253 replies to this topic

[Lord of All]

Rhinehardt Ritter, on 30 April 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

...I realize my post focuses on ppcs but the point i am making is that the the heat system is broken and that includes jump jets

I completely agree and think DHS are the main contributor to this problem. Remove them and put the chance of exploding engines in and watch how fast people manage their heat and by extension their builds!

[Just wanna play]

oldradagast, on 30 April 2013 - 04:05 PM, said:

So, we fix sniping and jump-sniping by making the weapons that are most-often boated STRONGER?! Really?!

I still don't buy it. We make the weapons stronger and/or armor weaker, so people won't "need" to carry so many weapons. Okay, so what else are they going to do with the tonnage? Carry extra AMS modules? Put in random weapons they don't need? Load up on ammo or needlessly oversized engines? What else is there? And if it takes half as many weapons to kill a mech now, how does that fix anything - the mechs with more boatable weapons will still kill enemies at the same faster rate, so nothing changes except games are shorter and mistakes are usually fatal.

The last thing this game needs is weaker defenses / strong boated weapons. Sure, in this theoretical world of half-armor and strong weapons, a mech is now easier to kill... which will just chase off new players and punish random mistakes and bad map design even more... but how is it better? A mech no longer "needs" a pile of weapons, but why wouldn't he still have them? There's no drawback to having a bunch of weapons - just set them in different firing groups if mechs are now easier to kill and you can take down mechs even faster with this proposed solution.

I just don't get how making the problem - boated long-range precision weapons - even strong fixes it.

the stronger ppc thing is for something else dumby

[TheSteelRhino]

Omaha, on 30 April 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

It doesn't matter what is changed, People with jump jets with fire at you while in the air. Its funny this only blew up after highlander was released. I wasn't reading anything about that impossible speedy spider jumping all over your mechs firing its weapons into your cockpit.

What gets me is that the community created a derogatory term (poptarting) for it. I'm guessing because of HeavyMetal.... But you guys even know how the highlander got its name?

"Leaping into the air and landing directly on their enemy, a Highlander could literally drive a light 'Mech into the ground. So successful was this maneuver that the design team re-engineered the legs to withstand repeated death-from-above attacks and turned what had been a desperation move into an art form, giving Highlander pilots an additional psychological edge."

Looks like its working to me too!

Dude. Death from Above (or highlander burial) and hitting targets while jumping is supposed to be difficult. Nobody is saying it should not be allowed. But its been really common. It shouldnt be hard, it should be VERY difficult.

There are minuses for this stuff in tabletop. For example, jumping mechs can fall and take damage. Not just to the legs, flat out on the ground. In this game, u dont save enough reaction mass, u take minor damage for blowing it

The reason its becoming a big deal now is the weps loadout highlander can carry along with the armour. A treb poptarts and get shredded. A jenner does it but doesnt have the weapons loadout. A cataphract CAN do it, but with the lower armour its not AS bad

Positives and negatives
Advantages and disadvantages

It's called BALANCE

Edited by Rhinehardt Ritter, 30 April 2013 - 04:31 PM.

[Just wanna play]

oldradagast, on 30 April 2013 - 04:05 PM, said:

So, we fix sniping and jump-sniping by making the weapons that are most-often boated STRONGER?! Really?!

I still don't buy it. We make the weapons stronger and/or armor weaker, so people won't "need" to carry so many weapons. Okay, so what else are they going to do with the tonnage? Carry extra AMS modules? Put in random weapons they don't need? Load up on ammo or needlessly oversized engines? What else is there? And if it takes half as many weapons to kill a mech now, how does that fix anything - the mechs with more boatable weapons will still kill enemies at the same faster rate, so nothing changes except games are shorter and mistakes are usually fatal.

The last thing this game needs is weaker defenses / strong boated weapons. Sure, in this theoretical world of half-armor and strong weapons, a mech is now easier to kill... which will just chase off new players and punish random mistakes and bad map design even more... but how is it better? A mech no longer "needs" a pile of weapons, but why wouldn't he still have them? There's no drawback to having a bunch of weapons - just set them in different firing groups if mechs are now easier to kill and you can take down mechs even faster with this proposed solution.

