58 replies to this topic

[RFMarine]

i think this should happen. when netcode is fixed and collisions re implemented we will see casualty rates of light mechs skyrocket. as a semi fix for this, jumpjets (at least jumpjets for lights) will enable a skilled player to run towards an atlas and quickly jump over and run away before the atlas has time to turn around and the rate of climb/max height must be fast enough for this to be a viable maneuver. too slow and the flying light will be a big target like a blimp

Edited by RFMarine, 20 January 2013 - 08:27 PM.

[UnseenFury]

Norris J Packard, on 20 January 2013 - 10:39 AM, said:

Right, but in MWO Mk's for JJ's work the other way.

For example; all Lights use Mk. 5's. The Cataphract and Catapult uses Mk. 3's.

Was it a mistake of the developers?

By the way I agree with the people in this thread, jump jetting as of right now doesn't feel right.

We need explosive burst, legs physically pushing and vertical thrust...

[Norris J Packard]

Paran01ac, on 20 January 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

Was it a mistake of the developers?

By the way I agree with the people in this thread, jump jetting as of right now doesn't feel right.

We need explosive burst, legs physically pushing and vertical thrust...

I guess? It's just labeled wrong, the stats (crits and tonnage) for the individual Mk's aren't wrong though.

[Haitchpeasauce]

Even with 4/5 JJ on the Jenner, they're no longer Jump Jets, they're Hover Jets.

[Chou Senwan]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 18 January 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

We will not be increasing max height but we are in the process of shortening the time it takes to get to max height.

I have trouble gauging the exact height of the buildings in River City, but it seems like the current elevation limit makes it hard for a Catapult or Cataphract to get atop the typical buildings there. Is that intentional?

Is there any plan to improve air maneuvering? Perhaps being able to adjust a few meters side to side, or to provide some forward thrust so you can go "up then forward" to get to a roof, instead of having to smash face-first into the side of a building and scrape your way to the top?

Questions aside, I'm glad to see the plan to increase thrust.

[Koniving]

I think I know what's wrong with jumpjets.

The "Mesh" physics weights for the Raven and Jenner might be exceptionally high. When killed they usually just flop over. They seem extremely heavy when jumping.

In comparison, a Cataphract when jump-jetting usually takes off pretty fast. When a Cataphract dies, it is often sent hurdling a good 15 meters by a laser beam. This clearly shows the Cataphract Mesh registers as being very light to the physics engine.

Catapults literally fall over in place, never being knocked around no matter what. As such their mesh physics weight is very heavy.

The Atlas if it were to jump could fly like a butterfly, since my Founder's Atlas can often be sent in barrel rolls down hills.

The Spider when killed goes flying. Once I got knocked through the map. Another time I went flying over a building, clearly showing the Spider mesh to be super light.

Video examples coming Monday afternoon.

In the mean time, this is me at the highest point in Frozen City. ON TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN OVER THE FROZEN CITY CAVES! O_O!




Video tutorials showing how to get to numerous high places are coming. However, given the exploitative nature of this particular high point (no one can hit you; you can shoot into the cave and hit them, etc.), the method of reaching this spot is going to the developers so that they can "cap" this particular spot off.

[Crimson Fenris]

The last newsletter promised Spider "holding eight jumpjets, leaps and soars over the battlefield".
All spiders i saw from here were not "leaping", but instead either stick running, or being easy targets when barely trying to lift their mass off the ground...

I could understand why you cut off by 3 the maximum height (even if the relative scales dont seems to be so off from TT lore, so that seemed not necessary to me), but definately the JJ need far more initial push, and a bit more fuel, accordingly to number of JJ installed.

I tried the Spider 5D with 8JJ :
- When jumping in maximum speed, the vertical lift seemed near from inexistent, my mech barely floated 30m from the ground for 4-5 seconds, before running out of fuel, and taking legs damage
- When jumping full stopped, the lift seems to be weak and the mech heavy, like previously the Catapult... When maximum height was reached, the fuel was near to depleted, and slowing the fall enough to avoid leg damage was impossible.
Acceleration during fall cant be compensated enough, that's a real problem, especially when lights are the less armored of all chassis in the legs...

So, again, where are the "leaping Spiders" ? If the Spider couldnt even jump over an Altas, where are the tactical advantage about equipping 4 to 6 tons of useless stuff ?

Remember that : JJ are taking critical slots and tonnage, is already balanced due to the fact this is a trade-off against either armor, speed (engine tonnage), upgrades (crit slots available) or weaponry, why did you felt the need to nerf them like that ?
Especially considering the poor weapon setup you gave to the spiders : they are meant to compensate by a fairly superior agility. If you deny that to them, what is left for the poor spider ?

