36 replies to this topic

[SubRyan]

What was PGI's intention including the aforementioned weapons systems into this game? Half of them are useless because of heat generation/duration and the other half are just useless

How would you fix them?

LB 10-X AC:

Armor-piercing rounds but take away the crit-seeking potential

Flamer:

Decrease heat to 0.3
Increase heat damage to 0.8
Decrease damage to 0.1
Decrease hit points to 2
Weapon explodes when destroyed

Machine Gun:

Increase max range to 400
Increase long range to 180
Increase heat to 0.1
Increase damage to 0.2

Small Pulse Laser:

Increase damage to 4
Decrease heat to 2.3

Small Laser:

Increase max range to 270
Increase long range to 180

[Smokem Jags]

These weapons provide much needed comic relief to this game. I certainly laugh when I see players using them, so I'm not sure if I'd want them adjusted.

[Victor Morson]

LBX10-AC: Change the firing pattern so they can hit to great effective ranges, with spread damage, but not "shotgun" up close. It would be awesome to see these weapons as they were represented in the lore (More of a Flechette round than scattershot), opposed to how they were in some past MW titles. This would also work to make them far more useful, if they were turned into sniping, not brawling, weapons.

FLAMER: Add heat "vision" effects when you are being hammered with it. Possibly buff the damage but the heat is about fine right now (these would get annoying quick if they worked too well for that). Make it more of a support weapon, basically, which is fine for the tonnage.

MG: I made a thread about this, but I highly suggest we bring the concept of the Machine Gun Array into the present timeline. They've been referenced in fluff quite a bit pre-3050, even if the actual TT mechanic didn't arrive until 3068, so I think it's justifiable.

Long story short the concept is you'd drop an Array in a ballistic slot, which could then take multiple MGs (say, 3-4). This would allow you to carry enough MGs to make them useful, without having to worry about over/under'ing the ballistics.

SPL: I'd slash it's firing duration by almost a full quarter. In fact, I'd do that to all the pulse lasers. I'd even consider going to a third. Specifically the pulse-damage-delivery time, nothing else.

SLAS: It's fine as is. It doesn't need fixing. I jam them on sometimes if I have a half ton and space for another laser.

[Windsaw]

Short lasers are fine.
SPLs could be buffed my making their firing time even shorter a bit. I already use them in my very fast Commando and think they would be even better then.

What really needs buffs are LRM 10 and especially LRM 5.
Here I suggest that AMS must not destroy a fixed number of incoming missiles but a certain percentage.

[Sephlock]

Smokem Jags, on 08 April 2013 - 12:36 AM, said:

These weapons provide much needed comic relief to this game. I certainly laugh when I see players using them, so I'm not sure if I'd want them adjusted.

Its less funny in a situation like the one I was in a few games ago: I saw one guy in a commando just standing there at the start of a match, flaming the sky. I shrugged it off, thinking "oh well, so we're one mech down"... then about 30 seconds later I saw a jenner doing the same thing.

We lost that match.

>_<.

[stjobe]

LB-10X:
Could use a proximity fuse; meaning the spread is not constant from barrel to target but from, say 20m to target. It would mean projectiles would have the same spread on target no matter what distance you fire it at.

Flamer:
Give it a serious damage buff, to about 1-2 DPS. Make it generate more heat on target than on the firing 'mech.

MG:
Give it a serious damage buff, I've been advocating tripling its per-projectile damage for months on end.

SPL:
Increase its damage to 4. That's all it needs, and would put it in line with the other laser/pulse laser combos.

SL:
Is actually fine.

[John MatriX82]

LBX:
give us the damn solid shot. After this, swap the range with the one of the AC 10 (450 for the LBX, 540 for the AC 10). Make that the solid round it's like a timed flak shot, so that it doesn't place full 10 dmg on a single section but something like 6-8 points on the hit section and some splah damage in its immediate surroundings.
Keep the shotgun shot, make it tighter and leave it at is this, while asking to load the specific tons of ammo to switch between the two ammunitions, wasting oner or two recycle times to switch between the two. Done. As it is now, any SRM is much more useful than this, it's like having 1 weapon less in the whole game to play with.

Flamer:
Make it generate more heat on the target, besides this it can already be quite annoying when a good player keeps shooting you in the head, you won't see a mess.

MGs:
take away any crit-fun, just raise them to dps that can make them a viable weapon for lights, something like a more weightful alternative to SMLAS.

