38 replies to this topic

[Sable Dove]

Crits are a terrible mechanic in a competitive game. No mechanic should be (artificially) luck-based in a competitive setting, especially when luck determines whether a shot is effective at all. Remove crits to start.

Give MGs a flat multiplier against internals, increase base damage. MG should be at least as good as SLs, considering they also require ammo.

Flamers, for a start, should not generate more heat on the shooter than on the target. Again, increase damage against internals. Reduce heat generated on user; increase heat on target; At least until the enemy gets heated up more than the user. Or, reduce firing heat to near-zero, and keep heat generation on the enemy relatively low.

LB10X: Just increase the range, and tighten the spread. Maybe a very slight damage increase (0.1-0.2 per pellet), but a tighter spread should be sufficient.

There are so many easy, fun ways to balance these weapons, but not until the crappy crit system is removed. I'm sure people will point to TF2 and the like, but aside from the fact that it's a completely different style of game, weapons in TF2 are no make or break based on criticals. Ghost Recon Online has criticals for no apparent reason, and it's easily the worst part of the game, considering how reasonable the rest of the game plays.

Remove crits, and you can un-cripple the two worst weapons in the game, and buff an underpowered one. Crit-seeking is a bad mechanic. Remove it, and you can fix these weapons easily.

[Donas]

Disagree on Critical Hits. Crits have been a mechanically fundamental part of this Battletech and Mechwarrior for as long as its existed. The randomness of whether it succeeds or not is part of the game.

MG's are, and probable should be, nearly as effective against external armor as a tennis ball thrown really really hard. THey're more effective against internal because of the sheer volume of material being thrown into a container of connectors, controls and other sensative components. They are the weakest thing going because they are an anti-personnel weapon, not an anti-armor one.

I've always been a little confused about the flamer heat ratio myself, and its another mechanic that has been that way for as long as I can remember. I'm totally with you on the 'More heat for target:Less heat for user' angle.

Tightening the spread of the LBX a bit would inrease its effective range automatically, and I'm totally in favor of that. It would make it more viable. The damage probably doesnt need adjusting though, since tightening the spread will increase its effective damage all ready.

So of the 4 ideas, I'm 50:50 with ya. 2 in favor, 2 not.

[Stringburka]

Sable Dove, on 20 February 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

MG should be at least as good as SLs, considering they also require ammo.

Just a note here: Don't forget to take heat into account. A small laser produces 0.89 heat per second if spammed, and a 1 ton DHS takes three slots and give 0.14 points of heat reduction per second.

[Sable Dove]

Well, it depends on your engine, but it's not as though you're going to have one heat sink per SL. Also, it's only 0.69 HPS, if I'm not mistaken.

Also, just because something's been in the series for a long time, doesn't mean it's not a bad system. But even with crits in, a weapon may have a higher crit chance as a selling point, but the MGs have a high crit rate to make them somewhere between mediocre and worthless. Before the last buff, MGs were nothing more than a liability because their ammo could explode.

Another idea for the MGs, if they don't make them actually effective against unarmoured components, is to allow them to function as manual AMS. I should be able to shoot down missiles with my MGs.


I do seriously hope they make Flamers not suck. I like to use them now despite them being nearly worthless, just because flamethrowers are so cool. Bonus points if you use a Dragon with a flamer.

[Calimaw]

Physics Lesson 101 ( history too )

Flamers: Soldiers using Flame-Throwers in WWII had a life expectancy of 8 minutes.
Platoon commanders had 6 weeks, the G.I. had a longer duration yet.
Why? It sure wasn't because the enemy ignored them while they torched themselves...

Machine Gun: M61A1 ( 100 rounds/s, same as MWO )

[MasterErrant]

I'm not even sure why you would include the LB10x. It does trade one ton for one critical space and one heat in the TT but the main funtion of the cluster ammo is antiaircraft fire. and in TT you could choose to load standard ammo. it seems that unless they made the spread very loose to make hitting fast moving lights easier. it's a kind of redundant weapon and should have been rebuilt to fix the fundamental difference in the version of the Game.

