11 replies to this topic

[HRR Mary]

So today we have PPC boats, yesterday was SRM, previously SSRM, Medlas... etc...

I use a few of them, and the effectiveness is undeniable, although you need to be conscious of your weaknesses, or have a backup weapon.

Most of the suggestions I have seen are to nerf the accused weapons themselves. The few proposal to counter boating multiple similar weapons (that in effect become one giant "Super-weapon") were rebuffed with much arguing.

- Cone Of Fire : most critics were that it "removed the skill" in the game
- Heat Increase : With the actual mechanics of Heat (no hard heat cap) it can be circumvented.

I have searched a bit, and not found the following proposal around :

What if boating multiple weapons of the same type increased their recharge rate?

In the Lore, it could be explained because the Fusion generator would be tailored to power the "Stock" weapon load, and multiple tweaking would lessen it's effectiveness.

In game, it would generate a cumulative increase to ROF of each weapon that are grouped together, or fired together.
Example : A Huncback P, with it's 9 medlas.
=> All weapons in the same group OR Alpha strike : Recharge time increased by 50%
=> 2 groups : Recharge time Increased by '25%' per group
=> 3 groups : Recharge time increased by 12.5 per group
(the number are there as placeholders, they are not definitive).

Of course, boating PPCS and Medlas are two different things : The PPC is less impacted as it is longer range, and can cope better with a reduced ROF.

To counter that, the "boating penalty" should be increasing with the damage output of weapons.
Ex : A 6 ERPPC Stalker would have it's recharge time increased by 100% (again placeholder)

Of course that means the above 6 ERPPC stalker could theorically better cope with heat generation, since it has more time between shots, but in effect it reduces drastically it's DPS, even better than the actual heat limitations.

What do you think of it? any ideas to improve upon that one?

[Karl Streiger]

HRR Mary, on 29 April 2013 - 02:33 AM, said:

- Cone Of Fire : most critics were that it "removed the skill" in the game

You don't believe that argument didn't you?


Generally speaken yes. Every Reactor has an energy output of X...featuring a bigger one means more energy...smaller one less energy.
Every Weapon that need recharge...Gauss- Energyweapon reduce the pool of available energy.
Its not jus boating ... it has to affect every Mech. A Mech with Gauss, PPC, Large Laser and 2 Medium Laser will still have this affect after firing all of his weapons. Because of its diferent aiming and range profile it could be not that kind of concern.

But I ask my self how to explain that with missiles? Only penalty would be the increased heat..per shot.
What of autocannons?

Maybe energy weapons with reload time and ballistic (not Gauss and MG) and missiles with heat based on the stock weapons heat creation at that location. (JaegerMechs have dissipation of 2 heat in arms)

Edited by Karl Streiger, 29 April 2013 - 02:56 AM.

[Critical Fumble]

Interesting, but wouldn't it run into the same limitation as the increased heat one? You delay the second alpha, but it still comes hammering down. In fact it would only disadvantage alpha brawlers, wouldn't it? Snipers stay backed off and can take advantage of cover or serpentine maneuvers during cooldown, but brawlers stay exposed and would have to chainfire for DPS or alpha to sucker-punch.

[HRR Mary]

Karl Streiger, on 29 April 2013 - 02:56 AM, said:

You don't believe that argument didn't you?

I do believe that Cone of fire, with the implementation stated by fellow unit member HRR Insanity, would be working, and would take real skill to master. I'm pretty sure it would return some balance to the game, and all around more adherence to the "spirit" of battletech.

Karl Streiger, on 29 April 2013 - 02:56 AM, said:

Generally speaken yes. Every Reactor has an energy output of X...featuring a bigger one means more energy...smaller one less energy.
Every Weapon that need recharge...Gauss- Energyweapon reduce the pool of available energy.
Its not jus boating ... it has to affect every Mech. A Mech with Gauss, PPC, Large Laser and 2 Medium Laser will still have this affect after firing all of his weapons. Because of its diferent aiming and range profile it could be not that kind of concern.

But I ask my self how to explain that with missiles? Only penalty would be the increased heat..per shot.
What of autocannons?

Maybe energy weapons with reload time and ballistic (not Gauss and MG) and missiles with heat based on the stock weapons heat creation at that location. (JaegerMechs have dissipation of 2 heat in arms)

Missiles need guidance system, reload systems, and fire control => all that needs energy. Given the current lock Mechanism (you have to keep lock to hit) it means also some kind of "remote control" (wich needs energy as well).

Autocannons : Reloading, weapon servos to aim (moving a 200mm tube around in a controlled fashion on a moving battlemech should be energy taxing)

Remember that when thinking about that solution, I was re-reading TROs which mentionned how taxing some weapons were on the system, or how a medlas could, or could not, be added to that particular section of a mech.

Critical Fumble, on 29 April 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

Interesting, but wouldn't it run into the same limitation as the increased heat one? You delay the second alpha, but it still comes hammering down. In fact it would only disadvantage alpha brawlers, wouldn't it? Snipers stay backed off and can take advantage of cover or serpentine maneuvers during cooldown, but brawlers stay exposed and would have to chainfire for DPS or alpha to sucker-punch.

