This blog post exists primarily to alert appreciators of giant imaginary Internet robots to the fact that MechWarrior Online is, as I write this, about to start a double-XP weekend, thus making it easier to earn shiny customisations for your 'Mechs.
There's also a recently-introduced new 'Mech, the Spider. It's been given an Alien-ish tubes-on-the-back look that's way, way better than the godawful design of the tabletop-game version.
The twelve-jump-jet Spider-5V is also a barrel of laughs, and marginally useful in the base-capturing "Conquest" game mode. But it's almost completely unarmed (would you like two little lasers or one big one?), and the game currently has a 150 km/h speed limit that makes the Jumping Spider easy meat for more sensible light 'Mechs. The king of which is still the extremely practical ECMRaven 3L.
The Spider 5D can fit ECM and so is the most useful variant, but it'll be hideously mauled by a cheaper three-Streak ECM Commando 2D. The Spider is rather tall, too, making it an easier target.
But Spiders are still all over the place at the moment, on account of being new. And they're cheap. So if you can't afford anything better to level on this double-XP weekend, go ahead and tear around in a Spider, and see if you can beat this:
The rest of the team was dead. Five or six enemies remained. We were royally boned.
I decided to go out by running around an Atlas and shooting him in the knees.
The various deceased spectators were highly uncertain that this novel strategy would achieve anything of note.
But I was not being completely quixotic.
Big 'Mechs, you see, often economise on leg armour, precisely because enemies usually try to blow off arms full of scary guns, or just drill through the torso into the engine, rather than plinking at legs.
Round and round I went. Pew pew. Pew pew pew. Pew.
And it was working. His leg armour in my target display went yellow, then orange, then red.
Someone blew my arm off. One torso-mounted laser left.
Round and round. Pew. Pew. Pew.
His leg armour went away.
As, in time, did one of his legs.
Spectators very impressed.
I had time to type "ha!" into chat before someone blew me to bits.
First off, thank you for running such a great site. I love learning from you, and the comfortable way you write so well. (You are a net benefit to the planet, something not true of many of us.)
It seems perfectly reasonable that the distribution of rockets hits will be a Poisson distribution: i.e., for a given area and a given unit time, a Poisson distribution will model the probability of getting hit once there in that time, versus twice, versus n times, versus never. (And note that this varies linearly, as you would expect, in both area and period of time.)
But the thing about a Poisson distribution is that it is (as the statisticians like to say) memoryless. The chance of getting hit in some area in any unit time is independent of how many times that area's been hit in the past.
So, sure, the chances of not getting hit in the next hour and getting hit in the hour after that are lower, by multiplication of probabilities, than the chances of simply getting hit in the next hour. But that's not a question anyone cares about, is it? Answering what I understand to be the writer's question, he's asking whether, an area having been hit in the last h hours, it is more or less likely to be hit in the next, say, h hours, And the answer is, if the rockets are no more aimed than V-2s, that it doesn't matter whether or not the area's been hit before.
But, again, what a great site you do. With thanks,
Eric
You're exactly right about the characteristics of the Poisson distribution, and the fact that a chance of a future hit does not depend in any way on whether a hit happened in the past, presuming hits truly are randomly distributed.
But the NEXT [arbitrary time period] in which any [arbitrary location] is likely to be hit is still the VERY NEXT [arbitrary time period], if the distribution is random. Because, as per the lightning-strike analogy, for a hit to happen the [time period] after next, it must NOT happen in the next [time period]. This gives lower and lower probabilities of the next hit being at a given time the further that time is in the future.
(You said this too, but I'm repeating it yet again because it's one of the slipperier statistical concepts and has led to a lot of erroneous conclusions on a wide range of subjects. See also non-transitivity, mechanical failurestats, and tax brackets.)
As you say, this is still no help at all in figuring out where and who is going to get hit, or not. But it's the explanation for the "clusters" that often make random events look very NON-random, and my correspondent from Israel wanted to know whether this apparent un-randomness was of any predictive value. Which, as you say, it unfortunately is not.
