112 replies to this topic

[Grokmoo]

I'd just like to point out that they actually did get rid of the ridiculously overpowered Swayback by limiting engine speeds to within a range of stock. This was actually a great change that further differentiates the different chasis types, which will become more and more important as new mechs are added.

The problem with the Cat K2 is that even when other mechs that can mount Dual Gauss are introduced (today), the K2 will still be superior as its Gauss hardpoints are in an extemely well protected part of the mech. So the K2, which should be an energy boat, is actually superior at mounting Gauss Rifles than the Ballistics centered Cataphract and Jaegermech.

There are a couple solutions here:

(1) Ideal solution: when you mount a Gauss Rifle, the mech's model in game actually changes. The Gauss Rifle becomes correspondingly large and easy to hit as it is on other mechs.

(2) Easy solution / quick fix: move the ballistic hardpoints on the K2 to the arms.

[Twilight Fenrir]

Look... all of this stuff will be balanced out as soon as there are other mechs that can do it, and do it better... We've got less than 1% of the available battlemechs in this franchise. Each mech has its strength, and weakness, that's the point! What's OP now will become dogfood as soon as we get a mech that will do it better, or something that will crush that mech..

IE: The Cataphract is going to wipe the floor with the Gaussapults... It simply has more free tonnage, with the same dual-gauss ability. The Gaussapult is only king now, because it's the only mech that can do it.


In summary: Chillax!

[canned wolf]

We'll see, but the Cataphract has the same weaknesses that the Atlas has, low mounted weapons with a wide profile. So, shooting poking just your nose over a hill doesn't work, you have to expose your entire upper torso for a clear shot. The Graphic for the double ballistic Cataphract also appears to place both guns on one side. So blow out that torso, and you take out both guns. That is a pretty major weakness. The Jager and Blackjack Mount the rifles in the arms, which means wicked convergence issues. They are at least high mounted though.

I was piloting a K2 last night and one of the things I noticed is that the gun mounts are right under the cockpit. What this means is, if you can see it, you can shoot it. Other mechs have to worry about terrain blocking shots and have to expose large parts of their torso to make sure their weapons are clear. K2's don't have this problem.

[BOOMLegShot]

Maybe once they change it so the Catapult's head doesn't take up more than half its torso space, THEN we can talk about weakening its loadout.

No joke, no Catapult should live longer than 6 seconds in a 1on1 brawl against someone who knows to aim for the comically large head hitbox.

[Odanan]

Darwins Dog, on 17 November 2012 - 11:29 AM, said:

I finally had a chance to see the AC20 cat in action today. I was spectating him and it was pretty brutal. 4 kills in about 3 minutes. Like the streak cat, you can out range it pretty easily, but once the brawl started, the match was essentially over.

I think that the K2 in particular needs work. I don't like the idea of hardpoint restrictions for everyone because imo this is the only real problem.

Best solution I've heard is to move the ballistic hardpoints to the center torso.

Although I'm a kind of hardcore Battletech fan, I like this idea.

[Odanan]

Other solution is to just move the ballistics hardpoints farther (they are too close right now, allowing concentrate damage).

[Henry Pride]

Best Solution: Dont be able to mount a Gauss, where only an MG fits in.

I accept a Gauss for an AC10 or an AC20, but nor for an MG. That space was never thought to carry a gun like the gauss.

But beside that: Anyone want some Cheese to ur Whine?

Gausscat is not a problem. It has never been. If u know how to drive ur scoutmech and how to outrun a gausscat u can easylie kill it. Just like each other mech, even the Gauss Cat has its weaknesses... same as the AC20 Cat, which has most of the time rly small amount of damage and is slow as hell....

[RussianWolf]

Already seeing 4xAC2 and 4xAC5 on the Cataphract. They can rock your world quick.

[Deadoon]

Dual uac/5 ctfs are hilariously powerful, a whopping 10 damage alpha every half second or so, I haven't seen any complaints about them yet really.

[Thomas Covenant]

My full armour Raven totally got 1HKO randomly by this 2xAC20 Cat build.

[canned wolf]

I'm not griping about the UAC yet because it's so comically OP'd I'm guessing it's a bug that will be fixed inn the next few days. I was running a Cataphract last night with dual UAC's, and I don't think I died once all night.

[MaddMaxx]

If they nerf the 30pt Alphas (Gaussapult), what the heck do they do about those "other" Cats that can actually do more potent Alphas?

A 4x LargeLaser Cat that sees a AC20apult coming, need not fear it. The AC20 has quite a range limitation, whereas that 36pt alpha Cat does not have that same issue.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 21 November 2012 - 09:03 AM.

[Rhent]

Thomas Covenant, on 21 November 2012 - 03:13 AM, said:

My full armour Raven totally got 1HKO randomly by this 2xAC20 Cat build.

Sorry it was probably me. Were you the Raven who was standing still and firing at a Heavy Mech allowing the heavy mech to shoot off your head cleanly or were you running an XL and he sheared off your torso making the engine go? I have a hard time remembering all the Ravens I one shot who decide to stand still and allow me to perform an aimed shot.

Edited by Rhent, 21 November 2012 - 09:10 AM.

