Mechwarrior Online

[5150]

Weren't we supposed to get the 'premium reset button' patch yesterday?

Not that I'm bothered, more free premium time is good

[calapine]

I am quite new in this (less than 5 hours /played).

Is it possible to attain non-trial mechs without spending 'real' money?

[5150]

I am quite new in this (less than 5 hours /played).

Is it possible to attain non-trial mechs without spending 'real' money?

Yes, once you have a couple of million c-bills from matches in trial mechs you will be able to afford a Commando (or save for a bigger one)

Currently only the Yen-Lo-Wang is 'real' money only, all the other mechs can be purchased with c-bills (garage slots however are real money only)

The Wang however is really useful as it has the biggest c-bill bonus (30%) of any mech (founder mechs are only 25% but also give 25% xp gain). Its also a very usable mech and wont break a non-premium players bank with repair bills even with a string of losses (even if it didn't have the bonus)

[Ghambit]

My team focus-fires Wangs on site as a priority (or leaves em for last so we can torture at endgame).  So ya go ahead, buy a Wang. 
I'm just about done with my 1st Cicada mastery.  Very underrated mech.  With Speed Phreak the thing is a beast.  140+kph with a 320 and if I go down to a 285/290 I still get 130 and have 4 more tons to play with (so overall about 10 more tons to play with than a comparable Jenner).  It's the 1st time I've ever really ran up against the slot maximum in a mech, let alone a medium.  Fun stuff.  Lights that try to go head up with me will lose (with a laser build) unless they get on my 6, and if that happens I just run sideways so they only hit arm-plating (which has no important systems on them).

[Segoris]

You can sign up Segoris as Segoris as well. But don't group with him, word out there is he is a team killer. 

Not my fault you didn't move your ass fast enough to get out of the way of my lasers! 

[HaemishM]

They should split trial mechs into their own trial only matches asap, can't wait till 8 man groups go back in.

Fuck, I'd actually be fine with this. The fact that the trial mechs suck AND you have no ability to edit their loadouts make them really really easy to kill for experienced guys who have tweaked the fuck out of their heat/armor/weapon balance. As it is, I've been absolutely dead set on NOT giving them any fucking money because I can't tell if buying a mech would make much difference. The game is skull-fuckingly brutal on the F2P players and I still feel this could be a long-term problem for them creating a good sized player base.

[Kitsune]

Do not pay $15 for Wang.  Seriously.  Having its primary weapon on a big SHOOT HERE FIRST gun arm means that they are literally disarmed within minutes of the round starting, as everyone concentrates on blowing the arm off.  And because the big gun has so many crit spaces, it's usually disabled immediately after the armor's breached.  The 30% money boost is a poor compensation for being everybody's priority target.

Also, Cicadas are at best a marginal upgrade over a Jenner, but give the opposing team an extra medium rather than a light, putting them on better footing.  I recommend avoiding them for that reason.

[Arthur_Parker]

HaemishM, buy a Jenner with Cbills, then save for a 300xl engine & put a single jump jet in it.

Do not pay $15 for Wang.  Seriously.

This.

Also, Cicadas are at best a marginal upgrade over a Jenner, but give the opposing team an extra medium rather than a light, putting them on better footing.  I recommend avoiding them for that reason.

I think they are a lot worse, easiest thing to leg ever.

[Lantyssa]

I thought assaults and lights were balanced fairly well, if anything the assault had the advantage.   Then they changed things, tripping has been removed while they work on it, double heats sinks in the engine are at 2.0, so lights are more likely to be on full armour & running cold which makes killing them a complete pain in the arse.

Lights are fine in and of themselves.

Jenners have lots of balance problems because they can get full jump capability with one JJ and can pack lasers out their wazoo.  My Commando is going to have a 50/50 chance against a single slower 'mech.  If he gets assistance, I'll likely be dead.

[Kitsune]

Pretty much any light that isn't a Jenner is going to be worse off than a Jenner, unless they're carrying a hardpoint combination that requires using that chassis.  Now that the days of the 200kph Commando are over, there's not much reason to use one.