(Also, in reality, human aiming of even unguided garage-built rockets may entirely swamp the random-clustering effect. So in reality a missile landing in some particular place probably does mean more missiles will land there, but not because of any abstract quirk of probability.)
This is the strange but, by this stage, depressingly familiar story of small businesses being shaken down by patent trolls. In this case, the trolls are called "Project Paperless" - except perhaps not any more, as they've now apparently exploded into a constellation of hard-to-track nonsense-named shell companies.
Whoever they are, they as usual claim to hold patents on common things that a blind and severely developmentally delayed toddler could see were in common use long before the patents were awarded.
One of their targets who stood up to them is quoted, in that Ars Technica story, as saying the four patents held by Project Paperless are "...a lot of what I'd call gobbledygook ... Just jargon and terms strung together - it's really literally nonsensical."
Well, that sounded like fun, so I checked out the four linked patents. All of them were originally assigned to one "Laurence C. Klein", who at some point presumably transferred ownership of the patents to whoever Project Paperless are, if he and they are not the same person.
In this one, Mr Klein is in 2001 granted a patent on programs that can view images of documents.
In this one, Mr Klein is in 2004 granted a patent on the basic functions of document scanners, to which he gives the name "Virtual Copier".
In this one, Mr Klein is in 2009 granted a patent on sending documents from one computer to another.
And in this one, Mr Klein is in 2011 granted another patent on the same stuff he patented in 2004, but this time without calling it "Virtual Copier".
I have not ploughed through the legalese in great detail, lest I slide into severely refractory depression. But I do not think I am exaggerating this. These software patents really are this stupid.
Not only are these patents all almost completely obvious, but they are all for processes that were invented not long after, and in some cases significantly before, the invention of the cathode-ray-tube monitor. Documents were being scanned and stored in computer memory, for instance, in nineteen fifty-seven.
The only thing that really surprises me about patent trolls is that, in yet another testament to the essential decency of the human race, not one of them has yet been found strung up with their own guts.
From: Ernest
To: dan@dansdata.com
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012
Subject: Wine Clip
Your review is entertaining but is not very helpful. I have used a Wine Clip for about 3 years, and frequently do a blind test on myself. Naturally, having some one else do the pouring.
After all, I don't really care whether some one else thinks the wine is better using the Clip. I am the only relevant person involved. And it works every time! Red wine is better when the Wine Clip is used. That is what is important to me; after all, I am the consumer.
There is a factor in the use of panels. The participants should never know it is a test. (I found this out when I was doing panel responses. Whether it be taste, smell or any other perception, translation by the brain of the perceptions received is influenced by the environment.
But you are right about one thing. Great magnets!
What would you do, Ernest, if someone sent you an e-mail that said, "Your commentary on the Psychotronic Money Magnet is entertaining but is not very helpful. I have used a Money Magnet for about 3 years, and always make more money when I have it hanging around my neck than when I leave it in the bedside drawer"?
Would you, in response to this, drop everything and dash out to buy a Money Magnet from one of the... differently-cognitive... people who sell them?
Would you turn your whole comprehension of the world upside down, because apparently it seems that the free will of other humans and the very workings of abstract probability can be distorted by a talismanic device that works by, uh, quantums, and stuff?
Or would you, rather, presume that the fellow e-mailing you might have not quite the right end of the stick?
I do not doubt that you believe the Wine Clip works. I am intrigued by your claim to have tested it in a controlled, though not double-blind, way. I do not consider your claim plausible, though, not least because if it's correct, then the whole of electrochemistry, indeed most of modern physics, is not. Countless carefully-assayed chemical mixtures are exposed to magnetic fields from the modest to the monstrous every day, with the assumption that those fields will not modify any molecules and mess up the experiment - and the fields never do.
Unless you stick some magnets on a wine bottle, apparently. Then, suddenly, physics goes out the window and "tannins" start getting broken up by magnetism.
