Mechwarrior Online

[Arthur_Parker]

I agree but never underestimate people's desire to by really annoying and flamers and machine guns do that well.

MechWarrior Strange Fire

[satael]

Well, that's an interesting idea and change, but I still think given the hardpoint system, no-one's going to be running around sanding down half dead mechs with machine guns.

Though I did have a machine gun on both my Dragon and Centurion.  It helped me aim and made a nice noise.

Shrug, it might turn out to be the best way to earn exp/cbills if you grind down all the parts instead of just blasting the target to (big) pieces.

[Ironwood]

I agree but never underestimate people's desire to by really annoying and flamers and machine guns do that well.

MechWarrior Strange Fire

Holy Shit, I can't stop laughing at that.

[Merusk]

So.. did that guy totally blow his own ass up or do flamers actually do some sort of damage? Because that's awesome.

[Arthur_Parker]

I believe flamers do a little damage but it's less than a small laser, rather than add heat directly I think they negate some of your own heatsinks.  Which means careful consideration of what weapons to use in response, while the flamer mech is busy overheating himself, is the way to go as overriding shutdown, or spiking your heat levels too high with weapon fire can cause your ammo to cook off, which is what seems to have happened to that guy.

A few months ago 8 of us took a flamer each and for a few games the last guy alive on the enemy team we flamed to death, it's a slow away to kill someone but they seemed to always panic fire and make it worse.

[Slayerik]

One time a flamer was annoying to me, I think it was on Night River city. It just fucked with my aim, having the flame up in my face.

I frikkin' love my Cicada ECM. 4 x Medium Pulse makes baddies backs go BOOM. I plan on running Quad Machine guns and a Large Pulse on my next Cicada, just for shits. Hopefully they are buffed.

[Arthur_Parker]

PGI

Another quick update on where we stand with the netcode roadmap. As outlined last time the first phase for the netcode was work to cleanup and solidify the basic movement code for Mechs. This work is complete and is already being phased into production, all initial work related to the movement code should be in by the end of January.

Internally work has already started on the next, harder, yet much anticipated phase which is to implement correct ‘State Re-winding’ for those not familiar with the term State Re-winding means that when you shoot at a Mech rather than check the shot against the Mechs current hit box location we rewind the Mechs state to the time in the past when the shot was fired and check the shot against the hit box position at that time.

We anticipate having this running in internal testing in a few weeks’ time, and then obviously it will be dependent on testing the time beyond that to get it onto production. We know that for some of you the lag shield issue can’t be resolved soon enough especially with the new Spider Mech hitting production today. We share your desire to see this issue resolved and wanted to re-assure the community that it remains one of our highest priorities and we’re excited to get this work wrapped up and available to the community.

Sounds promising.

[Lantyssa]

Well, that's an interesting idea and change, but I still think given the hardpoint system, no-one's going to be running around sanding down half dead mechs with machine guns.

I loved running around with three MGs on my DRG-5N during beta.  I'd love it if they became slightly more useful.

I really need to make some money for the Spider though.  It might beat out my use of Commandos.

[Slayerik]

Is there a new patch or just a new mech?

[Zaljerem]

Is there a new patch or just a new mech?

New patch, new mech, new hero mech.

As far as Machine Gun buff goes, bring it on. I just bought a Cataphract 4X, and put 4 Machine Guns, 2 MPLs, AMS, and an LRM 5. I'm not getting a lot of kills, but tons of assists, and that XP adds up. Component destructions too.

[Arthur_Parker]

http://mwomercs.com/game/patch-notes

[Zaljerem]

Ah, so no new hero mech quite yet ...

[Falconeer]

Death's Knell, hero Commando, next week apparently. Lant is gonna be so happy.

[Shannow]

And still no new maps. Any news on the strategic front? I'm only half joking.

[Arthur_Parker]

Earliest for the two new larger maps, February & March.

They were meant to release more detail on what Community warfare will involve in December, but not seen anything as yet.

On a different topic, video of clan roleplayers meeting non-roleplayers below.

MWO: CLAN ROLEPLAYING GONE WRONG

[Pennilenko]

SO I bit the bullet and bought my first ECM boat, the Cicada (ouch, 7 mil+)! First thing I tried was an Ultra AC5 with like 4 small lasers. Didn't like it much, I'm just going to fucking fast to utilize the AC properly. I realized next match that I needed to purchase the Guardian ECM module...that sure helped! I proceeded to strip the ballistics off it completely, add Endosteel and FF armor, and run 4 x Medium Pulses. Yeah, it's pretty beastly now that I'm getting my twitch skills going.

For the record, I actually do circles around my team to stay in ECM range the entire way to the fight (while making sure in fights that I am decently close to my friends via the map). I find myself really worrying less about my damage score and more about survival and counter ECMing. The Cicada can really last a long time if you pump it's armor up. I'm pretty impressed.

Also, concerning the pulses, I love them on fast mechs. I find it too hard to keep the full duration of normal Mediums on the exact spot im trying for...the pulses I can really focus my damage nicely, and against any other laser lights/mediums I seem to dominate them.

I can vouch for this man's skill at working his butt off for his team.

[HaemishM]

Is anyone else getting some seriously slow ass patching speed?

[Segoris]

I'm just now getting on, and it started slow for the first 15-20mb but has sped up nicely since then. Felt like it took less than 4-5mins for the patching, and it was 400+mb so that's not awful or anything.

