Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited January 2013
Yeah, that guy instantly lost any credibility whatsoever the moment he started griping about the gauss stuff. Yeah, ECM is a problem right now, but he doesn't even know what he's talking about with the gauss thing; gauss ammo is 100% inert, it's the rifle that explodes. Idiot. And the gauss still kicks serious ass, to the point where it's still generally better than AC/20 most of the time. And then I get in about 20 seconds later and the dude is bitching about how his streak and gauss Cats are useless. Guess what, moron? Only an asshole would think that the streak Cat should've been something good! And the gauss Cat is still plenty broken as well, just with a drawback now instead of none. I'm quite pleased with the fact that ECM is what had be back playing the game because it got rid of the streak bullshit and an idiot like that threw a hissy fit and walked away from the game because of it.
As for the second video, that's pretty retarded, too. Holy crap! An assault mech that murders things by charging at them and unloading huge amounts of firepower! Which is exactly how most assault mechs work. And he isn't using an especially scary Stalker build. And people being stupid enough enough to charge blindly at the enemy without seeing where the nasty stuff is what makes those kinds of loadouts powerful, not the loadout itself. I mean, the 5xSRM6 Stalker is a nightmare because people will always get close enough for it to murder them; if people played smart instead of over-aggressively, they'd just hang back and pick it apart from a safe distance.
To be honest i havent seen one Gauss in two days. Not ONE.
I see gauss just much as I ever, ever have. It hasn't gone anywhere whatsoever. The gauss explosion stuff hasn't done anything to keep people from using it, because it gets mounted in places where, if the rifle gets destroyed, the player has larger concerns. And the explosion is really weak anyway, so that's not much of a deterrent at all. Now that streak Cats are gone, I see Gaussapults all the time as people are defaulting back to the next most-exploitable mech.
One *may* be lucky bringing a LRM boat and nobody bringing ECM because everybody thinks there won't by any LRMs in any case.
I also see more LRM boats then I've ever seen before. The problem with LRM boats right now isn't even entirely the ECM thing, it's the fact that people do everything they can to throw an assload of LRM launchers on their mech and make no weapon choices for the "what if" situations when people get close, people stick to cover enough to make the LRMs mostly useless, or people have ECM and stay out of LoS. ECM is only part of the problem there.
Yeah, I definitely think ECM is overpowered and needs work, but the attitude towards LRMs is as much a problem as the ECM itself. People want LRMs to primary death-dealing weapons, when they just aren't. In the tabletop, they're softening-up weapons for the heavy-hitters. For online play, no way should somebody standing on a hilltop lobbing homing weapons be as powerful as somebody constantly having to aim and maneuver; that would just be lousy design. So people are taking weapons that, even on people playing mostly fire support, should just be for stripping armor and are expecting them to do the same work of direct-fire stuff all the time, which is dumb.
EDIT: TLDR: people are lazy. They can't be Streakapult lazy any more, so they're trying to be LRM lazy. Unfortunately for them, the game is always getting closer to good balance, so being lazy is increasingly less useful. Gaussapults/AC20 Cats are basically still the current lazy option, but that's an old lazy option anyway and they still have to actually aim.
As for the second video, that's pretty retarded, too. Holy crap! An assault mech that murders things by charging at them and unloading huge amounts of firepower! Which is exactly how most assault mechs work. And he isn't using an especially scary Stalker build. And people being stupid enough enough to charge blindly at the enemy without seeing where the nasty stuff is what makes those kinds of loadouts powerful, not the loadout itself. I mean, the 5xSRM6 Stalker is a nightmare because people will always get close enough for it to murder them; if people played smart instead of over-aggressively, they'd just hang back and pick it apart from a safe distance.
Yeah, but look, thats what "getting closer to good balance" turned the game into: people charging each other blindly. I think he has a point there. I think the game has some serious problems ATM, and you just can't blame "stupid players" for everything. They do what works best... and apparently what works best is a short-range loaden assault with lots of armor charging.
There are so many things wrong with it that i don't know where to begin with. Where are those gauss snipers shooting that slowly abornimation to pulp? And the answer is... there aren't any. At least so few that it hardly makes a difference. At the moment its all about medium laser/AC/SRM. And 99% of the mechs out there are equipped like that.
Assault mechs SHOULDN'T work like THAT. Not at all. NOT WITH THAT SPEED. With a shortrange armament he should be doomed to being outranged and slowly ripped apart from afar (with the notable exception of heavily urbanized areas). And why does it work? Because "getting closer to good balance" turned the loadouts into one pretty much homogenus approach. Thats why he can steam in there and crush any mech without a comperable firepower/protection performance. Thats the problem.
Just maxed my first 'Mech, HBK-4SP, and I'm too poor to buy anything else for the time being. Is it worthwhile to convert my 'Mech XP to GXP as I go or bank it for the time I unlock 2 other variants?