Since I am surrounded every day by evidence that magnetic fields do not pull molecules apart, and a good thing too or writing this piece would almost certainly have killed me, I am afraid I can only conclude that there is probably something wrong with your testing regimen. Your collaborator is accidentally signalling you - without your conscious knowledge - or the Clipped pour is consistently the first or the second, or any of the hundreds of other possible variables for which a good test must control, which is why good tests are so difficult to do.
Note that James Randi told me, personally, that he has specifically requested that makers of magnetic wine-treatment devices demonstrate the truth of their claims in return for worldwide fame and a million dollars.
Not a peep.
(You are of course welcome to join the many other believers in paranormal events who say that the Randi Challenge is clearly some kind of scam. I would venture the opinion that a scam-challenge looks more like this.)
But wait a minute - why am I bothering to say all this to you, when you conclude by saying that tests that people know are tests aren't useful anyway?!
I'm currently writing a piece in response to yet another example of audiophile weirdness, and this "the participants should never know it is a test" thing comes up there, too.
I even managed to find someone claiming that the fact that blinded tests are objective makes them bad. Because, see, if a proper test shows you that a $900 audiophile widget does nothing, and you therefore save some money and don't buy that widget, you then won't be as happy listening to music, because even though you now know it was a placebo, you still need that placebo in order to fully enjoy the music. Or something.
But... didn't you say you frequently do blind tests on yourself, Ernest?
If objective testing doesn't work if the testees know they're being tested, I suppose you don't know when these blind tests are happening, right?
So is it something like, your wife sometimes doesn't use the Clip when you think she is using it, or something? And then asks you what you think of the wine, which for some reason doesn't alert you to the fact that another "test" is in progress? And then you turn out to be the first person in human history completely immune to cues from a non-blinded researcher with whom you have a personal relationship?
I'm really trying to not insult your intelligence here, Ernest, but you're not making it easy for me.
From: Al
To: "dan@dansdata.com"
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 14:25:11 -0700
Subject: A little knowledge
I read your Dan's Data on the subject of power chips and must say you have lots to say about a subject you know nothing about. You state that engine timing before top dead centre will cause problems and can destroy the engine. Fact is every engine operates with timing set to vary from 15 to 5 degrees before top dead centre depending on load and rpm. I don't know where you pick up your information but do some serious research before you stick it on the web. I do agree chips are a bunch of hokey.
I am gratified to note that now that I have fixed the one mistake you could identify on that page, I have presumably graduated from knowing "nothing" about this subject, according to your intriguing system of evaluation, to knowing everything about it. Will you send me my Ph.D in Automotive Engineering right away, or do you require a small processing fee?
(It's also interesting that that guy from the chip company who offered me handsome remuneration in return for writing a "white paper" about their products didn't notice the mistake either.)
I've been following your blog, and decided to install MechWarrior Online to have a go at it (having played the board game version back in '88, the PC CGA version in 91, the new VGA version in 95.... these mechs are all the new ones... bring back the Marauder I say!). Anyhoo... I've played 50 or 60 matches now, and my kill/death ratio is about 0.15 and I have no idea what to be spending my credits on, I'm trying to get a Hunchback build that is reasonable... any tips?
J
Yeah, that's right: I've got a pinstriped Hunchback, baby. Most important part of the build.
But given the current structure of the game, I think (relative) beginners are best off in a 'Mech that can fit electronic countermeasures, which no Hunchback can. An ECM module largely prevents you from being the focus of enemy attention, and lets you sneak around capturing things in Conquest mode, and you can help teammates just by standing around near them.
Only four 'Mechs so far can accept ECM, though; this Commando, this Raven, this Cicada and this Atlas. Of those, I'd recommend the Raven, because it's pretty fast and flexible, and a 35-tonner, the heaviest possible "light" 'Mech.