SPL:
like many pulse lasers, it's too heavy and too much short ranged when compared to vanilla lasers. In general all pulse lasers should keep their reduced range and heat but also weight a tad less than now (6 tons for LPL, 1,5 tons for the MPL). The SPL would not be good at 0,5 tons (it would be really powerful doing this), so i think it should get a heat reduction along with an even shorter pulse duration.

SL:
they are fine as they are.

[jeffsw6]

SubRyan, on 08 April 2013 - 12:34 AM, said:

Flamer:

Decrease heat to 0.3
Increase heat damage to 0.8
Decrease damage to 0.1
Decrease hit points to 2
Weapon explodes when de

I think you should spend some time in the Testing Grounds with a Flamer equipped before you make suggestions on how to fix it. The weapon doesn't even work correctly right now, so addressing that is needed before fooling with the heat and damage figures. Also, why the hell would you want to give it only 2 HP? It is a gimpy novelty weapon anyway, so now you want it to be a gimpy novelty weapon that explodes before you ever have a chance to use it against anyone? That is stupid.

Equip a flamer and go to Testing Grounds. Find an enemy mech, a CDA for example, and start shooting it. Cease fire every once in a while. You'll notice several problems:

• Its heat is broken. Sometimes it will give you way more heat that it is supposed to when it first begins firing and as it continues to fire (see below.)
  
• Even if you never move the mouse, the weapon will not always strike the same opponent chassis section
  
• Sometimes it will not hit the opponent at all, even if you are aiming right for him
  
• It only hits one section at a time even though it is a big flame graphic which gives the impression of working differently
  
• It took me 8 minutes to destroy a Commando and about 2 minutes to destroy a CDA by head-shot after I got tired of waiting for it to do appreciable damage to the CDA's torso

I mention above that the heat on Flamer is broken. My STK-3F has 16 DHS and, if I understand correctly, should bleed off heat at a rate approximately 10*0.2 + 6*0.14 = 2.84 heat/sec. The Flamer's current in-game description is for 0.6 heat per 0.4 damage. However, my heat steadily increases while firing it until I shut down after around 40 seconds (on RCN.) In addition to that, it takes several minutes to head-shot an enemy mech. Further broken, sometimes firing the one Flamer instantly brings my heat to between 40% and 49% from 0% (this happens at least 1/4th of the time when firing before heat has gone below 10%.)

I appreciate that you are making what you believe to be helpful suggestions. I agree that the Flamer should be fixed. However, you did not do any research before posting your remarks about the flamer. I therefore question the basis for your other suggested changes as well.

[Karazyr]

id like a flamer to act like a glue gun let me explain.

for example in mechwarrior 4 the flamer acted like a laser, it was a single shot that increased the heat of the mech bleh right?
well what about if we kept that system ( although maybe not) and made it stick to the target? increasing all heat generated for lets say 3 seconds and have the recharge be 5 seconds or so. this would allow it to be a great support weapon and a pain in the *** to the foe it is used against

[Iron Hyena]

I agree pretty well with OP.

[Victor Morson]

Derrpy, on 08 April 2013 - 01:55 AM, said:

id like a flamer to act like a glue gun let me explain.

for example in mechwarrior 4 the flamer acted like a laser, it was a single shot that increased the heat of the mech bleh right?
well what about if we kept that system ( although maybe not) and made it stick to the target? increasing all heat generated for lets say 3 seconds and have the recharge be 5 seconds or so. this would allow it to be a great support weapon and a pain in the *** to the foe it is used against

Basically what you mean is flamers acting like actual flame throwers on a larger scale, like those awesome 'nam napalm boats.

I'd be cool with this, if the heat effects would linger a while after being hit, if for nothing more than the cool visuals of seeing on fire 'mechs fighting. Coupled with some vision problems from smoke or something and it could be a great "confusion" weapon for a ton.

[MustrumRidcully]

LB10 X AC
Change the ammo so that the pellets don't spread out so much. if neccessary, the LBX could get a splash radius, turning the pellets into a purely visual gimmick.
Selectable ammo is another option, but if you do that, you have to decide whether LB10 X should be superior to the AC/10 or not. If not, either the LBX needs a drawback (maybe a lower recycle time) or the AC/10 a buff (maybe a higher recycle time)

Flamer
- Damage: 0.8 (0.8 DPS)
- Heat: 0.4 (0.4 DPS)
Raising damage, lowering heat, but don't change the way it adds heat to the target. That is likely to end up in another balancing nightmare.

