373 replies to this topic

[Mongoose Trueborn]

I'll play you in tabletop but use my dice that have 6's on every side to reflect my skill. How long would we have to play before you realized it wouldn't work?

[Pht]

BigPuma, on 01 January 2013 - 03:04 AM, said:

Well, I see now, there are many things important, especially the ifs and whys of porting TT to MWO.

But maybe we concentrate on the core of it all: TT was fun and we loved it.

The next question you might want to consider is ... what, at it's core, made the TT fun? If you say, the way it played - you're making direct reference to the rules. It's the rules of a game that give rise to the way the game plays.

MustrumRidcully, on 01 January 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

Long range in Battletech gave you two perks
1) You could start firing earlier, and have more turns firing at your enemy.
2) ONce you get closer, you also were able to hit more often than a shorter range weapon.

So at 450m, you were allowed to fire your LLs already while the Medium Laser was still useless.
But at 270m, your Large Lasers would still be able to fire and hit much more often at this range than the guy with the Medium Laser that just could start opening fire.

Yes, you're right - but the medium lasers are more effective at medium range because they did not generate as much heat per weapon per turn, giving you a net higher DPT.

There are bonuses to using the medium and short ranged weapons in the TT.

[kingade]

no, pls.

you dont want banannas with cherry flavor, do u?

[Pht]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 01 January 2013 - 05:36 PM, said:

I'll play you in tabletop but use my dice that have 6's on every side to reflect my skill. How long would we have to play before you realized it wouldn't work?

To save you a lot of reading:

The pilot's gunnery skill rolls and the pilot's piloting skill rolls don't belong in an MW video game.

If you do a search for "gunnery" in my posts in this thread you'll see me saying this multiple times.

These two rolls simulate ALL of what a 'Mechwarrior has to do in his 'Mech in the TT game.

The other rolls that are being referred to - the to-hit mechanic (outside of the P&G rolls) and the hit-location tables all simulate ... the ... 'Mech... and how it is affected by its environment.

I want to see the 'Mech simulated. I don't want to see the dice rolls for the pilot; we control the piloting stuff from our computers.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Pht, on 01 January 2013 - 05:42 PM, said:

To save you a lot of reading:

The pilot's gunnery skill rolls and the pilot's piloting skill rolls don't belong in an MW video game.

If you do a search for "gunnery" in my posts in this thread you'll see me saying this multiple times.

These two rolls simulate ALL of what a 'Mechwarrior has to do in his 'Mech in the TT game.

The other rolls that are being referred to - the to-hit mechanic (outside of the P&G rolls) and the hit-location tables all simulate ... the ... 'Mech... and how it is affected by its environment.

I want to see the 'Mech simulated. I don't want to see the dice rolls for the pilot; we control the piloting stuff from our computers.

So you want a turn based game or all lock on weapons that only take "to-hit mechanic" into account and skill is for decision making?

The current game requires a player to have more than one skill or talent to be good at it. That is the appeal. If you lack one of these skills and refuse to spend the time it takes to get good at it, then maybe this game isn't for you.

[Pht]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 01 January 2013 - 06:09 PM, said:

So you want a turn based game or all lock on weapons that only take "to-hit mechanic" into account and skill is for decision making?

The current game requires a player to have more than one skill or talent to be good at it. That is the appeal. If you lack one of these skills and refuse to spend the time it takes to get good at it, then maybe this game isn't for you.

No, I don't want a turn-based game. Yes, the rules from the turn-based format can be converted to real time.

"all lock on weapons" - no, the weapons shouldn't all be "lock on" in the way that LRM's lock on - "lock on, fire, forget."

To boil it down as far as I can ATM, the routine is: you aim the reticule on the 'mechs hud, you track the target with the reticule, you decide when to fire and under what conditions.

The mech actually does the physical aiming of the weapons, how well or poorly your 'mech can bring it's weapons on-target is based upon the conditions your 'mech is encountering when you decide to fire, how accurate the individual weapons are, and how well your 'Mech can ultimately align the weapons (this last factor is very important).

You pilot the mech, you pick the targets and track the targets with the reticule, you control what's fired and when it's fired; the mech handles the rest of the gunnery chores.

The skill set only changes very slightly from an FPS - and it actually expands, because you have to know how well your 'mech can handle the conditions it's encountering when you choose to fire its weapons.

In other words, you're actually piloting a simulated 'Mech.

