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Pattonesque posted:why's the TT Shadow Hawk a bad robbit? It's oversinked and spends a lot of tonnage to do not much damage. Plus the weird 5/8/3 move profile
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Jan 30, 2018 16:58
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Pattonesque posted:why's the TT Shadow Hawk a bad robbit? It has a mix of weapons that manage to be both heavy and not do too much damage. The AC/5 is the worst offender here. It also uses a lot of ammo intensive weapons in an era when ammo explosions are deadly. The other weapons it has also tend to be on the lower end of the damage scale (SRM2, LRM5) for their weapons classes. The SRM2 in particular is both short ranged and really anemic if your'e facing anything but a light mech. The reason most people really see this come into play is because most TT isn't fought over anything like the range that really benefits long range mechs. If you can hold range over a long battle with a SHD-2H that AC5 actually becomes useful as an annoying plinker, and the LRM5 does the same. In that situation the medium laser and SRM2 actually provide enough of a "gently caress off" to keep the typical light mech annoyances at bay. Those aren't going to help you brawling with a hunchback, but they will sure gently caress up a wasp. Again, its' a mech that has to be played to its strengths and a lot of people don't do that.
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Jan 30, 2018 17:00
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Pattonesque posted:why's the TT Shadow Hawk a bad robbit? The Shadow Hawk has a lot of direct competition. I mean a lot, there are enough 5/8 medium (and heavy) 'Mechs that if you compare at any one thing (maneuverability, firepower, durability, heat management) about half of those 'Mechs beat it in at least two of those categories. Our friend the Dougram is in a "jack of all, master of none" situation where what it brings to the table just isn't quite enough. The Shadow Hawk's Maneuverability is matched or beaten by the: - Phoenix Hawk (45 tons this is also cheating, the Pixie's one of the best 'Mechs in 3025) - Wolverine (55 tons) - Griffin (55 tons) - Quickdraw (60 tons) - Chameleon (50 tons) - Scorpion (55 tons) - Dervish (55 tons) The Shadow Hawk's firepower is matched or beaten by: - Dragon (60 tons, lol) - Ostsol (60 tons) - Ostroc (60 tons) - Chameleon (50 tons, lol) - Quickdraw (60 tons, again, lol) - Griffin (55 tons) - Most Wolverines (But not the stock configuration, 55 tons) - Hunchback (50 tons) - Phoenix Hawk (45 tons still cheating) - Scorpion (55 tons) - Kintaro (55 tons) The Shadow Hawk's durability is matched or beaten by: - Hunchback (50 tons) - Griffin (55 tons) - Wolverine (55 tons) - Dragon (60 tons, lol) - Kintaro (55 tons) The only thing the Shadow Hawk has going for it is heat management (produces up to 11 heat, sinks 12). If they had spent that weight on a single ton of extra armor the Shadow Hawk would've beaten everything on the durability list except the Kintaro, which would've made it stand out a little more. The Shadow Hawk's a small fish in a big pond and there's always something that outperforms it. It's really hard when the easiest direct comparisons, the Griffin and Wolverine, meet or beat you in every or nearly-every category. Edit: And that's not to say it can't or shouldn't be your favorite robit. It does have strengths, they're just harder for it to leverage than many other designs. Being a jack-of-all-trades means it needs to constantly be exploiting the thing it does better than its opponent (and just running from any Griffins it encounters unless it can ambush them at close range). PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 17:23
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Buffs to the autocannons, the missile changes and multi-targeting pilots to leverage the varied range and oversinking probably helps the Shadow Hawk a lot. And having so many hardpoints of different types should make scrounging things to put on the frame as it takes damage easier.
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Jan 30, 2018 17:34
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Amechwarrior posted:It is our vat-born superior genetics, honed by generations of trials by combat to see which grognard has the groggiest nards. Speaking just of how the Atlas itself looks, this is actually one of my favorite representations of the Atlas, because it's short and stout and looks like a proper death machine should in my mind. Plus it makes the Skull head look appropriately menacing. That said, having thoroughly enjoyed the brawling triple SRM6 in MWO (and having come back to play from a time before MM tiers existed, so I ended up in T4) I can appreciate this political cartoon Atlas greatly. Who even made this? 
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Jan 30, 2018 17:48
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those are interesting explanations! it kinda sounds like the MWO problem of trying to make your mech do so many things that it sucks at everything.