Edit: Nevermind that, didn't see that cost MC.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
That being said, "more or less" means for me playing an modified AWS-8Q, with 3 PPCs, upgraded to FF armor, added a heatsink, shaved off armor COMPLETELY of the non-weapon arm and a hint of a layer from the legs using the extra 3 tons for the addition of 2 extra medium lasers for enhance close range capability and anti-light armament. I have to say i had my doubts about the heatmanagement, but it works increadible. Thats quite a nice punch against semi-closing targets. They die now as soon as they get into laser range.
Still i don't consider ECM in its current form okay and i don't consider Gauss okay. Nobody uses Gauss anymore. Nearly nobody uses LRMs anymore. That can't be right.
You should change out FF for Endo-Steel. It will gain you like, an extra 3 more tons of space. There is no situation in which FF is as good as ES. I made a spreadsheet to prove it!
As for the second video, that's pretty retarded, too. Holy crap! An assault mech that murders things by charging at them and unloading huge amounts of firepower! Which is exactly how most assault mechs work. And he isn't using an especially scary Stalker build. And people being stupid enough enough to charge blindly at the enemy without seeing where the nasty stuff is what makes those kinds of loadouts powerful, not the loadout itself. I mean, the 5xSRM6 Stalker is a nightmare because people will always get close enough for it to murder them; if people played smart instead of over-aggressively, they'd just hang back and pick it apart from a safe distance.
Yeah, but look, thats what "getting closer to good balance" turned the game into: people charging each other blindly. I think he has a point there. I think the game has some serious problems ATM, and you just can't blame "stupid players" for everything. They do what works best... and apparently what works best is a short-range loaden assault with lots of armor charging.
There are so many things wrong with it that i don't know where to begin with. Where are those gauss snipers shooting that slowly abornimation to pulp? And the answer is... there aren't any. At least so few that it hardly makes a difference. At the moment its all about medium laser/AC/SRM. And 99% of the mechs out there are equipped like that.
Assault mechs SHOULDN'T work like THAT. Not at all. NOT WITH THAT SPEED. With a shortrange armament he should be doomed to being outranged and slowly ripped apart from afar (with the notable exception of heavily urbanized areas).
62.9/kph is practically baseline for customized mechs. Only stock mechs, gimmick builds, and dakkaphracts are going to go slower. Identify him, stay at 300 range (He'll do a whopping 36 damage at that range. Cicada's barely do less), and either pick him apart or move on. He was shot at, what, once in that video? Yeah, charging works great when the enemy team ignores you, and gets utterly picked apart by the rest of your team (Seriously, watch it again and note the armor of every enemy he kills before he fires a single shot at them. Its all cleanup work, meaning his teammates kicked ass a man down as he lumbered around the entirety of the map to get in the fight). The fact is, if the best tactic is 'charge at each other and see who wins', its because both teams decide to charge at each other. Know how you break that up? ECM lights and LRMs! Or PPC, LL boats, or ballistic heavy platforms, to strip them at range (Not not a single one of those things happened to him in that video). Really, that video shows what that Stalker can do when its left alone to do what its built to. No more, no less.
I'll concede the large amount of medium lasers, but that's kind of the point of medium lasers. Your basic goto laser. There's also a lot of Large lasers and PPCs, they just generally require a more specialized build. ACs across the board are used. Hell, even LB10s see a fair amount of use. The only things noticeably absent in those two categories are Spulse, Flamers and MG. 2 Spulse deal the same damage as one Mpulse and generate 1 more heat, so eff using those. I don't think the other two need explaining.
As for LRMs. I'll be honest. I hate them, with a passion. The only thing I see from friendly LRM boats is a stream of missiles destroying my back armor as they lay into enemies I'm brawling with. I wouldn't shed a single tear if they were removed entirely.
But yes, ECM needs a tweak. You'll get no argument from me on that topic.
Hey guys, would someone who's played MWO with me when I'm in my dual Gauss, XL Engine equipped, Cataphract 3D tell Acsis how wrong he is about Gauss Rifles and the effectiveness of sniping?
I'd do it myself, but then I'd just sound like I was dick waving.
EDIT: TLDR: people are lazy. They can't be Streakapult lazy any more, so they're trying to be LRM lazy. Unfortunately for them, the game is always getting closer to good balance, so being lazy is increasingly less useful. Gaussapults/AC20 Cats are basically still the current lazy option, but that's an old lazy option anyway and they still have to actually aim.
And who wants to do something that involves work when you can just go brawl and mash the trigger blindly?
They do what works best
Actually they do what's the easiest which isn't always the same thing. See my prior statement about trigger mashing.
Gauss are still super effective, but the massive drop in health scared off a lot of people that didn't want to take that risk. I use it on my 'phracts still.
