41 replies to this topic

[pencilboom]

Grisnir, on 12 May 2013 - 05:15 AM, said:

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

the 6 PPC boats usually doesn't even need to move an inch once they've found their sweet camping spot

[Strum Wealh]

Zaptruder, on 11 May 2013 - 11:07 PM, said:

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.

Though, one point that was raised by both DV McKenna and myself is that the different classes of weapons would - and should - have vastly different energy requirements, such that it would not correspond to a flat damage:energy ratio.

For example, ACs and MGs should require next-to-no energy (think about how the analogous real-world weapons work; about the only thing that should require electricity - and not much of it, relative to the output of a portable self-contained fusion reactor - would be the servos to load the next shell and an electrical contact firing mechanism; the near-totality of the energy required to actually deliver the projectile to the target is stored in the shell's charge).
Likewise, both LRMs and SRMs - being far closer, respectively, in terms of size and mass to Redeyes and Stingers than to, say, Sidewinders and Hellfires - should have negligable energy requirements

By contrast, the directed-energy weapons (lasers and PPCs) should be horribly inefficient (and thus require much larger energy spikes to deal the same amount of damage per unit time) as a result of effects like blooming ("Laser beams begin to cause plasma breakdown in the air at energy densities of around a megajoule per cubic centimetre") and absorption by the atmosphere ("A laser beam or particle beam passing through air can be absorbed or scattered by rain, snow, dust, fog, smoke, or similar visual obstructions that a bullet would easily penetrate").

The Gauss Rifle, being a large weaponized coilgun, "should" have the strengths and flaws of that technology - which essentially boils down to having the energy requirements of DE weapons (cursory investigation seems to indicate that coilguns generally have between 3% and 6% efficiency, versus ~12% for a 300 KJ railgun) with the projectile effects of a ballistic weapon (no blooming/absorption effects, less susceptable to special armor types, and so on).

As such, it doesn't "make sense" (something we know the Devs take under consideration; explicitly mentioned when discussing why certain weapons don't have their TT-dictated minimum ranges while others do) for an AC/10 (essentially a slightly up-scaled tank gun) to need the same amount of energy to operate as a particle beam weapon (especially one being fired in an atmosphere), or for what is essentially a WWII field artillery piece with an autoloader (the AC/20 is basically an auto-loading version of the M115 8-inch howitzer) to require twice the amount of energy as a particle beam weapon (especially one with twice or more the range in an atmosphere).

In summary, a flat and universal "X units of damage always requires Y units of energy, regardless of the weapon" system is not optimal.

[Zaptruder]

I'm not really a fan of fake science trumping gameplay.

It's 10 energy per damage (again, as a general rule of thumb, to be modified depending on gameplay testing), because the primary intention of the system is to restrict the rate of alpha strike fire power.

If this was something that had been considered for a mechwarrior inspired game system that was designed from scratch, then what you're mentioning is fine (you'd balance other numbers and figures to provide each weapon family with a set of pros and cons). But it's a retconned system that is attempting to balance the numbers for a game system that was never concieved to be operated as a real time simulation.

The beauty of what is described is that it balances all the various boating weapon systems. How would boating be affected if this additional system only affected one family of weapons? You'd just get players boating another set of weapons, the problem it was designed to solve wouldn't be properly solved.

Think pragmatically. It's nice it has a little canon to justify it - but it's not the primary reason for justifying its existence. It's because this game desperately requires something that stops the meta game from devolving into singular role, flavour of the month weapon balance issues.

Edited by Zaptruder, 12 May 2013 - 05:46 AM.

[Grisnir]

pencilboom, on 12 May 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

the 6 PPC boats usually doesn't even need to move an inch once they've found their sweet camping spot

maybe the 6PPC boat is a bad example, but basic idea stands, if you load more high power weapons into your mech as your engine can handle, your reload time should increase

[pencilboom]

Strum Wealh, on 12 May 2013 - 05:29 AM, said:

Though, one point that was raised by both DV McKenna and myself is that the different classes of weapons would - and should - have vastly different energy requirements, such that it would not correspond to a flat damage:energy ratio.