[Arthur_Parker]

Yeah, I think Ravens get some sort of ECM advantage, Commandos, the only thing I think they could do is shrink their model even more, an extra missile slot isn't great when you don't have the tonnage to do much with it.  The Streak nerf hit the only commando build I thought was ok'ish, 3 streaks and big engine.

[Amaron]

Now that the days of the 200kph Commando are over, there's not much reason to use one.

That's partly a fault of the match maker at this point.  When they add in phase 2 or whatever it might take tonnage into account.

[Falconeer]

Battlemechs that made History

 

THE VCE exam body has been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5700 students.
Exams for the popular History: Revolution subject were original supposed to include the artwork Storming the Winter palace on 25th October 1917 by Nikolai Kochergin, which depicts events during the October Revolution, which was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917.
But when students opened their exam this morning they found an altered version of the work with what appear to be a large "BattleTech Marauder" robot aiding the rising revolutionaries in the background.

The original image.
It is unclear how the doctored version made it into the exam. But a search for the image in Google brings up the robot version as the first result.
Advertisement
A picture of the exam paper posted on twitter sources the photo to website all-art.org which also carries the doctored image in the Soviet Union part of its Visual History of the World section.
The robot image is also found on the website Dark Roasted Blend, which describes itself as one of the internet's "favourite destinations on the web for all things weird and wonderful."

A BattleTech Marauder.
A spokesman for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) said the image was "sourced and acknowledged by the VCAA as coming from the Internet".
"The image has been altered but the alteration of the image won’t impact on the students’ capacity to answer the examination question," he said.
"The VCAA will monitor students' answers to ensure that any student who has been distracted by the image will not be disadvantaged."
It is the second year running that the  Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has been embarrassed by problems in its end of year exam papers.
Last year popular columnist Helen Razer accused the VCE exam body of plagiarism and breach of copyright after the English exam featured on tattoos by the Melbourne writer without her permission or acknowledging she was the author.
[/url]

[Shannow]

Extra credit for identifying the mech correctly?   

[MahrinSkel]

My memory is a bit foggy, is that the one off the cover of the first printing of the 3025:TR, or the black and white sketch from inside?  My copy is buried in a box somewhere.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Looks like it.

[Simond]

Extra credit for identifying the mech correctly?   

Loss of credit for not identifying the mecha correctly?



 

[Falconeer]

Paul Inouye on weapon balancing.

Posted 15 November 2012 - 08:06 PM

POPULAR
This is a list of what is being tuned in the immediate future. There are no set dates for this. This is just a FYI as to what is coming down the pipe.





In Current Development:

Projectile speeds on AC rounds can use a buff.
AC/2 is fine where it's at.
AC/5 is pretty close to where it should be.
AC/10 needs a boost.
AC/20 needs a fairly big boost.
UAC/5 will be the same as AC/5
Gauss Rifle is going to become very fragile.
The Gauss Rifle is going to have it's internal health dropped substantially.
Once armor surrounding a Gauss Rifle has been removed, there is going to be a high probability that the Gauss Rifle will detonate via critical hits when that component gets hit by enemy fire.
LRM/SRM/SSRM/ARTEMIS
Artemis is fine where it is at the moment.
SRMs are fine where they are at the moment.
SSRMs will spread damage across LT,CT,RT instead of always just hitting CT. On moving targets, limbs will be hit as well.
LRMs will get a 0.1 damage buff.
PPCs are being investigated.
Heat balance?
Projectile Speed?

What we are planning:
Special effect when you are hit by a PPC that is similar to EMP.
Getting hit by an AC/20 is going to rock you hard.
MG's will be getting a damage boost.
Flamers will be getting the heat generation on enemy scaled in a way that makes more sense. You're not going to overheat a Mech but you should be raising their temps to the point that if they fire anything they will shut down/overheat.

As hoped, Cannons buff, PPCs buff, Gauss nerf.