As for the second video, that's pretty retarded, too. Holy crap! An assault mech that murders things by charging at them and unloading huge amounts of firepower! Which is exactly how most assault mechs work. And he isn't using an especially scary Stalker build. And people being stupid enough enough to charge blindly at the enemy without seeing where the nasty stuff is what makes those kinds of loadouts powerful, not the loadout itself. I mean, the 5xSRM6 Stalker is a nightmare because people will always get close enough for it to murder them; if people played smart instead of over-aggressively, they'd just hang back and pick it apart from a safe distance.
Yeah, but look, thats what "getting closer to good balance" turned the game into: people charging each other blindly. I think he has a point there. I think the game has some serious problems ATM, and you just can't blame "stupid players" for everything. They do what works best... and apparently what works best is a short-range loaden assault with lots of armor charging.
There are so many things wrong with it that i don't know where to begin with. Where are those gauss snipers shooting that slowly abornimation to pulp? And the answer is... there aren't any. At least so few that it hardly makes a difference. At the moment its all about medium laser/AC/SRM. And 99% of the mechs out there are equipped like that.
Assault mechs SHOULDN'T work like THAT. Not at all. NOT WITH THAT SPEED. With a shortrange armament he should be doomed to being outranged and slowly ripped apart from afar (with the notable exception of heavily urbanized areas). And why does it work? Because "getting closer to good balance" turned the loadouts into one pretty much homogenus approach. Thats why he can steam in there and crush any mech without a comperable firepower/protection performance. Thats the problem.
Assault mechs will always use brawler builds, because the maps give enough cover for them to close with the enemy, and for the enemy to close with them, so long range sniping / missile loadouts are useless when faster mechs close with them.
LRM builds are still very strong if they have a scout with TAG to spot for them. Though they still have to worry about the enemy mechs using cover / AMS / ECM.
MWO: Adamski
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
A slow, lumbering SRM boat is not actually nearly as good as that guy thinks, because pretty much everything else outranges it.
because the maps give enough cover for them to close with the enemy
With the notable exception of Caustic where, surprise surprise, LRMs and sniper builds can wreck havoc. On the other maps, most people have not bothered to take the time to figure out the firing angles on the map to know where to post up properly for long range support. Once again, it's that whole path of least resistance thing. Also, in PUG play people will do what's best from a solo perspective so judging the game on that is just silly. Why do something like take a TAG when you have no idea if your teammates will have LRMs, or even be competent enough to know how to use them?
A slow, lumbering SRM boat is not actually nearly as good as that guy thinks, because pretty much everything else outranges it.
Yeah, you pretty much have to get taken by surprise to get ripped up by an SRM Assault Mech. I haven't had any issues with them in a long time. The 6 SRM Catapult is kind of a hooker, but the Catapult itself is a hooker in general and now that they're a thing again, I'm getting back into the flow of engaging them properly.
That's another point of contention: Do you balance for pubs or organized teams? Pub rushing works wonders. Against a coordinated, proper team, it'll be decidedly less useful. Does that mean it should be balance because it works in one instance? Or is it fine because it doesn't work in another?
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Yeah, you pretty much have to get taken by surprise to get ripped up by an SRM Assault Mech. I haven't had any issues with them in a long time. The 6 SRM Catapult is kind of a hooker, but the Catapult itself is a hooker in general and now that they're a thing again, I'm getting back into the flow of engaging them properly.
Don't you speak about my baby that way! xD
I love Catapults. I'm at 23 of 24 basic efficiencies right now, should be able to finish up and start getting Elites on my K2 today
As for the second video, that's pretty retarded, too. Holy crap! An assault mech that murders things by charging at them and unloading huge amounts of firepower! Which is exactly how most assault mechs work. And he isn't using an especially scary Stalker build. And people being stupid enough enough to charge blindly at the enemy without seeing where the nasty stuff is what makes those kinds of loadouts powerful, not the loadout itself. I mean, the 5xSRM6 Stalker is a nightmare because people will always get close enough for it to murder them; if people played smart instead of over-aggressively, they'd just hang back and pick it apart from a safe distance.
Yeah, but look, thats what "getting closer to good balance" turned the game into: people charging each other blindly. I think he has a point there. I think the game has some serious problems ATM, and you just can't blame "stupid players" for everything. They do what works best... and apparently what works best is a short-range loaden assault with lots of armor charging.
There are so many things wrong with it that i don't know where to begin with. Where are those gauss snipers shooting that slowly abornimation to pulp? And the answer is... there aren't any. At least so few that it hardly makes a difference. At the moment its all about medium laser/AC/SRM. And 99% of the mechs out there are equipped like that.
Assault mechs SHOULDN'T work like THAT. Not at all. NOT WITH THAT SPEED. With a shortrange armament he should be doomed to being outranged and slowly ripped apart from afar (with the notable exception of heavily urbanized areas). And why does it work? Because "getting closer to good balance" turned the loadouts into one pretty much homogenus approach. Thats why he can steam in there and crush any mech without a comperable firepower/protection performance. Thats the problem.
