Void Angel, on 05 January 2013 - 11:47 AM, said:
Thanks, Indoorsman. Pht has pretty much removed himself from the "reasonable debate" category a long time ago. It's really not worth sifting through his huge pile of piecemeal quotes and sophistry just to point out every fallacy he's committed.
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Pht, your style of debate, to use the term loosely, is called "sophistry." You seem to think that if you just hand-wave away objections you don't have answer them, and can get away with sniping at small parts of post - then making claims like "no one has shown me any reason why (insert objection) is valid!" This is not in fact the case. Chopping up others posts into pieces so small that they take up (literally) half a page of this thread simply means that your ideas are sloppily organized - at best. At worst they are hypocritical in the extreme. For example:
Fallacies which you couldn't point out even if you did have the decency to do what you expect of others to do with your own posts.
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Simply stomping your feet and continuing to yell that someone's doing something doesn't mean they've done it. This false accusation of sophistry is yet another thing you can't
actually demonstrate as being true - because I haven't done it. At this point I expect you to not even attempt to; I'm certainly not going to try and somehow prove a negative.
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First, you claim that I'm avoiding your 1337 logical $K1LLZ when I point out that your huge, disorganized collection of sniping one-liners is unreadable - then you decline to deal with a body of arguments... because you claim you can't tell what they're about! That's the precise objection I raised regarding your mega-post of snippet quotes; you cannot dismiss my argument without derailing your own! Prattling on about how it's other people's responsibility to figure out the context of the snippets you're quoting is silly in the extreme.
I didn't claim you were "avoiding my logical skills." Another one to add to the stack of things you've been doing - putting words in people's posts that aren't there, directly or indirectly.
"decline to deal with a body of arguments" - I did deal with your arguments:
Pht said:
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I've posted nothing that says or means that mouse aiming doesn't break things. What you (and many others) appear to be completely missing is that the current (and past) MW video games allow the players to do things that are impossible to do in a BattleMech.
All of the MW video games have, instead of simulating the
'Mech's ability to calculate where to actually physically aim the weapons and than use its various mechanical and computer systems to align the weapons to hit what the Mechwarrior is aiming at... No, instead of simulating the 'Mechs from the BT lore ... in a game that's supposed to be about piloting 'Mechs from the BT lore ... we've been given anything but.
It's not mouse aiming that breaks the system; it's that the hit location tables -
(which, again, simulate the 'Mech's ultimate ability to get multiple weapons to align on a mobile 'Mech sized target, not Mechwarrior aiming skill)
- haven't been ported over - in any form at all. This lack of porting the hit location tables over plus pixel-perfect aiming means the entire TT damage assessment system will not work; thus we see, say, double armor, and endless weapons damage tweaks.
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You seem to have a habit of thinking that attaching abusive ad-hominems to me will somehow stand in for valid argument from true premises. "Theorycraft."
So, what's the
meaningful difference between the data that makes up the TT combat system and the data that makes up the MWO implementation? ... Or will this be another of those details you choose to ignore?
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You made arguments, I responded to them directly.
"Prattling" - If you can't comprehend someone's posts - as you've now admitted more than once - why are you acting as if you understand them well enough to refute them?
You demonstrably didn't even understand that I didn't just want the "equipment numbers" but also the rules that form the combat system - something I've copiously posted in multiple threads for a long time - something that's even in threads I link in my sig line.
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You seem to have jumped into a discussion on whether or not the tabletop rules (not the damn fluff in the sidebars, the rules) should be followed more closely, cut-and-pasting quotes from conversations regarding this topic and responding to them as if they pertained to that topic - if you wished to talk about whether or not to use the fluff in the sidebars of a technical manual to make a major decision in game design, you should have said so. Similarly, if you wish to carry on about whether or not we have to have a point and click targeting interface in order for this to be "real" BattleTech, you should make your own thread instead of trying to hijack this one. In either case, your opinion is really not germane to the subject to which you are repeatedly responding.
"seem to have jumped into" ... I started posting that we should use the rules in the
second post of the
first page of this thread. Dare I even ask you to clarify what the heck you mean by "fluff?" and where it is you think I've been discussing it? Or is it "sophistry" to inquire what someone means before responding to them?
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Yet your method of posting, as outlined above, doesn't lend itself well to unimportant things like context. If you want to talk about your subject, please feel free to make your own thread. While I disagree with some others on the subject of how closely tied to the tabletop rules our current gameplay should be, they are at least talking about the same subject - and unlike with you, I don't have to spend half my time correcting their hypocritically arranged and invalid arguments. The sophists contributed greatly to the destruction of Greek society. Please stop emulating them.
As for whether we should implement a sidebar in a supplementary rulebook as the Holy Word of Fasa, I say, "heck no." First if we're actually staying within the topic of the post, because it would: make a bad design choice for an in-the-cockpit perspective game; require a complete rework of a fun game system that has been months in the making; and dilute feedback to the player because the RNG would sometimes give to returns for a bad decision. There's no rational reason to select that one piece of flavor text and say "we must design the entire game around this thing!" particularly when that thing isn't related to game balance.
If, on the other hand you are saying that "It's not 'real' Battletech without a point-and click interface," I say "go away until you can reason from a consistent basis." You've said above that you don't want the tabletop rules directly transplanted into this Battletech game, so what's your basis for selecting this one thing (which is not even a rule) as a deal-breaker? To say nothing of the fact that, to bring you back to my thesis in these posts, you cannot thump a rulebook to "prove" a purely aesthetic opinion about what makes "real" Battletech - or to enforce an arbitrary opinion about which rules to import to this game.
P.S. Sidebar fluff aside, the fact that in tabletop, Mechwarrior skill levels affect targeting accuracy puts paid to the idea that it's only the Battlemech doing the aiming. Pairing Mechwarrior skill to accuracy, yet rolling the hit location randomly (only allowing called shots at a penalty, or with special equipment) is a game balance decision which cannot be coherently reconciled with the game lore. So now I guess Battletech isn't really Battletech...
I haven't taken any of your quotes out of context and again, I'm not going to try and prove a negative.
"A sidebar" - Seeings as I haven't quoted a single sidebar, I wonder what you're referring to; and you seem to have a habit of complaining about lack of context. What, in the structure of the language of your post, is supposed to help anyone be sure what you're referring to with your "sidebar" quip? Or would you prefer everyone simply guess?
"RNG would give returns for bad decisions" - as would any gaming system in existance. Or are you saying that it's possible to make a game where a bad choice will never give a good result?
"Point and click interface" ... are you referring to how one indicates to his 'Mech what should be aimed at? If you are, what do you mean by "point and click?" Do you think it means "point, click, fire, forget, ALA how LRM's worked in mw4? Or something else?
No, the MW gunnery skill rolls do not negate the idea that the 'Mech handles the aiming... they only mean that the pilot figures into the equation somewhere. Your premise doesn't require your conclusion.
"Is a game balance decision which cannot be coherently reconciled" ... again, not required by your premises. There is nothing about spreading weapons fire that negates the idea of pilot gunnery skill rolls or in-universe pilot gunnery skill.
Virtually the entire lore clearly shows that Battlemechs are incapable of getting every weapon to hit a single armor panel of a mobile target mech - the only exceptions being pure author fiat characters and situations - and I've already quoted from the authoritative author from the authoritative source on that. It is the 'mech that does the calculations and the physical aiming to hit what the MW is indicating with the reticule.
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