EDIT: oh yes, and you can tell how well or poorly your 'mech has it's weapons concentrated under the reticule by the color-coding of the reticule. Red= nearly all weapons miss, to gold = nearly all weapons should hit.

Edited by Pht, 01 January 2013 - 06:29 PM.

[wolf74]

The "to hit" or "cone of fire" can both be done without random number by Removing the auto-weapon convergence and placing in a manual controlled convergence. A player can get the auto convergence back at a much lower convergence speed with the targeting computer upgrade when they come out. This is my personal thoughts on this

[Indoorsman]

All this poo about mechs aligning weapons and bringing them to bear makes me think of this guy who drives a car. He isn't physically propelling it down the track or turning the wheels, but it does EXACTLY what he wants. Seriously, watch this and say that there would be problems with mech control 1050 years in the future.

[Taizan]

Not really a fan of TT games and don't see how there could be a closer implementation as movement is completely free and things like aiming are also left to player skill.

[steelblueskies]

ugh. if you've ever been dragged along on a pheasant hunt and had one of the trained hunting hounds go fetch a downed tree branch instead of retrieve a downed bird you'd better understand the difference between mind to mind linking commands and best effort direction of a largely autonomous intelligence.

you are not looking down the barrel sight or guncam on a mechs arm weapon and lining up a shot, while trying to compensate for recoil and heat and your movement and target movement and atmospherics by setting up a chain of controls for dozens of myomer bundles instead of direct drive motors. you are trying to rapidly and readily communicate through software which thing you can see is the one the mechs electronic picture sees that you want to use weapon x to hit a time y, while letting it account for those things, relying either on it's confidence feedback on when to fire and what it thinks you want to hit or overriding that feedback because you think you know better how it will respond.

that even such actions as grabbing or picking up objects with mechs with hands uses foremost a point and click cockpit system with manual ovverrides and/or neurohelmet feedback to try to give it a better idea of "grab and crush" vs "gently cup and lift" is in there. that only sme chassis had actualy gauntlet controls for hands is yet another element. first and foremost it was a best guess skillset between the machine learning to interpret pilot desires like a faithful hound or warhorse, and the pilot learning how the machine behaves and training it. and both learning to better catch on when a miscommunication of intent has occurred.

many prior mechwarrior #x titles were sorely lacking in features, or the tech and know how or computer power to support the know how of the time to do certain things. indirect fire with missiles for example, or a properly granular sensor setup(though later titles did try to add in to the prior titles simplifications here). most wound up simply aping earlier titles without actually realizing how much of those titles was grounded in simplifications for want of know how, or computer resources to do better.

so what it's boiling down to seems to be people who want it to work like a pure fps which it isn't, or want it to work like an aped copy of some of the earlier mechwarrior titles, or their aped number sequels.


hells get down to issues like projectile speeds. an 1800 meter max ppc moves over 1000meters per second.
a 1000meter lrm moves 100 meters per second. both would fire and hit in the same ten second turn.

ballistics? same story.

needing target locks to make your mech able to indicate it is able to "see" and properly account for multiple variables IT must regulate to place a round from a weapon on the target, and variable amounts of how well it sees the target vs you see the target? out the window. decrease in accuracy when it cannot do the compensation for converging a round on an indicated target? we don't have that any place but missiles of a lock on type.

heck how is it that the mech manages raticule accurate fire when taking hits, but the pilots going round and round in the rock tumbler from them. pilot skill? no. pilot skill is not accidentally triggering controls when being rocked that hard and overriding the mech's automation in such a way as you cause it to fall or similar. it can stand and balance unmoving on it's own fairly well. even manages to not simply keel over when temporarily shutting down its reactors and running off emergency power.

but for the thought exercise for the skill people. how well do antilock brakes work when you pump them on ice at high speed. theres an autonomous system v human override and communicating intent.

or driving a tank with a large turret. gun/barrel cam.

systems to make you work from a direct line from the weapon.

now we have say, six turrets on the same tank. we can give you six images and one control. see how it gets more complicated? now we have one control six images/barrelcams and want all six to line up to hit the same place at a distant target at x meters range from your machines cetner of mass, with variable ranges per turret to target, with a wind, while moving, and while the target is moving, requiring a lead from each weapon that will be slightly different.

you really can't do that without some go between equipment, at least not in a timely or efficient fashion.

the systems that make it so are the mechs intelligence. and as you msut rely on it so much, the rules even provide that if the mechs fire control/sensors have both crit slots damaged YOU CAN NOT FIRE AT ALL.

if the mech can't see it, your window view will avail you not. the mech must see it to handle the controls, you just designate targets and try to ensure they align with what the machine thinks your intent is.