Assault mechs will always use brawler builds, because the maps give enough cover for them to close with the enemy, and for the enemy to close with them, so long range sniping / missile loadouts are useless when faster mechs close with them.
LRM builds are still very strong if they have a scout with TAG to spot for them. Though they still have to worry about the enemy mechs using cover / AMS / ECM.
That's another point of contention: Do you balance for pubs or organized teams? Pub rushing works wonders. Against a coordinated, proper team, it'll be decidedly less useful. Does that mean it should be balance because it works in one instance? Or is it fine because it doesn't work in another?
Bingo. This game is about working as a team. You cannot go off on a ADHD COD kiddie alphabet soup of spaz and expect to win in this game. The moment you meet up with a group of 2 or 3 mechs working together, your pretty much toast if you are on your own. That's why all the pubs were butthurt because the premades y'know... actually went out and found teams to work with.
You should change out FF for Endo-Steel. It will gain you like, an extra 3 more tons of space. There is no situation in which FF is as good as ES. I made a spreadsheet to prove it!
I was looking at your spreadsheet...thank you for that btw. However, I believe that your heat sink calculations are off. You are treating engine double heat sinks as 1.4, when it should be 2.0, then additional double hit sinks at 1 when it should be 1.4. For example, in B56 you have =((A56+10) * 1.4) + 2. If I'm not mistaken, the real calculation should be for B56 ->
=((11) * 2.0) + ((A56 -1) * 1.4)
Right? Or in the past month did PGI rechange it so engine double heat sinks are at 1.4 and doubles outside of the engine are 1? I thought it was engine DHS are 2 and externals are 1.4....
Hey guys, would someone who's played MWO with me when I'm in my dual Gauss, XL Engine equipped, Cataphract 3D tell Acsis how wrong he is about Gauss Rifles and the effectiveness of sniping?
I'd do it myself, but then I'd just sound like I was dick waving.
I guess you don't understand who you are arguing with... Proof/evidence will not be effective. :-)
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited January 2013
Are the 10 stock sinks also engine sinks, or just the sinks you can put into engine slots? If that's so then yeah, that's wrong and I'll update it.
I was only told today about the engine DHSs counting as 2 thing. I haven't played the game in months and that isn't documented in game.
edit: Also if the 10 stock count for double then it's basically never, ever worth using SHSs.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, but look, thats what "getting closer to good balance" turned the game into: people charging each other blindly. I think he has a point there. I think the game has some serious problems ATM, and you just can't blame "stupid players" for everything. They do what works best... and apparently what works best is a short-range loaden assault with lots of armor charging.
On the design side of things, its the lack of knockdown contributing to that. There is just zero penalty for smashing right into a target and going through them, even against a much larger opponent, because you can just keep firing. It's lousy and annoying, but that's just the way things are right now.
The other side of it is definitely players being stupid, though. Case in point: River City. One team starts at the high base with an awesome view of where the enemy team is at and will go... and 99% of the time, pubs never look. Even when somebody does look, everyone else is already stomping their way along the the path they like and always take, so the team gets screwed because people get locked into patterns with no flexibility. It takes less than a minute to do this simple, easy check, but people just plain refuse to do anything but jam their foot down on the gas pedal and gun it on the same route every time. Forest Colony? People blindly charge to the left or right with zero information on the enemy composition; lakeside against LRM and TAG or long-range weapons gets you horribly murdered, left side into the face of brawlers can also get you horribly murdered.
There's no rule or game mechanic anywhere that says running straight for enemy contact is required or even advisable, but people constantly do it anyway. And most of the time, it seems like people don't even know that reverse even exists; backpedaling beyond the range of an SRM Cat will let you drop a lot of damage on it before it gets to a good range, but people still charge right at the things instead. People are also so keen to bring their entire arsenal to bear that they don't bother to think for two seconds and realize their gauss rifle or large lasers can deal huge amounts of damage to brawlers by standing waaay back and hitting them over and over again. Yeah, that doesn't work when the enemy is on top of you, but you also shouldn't be running into cover without seeing what else might be in that cover first.
A large part of that is because of what lag armor did to the game; people got so used to lights being killing machines that they just will not scout with them now, which is hugely valuable. The other part is that, for some reason, people think that you have to be firing all the time to be useful, which just isn't the case. A single mech completely avoiding a face-to-face brawl for the couple of minutes it takes to go around the enemy can throw even matches wildly in favor of their own team. Withdrawing from a fight to cool down and let your attacker(s) switch to another target is also hugely valuable, but almost nobody does that either. Years of twitch shooters have given people bad habits that are big detriments here, because engaging the enemy until one of you dies is not the key to victory in MWO. Deliberation and patience are hugely valuable, but those require thought rather than just reflexes so they get tossed out the window and we get lots of people who go straight into brawl mode and never think of anything else.
As far as I understand it, the engine sinks are either shs or dhs depending on whether you spend the money to convert.