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Jan 30, 2018 18:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:*shrug* it's something I've always done in mine, and most of the better GMs I've played with have. C-bill balance works out rather differently and not so actually balanced; there's a good reason BV exists
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Jan 30, 2018 18:23
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DatonKallandor posted:Buffs to the autocannons, the missile changes and multi-targeting pilots to leverage the varied range and oversinking probably helps the Shadow Hawk a lot. And having so many hardpoints of different types should make scrounging things to put on the frame as it takes damage easier. Oh yeah, it's a vastly better Mech in this game vs TT. It was one of my favorites in Beta, in fact my Lances almost always included a Shadow Hawk or Vindicator.
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Jan 30, 2018 18:24
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Also a stock AC/5 is one of the worst weapons in the TT game, I believe
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Jan 30, 2018 18:25
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Captain Foo posted:Also a stock AC/5 is one of the worst weapons in the TT game, I believe But not as bad as an AC2! The AC20 was the "good" autocannon of the vanilla types, especially when it was the only headcapper. The AC10 was at least acceptable, I think? And then the 5 and the 2 were actual wastes of space.
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Jan 30, 2018 18:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:Are all of them available now? The last time I looked there were huge gaps in what you could get. They had almost the whole classic line available (i.e. the non-Dark Age stuff), but it looks like in the transfer from their old, now defunct store to the new one a bunch of the titles have been dropped/not yet upped. Xotl fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 18:32
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Zaodai posted:But not as bad as an AC2! The AC20 was the "good" autocannon of the vanilla types, especially when it was the only headcapper. The AC10 was at least acceptable, I think? And then the 5 and the 2 were actual wastes of space. The AC/2s are only really useful in number and on large enough battlefields that the range advantage of them (24) would let them get in some hits and do some headshot/crit seeking before the battle was joined in earnest. Though admittedly they always have a place in my games after a Pike took out a catapult the opening turn of a battle when the pilot rolled a 2 on the consciousness check and promptly got mauled the next turn.
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Jan 30, 2018 19:31
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Did I do this right? Am I contributing?
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Jan 30, 2018 19:45
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I don't know that I'd want to live in a city where a boulder could come down crushing street signs, even if it would provide cover in the event of giant robot attack.
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Jan 30, 2018 19:47
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Look at the rebar. That’s. A chunk of collapsed building Also that locust has missiles where mgs should be and too few or too many tubes if it’s one of the variants that had them 
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Jan 30, 2018 19:53
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I figured it was supposed to be a chunk of building, but that's very clearly natural rock that hasn't been shaped. Maybe it crashed through a small bit of building on the way down the mountain? Demonstrably unsafe, I say!
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Jan 30, 2018 20:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:Look at the rebar. That’s. A chunk of collapsed building Early Locust art/models were strange.
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Jan 30, 2018 20:02
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That is a dick gun. I mean ... wow.
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Jan 30, 2018 20:10
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In the last beta build, AC2's were doing the same damage as a medium laser. It felt like a real improvement. Someone, (I think earlier in this thread?), explained that the shadowhawk was the AK47 of the inner sphere. It might not be the best at anything it tries to do. It might not be cutting edge technology or have fancy targeting or ECM gear. But it works. It can fight at any range. It's super cheap to maintain. There are parts for it everywhere. It's easy to pilot and it's a known factor on the battlefield. If you don't know what you are going to be facing and you have a budget. You know a shadowhawk is never going to let you down. It's never really going to shine either.
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Jan 30, 2018 20:49
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Psion posted:That is a dick gun. I mean ... wow. 
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Jan 30, 2018 21:28
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Basically, HBS rescaled autocannons from AC-2/5/10/20 to 5/8/12/20. Which has worked out really well in my opinion, once they addressed the issue of the AC/10 being a headcapper. Not that losing an Assault to an invisible Urbie wasn't hilarious, because it was...
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Jan 30, 2018 21:29
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this isn't the first time dick guns have come up in a BT thread, which says something, but that's literally front and center on the cover art. it's hilarious every time.
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Jan 30, 2018 21:31
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Psion posted:this isn't the first time dick guns have come up in a BT thread, which says something, but that's literally front and center on the cover art. it's hilarious every time. It has a bright red tip! 
