22 replies to this topic

[Jet Black Dog]

Rebalancing, endlessly , a game with nearly 30 years may not always be a great use of time.
That sounded snider than intended - and I get the translate turns to real time difficulties.

Aside from ten second cool vs 3-4 second fire 'turns' changing the whole meta, lets get back to AC's.
Autocannons are supposed to be dmg rated by damage over time already.
The dps of an Ac-20 is literally 10x that of an ac/2.

Quote

An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts...

...It is, basically, a giant "machine gun" .
Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage versus armor.[1] The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors. Autocannon are grouped into the following loose damage classes:

Sarna http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon

Esthetics aside, realizing that BT already had a balance of DPS on ballistics, might [ameliorate some of the rebalancing/tweaking/nerfing issues

[Amsro]

The pile of needed fixes are immense, but this is not the game you are looking for.

Working as intended.

[JohnnyWayne]

So ... You want AC`s to be like MG`s just like they were in MWLL? Could give LB - AC`s a real place as burst fire weapon with spread and reduces the pin point damage...

I actually ever liked that idea. Didn't like it for PPCs though...


Also people around here never seemed to realise that the 10 second turns in BT were never meant to be "shoot all once and run in a circle", but more to simulate what happens over 10 seconds...

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 20 April 2014 - 05:47 AM.

[Jet Black Dog]

JohnnyWayne, on 20 April 2014 - 05:45 AM, said:

So ... You want AC`s to be like MG`s just like they were in MWLL?

I want autocannons to be like autocannons were in BattleTech, the source material. Weird the pulse lasers are more autocannon - even in sound - than the autocannons. Metas and balance aside ( ballistics, convergence & ghost heat - all issues relating to damage on point vs d.o.t. - I think it's pretty established ballistics have an Unintended +
autocannons? I'm sorry, the 'big-ass single shell' cannons.
These cannons aren't CANON

Quote

Also people around here never seemed to realise that the 10 second turns in BT were never meant to be "shoot all once and run in a circle", but more to simulate what happens over 10 seconds...

I think you have a point there, sir. I HAVE seen alot of the cha cha cha dance - and i admit it works better than I thought when played out. I expect most mwo players played the MW games, much less BT.
but...back to cha cha? Firing while moving of course, doesn't bounce. I encourage folks to fire on the run in real life
but i digress.
Point is, it's not only esthetically wrong!, but canon wrong, and working as intended? My ass.
I'd add if anyone cares about balance 3050 is a BAD year - but the ballistics balance has been 'tweaked' quite a bit - there's a reason for that.
The real reason is after some computer games that did it 'wrong' people got stuck in an esthetic. Pooh.

Amsro, on 20 April 2014 - 05:43 AM, said:

The pile of needed fixes are immense, but this is not the game you are looking for.

Working as intended.

i'm taking that last emoticon as the sarcasm that deserved.
As to the first statement, you mean, it doesn't feel like you're driving a battletech 'mech, more like driving,
and half the 'fixes' are unnnecessary except to fix something they altered anyway ( problem with complex systems )- and community warfare never happened, then you're right - this ISN't the game i was looking for.
But it's fun, and the best we'll likely get, and I come back to it occaisionally, hoping that even if it isn't done as I'd prefer, at least they will balance it to their own satisfaction and add a little 'more'. Nonetheless...
No need in getting snarky when I am both mechanically(meta) and canonically correct.

Edited by Mercier, 20 April 2014 - 06:46 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

It has been said many times, but it looks like I must say it again.

Autocannon means, simply put, an auto-loading cannon. Weather it's a full-auto rotary gun, or a burst-fire cassette-loaded cannon, or weather it's essentially a single-shot howitzer, it is canon for the cannon to be listed according to generalized performance.

Autocannon does not, nor has it ever, required that it fire a stream of shells akin to a Vulcan or Avenger cannon. Some are always described that way (the MechBuster's AC20 is essentially an Avenger cannon), but MWO-style single-round ACs are just as canon, and far easier to distinguish from MWO lasers.

In general I'd love to see standard ACs be as they are, LBX-ACs do 1.5 damage per pellet with one pellet per AC rating, Ultra ACs being cassette-based burst-fire weapons, and Rotary ACs being fully automatic Vulcan-style cannons, but I don't think that'll be happening any time soon.