This matters, because the current game matchmaker matches any 'Mech on one team with any other 'Mech in the same weight class. So if you launch in a 25-ton Commando, you are likely to attract a Raven or Jenner on the other team. Likewise, Cicada pilots attract Centurions and Hunchbacks.
The new "cadet bonus" feature means new players can actually quite easily afford even an Atlas after not terribly many games (everyone else just got a lump-sum payment of almost eight million C-Bills, which was nice). But if you've already blown that money, the alarming purchase price of the Raven 3L (because it comes with ECM already installed, and an XL engine...) will force you to play quite a few games to buy one. (Or spend eight to ten bucks of real-world money on "Mech Credits" to buy one directly.)
The Commando 2D, on the other hand, costs less than 1.8 million C-bills (or only 715 Mech Credits, about $US2.50 worth). If you can afford the 'Mech but not yet ECM to put in it, you can just run it ECM-less and grind up some experience points while you save money. One solid hit from a big 'Mech can rip off a limb or kill you outright, but as long as you keep moving (which means not running into dead ends and rubbing on walls...) it's surprising how seldom that happens.
The 2D was the Commando everyone feared before ECM, because it's got three missile hardpoints so you can put three Streak SRM launchers in it and hit very surprisingly hard. ECM makes Streak-monsters much less dangerous... unless the Streak-monster has ECM too, in which case he just hits J to switch ECM from disrupt to counter mode, blows away the ECM-packing enemy, then returns to disrupt and keeps on fighting. My 2D has three Streaks, one small laser, and a pretty good kill-to-death ratio.
To answer your actual question, though, I think the secret of a non-annoying Hunchback is to put a big enough engine in it that you can do about eighty kilometres an hour. Then a couple of LRM 5s, some medium lasers or twice as many small lasers (the nine-small-laser Hunchback-4P is a sight to behold), and away you go. Put the lasers in chain-fire mode (backspace, by default, while the appropriate weapon group is highlighted in the bottom right of the HUD), for the best chance of hitting. Chained weapons will fire in slow sequence while you hold the fire button down, but if you want to fire them all quickly you can just click rapidly and get one shot per click.
Beyond that, the difference between frustration and misery and numerous kills and happiness is all in the piloting. Especially if you, like J and I, live in Australia and so routinely get 200-to-300-millisecond pings. When shooting at enemies with lasers with a high ping, ignore the glowing armour your game client shows you, and look at your target's status display at the top right of the HUD. If there are bits of it flashing, you're hitting it (well, someone is, at any rate...). If nothing's flashing, you need to lead the target more.
I'm sure that even you, J, will eventually be able to master this, despite the miserable reflexes and poor concentration that no doubt got you into your cushy government job driving a steamroller or a tram or whatever that thing is you actually drive at work.
Oh, and with regard to the abovementioned various versions of this game... It's come quite a way, hasn't it?
UPDATE - J's reply!
Sweet... I've spent most of tonight running around in a Raven 3L :) Still have to work out the best way to use the TAG and NARC... maybe I'll upgrade the engine to get more than 97kph out of it.
NARC launchers are not much use in the game as it stands. The last patch boosted the duration of a NARC beacon from 15 to 20 seconds, at least, but 20 seconds still isn't very long, and ECM neutralises NARC completely.
And the darn launcher weighs three tons, requires ammo, and that ammo only gives you six lousy missiles per ton. (This makes NARC missiles the heaviest ammo in the game; even AC/20 ammo gives you seven shots per ton!)
TAG, on the other hand, is only one ton (a NARC launcher is three tons), needs no ammo and makes no heat. So it's not much of a commitment to install it, and wave it around gaily like an overstimulated raver at almost all times. The last patch also increased TAG range from 450 to 750 metres.
You need to keep TAG-lasering a target to be of any use to your team, though. The TAG effect lasts for three seconds after you cease illuminating the target, so you can keep flicking the beam over targets and at least don't have to hold it on them constantly. But brief drive-by TAG-ing is worse than no TAG-ing at all. You'll just have the missile-boats on your team lining up a shot on your briefly-illuminated target and then, usually, launching precious missiles a millionth of a second after the target lock disappears again.