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Jan 30, 2018 21:39
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Still doesn't have anything on the robot dick saw from Robot Jox. 
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Jan 30, 2018 22:32
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Q_res posted:Basically, HBS rescaled autocannons from AC-2/5/10/20 to 5/8/12/20. Which has worked out really well in my opinion, once they addressed the issue of the AC/10 being a headcapper. So since it is relevant to this discussion; as someone who loves X-Com style gameplay and HBS' Shadowrun games, thinks that MW2/mercs is a still-untouched pinnacle of the first person mech pilot genre, and used to watch that weird Battletech cartoon as a kid, I'm understandably anticipating the release of this game. However, I don't actually know a drat thing about the actual Battletech rulesets, so I'm curious as to how close / divergent the game seems to be from the TT rules, based on the beta (which I completely missed). And how beholden are HBS to angry grognards in cases where the rules are just loving bad (I assume that this is a thing because lol if there exists a TT game without some incredibly broken elements and an army of angry nerds ready to defend that design decision to the death)
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Jan 30, 2018 23:34
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They have the guy who wrote battletech on their team, and have shown no hesitation to flicking the v's to angry grogs.
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Jan 30, 2018 23:44
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It still features turn based movements, and there's a heat scale and the damage values are sort of related to the tabletop as a ratio. For actually being able to play the game with no tabletop background, you should do just fine. There's a bunch of grogs angry on the official forums about the game not being similar enough to tabletop for all their old expectations and strategies to still hold water. The HBS response to that has essentially been "We said we weren't making a tabletop conversion, have a nice day." You should be fine stepping into it with no tabletop experience. My only tabletop experience is PTN's thread and a small amount of megamek, and I had no real trouble playing the beta (beyond not getting the initiative-delay system to gel in my mind right yet, and that's not a tabletop holdover anyway). [EDIT] The part of the existing stuff they're chained to is largely not sneaking in stuff that shouldn't exist until far in the future and not killing off people from the canon. They placed the game in a part of the periphery that basically nothing was known about, so within the confines of the campaign you don't have to worry about getting railroaded by canon external to the game or anything beyond what mechs are available and what guns are around, and even then you have a bunch of choice.
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Jan 30, 2018 23:44
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RabidWeasel posted:So since it is relevant to this discussion; as someone who loves X-Com style gameplay and HBS' Shadowrun games, thinks that MW2/mercs is a still-untouched pinnacle of the first person mech pilot genre, and used to watch that weird Battletech cartoon as a kid, I'm understandably anticipating the release of this game. However, I don't actually know a drat thing about the actual Battletech rulesets, so I'm curious as to how close / divergent the game seems to be from the TT rules, based on the beta (which I completely missed). And how beholden are HBS to angry grognards in cases where the rules are just loving bad (I assume that this is a thing because lol if there exists a TT game without some incredibly broken elements and an army of angry nerds ready to defend that design decision to the death) They mostly stuck to TT, except where TT is bad or doesn't work for videogames, where they have improved on it. The iniative system is a lot better than the TT version, they've balanced some of the weapons better and have rejiggered the economy so engines are not 90% of a mechs cost. I wanna say they kept all the weapon sizes and weights the same as TT so the classic stock mech variants all still work. Personally I'm most excited for the manufacturer variants and the mech internal tweaking - having guns that are the same type but actually behave slightly different is going to be awesome for tinkering (I don't think any other Battletech game actually does this, even though the "lore" totally supports it).
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Jan 30, 2018 23:50
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Yeah just to echo what everyone is saying HBS was very up front about making a game which captures the spirit of TT without being a slavish TT recreation. You'll be fine. All indications so far suggest this is working out well.
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Jan 31, 2018 00:14
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That sounds promising, thanks for the info  I hope that there are some good mods / 3rd party scenarios like there were for the Shadowrun games, I can see there being a lot of room for extending the game's life with different campaigns. And/or that there's enough variance in the game that it's fun to keep playing new games from the start just to see what the RNG throws at you, like in XCOM. RabidWeasel fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jan 31, 2018 |
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Jan 31, 2018 00:33
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They're not supporting modding, but they're also not doing anything to stop it. The Beta was modded like crazy and far more than HBS thought would be possible.