For example, ACs and MGs should require next-to-no energy (think about how the analogous real-world weapons work; about the only thing that should require electricity - and not much of it, relative to the output of a portable self-contained fusion reactor - would be the servos to load the next shell and an electrical contact firing mechanism; the near-totality of the energy required to actually deliver the projectile to the target is stored in the shell's charge).
Likewise, both LRMs and SRMs - being far closer, respectively, in terms of size and mass to Redeyes and Stingers than to, say, Sidewinders and Hellfires - should have negligable energy requirements

By contrast, the directed-energy weapons (lasers and PPCs) should be horribly inefficient (and thus require much larger energy spikes to deal the same amount of damage per unit time) as a result of effects like blooming ("Laser beams begin to cause plasma breakdown in the air at energy densities of around a megajoule per cubic centimetre") and absorption by the atmosphere ("A laser beam or particle beam passing through air can be absorbed or scattered by rain, snow, dust, fog, smoke, or similar visual obstructions that a bullet would easily penetrate").

The Gauss Rifle, being a large weaponized coilgun, "should" have the strengths and flaws of that technology - which essentially boils down to having the energy requirements of DE weapons (cursory investigation seems to indicate that coilguns generally have between 3% and 6% efficiency, versus ~12% for a 300 KJ railgun) with the projectile effects of a ballistic weapon (no blooming/absorption effects, less susceptable to special armor types, and so on).

As such, it doesn't "make sense" (something we know the Devs take under consideration; explicitly mentioned when discussing why certain weapons don't have their TT-dictated minimum ranges while others do) for an AC/10 (essentially a slightly up-scaled tank gun) to need the same amount of energy to operate as a particle beam weapon (especially one being fired in an atmosphere), or for what is essentially a WWII field artillery piece with an autoloader (the AC/20 is basically an auto-loading version of the M115 8-inch howitzer) to require twice the amount of energy as a particle beam weapon (especially one with twice or more the range in an atmosphere).

In summary, a flat and universal "X units of damage always requires Y units of energy, regardless of the weapon" system is not optimal.

man..you're over-sophisticating something that should've been kept simple..

Edited by pencilboom, 12 May 2013 - 05:53 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

pencilboom, on 12 May 2013 - 05:52 AM, said:

man..you're over-sophisticating something that should've been kept simple..

In and of itself, it is quite simple: conventional ballistics (AC and MG) and missiles should require substantially less energy to operate than directed-energy weapons (lasers, PPCs, and flamers) and Gauss Rifles (which are known to be highly energy-intensive).

The boating of conventional ballistics is limited (outside of those few 'Mechs that were expressly designed to do so, such as the JagerMech) by the weight and bulk of the harder-hitting weapons (AC/10, LB 10-X, and AC/20), and the very poor per-salvo-damage to weight ratio of the lighter versions (AC/2 has a 1:3 D/W, AC/5 has a 5:8 D/W, UAC/5 has a 5:9 D/W) necessitating carrying more of them than most 'Mechs have appropriate hardpoints (and, generally, tonnage).
And that is just the weapons themselves - there are also the issues of needing still more tonnage for adequate ammunition stores, and the risk of ammunition explosions.

The boating of missiles (outside of those chassis that were specifically designed to do so, such as the Catapult) has similar limitations - while not as greatly hampered by the weight of the launchers themselves, the missile systems tend to have rather low DPS capabilities (LRM-20: 2.95 DPS; SRM-6: 2.25 DPS; SSRM-2: 0.86 DPS) and much the damage-to-weight issues as the conventional ballistics, in addition to not being terribly ammo efficient (aside from the Streak system), having the same concerns regarding ammo capacity and explosion risk, and generally not having the sheer number of hardpoints to effectively boat the smaller (and more efficient) models.