If you're running among the enemy being an ECM nuisance, you're going to have trouble consistently illuminating them; if you're TAG-ing them from a distance you're announcing your location, which can be helpful if you're devoted to Team Annoying Bastard tactics, but will usually just get you killed.
For newbies, this video shows how to use TAG - it's the barely-visible red beam coming in from the right side of the cockpit view.
With regard to the engine, the biggest motor you can jam into a Raven 2X or 4X is a 245, giving 113.4km/h. The Raven 3L can take engines up to 295, though, giving a speed of 136.5 km/h. That's the fastest any 'Mech can go in the game thus far - apparently speeds above 150 km/h currently cause the game engine to do weird things, and the "Speed Tweak" elite upgrade adds 10% to your base speed, which takes a 136.5-km/h 'Mech neatly up to 150.
Even an XL 295 engine weighs 15 tons, though, making it difficult to cram much in the way of weapons into a XL-295 35-ton 'Mech like the Raven. Personally, I'm quite happy with the stock XL 210. If you want lightning speed with some room for weapons, the abovementioned Commando 2D will give it to you; my ECM Streak Commando has an XL 195 in it, giving a base speed of 126.3 km/h.
You can also use your Raven to explore different play styles and get the hang of big 'Mechs without having to buy one. Install a small engine, giving you the speed of a heavy or assault 'Mech, and some appropriate fraction of that 'Mech's weapon loadout, and then hang around with the heavies and do what they do.
I had a lot of fun in the pre-ECM world with my slow Raven missile boat, which was essentially half of a Catapult.
Just don't install a big missile rack in a location which, from the factory, had a NARC launcher; those locations usually have only one missile tube, and so wee out the missiles one at a time. This is a neat way of sucking all of the AMS ammo out of an enemy, and it's funny to watch, but that's as complimentary as I can be about it.
As of the eighteenth of December (which it already is here ion Australia as I write this, but isn't quite yet in Vancouver, where Piranha are), repair and re-arm costs are going away, completely.
So install XL engines and expensive-ammo-ed weapons to your heart's content! You'll still have to pay for ammo when you first install the weapon, I think, but no longer will you be installing extra ammo bins so that the free 75% reload after a game will give you enough to get along, without paying a fortune for that last 25%.
Newbies will get a lot more money - a "Cadet bonus" - for playing their first 25 games, so they can afford a reasonable 'Mech quickly. And trial 'Mechs will now earn as large a C-Bill and experience point reward as owned 'Mechs. So when you buy your first 'Mech you may already be able to afford an efficiency upgrade or two. You still can't upgrade or modify trial 'Mechs, but now they'll just be normal 'Mechs with I presume the traditional lousy setup, rather than complete second class citizens.
Oh, and non-newbies will be getting about eight million C-Bills, the total Cadet bonus, just as a present.
Rewards for starting a game and just standing around doing nothing are now very small. Rewards for killing enemies are much higher. The money and XP reward for assisting in a kill was until now the same as the reward for kill; now you will actually get quite a lot more of a reward for assisting than for being the person who fires the killing shot!
Also, rewards for capturing the enemy base in Assault games are now zero. So nobody will be shouting at the rest of their team to leave the last AFK baddie standing there and capture instead. Capturing is now just a way to end a game when you can't find, or don't have time to get to, the last enemy.
(You will of course get rewards for capturing things in the upcoming Conquest mode, since that's the whole point of that game mode.)
(To which there does not seem to be any good way to link. Click that link, and lie about your age, and then click the link again, and then click from the final page it helpfully shows first back to the first page...)
More importantly, if you click a button on the MWOPenny Arcade page, you can get a free day of "Premium Time".
(If your browser pops up a malware warning when you go to mwomercs.com, by the way, it's probably a false positivenot a false positive, but the problem has now been dealt with. The whole concept of the hyperlink seems to be disintegrating today.)
