68 replies to this topic

[Burakumin1979]

Shameless plug for a boating solution that doesn't hurt energy heavy lights!

I still think a slight addition to the hardpoint system is best. Allow the size of the weapon plus one incremental be installed for each point:

A normal small/medium Laser slot is an E2 (allowing up to 2 criticals for the hardpoint)
A large laser/PPC slot is an E3, allowing any mountable energy weapon (3 criticals for the hardpoint)

It would work with missiles too:

LRM 5 = M2 (up to 2 slots)
LRM 10 = M3 (up to 3 slots
LRM 15/20 = M5 (up to 5 slots)
SRM 2/4 = M1 (up to 1 slot)
SRM 6 = M2 (up to 2 slots)

And ballistics:

AC 2: B8
AC 5: B12
AC 10: B14
AC 20: B14

Essentially, any weapon hardpoint could be upgraded one level allowing for tons of customization, but the spirit of the chassis designs would remain intact and would stop PPC's from being mounted in medium laser slots or AC20's going in 3 AC/2 slots etc.

Now for things like Double AC20 Jagers....they already have a counter don't they? Range? They aren't like ER PPCs which are good at all distances. Maybe they just need weapons to not have a range and an effective range...maybe just a range period, like missiles.

[The Strange]

HRR Insanity, on 16 May 2013 - 07:13 PM, said:

The proposed fix doesn't fix the problem.  It attempts to add a downside to one class of weapons.
It will result in 2GR+1PPC/ERPPC becoming the dominant meta.</p>

And exactly how many Mechs can fit that loadout?

[HRR Insanity]

The Strange, on 16 May 2013 - 07:41 PM, said:

And exactly how many Mechs can fit that loadout?

How many 'Mechs pack ECM? How prevalent are they?

The 'best' 'Mech will be played more often.

Especially in a competitive environment.

[idle crow]

The increase recycle is a good place to start. You cannot keep us sustained fire with the current rate of fire but when enemy brawlers are pressuring you, its about quick burst dps over sustained. It then becomes a numbers game as your up kills.

You could make PPC recycle time 1 second and I hope people see the clear advantage that give you against a brawler attempting to close range. Its not a perfect solution but its a start.

The increase heat to boating the same weapon I'm not so sure on. As Insanity pointed out you see Gauss/PPC/ERPPC replacing the current 3PPC.

I think people forget the current Cataphract 3D Jump Sniper is hardly a boat. Or if we had MW4 instant hit lasers you have lots of viable all long range anti-boats that effectively operate as a boat.

It may cause the 6 Medium Laser Jenner to become 5. But some people already run 5 over 6 for heat efficiency now.

Either way I'm glad PGI is finally considering recycle time as part of the equation to weapon balance.

[Yiazmat]

HRR, here we are talking about oranges and you start talking about apples.  Answer The Strang's question.  what mech can load 2 gauss and a ppc with any effectiveness.  We're waiting.

Edited by Yiazmat, 16 May 2013 - 11:02 PM.

[Sephlock]

^ My super secret Gaussapult variant!

[Ralgas]

I've already stated my belief this line of balancing wont work for several reasons which have already been touched on (and the heat scale to wep size still falls over due to how many more weps the lights/meds boat compared to what this is trying to achieve), but i'm not losing sleep on it given Pauls last sentence.

"Investigation items are not locked in and are exactly that... thoughts and tests. Do NOT go flying off the handle about how this won't work or that won't work until we make an official post. It will severely help your blood pressure. "
(for those that don't know this idea falls into ^that catergory for the time being)

I'm still a firm believer that we need to lose "heat containment" altogether from the mech trees, possibly with the addition of 1 point of heat to the erppc then see how easy said boats have it.

Edited by Ralgas, 16 May 2013 - 09:06 PM.

[Shadowsword8]

Tennex, on 16 May 2013 - 03:54 PM, said:

i thought they were trying to nerf Alpha builds? so the AC40 and the gauss bulid do not constitute alpha builds.

also your thought process is very short sighted.

Fact of the matter is the PPC was not boated until the Stalker came out.
and the AC20/Gauss is not boated.
Untill the Mauler/Annihilator comes out.

Wait, you're basically saying that a Dual AC20 jeager should pump up 40 damage alphas without issues, but that a quad PPC stalker should be penalized for doing the same thing. It just doesn't make sense.


Boating isn't about the number of weapons you have, it's about how much of your total damage comes from only one weapon type.

[Asmudius Heng]

Not an optimal solutions to the issues but better than nothing. Again a band aid patch to a fundamnetal base level flaw of the game.

However, as people have stated a longer recycle time does give a small advantage to brawlers who might fire faster and cooler in close range.

Heat damaging a mech at excessive heat is a step in the right direction to have punishment for running high on the heat curve too often. However it is also a little harsh when it was suppose to be a mech performance degredation more than hurting the mech (unless it was ammo explosions). I would hope this is simply a start to increased effects heat has on a mech but i am not holding my breath.

Grouped weapons doing more heat - this seems fundamentally flawed as it will hurt energy builds more than any other. On the other hand, it is much harder to boat ballistics due to inherent weight, and missiles spread damage a little anyway. The answer in my mind is still to lower the heat cap and improve dissapation forcing all builds to think about how many guns they shoot at the same time and thus spreading out shots with less alphas as they become risky even on the first shot.

For people worried about the swayback. I do not see why it should be allowed to alpha strike with impunity either. Firing the hunch should be your large strike and firing your arm lasers would be done on your ooldown til you line up a good shot again. The problem is that medlas were nerfed, they need to be a little more powerful than they are now - but so do all pulse laser for that matter.

