Mechwarrior Online

You're imagining a world where you only have 1v1 fights...

"Imagining". There's a great way to have a debate about something. Why not just cut to the chase and call me a fool while you're at it?

Suffice it say I think your unsupported argument that "more tonnage is strictly better" is simplistic.

allowing the enemy to have a fully functioning medium mech while your team has a glorified light is strictly worse, you're trying to sugar coat it I think.

More tonnage is not ALWAYS better, but in 99% of situations it is, which is why it's odd that they went this route in the first place. If one team takes the highest tonnage vehicle in each weight class, and another team takes the lowest and all pilots are evenly skilled I would bet my life that the higher tonnage team will win almost every match.

A team with 2 Jenners, 2 Hunchbacks, 2 Catapults, and 2 Atlas is going to annihilate a team of 2 Spiders, 2 Cicadas, 2 Dragons and 2 Awesomes, unless it's a foot race or the pilot skills are completely out of whack. Even ignoring BV, if it was tonnage based you could do things like put a really good light pilot in a commando instead of jenner to free up tonnage for the top end. We did this in TT all the time.

the above teams are 500 tons versus 400 tons, you're basically missing an atlas. That's no joke.

Going that route in the first place is a fairly big improvement on what came before it though (nothing at all).

I imagine it will get better, but no idea when it would happen.

I'll give you that, it's definitely better than nothing. I would love to see some BV with pilot skill modifier

I'd be shocked if they go beyond trying to approximate tonnage and get into BV, as much as I'd like to see BV. I imagine bringing player skill into it is probably beyond their ability.

since the beta threads with the info have vanished, this is a great resource for seeing what the crit layouts are on each mech chassis

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/

The devs have already posted that player skill will definitely be in the mix somewhere

The AC/5 is still totally out of whack. It really needs a buff. Just reducing the cool down from 1.7 to 1.2 or 1.1 would put it right back in line and make it a desirable weapon again.

Jenners and Catapults are really good, while Spiders(!) and Dragons are really not. It's not just because of weight.Tonnage is going to be an easy way to make a FOO-X1 better than a BAR-Z9, but when you get to Cicada/Hunchback or Awesome/Atlas comparisons, maneuverability, hardpoints, and silhouette/hitboxes come into play. Some of this is because of technical reasons or NYI features: for example Jenners completely obviate Commandos because of MWO's speed caps.

Mechs don't become interchangeable blobs of tonnage until you get to Clan Omnimechs.

I completely disagree, except for the Spider (which isn't even yet made, so hard to judge) and to a lesser degree the Dragon.

- Cicadas are at least as good as Hunchbacks, as their speed gets over a crucial hump, and you'd much rather face a good Hunchback pilot than a good Jenner pilot. When Hunchbacks weren't limited in engine size I would have agreed -- but they are limited.
- Dragons are weak true, but more due to their crappy hardpoints and vulnerable CT.
- Awesomes can readily best Atlases. I intentionally and specifically hunt Atlases when I'm in an Awesome, and think that part of its strength is that you're likely paired off against an Atlas. Increased maneuverability and ability to pop over/out-of cover more than offsets their lower armor in a long range fight, and the hardpoint selection and speed of the 4xSRM6 Awesome R makes it a better brawler too. Awesomes can be fast enough to have some agency, while Atlases are so cumbersome you're basically forced to accept the situation you're given.

Comparing MWO to tabletop is moot, as it's functionally a different game; that you even need to go there weakens your argument. And your strictly tonnage based "missing an Atlas" argument is inherently flawed -- 8 Jenners will destroy 4 Cataphracts, and yet their total tonnage is the same.

There are talking about tracking pilot skill with some sort of ELO like mechanism. Next month or so from what I've read.

They're talking about giving most autocannons a 30% boost to projectile speed. Should extend their useful range considerably. Not sure it'll be enough for me to actually like AC5s, but we'll see.

The main problem I see is that UAC5s are only one ton/slot more yet refire at 1.1s with the option to double that and risk jamming. UAC5s do get decreased ammo/ton, but that's not really enough for me to consider AC5s.

You mean because of XL engines, endo-steel and FF armour.

As it stands a jenner can go super fast AND pack a punch equal to a commando AND have max armour, instead of having to pick 2 out of 3 (or 1 out of 3).