[Pennilenko]

I like this because other than screwing around with a guass cat a couple of times, I really love ac/20 and is my preferred projectile.

[Lantyssa]

Good on all points.

[eldaec]

While it all makes sense, going to be fascinated to see how this policy of open discussion of potential balance changes before they come to any definitive conclusions works out.

I guess it is easier in a game like this where characters are not locked into a class, but even so, not sure expectations are being well managed.

[Merusk]

So far my experience has been: Login, see if anyone I know is online.  They aren't.  Try a match solo, and my PUG gets owned by a premade team that scouts for LRMS or a group of brawlers that focuses.    Sigh and quit out of game.

Great game.

[angry.bob]

Hey, does anyone know where/how people are getting the snazzy red paint job? I've tried googling but all I get is people bitching that the sunburst on the premium whatchamacallit is on the wrong shoulder.

[Falconeer]

It was a PC Gamer promotion.

[Arthur_Parker]

So far my experience has been: Login, see if anyone I know is online.  They aren't.  Try a match solo, and my PUG gets owned by a premade team that scouts for LRMS or a group of brawlers that focuses.    Sigh and quit out of game.

Great game.

They had organised groups of up to 8 people killing pugs, who were naturally complaining about it on the forums.

They changed it to max group size of 4, my experience is they made the problem worse, you are now twice as likely to face an organised team.  It's pretty bad now playing as in a pug and I used to enjoy it for a change from groups.

They also added the forest alt map, so caustic pops less often and that's by far the best map.

[Merusk]

Yeah I went over the math of organized team size earlier, too.  A group of 4 is 50% of your team.. that's more than enough to overcome any PUG.  Max team should be 2 or # of mechs should be increased.  Neither will happen.

[Ghambit]

Meh, my W-L has gone into the dumps (relatively) since the 4-man patch tbh.  Even with us 4 skilled pilots we can't make up the PUG difference a lot of the time, partially due to more often than not going against other premades.  We DEFINITELY dont own the battlefield like we did with 8, wherein we'd go 40 matches before losing.

[Arthur_Parker]

Yeah I went over the math of organized team size earlier, too.  A group of 4 is 50% of your team.. that's more than enough to overcome any PUG.  Max team should be 2 or # of mechs should be increased.  Neither will happen.

I believe a lot of the problem will go away when teams of 8 can drop against others teams of 8.  It's only amusing for a short while to stomp pugs, there's a whole extra level of game play when it's one organised group against another.

They still need to separate trial mechs into their own separate matches though and put some kind of ingame tutorial in, it's just horrible to watch a trial atlas die in seconds.  PGI constantly promise more than they can deliver, so it's going to be interesting to see how long the current match system lasts, I'm not sure if they can tell from stats but closed beta pug matches were definitely more fun.

[Merusk]

Over the weekend I wondered what other places were saying.  The one or two spots I found that weren't MWO itself had a lot of fervor at the initial open beta that have died off to a lot of disappointment and complaints with a few die-hards telling people to suck it up, it's not counterstrike.

As always, the players are the worst part of the game.

[Brennik]

I keep wondering why they didn't just copy the MPBT3025 lobby system since IMO it was pretty good.

[Merusk]

I keep wondering why they didn't just copy the MPBT3025 lobby system since IMO it was pretty good.

That game was beta-demoed 11 years ago and only die-hard 'net or mech junkies knew about it.  I'd guess a lot of the folks at PGI didn't know about it when such decisions were being made, prior to the game being publicly announced. 

[Arthur_Parker]

I'd guess community warfare would have something like that but I'm not expecting that anytime soon.

[5150]

Anyone know if theres a [premium reset] patch today?

[Arthur_Parker]

Founders will get a button to restart their premium time one final time, I think it's meant to be today but not seen it confirmed as yet,

[Merusk]

Is it a reset and pause or just a reset?  Because if it's a reset and pause, great, if it's just a reset it'd be dumb to use it before your current premium expired.