[Lykaon]

Roland, on 16 May 2013 - 05:39 PM, said:

Did you even play MW4?
Because competitive play was dominated by ERLL boats.

Yes I did play MW4.

Did you read my post?

I did not say use the exact same hardpoint system I suggested a further tuning of the MW4 system to minimize boating.(similar to but not identical to Burakumin1979's suggestion)

Reading comprehension will reduce kneejerk posting.

I even gave a clear example of a specific mech (Hunchback 4P) that illistrated that what you pointed out as a flaw in MW4 has been addressed in my proposal since the Hunchback 4P would only be able to mount 2 ER large lasers or 2 large lasers or 2 large pulse lasers and only in the arm hard points.The 4P would retain it's canon "boating" of several small,single crit energy weapons in the right torso yet have the option to use the 2 crit single energy hardpoints in the arms to mount large energy weapons that do NOT exceed 1 weapon per hardpoint and have 2 or fewer critical slots.

Edited by Lykaon, 17 May 2013 - 12:38 AM.

[Lykaon]

Burakumin1979, on 16 May 2013 - 07:17 PM, said:

Shameless plug for a boating solution that doesn't hurt energy heavy lights!

I still think a slight addition to the hardpoint system is best. Allow the size of the weapon plus one incremental be installed for each point:

A normal small/medium Laser slot is an E2 (allowing up to 2 criticals for the hardpoint)
A large laser/PPC slot is an E3, allowing any mountable energy weapon (3 criticals for the hardpoint)

It would work with missiles too:

LRM 5 = M2 (up to 2 slots)
LRM 10 = M3 (up to 3 slots
LRM 15/20 = M5 (up to 5 slots)
SRM 2/4 = M1 (up to 1 slot)
SRM 6 = M2 (up to 2 slots)

And ballistics:

AC 2: B8
AC 5: B12
AC 10: B14
AC 20: B14

Essentially, any weapon hardpoint could be upgraded one level allowing for tons of customization, but the spirit of the chassis designs would remain intact and would stop PPC's from being mounted in medium laser slots or AC20's going in 3 AC/2 slots etc.

Now for things like Double AC20 Jagers....they already have a counter don't they? Range? They aren't like ER PPCs which are good at all distances. Maybe they just need weapons to not have a range and an effective range...maybe just a range period, like missiles.

You are onto something but need to shift focus to hardpoints themselves and not the weapons.

For example all Hunchbacks Awesomes and one Cataphract mount weapons in the head and thus have 1 critical available to that hardpoint.Without altering how critical slots are allocated no weapon with more than 1 critical slot of the appropriate type can be mounted in a head of a mech.Therefore that hardpoint must always be a single critical slot weapon mount.

Using the weapons mounted on canon designs as the basis of how large a hardpoint is can lead to issues conflicting with the actual space a mech has available in a given location.

So that would be the flaw of your concept.

Edited by Lykaon, 17 May 2013 - 12:49 AM.

[pencilboom]

I don't fear dual Gauss Rifles as much as I fear the PPC boats. Dual Gauss requires a lot of critical space and LOTs of tonnage. It is considered a very niche build. Gauss travels at 1200m/s and they requires ammo to do so. Gauss kitty weren't a problem back in the days. Dual gauss jager neither. They're fragile now even. But PPCs...It's a whole different story...2000m/s hellraising projectile that can be boated in almost every chassis with enough tonnage ( screw heat! )..It's a nightmare out there I say. NIGHTMARE!!!!!

But...I've been pretty successful lately in forcing those PPC boats to brawl in my Yen Lo Wang..I don't know..I must be gotten lucky..Or the PPC boats has become so mainstream that the bad players started to follow that trend and I get to pick them easy in close range combat... *shrugs*

[trollocaustic]

Gauss is massively better than PPC due to it's near-nonexistant heat.

[Asakara]

Shadowsword8, on 16 May 2013 - 09:48 PM, said:

Wait, you're basically saying that a Dual AC20 jeager should pump up 40 damage alphas without issues, but that a quad PPC stalker should be penalized for doing the same thing. It just doesn't make sense.


Boating isn't about the number of weapons you have, it's about how much of your total damage comes from only one weapon type.

So a Spider with 3 medium lasers is boating?

[Bagheera]

Helix, on 16 May 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

They made a second post saying one of the things they're considering going forward is to make weapons of the same type generate extra heat per weapon of that type fired in a certain period of time (basically to make boating have seriously negative penalties).

That is a "great" idea. I was just coming here to post how the -4P hunchie, the -2A. -2B Cicada, the energy boating Jenner, and the not-yet-released BJ-1X are all way too powerful and need to be nerfed badly.

[Corvus Antaka]

theorywarrior is alive and well

[Miekael]

So by firing the same type of weapon within a small amount of time, you get a heat penalty. So what's stopping us from setting the weapons to chain fire and setting up a macro to shoot them off with enough delay in between shots to not suffer a heat penalty?

[Shadowsword8]

Asakara, on 17 May 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

So a Spider with 3 medium lasers is boating?

Yes.

You should rather answer that question: How is a dual AC20 cat not boating?


Boating is about using the same type of weapon to get the same range, refire rate and accuracy, and being able to use them all as if you had only one of them.

So yes, your spider is also boating. Not that boating is wrong or evil is the first place.

[Fate 6]

Link please. Forum is too vast an complex to find in 10 minutes so I gave up.

[Fate 6]

Bagheera, on 17 May 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

That is a "great" idea. I was just coming here to post how the -4P hunchie, the -2A. -2B Cicada, the energy boating Jenner, and the not-yet-released BJ-1X are all way too powerful and need to be nerfed badly.

Not to mention the 8Q, may it rip in peaces.