60 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 03:43 PM, said:

All our ideas are opinions, no one's "flat-out wrong".

I know some of my ideas might be redundant with Ghost Heat's replacement on the horizon, I thought I'd still chime in. Although if the replacement really is a power-draw mechanic, then my laser rebalance could still work with it.

i think i was more pissed off at having to write the whole thing a second time so i sounded more salty than i should on the rewrite. my bad.

gh2 will fix the difference between lasers and other weapons, however there will be some effort needed to rebalance the lasers in relation to each other. what if clan lasers are windowed, where they are really good at their optimal range +/- 100-200 meters, but everywhere else they are sub par. is lasers on the other hand do optimal damage over a much larger range, but with lower overall damage. that way clan mechs can carry a larger variety of lasers, where is can just pick a jack of all trades weapons. duration might be able to go down on the large class clan lasers (as i said i actually prefer the cerppc to those).

Edited by LordNothing, 09 March 2016 - 04:05 PM.

[Gentleman Reaper]

LordNothing, on 09 March 2016 - 03:47 PM, said:

i think i was more pissed off at having to write the whole thing a second time so i sounded more salty than i should, my bad.

Haha, yes, I know the feeling too well

[STEF_]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 11:16 AM, said:

LRMs and C-LRMs:

Spoiler

How they are now:
They are surprisingly well balanced to each other, with the stagger fire making up for the lighter weight of the Clan LRMs. The main issue with them is the inaccuracy of the larger launchers, especially the LRM-20, which way too often has missiles completely miss the target, making most people choose LRM-15s over it.
How they should be changed:
Decrease the spread on LRM-20s and maybe LRM-15s to match that of the LRM-10.

I've already written this in many threads, but it's useful to remind that lrm has a speed of 160 m/s, and this means that a target at 800 metres will be hit by your lrm after 5 (FIVE!) seconds.
In five seconds, the target can do "hundreds of things" to counter those sloooooooooooooow missiles.
And this makes lrm crap.

Edited by Stefka Kerensky, 09 March 2016 - 04:07 PM.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Stefka Kerensky, on 09 March 2016 - 04:05 PM, said:

I've already written this in many threads, but it's useful to remind that lrm has a speed of 160 m/s, and this means that a target at 800 metres will be hit by your lrm after 5 (FIVE!) seconds.
In five seconds, the target can do "hundreds of things" to counter those sloooooooooooooow missiles.
And this makes lrm crap.

I get confused when I hear people talk about how bad LRMs are, are they talking about their velocity?

[Bilbo]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 04:26 PM, said:

I get confused when I hear people talk about how bad LRMs are, are they talking about their velocity?

They are talking about their inherent spread damage and their reliance on factors that you cannot control in order for most to consistently do well with them.

[Soldier91]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 11:16 AM, said:

Ultra-Autocannons:

Spoiler

How they are now:
Really uncomfortable to use, as no-one like having random chance dictate how a fight goes, but otherwise overpowered should you be lucky enough or have quirks to lower the chances of a jam.
How they should be changed:
Firing again before the full cycle cooldown is finished triggers a longer cooldown, with Clan UACs having the same DPS whether you double-fire it or not, and IS UACs having slightly better DPS with double-firing to make up for the extra tonnage. The advantage of this is that you can burst fire, then turn away while you go through the long cooldown, giving an actual use for UACs without relying on chance and making them overpowered.

Having used IS ultra AC5 a lot on quirked and unquirked mechs I'm convinced the jam chance quirk doesn't effect it actually jamming but lowers the amount of time it takes to actually clear a jam.

thehiddenedge, on 09 March 2016 - 12:34 PM, said:

Nah, I was just giving him a hard time. It was actually organized pretty well for a forum post. There's just so many different topics to branch out on there. I don't know where to start.


Small lasers I can totally agree with a shorter duration time. Last time I looked there wasn't much of a gap between small and medium.

I was actually comparing Clan lasers to IS lasers yesterday and current numbers are pretty balanced right now. They have longer duration and higher heat to match, but they also do more damage and have longer range. I think the real problem here is less efficient Clan heatsinks, not the lasers themselves.

