647 replies to this topic

[Nightcrept]

Prosperity Park, on 14 March 2013 - 11:24 AM, said:

SRM2 is dealing more damage to a Commando than a Gauss Rifle when fired into the chest; I tested and confirmed this. It is not intended, trust me. There's no way the Developers intended for SRM2 to deal more damage than a Gauss Rifle.

Edit - It's a good thing Matt Craig already posted in this thread that they (the Dev Team) will be making a posting about this issue later today.

But is the real world in game application what they had desired? That is the question.
When taking into account the speed, spread and various ballistics is the in game result about what they wanted? And if not why not change them long ago?

My fairly logical conclusion is that while they didn't mean for all the splash damage to be so severe they did want the end in game results we had been playing with.

That is unless of course this is a new bug and not what we have had for the last 4 months.

Edited by Nightcrept, 14 March 2013 - 11:29 AM.

[WardenWolf]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

Lrms were found to be unusable below 1.7. WE have beat that horse to death.
Lrms are almost useless now unless your playing against new players or the really bad ones.
Srms have been used becuase there wasn't even a different option. However there have been times you saw far fewer in game.

LOL

I'm sorry, I don't mean to disparage you, but that is simply not true.

My LRM Atlas is easily one of my most deadly configurations, and given my stats I have to be pretty high up the ELO ladder and playing against mostly good players.

LRMs were viable below 1.7 damage - less deadly, yes, but viable. And they are fantastic now, when used properly... in part, at least, because of the splash damage. And yet I am still in favor of dropping it for a while, to see what happens to balance and get a feel for where things 'should' be with the specs we've always been told about.

[HighTest]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 11:24 AM, said:

Exactly my point.

Umm... not exactly, but sort of.

My point was that I suspect that some of the current balancing that has been done in-game to date is based on data that is flawed. (That is, the data may be correct, but it is based off of flawed gameplay and flawed outcomes.)

My point, however, is not at all that missiles should continue to do the damage that they are doing. The splash damage issue needs to be addressed. However, once that is done, I expect that missiles, ECM, and potentially other weapons/items will need to be re-balanced on account of the massive difference that fixing the bug will make. But not to the level that missiles currenly are.

Assuming the devs do eliminate the splah bug damage overage, I would personally bet that in the near future that missile damage gets slightly buffed and that ECM effectiveness gets slightly nerfed to compensate for what I would expect to be a huge shift in light mech survivability from such a change.

Not that I'm a betting man...

[WardenWolf]

MaddMaxx, on 14 March 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

What would be ever better is to have an Observer standing side on to the target to show the missiles NOT arriving but detonating.

True, but that would require live testing - and three mechs on a team coordinating to get it done. Doable, but a lot of work... and I think we've pretty well laid this to rest now. Even if the splash damage radius wasn't exactly what it appears from Vapor Trail's testing it is still having the effects we have measured in other ways

[stjobe]

Vapor Trail, on 14 March 2013 - 08:51 AM, said:

Ok... some further testing...

Turns out SRMs have an approximate six to seven meter blast radius.

Six meters. Even as an approximate value it's huge for what is essentially a direct fire weapon.

No wonder a Commando takes it from toes to top-hat from an SRM strike.

Methodology: Use the 270m max range of SRMs to detonate them at a known point. Place the target outside this point and move it slowly closer until damage registers. Record distance. Repeat for veracity.

Demonstration Video:

Interesting as well is that at the maximum edge of the blast radius, the SSRM-2 still does almost its full 5 damage (first volley takes the 1B to 98%, that is 2.23 * 2 = 4.46 damage).

[Gevurah]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

Says you and you have no proof.
They told us when they added splash damage. So how is it being there a bug?

This whole damn thread is proof.
You think splash damage is supposed to work like this as a mechanic? In what alternate reality are you from where you have seen splash damage that is equal or greater than the epicenter instead of logarithmically decreasing? The devs have already said they're examining the issue ... which guess what? Means it's an issue. NOT A FEATURE.