[Tombstoner]

Once the decision was made to discard the TT hit allocation rules for skill based targeting and disconnected fire rates from once per turn, all TT weapon damage, size, fire rates, mass, ammo per tone and others... MUST be tossed out the window. this was not done. if fact the devs have an almost Comstar like devotion to the wrong factors used in determining game balance. They are building a massive problem for themselves and you can see it in the case of double heat sinks that dissipate 1.4 units of heat not 2.0. The weapon balance in this game is fundamentally broken.

It favors low heat and gauss has the lowest heat per damage value in the game. it looks like the devs are using damage per second for balance. big mistake. game balance must take HEAT, size, mass, range, damage and a bunch of other things into account as factors. you should not simply balance along one factor like dps. its why ac-20 sucks in comparison to a gauss

[MaddMaxx]

Tombstoner, on 21 November 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

Once the decision was made to discard the TT hit allocation rules for skill based targeting and disconnected fire rates from once per turn, all TT weapon damage, size, fire rates, mass, ammo per tone and others... MUST be tossed out the window. this was not done. if fact the devs have an almost Comstar like devotion to the wrong factors used in determining game balance. They are building a massive problem for themselves and you can see it in the case of double heat sinks that dissipate 1.4 units of heat not 2.0. The weapon balance in this game is fundamentally broken.

It favors low heat and gauss has the lowest heat per damage value in the game. it looks like the devs are using damage per second for balance. big mistake. game balance must take HEAT, size, mass, range, damage and a bunch of other things into account as factors. you should not simply balance along one factor like dps. its why ac-20 sucks in comparison to a gauss

Don't take this personally but "and a bunch of other things" really leaves the field pretty wide open.

[Willie Sauerland]

The answer to the Gaus question is to simply implement PPC effects. This should also assist against the AC/20 K2 since the PPC effects also affect the HUD which reduces targeting abilities.

It is like introducing the Artemis without the effective counter - the ECM module. PGI introduced the Gaus and some interesting (ridiculous?) hard points and people are Min/Maxing to their advantage. Things which seem OP really aren't - they are just OP because the counter hasn't been implemented yet...

[canned wolf]

MaddMaxx, on 21 November 2012 - 09:02 AM, said:

If they nerf the 30pt Alphas (Gaussapult), what the heck do they do about those "other" Cats that can actually do more potent Alphas?

A 4x LargeLaser Cat that sees a AC20apult coming, need not fear it. The AC20 has quite a range limitation, whereas that 36pt alpha Cat does not have that same issue.

A 4x LL Cat has serious heat problems, he also has to worry about losing any body section, at close range his convergence is going to suffer, and he has to hold his weapons on target or the damage gets spread out. An AC20 cat has range problems, heavy ammo, heat, and slow shot velocity to deal with.

Was this supposed to be a serious attempt to compare other builds to the gaussapult or were you being funny?

[AC]

I still vote for hardpoint restrictions like MW4. This adds another method of balancing chassis and creating differences and variety on the battlefield.

[Hetfeng321]

CompproB237, on 17 November 2012 - 10:59 AM, said:

I've actually theorized that a critical restriction on hardpoints would mitigate this issue. Much like Mechwarrior 4 had (I know). At least it would make the 'Mechs make more sense. Small hole in nose of K2 for MG. Can only place a 1 Critical ballistic weapon in the slot... etc.

SSRM-Cat/SRM-Cat - Stay >300m away from the mech. Easymode.

Yes, that is a brilliant idea. I loved the basic idea of MW4 mechlab (some of the weapon sizes were strange though. AC2s and AC5s having the same size?). For the most part, it was streamlined and made sense. The majority of BattleTech's vehicles and battlemechs are built with modular weapon hardpoints. So that means that the manufacturers build their weapons to fit into standardized sizes of hardpoints. 4 standardized sizes (weapons would still have differences in weight obviously) is the ideal amount because many weapons already loosley fit into those sizes.

Examples of this pattern

Size 1 (small)...........................Size 2 (medium)..........................Size 3 (large).......................Size 4 (assault)
Small Laser..............................Medium Laser.............................Large Laser........................Bombast Laser
Machine Gun
Autocannon 2..........................Autocannon 5..............................Autocannon 10....................Autocannon 20
Mini Gauss...............................Light Gauss................................ Regular Gauss....................Heavy Gauss
................................................Light PPC....................................Regular PPC.......................Heavy PPC
LRM 5......................................LRM 10.......................................LRM 15................................LRM 20
SRM 2......................................SRM 4.........................................SRM 6

Example of How I think The Hardpoint List (Empty) Should Look
(These are not the hardpoints of a real mech, just an example mech)



PG should take the MWLL method on mech customization. It would make representing weapon modifications on mech models visually much more easy. It's not too late either, I think. The current MWO mechlab interface could work with this. The list of criticals would just have to be reduced to actually restrict the size of weapon that can be put in. One section of the list could be for equipment specifically.

Edited by Hetfeng321, 21 November 2012 - 10:04 PM.

[SuperSpaceWhale]

You simply can't have TT rules in a Sci-fi sim like this. When you introduce real-world components, simply having DPS as a way to decide how effective a weapon really doesn't work. It isn't that hard. A simple algorithm with fix this. Abandon the BT mentality that they seem to have and adopt what this game really needs, which is realism, pure realism.