32 replies to this topic

[MuonNeutrino]

Lightfoot, on 29 April 2013 - 03:37 AM, said:

Right now, long range effectiveness vs short range is correct. Long range beats short range on open maps and short range easily beats long range in cities, tunnels, anywhere you can force a short range battle really.

Except... it doesn't, really. Unless you're packing double ac20, a sniper who's a good shot at range is still almost as deadly up close. All it takes is to have one weakened area on your mech and you're going to be down half your guns after the first shot.

The problem, I think, is the hit SRMs took recently. For short range mechs to trump long range ones up close, the short range mech needs to actually have a damage advantage once it gets into range, and right now SRMs don't cut it. SRMs were the primary close range option for mediums and lights, and heavies and assaults tend to be hardpoint limited enough that they also need powerful missiles to actually outweigh the snipers.

[Teralitha]

Stargoat, on 28 April 2013 - 05:42 PM, said:

keep beating that drum, no-one cares or takes you seriously. Just think about what you're advocating.

No... YOU think about it. I am the only one around here advocating a REAL solution.

[Karl Streiger]

Stretch the ranges...keeping the rest...will make real long range combat very interesting.
Now your target isn't that big at 1600m...with given "visual" enhancement it will nearly impossible to hit same target at 3200m.

SRMs with range of 540m
LRMs with range of 2000m.

More long range combat but with increased difficult

[Elfman]

As far as I am concerned the main issue is the present heat system which rewards high alpha then cool down over a more steady DPS and heat meta.

If they lowered the heat cap or removed the fact that heat sinks add to the limit and increased the heat dissipation a single 6 ppc alpha would auto over heat a mech and would be at least worth testing. Chain firing PPC's and only using Alpha as a last ditch option would produce more over all DPS with a lower cap.

A stalker on a hill shut down due to over heat is dead.

As for pop tarts add more heat to JJ's - a highlander with only a Gauss and 1 PPC as thats all it can us with out shutting down is not that much of a threat.

Just my 2 pence

[Anton Shiningstar]

Davers, on 28 April 2013 - 02:47 PM, said:

Lots of talk about PPcs and Gauss these days. People want to raise the heat, add JJ 'shake', and slow down the PPC's velocity.

Do we want to have effective long range builds? Should it be very difficult to engage anyone over 540m? Would everyone be happier if we went back to all medium lasers and SRMs?

My basic ride is a AC20 Jager. I have had some good matches in a Gauss version, Combat comes in at least two flavors, Long and short range. Knife fighters are complaining cause we need to get close to do our job. But what some of us are missing is we need the long range o pound the enemy's brawlers. Get used to folks using range.

[Roughneck45]

Make the JJ's give slight shake while in use so that shots from 800m out are difficult to land, but mechs using JJ's in a brawl can still land their shots.

Make PPc's their original heat values, or somwhere inbetween what it was then and what it is now.

They got their heat buff because they were weak. They were weak because they would splash damage and often hits would not register.

They have pretty much fixed both of those issues, but the PPC still retains it's heat buff.

If I was PGI, id be patching and tweaking numbers every week. It's a "beta" so let us test.

Edited by Roughneck45, 29 April 2013 - 05:22 AM.

[Nauht]

Teralitha, on 29 April 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

No... YOU think about it. I am the only one around here advocating a REAL solution.

Yes quit it. your solution isnt even a solution. Ain't gonna happen.

You got an argument if it was set in 3025 but in this time period, Dhs were very common - and last I checked my spinning holo it said 3050. Unless you advocate deviating even more than as is from the BT world - which you may as well call it World of Stomping Robots rather than a MW title.

We get clans invading this time period and that's part of BT lore as well. They were all jacked up on even better dhs than what we got now.

So no, you can't get rid of dhs. They're iconic as the ppc in the BT/MW world. So your "solution" sucks.

[Anton Shiningstar]

Teralitha, on 29 April 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

No... YOU think about it. I am the only one around here advocating a REAL solution.

Knee jerk reactions are seldom a true solution.

[Nauht]

Roughneck45, on 29 April 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

Make the JJ's give slight shake while in use so that shots from 800m out are difficult to land, but mechs using JJ's in a brawl can still land their shots.

Make PPc's their original heat values, or somwhere inbetween what it was then and what it is now.

They got their heat buff because they were weak. They were weak because they would splash damage and often hits would not register.

They have pretty much fixed both of those issues, but the PPC still retains it's heat buff.

If I was PGI, id be patching and tweaking numbers every week. It's a "beta" so let us test.