I just don't get how making the problem - boated long-range precision weapons - even strong fixes it.

i don't mean carry less weapons, just less weapons all for a certain purpose, so instead of 6 long range weapons, you could still be effective with, say, 1 long range weapon, 2 medium range weapons, and 3 brawling weapons

and if yo still want to be an effective high powered damage dealer you won't need 6 ppcs or a ridiculous catapult with 6 srms since an atlas ddc will get the job done just as well with many other weapon types to boot so it doesnt HAVE to close the distance

[Just wanna play]

what do you think is better, a mech that is guaranteed to tear the arm off of 8 various types of mech in one alpha (awesome 8q), or one thats guaranteed against 10 different mechs with twice the heat (6 ppc stalker)???

as the other guy said, the outrageous boats are results of a need to get through all the armor effectively since mwo mechs have so much more then they are used to (im guessing they are used to less armor from other games)

AND someone said ballistic weapons werent very common these days, but if you could get more done with out worrying as much about running out of armor since less would be needed to get the job done, im sure they would start making a comeback since that is there only disadvantage (and weight, but they have SOME many advantages to outweigh that)

[Just wanna play]

Lord of All, on 30 April 2013 - 04:26 PM, said:

I completely agree and think DHS are the main contributor to this problem. Remove them and put the chance of exploding engines in and watch how fast people manage their heat and by extension their builds!

i killed a 6 ppc stalker with the flamer on the trial commando once, even when shut down the mech can only take so much heat before taking damage

[Omaha]

Rhinehardt Ritter, on 30 April 2013 - 04:28 PM, said:

Dude. Death from Above (or highlander burial) and hitting targets while jumping is supposed to be difficult. Nobody is saying it should not be allowed. But its been really common. It shouldnt be hard, it should be VERY difficult.

There are minuses for this stuff in tabletop. For example, jumping mechs can fall and take damage. Not just to the legs, flat out on the ground. In this game, u dont save enough reaction mass, u take minor damage for blowing it

The reason its becoming a big deal now is the weps loadout highlander can carry along with the armour. A treb poptarts and get shredded. A jenner does it but doesnt have the weapons loadout. A cataphract CAN do it, but with the lower armour its not AS bad

Positives and negatives
Advantages and disadvantages

It's called BALANCE

I'll agree with what you said, and think more dmg should be done if you fall from max height or above without JJ retro fire. It isnt enough of a whoa wait let me think and not blow off my entire fuel supply. But its still not gonna stop the "jump snipe as its called" More mass from height should be more dmg, but if a chassis is built to take abuse from falls? Where is the fine line at?

Edited by Omaha, 30 April 2013 - 05:10 PM.

[oldradagast]

Just wanna play, on 30 April 2013 - 04:26 PM, said:

the stronger ppc thing is for something else dumby

That's uncalled for and unhelpful. So, the stronger PPC is "for something else" yet it'll still have an effect upon the game, so it's just making the problem worse... because boating PPC's isn't good enough?

Again, I never said boating was not a problem. Maybe heat is the issue, maybe having a ton of weapons hitting all at the same spot at the same time shouldn't be as easy to pull off (convergence changes) or do as much damage (something almost like an invincibility frame on that location?), maybe jump jets need to be addressed - supposedly, 1 is almost as good as 4, which isn't right - and so on.

But saying "well, if weapons were more powerful, you could carry a wider variety, so boating would be fixed." is simply nonsense. You can currently carry lots of different types of weapons (Well, assuming they haven't been nerfed), and yet nobody does. Why? Because having all your weapons hit the same spot at the same time with one click of the button is easier and far more effective to get kills and ALWAYS will be in a game that involves actual aiming vs. rolling dice to hit. If people have the option to boat high-convergence weapons that snipe effectively, they will do so. Making the targets of such attacks easier to kill by upping damage (which is for "something else") or reducing armor only makes the situation worse.

The "outrageous boats" are NOT the result of a need to get through all the armor effectively. The double armor IS a result of needing some way to give mechs a chance to withstand the boating that is going on and the ease of aiming vs. rolling dice to hit. Halving armor simply makes the situation worse unless you're also going to half the firepower of all the mechs in the game. It is unreal that this needs to be explained...

Edited by oldradagast, 30 April 2013 - 05:17 PM.