The heat limitation is not functionning : you can stay indefinitely in the high 90% heat without drawback, and PGI seems content with teh current implementation of heat. Hence : you need another way force the player to consider how he fires his weapons.

Snipers won't be prevalent, as the real useful weapons for sniping are the gauss and PPC, which have massive damage and with the current proposal would actually suffer the most from boating. One could even consider that a gauss should tax out more the power system when used in conjunction with the PPCs...

As for a brawler : if he is exposed, then he is toast, no matter what is in front of him. The role of the "brawler" is to get into a position where he can actually do damage without taking too much himself, while being still supported by his team.

[3rdworld]

Can't I subjugate the entire penalty by triggering them in pretty quick succession with a macro or something of that nature?

You could just lower the heat cap, and buff the heck out of dissipation. Then any high heat alpha will overheat you, because heat is generated instantly, but staggering the shots will not. Which makes dps a better stat as shot windows will have to increase. That is also correct with lore, as in BT you only had a cap of 30 but much more dissipation than we do currently.

Edited by 3rdworld, 29 April 2013 - 04:22 AM.

[HRR Mary]

I would be all for a Hard Cap on Heat, so that firing more than 2 ppcs together would instantly shut you down.

Unfortunately, one of the DEVs (not Paul, as he is working too hard on MachineGuns and ECM) I met ingame told me that the Heat mechanism would probably not be changed.

Effectively, firing in rapid succession would essentially permit moving around the restriction, with the current implementation, giving Macroing a place it does not deserve (skill != macro).

A way to prevent this would be the redifinition of groups as "firing in the same timeframe". so the closer you fire your weapons, the larger the penalty... (rough idea, off the top of my head).

[Ashvins]

Why give boaters a built in heat management system?

This suggestion does nothing to curb the excesses of boating that we see in game. Building the code so that people could not circumvent it would be way too time extensive and the devs have better things to do (like fixing the hud bug's) than implement something like this.

[3rdworld]

HRR Mary, on 29 April 2013 - 04:44 AM, said:

I would be all for a Hard Cap on Heat, so that firing more than 2 ppcs together would instantly shut you down.

Unfortunately, one of the DEVs (not Paul, as he is working too hard on MachineGuns and ECM) I met ingame told me that the Heat mechanism would probably not be changed.

Effectively, firing in rapid succession would essentially permit moving around the restriction, with the current implementation, giving Macroing a place it does not deserve (skill != macro).

A way to prevent this would be the redifinition of groups as "firing in the same timeframe". so the closer you fire your weapons, the larger the penalty... (rough idea, off the top of my head).

2 IMO would be too few. 3 should be about the sweet spot, and 4 requires some stagger firing. Granted this doesn't alleviate the 3ppc gauss highlander (but it should have never gotten an extra energy in the first place).

[HRR Mary]

Ashvins, on 29 April 2013 - 05:08 AM, said:

Why give boaters a built in heat management system?

This suggestion does nothing to curb the excesses of boating that we see in game. Building the code so that people could not circumvent it would be way too time extensive and the devs have better things to do (like fixing the hud bug's) than implement something like this.

Look carefully, there is no heat management actually : you go from 0 to 99, wait a bit, and go from 0 to 99 again. No drawback of running hot (remember in BT, one would start rolling for Ammo explosion at 10 heat, and movement and aim got reduced as well).

Basically, with that system you force a firing delay : instead of two 6PPC Alpha in 3 secs, you get it in 5 secs, meaning you have 2 more second to either kill it, or duck for cover.

3rdworld, on 29 April 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

2 IMO would be too few. 3 should be about the sweet spot, and 4 requires some stagger firing. Granted this doesn't alleviate the 3ppc gauss highlander (but it should have never gotten an extra energy in the first place).

I'm basing that on "the Lore".... The Fluff text of the Awesome states that it requires to fire it's PPC in a "Two out of Three" fashion, to avoid shutting down...

I know, Lore is usually not that good for balancing, but I was tossing numbers around to see if this idea is viable.

[Ph30nix]

if im piloting a 100 ton mech and it cant handle the recoil from a 7 ton weapon im firing thats a friggin problem. Any idea that causes my shots to NOT go where my target recticle is pointing is game breakingly ********. I don't want to play a game where i have to depend on random chance to hit what i want to hit especially when i already hae heat and ammo to worry about anyways.

I dont understand why people keep forgetting that Mechwarrior has ALWAYS had its boats, there are mechs built from the start with the idea of boating even the clan created boat mechs.

Boats walk into a fight with weaknesses that are easily exploited you just need to know what they are.

Every idea ive heard to "nerf" boats would end up causing so much collateral damage its not even funny, I mean people like to put that they would just have a limit for X number of weapons causing the desired nerf effect to happen. This number is usualy 3-4 some have been as harsh as more than ONE of a weapon gets you zapped.
What about the Jenner? the majority of its load outs depend on the medium laser which is usualy 4+ of them.

Boats are fine learn to deal with them.

[Adridos]

Ph30nix, on 29 April 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

I don't want to play a game where i have to depend on random chance to hit what i want to hit especially when i already hae heat and ammo to worry about anyways.

Convergence set manually by scroll wheel... sorry, your point about random was?

[Gallowglas]

I think there are some problems with your proposal. For instance, why should a Spider with two medium lasers in a weapon group suffer a penalty?