If that were true this thread wouldn't exist. And secondly when did you gain omniscience? (IRT #2)

I think it really needs to be a combo of factors, and the numbers on the poll so far really show that people are conflicted on what that is.


I voted for the armor modification because I think that would be a big help and I only can pick one choice, but-


I think charge (and run) should be reduced to 1.5x (rounded down) walk speed, ala battletech, but that wasn't an option.


I also believe in LOS as a charge/ram/DFA requirement. Again, monkey-no-see, monkey-no-charge.


Extra heat is a bad idea- mechs need the overall heat effects reduced across the board, not worsened. In fact, why does charge (logically) need extra heat anyways when in fact it's just a run? After other changes balance out charge, I think the extra heat click should be dropped.


I also think the +1 damage mod should just be dropped, not reduced, and allow mechs w/ brawling to be the best chargers. Going so far as to do a -1 damage mod would just about kill certain charge based units and the goal here should be to balance charge, not eliminate units.

One of my thoughts on leaving the damage done to the target as it is now is for simplicity for one. And two to keep charge a viable, albeit at a reduced efficency, tactic. By leaving the damage primary +1 its still tempting to take the risk involved in making the attempt, while the risk of failure will make you think more than once about charging. If we reduce the damage dealt by a charge we completely remove its usefulness, in light of the suggested changes I posted earlier. There needs to be a careful balance maintained when addressing this subject. Charge needs to remain a dangerous tactic, but it needs to move out of the primary use of a mech.
My humble opinion of course.

Everyone seems to want to say this. Yet, nobody ever seems to actually do the analysis. Here is a comparison of charge to firing:

Charge Advantages:
+1 damage
Armor Piercing
Doesn't need LOS
Improved range

Charge Disadvantages:
1 click of unpreventable damage
2 additional heat

In other words, it has 4 advantages over shooting and 3 disadvantages over shooting (i consider 2 additional heat to be 2 disadvantages). The 1 click of extra damage balances out against the unpreventable damage. Each click of additional heat (in general) balances out one of the other advantages. Heck, for all the people who wanted to let a mech move-shoot for ONE additional heat, that would (in general) have one heat counter both the third and fourth advantage.

So, if charge is truly unbalanced, it is only slightly unbalanced when compared to just firing your primary weapon. The question is whether one of these advantages should be removed (and it should only be one at most) or whether one more penalty should be added.

Charge actually really isn't that unbalanced. It just appears that way because it is the current first strike mechanic. It "shoots" further than a 14" or 16" gun. Basically, high spped becomes the "most important stat". If charge is seriously downgraded in any way, it will not make a whole bunch more mechs playable. It will change which very few mechs are playable. Instead of good charging mechs, the only playable mechs will be mechs with at least 14" guns (and not all of them), because they will be the new first strike mechs. The flaw with charging isn't a flaw with charging at all. It is a flaw with the dial design of mechs. They lose their stats too quickly. Thus, first strike almost always assures a victory.

Propose any charge fix you want, it doesn't really matter. The percentage of playable mechs will not significantly change (it will just be a different set). The only fix that would truly fix charge (and all mech play) would be for mechs to keep their stats for 6 or 7 clicks and then fall RAPIDLY.

-SYB

The only way Ill ever except a change to charge is if mechs are allowed to move and shoot in the same turn. Charge is as of right now the only way mechs can do that and they only way they can dominate a game. Mechs should be able to dominate games over vehichles and infantry just like in the PC games and the books. In the PC games, you never worry about vehichles and infantry over mechs, all you have to do is step on them and there finished. I really want to see mechs become more useful. Nerfing charge would make them even more useless.

SYB excellent points. However another Advantage that was not listed would be the range availible on a charge. Also to simply trade off advantage/disadvantage one for one is not a good representation of tactic/stratagy value.
Being able to "outrange" a mech whose point cost was derived from a 14" or 16" component detracts from that units value, and is what I believe to be the most unbalanced thing about charge. As far as that goes I would be willing to make the statement that if the charge rules remained the same with the exception of the range being reduced to printed speed, charge would be a more balanced game mechanic. However I am still partial to the defence bonus without LOS.