I've seen clan assaults carry a full set of clan small lasers. I've never seen an IS mech do that. The only thing IS small lasers have going for them is their weight as long as you don't want heat efficiency or to shoot past like 90m ever.

[Bilbo]

Soldier91, on 09 March 2016 - 04:46 PM, said:

Having used IS ultra AC5 a lot on quirked and unquirked mechs I'm convinced the jam chance quirk doesn't effect it actually jamming but lowers the amount of time it takes to actually clear a jam.

I've seen clan assaults carry a full set of clan small lasers. I've never seen an IS mech do that. The only thing IS small lasers have going for them is their weight as long as you don't want heat efficiency or to shoot past like 90m ever.

Firestarters do it all the time. When Hunchback 4p and that Awesome, whose variant I can't remember, could move at ludicrous speed, they did it with regularity too. The clan mechs that do it now generally have the advantage of lighter heavy weapons (read ranged) to compliment the excessive amount of smalls.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

Bilbo, on 09 March 2016 - 04:31 PM, said:

They are talking about their inherent spread damage and their reliance on factors that you cannot control in order for most to consistently do well with them.

This, speed, missile warnings, min range (IS), radar dep being absolute instead of reduction

The double tonnage irks me aswell, but im not willing to run the math right now

[STEF_]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 04:26 PM, said:

I get confused when I hear people talk about how bad LRMs are, are they talking about their velocity?

for me it's thier main issue.

In 5 seconds, target can get cover, find ecm mate, find ams mate.....

lrm needs at least double or triple speed for its missile. Imo.

[Bilbo]

Stefka Kerensky, on 09 March 2016 - 05:22 PM, said:

for me it's thier main issue.

In 5 seconds, target can get cover, find ecm mate, find ams mate.....

lrm needs at least double or triple speed for its missile. Imo.

Unfortunately a great deal more speed would generally obliterate most light mechs who happen to be unfortunate enough to be targeted for more than 3 seconds.

[STEF_]

Bilbo, on 09 March 2016 - 05:27 PM, said:

Unfortunately a great deal more speed would generally obliterate most light mechs who happen to be unfortunate enough to be targeted for more than 3 seconds.

No.
Lights have a lot of speed and can cover better than any other chassis.
That "missile incoming" message appearing, and run to cover in less than a second.
Easy.
It depends on the pilot of course

[thehiddenedge]

Soldier91, on 09 March 2016 - 04:46 PM, said:

I've seen clan assaults carry a full set of clan small lasers. I've never seen an IS mech do that. The only thing IS small lasers have going for them is their weight as long as you don't want heat efficiency or to shoot past like 90m ever.

IS small lasers and small pulse lasers are the most heat efficient lasers the IS have, being tied with medium pulse lasers. They also have 135 and 110 meters optimum range respectively not 90. The clan versions have almost the same damage/heat ratio. and only get 200 vs 135 range for smalls and 165 vs 110 range for small pulses. I know from personal experience that the 8 small pulse laser Firestarter is a beast that can regularly rack up high scores and kills and runs much cooler than boating medium lasers or medium pulses. So I don't really get your point.

I mean yeah, I've seen plenty of Executioners with tons of small lasers, so I'll agree that it's a thing, but is it really such a great build? I guess it's alright once you get close, but the Clan range advantage doesn't really do much once you get there.

[Bilbo]

Stefka Kerensky, on 09 March 2016 - 05:39 PM, said:

No.
Lights have a lot of speed and can cover better than any other chassis.
That "missile incoming" message appearing, and run to cover in less than a second.
Easy.
It depends on the pilot of course

The reason lights take more leg damage from LRMs than elsewhere is that the LRMs cannot catch up. If the are significantly sped up, the lights that are taking a little leg damage now are going to be smoked.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

I agree with most of what you said but i do have a few points.

"How it is now:
Sort of the ugly duckling of the family, the AC/5 has no real strengths to make it stand out over the other ACs, especially the AC/2. You get only marginally better DPS than the AC/2 (3.0 vs 2.8), as well as identical damage per ton of ammo (150).
How it should be changed:
Increase RoF slightly, so that its DPS hovers around 3.2, and either increase its ammo per ton to 32 shots (160 damage per ton) or lower AC/2 ammo to 70 shots per ton (140 damage per ton)."

