41 replies to this topic

[Zaptruder]

I'm proposing the use of an 'energy system' in the game - a resource limiting system that is designed primarily to limit the boating and alpha striking of weapons in the game.

Essentially, the idea is based around the amount of power that the mech can draw at any one time for its weapons.

If you were designing the game from the ground up, you might have this subsystem managed by capacitators or some such - but given that the game has to adhere to the restriction of making canon mech builds viable, the next most obvious solution is the slave the resource generation to the engine size.

The energy system that I have in mind should be a quickly replenishing system whose cap increases relative to the engine size. Larger engine allows for more capacity - and restoring from empty takes a second or two at the longest.

I think a nice easy way to do it is to have PPC = 100 energy and 400 std/xl engine = 400 energy capacity.

Additionally, as a general rule of thumb, weapons take 10 energy per point of damage to use - although this could be tweaked depending on the specifics of the weapon (streaks take more? LRMS less?)

To fire 4 PPCs at once, you need to have 400 energy. Naturally, this means mechs are limited to the most part to firing 3 PPCs at once.

If a mech is carrying 6 PPCs - then an alpha strike would result in 3 firing off - 1-2 second recharge, then the next 3 firing off.

Additionally, you could have movement drain some of the energy as well - if the jump jetting, or they're just walking, then a stalker with a 315 engine might find itself a tad short of been able to fire the third PPC. It would be forced to make the choice between mobility or extra fire power.


While some BT die hards might balk at the idea of the addition of a non-canon system, the reality is that BT never had to deal with a real time game mechanics inherent to game simulations of its universe.

So the pros of this idea is:

1. Makes some degree of sense within the canon of the universe and mech design.
2. Naturally balances high damage weapons with the tonnage of the engine required to use them.
3. Reduces or even solves alpha striking in the current meta game, while maintaining the current flexibility of mech designs.

Cons:

... I'll leave this one up to discussion.

[HeavyRain]

It is a good idea and i've seen it proposed by other people here and there, but it always seems to go unnoticed. It makes sense from a "realism" point of view, after all the 'mech's fusion reactor should be able to provide a finite amount of energy per second. I would add jump jets to the energy drain on the reactor, since it surely needs enormous amounts of power to accelerate the reaction mass necessary to lift 30-90 tons in the air.
The only con I can see is that it only applies to energy weapons and the gauss rifle. All other ballistics and missiles don't need energy to be fired, so we are back to splatcats and LRM boats and AC40 stomping in another cycle of QQ threads.

So, by all means do this, but also think about what to do with boating non-energy weapons.

[Zaptruder]

HeavyRain, on 11 May 2013 - 03:40 AM, said:

It is a good idea and i've seen it proposed by other people here and there, but it always seems to go unnoticed. It makes sense from a "realism" point of view, after all the 'mech's fusion reactor should be able to provide a finite amount of energy per second. I would add jump jets to the energy drain on the reactor, since it surely needs enormous amounts of power to accelerate the reaction mass necessary to lift 30-90 tons in the air.
The only con I can see is that it only applies to energy weapons and the gauss rifle. All other ballistics and missiles don't need energy to be fired, so we are back to splatcats and LRM boats and AC40 stomping in another cycle of QQ threads.

So, by all means do this, but also think about what to do with boating non-energy weapons.

It would affect all weapons (whether or not it makes 'real' sense for it to). But the designers and playtesters should feel free to tweak it starting with the rough rule of thumb of 1 damage = 10 energy.

[Demos]

Welcome to the BT universe.
Heat represents also the needs of the reactor (heat spikes), so instead of inventing a new system it would be sufficient to implement the heat effects (lowering speed, affecting weapon accuracy, ammo goes boom). This would affect (and limiting) boating, too.

[Strum Wealh]

Incidentally, that very system was mentioned - and used to a certain core character's advantage - in the BT novels, specifically Blood Legacy.

Quote

Phelan nodded to himself and studied the auxiliary monitor. "Gauss rifle in my left arm?"
"Great weapon. It uses magnetic currents to launch a ball of ferrous metal about the diameter of a melon. Generates next to no heat and packs one hell of a wallop. The only problem is that its power requirements are fairly heavy. If you try to shoot it and the lasers at the same time, the computer will have to cycle and allocate power, so it will take a bit longer to get your salvo off."