[Ironwood]

MWO: CLAN ROLEPLAYING GONE WRONG

That turned into a massacre in short order.

[Falconeer]

The question is: which Spider to buy? I am so not into lights.

[apocrypha]

I really do want to like this game, so I'm currently patching up and preparing to give it another go.

Is there anything that I should be aiming to do as a newbie in a trial mech to make it less painful? Are any of the trial mechs less sucky than others? Can I usefully customise them in any way?

Are any of you playing in the EU? If so would you be willing to group with a noob and point me away from suckage?  

Also are there any graphical settings in particular that are known to cause client crashes & lockups? Because I was having major problems with that the last time I tried it.

[Arthur_Parker]

The question is: which Spider to buy? I am so not into lights.

The Raven 3L, Spiders are fun for about 5 minutes, the 5D ecm one is the best and it's terrible.  The 5V can fit 12 jump jets so you can leap higher than anything else, take a nice screenshot and then break your legs.

Is there anything that I should be aiming to do as a newbie in a trial mech to make it less painful? Are any of the trial mechs less sucky than others? Can I usefully customise them in any way?

Sign up for the free day of premium time http://mwomercs.com/pennyarcade, there's a new bonus to the first 25 matches an account plays so you'll have some extra cash from that too (it's back dated), I also think it's double xp this weekend, not that xp means a lot except for modules which are nice to have but expensive and not a great advantage.

Then save for an Atlas D-DC or a Raven 3L, possibly a Cicada 3M but I'm sick of Cicadas at the minute as played them too much in 8 man drops.  You can't customise the trials but at least you get full cbills and xp from them now.  The stalker is probably the best trial mech at the moment, configure your weapon groups, right ctrl plus arrow keys, as it won't have enough heat sinks, basically ignore half your weapons.

[Falconeer]

In a better world, the 4 ballistics Spider would be a fantastic bulletstorm devil from machine gun hell. When they'll give MGs the promised buff, I will get this simply to go around and plink people non-stop.

[apocrypha]

Cheers Arthur. Not seeing the free day of premium option on the website anywhere though. I've already got an account though, does it only apply to new accounts?

[Arthur_Parker]

Oh it must have expired, there's normally a button to claim it, any account would have worked.

Edit there's an issue with it not applying correctly so they removed it for now.

[apocrypha]

Ahh, shame. OK well I seem to be getting a better grasp of it this time than before. The lack of client lockups and crashes is helping 

[Slayerik]

I'm glad to roll with whoever...just add me 'Slayerik'

PM me, and I'll give ya the mumble that me and a few other f13ers hop on occasionally. I'm fine with just grouping and going, no voice required as well.

[apocrypha]

I've friended up everyone on the list on the previous page, I'm Apocryphai.

[apocrypha]

Wow... OK, so I thought I was doing OK, making something like 400k-500k per game in my trial mechs, getting the odd kill too, surviving some matches.

Then it got to 7-8pm and suddenly I'm getting raped over and over and over again, coming away with 200k -250k. No more kills, dead every match, not a single win. I'm guessing that's when all the grouped players turn up?

[Lantyssa]

Probably.  That's why I want the PUG only drop option.  Then I can be the Queen scrub in a field of scrubs.

[Threash]

Wow... OK, so I thought I was doing OK, making something like 400k-500k per game in my trial mechs, getting the odd kill too, surviving some matches.

Then it got to 7-8pm and suddenly I'm getting raped over and over and over again, coming away with 200k -250k. No more kills, dead every match, not a single win. I'm guessing that's when all the grouped players turn up?

You are also probably running out of your newbie bonus cash.  On a good win i make slightly over 100k.

[Merusk]

Yeah, the same, plus an additional 20k or so for a Founder's mech.

[apocrypha]

Nah, I was still getting my newbie bonus, I was just sucking a lot. 

[Arthur_Parker]

PGI on ECM

This'll be my last post on the subject, as Paul mentioned what we're doing in regards to speaking to the changes.

ECM being used on all ECM-able Mechs does show that it is overly powerful. The reason no changes have been made is it takes time to figure out what, exactly, is making that the reason. Is it the lock prevention? The 'cloak'? The range it works at? The weight? Crit space? Variants that use it? That it makes LRMs incapable of lock? SSRMs?

So while total numbers used isn't an indicator it's fine, it does mean people won't just go to ECM because it makes you instantly win. In fact, many builds aren't affected by ECM at all (my Cicada, in particular, does not discriminate.)

So we use that, suggestions, feedback, numbers gathered, watching 8v8's, etc, and eventually we come up with ideas. Then we test them. Tweak them. Test them. Tweak them. etc.

So while I'd love to tell you what changes we've made, none are in stone and until I have something to tell you that won't be wrong as of 9am the next day, I will.

I hope you all understand, we don't do this to be cruel, we do it because there is, quite literally, nothing of use to tell you yet, beyond that we've gathered our data, your suggestions, and are going through testing them now.

ECM has added depth to the game while somewhat limiting the range of "optimal" mechs.  You can still say screw ECM and drive what you like, but 8 man league games are already restricted on numbers of each weight class each side brings and for those heavily ECM is pretty standard.   PGI doesn't appear to know what to do about it yet.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, I said that a couple of posts back :  The ECM, when used properly, is an utter game changer.

There's nothing like a whole group of cloaked Atlases suddenly looming out at you.  Scary shit.