Machine Gun
- Damage: 0.08 per shot (0.8 DPS)
- Normal Range: 180m, Maximum Range 360m
This is an extremely conservative change. I am not sure t he MG would be good enough this way, but one has to be somewhat careful in buffing it. We don't want a hypothetical 8 MG light or medium mech to become OP because heat isn't a limiter for th eMachine Gun. By increasing its range, we make it a bit better to use and not quite as gimped.

I suspect with its current range and the current avaiable mechs, 1.2 DPS would be fine.

Small Pulse Laser
- Damage: 3.25 (1.18 DPS)
- Heat: 2 (0.72 HPS)
Lowering the heat will make it more comparable to the Small Laser. Basically you get a 0.25 duration reduction and a 20 % sustained damage and heat increase for the price of 0.5 tons.

Small Laser
I see no real reason to change it. The Small Laser is more weight efficient as the medium laser, the reason it's not used so much anymore is that we have Double Heat Sinks now, and no light mechs with enough energy slots ot rely purely on SLs.
Of course, if one wants to tweak it so it works better together with other weapons (for example, the small pulse laser), one could adjust its cooldown - lower it to 2 seconds (Now SPL and SL have the same total recycle time) and give it a small damage decrease, say to 2.75 damage (still 1 DPS).

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 08 April 2013 - 02:05 AM.

[Victor Morson]

The reason I suggested a dramatic pulse laser damage-delivery time is I don't think most of you are considering how much of a factor that is in a game where beams can drag over a 'mech, and pulse lasers do more damage than the beam ones. The shortened delivery time is the most important thing about pulse lasers, and the main reason their slight damage advantages are worth all their drawbacks.

Some require more of a reduction to this than others. If the SPL was given a drastically reduced pulse burst, it would become a top tier weapon rapidly. Whatever laser that can offer the closest-to-pinpoint accuracy will, unless horribly flawed in some other way, dominate.

[Harmin]

MGs have recently been buffed and they do not need further boosting.

LBX-10 needs slugs (as separate ammo).

Flamer needs a re-work probably.

Small Lasers are fine and effective as they are.

SPLs follow the general principles pulse vs regular lasers ... perhaps in this case however we can deviate from it by halfing their weight to 0.5 tons.

That's how I see it anyway.

-Armin

[stjobe]

Harmin, on 08 April 2013 - 02:47 AM, said:

MGs have recently been buffed and they do not need further boosting.

Please tell me you're joking.



These stats come from the horrible, horrible grind trying to level my 4xMG SDR-5K. I'll point some numbers out for you:
* Damage per match is 18.74. With four MGs firing.
* Per MG, that's 4.68 damage per match. Almost as much as a single hit with a Medium Laser.
* I fired about 1,000 rounds per match, and hit with about half - continuous-fire mechanic is rough on DPS.
* Effective DPS is 0.19 per MG, less than half of the theoretical 0.4
* Even if I had hit with every single round, I would only have done 37 damage per match, or a bit over 9 damage per MG.

The SDR-5K in question can't really mount anything else than MGs in its four ballistic slots, and it only has a single energy slot besides those. To complete the picture, here's the stats for the SDR-5K from purchase to full Basic:



It's nice to see that the numbers line up so perfectly; A total damage done of 3,581, 581 of which were done with the four MGs. Which means the ERLL and other weapons I mounted did the other 3,000 damage. The MGs did 16% of the damage for this 'mech while being 50% of the weapons weight. I should probably also not that I dropped six matches without MGs in a desperate search for something viable. For those six matches I mounted a single AC/2 which did about 60 damage per match.

In short, MGs need a damage buff, there's no question about it.

Edited by stjobe, 08 April 2013 - 03:19 AM.

[Harmin]

stjobe, on 08 April 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

Please tell me you're joking.



These stats come from the horrible, horrible grind trying to level my 4xMG SDR-5K. I'll point some numbers out for you:
* Damage per match is 18.74. With four MGs firing.
* Per MG, that's 4.68 damage per match. Almost as much as a single hit with a Medium Laser.
* I fired about 1,000 rounds per match, and hit with about half - continuous-fire mechanic is rough on DPS.
* Effective DPS is 0.19 per MG, less than half of the theoretical 0.4
* Even if I had hit with every single round, I would only have done 37 damage per match, or a bit over 9 damage per MG.

