32 replies to this topic

[Karl Streiger]

I have spend more time in reading through all the discussions of boating, and MechLab limitation... than working... hope my Boss didn't find out.

However what I, what we need are figures.

Here are the topics

convergence
http://mwomercs.com/...point-accuracy/

boating
http://mwomercs.com/...ons-themselves/

http://mwomercs.com/...ddress-boating/

mechlab:
http://mwomercs.com/...-per-hardpoint/

http://mwomercs.com/...specific-slots/

Edited by Karl Streiger, 18 March 2013 - 02:15 AM.

[Zyllos]

Boating is not a problem in itself. With current weapon convergence, yes, boating is an issue. But boats are only easier and, most of the time, better to play than mixing weaponry due to how weapon convergence works. Plus, some mechs are meant to be boats.

So, no on the boats.

Personally, the mech lab limitations are not enough when situations like Machine Gun ports being replaced with Gauss Rifles. This is what I suggested to modify the mech lab with the idea of Omnimechs in the future:

Quote

I think they just need to add classifications of hardpoint sizes and types.

All hardpoints contain a Size and Type modifier.

There are three, Small, Medium, and Large, Size modifiers. Size modifiers allow for 1 weapon of the same size or one catagory size smaller to fit in that location.

There are four, Energy, Ballistic, Missile, and Omni, Type modifiers. Type modifiers allow for 1 weapon of a given type to fit in a location. The Omni Type modifier allows all to be equipped in a location.

Thus, a Battlemech will never contain Omni Type modifiers to their mount locations while Omnimechs will never have specific Type modifiers. Size modifiers will be enforced for both specific and Omni Type modifiers.

This gives differences between Battlemechs (having specific Type modifiers) and Omnimechs (having Omni Type modifiers) but still have limitations on location of hardpoints, Size Type modifiers, and number of allowed hardpoints. This should give enough freedom and limitations on various chassis of mechs, for both Battlemechs and Omnimechs, to allow for the three variation rule needed for a mech to be releasable for it's timeline.

As stated, weapon convergence, I think, is MWO's largest issue. It is going to be causing so many inbalances in how the balance between many weapons and a small number of weapons compared with small, fast targets with low armor and slow, large targets with high armor.

Yes, weapon convergence is an issue.

Edited by Zyllos, 15 March 2013 - 05:49 AM.

[Revorn]

Zyllos, on 15 March 2013 - 05:28 AM, said:

Personally, the mech lab limitations are not enough when situations like Machine Gun ports being replaced with Gauss Rifles.

Worth to be thougt about by the Dev´s. imho.

[3rdworld]

I don't really understand why you would want to shoot less accurately.

If you think boating high damage weapons is bad now, institute a "must stand still to shoot" policy and that is all you will see.

The ability to run and gun and hit consistently is what is keeping slow super alpha mechs from being the norm.

Think if your Trebuchet could only land hits on the stalker while standing still. You would get alpha'd every match.

Edited by 3rdworld, 15 March 2013 - 05:46 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Zyllos, on 15 March 2013 - 05:28 AM, said:

Boating is not a problem in itself. With current weapon convergence, yes, boating is an issue. But boats are only easier and, most of the time, better to play than mixing weaponry due to how weapon convergence works. Plus, some mechs are meant to be boats.

So, no on the boats.

Personally, the mech lab limitations are not enough when situations like Machine Gun ports being replaced with Gauss Rifles. This is what I suggested to modify the mech lab with the idea of Omnimechs in the future:



As stated, weapon convergence, I think, is MWO's largest issue. It is going to be causing so many inbalances in how the balance between many weapons and a small number of weapons compared with small, fast targets with low armor and slow, large targets with high armor.

Yes, weapon convergence is an issue.

Actually that reflect my own opinion...but however i don't want to start any discussion...
maybe ask your friends, wifes, sons, daughters, grand parents, parents...lance mates...regimental commander shortly everybody you know playing MWO to adress this vote.

Actually it looks like: boating is acceptable, mech lab is fine ...but convergence is a real issue

[Zyllos]

Only posted to explain my votes.

Sorry.

[Karl Streiger]

Zyllos, on 15 March 2013 - 06:53 AM, said:

Only posted to explain my votes.

Sorry.

No need to excuse...

hm...maybe i should chance the 2nd question?
because... when you see a problem you have to vote yes in question 1 and question 3 but in question 2 you have to vote with no...when you see a problem....

what do you think?