Yeah, at the lower end of the scale there's definitely a sweet spot right where the Jenner is. Commandos are simply sub par, and I think Hunchbacks and Centurions are too (though to a lesser extent).

Maybe this will change if MWO's netcode improves so you need to lag-lead less, but that remains to be seen. Or maybe my view stems from my crappy 180ms connection. :-/

No, I do mean because of speed caps. In theory, a Commando can outrun and disengage from anything in the game, which would give it a role it can fill better than a Jenner can. The reason they can't do this is because mech speed is hardcapped because of netcode limitations, so Jenners can match the top speed of a Commando (regardless of what it says on the speedometer). So, in MWO, the Commando doesn't have anything that the Jenner doesn't. On top of this, the Jenner is just very good. Its silhouette is excellent, and its hardpoints allow it to fit just the right number of the most efficient and effective weapons in the game. It already has all of the advantages you would need to give to lighter mechs to make them competitive with heavier mechs in the same class. (The Catapult similarly looms over the rest of its weight class.)

Mechs aren't just blobs of tonnage. Compare the Jenner to the Raven to see why.

The OP has been altered. Pray that I alter it further after an official release.

I guess my point is that without XL engines, a stock jenner simply would not be able to go much faster than stock without shedding most of it's weapons. Who would really be afraid of a jenner with 2 medium lasers?

Edit: For an even more extreme example compare the stock Cicada to the stock Locust.

I didn't realize this was now open to everyone. Promptly grabbed it and fired it up - looks and feels good, can't wait to be able to actually mess around with my own mech. Gonna be a bit of a slog looks like, but it's nice they give you a taste of all the classes.

Is the trial matchmaking restricted to other trial players? I'm going to have to read the rest of this thread now. :)

We wish

The matchmaking is a bit of a mess right now, mixing premade teams and PUG players, mechs with solid loadouts and expensive parts vs. mediocre trial mechs, a surprising number of players suicide farming or using bots for fast XP/credits, and still a significant number of crashes and disconnects.

I'm enjoying it nonetheless, and they're apparently testing improvements to matchmaking right now, but hopefully it's not much longer before they can smooth out the kinks. It's pretty frustrating to have a match start and have one teammate disconnect because he can't see anything, while another rushes off to a quick death so he can start a new match ASAP.

They're in the process of reinventing WoT's wheel.

Not really, WoT made it wasy for themselves by stratifying the tank hulls into tiers and then balancing purely based on that. Loadouts and player skill is not taken into account at any stage. For that wheel to fit on the mechs you'd have to stratify them in the same fashion, adding the slow grind down the tech tree that makes WoT such a maddening experience.

What MWO needs is a rating system based on past pilot performance, average XP gained is my favourite measure as it puts more weight on participation than simple Kill/Death or Win/Loss ratio. Add a trial phase of five to ten matches in a Trial league but boot premades containing any members not in the trial phase to the general pool.

Wouldn't you also need a weight system on the various upgrades, too?

The solutions to suicide farming and botting and mixing of groups and pickups are going to be pretty much the same, though.

How does WoT handle suicide farming and botting?

Suicide farming is not worthwhile as your xp and money gain is entirely contingent on things you do in the match. If you charge the enemy in the first 30 seconds and explode you have a high chance of simply losing money and your xp gain would be negligble. I never noticed anyone botting so I don't know how that would work, presumably it's too hard to write a bot that would play effectively enough to gain xp and cash each match.

No reason why MWO can't implement a similar system. Do nothing, get nothing but a repair bill.

I do hope they don't screw it up, I feel like WoT went a little overboard, and now the losing side tends to get very little experience or money, even if they performed well.

I don't think that's true except in clan wars/company matches (where the losing side pays "reparations" in the form of half their gross pay to the winners). In terms of cash, winning only affects the base participation amount and not the performance-based portion. In terms of XP, things are a little harsher, but the reason for this is that there appears to be something of a team performance adjustment--you seem to get underpaid if your team as a whole got stomped, even if you personally did okay--which conversely means that in a close match, the difference in the average will mostly be from the 50% bonus. My average base score on a loss is probably in the mid 300s (including blowout losses), which isn't excessively painful.

Plus, it's hard to lose more than about 55% of your games if you're putting in some effort--even people who just AFK matches usually don't drop below 40%.