Look at your game stats : Spiders are more and more rare on the battlefield, ask yourself why, and consider my suggestions

[KageRyuu]

Ok, finally some feed back on Jump Jets from Garth via No Guts No Glory Podcast.

http://nogutsnogalaxy.net/ngng-57/

If you want to skip to the man himself speaking about them then skip ahead to 38:30, if not I'll post some quotes from the show.

Community Question from Balrig (abbreviated): "With regards to the Spider, now that we have a mech that is really truly a jump dedicated mech... Are they fully implimented?"

Response from Garth: "Lord knows they are not complete, we are working on fixing them up right now. They are not intended to work like this, believe me. They are under strength to put in mildly."

[Koniving]

Crimson Fenris, on 21 January 2013 - 02:48 AM, said:

Said stuff.

I think you're jumping wrong. Spiders are the only mechs jump jets seem to really work for. Look above for proof, I'm "412" meters in the air, at the highest point on all of the game's maps. I'm so high up there is no level left in the center of the level. That's the cave down below. In the other shot, that's looking out toward the dropship (dropship to the left).

However, we know why the Spiders are rare and why they suck. Admittedly people are trying to use them for combat roles. That is the standard now since almost all of the strategic element has been shredded by ECM -- which has turned scouts into combat specialists ideal for taking out every mech in the field -- and self-tagging LRM boats who in turn have eliminated the need for light scouts.

Most scouts are now medium mechs, and they don't really scout anymore. They walk off in a direction and then cry for help. "Oh, well we know the enemy is in D7 now." Whole team walks over. One or the other side wins.

I miss the old strategy involved even in pug matches from the closed beta.

However, the scout's role is not combat. The Spider's role, given the current situation, is not to scout either or it will be slaughtered.

Its current only feasible role in MWO is a support 'Mech in one of two regards:

One is a diversionary cannon fodder, making great leaps and drawing lots of attention while an army of Gauss Cats simultaneously wipe out the other team. (it's happened, and it's hilarious! Look it's a spider! PULL!! Everyone looks up at the spider flying through the air, then wonder how they died when the match suddenly ends within the next 30 seconds or less.) Without the assistance, however, the Spider is going to die. Even with the help, the Spider is going to die. Here, the commando gets virtually no money or only kill assist money and little experience.

Two is as a sniping support platform, perching up at high locations otherwise inaccessible by any other 'Mech and laying down rapid PPC or AC-2 / 5 firepower. Typically, the Spider becomes the last one to die or survives, and averages around 200 to 600 damage with 1 kill and a few assists.

Edited by Koniving, 21 January 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Eddrick]

I know they want Jump Jet vertical lift to be based off of mass. But, more vertical lift across the board would be nice.

[focuspark]

IMO JJ should be 45 degree thrust in the direction you're currently facing. No directional control other than to rotate as you see fit. Longer you hold down the thrust the longer you jump. Jets should cut out at 25% fuel (unless you press a second key) to allow for a graceful landing.

[Ashnod]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 18 January 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

We will not be increasing max height but we are in the process of shortening the time it takes to get to max height.

What about directional control?... needs to be added IMO

[Ave Hax]

Well on the spider there is very little air directional controll with 12 however and remeber there not aircraft or helicopters there sticking to the board game quite a bit on this. Pilot skill was everything on jumps = so learn how
a jump was used as arching not helicopter.

[Ave Hax]

Oh and if the devs want to have the jump jets in the feet give more lift over ones in the body could give more forward thrust if anything ??

[Koniving]

Reaching the highest perch in MWO as in my previous pictures. Here's the how to.



I've noticed a trend with jumpjets.

If you want to get in the air, you have to run into a building or a wall that doesn't have an overhang.

They would work better if we didn't have to be running into a building to go up.

[Corvus Antaka]

Koniving, on 21 January 2013 - 08:19 PM, said:

They would work better if we didn't have to be running into a building to go up.

This must be a common video game "Feature" Mech4 was the same by hitting certain stuff. Made me laugh cause I've noticed this as well.

Maybe mech devs are scared of real jumpjets. I wish btech:3025 was still around, because imho that was truly the only game that made awesome mech jumpjets, you couldnt jumpsnipe, but you could JUMP, you where hard to hit, it was damn hard to aim while jumping, and the whole experience actually felt like 20-100 tons shaking & powering through the air.

[Pando]

LtPoncho, on 17 January 2013 - 10:30 PM, said:

They need an initial explosive burst, not a consistent burn rate. You need that jump to break gravity - of which I thought would be relative to the planet gravity factor. Every map/planet seems to have the same gravity.

this

[Koniving]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 22 January 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

This must be a common video game "Feature" Mech4 was the same by hitting certain stuff. Made me laugh cause I've noticed this as well.

