2012 - 12:56 AM, said:

no limits please, let the teams decide what works best for them and let them use it

got stomped by team of jenner? get a streakcat or 2 in yours... it will be about taking the right mixture of mechs into the fight and teams will get used to it

Um.... you can do the exact same thing with a tonnage limit.

[Teralitha]

Zylo, on 03 December 2012 - 12:55 AM, said:

If this turns out to be a problem then maybe a tonnage limit would be the answer but unrestricted drops should be done to determine if there are any balance issues with mechs.

Closed beta was without any restrictions and many complained when one team was too light and the other was too heavy, and was also when ppl coined the phrase "atlaswarrior online'. So this already has been tested.

[BFalcon]

SixStringSamurai, on 03 December 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Already complaining about a feature you haven't even tried yet? Why don't you actually play the game before making these kinds of threads? There's no way to know if this will work or not since it isn't even in the game yet.

So you weren't around before when this was the default mode for drops? "Dropping heavy" just for a bunch of Jenners and Commandos to run around you, laughing and then cap you out? Or taking mediums along to deal with said Jenners only for THEM to get stomped by the all-Atlas team coming the other way?

Hopefully this phase will be done in a week or so and we'll have sanity restored.

On the plus side, at least the newcomers will have had a taste of what it USED to be like in Beta...

[Teralitha]

Kobold, on 03 December 2012 - 01:02 AM, said:

Presumably everyone in an 8-man knows they could face anything, and they should prepare accordingly.

When you have a tonnage cap... you still never know what your facing. You just know for sure it wont be 8 atlas...

Edited by Teralitha, 03 December 2012 - 05:04 AM.

[BFalcon]

Teralitha, on 03 December 2012 - 04:58 AM, said:

When you have a tonnage cap... you still never know what your facing.

Not *entirely* true - you KNOW you won't be facing 8 Atlases in the "Battletech Rolling Wall of Doom"...

On the other hand, they could also include a minimum average tonnage too - no less than an average of, say, 40 tons... that should see at least a few heavies or mediums in a drop... I know Lights are the most common weight class in Canon, but those lances still usually carry a Medium or two along for some heavier support.

[Kerguidou]

After reading through several threads similar to this, I still don't understand what the problem is. The point of the game is to win... if 8 atlas are what's needed to win, then why remove that option? Good game design doesn't take freedom away from players.

[Teralitha]

Pr8Dator, on 03 December 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:

It'll only work if teams MUST HAVE 500 tons so that you won't have a full Jenner or full Raven team.

I agree. This would make premades always on even terms. Although a small varience would be fine too

say a tonnage limit of 450-500.

Edited by Teralitha, 03 December 2012 - 05:10 AM.

[FrostPaw]

Well two things will happen.

1) It will highlight if the game really does have balance between mech classes, are an all light team really an equal match to an all Atlas team? No more theorycraft let's find out.

2) It will enable players to take what they have rather than what tonnage limits allow, because not everyone has a mech for all weight limits.

It has potential to go either way, depending on how balanced mech selection actually is, although personally I think assuming skill is equal, tonnage matters, because if you hit/miss as often as your opponent, the guy with bigger or more guns will win.

[BFalcon]

Ker: the problem is, it becomes more a game of "rock, paper, scissors" than Battletech.

You take your all-Atlas team. An all-Jenner team will cap around it, which is as it should be, don't get me wrong.

But then you design a drop team with some anti-Light capability in it... and meet the all-Atlas team. Suddenly, you're 100 tons or so down on their team and they just stomp you because you tried to be a) flexible and a bit more realistic.

Let's face it, in Canon, an all-Assault lance would be financially unviable and tactically unsound - in the greater scheme of things, you need faster lances to find the enemy and pin them in place - one 12m c-bill assault mech costs the same as an entire lance of light mechs and is far less useful outside of the intensive brawl or assaults that they are designed for - having overwhelming firepower is all well and good, but not if you can't find something to shoot with it.

When you consider the larger picture, it becomes even more obvious - a Lance of Assault mechs suddenly takes on the same cost as a company of Lights... which might be enough to secure a backwater planet. Looked at like that, the all-Assault lance suddenly becomes a lot less attractive when you find that entire planets are going without a garrison just so you can have an all-kicking assault regiment.

Great, too, until you consider that Assault mechs ride in the same dropships as anyone else and can be destroyed in space like any other... and then you start to see why few units actually WANT to spent out any more than they must on assaults than they need to, unless they expect heavy fighting - two Mediums or Heavies can actually outgun an Assault anyhow.

The problems come with artificial limits like numbers - if we could take twice as many mechs against those Assaults, then we could beat them.

The problem with too many Lights is purely the capture mechanism, but it is pretty indicative of the problems that would occur with light mechs outmaneuvering anyone else - the problems would then come when they needed to defend an objective and didn't have the firepower to do it.

[BFalcon]

Teralitha, on 03 December 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

I agree. This would make premades always on even terms. Although a small varience would be fine too

say a tonnage limit of 450-500.

I agree that a range would be needed - expecting precisely xxxx tons would be unrealistic - especially while we have so few mech tonnages represented.

I would go further and suggest that a low-tonnage unit should have a boost to their earnings if they win, while a high-tonnage unit would actually gain less for everything - after all, a bunch of assaults beating a like number of heavies is pretty much expected. Losing to those Assaults would be a disgrace for any unit in that position, so would be likely to lose supplies and/or be penalised financially.

[PurpleNinja]

I'll go for tonnage limit on 8v8.

How about 280?

[Daimonos]

I doubt that eight D-DCs would win half their matches after the first few days. There will be invisible Ravens TAGing for LRMs, packs of Cicadas, and all the best Dragon, Cataphract and Catapult sniper builds to deal with.

I'm happy to go with no tonnage cap to begin with, but I do expect Hunchbacks and Centurions to be underrepresented. If phase 3 is delayed, I'd like to see a 500-550 ton cap imposed on 8v8 - or at least a capped 'launch mode' with its own queue - just to give us a reason to drive mediums again.

[Teralitha]

SixStringSamurai, on 03 December 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Already complaining about a feature you haven't even tried yet? There's no way to know if this will work or not since it isn't even in the game yet.

Thats what I said about having TDM, yet no one listened.... Of course, this one already has been tried, in closed beta. And failed.

Edited by Teralitha, 03 December 2012 - 05:30 AM.