6 replies to this topic

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I propose that weapon cool down rates be one of the first places for balance adjustments.

Hear me out. What was the number one problem weapon after the smaller laser weapons had their heat adjusted? The Gauss Rifle. How did PGI fix it? They reduced its rate of fire (in addition to making it far more vulnerable). Despite some people who continue to complain about the Gauss, I believe that it is in a good place balance-wise right now.

Consider Streak missiles. The Streak SRM systems have been an issue for a long time now. PGI "fixed" them initially by adding ECM as a hard counter. Hard counters make for bad game play, and what ECM mostly did was elevate those lights that could carry ECM and Streaks into absolute killers while rendering Streaks on heavier mechs nearly useless against said lights. With the upcoming BAP adjustment (making a hard counter to ECM available to every mech that cares to take it), Streaks will become super easy to use once more.

Streaks have the added problem of a guidance preference that targets the CT almost exclusively (it'll damage the arms if fired from directly to the side, but once the arm is gone the CT gets blown away preferentially again). This means that, even though you can get only a third of the missiles out of a Streak launcher as you can an SRM6, you do far more reliable, useful CT damage with the Streaks unless you're at point-blank range and your target stands there and takes it (note, I said reliable; a good pilot will take his shots when he gets them, but a Streak pilot can hit the CT almost no matter what with minimal effort).

To make matters worse, the SSRM2 fires at the same rate as the SRM2. The SRM6 is a full half-second slower cycling (and in fact matches the slow Gauss Rifle at 4 seconds).

Here is my proposal then: Reduce SRM2 cool down to 3 seconds. Reduce SRM4 cool down to 3.25 seconds. Reduce SRM6 cool down to 3.5 seconds. Make the SSRM2 have a 3.5s cool down. When they become available, give the SSRM4 a 3.75s cool down and the SSRM6 a 4s cool down period. Standard SRMs might need to have their fire rate increased even more, relative to Streaks and to other weapons, but these sample numbers should be good enough to begin with.

What does this do? It gives standard SRMs an advantage as proper brawling weapons. They would fire quickly (relatively speaking), but would require skill and judgment to use effectively. Streaks would have the advantage of accuracy and ease of use, but would not be as good at brawling since their overall damage output would be slower. If the guidance bug is fixed, it'd actually be less concentrated than skilled standard SRM usage, but I'm very happy to promote a higher potential skill cap in MWO, and the damage would remain very consistent (which is most of the point of Streaks anyway). They'd also still excel at smacking uppity light mechs when you lack other weapons appropriate to dealing with them.

How about the PPC? Aside from some usability tweaks (standard PPCs should have a lower velocity, while erPPCs retain their current one to reflect their greater accuracy), the main problem I have with PPCs is that they fire so very quickly. They have a 3 second cool down. 3 seconds is super fast. 3 seconds is brawling-weapon fast. They should have their cool down increased to match the Gauss Rifle at 4 seconds, which would lower their effectiveness in a fast-paced brawl but not really hurt them at all with mid- and long-range direct fire support (the role that they should be designed for). I'd even be fine with the PPC being set to 3.75s and the erPPC moving to 4s (giving the PPC a slight advantage in its range bracket).

While on the issue of cool downs, the Autocannon line could use another pass. The AC20, a super-short-ranged brawling weapon, reloads at the slow sniper-weapon pace of 4 seconds. I'd like to see it gain a bit of an edge over the Gauss Rifle in this regard, say a half second. Give the Gauss Rifle a reload time of 4.5s, so PPCs would fire a bit faster, and so the AC20 would be a superior option for brawling. The Gauss would lose little of its effectiveness as a sniper weapon.

The AC10 (and LB-10X), in the mean time, should have its reload time reduced to 2 seconds. The AC5 and UAC5 should be the same at 1s (UAC should rely on double-firing to speed up its rate of fire, which should have a mode toggle). The AC2 is fine where it is (0.5s).

What would these changes to do ballistic weapons? You'd get more damage per shot with larger ACs, and you'd get more range with smaller ones. Overall DPS, though, would be flat across all AC types.

This brings us to lasers. The overall trend of smaller lasers recharging faster is a good one. However, I'd like to see pulse lasers get a bit of an edge over standard lasers in this regard. They spend a lot of weight for a slight damage increase, a range nerf, a slight burn time reduction, and a heat increase. If pulse lasers across the board shaved a small chunk off the recharge time of the standard equivalent, then I think it'd be positive for the pulse line of weapons.

