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There was a good reason to put weapons in the arms in MW2: Mercenaries and MW3: you could actually shoot behind you if you had a joystick with a POV hud, the arms would twist to follow your camera. Your arms were still guaranteed to fall off in MW2, though, bounding spheres were kinda bad but are a fascinating pre-hitbox prototype.
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Feb 1, 2018 16:58
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What defines an Omnimech, exactly?
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Feb 1, 2018 20:05
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Night10194 posted:What defines an Omnimech, exactly? OmniMechs are designed to be easily customized, their computers will adapt to whatever weapons or equipment are installed. An OmniMech can have its loadout swapped to one that better fits its mission in the span of about 16 hours, and converting one is extremely cheap. This comes at a minor cost: any equipment part of the "base" (empty) loadout, like the engine size, whether or not the 'Mech carries endo steel structure or ferro-fibrous armor, and occasionally extra equipment like heat sinks, MASC, or the Summoner's Jump Jets can't be removed after the fact without rendering the 'Mech a non-Omni. It can take weeks or months to customize a non-OmniMech, and doing so incorrectly can lead to crippling balance problems.
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Feb 1, 2018 20:28
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Night10194 posted:What defines an Omnimech, exactly? Essentially, plug and play weapon functionality. If you can swap out weapon pods, it's an omnimech. You can also make custom pods if you don't feel like hauling those old, tired loadouts. (Offer only valid if rich and powerful.) E: f, b. A funny thing about mech balance is that a mech can be unbalanced but if you pop off their arm they won't have balance penalties. Gameplay abstractions.
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Feb 1, 2018 20:29
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SIGSEGV posted:A funny thing about mech balance is that a mech can be unbalanced but if you pop off their arm they won't have balance penalties. Gameplay abstractions. It's less balance-balance and more "the Zeus keeps automatically bracing itself to fire the Autocannon it doesn't have" or "the uncontrolled recoil of the Awesome's right torso autocannon causes it to slew to the right unexpectedly"
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Feb 1, 2018 20:33
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painedforever posted:MW4 improved that by only allowing you to place weapons where it lets you. And then Mech Assault goes to the extreme of treating every 'Mech variant as a different 'Mech altogether. They had customization as a feature in MA during development but pulled it out. According to this interview, it was to speed things up - and speeding things up seems to be the entire point of MA. Jump in your mech and blow poo poo up immediately, the game. quote:We agonized over this. (Fought actually.) We had the ability to customize the 'Mechs in the game, but it dramatically slowed down getting into the single player game and we knew that it would be a painfully slow process for multi-player? eight people tuning and tweaking their 'Mechs... Yawn... wake me up when everyone is ready to play. No, we wanted the player in the game. Not the interface screen. We also wanted to give each 'Mech a distinct battlefield role to teach the players the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Customization of weapons dampened that distinctiveness and character.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:47
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Last Time on Dragoonball Z You should free the Northwind Highlanders from Word of Blake Space Jail! Hopefully they won't be mad at us for nuking a city of their civilians or anything. ... Ooh, wow, fancy! That's a Star Adder! What's a Star Adder? Do you mean that Blood Asp? WHO'S THE TECHNICIAN HERE YOU OR ME?!  The Star Adder is a super tough unbeatable assault 'Me-- The Highlanders killed it.  ... ... ... DIBS! 
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Feb 2, 2018 04:10
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Name shoutout! PTN poptart ninja-ing all over the mission. Gosh, that was terrible. The artillery doesn't do much splash damage, does it? You'd think they'd add that at least.
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Feb 2, 2018 04:59
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PoptartsNinja posted:OmniMechs are designed to be easily customized, their computers will adapt to whatever weapons or equipment are installed. An OmniMech can have its loadout swapped to one that better fits its mission in the span of about 16 hours, and converting one is extremely cheap. This comes at a minor cost: any equipment part of the "base" (empty) loadout, like the engine size, whether or not the 'Mech carries endo steel structure or ferro-fibrous armor, and occasionally extra equipment like heat sinks, MASC, or the Summoner's Jump Jets can't be removed after the fact without rendering the 'Mech a non-Omni. I suppose that would make most mechs in Gundam qualify as omnis, then? (Hell, some of them change loadout in the middle of a fight.) Huh. I get the value, but I always assumed from the name there was something a little flashier. Well. Interesting to know.
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Feb 2, 2018 10:03
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chiasaur11 posted:I suppose that would make most mechs in Gundam qualify as omnis, then? (Hell, some of them change loadout in the middle of a fight.) Nope, they've got external armaments. BattleTech handles that with the 'jettison-capable weapon' quirk which means they can dump it and pick up a new one on the fly if they've got spares.