AC5's are straight superior to AC2's atm. Ac2's simply require to much face time to use effectively and if you have enough ballistic slots and tonnage to pack 3-4 AC2's you should be packing 3-4 AC5's. IE 3 AC5's are better then 4 AC2's.

best example being the MX90 with 6 AC5's, or Banshee with 3 AC5's and 3LL, when used properly both can outright face tank and win against a dakka whale at range.

you forgot the most important things about LRMS. that is, they should be fire and forgot at least when they are fired with a direct LOS lock. let them still hit terrain but they should continue to track their target and they will still be a weapon that is only as good as the target they are fired upon.

but...... real changes to LRMS and streaks will need to start with the Jesus box. otherwise i demand blue light shields, reflective, reactive and stealth armor. so we can have proper counters to ALL weapons. (this would also give FF a reason to exist outside of IS lights and almost all clan mechs, it doesn't do anything special like the other armors, but it does save weight)

Jesus box should be redone entirely, its still 7+ tons of equipment rolled into one thing (Angel ECM Suite, Stealth armor and Null sig all in one plus a magic "Jesus field" that reduces enemies radar range)

ECM was meant to counter BAP and Artemis, but instead BAP counters ECM and ECM still counters Artemis.

honestly i think we should just let pilots choose, let them have all three ECM, stealth armor and null sig and let them equip it on their mech if they so choose. maybe change null sig to cause the "Jesus field" so it doesn't just double up on stealth armor

but each should generally work as intended and if you want the maximum effect you need to install all three.

Edited by Col Jaime Wolf, 09 March 2016 - 06:34 PM.

[Soldier91]

thehiddenedge, on 09 March 2016 - 05:42 PM, said:

IS small lasers and small pulse lasers are the most heat efficient lasers the IS have, being tied with medium pulse lasers. They also have 135 and 110 meters optimum range respectively not 90. The clan versions have almost the same damage/heat ratio. and only get 200 vs 135 range for smalls and 165 vs 110 range for small pulses. I know from personal experience that the 8 small pulse laser Firestarter is a beast that can regularly rack up high scores and kills and runs much cooler than boating medium lasers or medium pulses. So I don't really get your point.

I mean yeah, I've seen plenty of Executioners with tons of small lasers, so I'll agree that it's a thing, but is it really such a great build? I guess it's alright once you get close, but the Clan range advantage doesn't really do much once you get there.

Yeah firestarters with small pulses is really good one of the few mechs I actually got a tie or positive k/d ratio with(at least the one with small pulse quirks, the others I'm terrible in k/d and w/l I honestly just tell my team I'm going down and going to stick damage, if they don't tell me where they want it it's going to happen fast I'm not going to drag out the match being that last light running around for no reason dragging out a total defeat if I got no chance of pulling off a clutch. good mechs though would buy again probably) Get killed by them sometimes pretty fast, all the variants. The small lasers don't exactly run cooler than medium lasers because. stacking multiples kills heat efficiency is what I was saying about the heat I mean heat efficient on paper and heat efficient in practice are two entirely different things, on paper stacking a bunch of them is going to lower heat efficiency to start with but over heating when you just got into a brawl vs. shooting at stuff oh no brawl broke out heat problem is another thing.
I've seen very few mechs that run IS small lasers pretty much exclusively the firestarter but its nearly a medium mech in tonnage, looks cool, has a lot of nice hardpoint locations, and is fast with jumpjets. Those are the shortest ranged weapons in the game their falloff range is near SRM's max range heat wise SRM's are pretty good since they should do roughly twice the damage as they do heat even if it spreads and is kinda difficult to get in range and use. I'm not really trying to make a specific point about lasers I was more commenting after the fact and was just trying to add to the discussion about IS UAC5 which I think is pretty good even though I miss most of my shots with it up close, if I commented on lasers it was rather just an afterthought.

Edited by Soldier91, 09 March 2016 - 07:04 PM.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Col Jaime Wolf, on 09 March 2016 - 06:26 PM, said:

I agree with most of what you said but i do have a few points.

