8 replies to this topic

[LordKnightFandragon]

So, basically I felt like drumming up how I would change weapons and overall balance in this game. Weapon tables at the end lol.

It would start with a change to a fixed, 50 point heat scale. Dissipation would be 10% of your TT Coolant value. SHS would change to 1.4x and DHS would change to 2.0x.

10SHS@1.4x=1.4/s coolant
20DHS@2.0=2.0/s coolant.

Basically, the idea would be to close the gap between SHS and DHS, making SHS not so worthless and DHS not so OP. Obviously, DHS is still better, but it wouldnt be as much of a must have type of deal.

Overall Idea is to slow the pace of the game, slow our sustainable output. General idea is to have bursts of firing, with periods of cooling off. A change from our current, fire until our 100 point heat scale reaches 100%.

Also, I would include engine/speed heat. This would be 10% of current speed+engine size.

Ex WHK-P moving at 71KPH with a 340 would be 7.1 heat for speed+3.4heat for engine size for a total of 10.4 heat. Basically you always have this heat, change it by altering speed. It would give you about 35-40 heat with which to fire weapons, about 30 or so after I list my heat effects. Negate the movement heat by simply stopping to fire.

During the last 10 heat points, from 41-50, there would be various heat effects added to your mech. These are just very rough ideas, but the general idea is to make heat as much a resource to be managed as is your health bar and ammo. Neglecting your heat, will get you just as dead as running out of health. These effects stack up and add together. The hotter you get, the nastier it is.

41-44: -10% top speed, -10% traverse, twist rates, +10% weapon Cooldown
45: 5% chance for ammo explosion per second
46-48: All ballistic/missile weapons jam, 7.5% chance for ammo explosion per second. Radar range reduced by 50%, Unable to get lock, any current locks are lost.
49: 10% chance for ammo explosion per second
50: Shutdown

You would then need to wait until you reach 10 heat before being able to turn back on. At a coolant rate of 2-3 heat per second, you might be there awhile. Also, that over ride shutdown thing? LOL, I would make it where any heat over 50 you take each second to your Engine Internal until you get below 50 heat

Ex: you get your self to 60 heat with a coolant rate of 2/s. So, 1st second you take 10 dmg, cool to 8, then 8 dmg for 18dmg, 6 for 24 dmg, 4 for 28 dmg, 2 for 30dmg. Now your back to 50. So, in total, you just took 30 dmg to your internal CT engine. Meanwhile, your sitting at 50 heat with 2/s coolant. Most likely your dead before you turn back on. Manage your heat better next time.

Also, Ammo explosions. They would deal 10% of total ammo carried in each location. So, if your a MDD-P with 200 rockets in each of your ST, you take 20 dmg to each internal ST. However, this is where CASE becomes very valuable. I would make it where CASE has its own hitpoint pool of 100. Basically, this allows CASE to take the 20 dmg rather then your internals. Once it reaches 100, CASE is destroyed. Ofc, so would your ammo.....If you happened to be carrying enough ammo to blow 100 points of case up...then wouch. Like MGs? carry 4200 MG rounds, 2100 in each ST for example, that is 210dmg to each torso, CASE would stop 100 of it, but 110 would go to your ST, so, yeah, you just blew your self up.

Also, IS CASE I personally would reduce to 0/0 in weight and crits. Some things just need to change for the sake of IS/Clan balance, this should be one of them, especially given how mean I would make heat management. It would be a resource to be managed. You want a skill based game. This would be the first skill you master, or die horribly. Laser vomit away, but your heat will stop you.



Next segment would be about overall weapon identification changes. I would personally go with a 1x weapon range for all weapons.

Lasers: They would have the advantage of:
-No Ammo Limits
-HIt Scan
-Light Weight
-Smaller size
-Faster Cooldown vs Ballistics

Disadvantage of
-Limited heavily by heat

I changed energy to be equal in damage and heat as well as lowered the beam times of lasers down from current numbers to make them a bit more PPD, while still maintaining their spread feature. This is to help prevent a full ballistic meta given a 50 point heat scale. Lasers would deal their damage faster, but be heavily limited by a 50 point heat scale, 30-40 some given engine heat I would add.

Is vs Clan laser balance. In a 1x weapon range environment and to close the gap between CLans and IS, I increased the ranges on many of the IS weapons, starting with Lasers. Now, realize, the reason IS lasers dont even come close to matching CLan, is its EXTENDED RANGE vs NON-Extended Range weapons. So, it wouldnt even make sense to make ranges similar.