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Feb 2, 2018 12:13
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e: tab open long time
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Feb 2, 2018 13:52
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PoptartsNinja posted:OmniMechs are designed to be easily customized, their computers will adapt to whatever weapons or equipment are installed. An OmniMech can have its loadout swapped to one that better fits its mission in the span of about 16 hours, and converting one is extremely cheap. This comes at a minor cost: any equipment part of the "base" (empty) loadout, like the engine size, whether or not the 'Mech carries endo steel structure or ferro-fibrous armor, and occasionally extra equipment like heat sinks, MASC, or the Summoner's Jump Jets can't be removed after the fact without rendering the 'Mech a non-Omni. Where you getting 16 hours? Just curious.
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Feb 2, 2018 16:17
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Out of my rear end, I'm not going to look up conversion times in the sourcebooks (because who gives a poo poo? There are official conversion times but it's all variable and based on the weight of the 'Mech). Two determined people working together can convert an Omni in less than 24 hours. Twilight of the Clans, Book 1. It takes more or less time depending on how many techs you're dedicating to the process, but it's still a conversion time of days vs. months. Edit: More interesting is that OmniMechs are notorious hanger queens and require more routine maintenance than a standard BattleMech. Double Edit: Omnis being hanger queens was intended to make them harder for munchkins to use in campaigns, they're very expensive to keep in peak condition and most small mercenary companies are better off selling them in favor of high-end IS gear. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 16:27
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PoptartsNinja posted:Double Edit: Omnis being hanger queens was intended to make them harder for munchkins to use in campaigns, they're very expensive to keep in peak condition and most small mercenary companies are better off selling them in favor of high-end IS gear. I would think it makes even sense in universe from an engineering perspective. Modular equipment takes a lot of calibrating and puts hardware (connection points) under a lot of stress. The real sci-fi part is that the jack-of-all-trades mechs actually work as promised unlike multi purpose military vehicles in real life. OutofSight fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 18:39
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Even that breaks down in places. Like the notorious SHD-2D Shadow Hawk 'Cause nothing says 'added close in punch' like stripping off 30% of your armor to mount a second SRM-2. Thanks, House Davion!
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Feb 2, 2018 19:17
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PoptartsNinja posted:Edit: More interesting is that OmniMechs are notorious hanger queens and require more routine maintenance than a standard BattleMech. Omnis were also invented by the Clans who wouldn't see this as a downside. The whole point of how the Clans fight is to minimize waste and collateral damage, short but intense battles are what they prefer. Prolonged campaigns where Omnis being hangar queens being a problem are something the Clans try to avoid.
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Feb 2, 2018 19:20
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Last Time on Dragoonball Z 
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Feb 6, 2018 17:43
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Oh god, machine guns! Machine guns are not very good in BattleTech. They're light, they're rapid fire, they don't add to your heat, but they're short range, and they don't do a lot of damage. They're anti-infantry, and even then, you have better options. Something that I just noticed is that the armour is a single stat in Mech Assault. In every other BattleTech game, being shot at from the back is bad, because the armour is lighter there. In this... get shot from the front, from the back, it's all the same. Oh. And Kuritans are not "good". They're interesting, and under Teddy-the-K not quite as repressive... but still a long way from "good".
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Feb 6, 2018 18:36
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So you just blew up a couple of mech factories. By Battletech standards, isn't that another war crime for the pile?
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Feb 6, 2018 19:00
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Cythereal posted:So you just blew up a couple of mech factories. By Battletech standards, isn't that another war crime for the pile? As I recall, during the Pre-Clan incasion only things like Jumpships and HPG generators were considered "off-limits" by military standards as jump drives were practically losttech at that point and Comstar would banhammer anyone who messed with their stuff. Things like automated mech factories were technically valid targets but were usually targeted for capturing rather than destruction as they could be used to build more goodies for the war effort.