So, a 275 comes with 10 stock heat sinks....and 1 additional slot. So, that would be -> If you put in 1 DHS into the additional slot, it would be 22 heat dissipation (assuming the heat sink that gets loaded into the additional slot is 2.0 heat dissipation instead of 1.4) and no critical slots. Adding 5 additional DHS would be 15 critical spots, and 22 + 5 * 1.4 = 29 heat dissipation and 6 tons of heat sinks.
I believe the spreadsheet still needs to be calculated b/c in some instances it still makes sense to switch to single heat sinks like in large assaults...but I could be wrong about that.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
As far as I understand it, the engine sinks are either shs or dhs depending on whether you spend the money to convert.
So, a 275 comes with 10 stock heat sinks....and 1 additional slot. So, that would be -> If you put in 1 DHS into the additional slot, it would be 22 heat dissipation (assuming the heat sink that gets loaded into the additional slot is 2.0 heat dissipation instead of 1.4) and no critical slots. Adding 5 additional DHS would be 15 critical spots, and 22 + 5 * 1.4 = 29 heat dissipation and 6 tons of heat sinks.
I believe the spreadsheet still needs to be calculated b/c in some instances it still makes sense to switch to single heat sinks like in large assaults...but I could be wrong about that.
You can get one or two more DHS on a few builds, like some hunchbacks I've been looking at, but for me, the only ones I've built that keep single heat sinks is Awesomes.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I thought any and all double heatsinks added that were not part of the "free" engine heatsinks counted as only 1.4 DHS? So even if you had 10 DHS in the engine (for 20 heat dissipation) and a big engine with 4 heatsinks slots, those four extra DHSes you mount would only count as 1.4 each, not the full 2.0.
The other side of it is definitely players being stupid, though. Case in point: River City. One team starts at the high base with an awesome view of where the enemy team is at and will go... and 99% of the time, pubs never look. Even when somebody does look, everyone else is already stomping their way along the the path they like and always take, so the team gets screwed because people get locked into patterns with no flexibility. It takes less than a minute to do this simple, easy check, but people just plain refuse to do anything but jam their foot down on the gas pedal and gun it on the same route every time. Forest Colony? People blindly charge to the left or right with zero information on the enemy composition; lakeside against LRM and TAG or long-range weapons gets you horribly murdered, left side into the face of brawlers can also get you horribly murdered.
Then you've got guys like me who'll find a little bit of cover, flip on thermals, and start scanning to see what's going on.
And then promptly facepalms himself to death as he sees his entire team rushing right past him with no clue what's going on because hurrr duuuurrrrrrr.
On the design side of things, its the lack of knockdown contributing to that. There is just zero penalty for smashing right into a target and going through them, even against a much larger opponent, because you can just keep firing. It's lousy and annoying, but that's just the way things are right now.
Knockdown really was an important aspect of the game that equalized a bunch of stupid shit. I can't wait for it to get put back in. I'm a fan of anything that makes piloting require more skill, but I'm also an old Steel Battalion junkie so there is that.
EDIT:
Random idea: Comm Rose to make relaying information with no voice comms easier. People can relay who they're targeting, who needs to be targeted, if they need help, etc more quickly than just typing it out while being shot at.
Hey, how would I go about getting an Oosik irregulars invite? In game name is helix
Get in Vent.
Yeah, there's really not an 'Oosik Invite" so much as an invite from an Oosik. Not until they do community warfare, anyways. I was going over the content map and they've got their MC claws in me because I'm pretty excited for the tiger paint scheme.
It was a good night of way too much MWO. I've been awake far longer than I should be and its time to sleep, but the big thing to remember: The dragon is fucking back
Hey, how would I go about getting an Oosik irregulars invite? In game name is helix
Get in Vent.
Yeah, there's really not an 'Oosik Invite" so much as an invite from an Oosik. Not until they do community warfare, anyways. I was going over the content map and they've got their MC claws in me because I'm pretty excited for the tiger paint scheme.
Maybe now that we have full mech startup sequences they can turn a couple guys loose on the UI and get it functioning properly. I can dream at least.
I thought any and all double heatsinks added that were not part of the "free" engine heatsinks counted as only 1.4 DHS? So even if you had 10 DHS in the engine (for 20 heat dissipation) and a big engine with 4 heatsinks slots, those four extra DHSes you mount would only count as 1.4 each, not the full 2.0.
You could be absolutely right...that is the one part of the equation that I was not sure of....I knew that heat sinks "in the engine" counted as 2.0....but didn't know if it was just the stock ones that came with the engine or also included the ones that you could add directly into the engine ......anybody know for certain?
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
A simple spotting function would do wonders, even (and probably especially) with pubs. Being able to hit a button and designate the grid square and mech chassis (though not the variant) for your team would be huuuuge. Even if you couldn't do that much, a HUD arrow pointing at where the mech was spotted for the team to see would be huge, too. It would certainly throw a wrench in one of the things which makes ECM so ridiculous, which is that there's never any way to tell which of the enemy is in the ECM bubble without seeing them yourself.