The flamer is another weapon that need a critical rethink for this game. yes they could add heat to an enemy mech even telling heat at a critical moment. But they also killed "All" the infantry in a hex and set forest hexes on fire making smokescreens and heat adds to any mechs standing in or passing through...that made them usefull.

likewise MGs had uses other that straight mech attack though the standard ammo exp rule made the lwell stupid. No one I played with used that particular rule.

Edited by MasterErrant, 20 February 2013 - 08:56 PM.

[Woska]

I disagree completely. In fact I'd like to see the crit system become more important, not less. Some of the best games in the table top were when your mechs were limping around with all kinds of internal critical damage, but you still had to fight.

[focuspark]

Agreed that randomness doesn't work well for competitive games.

[blinkin]

i would like this to be a simulator first, and IRL when things break there are usually so many variables involved that to effectively represent it in a gaming environment you would need to use random numbers in most cases.

i know this is a futuristic game with giant robots, but i would prefer to not spend my whole time playing being constantly reminded that this is a game. i would like to feel like a mech pilot once in a while, instead of a guy spending too much time staring at a computer screen and pressing buttons.

[Stringburka]

"randomness" is an issue when it's stuff like 5% chance per second to do double damage or stuff like that.

When it checks 10 times per second for a 42% chance to do a minor effect it's not an issue.

[jay35]

If MG damage is increased, they'd need to adjust the weight, slots, firing rate, cost, and add an overheat mechanic, lest they immediately become overpowered due to how easy they are to stack on light mechs, constant rate of fire, and large ammo capacity per ton.
MGs currently are just as effective as they've been in past MW games, possibly more so.

Edited by jay35, 21 February 2013 - 07:55 AM.

[focuspark]

jay35, on 21 February 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

If MG damage is increased, they'd need to adjust the weight, slots, firing rate, cost, and add an overheat mechanic, lest they immediately become overpowered due to how easy they are to stack on light mechs, constant rate of fire, and large ammo capacity per ton.
MGs currently are just as effective as they've been in past MW games, possibly more so.

We're discussing MG vs unarmored sections only, and MG are significantly weaker than they're supposed to be - even with the current crit bonus.

[Sable Dove]

Stringburka, on 21 February 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

"randomness" is an issue when it's stuff like 5% chance per second to do double damage or stuff like that.

When it checks 10 times per second for a 42% chance to do a minor effect it's not an issue.

12.5x damage is a "minor effect"? The machine gun's critical almost literally determines whether or not it even deals damage.

[Stringburka]

Sable Dove, on 21 February 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

12.5x damage is a "minor effect"? The machine gun's critical almost literally determines whether or not it even deals damage.

When it's 12.5x0.04, yeah, that's a minor effect. It's a 12.5% chance to deal ten percent of what a medium laser does. Yeah, thats a minor effect.

[focuspark]

Stringburka, on 21 February 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

When it's 12.5x0.04, yeah, that's a minor effect. It's a 12.5% chance to deal ten percent of what a medium laser does. Yeah, thats a minor effect.

well... to be fair it does do that 10 times per second

[Stringburka]

focuspark, on 21 February 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

well... to be fair it does do that 10 times per second

Yes, which is why it's not that large an issue of randomness - the high number of rolls against it makes it not that random. I say this coming from a tradition of pen and paper roleplaying, where more and less random rolls are very common.
Basically, one roll of 1-100 is very random. If an item has 90 hp and take 1d100 damage, that's a 10% risk of that happening on the first try, the risk of it dying on the second is like 60% or so.
Rolling twenty rolls of 1-100 and taking the average is far less random, and if that's the damage to a 90 hp item, that's like a .5% chance of happening on the first try, but like an 95% chance of happening on the second (not bothering to check exact maths now because I think you understand my point).

Sorry if I come across as explaining obvious stuff to you, I think you already know this. If it comes across as stuck-up or anything like that, it's probably my limited grasp of english that forces me to use a sometimes formal language. Sorry 'bout that.

Edited by Stringburka, 21 February 2013 - 03:22 PM.