Edited by Karl Streiger, 15 March 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[Felbombling]

The flexibility we enjoy in the Mechlab with regard to engine sizes is a major reason for boating. If you can shoehorn engines into a chassis while getting the exact weapon and heatsink loadout you want, there are no painful decisions being made during the Mech design process. I hate to bring up TT rules, but they had it right when it came to Mech design... they forced players to make much tougher decisions when it came to designing than the MW:O system requires.

Weapons being pin-point accurate is another issue facing the game that only leads to boating. Every weapon statistic is thrown off by this fact when you try to migrate numbers from a board game with a vastly different damage location method.

Ammunition totals per ton are another major reason we see boating. Players generally take twice the ammunition a standard Mech would carry for a TT game. When you start allocating that much tonnage to a certain weapon system, it is hard to find the spare tonnage for secondary weapons.

Weapon reload/recycle times are also an issue, and this is even more so when it comes to weapons that use ammunition, as directly above.

The Dev team has shown amazing stubborness when it comes to their initial thoughts on all the above points. I have been around since very early in the Open Beta, and have seen countless threads with very thoughtful, solid arguments to all the points above. I think I've only seen the Engine restriction come out of it.

It is true that many people think there is nothing wrong with boating and that the Mech Lab is fine, which is great. I submit that they most likely grew up with the Mechwarrior computer game series, which always gave major flexibility in their own Mech Lab versions. Had all those versions of the computer games came out with very restrictive Mech Labs, they'd probably have an issue with boating and the Mech Lab as we see them today, because that is now how they know Mechwarrior to be. Perception is everything.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Boating is not a problem in itself. BattleTech has a long tradition of boat builds, and so have all the past MechWarrior titles. The problem isn't in hardpoints, either (though some mechs just lack hardpoints relative to others and so won't really have a reason to exist until quirks are added for the chassis type).

The problem is two-fold: convergence and rate of fire.

For convergence, I like the current system, but I'd like to see torso weapons have slightly less range of motion. They should be able to converge pretty tightly at longer range, but as you get closer it should start to run into limits

Taking the 4P Hunchback as an easy example, the lasers should be able to get pretty pin-point out at, oh, 300m, but at 50 you might see some vertical spread since they're fixed in relation to each other and start running into physical limits for converging on a single point.

Arm weapons should have convergence performance determined by actuators. Does the mech have lower arm actuators? If yes then it should have relatively fast and good range of motion with arm weapon convergence. If no, then it should basically behave like torso weapons, but since the arms are off-set to the sides more than any torso weapon they should run into convergence issues against close-in targets even before the torso weapons do.

As for Rate of Fire, all those people complaining about how quick fights are now have a point. The fix is to slow down the pace of battle somewhat by doing a balance pass on rate of fire. Give ACs an advantage here, slow down lasers somewhat, slow down missiles a bit more (and Streaks even more than that). PPCs and Gauss should be the slowest of all (Gauss probably the slowest period).

This would incidentally help with heat management a bit, too, as it'd make the heat dissipation time scale and the heat generation time scale somewhat closer to how they were originally designed to interact. Heat would still be higher than TT, since I'm not suggesting 10s cooldown on everything (even Gauss should be more like 6 seconds), but the simple expedient of slowing down the rate of fire across the board (with a few possible exceptions like the SPL) would make heat slightly less punitive than it has been (and would make stock and Trial builds slightly more user-friendly).

[Zyllos]

StaggerCheck, on 15 March 2013 - 07:12 AM, said:

The flexibility we enjoy in the Mechlab with regard to engine sizes is a major reason for boating. If you can shoehorn engines into a chassis while getting the exact weapon and heatsink loadout you want, there are no painful decisions being made during the Mech design process. I hate to bring up TT rules, but they had it right when it came to Mech design... they forced players to make much tougher decisions when it came to designing than the MW:O system requires.

Weapons being pin-point accurate is another issue facing the game that only leads to boating. Every weapon statistic is thrown off by this fact when you try to migrate numbers from a board game with a vastly different damage location method.

Ammunition totals per ton are another major reason we see boating. Players generally take twice the ammunition a standard Mech would carry for a TT game. When you start allocating that much tonnage to a certain weapon system, it is hard to find the spare tonnage for secondary weapons.

Weapon reload/recycle times are also an issue, and this is even more so when it comes to weapons that use ammunition, as directly above.

The Dev team has shown amazing stubborness when it comes to their initial thoughts on all the above points. I have been around since very early in the Open Beta, and have seen countless threads with very thoughtful, solid arguments to all the points above. I think I've only seen the Engine restriction come out of it.