Moreover, this is a logical fallacy as you're merely stating that the current game balance is intended due to an unsourced series of comments from CB. Nothing's changed since then has it? PGI certainly hasn't made any adjustments at all to their original plans/statements right? That's sarcasm, btw.

I should mention as to the current game balance with SRMs doing ridiculous damage is contrary to EVERY OTHER BT GAME/MW GAME EVER MADE. Obviously, this is a different game, but given the sheer volume of complaints about missile damage which are quite literally ever-prevalent on the forums I think that'd stand to reason that there's a balance issue, wouldn't you? One can argue player skill as much as they want but that doesn't take away from the fact that this:

A) increases their damage on a vast scale, virtually exponentially on small mechs - far beyond it's stated functions.
goes beyond lab-stated values - which are the closest thing we have to what they are supposed to deliver damage wise
C) cause disproportionate damage for chassis in various classes
D) deliver damage outside of the range actually stated on the weapon (by 6m) at full or near full damage.
E) and again is completely contrary to every single BT/MW game ever created.

But evidently, I'm the one drawing baseless conclusions *eyeroll*

[Bubba Wilkins]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

How do you know what was intended?

Since we have been playing with the results in game for months with little crying. So that can be taken as a indication that the effect was intended although the method may not have been.



No they stated in a patch way back in nov that they were adding splash damage in combination with norm damage. They jsut didn't tell us how much. So it isn't a bug unless the results are more then they wanted.

Your argument is flawed. We have been playing with the current build for little over one week and there were two things which happened in the last patch which specifically made missiles different.

The new flight patterns and grouping have changed the locations of actual impact. State rewind now allows for each missile hit to be accounted for. We've been seeing damage improvements for missiles with every patch as the underlying code and mechanics have been proved.

The missile effectiveness was immediately noticeable when the current build went live. At first, it was just dismissed as a by product of state rewind. Now that we have a semi controlled environment to test in, it appears that we can reasonably duplicate that results. The total damage dealt via direct and splash should be consistent across the board from mech to mech. Splash damage should be a fixed total amount of damage spread across all components in a given radius. By the sound of it, it appears that it is a fixed amount to each component within the damage radius.

so the difference is say 5 total damage spread across 5 parts vs 5 parts taking 5 damage each for 25. These numbers are made up, but the underlying application remains the same. Regardless, total splash damage should never exceed the initial direct damage number.

[Nightcrept]

WardenWolf, on 14 March 2013 - 11:35 AM, said:

LOL

I'm sorry, I don't mean to disparage you, but that is simply not true.

My LRM Atlas is easily one of my most deadly configurations, and given my stats I have to be pretty high up the ELO ladder and playing against mostly good players.

LRMs were viable below 1.7 damage - less deadly, yes, but viable. And they are fantastic now, when used properly... in part, at least, because of the splash damage. And yet I am still in favor of dropping it for a while, to see what happens to balance and get a feel for where things 'should' be with the specs we've always been told about.

I have ran lrms forever as well and I disagree with you.

We went through that whole series of nerf and buff in late oct early nov starting with the artemis patch. The community voted and voted weekly until we were sick on the new changes each patch brought to try and balance missiles.

Under 1.7 with the current spread and speed etc a player could rush you in any mech. People began dumping lrms and the polls showed it. They raised it to 1.8 in the last patch and the majority voted it was about right.

That is the last time other then this last flight path change that lrms have had a major change.

Gevurah, on 14 March 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

This whole damn thread is proof.
You think splash damage is supposed to work like this as a mechanic? In what alternate reality are you from where you have seen splash damage that is equal or greater than the epicenter instead of logarithmically decreasing? The devs have already said they're examining the issue ... which guess what? Means it's an issue. NOT A FEATURE.

Moreover, this is a logical fallacy as you're merely stating that the current game balance is intended due to an unsourced series of comments from CB. Nothing's changed since then has it? PGI certainly hasn't made any adjustments at all to their original plans/statements right? That's sarcasm, btw.

