145 replies to this topic

[shintakie]

Khobai, on 14 February 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

Assaults are hardly nimble lmao. Except for the Awesome-9M and Pretty Baby.

And the reason why everyone trends towards speed is because aiming and the triple rate of fire on weapons makes mechs die WAY faster than in tabletop. So speed is the only real way to stay alive.

Perhaps nimble is the wrong word. The issue I have is that Assaults with large engines effectively negate what should be a weakness of Assault mechs, that is that they're not very light on their feet and can't maneuver well. The trade off for that is that they have massive amounts of firepower at their disposal. The fact that Assaults that arent a Stalker can quite easily guard their backside as well as they do, to me, feels like a major balance concern.

[Vechs]

shintakie, on 14 February 2013 - 08:20 PM, said:

Perhaps nimble is the wrong word. The issue I have is that Assaults with large engines effectively negate what should be a weakness of Assault mechs, that is that they're not very light on their feet and can't maneuver well. The trade off for that is that they have massive amounts of firepower at their disposal. The fact that Assaults that arent a Stalker can quite easily guard their backside as well as they do, to me, feels like a major balance concern.

The thing is, Assault mechs don't even have "massive amounts of firepower".

Due to the hardpoint system, all the Atlas variants, and a few Awesomes have "meh" weapon options. You can fit the same weapons on a Heavy and go faster.

The Stalker is the only Assault that really feels like it has that kind of on-demand massive firepower that the weight class is supposed to claim as it's specialty.

[Taizan]

Since they changed the AWS (non 9 series) engine limit to 300 I've upgraded my AWS to 300 instead of 290. Why? Because I get 2 extra HS instead of one and move faster. Currently there is no benefit to moving slow.

An Ilya with AC 10 for example would be doable, but it would be so slow, it'd be a feast for lights / meds before it can do serious harm.

On top of that everyone tries to get at least a 250 engine imo is because of the 10 HS, from then on it's all in steps of 25's the more you can cram in the better.

It's not only about speed though - most mechs I see are optimized for high front load damage, not sustainable damage over time, a larger engine will help with the heat spikes and you can pull off more alphas / frontload shots.

[Captain Stiffy]

TT is not as much like this because you aren't so exactly tied to KPH - more hexes. So you make a mech by looking at how many run/walk hexes it has with the engine that it has. This depends on total tonnage - another thing they don't get to in the game.

Let me pick that bone for a second by the damn way! How come if I take five tons out of my atlas the speed doesn't go up? By every single last battletech manual EVER EVER it should MOVE FASTER IF IT WEIGHS LESS given the same engine!!!! Even in the same weight class!

[TheRulesLawyer]

The real reason big engines are such an advantage is the double armor in the game. In CBT to run a large engine you either end up really really fragile, or have no offense. A slower mech might only need to connect once to ruin the day of a fast build. IN MWO you don't double your firepower by taking a slower engine. Its extremely hard to get that one hit cripple or kill with the doubled armor. This changes the relative value of being hard to hit vs lots of fire power.

[Praehotec8]

Part of the problem (or the visualization of the problem?) is seen in that, assuming decent pilots, a fast, nimble light often will be able to take down an assault 1 on 1. The only hope an assault has is to up engine speed to increase turning radius in hopes of getting the light in his sights and landing a lucky shot to kill/cripple it. As the game currently stands, assaults don't have the feel I expected them to when I first came to the game. I expected huge behemoths that required prolonged fire from several smaller mechs to take it down; a mech that 1-1 wipe out any smaller mech without breaking a sweat.

This is a little less of a problem for lower weight classes and suport mechs (my stalkers have a std 300, while my cats share an XL 265 and it feels sufficient balance between weight, heat and speed to keep up in a supporting role. It would be nice for assaults to be able to viably choose lower speeds for increased firepower, but it just isn't the case currently.