Then you wouldn't have to worry about stopping to relay positions through typing, and even in 4-man or 8-man premades, being able to quickly point out 3-4 mechs and their current position without having to say everything would be an improvement.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I want the ability to ping what I'm looking at. So that when I see a light zip across my vision in the distance, into cover, I can ping and go HEY TEAM. PERSON HERE.
Well, the obvious solution is voice chat, whenever they get that implemented.
It is and isn't. Some people just don't like using mics with random people, or can't due to roommates, spouses, kids, etc. A simple push button comm system is far more useful and doesn't lead to matches where people are just arguing in voice chat the whole time.
I think a HUD indicator showing who/how many are targeting a given mech would be the most unobtrusive way to convey focus fire info. That and a Battlefield-series spotting system like Ninja mentioned would be awesome (quick-comms are usually too vague and people tune them out). The main point is to lower the barrier for good communication, however you do it. And not everyone has a mic.
Knockdown really was an important aspect of the game that equalized a bunch of stupid shit. I can't wait for it to get put back in. I'm a fan of anything that makes piloting require more skill, but I'm also an old Steel Battalion junkie so there is that.
From reading their updates on collisions, I keep getting the hint that knockdowns might not be coming back. They talk about netcode and balancing so everyone is "receiving proper damage" for collisions, but knockdown doesn't get specifically mentioned. What with the "Dragon bowling" stuff I hear about, it sounds like knockdowns are off the table or they'd mention fixes for it.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Does anyone else have this bug where they change their game mode, and then can't click mech lab or anything?
It sounds like a lot of these things would be good ideas for C3 functionality. Things like auto-lighting up TAG'd targets, showing a target that's being attacked, showing a target that's attacking, those sorts of things.
It'd also be cool if you could share target data with allies. So if one person has Alpha targetted, then everybody in their C3 lance can see Alpha's stuff automatically, without having to target them. Maybe not loadout, but the paper doll at least. So you could have half the enemy's damage statuses on your HUD instead of just one guy and his loadout.
Spreadsheet looks good now. From the data, it does seem that its always better to add double heat sinks, at least "stats" wise. That is...until you get to the 15 slots used point. From then on, it is a function of how many critical spots you have left vs how much weight you have left. But...you have to have a TON of weight left to make the singles worth it ....
Of course....it can still be a good idea to use singles....for example, in variants you don't plan on keeping so you don't want to drop 1.5M for the upgrade. Or...builds like the gaussapult.
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As for the second video, that's pretty retarded, too. Holy crap! An assault mech that murders things by charging at them and unloading huge amounts of firepower! Which is exactly how most assault mechs work. And he isn't using an especially scary Stalker build. And people being stupid enough enough to charge blindly at the enemy without seeing where the nasty stuff is what makes those kinds of loadouts powerful, not the loadout itself. I mean, the 5xSRM6 Stalker is a nightmare because people will always get close enough for it to murder them; if people played smart instead of over-aggressively, they'd just hang back and pick it apart from a safe distance.
I see gauss just much as I ever, ever have. It hasn't gone anywhere whatsoever. The gauss explosion stuff hasn't done anything to keep people from using it, because it gets mounted in places where, if the rifle gets destroyed, the player has larger concerns. And the explosion is really weak anyway, so that's not much of a deterrent at all. Now that streak Cats are gone, I see Gaussapults all the time as people are defaulting back to the next most-exploitable mech.
I also see more LRM boats then I've ever seen before. The problem with LRM boats right now isn't even entirely the ECM thing, it's the fact that people do everything they can to throw an assload of LRM launchers on their mech and make no weapon choices for the "what if" situations when people get close, people stick to cover enough to make the LRMs mostly useless, or people have ECM and stay out of LoS. ECM is only part of the problem there.
Yeah, I definitely think ECM is overpowered and needs work, but the attitude towards LRMs is as much a problem as the ECM itself. People want LRMs to primary death-dealing weapons, when they just aren't. In the tabletop, they're softening-up weapons for the heavy-hitters. For online play, no way should somebody standing on a hilltop lobbing homing weapons be as powerful as somebody constantly having to aim and maneuver; that would just be lousy design. So people are taking weapons that, even on people playing mostly fire support, should just be for stripping armor and are expecting them to do the same work of direct-fire stuff all the time, which is dumb.
EDIT: TLDR: people are lazy. They can't be Streakapult lazy any more, so they're trying to be LRM lazy. Unfortunately for them, the game is always getting closer to good balance, so being lazy is increasingly less useful. Gaussapults/AC20 Cats are basically still the current lazy option, but that's an old lazy option anyway and they still have to actually aim.
Yeah, but look, thats what "getting closer to good balance" turned the game into: people charging each other blindly. I think he has a point there. I think the game has some serious problems ATM, and you just can't blame "stupid players" for everything. They do what works best... and apparently what works best is a short-range loaden assault with lots of armor charging.