Also, Clan keep their slight damage advantages at 1 point per laser, ISERLL:9/9, CERLL: 10/10. Clan Laser beam times came down, my math for laser beam times is 0.1s burn time for 1 point of damage. Clans get half a second(0.5) more in general for their increased ranges. But given how its 1x ranges and not 2x, they get alot less overall then now. CERLL I have at 1.15 vs 1.5.

>Pulse Lasers: They would deal slightly less damage then thier standard counterparts, but deal slightly less heat and have quite a bit less range. In trade, they would burn and cool down faster to give a sort of "machinegun" feel to them. More a brawling style weapon, while normal lasers are your longer range versions.

Flamers: These would deal 1 heat to the target vs 1 heat to the shooter, per flamer. Also, if your shooting a section of a mech carrying CASE or Ammo, you will deal 1 dmg per second, per flamer to the CASE and if there is ammo inside the CASE, there is a 2.5% chance per flamer per second, of making it explode. Once CASE is breeched, the chance goes to 5% per second per flamer of making the ammo explode. Basically, Flamers would be for convincing ammo to pop...lol. Idk what else to do with them.

PPCs/ER/C: ISPPC, I increased its range to 600m to improve it a little. PPCs in general get longer CD vs what we have now since they are PPD, long range weapons. THey are hot, slow firing and PP. ERPPC came down in heat from 15 to 12, and on a 50 point heat scale, that is only like 3-4 shots, so its not even that OP. You would likely be out DPS'd by non PPC builds. BUt if you kept your range, you might be OK. I also increased velocity. If they need ot be long range, they would get the speed to match. 1220-1250 is a good place to start. Some mechs would get quirks to help out.

Also, PPC/ER/C would be unable to group fire. Any group you place them in would automatically swap to Chain fire. This is to curb any PPC boating further and prevent any AC/PPC meta builds people might try ot make, as well as keeping them from grouping with Gauss. There would be a 0.75s delay between PPCs firing and any other weapon becoming available. This is to slow the fire rate on these down and keep them from being the meta gun, since it is PPD I would buff them in other areas to make this worth it.

Ballistics: They have the Advantage of:
-Excellent Dmg to Heat ratio

Disadvantges of
-Limited by Ammo
-Requires lead and aiming for velocity
-Longer reloads vs Lasers.
-Large in size and weight

Basically cannons/Gauss/ACs would get longer CDs, and require you to lead your shots AC2s and 5s I increased ranges, AC2 got less velocity but more range, 2000 just seems a bit much. 1700 seems better. 900m range up from 720. They deal much better dmg vs the heat you gain. Sure, they are heavy, but the dmg they deal vs the heat they gain is their primary advantage.

Gauss Rifles would increase in reload rate significantly, 4s to 8s.; This is a long time to wait in a heated engagement and it helps to limit those Quad Gauss Whales. Gauss Rifles would be unable to group fire, only CHain fire. There is a 0.75s delay between firing a Gauss and any other weapon. (See PPCs above, same story with the Gauss) PPCs would fire faster then Gauss simply because Gauss are 1 heat vs the PPCs 10-12-15; Heat alone on a 50pt heat scale would heavily limit thier output.

Clan Ultras would fire in much smaller bursts. AC2 and 5 being single shots, with double rate. Clan 10 and 20 would fire in bursts equalling 5 dmg per pellet. So, UAC10: 2 pellets, 5/5. UAC20, 4 pellets, 5/5/5/5. I would keep their burst speed like t hey are now at .11

Missiles:
-Good damage vs heat

-Highly limited by ammo
-Quite inaccurate overall
-Rather long reload cycles

Missiles I would buff in terms of accuracy and speed from where they are now. LRMs I would improve thier speed and change them all to CLan style stream fire. To get the best acc out of LRMs you would need NARC or TAG, but I would buff accuracy in trade for a long reload cycle.

SRMs I would make track your cursor, giving you some control over their direction, making them easier to aim and hit with. I watched a MWLL vid where a guy used SRms and they did track the reticule, I thought, that was really how t hey should be and how, personally, I imagine them.

Streaks would do like MW4, lock on and track the target, but they would not twist and turn as fast as that game. Rather, they would lock on and try to track around obstacles and all that within their max range of 300m, once they travel that far they die out..

SRMs would also fire in a rapid stream, 1 right after the other in very rapid succession, much like a CUAC

SRMs would deal 2per missile in damage, Streaks would be 1 per, in trade for thier tracking ability..