[Sable Dove]

Stringburka, on 21 February 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

When it's 12.5x0.04, yeah, that's a minor effect. It's a 12.5% chance to deal ten percent of what a medium laser does. Yeah, thats a minor effect.

No, it's a minor effect in terms of integers. Which is not even really a thing. We're concerned with relatives, not absolutes. 12.5x damage is a huge effect. You change an MG's DPS from 0.04 to 0.50. Four MGs means a difference between 0.16 DPS (basically no damage at all), and 2 DPS (equivalent to 2 SLs; for only six times the weight!). And while yes, it is pathetically low, the effect itself is still massive.

Imagine if we gave the AC20 a 12.5x crit bonus. That means that there's a chance to deal 250 damage with one shot. The effect is exactly the same scale as the effect on the MG, which is to say a massive effect. That the absolute change in damage is small is only because the MG is horrendously underpowered, to the point that it literally hurts you more than enemies, because the damage cause by the exploding ammo will probably be more than the MGs could deal.

MGs might be remotely useful if they made it 100% crit chance against internals. But even then, for the weight and space, any other weapon would still deal more damage.

Edited by Sable Dove, 21 February 2013 - 03:26 PM.

[Stringburka]

Sable Dove, on 21 February 2013 - 03:24 PM, said:

No, it's a minor effect in terms of integers. Which is not even really a thing. We're concerned with relatives, not absolutes. 12.5x damage is a huge effect.

No, it's not a huge effect because it doesn't have a huge effect on gameplay. Even that *12.5 damage means you have to do it _TWENTY TIMES_ to the same object to destroy it, unless it's a gauss/ECM.

It's a 67% chance to deal 5% of a random internal items hp. That's the relative effect. Because until the items hp reaches 0, the effect of the MG has been nada.

Sable Dove, on 21 February 2013 - 03:24 PM, said:

Imagine if we gave the AC20 a 12.5x crit bonus. That means that there's a chance to deal 250 damage with one shot.

Go right ahead. It would be exactly nada as a buff - in fact, I'd say it wouldn't make the AC-20 an iota stronger than it already is. Because you know what? The toughest item in the game has 18 hp (the AC-20 itself). Dealing 20 damage or 250 damage is completely irrelevant when the toughest item in the game has 18 hp.

Edited by Stringburka, 21 February 2013 - 03:36 PM.

[focuspark]

Sable Dove, on 21 February 2013 - 03:24 PM, said:

No, it's a minor effect in terms of integers. Which is not even really a thing. We're concerned with relatives, not absolutes. 12.5x damage is a huge effect. You change an MG's DPS from 0.04 to 0.50. Four MGs means a difference between 0.16 DPS (basically no damage at all), and 2 DPS (equivalent to 2 SLs; for only six times the weight!). And while yes, it is pathetically low, the effect itself is still massive.

Imagine if we gave the AC20 a 12.5x crit bonus. That means that there's a chance to deal 250 damage with one shot. The effect is exactly the same scale as the effect on the MG, which is to say a massive effect. That the absolute change in damage is small is only because the MG is horrendously underpowered, to the point that it literally hurts you more than enemies, because the damage cause by the exploding ammo will probably be more than the MGs could deal.

MGs might be remotely useful if they made it 100% crit chance against internals. But even then, for the weight and space, any other weapon would still deal more damage.

I think the OP is saying that since the random basically becomes a static value anyways, why not make it a static value?

50% chance of doing 25% more damage, just becomes 12.5% more damage 100% of the time. Just for example.

[Sable Dove]

It has a huge effect on the MG's gameplay. It's just a matter of the MG itself having a negligible impact on gameplay in the first place. Also, having to hit one piece of equipment 20 times is most definitely a large improvement over having to hit it 250 times. It's still terrible, but it is significantly better.

And I'll admit the AC20 was a bad example; I mistakenly thought that crit damage also applied to the component itself. Apparently I was giving the MG too much credit. So let's say the AC2 instead. The ability to randomly destroy any internal but an AC20 in one shot is a pretty significant effect.

Edited by Sable Dove, 21 February 2013 - 04:07 PM.