There are so many things wrong with it that i don't know where to begin with. Where are those gauss snipers shooting that slowly abornimation to pulp? And the answer is... there aren't any. At least so few that it hardly makes a difference. At the moment its all about medium laser/AC/SRM. And 99% of the mechs out there are equipped like that.
Assault mechs SHOULDN'T work like THAT. Not at all. NOT WITH THAT SPEED. With a shortrange armament he should be doomed to being outranged and slowly ripped apart from afar (with the notable exception of heavily urbanized areas). And why does it work? Because "getting closer to good balance" turned the loadouts into one pretty much homogenus approach. Thats why he can steam in there and crush any mech without a comperable firepower/protection performance. Thats the problem.
Edit: Nevermind that, didn't see that cost MC.
You should change out FF for Endo-Steel. It will gain you like, an extra 3 more tons of space. There is no situation in which FF is as good as ES. I made a spreadsheet to prove it!
Collision.
You begin with collision.
Which is a function of netcode.
So once the netcode is all fixed and they put collision back in, the chargers will get fixed. Because they will get knocked on their ass and alpha'd.
62.9/kph is practically baseline for customized mechs. Only stock mechs, gimmick builds, and dakkaphracts are going to go slower. Identify him, stay at 300 range (He'll do a whopping 36 damage at that range. Cicada's barely do less), and either pick him apart or move on. He was shot at, what, once in that video? Yeah, charging works great when the enemy team ignores you, and gets utterly picked apart by the rest of your team (Seriously, watch it again and note the armor of every enemy he kills before he fires a single shot at them. Its all cleanup work, meaning his teammates kicked ass a man down as he lumbered around the entirety of the map to get in the fight). The fact is, if the best tactic is 'charge at each other and see who wins', its because both teams decide to charge at each other. Know how you break that up? ECM lights and LRMs! Or PPC, LL boats, or ballistic heavy platforms, to strip them at range (Not not a single one of those things happened to him in that video). Really, that video shows what that Stalker can do when its left alone to do what its built to. No more, no less.
I'll concede the large amount of medium lasers, but that's kind of the point of medium lasers. Your basic goto laser. There's also a lot of Large lasers and PPCs, they just generally require a more specialized build. ACs across the board are used. Hell, even LB10s see a fair amount of use. The only things noticeably absent in those two categories are Spulse, Flamers and MG. 2 Spulse deal the same damage as one Mpulse and generate 1 more heat, so eff using those. I don't think the other two need explaining.
As for LRMs. I'll be honest. I hate them, with a passion. The only thing I see from friendly LRM boats is a stream of missiles destroying my back armor as they lay into enemies I'm brawling with. I wouldn't shed a single tear if they were removed entirely.
But yes, ECM needs a tweak. You'll get no argument from me on that topic.
I'd do it myself, but then I'd just sound like I was dick waving.
And who wants to do something that involves work when you can just go brawl and mash the trigger blindly?
Actually they do what's the easiest which isn't always the same thing. See my prior statement about trigger mashing.
Assault mechs will always use brawler builds, because the maps give enough cover for them to close with the enemy, and for the enemy to close with them, so long range sniping / missile loadouts are useless when faster mechs close with them.
LRM builds are still very strong if they have a scout with TAG to spot for them. Though they still have to worry about the enemy mechs using cover / AMS / ECM.
MWO: Adamski
Yeah, you pretty much have to get taken by surprise to get ripped up by an SRM Assault Mech. I haven't had any issues with them in a long time. The 6 SRM Catapult is kind of a hooker, but the Catapult itself is a hooker in general and now that they're a thing again, I'm getting back into the flow of engaging them properly.
Don't you speak about my baby that way! xD
I love Catapults. I'm at 23 of 24 basic efficiencies right now, should be able to finish up and start getting Elites on my K2 today
Bingo. This game is about working as a team. You cannot go off on a ADHD COD kiddie alphabet soup of spaz and expect to win in this game. The moment you meet up with a group of 2 or 3 mechs working together, your pretty much toast if you are on your own. That's why all the pubs were butthurt because the premades y'know... actually went out and found teams to work with.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I was looking at your spreadsheet...thank you for that btw. However, I believe that your heat sink calculations are off. You are treating engine double heat sinks as 1.4, when it should be 2.0, then additional double hit sinks at 1 when it should be 1.4. For example, in B56 you have =((A56+10) * 1.4) + 2. If I'm not mistaken, the real calculation should be for B56 ->
=((11) * 2.0) + ((A56 -1) * 1.4)
Right? Or in the past month did PGI rechange it so engine double heat sinks are at 1.4 and doubles outside of the engine are 1? I thought it was engine DHS are 2 and externals are 1.4....
I was only told today about the engine DHSs counting as 2 thing. I haven't played the game in months and that isn't documented in game.
edit: Also if the 10 stock count for double then it's basically never, ever worth using SHSs.