[danger uxo]

stellblueskies...I wish I could like your post more. A game capable of simulating what you describe is what I think most TT players are looking for. MWO is a fun game but isn't there by a long shot.

[Kaijin]

All or none. PGI's practice of using some TT rules and disregarding others is bothersome.

[Lanessar]

My only beef with PGI and not "adhering to table top" is that they took the base damage/heat values directly from table top, and then increased rate of fire without mitigating the other factors. This breaks the overall system in a number of ways:

- Heat values for lower powered weapons (small laser, medium laser, gauss) become irrevocably broken on the DPS per ton aspect. If you allow a 4 heat weapon to be fired three times as fast, the higher-heat weapons, once very powerful, are now useless, as you have medium lasers granting more DPS per heat and ton than a PPC, which really should be a fearsome weapon (and now it just plain stinks).

- Meta-factors, such as slots and tonnage, now mean nothing. DHS are a good example of this (best math example available), but FF, PPCs, AC/20s and many more are affected by this.

- tweaking or balancing based off of a faulty premise negates any further work in this regard. It's already broken by people who can't figure out basic division and simple variables. If you "tweak" things based on an already shaky foundation, you end up with a house of cards that becomes more and more jerry-rigged as time goes on.

I don't care if they use a variable of "heavy = 1, medium = 0.5, light = 0.25" and restructure from there. But honestly, taking an existing working system, basing all the values from that, then changing something as simple as ROF just makes everything wonky.

[Sayyid]

Pht, on 26 December 2012 - 06:54 PM, said:

Otherwise, the game has been pretty good.

PS: One need NOT make all the weapons fire every ten seconds. If you want to control refire rates and keep the balance, tweak heat values on the weapons. It's the heat output that controls refire rates for every weapon in the TT. Fire faster than every 10, add heat - slower, less heat.

Why do people who never played some of the other games that were true to the table top say this. Multi-Player Battletech:Solaris, and 3025 (MPBT:3025) both stayed VERY true to the table top and had a MUCH better game than MWO. Oh and they actually had more game to play with less bugs then what we have now.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Indoorsman, on 02 January 2013 - 12:23 AM, said:

All this poo about mechs aligning weapons and bringing them to bear makes me think of this guy who drives a car. He isn't physically propelling it down the track or turning the wheels, but it does EXACTLY what he wants. Seriously, watch this and say that there would be problems with mech control 1050 years in the future.

I can't do this so he must be hacking. I propose ford adjust the steering, throttle, and braking input to effectively average out his abilities so that I can do this just as good as he can.

I will cry on these forums daily with as many different screen names as it takes until this is done.

[Kes Moreau]

I love this game. I get weary of the pug stomp but that's my fault for not having hooked up with an outfit. I hear a lot of different rages (ecm, steaks, ect.) and I'm glad that the community is so passionate. Here's to ya Piranha.

[Sayyid]

Indoorsman, on 02 January 2013 - 12:23 AM, said:

All this poo about mechs aligning weapons and bringing them to bear makes me think of this guy who drives a car. He isn't physically propelling it down the track or turning the wheels, but it does EXACTLY what he wants. Seriously, watch this and say that there would be problems with mech control 1050 years in the future.

Man Indoorsman posted a great Ford Fiesta advertisement there. What he fails to point out is that is a PROFESSIONAL DRIVER WITH MORE EXPERIENCE DRIVING THAN HE HAS HAIRS ON HIS ******! And that car is over 2.5mil dollars to build. I would love to see the same driver do the same stunts in a stock Ford Fiesta, that would be interesting.

Now about mechs, control, and this video....

Ford Fiesta used in this video weighs in at 2000lbs + driver. Makes over 650bhp (for the uninfromed thats Horse power at the fly wheel not at the wheels), and has all wheel drive with what looks to be BFG KDW2 tires on it, which are pretty good for the application he was using them for.

Lets look at the lightest mech in game...

