26 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

Okay, here's a "solution" to laser-boating: Implement a scheme where reactor energy output is limited, so only a certain amount of "laserness" can be fired over a given course of time (for example, say you can only fire 20dmg/sec with a 160-rated engine, or something), and scale this laser energy output with reactor size! Now your heatsinks aren't the only thing that limits your laser-boativity, it's your reactor. Only the biggest Mechs could fire all their energy weapons at the same time.

There, solved.

Edit: (If anyone was interested... I would do this by creating an entity called an "energy reserve" with a certain maximum value which is constantly recharged at a given rate, both as determined by the Mech's engine capacity, and you can only fire an energy weapon when the energy reserve is higher than the energy consumption value of that particular weapon[group] being fired)

Editwo: (I know this is completely non-canon and probably will never find its way into a Battletech game of any sort).

Edited by Prosperity Park, 08 December 2011 - 06:13 PM.

[Strayed]

You talking powergrid?
Nah I think it should be hard to hit a single point even when clustered together (beam style over several spots) Got to keep that aim steady?
Or make it so that lasers just melt armour, an ac20 round will tear your insides up as well in process? So in essence an ac20 may do 20pts of damage, but it'll wreck your criticals, blow up your ammo, destroy heatsinks etc. Scalpel vs Mallet approach?
(yeah know you didn't mention autocannons but using it as an example sorry)

[CaveMan]

It's not necessary. Just make the penalties for overheating brutal. Give people enough rope to hang themselves with and laugh as all the trees collapse under the weight.

Problem solved.

[Kudzu]

CaveMan, on 08 December 2011 - 06:11 PM, said:

It's not necessary. Just make the penalties for overheating brutal. Give people enough rope to hang themselves with and laugh as all the trees collapse under the weight.

Problem solved.

Combine this with the removal of pinpoint accuracy and you have a winner.

[CaveMan]

Kudzu, on 08 December 2011 - 06:15 PM, said:

Combine this with the removal of pinpoint accuracy and you have a winner.

Even pinpoint accuracy is okay, as long as you can't have pinpoint accuracy while on the move. If you want to snipe people from miles away, you have to pay the price by being a sitting duck.

[Raeven]

I have a solution that trumps any sort of aiming system. No customization.

If there is customization, it needs to be highly expensive, time consuming, and restricted for the inner sphere. The majority of Mechs on the field should be stock or approved variants.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Raeven has a very good point: installing a new weapon should cost about as much as the weapon itself, or more, since we're playing in an age where the Inner Sphere is in very short supply of technologically trained technicians and engineers.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 08 December 2011 - 06:55 PM.

[VYCanis]

I'd be all for the solution in the original post if it wasn't for 1 sticking point. There are numerous canon energy boats, and such a solution would potentially invalidate a number of them.

There should be nothing to actually stop laser (or otherwise) boating.
The goal should be to balance boating of any particular kind so that it's not so brutally effective that it forces all other loadout types into obsolescence

The reason people defaulted to boaty configs was that there was rarely any reason not to and they often kicked the crap out of variants that didn't boat. The gameplay truth is that its a lot easier to manage and aim several of the same type of weapon rather than 4 separate fire groups.

Anyway, the way i think it could be done. without requiring any particular cone of fire.

Lasers deal damage over duration.
Multiple separate weapons striking the same location within a given small window of time will deal slightly less total damage. representing vaporized metal reducing energy weapon efficiency or torn up fragments of armor prematurely detonating missiles and slugs, explosions and shockwaves affecting trajectories, etc. The more seperate weapons doing the damage, the more this effect.

For example. Joe in his Komodo decides to alpha with 10 medium lasers at Bob in his hunchie. He sweeps his aim across the hunchback's torso, slips past its right arm, and wastes a fraction of the energy into a wall some distance behind. Lets say that 85% of the laser's damage ended up properly on target. Drop that another 30-25% due to the inherent inefficiency of using that many different weapons together at the same time. And then divide that up over the 4 different locations that those lasers sweeped. Its still a lot of damage, but its still most likely to be spread, and for Joe's trouble, he has spiked his heat in a rather hard way.

Such a system would still allow boats, but since arrays of smaller weapons would not longer be able to alpha up ridiculous damage values in one go, they would be not be the end all be all of loadouts, but still be totally legal, and would encourage gameplay that spreads the damage around, but rewards good aim.

Edited by VYCanis, 08 December 2011 - 07:32 PM.