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Feb 6, 2018 19:46
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Cythereal posted:So you just blew up a couple of mech factories. By Battletech standards, isn't that another war crime for the pile? That's a little messier a question than it seems at first. Every nation had different industrial capabilities, everyone jokes about the Lyrans and their love of assault 'Mechs but when you make four times as many as your neighbors you're going to field four times as many as everyone else and your leadership is going to fall into tactical laziness because throwing more weight at most problems is something that usually works. Factories were always valid military targets but by 3025 they're mostly subject to light raiding--stealing a computer or a part or some data that will help a factory on the other side of the border run. Destroying one would've made most successor states poo poo a brick and learning that a mercenary band was responsible was almost certain to end with a regiment of extremely pissed off house troops dropping in to share that displeasure during that merc group's next garrison contract. Most of the factories in heavily contested areas are relatively safe from outright destruction thanks to the very "what's yours now could become mine tomorrow" mentality the late successor states had developed. This changed with the discovery of the Helm memory core in 3028 which, among other things, had the industrial plans and specs necessary not only to keep the current factories in the Inner Sphere running indefinitely, but to bring more damaged production lines back online. Suddenly factories, while extremely expensive, were replaceable again. This was carried even further in 3052 when Hanse Davion outsourced a good portion of the Federated Commonwealth's (and Draconis Combine's) industry to the Free Worlds League. The resulting exchange of factory "secrets" meant that suddenly everyone and their grandmother was able to design new factory lines capable of producing whole new 'Mechs in a very short amount of time, which nearly everyone did to greater or lesser extents (the FedSuns did the worst with this, because Victor was in charge and he was incapable of solving any problem he couldn't shoot with an ER PPC). The redevelopment of industry in the 3055-3060 truce era hurt ComStar's prestige a lot and was a huge boon to the Free Worlds League and (secretly, thanks to Sun Tzu Liao stringing along Isis Marik as a possible fiance) the Capellan Confederation and pretty much only ended when Joshua Marik died of leukemia, which ultimately resulted in the FedCom Civil War and the utter decimation of the Lyran Alliance's industrial capacity. It's hilarious that nearly every bad thing that happens in the Inner Sphere can be traced directly to something a Marik did. If the Davions were the embodiment of the Sword of Damocles made manifest, the Mariks were an Albatross around the Inner Sphere's neck. In any case, the Word of Blake happened and since (the fake) Thomas Marik was a Wobbie sleeper agent, they quietly took over nearly the entire Free Worlds League, turning the biggest industrial powerhouse in the Inner Sphere to the task of building them an army, which is how the Jihad happened. Just because someone's certain to find it fun: - The Federated Suns had (and has) probably the worst industrial capability in the Inner Sphere, and they tended to build lighter 'Mechs than their neighbors. That forced them to innovate, but the sad truth is higher education in the Suns was typically extremely lacking. They had plenty of food and their agriculture is probably all-around the best in the Inner Sphere because most of their planets were well-suited to growing a GMO Supercorn called Quillar. Before 3025 their factories were nearly entirely old construction and the FedSuns raided their neighbors for parts a lot. Taking Tikonov from the Capellan Confederation basically doubled their industrial capacity, but it was the merger with the Lyran Commonwealth that gave Hanse Davion the tools necessary to match his ambitions. - The Capellan Confederation's a bit of a mystery, but prior to losing most of their Tikonov factories I'd put them about on par with the Federated Suns. They probably produced more 'Mechs overall but Urbanmechs don't count and Capellan construction was notoriously shoddy by 3025 because the Free Worlders had been kicking them in the teeth and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down once each decade for about 300 years. After losing their factories in Tikonov, the Confederation was hosed in terms of industrial capacity but Sun Tzu Liao was able to rectify this by sharing technology with his periphery neighbors, letting them bear the brunt of the start-up costs and outsourcing his industry to places that were either politically inconvenient for his neighbors to attack (the peaceful and pirate-hating Magistracy of Canopus) or who were bristling with nuclear weapons and a grudge against House Davion (the Taurian Concordat). This let House Liao recover their strength in relative secret while developing technologies the rest of the Inner Sphere would have to scramble to reverse engineer (Stealth Armor). - The Free Worlds League probably had the best industrial capabilities in general, but they had a lot of damaged and inactive lines due to the near constant infighting. The Helm Core did them the most good, and as much as (the fake) Thomas Marik bitched about turning the League into a giant factory for the FedCom war machine holy poo poo did that ever pay off for him in the long run. Sort-of. The league's biggest downside was: its factories were very spread out and vulnerable to raiding. - The Lyran Commonwealth was the League's match in terms of industrial capacity, but that was largely thanks to Defiance Industries--the factory we helped blow up this video. Hesperus II is a massive forge-world style industrial complex of interlinked automated factories that produce the vast majority of the Commonwealth's BattleMechs. Defiance Industries is a marvel of the Inner Sphere and probably the last truly irreplaceable factory world left due to the sheer scale and complexity of their factories. Damaging Defiance Industries even a little bit would've certainly been grounds for execution in the Commonwealth. Hesperus II was either taken over by Wobbie-backed Skye separatists or nearly so during the Jihad and many of the factory lines were badly damaged. This is further proof that Captain Wolf Mechwarrior is an implement of the Blessed Blake's will. - Rasalhague I won't discuss, their industrial capacity was a cruel joke. They inherited some of the most heavily damaged factories in the Inner Sphere from the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine. - The Draconis Combine is in the same boat as the Lyran Commonwealth, at least on paper, with the bulk of their military industry happening on their capitol, Luthien. In actuality, the Draconis Combine's industrial capacity is extremely diffused with core components for different 'Mechs being built in different factories on different worlds and then shipped off to be assembled (probably by farmers and the like) in places well away from the factories themselves. The Draconis Combine's industrial capacity is a baffling mystery to their neighbors but their construction practices leave a lot to be desired and they have a notorious problem with mice chewing up BattleMech wiring.