The LL has a cool down of 3.25s. If the LPL moved to 3s then it'd wind up with a net advantage in fire rate of a half a second, which is far more meaningful than its current quarter second advantage (which is pure burn time decrease).

The ML has a cool down of 3s. Again, the MPL currently has a quarter second advantage in fire rate. If it moved to 2.75s for cool down then that would go up to a half second, making the MPL a much more attractive choice.

The SL is the most egregious by far. The SL has a 0.75s burn time and a 2.25s cool down. The SPL again gains only a quarter second of burn time. If its cool down were reduced to 2s, then that would go up to half a second. Since the SPL lacks a damage increase it is basically a redundant weapon system. The SL already fires fast enough that a mere quarter second is trivial, and the ML does far more for the weight than the SPL. Giving the SPL a total cycle time of 2.5s would suddenly give it a unique purpose among the laser weapons.

The best part of these sorts of tweaks is that they ought to be super easy to change with frequency and in fine increments. Increase PPC cool down times for a week and see what happens. Regularize AC dps levels for a week and check the numbers once you have plenty of data collected. Make Streaks have a performance trade-off relative to standard SRMs and see how builds change. And if any of the changes are bad, simply change them back, or tweak them further.

TLDR - Weapon cool down periods should be a fast, easy, and effective way to tweak weapon balance. It should allow for weapons with different battlefield roles to specialize in different areas, and thus mitigate the use of oft-complained-about over-specialized boats without obviating such builds entirely.

PS - I am refraining from further discussion of ECM, BAP, information warfare generally, and the concept of hard counters in this thread. Please try to do the same and stay on-topic, namely the use of weapon cool down rates as a balancing tool. Thank you.

[Togath]

At the risk of saying little, this makes sense to me. I would definitely like to see the current meta shaken up and this seems like a good thing to look at for doing just that.

[skullman86]

I would probably leave the velocity and just do more to the PPC's cooldown (possibly 4.75 and 5 sec) because of the way it works in the game. The PPC is a basically a heavy ballistic weapon with an energy weapon's weight and critical profile -- because of that and energy being the most common hardpoint in the game, it's much easier to carry in bulk and raise the overall DPS.

Aside from that though, I wouldn't mind seeing these changes. Giving weapons better defined roles will give players more reasons to play around with different loadouts and styles of play.

[Corvus Antaka]

I agree.

[SJ Osiris]

I agree with the ideas you have presented but I think that what you suggested on ppcs would need further tweeking. For instance, increasing the cycle time of the ppc to 4 seconds would seemingly to me help lesser ppc boats manage heat. Now if heat was increased to say 9 heat along with a recycle time at 4 seconds then I'd have no objections in that regard. As you also mentioned travel time of the ppc needs reduced somewhat since I feel like I can hit anything at max range and beyond with the current speeds.
In that same vein, I feel like stacking heat penalties could help negate some boating and lead to more diverse builds. For example, an ac20 generates 6 heat, but when two are equipped on a mech they could generate 6.5 heat per shot. Though now I’m getting off tangent. Anyway, I agree that srms, pulse lasers and such need to have their stats readdressed especially in regard to recycle times.

[MustrumRidcully]

While I think the PPC would be more "pleasing" if it had a 4 second recycle rate like the Gauss Rifle, it has little effect on the current alpha strike builds. They are all about dealing a lot of damage in one shot. Firing 2 shots at max recycle rate is often not even possible without overheating.

It might mean a small advantage when brawling and you decide "screw this, I am not waiting for the next AC/20 + 2SRM6 + 2ML salvo to hit, I shoot know, shut down, but might take the enemy down..." But I am not convinced this is a significant aspect for the current metagame.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 11 May 2013 - 01:08 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Rather than multiples of the same weapon adding extra heat or any other gimmicks like that, what we need for heat is a sliding heat scale that kicks in minor penalties to move speed, torso twist rate, arm agility, convergence rate, and overall weapon cycle times, and as you climb the heat scale those penalties increase. However, this is not the topic of this thread, so I'll leave it at that. I may well make a new post about graduated heat scaling at some future point (probably after the next Ask the Devs answers come back).

The problem with brawling right now is largely two-fold. First, one of the most potent brawling damage dealers was nerfed. SRMs desperately needed a fix, but since they're currently operating under a temporary hot fix rather than working as intended they're pretty badly sub par. Second, sniper weapons and efficiency weapons (essentially PPCs and Streaks) are as good as or better than brawling weapons in most cases (the main exception being inside about 45m with standard PPCs). This is most easily fixed by increasing the cool downs of non-brawling weapons and decreasing them on brawling weapons.