"How it is now:
Sort of the ugly duckling of the family, the AC/5 has no real strengths to make it stand out over the other ACs, especially the AC/2. You get only marginally better DPS than the AC/2 (3.0 vs 2.8), as well as identical damage per ton of ammo (150).
How it should be changed:
Increase RoF slightly, so that its DPS hovers around 3.2, and either increase its ammo per ton to 32 shots (160 damage per ton) or lower AC/2 ammo to 70 shots per ton (140 damage per ton)."

AC5's are straight superior to AC2's atm. Ac2's simply require to much face time to use effectively and if you have enough ballistic slots and tonnage to pack 3-4 AC2's you should be packing 3-4 AC5's. IE 3 AC5's are better then 4 AC2's.

best example being the MX90 with 6 AC5's, or Banshee with 3 AC5's and 3LL, when used properly both can outright face tank and win against a dakka whale at range.

you forgot the most important things about LRMS. that is, they should be fire and forgot at least when they are fired with a direct LOS lock. let them still hit terrain but they should continue to track their target and they will still be a weapon that is only as good as the target they are fired upon.

but...... real changes to LRMS and streaks will need to start with the Jesus box. otherwise i demand blue light shields, reflective, reactive and stealth armor. so we can have proper counters to ALL weapons.

Jesus box should be redone entirely, its still 7+ tons of equipment rolled into one thing (Angel ECM Suite, Stealth armor and Null sig all in one plus a magic "Jesus field" that reduces enemies radar range)

ECM was meant to counter BAP and Artemis, but instead BAP counters ECM and ECM still counters Artemis.

honestly i think we should just let pilots choose, let them have all three ECM, stealth armor and null sig and let them equip it on their mech if they so choose. but each should work as intended and if you want the maximum effect you need to install all three.

Well Stealth armor+ECM and the Null Signature System completely masked your presence from sensors, no matter the range, you just get a fairly large heat penalty while it's active.

Edited by Gentleman Reaper, 09 March 2016 - 06:34 PM.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Actually, I just realised that I forgot SSRMs. What do you think would be the best way to balance them? I'm thinking making them only target the CT and STs.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 06:38 PM, said:

Actually, I just realised that I forgot SSRMs. What do you think would be the best way to balance them? I'm thinking making them only target the CT and STs.

i think streaks are fine for the most part, it would be nice if they prioritized open components but their tracking and increased range over normal srms make their spread a decent trade off.

edit: IS should get streak 4 and 6's to balance things out a little better. make them cannon size and weight with slightly lower cooldowns vs clan streaks.

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 06:33 PM, said:

Well Stealth armor+ECM and the Null Signature System completely masked your presence from sensors, no matter the range, you just get a fairly large heat penalty while it's active.

which is fine, the point i was trying to make is that ECM will always be a force multiplayer because it does many things for a very small trade off (especially clan ECM). i say separate their functions into valid upgrades and then those components can be tweaked individually for balance.

Edited by Col Jaime Wolf, 09 March 2016 - 07:55 PM.

[LordNothing]

Col Jaime Wolf, on 09 March 2016 - 07:45 PM, said:

i think streaks are fine for the most part, it would be nice if they prioritized open components but their tracking and increased range over normal srms make their spread a decent trade off.

edit: IS should get streak 4 and 6's to balance things out a little better. make them cannon size and weight with slightly lower cooldowns vs clan streaks.

at least make the 2s viable. you need 4 or 5 missile points just to make them useful. they should at least get a shorter cd. i had a locust build that could carry 4 and a tag (i dropped it to 3 to get extra ammo but it was fun either way).

Edited by LordNothing, 09 March 2016 - 07:52 PM.

[Zerberus]

Gentleman Reaper, on 09 March 2016 - 06:38 PM, said:

Actually, I just realised that I forgot SSRMs. What do you think would be the best way to balance them? I'm thinking making them only target the CT and STs.

That´s exactly they way they used to be ca 2-3 years ago. In today´s era of 5-6 cSSRM6 Stormcrows and Maddogs, that is a death sentence to any light, even more so than it already is.. and in fact most mediums and a few heavies.... 30missiles x2dmg /3 locations= 20 dmg /torso section on average...on a mech that runs around at 90 km/h..... 5 salvos would "zombify" even the heaviest assault, assuming they didn´t die after 3-4 due to an XL engine....

Edited by Zerberus, 09 March 2016 - 08:40 PM.