The other side of it is definitely players being stupid, though. Case in point: River City. One team starts at the high base with an awesome view of where the enemy team is at and will go... and 99% of the time, pubs never look. Even when somebody does look, everyone else is already stomping their way along the the path they like and always take, so the team gets screwed because people get locked into patterns with no flexibility. It takes less than a minute to do this simple, easy check, but people just plain refuse to do anything but jam their foot down on the gas pedal and gun it on the same route every time. Forest Colony? People blindly charge to the left or right with zero information on the enemy composition; lakeside against LRM and TAG or long-range weapons gets you horribly murdered, left side into the face of brawlers can also get you horribly murdered.
There's no rule or game mechanic anywhere that says running straight for enemy contact is required or even advisable, but people constantly do it anyway. And most of the time, it seems like people don't even know that reverse even exists; backpedaling beyond the range of an SRM Cat will let you drop a lot of damage on it before it gets to a good range, but people still charge right at the things instead. People are also so keen to bring their entire arsenal to bear that they don't bother to think for two seconds and realize their gauss rifle or large lasers can deal huge amounts of damage to brawlers by standing waaay back and hitting them over and over again. Yeah, that doesn't work when the enemy is on top of you, but you also shouldn't be running into cover without seeing what else might be in that cover first.
A large part of that is because of what lag armor did to the game; people got so used to lights being killing machines that they just will not scout with them now, which is hugely valuable. The other part is that, for some reason, people think that you have to be firing all the time to be useful, which just isn't the case. A single mech completely avoiding a face-to-face brawl for the couple of minutes it takes to go around the enemy can throw even matches wildly in favor of their own team. Withdrawing from a fight to cool down and let your attacker(s) switch to another target is also hugely valuable, but almost nobody does that either. Years of twitch shooters have given people bad habits that are big detriments here, because engaging the enemy until one of you dies is not the key to victory in MWO. Deliberation and patience are hugely valuable, but those require thought rather than just reflexes so they get tossed out the window and we get lots of people who go straight into brawl mode and never think of anything else.
So, a 275 comes with 10 stock heat sinks....and 1 additional slot. So, that would be -> If you put in 1 DHS into the additional slot, it would be 22 heat dissipation (assuming the heat sink that gets loaded into the additional slot is 2.0 heat dissipation instead of 1.4) and no critical slots. Adding 5 additional DHS would be 15 critical spots, and 22 + 5 * 1.4 = 29 heat dissipation and 6 tons of heat sinks.
I believe the spreadsheet still needs to be calculated b/c in some instances it still makes sense to switch to single heat sinks like in large assaults...but I could be wrong about that.
You can get one or two more DHS on a few builds, like some hunchbacks I've been looking at, but for me, the only ones I've built that keep single heat sinks is Awesomes.
Get in Vent.
And then promptly facepalms himself to death as he sees his entire team rushing right past him with no clue what's going on because hurrr duuuurrrrrrr.
Knockdown really was an important aspect of the game that equalized a bunch of stupid shit. I can't wait for it to get put back in. I'm a fan of anything that makes piloting require more skill, but I'm also an old Steel Battalion junkie so there is that.
EDIT:
Random idea: Comm Rose to make relaying information with no voice comms easier. People can relay who they're targeting, who needs to be targeted, if they need help, etc more quickly than just typing it out while being shot at.
Yeah, there's really not an 'Oosik Invite" so much as an invite from an Oosik. Not until they do community warfare, anyways. I was going over the content map and they've got their MC claws in me because I'm pretty excited for the tiger paint scheme.
You could be absolutely right...that is the one part of the equation that I was not sure of....I knew that heat sinks "in the engine" counted as 2.0....but didn't know if it was just the stock ones that came with the engine or also included the ones that you could add directly into the engine ......anybody know for certain?
Then you wouldn't have to worry about stopping to relay positions through typing, and even in 4-man or 8-man premades, being able to quickly point out 3-4 mechs and their current position without having to say everything would be an improvement.
It is and isn't. Some people just don't like using mics with random people, or can't due to roommates, spouses, kids, etc. A simple push button comm system is far more useful and doesn't lead to matches where people are just arguing in voice chat the whole time.
Has happened on both my computers.
It'd also be cool if you could share target data with allies. So if one person has Alpha targetted, then everybody in their C3 lance can see Alpha's stuff automatically, without having to target them. Maybe not loadout, but the paper doll at least. So you could have half the enemy's damage statuses on your HUD instead of just one guy and his loadout.
Spreadsheet looks good now. From the data, it does seem that its always better to add double heat sinks, at least "stats" wise. That is...until you get to the 15 slots used point. From then on, it is a function of how many critical spots you have left vs how much weight you have left. But...you have to have a TON of weight left to make the singles worth it ....
Of course....it can still be a good idea to use singles....for example, in variants you don't plan on keeping so you don't want to drop 1.5M for the upgrade. Or...builds like the gaussapult.