COM-2D Commando.
Weighs in at 25tons, thats 50,000lbs! or 25times the weight of that Ford Fiesta Rally car.
The Commando has 2 legs, and is powered by a fusion reactor which doesnt make horse power AT ALL. The Commando is 12m tall or about 4 stories tall, and its center of gravity is 20 feet off the ground. Unlike the Rally car in the video which has a center of gravity a few inches off the ground. Then lets look at the pilot of a Commando, he has a years of training since he was 14 in many cases, and can do things with a mech that most people cant even think of.

So unless your family tree is a pole you shouldnt post anymore Indoorsman.

Edited by Sayyid, 02 January 2013 - 07:04 AM.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Sayyid, on 02 January 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:

Man Indoorsman posted a great Ford Fiesta advertisement there. What he fails to point out is that is a PROFESSIONAL DRIVER WITH MORE EXPERIENCE DRIVING THAN HE HAS HAIRS ON HIS ******! And that car is over 2.5mil dollars to build. I would love to see the same driver do the same stunts in a stock Ford Fiesta, that would be interesting.

Now about mechs, control, and this video....

Ford Fiesta used in this video weighs in at 2000lbs + driver. Makes over 650bhp (for the uninfromed thats Horse power at the fly wheel not at the wheels), and has all wheel drive with what looks to be BFG KDW2 tires on it, which are pretty good for the application he was using them for.

Lets look at the lightest mech in game...

COM-2D Commando.
Weighs in at 25tons, thats 50,000lbs! or 25times the weight of that Ford Fiesta Rally car.
The Commando has 2 legs, and is powered by a fusion reactor which doesnt make horse power AT ALL. The Commando is 12m tall or about 4 stories tall, and its center of gravity is 20 feet off the ground. Unlike the Rally car in the video which has a center of gravity a few inches off the ground. Then lets look at the pilot of a Commando, he has a years of training since he was 14 in many cases, and can do things with a mech that most people cant even think of.

So unless your family tree is a pole you shouldnt post anymore Indoorsman.

The video wasn't about scale but about a persons ability. Just because YOU can't do something doesn't mean someone else can't.

[Void Angel]

MustrumRidcully, on 01 January 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

Void Angel said:

You've been given rules that justify heat spiking and heat as a limiting factor in a weapon's effective rate of fire (as opposed to its maximum rate.) You've ignored it.

I point out that most ballistics weapons do not have heat as limiting their rate of fire, yet they received similar (or higher) rate of fire increases as energy weapons did.

Void Angel said:

You've had it pointed out to you by myself and many others that the balance of even the game rules you insist upon depends on rules such as hit probabilities which simply do not translate to a mouse-aim interface. You ignored all that, too.

No, I don't ignore that.

Yes you did. I gave you the rules that gave those same ballistic weapons a higer rate of fire, and you haven't addressed them. When you can cite the relevent rules and explain to me by what standard you wish to ignore those rules in favor of (literally) one page out of the tabletop rulebooks, please get back to me.

Quote

These factors influence weapon statistics based on the unique properties of the table top game mechanics: Single Hit Location damage is a factor that tends to make a weapon heavier than it would just based on weapon configurations with similar total damage potential but more weapons to achieve it. (Say, an AC/20 with heat sinks and ammo is heavier than 4 Medium Lasers with Heat Sinks, despite both dealing the same damage of 20 potentially, the AC/20 is designed to be heavier to account for the advantage of single hit location damage.)
The advantage of the AC/20 does not exist with convergence.
The other factor is range - this affects hit probabilities in Battletech. This meant that long range weapons were usually designed heavier and hotter than lower range weapons. 2 Medium Lasers with heat sinks weigh a lot less than 1 PPC with heat sinks.

We don't have those ranged to-hit probabilities in this interface, and that's why the numbers cannot be weighted the same way they were weighted in Tabletop - therefore you can't say "we need to go back to the Holy Word of Fasa!" That's the point that you try to gloss over by effectively saying "well, yeah, but..." You can't say "well, yeah, but the weapons still aren't balanced, so we need to re-implement the tabletop equipment values!" Yet that is exactly what you and others seem to want; it just won't wash. My issue isn't with the idea that the weapons aren't all balanced yet. My issue is with the inexcusably silly proposition that because the weapons are not yet balanced, we have to go back to this one set of weapon stats - even though those stats were already found to be unbalanced during testing. The weapon values didn't work out, so they embarked on a series of alterations that lead us to where we are now.