Ppcs were never, ever splash damage. They originally had a splash impact graphic but it was always single target location. However they did have a big *** beam and that actual impact hit was massive - I'm talking about the size of a raven head. This lead to shots hitting 2 components often.
In cb they reduced the beam size and impact to a more laser like effect and added the GR impact hit graphic.

Ad ppl could hit with them fine before the state rewind - you just had to learn how, which most ppl could not grasp... hence the early calls to make them hitscan.

[Roughneck45]

Nauht, on 29 April 2013 - 05:39 AM, said:

Ppcs were never, ever splash damage. They originally had a splash impact graphic but it was always single target location. However they did have a big *** beam and that actual impact hit was massive - I'm talking about the size of a raven head. This lead to shots hitting 2 components often.
In cb they reduced the beam size and impact to a more laser like effect and added the GR impact hit graphic.

Ad ppl could hit with them fine before the state rewind - you just had to learn how, which most ppl could not grasp... hence the early calls to make them hitscan.

Hitting 2 components made it similar to splash damage, which made it weak.

I know it was possible to hit with them, but many players had a ton of lag issues along with everything else in this game, so they gave it HSR. Wasn't really a matter of "learning".

They buffed heat to compensate for other issues. The other issues were fixed, and the heat is still buffed.

Edited by Roughneck45, 29 April 2013 - 06:02 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Teralitha, on 29 April 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

No... YOU think about it. I am the only one around here advocating a REAL solution.

No, you're just believing that you have a solution, but you just replace one problem with another problem.

[MaddMaxx]

So the question then becomes.

If Short works @Short range and Long works @ Long and Short (erPPC and Gauss) how do we get the Longs to not work so well @ Short ranges?

The PPC has a Minimum, get inside that and it becomes useless.

The erPPC has no Minimum but is a Heat beast to use in # in Close combat. 1-2 misses and things go south quickly.

The Gauss has 3 Health, get to that and BOOM, it goes away easily.

The AC20 is very powerful but Short range. Good to go when it gets in range of both the PPC and Gauss equipped units. (the ability to get there is not a game play issue imho)

So, what to do about this supposed Imbalance between Long and Short? Give the erPPC a minimum? Against the Canon. Increase its Heat? Already hot when confronted in close.

Ideas, other than stupid ones that remove entire entities from the current Meta.

How about changes to those additional ranges and or increase damage drop off for certain weapons.

ALA,

Quote

minRange="0" longRange="810" maxRange="1620"

Instead of no damage @ 1620, the drop off to 25% = 1205m.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 29 April 2013 - 06:33 AM.

[Zyllos]

I think PPCs type weapons have too high DPS, which makes them effective in brawls due to both high DPS and localized damage. Heat is circumvented by being able to fire all weapons if your going to shutdown or just removing a single weapon and adding more heatsinks to allow for more shots.

I would start with the base idea that regular Lasers are at a good point. I think the community can agree with that. Based around that, this is what I would do to weapons:

Ballistic:

AC/2 > Reduce heat by 0.5 (to 0.5)
AC/5 > Reduce cooldown by 0.6 (to 1.1)
UAC/5 > Modify the jamming mechanic to be less often but longer in jamming cooldown
AC/10 > No change
LBX/10 > Reduce spread by a lot
AC/20 > No change
Machine Gun > Increase damage by 0.06 (to 0.1)?
Gauss Rifle > No change

Energy:

Small Laser > No change
Small Pulse Laser > Decrease cooldown by 0.25 (to 2.0), increase damage by 0.5 (to 3.5)
Medium Laser > No change
Medium Pulse Laser > Decrease cooldown by 0.5 (to 2.5), decrease beam duration by 0.25 (to 0.5)
Large Laser > No change
Large Pulse Laser > Decrease cooldown by 0.5 (to 3.0), decrease beam duration by 0.25 (to 0.5), increase heat by 0.7 (to 8.0)
ER Large Laser > Decrease heat by 0.5 (to 9.0), decrease beam duration by 0.25 (to 0.75)
PPC > Increase heat by 1.0 (to 9.0), increase cooldown by 2.0 (to 5.0)
ERPPC > Increase heat by 1.0 (to 12.0), increase cooldown by 2.0 (to 5.0)

Missile:

LRM/5 > Decrease cooldown by 1.75 (to 2.0), increase speed by 150m/s (to 250m/s)
LRM/10 > Decrease cooldown by 0.75 (to 3.0), increase speed by 150m/s (to 250m/s), decrease heat by 1.0 (to 3.0)
LRM/15 > Decrease cooldown by 0.25 (to 4.0), increase speed by 150m/s (to 250m/s)
LRM/20 > Increase cooldown by 0.25 (to 5.0), increase speed by 150m/s (to 250m/s)
SRM/2 > Decrease cooldown by 1.5 (to 2.0)
SSRM/2 > Decrease cooldown by 0.5 (to 3.0)
SRM/4 > Decrease cooldown by 0.75 (to 3.0)
SRM/6 > No change

The ballistics are really close to where they need to be. We still only have a few issues with some of the weapons in those categories. Like the Machine Gun for starters, yes, a damage increase would make them more viable but they do need to stay as critical seekers. Maybe increasing them to 0.1 per bullet (DPS of 1.0) along with keeping their critical damage would help them greatly. It still makes it worthless in removing armor (1 point of armor every 1.0s if all the bullets hit the same location). Interestingly, I wonder how the Machine Gun would perform with that increase and was boated.

The LBX still needs a lot of work on spread but PGI is already planning on doing this. The AC/2 needs it's heat decreased to be only slightly hotter than the AC/5. The AC/5 needs to match the UAC/5 cooldown. I was originally going to decrease the cooldown of the Gauss Rilfe but maybe it's not needed.

Energy weapons, beyond the regular lasers, need a lot of work. Pulse lasers need more of a bonus in their accuracy, so that is why I reduced the beam duration by another 33% (to 50% of regular lasers). I also decreased their cooldown by a bit so that they can keep a steady, high DPS. Interestingly, this makes the Small Pulse Laser a good competator against the Medium Laser. Higher DPS and accuracy for lower range. But this does make the Small Laser fairly underpowered, but the weapon has always been in a small niche.

PPCs will have the same treatment as the Gauss Rifle, lowered DPS, while increasing their heat by a bit. Of course, their overall heat per second is greatly reduced but for those weapons, it really doesn't matter. It's all dependent on how much heat they instantly produce.

Missiles are kinda on the fence until we know what they are going to do with the missile hotfix. I suspect them to stay pretty close to their damage right now but with removed splash. So, SRMs will end up dealing 2.0 and LRMs 1.0 is what I expect. They will increase the speed on LRMs so that they are much more accurate to fast targets and make targets of LRMs want to get into cover quickly or take a face full of missiles.

I greatly reduced the cooldown of smaller launchers. This adds more DPS to their type but AMS really hurts the smaller LRMs (AMS will need a RoF or damage increase to keep it in line with the new LRM speeds, which will make them more effective to SSRMs/SRMs). The lower cooldown is greatly needed for the SRM/2. The decrease in heat for LRM/10 is to bring it more inline with the other launchers. The LRM/10 is double the heat and more than double the tonnage as an LRM/5. This makes the LRM/10 weaker overall, thus a slight heat adjustment is needed on it.

SSRMs, when the spread gets back to normal with new damage (and no splash), should have a minor decrease in cooldown and increase in heat. But this is a hard one to gauge because SSRMs still dominate the Light vs Light scene, but the increase in AMS RoF or damage would really hurt SSRMs. If AMS almost guaranteed a missile destroyed at close range and will destroy 2 of them at close to maximum range, I bet you would start to see a shift in AMS on Lights to counter SSRMs.

Also, NARC/TAG/GECM still need their interactions reworked. NARC needs a significant buff. I would suggest starting by removing the damage removal threshold and increasing the duration by 15.0s (to 30.0s). GECM is still going to counter it. And NARC is very heavy for it's bonus and hard to hit with at times unless you want to literally get into someone's face.

With this change, TAG will need the range reduced back to 450m. TAG and NARC should be something that is utilized on the same mech for scouting and support purposes. The LRM wielders should not be able to sit back and TAG a target and fire unless you willing to get close to the target. TAG should never be counted by GECM (and only indirectly by AECM).

GECM still needs the AoE stealth removed or greatly reduced. I would suggest one of two methods. Removing the stealth all together for mechs within 180m (the mech with GECM is still stealthed) but leaving the lockon time increased. Or reduce sensor decrease to 50% (seeing mechs at 400m increase of 200m) but remove the LRM lockon time increase (again, the GECM equipped mech is still stealthed).

AECM, when it comes, will be 100% blocking all missile locks but provides no stealth, even against TAG. Both systems counter Artemis IV and NARC.

Either way, this is my overall suggestions on balancing the effective long range to short range.

Edited by Zyllos, 29 April 2013 - 07:26 AM.