[Just wanna play]

oldradagast, on 30 April 2013 - 05:04 PM, said:

But saying "well, if weapons were more powerful, you could carry a wider variety, so boating would be fixed." is simply nonsense. You can currently carry lots of different types of weapons (Well, assuming they haven't been nerfed), and yet nobody does. Why? Because having all your weapons hit the same spot at the same time with one click of the button is easier and far more effective to get kills and ALWAYS will be in a game that involves actual aiming vs. rolling dice to hit. If people have the option to boat high-convergence weapons that snipe effectively, they will do so. Making the targets of such attacks easier to kill by upping damage (which is for "something else") or reducing armor only makes the situation worse.

still not understanding what im saying, im just saying they should make ppcs stronger if they dont make armor weaker, we are just saying they arent very good now UNLESS boated in large numbers, which makes them as good as they should be normally, which is why you see them boated in pairs of 6

If weapons where more powerful/armor was weaker, what im saying is that you wouldnt require as many similar weapons to get the same effect damage as boats, there fore making boats less useful, since 3 ppcs could get the job done of a 6 ppcs stalker and still have tonnage left over to put in a more varied weapon set-up else where on the mech
you could also take advantage of not needing multiple weapons of the same type to do decent damage against something with good amount of armor

sure boats will always be around, they have mechs with only one type of weapon hard point after all, so might as well balance them by making them extremely specialized and only the best option in a few select scenarios (and even more terrible for most scenarios)

This whole discussion about making weapons hurt more to "improve variety" makes about as much sense as thinking "Maybe if I don't wear my bullet-proof vest, the bad guys won't feel a need to shoot a gun at me and can instead use a wider variety of weapons instead of the guns they have."
Fail What you should be saying is "If they arent using their bullet proof vests, we can carry lighter weapons, more ammo since we can use smaller rounds, and maybe switch out our second assualt rifle for something more versatile, and still tear their limbs off in one shot!" since we are trying to get boats away from their beloved monstrosities, you don't want to portray the idea as negatives
Since less damage is needed to get the job done, instead of having two assualt rifles at the same time (we are using this as a metaphor to talk about mechs so bear with me) you could have one assualt rifle, since it would still have the same effect as having 2, but ALSO get another weapon, for longer ranges or what ever, meaning you wouldn't have to boat just to use your weapons effectively, but you still could, at the cost of versatility

Boating should NEVER be removed from the game, just have other options available to help "convince" people not to do it because there is no need since having 6 ppcs might be over kill since 3 ppcs would get the same effect

[Just wanna play]

Do you understand now?!??!?!?!

[Khan Reaper]

You are aware that if you make 3 PPC's strong enough to warrant not using 6, people will still use 6 because they will be that much more powerful, right?

[TheSteelRhino]

Of course you are missing the point here. Raise heat on ppc and erppc to where u cannot use more than 3. And 3 would be very special and require VERY good heat mgmt.

And make the penalties for overheat DIRE

U go past a certain level, heat sinks explode, mech slows, recharge time go UP, make ammo explosions more likely

[Lugh]

Franklen Avignon, on 27 April 2013 - 06:55 AM, said:

This right here. JJ "fuel" refills way too fast. Should be at least 20-30 seconds between jumps.

Yes because FORCING the boating PPC user to wait even longer between jumps so he has to cool down is sure to solve your problem of taking one to the face.

And boating isn't the problem. How you are fighting the boater is the problem.

Edited by Lugh, 30 April 2013 - 06:36 PM.

[Just wanna play]

Khan Reaper, on 30 April 2013 - 06:20 PM, said:

You are aware that if you make 3 PPC's strong enough to warrant not using 6, people will still use 6 because they will be that much more powerful, right?

Yes, but there will be fewer cases where having 6 actually has an advantage due to 3 still tearing off limbs/stripping off armor, one shotting people just as quickly, and still leaving room for other weapons, and, while you had various other more versatile options, adding 3 more ppcs would be just another option to use that would create a specialization against big slow and probably lone targets, like i said, they will always be around, and to keep the game balanced and fun, but still offer freedom, we need to not make them weaker, but make other options stronger, and imo lrms need to come back, they sure did help against 6 ppc stalkers since a light, while staying to close for the ppcs 2 hit, could call in the firepower of indirect fire artillery type weapons, and the lrm guy wouldn't be at risk either since ppcs are los weapons, since lrms require team work to use, imo they should be the strongest weapon (maybe aside from ac/20)

Balance sure is some complex stuff

Lugh, on 30 April 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

Yes because FORCING the boating PPC user to wait even longer between jumps so he has to cool down is sure to solve your problem of taking one to the face.