[Y E O N N E]

Interesting. Inner Sphere lasers seem to offer a uniform impulse DPS of 10 while the Clan ER lasers increase with size from 7.27 to 8.70. That makes the IS lasers incredibly dangerous within their range, and I'm talking on the level of TDR-5SS wubs vs. HBR-PRIME wubs. They are 100 meters shy of the enemy, but at 1x ranges that's less of a problem. My BJ-1X would be a beast, here, even with the higher heat.

The one major discrepancy is the IS ER Large. You said it wouldn't make sense to make the ranges similar since the lasers are not ER, but that one is and it is way off from the Clan version. Not as off as TT would have it, but still off. While it sort of makes sense since it's competing directly with the C=LPL in your table, it's actually head-and-shoulders above the C-LPL in performance here since it is longer ranged, weighs less, deals more damage, and has the same burn time in exchange for only one more point of heat. More logical would be to more closely match the range of the IS ERLL to the C-ERLL and give it a burn of 0.95 or 1.00 second.

Still, all of the pulse lasers are out-classed. Lasers are typically used in a peeking manner, and so I'm not really going to complain about the heat on the standard lasers since I'm just going to get in cover to cool down. No big deal.

Your SRM and S-SRMs are totally out of alignment. The Clan SRM options are superior in every way. They are smaller, lighter, have longer range, and do the same damage. You can easily throw them onto almost any Clan 'Mech and have a competent brawler, while it's a bit harder to do so with IS options. The extra damage per missile and the instant salvo is what made it worth doing at all. The instant salvo is also what made it worth it to bring LRMs on an IS 'Mech. For IS, missiles are a dedication and not an augmentation. IS have slots and tonnage for one ammo-dependent weapon system and at that they will be pushing the limits of cooling, speed, and durability when they add in some energy backups.

In general, the ballistics seem fine, but 2000 m/s is actually warranted on the AC/2. It's already losing in damage and DPS to the AC/5 before your change, and it's losing even more after it. A 900 meter range cap is also really long, and it already takes a little bit of mental work to make consistent hits at that distance with a shell moving 2000 m/s. I'm also questioning why the Clan LB-X get a range boost while the IS ones do not. They are identical, even in TT.

Very interesting. I kind of want to play with your lasers in a match; I think the IS options might be a hair too toasty for the amount of heat-sinks IS 'Mechs can bring, but I do think the range and damage trade-offs to the enemy might actually be fairly balanced. Pulse lasers will never get used, it's not worth the extra tonnage for a lower-damaging weapon that offers lower heat. It's competing too closely with the PPC; because nobody can twist damage dealt in less than 0.8 seconds anyway. The PPC is simply better at firing from cover.

[Kiiyor]

This is interesting.

I'm not on board with the Gauss changes - 8 seconds is utterly horrifying, and i'd carry any other weapon system in the game over it. I can't see any advantages at all carrying that over 2 PPC's.

Some of the other stuff, like SRM's, sounds really nice, but i'd be interested to see how they actually fared in the heat of battle. Changes this big would result in a whole new mess of balance issues once the meta emerged.

What would you do with quirks?

[LordKnightFandragon]

Kiiyor, on 13 June 2015 - 10:22 PM, said:

This is interesting.

I'm not on board with the Gauss changes - 8 seconds is utterly horrifying, and i'd carry any other weapon system in the game over it. I can't see any advantages at all carrying that over 2 PPC's.

Some of the other stuff, like SRM's, sounds really nice, but i'd be interested to see how they actually fared in the heat of battle. Changes this big would result in a whole new mess of balance issues once the meta emerged.

What would you do with quirks?

Quirks I would use to augment a mech's role or area it is best used in.

IE: Catapult, I would give it quirks such as 10% faster Missile Cooldown, +10% MIssile Accuracy, things like that.

Warhawk-P: +10% CERPPC Velocity, +10% Heat dissipation

Nova-P: -10% Laser beam duration,

Jagermech: +10% Ballistic Velocity, -10% Ballistic CD.

The 8s CD on Gauss is so that in a 50 point heat scale, like ive seen people say, everyone would just load up on Gauss and Ballistics. BUt, I can see by your comment, that, well, an 8s CD is kinda a long time. You might reconsider if the weapon has a long enough CD. Sure, its punchy, and long range, but witha CD like that, you might think about working with something else. BUt do keep in mind, I would remove Gauss Charge in trade for that lower velocity and 8s CD. So, we would get that. Also, keep in mind, my changes would come with a 50 point max heat scale. The advantage of 8s CD GR over 2 PPCs is sustainable RoF, or not shutting yourself down. My heat scale would see your heat dissipating every 1s. And with reduced Heat sink dissipation, if you brought like 16 DHS, you would be cooling 3.2h/s. BUt wiht 2 PPC generating 20. Probably already have engine heat of around 8-10, so 50 point heat scale, 10 lost to engine, last 10 is full of heat effects, 30 heat with which to fire free of charge....2 PPCs would be hot.