As for TT dps balance for ACs, the AC2 is basically pointless on the TT unless you are running a half dozen of them. MWO finally gave them a distinctive place, though the last patch made them redundant, with the AC5 being better in all situations now (either all ACs should have 3x range, or all ACs should have 2x range). The larger ACs already have a large advantage due to the mechanics of a real-time simulation (lump damage is always better than damage over time), so giving the smaller ACs a dps advantage compared to their TT progenitors is not just okay, it is probably the main thing keeping them viable.

[Jet Black Dog]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 20 April 2014 - 06:48 AM, said:

It has been said many times, but it looks like I must say it again.

Autocannon means, simply put, an auto-loading cannon.

Doesn't matter what HOW many times you say it, it's simply not true. I'm sorry, you're correcting me when YOU are incorrect. It's fine to say, screw it, it's fun this way, but let's not change words around so they lose their purpose and meaning.
"Definition[edit]
The precise definition of an autocannon is often confusing, as there are other weapons which fulfill much of the criteria that define it, however a useful definition is that an autocannon is a large fully automatic gun capable of firing armour piercing, explosive-filled, or other types of shells, whereas a true machine gun fires solid bullets only.
Larger forms of artillery have been fitted with autoloaders, which are somewhat different."

Auto-LOADER and auto-cannon is NOt the same. Repeating it won't change it.
Admittedly, 'automatic' could be, like GL's, not so fast, but by BATTELTECH canon ( check the sarna) even the big slow ac's are about 5 per second. So, by CANON, no, you're still wrong.
( you could argue the ac/2 , as the sarna implies, is very slwo firing for accuracy over range, w/e )
The damage over time/ by location, is exactly what i was discussing. And yes, ac-2's were always marginal, but that extra range can sting. The ballistics issues ('tweaks') are exactly due to these issues, the 'lump' damage in one spot at one time ( same as convergence and ghost heat alphas ) is why ballistics seem so good- and shouldn't be ( 'lump' - any more than a pulse laser).

Edited by Mercier, 20 April 2014 - 07:09 AM.

[Khobai]

Honestly battletech canon is irrelevant. MWO already deviates heavily from the canon so it seems absurdly inconsistent to selectively enforce some bits of canon while blatantly ignoring others.

Whats relevant is that front loaded damage is overpowered in MWO and needs to be fixed. Burst fire on autocannons and arcing damage on PPCs is the easiest way to fix it. It brings those weapons in line with lasers and SRMs and helps increase the already too short time to kill.

Edited by Khobai, 20 April 2014 - 07:34 AM.

[Jet Black Dog]

Khobai, on 20 April 2014 - 07:26 AM, said:

Honestly battletech canon is irrelevant.

While I don't fully 'agree', I admit you're right, sir.

"Whats relevant is that front loaded damage is overpowered in MWO and needs to be fixed."
would you consider my assertion that the problem you refer to goes back to 'convergeance' - what ghost heat is to combat
( i'd like to add, unless each weapon is actuated in a mini turret, the convergence is fixed and wouldn't pinpoint precisely , or at least not variably. look at , especially, ww2 fighters guns.)
i digress - and 'lump damage' in ballistics, from single shells?
used to i heard bitching about srm's, now it seems to be mostly realted to ballistics and ghost heat vs alpha ( convergence/pinpoint)

Edited by Mercier, 20 April 2014 - 07:35 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

would you consider my assertion that the problem you refer to goes back to 'convergeance' - what ghost heat is to combat

Convergence is obviously the problem, but its not a problem that can be easily fixed.

The easiest solution is just to make all autocannons fire in bursts so they spread their damage around to different locations. And make PPCs do arcing damage so they no longer apply all of their damage to a single location. That would reduce front loaded damage by 30%-40%.

Combine that with a possible internal structure increase and I think that would get time to kill to about where it should be. The reason we need an internal structure increase is so critical hits start to matter more. Right now entire locations get destroyed before critical hits really have an effect. So increasing internal structure addresses that.

[JohnnyWayne]

Not canon PPC is not canon. Go play a different game, if you want a different game thats not BT/MW. Dont propagate to ruin weapons that are ok if not combined with their lore counterparts the ACs. That is the actual problem.

That is what you should cry about, not always stomp on the buttom and start screaming if someone mentions changeing ACs or start applauding if some moron proposes to nef the PPC to uselessnes.

And yes your changes would totally destroy the PPC as mainweapon on a mech. The heat, the cooldown and the minor damage it would do were a mere joke compared to ACs. Compare its DPS, even an AC2 would be better if the PPC were redsigned according to your idea.

