37 replies to this topic

[zorak ramone]

MustrumRidcully, on 24 April 2013 - 10:51 PM, said:

Back in the day, the AC/20 heat was 2 points higher per shot, and its projectile was much, much slower. ANd even further back then, we had only single heat sinks. It was no question then that the Gauss Rifle was the best weapon of them all, and even the explosive and crit thingy wouldn't change that.

Even so, today I see far more GR K2s (or mixed UAC5/AC5/GR/ML K2s) than I see AC20 K2s. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw an AC20 K2. As for the Jagermech, there was an explosion of 2xAC20 Jagermechs when it first came out, but I see less and less of them, and more and more multi-light AC Jagermechs. Why not GRs? There are better platforms (K2, CTF).

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You see less of them because long range builds have gotten so common. I tried the AC/20 Jagermech finally yesterday, and it worked well, despite being on Alpine and Tourmaline for all matches. The big problem was - I knew the moment I'd encounter a Stalker or Highlander at long range, I risked taking internal damage from the first salvo. You really have to be extremely careful now with short range builds. And it doesn't really help that your team also has more long range members that won't be willing to engage the enemy at close range, meaning that you're often the first target to be seen, and the enemy has something to focus on.

This is exactly my point. The tradeoffs of using AC20s (all the risk required to get into range) do not currently match the benefits.

By giving the AC20 clear advantages over comparable long range ballistics (GR/UAC5), you make up for the tradeoff of extremely short range.

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It might be the most effective one ,but it's not the only one. If you take away the ability to "safely" alpha for large damage values, you have solved the issue as well.




I find heat penalties very tempting, but a heat penalty in this case would just mean - you don't shut down, so you can keep firing. Since we already agreed that cone of fire won't happen, the heat penalties will be mostly meaningless to a sniper. Speed reduction? Twist limitations? You don'T need to worry about that all that much.

A guy in my group, Insanity, has been fighting the Sisiphyian fight for cone of fire for a long time now. It would solve alot of issues and give us much more freedom when it came to balancing weapons, but I fear it may never be implemented.

As for heat penalties vs hard caps, it all depends on the penalties. If the penalties for going over heat sink capacity were as severe (relatively speaking of course) as they were in CBT, I think it would work just fine. Then again, lowering the heat cap is just another way of introduction hard penalties for overheating (i.e. shutdown).

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Does it? the Dual AC/20 mech delivers a 50 damage alpha. People complain now in an environment of 35 to 60 damage alphas.

Before the SRM nerf, we could do 60 point alphas at close range with mixed weapon configs that ran cool, and no one complained about them. On a DDC, you could get 60 points with 3xSRM6 and a GR alone. The 4SP could hit 50 with just 4xML/2xSRM6, and one of the centurions could hit 55 with 3xSRM6/2xML. The only mech that people complained about was the A1 with its 90 point alpha.

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The range is really the mitigating factor here. There are Dual AC/20 mechs - if it's a good build that works better than most, then that's the build you're gonna see on the field. But 40-50 damage alphas at close range is something very different from 40-60 damage alphas at long range.

It is. And, as we both know since we've both spent alot of time analyzing it, its also about how much tonnage it costs and how much heat you spend. Right now, the AC20 is not an attractive option because its damage per heat is way too low compared to things like the GR. Even if its range was equal to the GR, it would probably still be outclassed.

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I think 2 AC/20s is very scary. But it shouldn't be too scary. This is a Battletech-based game, and it should have a relatively slow gameplay to other shooter-type games. Part of the appeal of battlemechs in Mechwarrior titles is that you exchange quite a few shots before something gets destroyed.

With mechs trading 40-60 point alphas at 540m, dual AC20s hitting 50 damage would not significantly speed up lethality from where it is right now. Making the game slower overall would require alot of radical changes to the weapon and armor systems, and the devs seem adverse to such changes.

[MustrumRidcully]

zorak ramone, on 25 April 2013 - 08:31 AM, said:

A guy in my group, Insanity, has been fighting the Sisiphyian fight for cone of fire for a long time now. It would solve alot of issues and give us much more freedom when it came to balancing weapons, but I fear it may never be implemented.

But will it be done? I don't think it will, even if I agree that we could use something that loosens up convergence. (I don't necessarily think it must be random).

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As for heat penalties vs hard caps, it all depends on the penalties. If the penalties for going over heat sink capacity were as severe (relatively speaking of course) as they were in CBT, I think it would work just fine. Then again, lowering the heat cap is just another way of introduction hard penalties for overheating (i.e. shutdown).