I should mention as to the current game balance with SRMs doing ridiculous damage is contrary to EVERY OTHER BT GAME/MW GAME EVER MADE. Obviously, this is a different game, but given the sheer volume of complaints about missile damage which are quite literally ever-prevalent on the forums I think that'd stand to reason that there's a balance issue, wouldn't you? One can argue player skill as much as they want but that doesn't take away from the fact that this:

A) increases their damage on a vast scale, virtually exponentially on small mechs - far beyond it's stated functions.
goes beyond lab-stated values - which are the closest thing we have to what they are supposed to deliver damage wise
C) cause disproportionate damage for chassis in various classes
D) deliver damage outside of the range actually stated on the weapon (by 6m) at full or near full damage.
E) and again is completely contrary to every single BT/MW game ever created.

But evidently, I'm the one drawing baseless conclusions *eyeroll*

This thread does nothing but show that the method they used to implement a desired outcome is flawed. Them saying we are looking at is is their default answer.

[Nightcrept]

Bubba Wilkins, on 14 March 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

Your argument is flawed. We have been playing with the current build for little over one week and there were two things which happened in the last patch which specifically made missiles different.

The new flight patterns and grouping have changed the locations of actual impact. State rewind now allows for each missile hit to be accounted for. We've been seeing damage improvements for missiles with every patch as the underlying code and mechanics have been proved.

The missile effectiveness was immediately noticeable when the current build went live. At first, it was just dismissed as a by product of state rewind. Now that we have a semi controlled environment to test in, it appears that we can reasonably duplicate that results. The total damage dealt via direct and splash should be consistent across the board from mech to mech. Splash damage should be a fixed total amount of damage spread across all components in a given radius. By the sound of it, it appears that it is a fixed amount to each component within the damage radius.

so the difference is say 5 total damage spread across 5 parts vs 5 parts taking 5 damage each for 25. These numbers are made up, but the underlying application remains the same. Regardless, total splash damage should never exceed the initial direct damage number.

Last I checked there wasn't a rewind of missiles yet was there.

Regardless. They have not indicated if this is a new bug or one that has been with us since they introduced splash damage in nov.

If this is a new bug then it is a bug. But i haven't noticed a difference in game and I went face to face with a splat cat earlier today.
If it isn't a new bug then it is a flawed implementation of a desired effect.


The whole new missile flight path conspiracy is extremely overblown.

[Scop]

WardenWolf, Vapor Trail: I have an idea for testing LRM splash since we can't yet maintain the lock at 1,000m+. I can't try it right now because I'm in the middle of something (can post but not test, also I'm not set up to Youtube my observation), but it could be worth a shot.

I was trying minimum range LRMs once on a CN9, attacking from its left side. At 179m, the dummy was taking damage on the right. My guess at the time was that its midline was 180m away and the right limbs and torso at 181+ were taking the hits. Seeing the demonstration of 6m-radius of splash from SRMs makes me think now that this CN9 was actually getting splashed by the LRMs detonating right at their minimum range.

So this is the suggested method: set up your test subject just inside the 180m minimum for LRMs, then walk it forward and see if the splash measures.

[Nightcrept]

HighTest, on 14 March 2013 - 11:35 AM, said:

Umm... not exactly, but sort of.

My point was that I suspect that some of the current balancing that has been done in-game to date is based on data that is flawed. (That is, the data may be correct, but it is based off of flawed gameplay and flawed outcomes.)

My point, however, is not at all that missiles should continue to do the damage that they are doing. The splash damage issue needs to be addressed. However, once that is done, I expect that missiles, ECM, and potentially other weapons/items will need to be re-balanced on account of the massive difference that fixing the bug will make. But not to the level that missiles currenly are.

Assuming the devs do eliminate the splah bug damage overage, I would personally bet that in the near future that missile damage gets slightly buffed and that ECM effectiveness gets slightly nerfed to compensate for what I would expect to be a huge shift in light mech survivability from such a change.

Not that I'm a betting man...

No that's basically what I am at least trying to say.

If splash damage is dealing as much damage as people are indicating and it has been that way since nov and not a new bug. Then it stand to reason that the devs have balanced the game against false data and the effect it had.

Due to the amount of actual damage being dealt by splash damage removing splash damage would reduce the in game effectiveness (damage) by (I'm guessing) a third or so.