[Mcgral18]

JohnnyWayne, on 20 April 2014 - 08:59 AM, said:

Not canon PPC is not canon. Go play a different game, if you want a different game thats not BT/MW. Dont propagate to ruin weapons that are ok if not combined with their lore counterparts the ACs. That is the actual problem.

That is what you should cry about, not always stomp on the buttom and start screaming if someone mentions changeing ACs or start applauding if some moron proposes to nef the PPC to uselessnes.

And yes your changes would totally destroy the PPC as mainweapon on a mech. The heat, the cooldown and the minor damage it would do were a mere joke compared to ACs. Compare its DPS, even an AC2 would be better if the PPC were redsigned according to your idea.

But having BT become a twitch shooter is fine?

There are exactly two weapon types that do NOT have a spread mechanism built in : Ballistic and PPCs. Those are Frontloaded and Pinpoint damage, and multiple simply become a single large weapon because of the instantaneous pinpoint convergence.

If we don't want to touch the weapons, we have to change the convergence. PGI said they couldn't do that progressively without borking the hitreg, which leaves static aim points. That could work.

Other alternatives include CoF when moving or shooting many weapons, or just chaning the weapon damage mechanics and not changing the underlying problems at all. That sounds more like PGI.

[JohnnyWayne]

Mcgral18, on 20 April 2014 - 09:15 AM, said:

There are exactly two weapon types that do NOT have a spread mechanism built in : Ballistic and PPCs. Those are Frontloaded and Pinpoint damage, and multiple simply become a single large weapon because of the instantaneous pinpoint convergence.

That is totally right for the PPC and partly for the AC (single shot ACs were rather rare as far as I know, we would need different manufacturer).

Moreover PPCs are quite limited due to heat and the awful heat system in this game, where as ACs are not. There is nothing wrong with PPCs (especially thanks to heat penalties, which I think is a good balancing component) but the implementation of ACs is wrong and therefore the synergy between these 2 weapon systems is out of hand.

We have the measure of 30 pin point alpha being ok (personally I'd prefer 25) by PGI. What DPS on the other hand are ok? What DPS / Weight ratio is ok? What time to shutdown is ok?

Numbers I'm not sure PGI has thought about. Balancing these would result into a way more complex system than heat penalties.For me as someone that likes to get into complex systems this would be great. For a casual... Not so much...

Also any kind of change has also a component to itself we don't think about: This is a computer game. It has to be programmed and the hardware has to be potent enough to handle our ideas. So real ACs might not be possilbe in the next few years in the current games environment.

[Jet Black Dog]

For what it's worth, the fella Khobi who suggested less-pinpoint PPC's already said he couldn't give a toss about canon ( or that mwo doesn't )
Also, most players, I'm guessing, are more familiar with MW than BT ( although i think most of the 'hardcore' players are also

Mcgral18 said:

If we don't want to touch the weapons, we have to change the convergence. PGI said they couldn't do that progressively without borking the hitreg, which leaves static aim points. That could work.

Other alternatives include CoF when moving or shooting many weapons, or just chaning the weapon damage mechanics and not changing the underlying problems at all. That sounds more like PGI.

I just wanted to clarify, when you say static aim points, you mean, the offset of the weapons from each other, like the spacing of cannon on, for example, a ww2 fighter wing...Yes?
the weapons aiming at a perfect point...
in BT it was very difficult to hit a mech, much less a specific location - the lack of bounce in moving, the aiming skill of the players, -as well as the convergence issues - mean, on the contrary, quite a bit of focused damage.
In the immediate case, AC's requiring the same skill to focus damage as a current laser ( or pulse laser ) does, seem reasonable. ( esthetically awesome as well
- apparently i'm not alone as i thought : http://mwomercs.com/...annon-provokes/ )

and to Mr Wayne, If you were saying the software can't handle burst s of ac fire, I'm going to have to disagree - mw4 had it, though iirc, only for ultras.
I would definitely agree - and that was a point i posited originally - that many of the 'fixes' - as monte cook said of later editions of DnD for example - end up much more complex than originally intended - it always sounds good on paper, doesn't it? But i think many of the fixes are... quite complicated.
I don't follow their design process closely enough to remark- sounds like you do - but it certainly feels patchwork,
frankly, if it wasn't battletech ANd wasn't so damn fun, ( and i didn't enjoy so many of the players ) I'd have given up already.

Edited by Mercier, 20 April 2014 - 10:22 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Mercier, on 20 April 2014 - 10:17 AM, said:

I just wanted to clarify, when you say static aim points, you mean, the offset of the weapons from each other, like the spacing of cannon on, for example, a ww2 fighter wing...Yes?
the weapons aiming at a perfect point...