Premium Time gives you a 50% boost to all money and experience points earned over the premium period, but once you "activate" it in the game client, you can't de-activate it again. The timer ticks down to zero over the allotted time, whether you play the game or not.
The most sensible way to use the free 24 hours is therefore, clearly, to kit yourself out with intravenous feeding and a bucket to sit on and play non-stop for a straight day over the weekend. Or, indeed, during time when you're meant to be working, studying, sleeping, collecting your children from school, governing a nation, or what-have-you.
I haven't written about MWO for a couple of weeks. There've been some changes, the most important of which is the introduction of Electronic Countermeasures - ECM.
The 1.5-ton Guardian ECM unit can be installed on exactly four 'Mech variants, so far; one model each of Commando, Raven, Cicada and Atlas. In essence, it creates a 180-metre-radius bubble around the 'Mech it's on, in which no enemy can get a target lock, unless an enemy ECM-equipped 'Mech in the same range has switched their own ECM from the standard "disrupt" mode to "counter".
There's a bit more to it than that; here's a lengthy screed on the subject. (Here's the same thing on the official forums, which as mentioned above currently pop a malware warning for me, in Chrome.)
When ECM was new almost everybody used it, which is what happens whenever they introduce a new feature. This made it pretty much pointless to launch in a 'Mech that relied on long-range or Streak short-range missiles, because you'd almost never get a lock, even if you had your own ECM with which to counter one of the horde of enemy ones.
Now ECM is no longer new and exciting, and it's become normal for pick-up teams to contain only a couple of ECM 'Mechs out of eight players, or even none at all. LRM boats are now quite useful again, though no longer the relaxing play experience they used to be. And the Scourge of the StreakCat...
...has been ended, along with the massive dominance of the Jenner and to a lesser extent the three-Streak Commando in the light category.
It's still wise to run an ECM 'Mech in pick-up games, and it's not difficult to get into those, at the low end. A Commando-2D will only cost you 1.8 million C-Bills, and a Guardian unit is only 400,000 on top of that.
(You can also buy 'Mechs, but not equipment for them, with real money via the "Mech Credits" system. A Commando-2D costs 715 Mech Credits, which is not much. PGI are continuing their merciless war of attrition against their customers' wallets by currently offering a 20% bonus on all of their Mech Credit packages; the smallest $US6.95 one therefore now gives you 1500 MC. That's enough to buy a Commando-2D and a whole other different Commando variant too, to get you started on the efficiency unlock process which requires levelling three variants of a given 'Mech to get to the tasty Elite upgrades. Unlocking Elite also doubles the effectiveness of all of the Basic upgrades, though contrary to popular belief unlocking the final Master upgrade that gives you another module slot does not double the Elite upgrades. Mech Credits are also how you normally buy Premium Time; one day of Premium costs 250 MC, and there are other packages ranging from three to a whopping 360 days. The one-day price is no more than $US1.39 even if you buy the worst-value MC package that exists; 180 days is 13,500 MC, which you could just afford with the current 20%-boosted $US49.95 MC package. 360 days is 24,000 MC, eighty US dollars if you buy the best-value $US99.95 20%-boosted MC package.)
Man, that was a big parenthesis. Here's a palate-cleanser.
"You might want to have something to do while you wait for your mech to cool down. I watch a stream and enjoy my coffee. Or wash the dishes."
It's kind of like the last sword-fight in Rob Roy: He's only got to hit you once, fancy boy.
The tradeoffs for this thing are terrible, of course. Not only do you overheat and shut down after every shot (you could avoid this by chain-firing (this player has the same four ER-PPCs in two groups, the first of which is chained), but then heat would limit you to the same rate of fire you'd get from only two, or at most three, ER-PPCs. THe massive weight of the guns in this titchy 40-ton 'Mech also means you can only fit a tiny engine, which gives this oversized-scout-'Mech a top speed of fifty. And it doesn't have much armour, or, plainly, nearly enough heat sinks.