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Feb 6, 2018 23:00
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Apparently, since 2787 and upto 3145, there have been seventeen major battles over Hesperus II. Eight of those (and some of the biggest ones) were by House Kurita, or the Draconis Combine. Those battles have also been significant for House Steiner politically. One of the battles came about because House Steiner withdrew defending troops to raid another planet, and House Marik took advantage. That set the stage for Katrina Steiner to overthrow Alessandro. Another battle convinced the Eridani Light Horse (a premier, but very boring merc company) to leave Lyran service. And finally, a Wolf Dragoon raid under Marik contract convinced Katrina to start negotiating with Jaimie Wolf to work for the Lyrans.
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Feb 7, 2018 04:07
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painedforever posted:Apparently, since 2787 and upto 3145, there have been seventeen major battles over Hesperus II. Eight of those (and some of the biggest ones) were by House Kurita, or the Draconis Combine. Yeah, it should never be overlooked just how big of an rear end in a top hat the Draconis Combine is. They have nearly taken half the Inner Sphere by military force at one point or another and it was the existential threat of the Draconis Combine that lead to the Lyran Commonwealth / Federated Suns merger. The Federated Suns' anti-Asian racism and near-total lack of infrastructure and education is a direct result of the Draconis Combine slaughtering them for 300 years only to eat last-minute reversals when they do something incredibly stupid like starting a second war with the Commonwealth at the same time or derailing a highly-successful invasion to murder 80% of a planet's civilian population with swords because their coordinator was a dumbass and got himself sniped there.
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Feb 7, 2018 04:40
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Last Time on Dragoonball Z   
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Feb 11, 2018 22:45
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That Atlas almost makes up for the stealth sections.
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Feb 12, 2018 01:16
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The Atlas just absolutely murdering everything pleases me greatly. Every other mech's weapons just feel weak and piddly.
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Feb 12, 2018 02:08
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not a bad cacafuego
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Feb 12, 2018 03:23
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Ah Robokye! The puns are wonderful. As someone who uses them a lot, I cannot help but agree that the groans, the real heartfelt groans are so much better than any canned laughter. My wife usually just glares at me, which works nearly as well.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:40
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I know it's been discussed to death but I cannot get over the curving gauss rifles and ppcs I also cannot get over that even the lightest mech in the game carries a gauss rifle
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Feb 12, 2018 14:05
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Captain Foo posted:I also cannot get over that even the lightest mech in the game carries a gauss rifle To be fair, the Inner Sphere put a gauss rifle on a helicopter.
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Feb 12, 2018 14:25
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Cythereal posted:To be fair, the Inner Sphere put a gauss rifle on a helicopter. More put a helicopter on a gauss rifle. They also put legs on one 
dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 14:27
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I mean i'm familiar with the hollander but yeah that's basically a gauss rifle with legs, not a nimble light mech
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Feb 12, 2018 14:36
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The Cougar isn't, either. The same movement profile, just with some extra pew pew because clantech.
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Feb 12, 2018 14:42
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dis astranagant posted:The Cougar isn't, either. The same movement profile, just with some extra pew pew because clantech. I thought the hollander managed to only be 3/5 but the cougar was at least 4/6? It's been a good long time since I've played, though
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Feb 12, 2018 14:57
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Captain Foo posted:I thought the hollander managed to only be 3/5 but the cougar was at least 4/6? It's been a good long time since I've played, though They're both 5/8. The Hollander doesn't even need an XL engine to achieve that. The Cougar uses one to fit half again as much armor and a brace of medium lasers. dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 14:59
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Captain Foo posted:I know it's been discussed to death but I cannot get over the curving gauss rifles and ppcs
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Feb 12, 2018 19:59
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90s Cringe Rock posted:ITs basic mech design, why don't you get it? Lights and the faster mediums get gauss rifles, and in the assault category you get the good old classics like the CGR-1A1. That's the best use of 800 leftover BV
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Feb 12, 2018 20:01
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I had a little more free time than usual so we get an early update! Last Time on Dragoonball Z Why are you driving that Atlas this is a stealth mission! You never wanna do what I wanna do! I'm telling Major Kerensky! ... Y'know, once we rescue her. You're gonna be in so much trouble! And then I'll get to do everything I want to do again! Like that time I drove a Cougar, that was pretty neat. And she'll let me drive the truck again. And then later on we'll ki-- ... What? ... Hmm. Y'know... If we put some sweet spikes on that Atlas... 
PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 22:51
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There is something so supremely weird about making stone statues of mechanical objects. They're already made of something that'll last the test of time...
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Feb 13, 2018 03:16
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We can never let the giant insects take over a mech.
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Feb 13, 2018 03:59
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