Correct, torso weapons aim parallel to each other, never converging. To make them hit the same location, you'd have to fire them sequentially, but it doesn't stop alpha strikes.

Some mechs avoid the worst of it by having hardpoints close together, but it helps none the less.

[Lykaon]

Mercier, on 20 April 2014 - 07:34 AM, said:

While I don't fully 'agree', I admit you're right, sir.

"Whats relevant is that front loaded damage is overpowered in MWO and needs to be fixed."
would you consider my assertion that the problem you refer to goes back to 'convergeance'

Convergence is not the primary cause for the immense advantage of front loaded damage.Convergence enhances the already potent advantage of front loading when weapon grouping and group fire come into play,a single PPC will still place all it's damage in one spot at the instant of impact (thus preventing the target the ability to perform reactionary manuvers to spread the damage around) so convergence or no the PPC will always out perform a laser.

The core issue is an interaction between damage application and damage absorbing armor mechanics.

The armor mechanics used in MWo are so heavily derived from the table top game that they inherited the table top game mechanic's weaknesses,yet the developers of MWo failed to create sufficent supporting mechanics to allow the armor to function equally well under fire from any weapon.

To put it plainly the armor mechanics in use are not designed to operate in an enviorment that uses pinpoint accuracy and groupfired weapons.The game developers failed to realize this and have thus far also failed to devise sufficent supporting mechanics to correct this flaw.Ghost heat was an attempt to limit this effect but only really resulted in a slight shift in the meta build of choice (we saw 4x PPC shift to 2x AC5 2x PPC).

[Jet Black Dog]

Lykaon, myself, i don't have a problem with the armor - but with, as you said, how accuracy and groupfire allows what i was calling "convergence " - -weapons hitting all in one spot for what in BT was a single weapon hit - no more than 10 ( ppc ) and later the additional AC's.
That ppc's hit in one spot i never saw as a 'problem' - they have their drawbacks - when are 2 5 point lasers as good? well...
The effect of alpha strikes, "convergence", etc - would be as if an lrm swarm all hit one location - that the damage is focused - or as i was saying, converged - with (relative to batteltech's random hit location ) -
my point was ballistics seem to do well ( i blame the ac-20, citytech! ) in mwo bcas the hit is to one sinle, instant, without laser skill, spot.
ppc's and ac's together, well, enough said - but the same effect can be gained , as you said, more or less, by a weapon group hitting on a single 'pinpoint' - convergence, what ever - another poster said PGI was ok with around 30 on that -
I'll stick with my OP that ballistics would balance better if, like lasers, it took a good hit to get full damage -
but as i see it, all other points that have come up, including the ac dps vs range 'tweaks' ( ? nerf? ur call ) - the old issues with srms ( ah splatcat, your shot grouping is so impressive) - the ghost heat to balance alpha strikes, all comes back to what i was calling convergence.
In a previous post i pointed out how much easier it plays out to get (relatively) accurate fire as opposed to BT 's to hit/ location numbers, and other than my terminology, it sounds like we aren't at odds.
( one could say the battles may feel short, as the 'dps' of btech weapons was over ten seconds of fighting, whereas ... enuff said).
Anyway, sounds to me like we're coming to similar conclusions, I was picking on ballistics in particular, but you could see it as a symptom of the same principle, whether or not you agree with my ' should be' damage over pulse .

Edited by Mercier, 20 April 2014 - 02:10 PM.

[JohnnyWayne]

Mercier, on 20 April 2014 - 10:17 AM, said:

and to Mr Wayne, If you were saying the software can't handle burst s of ac fire, I'm going to have to disagree - mw4 had it, though iirc, only for ultras.

http://mwomercs.com/...01#entry3291001

As you see, it depends.

[Jet Black Dog]

I hadn't seen that post, and yes, i see your point: 'that depends'
this made me very happy though: " Alex is also hugely supportive of this model for AC's, as it's actually much closer to lore."
...so thank you. I'm only a fledgling programmer, at best, I hadn't thought out that doing it like pulse would include all those considerations.
I've bookmarked that for further reading, thank you!

Edited by Mercier, 20 April 2014 - 02:32 PM.

[Archon]

This thread is NEW and EXCITING!

[JohnnyWayne]

Archon, on 20 April 2014 - 02:54 PM, said:

This thread is NEW and EXCITING!

This post is NEW and EXCITING! You are too late.

I also want to add, that in MW4 we had no HSR that calculates back if a shot hit or not. That makes calculating shots even more complicated.