The SDR-5K in question can't really mount anything else than MGs in its four ballistic slots, and it only has a single energy slot besides those. To complete the picture, here's the stats for the SDR-5K from purchase to full Basic:



It's nice to see that the numbers line up so perfectly; A total damage done of 3,581, 581 of which were done with the four MGs. Which means the ERLL and other weapons I mounted did the other 3,000 damage. The MGs did 16% of the damage for this 'mech while being 50% of the weapons weight. I should probably also not that I dropped six matches without MGs in a desperate search for something viable. For those six matches I mounted a single AC/2 which did about 60 damage per match.

In short, MGs need a damage buff, there's no question about it.

Those statistics are not suitable to assess the viability of the MG. It is ineffective vs armor and I fully agree with the devs who have interpreted / implemented the MG as such. But against exposed sections it is very effective as I have experienced numerous times myself when on the receiving end of some machine gunning spider.

It is a specialty weapon for speciality situations.

And misrepresented in the statistics, for if you hit for 0.04 and blow up a crit slot you still do 0.04 damage.

I think it's time to Master a 5K myself. Should be fun!

-Armin

[MustrumRidcully]

Harmin, on 08 April 2013 - 03:31 AM, said:

Those statistics are not suitable to assess the viability of the MG. It is ineffective vs armor and I fully agree with the devs who have interpreted / implemented the MG as such. But against exposed sections it is very effective as I have experienced numerous times myself when on the receiving end of some machine gunning spider.

Are you aware that the MG crit rate was bugged for a while and much higher than intended?

And have you ever considered the opportunity cost - what would t hat enemy have done if he had any other weapon. He'd gone through your armour faster, and destroyed the entire section, not just some items.

[Harmin]

MustrumRidcully, on 08 April 2013 - 03:43 AM, said:

Are you aware that the MG crit rate was bugged for a while and much higher than intended?

And have you ever considered the opportunity cost - what would t hat enemy have done if he had any other weapon. He'd gone through your armour faster, and destroyed the entire section, not just some items.

To my knowledge, I have never died to a 4 small laser fast mech sitting in my back.

Anyway, I have decided to have a go at the 5K myself and this is what I'll buy and play tonight:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...d6fea7c7a6386b1

-Armin

[stjobe]

Harmin, on 08 April 2013 - 03:31 AM, said:

Those statistics are not suitable to assess the viability of the MG.

The statistics are not "suitable"?!?

Sorry, but that's just sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU".

Harmin, on 08 April 2013 - 03:31 AM, said:

It is a specialty weapon for speciality situations.

And that's one of the many things that's wrong with them. The MWO devs have turned them into a joke weapon that's ineffective for the majority of the match time, while giving them the ability to not kill the enemy for the short period where they are effective.

The MG was never a speciality weapon for speciality situations in BattleTech. It was a regular, if short-ranged, anti-'mech weapon. Why the MWO devs did what they did to them is puzzling to say the least; there's simply no precedence for it.

Harmin, on 08 April 2013 - 03:31 AM, said:

I think it's time to Master a 5K myself. Should be fun!

Oh, enjoy. Perhaps you can come back after you're done and show us your 5K stats?

[Oriius]

Derrpy, on 08 April 2013 - 01:55 AM, said:

id like a flamer to act like a glue gun let me explain.

for example in mechwarrior 4 the flamer acted like a laser, it was a single shot that increased the heat of the mech bleh right?
well what about if we kept that system ( although maybe not) and made it stick to the target? increasing all heat generated for lets say 3 seconds and have the recharge be 5 seconds or so. this would allow it to be a great support weapon and a pain in the *** to the foe it is used against

That is an interesting idea for the flamer, I think it'd need a slight weight increase too for that type of use, and maybe a limit to how many you can actualy use (or equip) to stop abuse.

it should also not be able to "stack" (so no groups of flamer lights locking people down) so only one person should really need to use it, pushing it into a support role rarther than a must have for any close range fighter.

With that said I don't know how well it would "fit" with the games cannon/lore, but it'd be interesting (in my opinion) as a game mechanic. Correct me if i am wrong, but arn't the flamer and MG in the TT anti-infantry weapons? with only limited use outside of that role.