Energy weapons, given their commonness (many designs carry arrays of lighter lasers, which often translates into several energy hardpoints into which players stuff heavier weapons) and light weight and lack of ammo requirement (making them more efficient and less risky), are far more easily boated, even on those chassis that weren't explicitly designed to be "energy boats" (example: AS7-RS as a x4 PPC boat).
Additionally, and for the reasons preciously described, energy weapons "should" "logically/sensibly" be less energy-efficient than their more conventional counterparts (thus, requiring more energy per unit of damage).

----------

To put some numbers to the proposal:

MG: 0.10 energy per damage (EN/DMG)
ACs (all classes): 0.20 EN/DMG
LRMs: 0.30 EN/missile
SRMs:0.40 EN/missile
Flamer: 0.50 EN/DMG
Lasers (all classes): 1.00 EN/DMG
Gauss Rifle: 1.10 EN/DMG
PPC (all classes):1.20 EN/DMG

AMS: 0.10 EN/sec
Artemis: 0.20 EN/sec per launcher
Beagle: 0.30 EN/sec
Guardian: 0.40 EN/sec
Narc: 0.50 EN/Missile
TAG: 0.20 EN/Sec

Speed: 0.1 EN/sec per kph (while moving)
Jump Jets: 0.1 EN/sec per Jump Jet (while triggered)
Standard Heat Sinks: 0.10 EN/sec per SHS
Double Heat Sink: 0.20 EN/sec per DHS

Engine capacitor pool/reserve: (25 * (rating/tonnage)) energy units
Engine capacitor charge rate: (rating/25) energy units per second

Thoughts?

Edited by Strum Wealh, 12 May 2013 - 09:15 AM.

[Child3k]

I'd favor different hardpoint-sizes over this solution here. And - the guys who was like "Don't make it more complicated" is absolutely right - even if his argument got ruled out quickly. People on this forum only think from their perspective which is the "nerd"-perspective. Most ppl playing the game are casuals and MWO is a free to play title.
So the rule od thumb should be: Make it easy to learn and hard to master. Which in part means: Keep game mechanics along the lines of real-life logic

Edited by Child3k, 12 May 2013 - 08:03 AM.

[Nmementh]

Neverfar, on 12 May 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

Think of it instead like capacitor versus power in EVE Online.

One attribute limited how much could be installed and "powered" at the same time, but another attribute gagued the energy storage that could be applied to any of these devices in a given period before recharging.

A power plant does not have anywhere near all of its potential energy available at once.

A TRO AWS-8Q runs a 240 fusion engine which provides enough power to run the awesome at 54kph and charge 3 PPCs and power 28 heat sinks every ten seconds, this is BT's energy tracking system in a pen and paper game. MWO like previous MW titles before it adopted universal recycle times as it's energy tracking system, probably because older games didnt have the storage space or system power for a complicated energy system and following games copied...
MWO's PPC charging time using the awesome as a base point (ignoring the small laser) dictates that on a 240 (ignoring movement and HS which would change the energy available) 3 PPCs take 3 seconds to charge, and if the number of the engine rating is proporational to it's energy output a 360 fusion engine can do it in 2 seconds. To further complicate things the ppc would use a ring accelerator to energise and store each bolt so even a charged PPC would require energy from the reactor to maintain a "ready" weapon making shutdowns somewhat more dangerous and single PPC builds fire even faster.

A standard laser in MWO fires a "continuous" beam (a tick representing a charge/discharge cycle of the capacitators) so if we move away from the PnP system into a power tracked system the laser would continue to fire so long as there is energy available. Even the pulse laser would be able to do this although it would run a different cycle (IE 3 ticks off 1 tick on) and deal more damage over time than the other lasers.
If the engine can supply X energy per second, the mech can hold Y energy and the weapon drain Z energy per second then the laser can fire for upto YX/Z seconds (or forever if supply exceeds demand).

An energy system is a good idea and it's always bugged me that these and other games tend not to run them, however it is a core mechanic and would take months of coding to change. Even after that if implemented every single weapon would have to be redesigned and rebalanced (with more variables it becomes even harder) with many many more unintended cheese builds popping up and more QQ. Unfortunately it wont happen in this game, maybe in 10 years the next one...

[Belorion]

heat is already a limiting factor.