[wolf74]

It not totally Uncannon that a Mechs Engine Could Effect the recharge times of the weapons system.
Remember that the Engines in the game are rate from 5-500 with 99.99% of them being under 400 mark. The power output of the engine effects how fast a Mech can move. Whos to say it can’t effect the recharge time of the weapon a bit.
There are also Many Types of Engines

Combat Engines:
Standard Fusion
XL Fusion
ICE
Compact Fusion

Civilian Engine:
Standard Fusion
Standard Fission
ICE
Fuel Cell

The Power output of the engine also should be based on the group
Fusion > Fission > Fuel Cell
ICE has no power output (See Power Amps equal to a 10% of the Energy Weapons)

Now here something I just quickly thought up:
Energy Weapon Damage * 8 = Recharge power Draw
Sum all Currently Recharging weapons = Value A
Engine Rating / A = B
If B =>1 than Normal Recharge normal rate,
If B < 1 than Recharge time X (1+(1- B )) = New Recharge time

AutoCannons, and Missile Launcher have a MUCH smaller Power Draw
The Only other weapon I would add to the Energy Draw Delay Effect would be the Guass Rifles


<Warning CBT info incoming>
A Mech Speed is normally done by
Engine Rating / Tonnage *10.7kps = Walking speed
(Round to the whole((Engine Rating / Tonnage)*1.5)) *10.7kps = Running speed
<End of CBT info>

Edited by wolf74, 08 December 2011 - 08:06 PM.

[Strum Wealh]

Prosperity Park, on 08 December 2011 - 06:03 PM, said:

Okay, here's a "solution" to laser-boating: Implement a scheme where reactor energy output is limited, so only a certain amount of "laserness" can be fired over a given course of time (for example, say you can only fire 20dmg/sec with a 160-rated engine, or something), and scale this laser energy output with reactor size! Now your heatsinks aren't the only thing that limits your laser-boativity, it's your reactor. Only the biggest Mechs could fire all their energy weapons at the same time.

There, solved.

Edit: (If anyone was interested... I would do this by creating an entity called an "energy reserve" with a certain maximum value which is constantly recharged at a given rate, both as determined by the Mech's engine capacity, and you can only fire an energy weapon when the energy reserve is higher than the energy consumption value of that particular weapon[group] being fired)

Editwo: (I know this is completely non-canon and probably will never find its way into a Battletech game of any sort).

I posted a reply/counter-argument to this suggestion in the other thread:

Quote

Classic BattleTech Companion, pg. 242:

Quote

In the early days of BattleMech design, plants too large for a particular chassis were often installed in hopes that the excess energy might give some undefined boost in combat.
Instead, the 'Mech's ammunition exploded or the reactor scrammed (automatically shut off by DI computer command).
Coupled with exact information on how much power is needed to move the myomer bundles that make up a 'Mech's musculature and the amount of energy that each weapon and ammunition-loading carriage require, power plants are ever installed in the wrong chassis.

Canonically, the 'Mech would always be fitted with an engine that would allow for both a.) enough power to fire whatever weapons were loaded onto said 'Mech (regardless on what said weapons were, or how many of them there are) and b.) enough power to move at the given speed ratings - larger engines would dump excess energy into the movement system (making the 'Mech faster) while smaller engines would subtract energy from that allocated to the movement system (making the 'Mech slower) without subtracting from the energy allocated to other systems (life support, weapons, etc).

Furthermore:

Quote

IMO, the "solution" to boating is through the employment of combined arms assets - make 'Mechs need to have anti-personnel weapons (machine guns and flamers) to efficiently deal with conventional and anti-BattleMech infantry using satchel charges and flamers, and swarming BA-equipped infantry, make make 'Mechs need to have rapid-fire, long-range "plinkers" (AC-2/AC5, UAC-2/UAC-5, LBX-2/LBX-5) or lancemates with such weapons to deal with fast-and-maneuverable VTOLs sniping them with 'Mech-grade Gauss Rifles (e.g. the Yellow Jacket) and strafing runs by fast-and-maneuverable conventional fighters andAeroSpace fighters with 'Mech-grade weapons (such anti-air roles are what 'Mechs like the Rifleman and Lancelot were designed for), make 'Mechs need to use their heavier weapons to deal with not only other BattleMechs, but with combat vehicles (tanks and hovercraft) of comparable weight, speed, durability, and armament (examples include the Demolisher, theMars, the Manticore, the Condor, the Maxim, and the Pegasus).

I think making more conventional combat platforms (which for reasons of cost and cost-effectiveness would make up the bulk of a lot of planetary militias' main combat forces, if we're talking about taking and/or holding worlds from other factions) a real threat that Mechwarriors (players) must deal with (instead of the largely-ignorable pests they were in previous games), would lead to a decrease in the proportion of over-specialized anti-'Mech boats seen in the field, with a corresponding increase in the number of mixed-weapon, TRO-esque builds and/or lances made up of individual specialists (anti-'Mech specialists, anti-air specialists, etc) being fielded...

Your thoughts?

[VanillaG]

The big problem with lasers up to now are that they are magic bullet machines. Basically you press the trigger and the target takes max damage immediately. With missiles you need to keep the target in your sights for period of time before you get a lock and with AC you need to lead your target.

In theory you should have to hold you laser on target for a period of time while the laser fires to get max damage. The problem with this is in older games hit detection over network was hard for just one projectile, a laser would need to be modeled like hundreds or thousands of projectiles over the time the laser fires. To get around this they made them behave like magic bullets. Hopefully gaming technology has advanced enough so the laser can modeled as damage over time. With DoT the power of the boat goes down.