Maybe mech devs are scared of real jumpjets. I wish btech:3025 was still around, because imho that was truly the only game that made awesome mech jumpjets, you couldnt jumpsnipe, but you could JUMP, you where hard to hit, it was damn hard to aim while jumping, and the whole experience actually felt like 20-100 tons shaking & powering through the air.

From the description it sounds like the only version of Gundam I liked: Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team. It had a very Front Mission 4 style to it. Units stomped around for the most part. Jump-jets allowed you to leap to higher spaces or leap through the air in a very short but very rapid burst. Although they could be used at a significantly weaker power to soften a landing. Of course, it was the only mechanized show from Japan where units had problems like dirt in the actuators preventing them from moving. A high focus on the use of sound as opposed to radar, with a support truck that served as their sonar. Taking out the truck would ruin their "radar" capabilities.

The Spider was a step back in the right direction, but if something isn't done about how the game's handling jumpjets, then the only other alternative is to severely impair certain Light 'Mechs to put them back into scout roles.

The current state of the game is this: Scouting is now overrated. The Raven 3-L has become a front-line fighter. The Spider, an excellent design for a scout, now only has a useful role hiding in trees or sniping. LRM support Mechs are now doing the job of the scouts by tagging their own targets due to the Guardian/Angel ECM/Stealth Armor combo.

I was here in the Beta since June 23rd. The game can still be fun, but it was a lot more fun back then. Now PUG groups no longer really work as teams. Scouts don't scout. They brawl. People flock to an Atlas just because he has ECM, even as he waltz his way outside the border the rest mindlessly follow into a mass suicide. (I stopped, typed something, but evidently at 3 AM for me, no one that's still playing speaks English. Seven 'Mechs in a pug match just walked right outside the base and left me.)

I remember when dodging missiles out in the open was a fun game in itself. Turn 90 degrees from shooter, run, shutdown, start up, turn 45 degrees, take a few steps. Missiles miss. Run circles around missile boat. Repeat.

I remember when Scouts weren't a problem. They run by, get knocked over, everyone shot them.

I remember the panic of being the only one still alive, when you don't know what happened to the rest, as the Jenner you've been bullying in your first time playing comes back with all 7 of his friends and they tear you limb from limb as you're asking "Guys? Is anyone out there? Guys?"

Now.. You're the last one left and all you can do is face-palm because the whole team was wiped out by one light Mech, "I told you fools not to tangle with the 3-L. You AVOID from the 3-L and take it on in a group."

Remind me never to team up Steiner's forces again. "Oh I got an Atlas!" "Oh you're a corpse."

[Hubis]

Pasting in a suggestion from my other thread:

Hubis, on 22 January 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

So one of the main problems with Jump Jets right now is that there's not really any "jump" -- they're more like "hover-jets". Aside from feel and verisimilitude (as much as you can use that word in a game about 30m tall death robots) this is a problem because it really doesn't give jump jets the usefulness in terms of mobility as they should have. In practice, jump jets should give you a big initial "boost" to get you into the air, and then let you seer a little bit to come in for a soft, guided landing.

I think this can be fixed with few very simple changes to how jump-jets change a mech's movement:

• Give Jump-Jets more Forward Thrust. Right now Jump-Jets all actually have a "Forward" thrust in addition to the vertical amount; however, it's a tiny, tiny fraction of the vertical bump, so much as to be fairly useless. PGI may be planning on boosting these and is just waiting on testing/code in the back-end, I'm not sure; at any rate, however, this would give jumping mechs much more control over where they move in flight (which, if we're going to consider tabletop mechanics, they really should have).
  
• Change jump jet thrust from a constant value to something like "BaseThrust * (1.0 + RemainingFuel^2)". What this would mean is that, when fully "charged", hitting your jump jets would give you a dramatic initial burst (2x the base thrust), sending you rocketing up into the air. The longer it burned, however, the less thrust you'd get causing your upward movement to settle into a slow ascent, then a hover, and finally a soft landing. It would also discourage constant jumping, in favor of letting your jets fully recharge before making another maneuver, adding an interesting "timing" aspect to playing a jump-jet mech like the Jenner or Spider. Obviously the base thrust values would need to be tuned after this change, and I would only apply this to vertical thrust -- horizontal thrust would remain constant.

I think that these changes would make having jump-jets an incredibly valuable option on all mechs which can fit them, and really increase the viability of jump-jet mechs and add a lot of variability between mechs that are just "fast" (Commando, Raven, Cicada) and ones which are fast AND mobile (Spider, Jenner) which makes them feel distinct. With a system like this I would definitely consider bringing a slower engine on a Jenner if it meant I could fit a full compliment of jump-jets for effective ambushing.