Edited by Belorion, 12 May 2013 - 08:48 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

Belorion, on 12 May 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

heat is already a limiting factor.

As are mass (tonnage), volume (criticals), recycle time, rounds per ton, convergence time, lock-on time, armor limits, and engine rating caps.

Why shouldn't energy capacity/generation also be a(nother) limiting factor?

[MustrumRidcully]

Strum Wealh, on 12 May 2013 - 09:21 AM, said:

As are mass (tonnage), volume (criticals), recycle time, rounds per ton, convergence time, lock-on time, armor limits, and engine rating caps.

Why shouldn't energy capacity/generation also be a(nother) limiting factor?

Why add another factor?

KISS - Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Can you figure out why the existing elements cannot limit alpha capability enough?

Just as an example - imagine we had twice the armour we have now. Would people still find 2 60 damage alphas in a row followed by a 10 second cool-off period impressive?
Imagine our heat capacity was set to 30. Would people still play PPC boat if they'd shut down on every shot, and how would others fear such mechs?

[jakucha]

Demos, on 11 May 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

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.

I disagree with ammo exploding, but I do agree that an expanded heat system would be pretty useful and just a "cool" thing in general to add to the complexity of the game, making it a bit more sim-like.

Edited by jakucha, 12 May 2013 - 09:37 AM.

[Zaptruder]

MustrumRidcully, on 12 May 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Why add another factor?

KISS - Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Can you figure out why the existing elements cannot limit alpha capability enough?

Just as an example - imagine we had twice the armour we have now. Would people still find 2 60 damage alphas in a row followed by a 10 second cool-off period impressive?
Imagine our heat capacity was set to 30. Would people still play PPC boat if they'd shut down on every shot, and how would others fear such mechs?

And how would these affect other non-alpha striking builds?

[Strum Wealh]

MustrumRidcully, on 12 May 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Why add another factor?

KISS - Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Can you figure out why the existing elements cannot limit alpha capability enough?

Just as an example - imagine we had twice the armour we have now. Would people still find 2 60 damage alphas in a row followed by a 10 second cool-off period impressive?
Imagine our heat capacity was set to 30. Would people still play PPC boat if they'd shut down on every shot, and how would others fear such mechs?

The other limiting factors fail to sufficiently "limit alpha capability" because 1.) several of them do not directly affect the "alpha capability" as an energy system would, and 2.) those that do are not limiting enough.

• Convergence is fast enough, and locking times short enough, that it becomes a near non-issue against all but the fastest of 'Mechs.
  
• The heat cap is high enough, and dissipation fast enough, that heat levels that should cause automatic and unavoidable shutdown become a minor and fleeting annoyance.
  
• The recycle times are short enough (and all close enough to one another) that firing everything all at once doesn't leave one effectively weaponless (and, thus, vulnerable) for a significant period.
  
• The damage-to-armor ratio is such that sacrificing a given tonnage of armor to mount multiple heavy, "high-alpha" weapons doesn't affect 'Mech survivability to as great a degree (which makes builds like the twin-AC/20 and twin-Gauss Catapults and JagerMechs and six-PPC Stalkers much safer - and thus more viable - than they would otherwise be).
  
• The lack of maintenance and repair costs (note: the removal of a limiting factor!) and other consistent c-bill sinks allows for those same "high alpha" weapons (which also tend to be the more expensive weapons) and substantial amounts of ammunition to be much more readily available in much larger numbers.
  
• The engine cap only really works against such builds in one direction - it limits the maximum speed attainable by such builds, but it does not limit to as great a degree the amount of tonnage that can be freed by downsizing the Engine (which several of the "high-alpha" builds are dependent upon) rather than forcing a change to the lighter-but-more-vulnerable (and much more expensive) XL model.

While they could "simply" remove the aforementioned "slack" from the system by addressing the above, the addition of another factor (in this case, an energy system) introduces an additional layer of complexity - of challenge - to the 'Mech creation process as well as the combat process (as opposed to mainly, if not totally, affecting only the latter), provides additional novelty (as an energy system, a relatively common in several other same/near-genre games, has been generally absent from the MW series), and provides an additional safeguard against the very hyper-focused builds that become the "FOTM" style currently being railed against.