Quote

A fragment of something he'd heard suddenly hurtled forward into Phelan's consciousness, and it was as though a blindfold had been torn from his eyes. "Vlad isn't in control. Natasha warned me about the power requirements for a Gauss rifle. Vlad hit the triggers for everything in his first shot. He's got the Gauss rifles set up as his primary weapons, so they get first crack at the power from his fusion engines!"

(link to the e-book chapter)

According to that novel, certain weapons (notably, Gauss Rifles) had very high power requirements, and the charging priority (and, thus, cycling time) was related to which TIC ("Target Interlock Circuit"; aka Weapon Group)the weapon(s) in question linked to.

IMO, one would/should expect

• the Gauss Rifle and the PPC family to have very high energy requirements,
  
• the Laser family to have moderate-to-high energy requirements (increasing with relation to size, and with Pulse Lasers being granted slightly lower energy requirements than their Standard Laser bretheren and ER Lasers being given a slightly higher energy requirement),
  
• Flamers to have a rather low energy requirement (perhaps on par with the Small Laser?),
  
• ACs and MGs to have effectively no energy requirement (much as with modern ballistics)
  
• Missile launchers to have a somewhat low energy requirement - perhaps with the energy requirement increasing at an increasing rate as both the number of launchers (so as to help mitigate the boating of small missile launchers) and the number of missile tubes per launcher increases...?

Thoughts?

[cyberFluke]

I don't disapprove, anything to bring more thought and skill to using the weapons we have is a positive thing at the moment. I'm increasingly fed up of the easymode "alpha everything all the time" excrement we have now.

[Zyllos]

This does nothing with boating LRMs, SRMs, and ACs.

The boating problem is not just PPCs/Gauss Rifles, it just looks like that right now because it's the best way to do it.

I wide range of changes needed to be introduced to fix the problem:

Heat penalties
Change in convergence
Weapon balance tweaks
DHS dissipation rate and capacity changes
DHS penalties for smaller engines removed
Hardpoint changes

[Caustic Canid]

As stated in the thread this was lifted from, I think it could work. At this point tho, I just hope they do SOMETHING.

Zyllos, on 11 May 2013 - 08:44 AM, said:

This does nothing with boating LRMs, SRMs, and ACs.

The boating problem is not just PPCs/Gauss Rifles, it just looks like that right now because it's the best way to do it.

Missle boating isnt really a problem, nor is AC boating. Missles are greatly affected by terrain, and can be dodged by lighter mechs and mitigated by ams in groups, ACs that do any significant damage have to be fairly close to be effective. These weapons also have AMMO, and thus can only be fired so many times. They are also still effected by heat.

I do agree with heat penalties tho.

[YueFei]

Lasers are DoT weapons, so they should draw power gradually as well. I have no issue with people being able to fire multiple lasers at the same time, at least the victim has a chance to twist during the beam duration.

Missiles are supposed to be scattershot weapons, so proper flight pathing can prevent overwhelming pin-point damage from ripping mechs apart in one or two salvos.

Requiring players to manually aim individual successions of shots actually raises the skill-cap. Any fool (like myself, I am mediocre) can fire a big alpha strike and get lucky and rip the shoulder off of an enemy mech, or core out a light mech. It takes a whole lot more skill to repeatedly hit an enemy mech in the same spot over and over again with a dozen shots, instead of just two salvos.

[Zaptruder]

C'mon you nerds. This is the answer to all your PPC+Gauss+Jump Tart QQ issues. Upvote it, bump it, copy pasta it, claim it as your own idea. Do everything you can to bring this solution to the dev's attention and champion it as the panacea that it is!

Splat cats get a nerf
AC2 Jags get a nerf
Poptarts get a nerf
AC20 Jags and Cats get a nerf
Alpha strike Boating gets a nerf!

Splat cat = 300 engine typically.
SRM6 = 2 dmg * 6 missles * 10 energy = 120 energy per launch.
It means they can launch 2 SRM6 volleys every 1.6 seconds. They can launch 6xSRM6s in 4.8 seconds, just enough time to refresh the next SRM6 volley. Which is fine - it still retains the purpose for having 6xSRM6s if they so desire. They just can't launch all of it at once.