My modifier for charge rules-

Mech may make a charge attack against any other unit, even a single infantry unit, which is effectively trampling (vehicles ram and mech DFA against infantry also) but infantry gain a +3 modifier to their defenses. Attacking unit must meet the same LOS requirments as for direct fire.

(Note: it's somewhat harder to hit infantry as they can get out of the way, but a mech or vehicle attempting this attack has now potentially exposed itself to capture. Imagine missing a charge attempt against a merc kanazuchi!)

Charge/run is 1.5 x unit movement rounded down (modified for existing heat effects) and adds 1 click of heat, plus 1 click for pushing if applicable.

Mech successfully attacking does damage equal to it's primary attack value. Damage done against infantry is reduced by -1 to a minimum of 1. Brawling adds +1 damage as normal. Heavy and hardened armor reduce charge damage.

Attacking mech takes 1 click of damage if charge is successful, 2 clicks if unsuccessful.

Lots of this stuff is pie-in-the-sky complicated and has wide ranging effects, and really needs to be implemented with other big changes like allowing mechs to move/shoot. Really, LOS requirement and allowing armor to reduce damage is probably the simplest and easiest changes to quickly implement in the here and now game environment.

My favorite fix:

Charge damage = attacker's primary damage (min of 1)

Attacker takes (defender's primary - 1) for a minimum of 1

Salvaged Locust can still hit undamaged Atlas for a point of damage, but will go bye-bye in the process.

Hmmm... the LOS option seems to be climbing in the polls. This is a bad thing.

LOS for charge is a REALLY bad idea.While it makes it harder to charge and makes terrain more useful, it will lead to the two problems that the game designers were worried about, the very reason why charge is NOT LOS now... first we will discuss back-arcing.

Think about it. I run around behind a mech. The mech can't attack me back at the moment, and won't want to sit still and allow a backshot. So what to do? Just turn around and get hit, or... run around the other mech's back arc? The answer is obvious. I run into your back arc, you run into mine, I run into yours, until one side decides to cool or vent and BLAM! Meanwhile, both mechs have wasted 3-4 turns doing this, while their support units pick away at both mechs.

Next is cowering. Now mechs will spend their time hiding behind blocking. The first mech to poke their head out dies. Simple as that... And Arnis will still be the best Mech to wait for the other mechs to come out of cowering with his uber-long range.

LOS charge will do more to ruin mechs than the current charge mechanics. Things will be worse, rather than fixed.

@SYB, while I agree with you that your solution make dials go down slower would be a good fix, there's no way that could ever happen, so we can't even really consider it. You can't FAQ every unit's stats, and you can't start releasing units that don't drop that way without upsetting everyone that their old units are now terrible.

I still prefer the option that makes the game make more logical sense as well as playable sense. x1 movement is best.

On reading the last post, it occurs to me that this discussion is nearly useless. The problem is us. I've seen at least half a dozen different agendas and sadly, they don't mix. For example:

Warflail hates charging (and will happily admit to this). His goal is to make the mechanic as weak as possible. If no mechs ever charged, he would be a happy guy. BTW, Warflail, thanks for not using the word that makes my teeth ache.

Deus Ex thinks mechs should be completely superior units. I'm assuming that he thinks a 150pt mech should always beat 150pts of infantry. Even if he doesn't (don't want to put words in his mouth), there are plenty of people who do. The people with this agenda don't want to see any mechanic altered that would decrease the power of a mech.

James_Nova_Cat seems to represent a camp that likes the game exactly the way it is. While I agree Terman8ter that this puts her in the minority, I think it is only the minority on MWRealms. Forums tend to attract those who are vocal and want change. I think that of the thousands of MW players, there is probably a large percentage who are perfectly happy with the game and don't feel any need to change it (or post on forums). The silent are usually the content.