How meaningful is -1 to speed really to a Sniper?
How do you implement a -1 to attacks? IF it's not cone of fire, (which we already fear will not happen anyway), what is really left that has the same level of penalty?

Finding something that has the same effective penalty on MW:O players as it has on the table top pilots is not easy.

[MaddMaxx]

If the increased damage would somehow make it easier to get to where you need to be with your SR weapons package I would be all for it. Seeing as actual damage potential, that does not get to where it needs to be, intact, could be set to 10000dps and would matter less.

There is no sense in arriving at the "Big Brawl" with 1/2 of your armor stripped and half your required systems tore all up and still expect to be effective. The only real change that would help with this, well two I suppose, would be reduced range on the Longer alpha based weapons or allow those Mechs that can carry the brawler weapons some speed buff to allow them better chances to get to the fight, in a fighting condition.

Let's not forget. This is a Team game and with that comes the ability to assemble Lances, and soon Companies, of Mechs such that all possible enemy actions can and should be counter-able.

And yes. I am sure those that Pug will say that is not entirely true, but that is for the "now" and likely another thread.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 25 April 2013 - 09:09 AM.

[zorak ramone]

MustrumRidcully, on 25 April 2013 - 08:50 AM, said:

But will it be done? I don't think it will, even if I agree that we could use something that loosens up convergence. (I don't necessarily think it must be random).

I don't think it will be either. I was just lamenting that fact.

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How meaningful is -1 to speed really to a Sniper?


How do you implement a -1 to attacks? IF it's not cone of fire, (which we already fear will not happen anyway), what is really left that has the same level of penalty?

Finding something that has the same effective penalty on MW:O players as it has on the table top pilots is not easy.

Thats why I said "realatively." We need to look at the severity of the heat penalties in CBT and try to match that severity, if not the exact effects, in MWO.

As for accuracy penalties, I would totally be in favor of reduced convergence for mechs that hit high heat thresholds. While I have no hope of cone of fire being used as a standard for balancing boat configs or low damage vs high damage weapons, I DO think its possible that it has a chance to be implemented as a penalty for high heat. Other ways to implement accuracy penalties would be to make the reticule track slower or even jump/float around.

Anyway, this is a bit of a derail.

MaddMaxx, on 25 April 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

If the increased damage would somehow make it easier to get to where you need to be with your SR weapons package I would be all for it. Seeing as actual damage potential, that does not get to where it needs to be, intact, could be set to 10000dps and would matter less.

There is no sense in arriving at the "Big Brawl" with 1/2 of your armor stripped and half your required systems tore all up and still expect to be effective. The only real change that would help with this, well two I suppose, would be reduced range on the Longer alpha based weapons or allow those Mechs that can carry the brawler weapons some speed buff to allow them better chances to get to the fight, in a fighting condition.

The thing is, for several weeks, we HAD this state of balance. I'm thinking of the time right after they reduced PPC heat to 8 and before they nerfed SRM damage. PPC/GR snipers (and for that matter LRM and LL users) could severely injure or kill mechs at range. However, infighers packing SRM clusters, if they were smart/sneaky/fast enough to get close, could clobber them with no problems. This was, IMO, the best MWO's balance has ever been.

The problem with the current meta is that the advantage that the SRM infighter gets for getting into close range is too slim to justify the risk and difficulty of getting there. The simple solution is to restore SRM damage. However, I think we should go farther and boost AC20s/10s and the medium/small lasers to give infighters and mixed-range fighters more options.

[BLeeD]

slight heat reduction for ac 20 / ac 10 , slight dps increase to ac 10. slight buff to srms again try 2.0 per srms. LRM speed increase with very slight damage buff .1 but LRMs need better spread , to many hit the target in close with no spread.

[Sephlock]

Apparently they think damage is too high on average, so.... yeah...

[Darius Deadeye]

Anything that increases damage and heat efficiency would be bad for this game.

So no.

[blah40000]

this is an all around terrible idea, we don't need to buff things to make them on-par with the OP things. the game has already degraded into a fast paced mess, we need to increase the CD on most if not all weapons, raise heat values, and lower heat caps.

we need to encourage diverse builds based on situational needs. min-maxing is all fine and dandy and so is boating, but only if you're trying to fit a certain role or niche playstyle. look at the tabletop builds or the trial mechs of old, these are supposed to be not only viable, but fairly optimized. this game has strayed too far from it's original path.

[Tombstoner]

Any desire to "balance the weapons" should be done in conjunction to what changes or additions the game is going to under go in the next few months. unless something is its radically altering game play then hot fix it.