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 13 June 2015 - 11:10 PM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 June 2015 - 10:05 PM, said:

Interesting. Inner Sphere lasers seem to offer a uniform impulse DPS of 10 while the Clan ER lasers increase with size from 7.27 to 8.70. That makes the IS lasers incredibly dangerous within their range, and I'm talking on the level of TDR-5SS wubs vs. HBR-PRIME wubs. They are 100 meters shy of the enemy, but at 1x ranges that's less of a problem. My BJ-1X would be a beast, here, even with the higher heat.

The one major discrepancy is the IS ER Large. You said it wouldn't make sense to make the ranges similar since the lasers are not ER, but that one is and it is way off from the Clan version. Not as off as TT would have it, but still off. While it sort of makes sense since it's competing directly with the C=LPL in your table, it's actually head-and-shoulders above the C-LPL in performance here since it is longer ranged, weighs less, deals more damage, and has the same burn time in exchange for only one more point of heat. More logical would be to more closely match the range of the IS ERLL to the C-ERLL and give it a burn of 0.95 or 1.00 second.

Still, all of the pulse lasers are out-classed. Lasers are typically used in a peeking manner, and so I'm not really going to complain about the heat on the standard lasers since I'm just going to get in cover to cool down. No big deal.

Your SRM and S-SRMs are totally out of alignment. The Clan SRM options are superior in every way. They are smaller, lighter, have longer range, and do the same damage. You can easily throw them onto almost any Clan 'Mech and have a competent brawler, while it's a bit harder to do so with IS options. The extra damage per missile and the instant salvo is what made it worth doing at all. The instant salvo is also what made it worth it to bring LRMs on an IS 'Mech. For IS, missiles are a dedication and not an augmentation. IS have slots and tonnage for one ammo-dependent weapon system and at that they will be pushing the limits of cooling, speed, and durability when they add in some energy backups.

In general, the ballistics seem fine, but 2000 m/s is actually warranted on the AC/2. It's already losing in damage and DPS to the AC/5 before your change, and it's losing even more after it. A 900 meter range cap is also really long, and it already takes a little bit of mental work to make consistent hits at that distance with a shell moving 2000 m/s. I'm also questioning why the Clan LB-X get a range boost while the IS ones do not. They are identical, even in TT.

Very interesting. I kind of want to play with your lasers in a match; I think the IS options might be a hair too toasty for the amount of heat-sinks IS 'Mechs can bring, but I do think the range and damage trade-offs to the enemy might actually be fairly balanced. Pulse lasers will never get used, it's not worth the extra tonnage for a lower-damaging weapon that offers lower heat. It's competing too closely with the PPC; because nobody can twist damage dealt in less than 0.8 seconds anyway. The PPC is simply better at firing from cover.

The CLan lasers, I gave them 1 pt more dmg, 1 pt more heat, gave them a range advantage, but less so then it currently sits. Really, it was to embrace PGI's CLans are different not better and to kinda close the gap between the 2. Currently, I find CLan lasers are actually rather bad due to beam times. They trade entirely to much beam time and heat for a negligible boost in damage. 2 points of damage is meaningless when the beam time is 1.5s, one can twist away every point of that 11 dmg in that time, essentially leading to the Clan lasers actually being lower damage then IS, since IS lasers you cant so effectively twist away. Large lasers in general I think have to long a duration. Much more then 1s and its to much.

Pulses, the idea was a laser that deals moderate damage at less range for less heat, at a faster pace then regular lasers. Basically, a Laser machinegun. I really was drawing a blank how I would really make them do that without making thier damage atrociously low, cuz believe me, I know the feeling of pulses being bad, MW4? I never used them cuz of that. 0.5dmg on the CLPL for like 6t...lol no. I had considered giving them even lower CD, but idk. Didnt know exactly what kinda numbers I was going for. I had pulse CD as low as 1.25s for the IS SPL, had the CLPL at like 2.5s CD. had it also at like 0.8s beam time.....Pulses might be used on a brawler build. Someone who wants to get in close with SRMs and some pulses and out DPS/Heat Scale your PPC boat. Might be bad for peeking, but the idea of my heat scale change would be so there are windows of time where your simply to hot to fire, giving people time to move.

Right now, half the issue with why we nascar and blob is there is no time to move w/o nearly everyone being able to fire. So, basically, we blob together in hopes that when we do dare to move, our team can suppress the enemy long enough for us to move and for mutual protection.....