4xAC2 Jag w 300xl as an example.
AC2 = 4AC2s x 2dmg x 10energy = 80 energy per volley.
4 volleys per 2 seconds = 360 volley. Means they can't keep up their full rate of fire, so they'll either have to accept some compromise in ROF, or switch out the 4th AC2 for secondary weapons.

Poptart = 300xl + 2ERPPCs + Gauss
Volley = 100 + 100 + 150 = 350. Can't fire it all at once.
Jump Jets = 50 energy flat for duration of use
So a poptart would have to JJ, fire 1 gauss (down to 50), wait a second, then fire 2 PPCs - increasing the spread and skill required to hit the same area twice.

LRM boat = Stalker with 4xLRM15
Engine maybe 300?
1x LRM15 = 150 energy.
It'll have to wait 2 seconds between each LRM30 volley, then additional time to recharge.

AC20 Jag w/ 280xl
AC20 = 200 energy.
Simply can't fire both AC20 rounds at once - firing both will cause 1 to fire and the other to fire 1.2 seconds later.

So... they're not big nerfs - but enough to reduce the negative impact of overwhelming convergence fire. Certainly, you *can* still run boat mechs... but it also gives reason for players to build other more diverse mechs that don't rely on pure alpha striking fire power. It gives soft buffs to things like AC5s - because they don't take that much energy per second to use.

Edited by Zaptruder, 11 May 2013 - 11:08 PM.

[YueFei]

Hey man I'm on board with this idea.

If we're going to use a damage and armor model from TT, then we need a way for players under fire to take hits all around their mech, or that model breaks down.

Plus, it just fits the description of the lore and the novels with the way mechs exchange shots that strike different parts of the mechs.

And, best of all, it doesn't preclude the possibility of skilled shooting with successive shots to strike the same armor panel.

[Lobot]

I posted pretty much same thing to suggestion forums couple days ago. It stayed mostly unnoticed. I also suggested mech stability to control alphastrikes of ballistic weapons. If you try to shoot too many ballistic weapons at the same time, you just end up falling down because of high recoil. This could also be used to balance poptarting, there isn't much you can do to high recoil when flying with jetpacks.
http://mwomercs.com/...balance-alphas/

I really am not against anything that would make this game more complicated. I have always considered mechwarriors as scifi-simulators. There ain't many of those around. Some think too complicated game would scare of bigger players base, but I think it just makes it last.

[MustrumRidcully]

HeavyRain, on 11 May 2013 - 03:40 AM, said:

It is a good idea and i've seen it proposed by other people here and there, but it always seems to go unnoticed. It makes sense from a "realism" point of view, after all the 'mech's fusion reactor should be able to provide a finite amount of energy per second. I would add jump jets to the energy drain on the reactor, since it surely needs enormous amounts of power to accelerate the reaction mass necessary to lift 30-90 tons in the air.
The only con I can see is that it only applies to energy weapons and the gauss rifle. All other ballistics and missiles don't need energy to be fired, so we are back to splatcats and LRM boats and AC40 stomping in another cycle of QQ threads.

So, by all means do this, but also think about what to do with boating non-energy weapons.

The idea may sound good, but we already have heat, tonnage, critical hits and ammo requirements as limiting factors for mechs. Why add yet another factor, are we sure we cannot tweak the other factors to achieve the same?
I am sure we can - half the heat capacity of mechs, and suddenly more than 3 PPCs fired at the same time will invariably lead to an immediate shutdown.

The best alpha you can then get without shutdown would require something like 4 AC/20s or 4 Gauss Rifles. No such mech exists currently, and once one should exist, these mechs would be limited by tonnage - they couldn't carry much ammo or armour and have a very small engine. (And for the AC/20, it's also much lower range then PPCs and ER PPCs, so the typical sniper tactics stop to work. And the 2nd Quad AC/20 Alpha would overheat the mech as well, unless it could dissipate about 4+ heat per second )

Or if you don't like that, just force people to chain fire. Institute a server enforced 0.25 second global cooldown between each weapon shot, and turn Alpha Strike into a 10 second cooldown special ability that always fires all weapons in a sequence with a 0.1 second delay between each weapon.

That would be at least a lot simpler than trying to figure out how much energy certain weapons would need to drain and how much drain we maximally want a weapon to have, and then having to find a way to make sure macros, or rolling your finger over the number keys, can't circumvent the limit.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 12 May 2013 - 12:30 AM.