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Jan 31, 2018 02:56
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Yeah, they don't really have the resources to support modding but they're definitely okay with it and it's pretty easy. If you're so inclined, you could go through and adjust sensor and sight ranges, weapons damage and other attributes, there's tons of things you can fiddle with. Edit: Updated the 2nd post with Mech info and Amechwarrior's mod. OP update coming sometime this weekend. Planning to write up some info on the pilot skills, mainly. Any suggestions on info that I could stand to add are welcome. Q_res fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jan 31, 2018 |
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Jan 31, 2018 03:06
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Major Spag posted:Did I do this right? Am I contributing? I'm the Blood Angels codex underneath.
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Jan 31, 2018 07:09
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Strobe posted:I'm the Blood Angels codex underneath. Holy poo poo, you're right. They must be attracted to each other, like some singularity of bad decisions about money.
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Jan 31, 2018 07:28
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Oh god the next picture is going to have one of those Star Citizen membership cards isn't it?
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Jan 31, 2018 08:05
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vorebane posted:Oh god the next picture is going to have one of those Star Citizen membership cards isn't it? I still have mine!
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Jan 31, 2018 08:10
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If any goons got the time, we could use some help filling out the wiki in preparation for launch. It's really quite bare and needs basic stuff like mechs and weapons created and filled out. This one was focused on modding, but needs the more basic info established so new players can find what they need. I've been talking with the guy who runs it and we both agree something like the KSP wiki's parts page would be a good format for the main "Weapons and Equipment" section. That wiki and the one for minecraft are a good examples that serves both the normal user and modding communities. We could use any help we can get. I know WoL had a mean internal wiki back in the MWO days and hope we can get something like that going again for this game. HBS Battletech Wiki
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Jan 31, 2018 12:49
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wiegieman posted:Holy poo poo, you're right. They must be attracted to each other, like some singularity of bad decisions about money. No, just an attraction to big dumb GAY things. I mean, I COULD spend money on telescopes if I wanted to spend LOTS of money on a dumb hobbies. But instead, I snort plastic/metal shavings and read terrible fiction. It keeps me off the streets though, which is the only thing my grand mother asked of me.
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Jan 31, 2018 16:28
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RabidWeasel posted:So since it is relevant to this discussion; as someone who loves X-Com style gameplay and HBS' Shadowrun games, thinks that MW2/mercs is a still-untouched pinnacle of the first person mech pilot genre, and used to watch that weird Battletech cartoon as a kid, I'm understandably anticipating the release of this game. However, I don't actually know a drat thing about the actual Battletech rulesets, so I'm curious as to how close / divergent the game seems to be from the TT rules, based on the beta (which I completely missed). And how beholden are HBS to angry grognards in cases where the rules are just loving bad (I assume that this is a thing because lol if there exists a TT game without some incredibly broken elements and an army of angry nerds ready to defend that design decision to the death) Your previous experience will serve you well. They've redesigned the initiative system to something closer to a traditional Move + Action turn sequence you'll be used to from other turn based strategy games, and they've tweaked tabletop balance to fix some very old mistakes and improve a few things that were essentially trap options (small-caliber autocannons are now functional weapons, machine gun ammo is no longer a self-destruct button, some other things), so once you've familiarized yourself with the roles different mechs are expected to perform things should work pretty smoothly for you. The most game-breaking design mistakes aren't available in the current timeline, so you don't have to worry about that yet. I think they're sticking primarily to stock mech variants, which could lead to some balance issues because they vary wildly in effectiveness, but the weapon rebalancing will correct some of that by itself and the presence of physical combat also does a lot to improve some of the lackluster designs. The Dragon DRG-1N may never be an all-star, but it's gonna look a lot better in the world where AC/5s aren't a waste of space and it's allowed to run up and kick the poo poo out of mechs 2/3s it's weight. The biggest issues you're likely to see are mechs with thin armor (very few stock mechs mount their maximum possible armor load, but if you're looking to be optimal there's generally little reason to carry anything less than the limit) or mechs with too many guns and not enough heat sinks to actually use them all, though I think they may have also played with heat mechanics a bit. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jan 31, 2018 |
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Jan 31, 2018 16:46
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Is there a reason why melee weapons are apparently just not a thing? I mean in the real world it's probably a dumb idea but coolness demands that I can put a giant chainsaw on my giant robot.
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Jan 31, 2018 17:49
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