[Felicitatem Parco]

VYCanis, on 08 December 2011 - 07:32 PM, said:

I'd be all for the solution in the original post if it wasn't for 1 sticking point... [text] ... would encourage gameplay that spreads the damage around, but rewards good aim.

Good points, but the canon states that lasers are real one-shot, quick-hit weapons and that pulse lasers get their advantage specifically because it's a discontinuous pulse with a lag phase just long enough for armor vapor to dissipate from the impact site between pulses. I think the "Large Continuous Beam Laser" from earlier Mechwarrior games is near what you're describing, and also the Beam Lasers employed in the FreeSpace Universe (the best Space Sim EVER!!!). They are severe resource hogs - I don't mean fictional universe resources, I mean really bad lag times and bandwidth hogs. They don't fire a true beam, per se, they fire a rapid succession of shots that the game engine has to account for and sync with all the other players. There's a good lot of processing that goes into a "continuous" laser beam that refreshes many times per second; imagine a game where everybody has machine gun boats blazing at the same time, it's be a FPS graphic disaster. The LCBL was only refreshed a few times per second, but your suggestion of a maybe 1sec long pulse that's broken down to 5%-damage-per-hit resolution is actually 20 laser beams fired very rapidly and that data has to be sent a long way, potentially around the globe; a 1%-damage-per-hit laser would be 100 lasers fired in one second.

Nah, I say we should just let it be as it always has been for MWO regarding laser mechanics and leave heat management to buffer whatever "unfair advantages" laser players begin to experience. We can play the game for a while upon its release, hit up the forums with play reviews, and over the course of the games' first few months the Dev's can tweak it as needed to keep things neat and balanced.


Edit: I mean, this is a suggestion forum for a game that might not be able to implement changes as drastic as introducing new reactor output parameters, adding more aiming reticules, implementing ballistic drop-off for autocanonns, changing PPC shot-trajectories, melting through ice-covered lakes, changing the jumpjet behavior, HUD's, critical hits, or anything else in the forum that's been suggested. I don't know how far into the game they've gotten or, honestly, how many hours it would take to do something like this.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 08 December 2011 - 10:15 PM.

[Yeach]

I don't see problems with laser boating itself.
But how about re-examining the laser instead.

How about pin-point accuracy of laser but you have to hold onto the target for a half-second or second delay waiting for the laser to "charge" up before the laser releases its load. (oh oops this sound dirty)

[Tierloc]

These aren't the answers you're looking for.




Or more specifically, the other 20 threads didn't convince me it was a problem so why continue to focus on fixing it in a game that hasn't come out yet.

[Gothbloodman]

Raeven, on 08 December 2011 - 06:31 PM, said:

I have a solution that trumps any sort of aiming system. No customization.

If there is customization, it needs to be highly expensive, time consuming, and restricted for the inner sphere. The majority of Mechs on the field should be stock or approved variants.

Remember: Swayback, the laserboat of all laserboats, is stock!

[Raenen]

The problem is not laser boating but artillery and lead time combined with weapon convergence with the target your pointing at. Because you have to lead your target with artillery you lose your weapon focus on your target. One person earlier suggested one fix was to make peoples mech's focus on the targeted mech. With lasers we don't have this problem because of the instant travel time so weapons are set to converge on your target.

[blinkin]

Raenen, on 20 February 2013 - 01:55 AM, said:

The problem is not laser boating but artillery and lead time combined with weapon convergence with the target your pointing at. Because you have to lead your target with artillery you lose your weapon focus on your target. One person earlier suggested one fix was to make peoples mech's focus on the targeted mech. With lasers we don't have this problem because of the instant travel time so weapons are set to converge on your target.

unfortunately the developers have said that they don't want to link convergence to the targeting system. they like it how it is now.

[Raenen]

blinkin, on 20 February 2013 - 02:18 AM, said:

unfortunately the developers have said that they don't want to link convergence to the targeting system. they like it how it is now.

Maybe... However, was the issue clearly pointed out to them?

[Roland]

Making a post about a balance discussion from months ago is silly.

The game is different now than it was in december.

How do you people even find these old freaking threads to reply to? Are you intentionally searching for "old, outdated, irrelevant crap" or something?

[focuspark]

Prosperity Park, on 08 December 2011 - 06:03 PM, said:

Okay, here's a "solution" to laser-boating: Implement a scheme where reactor energy output is limited, so only a certain amount of "laserness" can be fired over a given course of time (for example, say you can only fire 20dmg/sec with a 160-rated engine, or something), and scale this laser energy output with reactor size! Now your heatsinks aren't the only thing that limits your laser-boativity, it's your reactor. Only the biggest Mechs could fire all their energy weapons at the same time.

There, solved.

Edit: (If anyone was interested... I would do this by creating an entity called an "energy reserve" with a certain maximum value which is constantly recharged at a given rate, both as determined by the Mech's engine capacity, and you can only fire an energy weapon when the energy reserve is higher than the energy consumption value of that particular weapon[group] being fired)

Editwo: (I know this is completely non-canon and probably will never find its way into a Battletech game of any sort).

Did you just suggest using EVE Online's Capacitor and Power Grid mechanics?