[Cochise]

...and boating is a problem why?

Oh wait, some people dont like it...

Well, that is what the heat system is for and yes, it does work according to me.

[MustrumRidcully]

Zaptruder, on 12 May 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

And how would these affect other non-alpha striking builds?

Doubling the armour would put the onus on all mechs to run more heat efficient, because you need to fire longer to kill a mech, and it's a bit dumb to shut down while the enemy is only half down.
This is definitely not my favorite idea, because it makes combat a lot slower. I think, at least without the alpha strike mechs in place - the combat pace is nice.

Lowering the heat capacity does also require more heat efficient mechs. Which is why I usually combine this with an increase to the heat dissipation. The Alpha Strike builds still can't strike without overheating, but the builds that are already build more around chain-firing and mixing weapon types don't change much - it's not like they didn't benefit of the heat cap, they just didn't utilize it as effectively as alpha boats.
The alpha/boat competitors now also resort to chain-fire, so mixing two weapons with two different "flight" properties (e.g. hit-scan beam with duration vs projectiles with different speeds vs homing/lock based) can cause less drawbacks in terms of convergence.

I'd say before we try to add a completely different subsystem, we should try using the existing ones.

But we must do something. Just trying to tweak the PPC heat again will probably just fail. I mean ,maybe we get rid of the PPC boats, but only because the PPC is now useless. We haven't improved the situation.

I am not really sure PGI is willing to do anything big on this topic. But if they aren't...

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 13 May 2013 - 04:04 AM.

[Butane9000]

Rather then have a limit I'd rather the energy gauge effected recharge speed of energy weapons.

Ideally your energy "resource" would be tied into your engine. So a Standard 350 engine would supply 350 energy or "power." Now I don't think PPCs or Large Lasers should take an inordinately huge amount of power. Instead the easiest way I see this being balanced is energy weapons draw power equal to twice their damage. So an ERPPC and PPC take 20 power to fire. A medium laser would take 10 and a small laser would take 6.

Power would regenerate base on how much energy is missing and the current speed of the mech. Ideally 1 power would regenerate every 1.5-5 seconds depending on how much power has been drained. Another option is to have the heat level effect the power restoration/recharge speed.

Now missile weapons and ballistic weapons should tie into this system as well. However they aren't really effected like energy weapons are. So instead of having a reload/recycle speed impact let's say reloading the ammunition for these weapons is .25-1 energy per ammunition and that they would drain power at equal to double their tonnage. So a Gauss rifle would take 15-30 power to fire. While this would lead people who like energy weapons to boat energy weapons and forgo all ballistics and missile slots we could alternate it so that the power used by these weapon systems recharge at a faster rate.

The idea with this system is a Misery sporting 4 PPCs and a Gauss rifle would require 95-110 power to fire all of them at once. This would drastically drain their mechs power and lead to increased recycle speed of their PPCs before they could be fired again.

But it is an interesting idea and I hope PGI takes a serious look at it.

[Apoc1138]

we already have an "energy system"... heat being generated is as a direct result of the engine needing to output more energy to power weapons etc.

does heat need more balancing effort? yes
do we need a whole 'nuther layer of abstraction in a vain attempt at rebalancing properly instead of this? no

[Lostdragon]

I like the way you are thinking, OP, but I have to agree with the folks who say the existing heat system should be modified to accomplish the same thing. PGI has way too much stuff that is incomplete or completely broken to try to implement a new system this late in the game. I think it would be much easier to accomplish your goals by adjusting the heat cap, making heat sinks not increase the cap, and increase the dissipation of heat sinks.

[Zyllos]

I have to agree on this that another system that is made up and balanced independent of BT is not a good way to go about this.

Tweaking of the current systems should be the way forward.

Adding additional hardpoint restrictions, more emphasis on the heat mechanics, modifying weapon convergence, and further tweaking the numbers is where we should focus.