All this rulebook waving doesn't accomplish anything useful. At best, you're telling the devs that all their work on balance up to now should be thrown out, and re-set to the divinely given equipment values from The Book of Second Equipments, Holy Word of Fasa (King Weisman Edition,) and then subjected to additional testing by real game designers. At worst, you're basically running around the forums screaming "REPENT, AIR BREATHERS!" and whopping people on the head with the rulebook for a separate game.

All that's being asked of you (collectively, as a book-waving group) is to put the rulebook down and stop hitting. Couch your suggestions and analyses in terms that apply to this game, and that don't offer an implied insult to the people you're trying to convince. By the way, none of your theorycrafting takes into account weapon damage fall-off, and the impact of projectile speed on player accuracy will be likewise very difficult to map mathematically - unless you have the demographic data available to the people who run the servers and keep tabs on such things, it'll be hard to accurately model weapon performance mathematically. In other words, PGI has more real data than you do. Everything you've shown me is an attempt to predict weapon balance, but without having all the data you need. As long as you do this, PGI is going to look at your carefully crafted mathemagic and say "meh, we know that actually weapon X is doing pretty well in the player population," or "no, we can see that that weapon is underutilized and seems to be underperforming where it is used." They have data that you don't have, so talking down to them about their decisions based on your inferior data is the Battletech equivalent of the Gazurtoid: "REPENT, RULE-BREAKERS! REPENT! I am a theorycrafter, and I have come to SAVE thee!" (whap, whap, whap, whap, whap!)

Edited by Void Angel, 02 January 2013 - 09:17 PM.

[Void Angel]

Pht, on 01 January 2013 - 05:28 PM, said:

You really *haven't* been reading my posts, have you? I've been complaining on these forums from nearly the first day these forums were online that you can't use the damage numbers without the to-hit numbers mechanics (minus the pilots gunnery and piloting rolls) and the hit location tables mechanic.

Massive lines of context-less quotations paired with your own (context-less) commentary on them are less than useless. The purpose of quotations is to provide context for your response - not to make people research what the crap you're talking about from three days ago just in order to figure out if your reasoning is even formally correct. I'm just going to assume that you're playing more semantic games, and point out, as an example, that "theorycrafting" isn't inherently pejorative, and even if it was, characterizing your activities with a pejorative term isn't an ad hominem attack. Remedial instruction is available at your local institute of higher learning.

You also like to respond to general statements addressed to groups of posters, or statements made to other people entirely (you have noticed that there's more than just you arguing with me, right?) based on what only you have said - muddying the waters this way is not helpful.

As for implementing random hit locations and the like; not only does that sound wonderfully not-fun (and totally unnecessary to give the feel of "real" Battletech,) its implementation would reduce the complexity and skill needed to play the game, while simultaneously making it harder for the player to interpret feedback from gameplay. Because of the RNG factor, a sub-optimal choice would sometimes give excellent results - thus requiring players to try to average out their experiences or resort to theorycrafting to find the 'best' options. MWO feedback as it stands is much more closely tied to player skills and choices than that. This is a good thing.

None of this is really cogent, however, because the normal Battletech rules are a generalization of the net results of a pilot's moment-by-moment decisions, sliced off in 10-second slices. The ruleset that's designed to simulate a more down-to-the-second time scale looks a lot like what we have now.

In the final analysis, if I'm understanding your general opinion, you need to separate your argument into one (or both) of two separate avenues: first, that the game doesn't "feel like 'real' Battletech" to you - in which case, it's a completely subjective interpretation based on the game you want. There's no rulebook you can thump to 'prove' a non-falsifiable, inherently personal opinion. Note that your belief may be justified, or not: it doesn't matter. What matters is that you can't claim a rulebook's authority for a purely aesthetic opinion. Now on the other hand, if you're saying that not following the "real" rulebook in a given way breaks the game's balance - it's been pointed out to you, rather exhaustively, that converting the full ruleset doesn't translate well into this format. You're giving people moment-to-moment decisions, and asking them to accept a direct, slavish conversion of rules based on a generalization of their choices over time. The game rules will have to be tweaked to accomodate live human pilots with real human reflexes - so you really can't thump a rulebook and say "this is the authority for Battletech!" here, either.

Put down the rulebook for the separate Battletech game and stop hitting.

Edited for clarity.

Edited by Void Angel, 02 January 2013 - 09:29 PM.