While cool, stability damage and knockdown FEEL wrong
Let me start by saying that, in principle, I love the addition of stability damage to the game. It does a good job of differentiating the weapon types, tones down the power of bulwark, adds a whole dimension of suitability, balances the otherwise over heat-costed PPC and gives the game a second angle to use when formulating strategies.
With that said, I have a big problem with how it works out in practice. When you first start the game stability is a bit of a non-issue, your weapons rarely do enough to knock someone down and when they do that mech is very nearly dead anyway, it just helps avoid having the fight be too tedious. We've all experienced that light mech that just.wont.die! and I don't think the game would be as enjoyable if every kill felt like this.
A side effect of this is that it's actually moderately difficult to get your first few mechs since you're so likely to kill them rather than kill their pilot. Combine that with the healthy variety of light mechs and it'll likely take you a few missions before you have a new mech unless you get lucky.
By the time you're piloting heavy mechs however it's an entirely different story. once those mechs show up you'll have more than you can field in a handful of missions. Not only are you now able to easily field enough weapons to fill those stability bars but the mechs often have enough armor to not pierce structure until the second or third knockdown. By the time you fight assault mechs it's like picking what you want to pilot from a menu; with enough lrm's you can fill up a stability bar and a single srm or ac will make that mech fall down. with even a single headshot you can kill the pilot without ever piercing structure! This is way, way too easy.
And it also FEELS wrong. That 100 ton monstrosity should ABSOLUTELY be harder to knock down. Likewise, if an Atlas punches a light mech it's almost unbelievable that the mech is not immediately on it's ass.
One of the things that highlights this the best I think is how pointless LRM5's feel. LRM's are not really a good weapon outside of the context of knocking down mechs. They spread their damage, don't do enough total damage to really harrass anyone with their indirect fire which itself barely hits because your pilots have low gunnery and you're fighting fast mechs with lots of evasion. but then they seem to go from being a bit pointless to fantastic once you get to heavy mechs. At some point they take on the dual role of CC and extra salvage; you'd be a fool not to field an LRM boat! I don't think this is the intended dynamic.
TL;DR is that I really think HBS should re-visit how stability damage affects the game play of light vs heavy mechs. I don't think it's where it should be.
Posted May 1, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC · edited
I feel like it's exactly the opposite. A 100 ton mech should have bigger actuators that require more power to operate.
The Atlas only needs 35 tons of structure, power, and actuation to support 100 tons. The Firestarter uses 18.5 tons to support 35.
The power to weight ratio is completely bonkers here. With those numbers it should be a lot easier to knock over a 100 ton.
What you're describing is why smaller mechs are faster but when it comes to not falling over sheer inertia is bigger factor.
But you have a point, maybe small mechs should be able to 'stumble' when they get knocked around rather than fall. Maybe get the aim penalty easily but not fall any easier? Dunno, I'm not sure I have the answer but as it stands now it's a bit silly to be worried about my stability when a spider punches an Atlas.
Well consider that the fastest way to knock down a mech is to spam it with missiles. So basically the concussion of many smaller explosion is knocking it over.
That, by all rights, should have a much larger effect on a mech with a smaller mass, as they would have much less weight mitigating the concussions.
In a realistic situation, an Assault mech would only have to brace to completely mitigate that instability. Then again, in a realistic situation no one would make giant walking robots; they'd make airplanes (also why is there like, no space fighting in this universe?).
It really is counter-intuitive, but it serves a purpose and that purpose is balance. However, that balance gets somewhat lost in this game due to the greatly increased hit percentages compared to the TT.
There is space fighting in lore. Drop ships are pretty heavily armed, there are air/space fighters, and the biggest problem that the great houses face is a shortage of jump capable ships due to limited factories (which can't really be replaced). Iirc, the rifleman is purpose built to counter aerial threats.
Stackpole's clan invasion trilogy really highlights the impact of air/space battles in a way most of the books ignore
The twilight of the clans series also features several large naval battles, and the blood of kerensky trilogy features a few, from the POV of fighter pilots mostly, iirc.
There is space fighting. Aerospace fighters and warships have entire rule books dedicated to them. However, it's more rare in this time period for a few reasons.
First, aerospace fighters are expensive, far more expensive than mechs with some pretty big disadvantages. Second, warships don't exist anymore. They're lostech. There are literally no operational warships int his time period except for a small secret comstar fleet. They start making a comeback after the clans invade because of the tech renaissance. And last, without warships, what is there of value to fight over in space? At best you shoot down a dropship, but dropships are pretty heavily armed and losing an aerospace fighter is expensive. Jumpships are absolutely off limits and nobody would dare attack them since they can't be replaced. So, what are you going to fight over in space? There's little point in this time period. Aerospace fighters are mostly used for air support in the succession wars period.
Well, just a little background about myself, I spent years as a tanker for the Army. Our worst nightmare scenario in an Abrams is to be somewhere where we don't have air superiority. Our 70t tank would have been a feast for crows in those circumstances. Even an attack helicopter is the scissors to our paper.
A giant walking tank of comparable size? Oh my goodness would that be a hearty meal for an A-10. No camo, no defilade profile, just a fully exposed target.
What would even be scarier than that? If the ship that carried our tank over was sunk by a submarine or battleship en route. Which would basically be the equivalent of nuking a dropship in orbit. The way wars are really fought is by cutting off supplies and choking out the enemy to kill their ability to fight... not on giant Kursk-like battlefields. It makes for a wonderful science fiction game, but it's hardly realistic. Just my 2 cents, though.
Just remember, the lore exists to justify us punching things to death with giant robots.
Interesting that you wouldn't choose the tank to be a rock and the helicopter the paper.
While you're logically correct, I think having heavier mechs be harder to knock down makes more sense in terms of gameplay.
Yeah. This was a question I had when I was 12 playing the TT. Our GM just explained it as necessary for game balance and that's the working assumption I've gone on for the last... 26 years I guess.
yeah, this just isn't correct from a physics standpoint. due to their immense mass, they should be incredibly difficult to topple. a more massive object at rest has a greater tendency to stay at rest (inertia) than a less massive object should have. it should take WAY more missiles to topple an assault than a heavy.