[Zaptruder]

MustrumRidcully, on 12 May 2013 - 12:29 AM, said:

The idea may sound good, but we already have heat, tonnage, critical hits and ammo requirements as limiting factors for mechs. Why add yet another factor, are we sure we cannot tweak the other factors to achieve the same?
I am sure we can - half the heat capacity of mechs, and suddenly more than 3 PPCs fired at the same time will invariably lead to an immediate shutdown.

The best alpha you can then get without shutdown would require something like 4 AC/20s or 4 Gauss Rifles. No such mech exists currently, and once one should exist, these mechs would be limited by tonnage - they couldn't carry much ammo or armour and have a very small engine. (And for the AC/20, it's also much lower range then PPCs and ER PPCs, so the typical sniper tactics stop to work. And the 2nd Quad AC/20 Alpha would overheat the mech as well, unless it could dissipate about 4+ heat per second )

Or if you don't like that, just force people to chain fire. Institute a server enforced 0.25 second global cooldown between each weapon shot, and turn Alpha Strike into a 10 second cooldown special ability that always fires all weapons in a sequence with a 0.1 second delay between each weapon.

That would be at least a lot simpler than trying to figure out how much energy certain weapons would need to drain and how much drain we maximally want a weapon to have, and then having to find a way to make sure macros, or rolling your finger over the number keys, can't circumvent the limit.

General rule of thumb: Max Alpha = Engine rating/10.

Pretty easy right? And as a beautiful balancing factor, the larger the alpha, the less tonnage you have to carry high alpha weapons. It adds an extra gameplay dimension to mech construction as well.

And it's not really all that arbitrary, fits in with the theme of the game and universe, while cleanly balancing the primary scourge of this game.

There are already a considerable number of non-table top factors that affect gameplay - but I don't see anyone complaining about those.

These include impulse, rate of fire, projectile speed, damage over time, etc. But we naturally accept them as part of a real time simulation of Battle Tech - which can only ever really translate the spirit of the board game anyway. One that followed the rules to a fault... would be following the rules to a fault.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

This is actually how it should work...why no game has ever done it i have no idea.

Ballistics and missiles would be exempt from the system, that gives them a nice niche to work with.
Energy Weapons and Gauss, Flamers etc would.

Edited by DV McKenna, 12 May 2013 - 01:50 AM.

[Chavette]

Sounds good to me, and I'm a popper myself(rank one too).

[Nmementh]

lol, you're forgeting one thing... Energy weapon reload times! They're not reloading ammo, they're recharging energy.
So under this system would a laser just fire continuously until the energy runs dry? (I do kinda like this idea)
Therefore would a laser be measured in damage per tick, heat per tick, energy per tick and ticks per second? (or dps/hps/eps)
Would 2 med las fire for exaclty half the time but double the damage per tick of 1 med las? (and boating comes straight back)
Would a PPC recharge almost instantly if the energy was available?
Would a 1 PPC/360XL/51 SHS atlas become a Rotary Particle Cannon? (592 armour/64.2kph)
What would be the smallest mech that could shoulder the recoil of a guass rifle? Hollander II? (45t) Hollander? (35t)
How would an AC2 (or 5) compare to an AC20? AC20 vs Gauss?
Do we really need 4 heat scales instead of 2? (heat/jets/recoil/energy)


Edit: Armor locations need to be tweaked aswell/more, it's all good having just 10 locations when you're using pens paper and dice for damage and hit locations and hit chance but when you've computers that can do that quicker than you can blink shouldn't that atlas shoulder pad be a completely different location to his side? Toe is the same piece of armor as the thigh? Why does the hunch count as the side torso when it's clearly a bolted onto of the shoulder not in front of the reactor?

Edited by Nmementh, 12 May 2013 - 02:53 AM.

[FunkyFritter]

Seems completely redundant when the heat system does pretty close to the same thing in theory. The last thing this game needs is more complexity.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

FunkyFritter, on 12 May 2013 - 03:51 AM, said:

Seems completely redundant when the heat system does pretty close to the same thing in theory. The last thing this game needs is more complexity.

That's the problem, heat is a minor problem.

And this game has no complexity.

[Grisnir]

I would do it differently , the weapons don't need power to fire but power for reloading,
so if you make and alpha strike with 6 PPC, your weapons need more time for reloading and you would probably slow like a sloth because the is no more power for movement left