Confider the impact of 12 vs. 12. will have on the game. the amount of firepower on both sides is ideally incremented by 50%.
this will shorten your life expectancy noticeably. too short and the game looses some fun. its going to increase the density of LRM's. i see a need to reduce damage over all or increase armor ratting to compensate for the incensed fire power. ideal a COF would be implemented for one more degree of freedom for tuning damage.

The most important changes will be the ones that just predate release. until then if it's not broken too bad... dont fix it.

[Inappropriate1191]

For the most part, I like this idea. I have always felt that PPCs are perfect, as they are. I like them this way. They are not overpowered, they're viable. Rather than nerf existing weapons, buffing the ones lagging behind is what PGI needs to do. The Ac/10 especially needs some love, LBX needs it more so. I'd say, slight heat reduction and slight increase of firing speed would make them just where they need to be.

Edited by Inappropriate1191, 07 June 2013 - 08:47 AM.

[Pinselborste]

PGI should simply have balanced all the things for a realtime game instead of having the TT stats, they where created for a TT game and not for a game like mwo.

with dropping the TT stats we could have way better balance, refusing to buff the damage of the AC5 cause of a number in its name that comes from the TT game is just bad.

that way we could have things like weapons from different manufacturers so there is one for different weight classes.

for example things like a 3 ton fast firing low caliber autocanon and so on.

[Blue Footed Booby]

As a full-time AC40 jager, I think AC20s are about where they belong. They're very, very effective, but you have to build your mech around them, and use them differently from gauss, etc. I could see maybe a tiny decrease in heat production, but honestly I think a damage buff would make them the new ppc highlander.

AC2 needs something but I'm not sure what. On paper I think AC2s have decent DPS but it doesn't ever seem to work out that way in practice.

Aside: I can't decide which is dumber between weapon name being the damage (which kind makes it hard to balance if they later need a change) and guns getting better range the smaller they get. Neither is as dumb as mechwarriors not wearing pants (a TT detail I'm glad PGI ignored).

[Pinselborste]

Blue Footed Booby, on 07 June 2013 - 09:30 AM, said:

As a full-time AC40 jager, I think AC20s are about where they belong. They're very, very effective, but you have to build your mech around them, and use them differently from gauss, etc. I could see maybe a tiny decrease in heat production, but honestly I think a damage buff would make them the new ppc highlander.

AC2 needs something but I'm not sure what. On paper I think AC2s have decent DPS but it doesn't ever seem to work out that way in practice.

Aside: I can't decide which is dumber between weapon name being the damage (which kind makes it hard to balance if they later need a change) and guns getting better range the smaller they get. Neither is as dumb as mechwarriors not wearing pants (a TT detail I'm glad PGI ignored).

yeah, not wearing pants in a hot metal box would be a terrible idea since you would burn the skin on your legs the moment you touch something with them. and basing the damage of a weapon from its name is something that should not be done in mwo.

[Lord of All]

zorak ramone, on 24 April 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

We have a million posts now talking about how PPC/GR snipers/jump snipers dominate the current meta. This situation is analagous to MW4. Fortunately, the reason behind the dominance of PPC/GR snipers is obvious in MWO due to recent patches....

OK, Stop right here. Your initial Premise in incorrect and therefor any conclusions you make from it are implicitly incorrect as well.

[Pater Mors]

The only thing I straight up agree with is the SRM buff.

AC's don't need any changes save for a very slight tweak to the AC10's ROF. The AC5 needs more love than the AC10 and I find it hard to believe you left it out entirely. It needs a significant tweak to it's ROF to get closer to a UAC. The range buff was weird and uncalled for.

ML's are fine as they are. SL's need a damage buff but heat and ROF are fine.

Pulse Lasers need a ROF increase badly and need their beam time shortened so that they become viable close range weapons for their tonnage. Heat is fine. It should be a trade off between heat management/range vs close range pinpoint accuracy for the laser class weapons.

You left out the LBX, MG and Flamer entirely.

The main thing that needs to be implemented as a overall balance to the entire weapons system is:

A large decrease of the heat cap.
A large increase in dissipation to compensate.
Heat penalties.

Edited by Pater Mors, 07 June 2013 - 03:32 PM.

[Typhoon Storm 2142]

I bet the OP didn't intend for his poll to go in this direction. I voted No on every point aswell. How can anyone just make such suggestions without being able to test the changes he's implying. It would take alot of beta testing from a bunch of professionals to balance out the changes in damage and behavior of a weapon. But some people believe they can do everything on their own, just by thinking about it. DUH!

[Mokou]

ACalmost20...

[Alex Warden]

appearently the person who started the poll didn´t play the game yet...