None of the mentioned weapons are even remotely that op even to the most anti-missile fanatics.

So a readjustment would be needed. That would then in turn trickle down to many of the other mechanics in the game.

Thontor, on 14 March 2013 - 11:54 AM, said:

I have searched and have not found any mention of this in any patch notes... I'm not saying they aren't there... But until I see exactly what it says I am going to assume what I've always assumed... Splash damage was never intended to be in addition to the listed firepower of missiles.

Search between oct and nov. That was when they got all the tweaking. I will look too.

[Amaris the Usurper]

SRMs currently spread out after leaving the launcher. Consequently, at a given range, the damage dealt will always be more concentrated (against a single hit location) when firing at larger targets.

On the other hand, in tabletop (sorry for using the T-word) neither range nor target size has anything to do with the number of missiles that hit. If you can imagine the SRMs flying out in a coherent blob and then either

• deliberately going for randomly chosen limbs, torso sections, etc., regardless of the target size, or
  
• missing entirely,

you have a pretty good idea of what's going on in tabletop. It makes very little sense, but the spread problem mentioned above doesn't exist.


Now, a core mechanic with SRMs (and missiles in general) in both BT and MW is that they do not deal all of their damage to the same location. Among the short-range weapons, they have nice damage/weight and damage/heat numbers, and they can cause lots of critical hits, but they are bad at punching through armor.

The fundamental questions with regard to SRM balancing in MWO appear to be:

If the damage is to be spread over random locations by having the missiles disperse, how can we avoid excessive damage concentration against large/close targets? How can we avoid doing too little damage against small/distant targets?

The answer to both is that you probably can't.

The current system of "corkscrewing around a straight path" does a decent job of addressing this, but it isn't perfect. I suspect that the excessive splash damage done to light 'mechs may be an attempt to address the target size issue, i.e., the fact that a small 'mech will tend to "capture" less of the middle spread pattern and, consequently, take less damage.

Nevertheless, having the Commando take between four and five times as much damage per missile from torso hits as the Atlas strikes me as overcompensation. And the fact that (at the same time) hits to the extremities frequently do much less than the expected damage is counter-intuitive and misleading. Why not just introduce a per-chassis damage multiplier for missiles to balance things out, instead of going with the over-complex splash damage system? On the basis of physical intuition, both are nonsense, but the first is probably much easier to manage!

[DrSecretStache]

Nightcrept, it doesn't matter what they intended to do then, it matters what they intend to do now.

Consider if they came in and said that this was NOT intended (the current mechanic of the splash damage actually bouncing back to the part it hit is likely not intended). That would make you wrong.

The thing is, they haven't said yet, so we can't possibly know.

Also, notice that they've been balancing around this mechanic, instead of balancing the mechanic itself.

What I see from all this data is that it is in fact impossible to do any sort of realistic balance around this mechanic because of the inherent randomness of the splash. By removing it, they can then balance srms by changing their spread and damage, thus creating a 'splash' using realistic numbers, if they so desire, without causing wonky things to come up. same goes with ssrms and lrms.

And it's definitely not balanced now, so why change the numbers back? The point of balance is to see what works, and that happens through experimentation. If they remove the bug and see what happens, and numbers look too low, then they'll likely change it up.

The balance itself is definitely uneven. Consider what people have been saying...that the srm2 is doing the effective damage of a gauss rifle.
The srm2 is 1 ton, as opposed to the gauss rifle's 15 (IIRC). And for one ton of ammo, it gets the equivalent of 50 shots, to the gauss rifle's 10. These numbers alone, despite the range advantage the gauss has, can't possibly be intentional.
I guess the numbers don't matter if they change it. we'll see what happens then, and adjust accordingly.

Edited by Zoughtbaj, 14 March 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Nick Carlile]

For reference. No one but the devs can say what is intended and what is not.

This is all conjecture.

I appreciate the testing, and I'm not saying the results are wrong.

But only the devs can draw a conclusion based on the results.