Oh I'm in favor of a system approximating battle value where some combo of hull, equipment and upgrades make a number that is added to balancing. I just don't think they're anywhere near as close to that as they are to some ELO-like system.

I guess, WoT had quite a few issues with suiciders and AFK/bots in it's early days. I hope they're keeping an eye on what the WoT devs did but I'm not sure they need to use the exact same measures, especially since the grind is a lot more bearable in MWO. In the end it's something I've noticed much less in MWO than in early WoT, so my opinion is a bit half baked.

Well, if WoT didn't have those problems, they wouldn't have invented solutions for them. In any case, it took them longer than it should have, but what they came up with works quite well, so it seems like the sort of thing to consider.

You and I may just be "lucky" in that we never got exposed to too much of that stuff; I only saw AFKers and suicide scouts occasionally, and teamkilling almost never, whereas the forums had people claiming they got team damaged every other game.

I am closing in on 1000 matches and I have seen exactly 1 instance of teamkilling. I have also killed one of myteammates by accident once. I see suicides every few matches, maybe one out of 3 or 4. It could be a lot worse.

I made a fairly effective loadout for my CN9-D. "Trebuchet" fit: 250XL engine, 2xLRM15 with Artemis, 2 medium lasers, 2 machine guns (just to have something on the arm mount really). 8 tons of ammo.

Elited it can walk backwards at 60kph. You can retrograde from a streakapult for example and kill it before it ever gets in range. Even light mechs have trouble controlling the range, and I have killed Jenners and cicadas that could not reliably stay under 180m. Against assault mechs you can run wide circles around them at 2-300m and lambast them quite effectively... LRMs use the arm cross air to target making them very flexible in a turning fight. And of course it can also fill the traditional long range bombardment role.

There appears to be a psychological advantage this mech also, which is that in a furball, centurions have a relatively low target priority. Consequently they tend to survive longer and do more damage, and this is true for all my centurions. What a great mech!

Hate to break it to you, but you got boned (as did I!) on the 250 XL engine -- 255 XL weighs the same!

The machine guns' 2 tons is probably better spent on a bigger engine anyway. Might try TAG too if you're LRMing from up close, especially with ECM around the corner...

Speaking of which, I'm curious to see how LRMs and Streaks work out with the pending release of ECM, which apparently will make locking on effectively impossible without either TAGing targets, or having someone with ECCM within 180m of your target.

I used a 250XL engine which I already had lying around (probably off some other mech)

The machine guns are suboptimal. I put them there just to have an arm weapon, therefore not feel utterly ineffectual at close rang and because they speak of buffing them, so you never know. TAG would take up one of my 2 precious energy slots, but it's an interesting idea.

I don't think streaks will be much affected by ECM, as the effect of ECM is to shorten the distance at which you can lock on. Seems unlikely it will shorten to below 270m, the maximum range of streaks. LRMs on the other hand will be largely nullified at long range... ravens in counter jamming mode / tag lasing will become indispensible.

From what the devs have said, Steaks will indeed be affected by ECM:
- normal lockon range reduced to 200m, not extendable with BAP.
- can't lockon if an ECM mech is within 180m.
- Can overcome this with TAG outside 200m, or with a friendly ECCM mech near the enemy ECM mech.

That 20m gap (maybe 50m with the +sensor module?) is going to be a tough needle to thread for Streaks.

LRMs are certianly going to become very difficult to use in an ECM environment. ECM mechs will also likely become the favoured light mechs to drive since they will be mostly LRM immune.

Yeah, with ECM looking so good I can't see driving any Light mech without it. Might even extend to Medium mechs too; I'm working on picking up a Cicada M for just that reason right now...

I suspect they'll have to back down the power of ECM as otherwise hardly anyone will use LRMs (or Streaks), with the possible exception of full teams packing enough ECM to ensure dominance. Essentially having to get within 450m and maintain TAG painting is a huge obstacle.

[Edit] Oho! And now they've changed it so no Jenner model allows ECM... that'll be interesting!

The Cicada is not very attractive as a medium, however the Atlas D-DC suddenly becomes a very compelling platform.

I think they should allow for a dumb fire mode for LRMs

I thought they had a dumb fire mode for LRMs already, and it was just Streaks that you absolutely needed a lock for?

Been a while since I went LRM hunting though.