For the record i rarely see full on ppc boats as poptarts, i see guass rifles more often then not, ppcs dont have a very good effective range for sniping, which you can often take advantage of

[Just wanna play]

Rhinehardt Ritter, on 30 April 2013 - 06:33 PM, said:

Of course you are missing the point here. Raise heat on ppc and erppc to where u cannot use more than 3. And 3 would be very special and require VERY good heat mgmt.

And make the penalties for overheat DIRE

U go past a certain level, heat sinks explode, mech slows, recharge time go UP, make ammo explosions more likely

this 2 to help balance out the damage becoming truly like a ppc (if you people read full threads and not the most recent post you might have noticed thats been said already)

[Just wanna play]

okay maybe make 4 be the one requiring really good heat management and such because that trial 8q would screw noobies over if it was any hotter, by specialized you mean something like this right?

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c26ca1ccb24aee5

doesn't get much more ppc specialized then that, trading mobility for heat eff just so you don't blow your self up, and putting all armor in front for long range fights only

[TheSteelRhino]

Lugh, on 30 April 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

Yes because FORCING the boating PPC user to wait even longer between jumps so he has to cool down is sure to solve your problem of taking one to the face.

And boating isn't the problem. How you are fighting the boater is the problem.

haha..who said I have a problem fighting boaters.. PPC stalkers are EASY kills..super slow, if you can get in close or behind them. The ones that are the problems are the ones you don't see (night with ecm support). It's not that people don't know how to beat them. It's just...a SYMPTOM of a broken mechanic.

PPC's/ERPPC are fine rangewise for poptarting. Gauss projectile is actually a little slow imho.

Again, Poptarts aren't OP (although it's annoying if you aren't doing it and literally everyone else is..and boring). But if something is that common..something is broken.

[Tremendous Upside]

The simple solution to stopping the boating (to me) is to just increase the slot size of the weapons. There's no reason why a PPC or ERPPC should only take 3 slots. If you increased it to say "5" like the UAC5, you'll limit the number that any mech can carry without screwing around with the heat balancing. That would control how many you can mount in any component section, and it'll clamp down on the number of DHS's you can pack in to run them. Less of an issue if you're only carrying 1 or 2. A much bigger problem if you still try to run 6.

[HeroNemisis]

I have no problem blasting poptarts with uac5's or ppcs. As soon as you see them coming over a hill or cover lead them a bit and shoot. Wait til they hit peak, then do the same on the way down. Stop sitting in the same spot and they won't be able to shoot you more than you shoot them. Not sure what all the fuss is about except for people that like to boat lrms or slow ballistics... if your a brawler you need to learn to get within range of your weapons and you have designed your mech to have a major weak point. Balance your builds and its really a non-issue.

Edited by HeroNemisis, 30 April 2013 - 09:31 PM.

[Hex Pallett]

Just wanna play, on 30 April 2013 - 05:32 PM, said:

we are just saying they arent very good now UNLESS boated in large numbers,

Because it's not MEANT to be very good. I had plenty of glory moments with my beefed stock K2 BEFORE the HSR and heat reduction, simply by thinking myself as an LRM boat and chainfire the twin-PPC from afar. It's hard to grab kills with it, but the cumulative damage it can deal is tremendous. Average in my impression was 500-600, up to 100+ in really good/lengthy matchs.

It's as unlimited-ammo AC!

And you want it even stronger? You THINK people would "boat less hurr durr" if a weapon is buffed for single-use? SERIOUSLY? That would be one more f**king reason for them to boat it for f**k's sake!

Speaking of solution, I vote for JJ nerf/aiming desruption. I don't feel so strongly about heat rewinding for PPC/ERPPC, as they're still indeed great for suppressing brawlers, especially dual-AC20 Jagers. I never felt so strongly against quad-PPC Stalker/Atlas RS, or hexa-PPC Stalker, as their speed makes them easy prey for LRM and Light backstabbers. Or maybe they do need a slight heat-rewind, along with reduced projectile speed.