[Nightcrept]

Zoughtbaj, on 14 March 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

Nightcrept, it doesn't matter what they intended to do then, it matters what they intend to do now.

Consider if they came in and said that this was NOT intended (the current mechanic of the splash damage actually bouncing back to the part it hit is likely not intended). That would make you wrong.

The thing is, they haven't said yet, so we can't possibly know.

Also, notice that they've been balancing around this mechanic, instead of balancing the mechanic itself.

What I see from all this data is that it is in fact impossible to do any sort of realistic balance around this mechanic because of the inherent randomness of the splash. By removing it, they can then balance srms by changing their spread and damage, thus creating a 'splash' using realistic numbers, if they so desire, without causing wonky things to come up. same goes with ssrms and lrms.

And it's definitely not balanced now, so why change the numbers back? The point of balance is to see what works, and that happens through experimentation. If they remove the bug and see what happens, and numbers look too low, then they'll likely change it up.

The balance itself is definitely uneven. Consider what people have been saying...that the srm2 is doing the effective damage of a gauss rifle.
The srm2 is 1 ton, as opposed to the gauss rifle's 15 (IIRC). And for one ton of ammo, it gets the equivalent of 50 shots, to the gauss rifle's 10. These numbers alone, despite the range advantage the gauss has, can't possibly be intentional.
I guess the numbers don't matter if they change it. we'll see what happens then, and adjust accordingly.

I agree.

I'm still busy looking for when they introduced splash damage to begin with to figure out what they said about it. I'm afraid though that they don't let us go far enough back in patch note.

Edit: I don't think they intended splash damage to work like it is. But I think they did like how it played out in game and never examined how it worked.

But it does need fixed so we can properly balance the game.

Edited by Nightcrept, 14 March 2013 - 12:17 PM.

[Phaesphoros]

Amaris the Usurper, on 14 March 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

If the damage is to be spread over random locations by having the missiles disperse, how can we avoid excessive damage concentration against large/close targets? How can we avoid doing too little damage against small/distant targets?

[...]

Why not just introduce a per-chassis damage multiplier for missiles to balance things out, instead of going with the over-complex splash damage system?

Although I consider this being out of scope of your original post (which is a discovery, now we're discussing the cause and fixes), I'd like to address that:
AFAIK and IMHO, light mechs in this game have been balanced by being harder to hit. They're fast and small (and I think one of the main reasons of the "weird" relative sizes of mechs in this game is due to hit statistics / survivability). Take a look at the legs of 35 t RVN compared to 40 t CDA.

I don't think we need to fix the issue that SRMs spread over more hit boxes on light mechs. That's exactly what is intended to increase survivability.

Edit: IMHO, missile spread is also a sort of splash damage. It doesn't increase overall damage but literally spreads it for less pin-point dmg.

Edited by Phaesphoros, 14 March 2013 - 12:23 PM.

[HoppinRaven]

Uhm, wasn't the splash damage implemented to make the streaks more effective some patches ago? And yes then effectiveness becomes deadly on smaller mechs where the hit areas are smaller and thus close to each other.

[Nightcrept]

The patch notes don't go far enough back or they were in a special announcement.

Someone actually noticed it and posted pretty much the ops same observation in dec.

http://mwomercs.com/...-splash-damage/

[Amaris the Usurper]

Thontor, on 14 March 2013 - 12:18 PM, said:

the less damage to the limbs thing is an unintended, and known issue that is going to be fixed in the next patch

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1969176

OK. I was operating under a memory malfunction and thinking it had already been fixed.

[krolmir]

For anyone who would like to repeat the test themselves, go into the Training Grounds on a mech with lasers and SRMS.
Hunchback SP is a good example. 1 SRM6 is supposed to do 15 damage = 3 MLasers , 2LLasers (is slightly higher at 18), 5 SLasers, 3 rds A/C5 , 1 gauss slug, etc.

Target a mech and fire a single volley of SRMs at 100m record the % data, fire your laser/ ballistic equivelant record the % data, move to approximately 50m, and repeat.

By the end of this test you will see for yourself how much extra damage is being done by the splash, and remember that the bug is verified in live game as well.