I would be open to ideas on how to better make Pulse lasers, but I really dont wanna go PGI's approach and simply power creep up the damage.

ISLL was competing against the ISERLLs 675, and against its own 450m. I figured 550 was a good number, which is where I initially had it. added that extra 25m on later. FIgured it would be ok.

As for LBX, idk, figured id keep to the CLan range advantage theme.

SRMs, I had initially had at 300m uniformally for IS and CLan, but added the 20m more range for Clan range advantage. I really didnt have a good grasp on how I woulda changed them in terms of range and all that. As it is, I forgot to add them and remembered late I forgot them. Gave them all the boosted range, cuz 270 seems short lol. 300m in a 1x, seems like a good middle ground.

[Y E O N N E]

Themes don't work. You can't just declare a blanket quality for one side without also considering what its effects are. For example, you can't give the Clans longer range without giving the Inner Sphere some sort of higher damage as compensation. That's one of the problems we have now: Clans get longer range in addition to higher damage, higher impulse DPS, and higher total DPS and are thus broken. That's not even counting the weights and sizes of the weapons, which are also trade-offs. IS gear is heavier, so it should be more potent at whatever its specialty is than Clan gear to compensate.

In most games, the trade-off is usually fast and precise versus slow and powerful. Faster units use lots of smaller, rapid bites on the target to do their work. Slower units use single blows dealing a lot of damage. Another common trade-off is fast and close versus slow and long. If you have speed, it's a lot easier for you to get closer without being cut up.

So, if this game were balanced properly and not according to fluff, Clans should generally have faster 'Mechs with shorter-ranged weapons that do slightly less damage than their equivalent IS counterparts. The lighter weight, though, means they have the option to stack more and gain an edge at the expense of heat.

Inner Sphere ought to be typically slower with longer-ranged weapons that do slightly more damage than their Clan counterparts. Because their equipment is heavier, they don't have to stack as many weapons for a large punch.

As for pulse lasers, I might suggest making them fire 1 pulse per 0.1 second and just let size determine the heat and damage done per-pulse if that's the way you want to go. Their DPS needs to be substantially higher than standard lasers to be worth it; i.e. SPL does 0.2 damage per pulse for a DPS of 2, MPL does 0.3 for a DPS of 3, and LPL does 0.4 for a DPS of 4.

For SRMs, I wouldn't be against Clans getting longer range as long as IS get more damage. Between 2.2 and 2.5 damage per missile, since they eat up significantly more space than their Clan counterparts.

[Joseph Mallan]

I stopped at the closing of the gap between single and double sinks.

Double sinks should, as their name describes, be twice as effective as single.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 June 2015 - 04:08 AM, said:

I stopped at the closing of the gap between single and double sinks.

Double sinks should, as their name describes, be twice as effective as single.

Well yeah, it would make sense, but gotta make SHS useful somehow, since alot of IS mechs are stuck for gobs of games with SHS until the player can get enough $$ to get DHS. Ofc, id love to lower the cost of all those upgrades by 50%, while increasing overall rewards by about 30-50K per game lol.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Yeonne Greene, on 14 June 2015 - 04:04 AM, said:

For SRMs, I wouldn't be against Clans getting longer range as long as IS get more damage. Between 2.2 and 2.5 damage per missile, since they eat up significantly more space than their Clan counterparts.

Yes, but realize the changes I would make to SRM and how they track your cursor, it would VASTLY improve overall accuracy and damage dealt with them. So, sure, the Clan one fires further and they do the same damage, but firing in a stream might improve hit reg a little, since it doesnt have ot record all at once, but in a stream. All once once type of deals seem to wreck hit reg. PLus, they would start with a SIGNIFICANTLY tighter spread out the barrel. THey would come out of the tubes more in a sensible fashion, more like a close range LBX shot, over what we have now, where even from 2 1/2 inches the SRM spreads all over the mech and some even miss. You would be able to land all your shots in the same general location. From 300m, you could potentially land all your shots in like the CT/LT/RT area, over 2 in the arm, 1 in the head, 1 in the leg, 2 in t he LT, and the rest spread off and miss, leading to more damage overall, both IS and Clan.

Streaks would basically be fire and forget like MW4. Fast locks with self auto tracking. THey might actually be worse then regular SRMs in that they wouldnt make 180 degree turns and stuff like MW4.

Maybe for Pulse lasers I would vastly reduce CD times. From like 2.5s for ISLPL to like 1.5s for ISLPL and like 0.65s for ISSPL, giving them that vastly superior burst DPS to standard lasers.