It is true that many people think there is nothing wrong with boating and that the Mech Lab is fine, which is great. I submit that they most likely grew up with the Mechwarrior computer game series, which always gave major flexibility in their own Mech Lab versions. Had all those versions of the computer games came out with very restrictive Mech Labs, they'd probably have an issue with boating and the Mech Lab as we see them today, because that is now how they know Mechwarrior to be. Perception is everything.

I have always wondered if they forced engine rating constraits of having to be a multiple of the mech tonnage then would balance be better?

Doing this fixes a small problem I have with engines right now...255 invalidates the 250. There are multiple examples of this.

Edited by Zyllos, 15 March 2013 - 07:22 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Boating itself is not a problem.

Imbalanced Weapons is a problem.
Convergence is an issue, two-fold:
1) It makes using weapons with different flight characters (e.g. lasers with lasers, ballistics with the same projectile speed and so on) preferable to use, since you always hit the exact point you're aiming for. THe only thing that would need to be done for this aspect would be to have fixed convergence points for weapons, or have all weapons fire parallel. THe only thing that would converge would be arms (not arm weapons itself, just the arm pointing in the right direction, and the arm weapons firing parallel to it:)
2) Ballistic weapons get screwed over when you fire with lead, because the convergence is not set to a location near the target, but instead to a point in the background. That's a poor implantation of the convergence system itself that hurts ballistic and PPC users for no reason.

[Protection]

Here's the thing - any mech that tries to go with 4+ weapon groups (that is - 4 or more different types of weapons, rather than boating 2-3 of the same type of weapon) is just a flat out inefficient design.

You start having to adjust for four different convergence points, making it harder and harder to put all the damage down on the same location. And you need to spend more time directly facing your target, and lining up four different shots, rather than one or two.

Players need to accept that boating is how the game will be played, and focus on balance from there.

[NDwaidomela]

boating: sometimes yes, sometimes no...mostly no. if same players want to play some, ok, let them. But are there too much of them all matches long... thats boring and exhausing.
Mechlab: Ok, i miss some more Wappens, but for now there are enough. i think, little by little more things will be included.
convergence:....

[Zyllos]

It seems the poll is in agreeance with what is the preceived view of the community regarding boating.

I am surprised by the "Mech Lab Limitations" vote.

And it seems the community is split on weapon convergence.

[Shibas]

Why is there an abstain option, who goes on to vote: "no vote," that option seems redundant.

Also, boating is cannon for all you TT die hards. Take a look at sarnia.net, there is a plethora of mechs that remove componants to add similar weapons of the same type; hunchback, quickdraw, various clan mechs, hell the Awesome's standard loadout is multiple ppcs.

Boating is a gimmick that will probably be less prevalent once more larger maps start coming out.

[Karl Streiger]

maybe we should be more specific. A (my opinion) bad boat removes large cumbersome weapons for more smaller ones. for example like the 7ml awesome or the short range stalker...

so in another poll we should be more specific what kind of boat is a problem.

however i'm too surprised about the second poll. that means all the complaints suggestions and discussions about hardpoints size, penalty, limits were only the problem of some nerds....so gauss cat is logical and fine.

Convergence needs a second poll too.
Should perfect convergence be achieved over time?
Should there be fixed convergence? Weapon will meet at the max optimum range?
Should convergence only allow to hit a Mech sized target somewhere.
Should convergence be random?
Should point where you aim and the point were you hit be determined when you build the weapon in your mech..allow calibration after each battle?

Last resulting question. why is there no official survey from PGI? could be helpfull...

[Zerstorer Stallin]

What is should worry PGI is this poll has been repeated over and over. The difference now is that much less people have voted and instead of roughly 60% against boating its changed. One has to wonder where those other votes have gone?

[DocBach]

Shibas, on 15 March 2013 - 10:30 AM, said:

Why is there an abstain option, who goes on to vote: "no vote," that option seems redundant.

Also, boating is cannon for all you TT die hards. Take a look at sarnia.net, there is a plethora of mechs that remove componants to add similar weapons of the same type; hunchback, quickdraw, various clan mechs, hell the Awesome's standard loadout is multiple ppcs.

Boating is a gimmick that will probably be less prevalent once more larger maps start coming out.

You left out the Kraken, which in all of its configurations is like, the ultimate cheese boat. 10 Ultra AC/2s? 8 LRM-15s?

[M4rtyr]

My vote, boating is part of battletech, its the mechanics surounding it causing issues.

The mechlab is about as good as you can do without making it too complicated or too limited. Personally I wouldn't mind stock mechs for IS that is why omnimechs are different after all. but i know too many people would be turned off by that.

The convergence is a problem, yes. But worse, its a really difficult fix.

[Karl Streiger]

Bump.
not enough votes