Myself, I am interested in balance. I sincerely want 150pts of units to be approximately as good as any other 150pts of units. And, I want every mechanic to be balanced as well. I want charging to be approximately as good as shooting (no better, no worse). Sadly, I seem to be in the minority.

Another agenda seems to be the CBT agenda. The people with this agenda constantly talk about how charge did this or that in CBT and how it was a desperation move. And, since that was the way it was in CBT, it should work exactly like that in MWDA. Almost all of their ideas revolve around that.

Another agenda is the the "realism" agenda. Thus, somehow, ignoring the lack of realism of 40' tall robots of war, this crew argues for all changes to be based on the "realism" of how physics should work.

And this isn't even a full list. I've seen the move-shoot agenda, the "my home-made rules are better than WK" agenda, and even the "tank-drop sucks" agenda come up in this discussion.

If the only two camps discussing things here were the camp that wanted to balance charge and the camp that wanted to make the tactic practically worthless (or a last ditch effort), we still wouldn't make any headway. But, with all these camps, I don't see how any real discussion can come out of this. Though, admittedly, it is more interesting to read than the discussion of what Matrix character people would be.

-SYB

I think just adding +2 or even just a +1 to defense against charge would be simple and effective.

Well, it's kind of like discussion in the political arena, isn't it? Everyone has their own agenda, and their own ideas which they think is better than anyone elses. That's human nature.

I don't think this discussion here is entirely useless... All that many of us seem to have in common is we want charge to change, but everyone has their own disparate manner in which they'd like to see that happen.

I think ours is to argue it out for each of our particular visions of how things should work to create a resource for the WK designers, should they ever decide to actually fix charge, to read through to form their own opinions.

Essentially, it's kind of like a reverse political process, with the majority stumping for their ideas and a minority -- the WK designers -- getting to vote. We each are trying to show the WK designers why our vision is best.

SYB, I agree charge should be balanced with shooting, but even having that much in common we don't see things the same way... I dunno, if nothing else and the WK designers never actually look at charge, this whole discussion certainly at least passes the time. ;)

SYB I see your point and couldnt agree more. While I feel that I have balance in mind perhaps I have picked one side or the other. That was not my intent. I simply wished to offer my opinion on how to balance charge with other mechanics of the game. As you stated earlier its not that charge is so out of balance, only slightly. That being the distance of charge versus firing. If I am overlooking another factor in the balance issue please bring it to my attention as I would like to discuss it.

Here's my agenda: I like games with big war machines shooting at each other. So I voted for reduced damage, even though I’m in favor of flat damage (2, +1 for brawling) which would give salvaged mechs a better chance. It’s all about changing the equation so shooting is a better tactic than charging in most (but not all!) cases.

I agree with Deadboy, the straight line / LOS rule would limit charge too much, and lead to conga lines. *blows dust off his 15 point Shandras*

+2 defense would just bump Arnis off his “king of the monkeys” throne and put Danni Haag on it instead. It would also ensure that salvaged mechs (5-6 attack) have NO chance of knocking armor off an Atlas.

The armor proposal would only help a small constellation of mechs and vehicles, who generally have high enough defenses to not get charged as much anyway.

More heat: if we make it enough to discourage uber-heat-dial mechs like Arnis, we will completely prevent all other mechs from even considering the tactic.

The 1x speed limitation was my second choice but it would mean that charging is hardly ever a choice at all. If you’re that close to my units, you’re based by one of my SH miniguns too.

Both damage reduction and 1x speed would return tankdrop to dominance, since either one would make it very hard to salvage a transport before it can drop its tank to shoot you. So no matter what we will have to deal with tankdrop too. Again, we need to change the equation so driving your tank is a better tactic than dragging it in most (but not all!) cases. That’s a topic for another poll.