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Before I start I have noticed some devs respond to people flaming them, I would suggest against this it encourages flaming. Responses are good and a simple 1 line of "interesting thought there", or "we tested that it has flaws" or "Noted, but working on other things now" can really make the community feel appreciated. I would strongly recommend against ever responding to anyone that calls you or something you do stupid without giving a solution (and preferably not call you stupid even then.)
Also I find this game not nearly an imbalanced as many I have played, but no reason not to strive for perfection.
Lets start with balancing weapons. (Some of these changes only balance when taken as a group)
Energy Weapons (Role: Medium DPS, High heat, Low crit slots, low tonnage)
ER-PPC, and PPC: The big long range hitter
* increase cooldown to 4 seconds (presently lasers start their cooldown after the beam finishes firing so even if they have a 3 second cooldown its 4 seconds between shots, so this just equilizes rate of fire)
* reduce projectile speed to 1000
Raise heats to 15 and 10 respectively (helps reduce boating, and reflects lore)
Small Laser: Reduce heat to 1, raise cooldown to 2.5, raise duration to 1 (reduction to heat makes them viable for use, other changes make SML pulse laser have a purpose)
Pulse lasers: make fire 3 pulses at .1 second intervals for 1/3 total dmg each (this will change all durations to 0.2 seconds)
Large Pulse Laser: reduce to 9 damage (3 x 3 damage pulses) Reduce tonnage to 6
Ballistic Weapons (Role: High DPS, Low Heat, High crit slots, High Tonnage)
Auto Cannons (Description from Sarna.net: The Autocannon is a direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) rounds at targets either singly or in bursts. Different manufacturers and models of autocannons have different calibers (25mm-203mm) and rates of fire. Due to this, autocannons are grouped into generic "classes" of autocannons with common damage ratings, with Autocannon/10s causing more damage than lower-caliber autocannons while retaining a moderate range.)
Based on this description I recommend switching to 2 separate types of Autocannons, Regular, and Burst (If not using this then remove the impact effect from AC 2)
AC/2 Raise Cooldown to 1.5, Raise slots to 2, reduce tonnage to 5
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ADD burst Autocannons (the higher dmg to weight ratio on ammo is do to smaller amount of propellant hence the shorter ranges <also equalizes dmg due to misses>, also the reduced range with increased dmg is fiiting for ballistics, and makes them different than the energy equivalent in pulse lasers)
Burst AC/2: Damage 2.5 (5x 0.5 damage rounds at 0.2 sec intervals), Heat 1 (HPS 0.33), cooldown 2 (+1 from duration), Range 270, Max 810, Slots 1, Tons 4, Ammo 450 (90 x 5 round bursts)
Burst AC/10: Damage 10 (5x 2 damage rounds at 0.2 second intervals), Heat 3 (HPS 1), cooldown 2 (+1 from duration), Range 120, Max 360, Slots 4, Tons 10, Ammo 90 (18 x 5 round bursts)
(could have burst AC of other sizes I just figured this was enough for the idea)
I tried to make these different enough, to not overlap energy or regular Autocannons, be not offensive to lore (I know they are not exact ballistics needed lighter options), and to fill an empty zone of lighter ballistic weapons and also to improve close range brawlers a bit). Since these are truly fairly new I am not sure I balanced them perfectly it would take some testing.
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Ultra AC/5: raise cooldown to 1.7 to equal AC/5, allow it to fire after 1 second of cooldown with risk of jamming. Raise Ammo/ton to 30 (lore says uses more ammo from firing more not that is should weigh more, also to slightly offset the nerf)
Missile Weapons (Role: High DPS, Low Heat, Med Crit slots, Med Tonnage, Indirect fire)
Streak SRM's: ok make these follow a flight path that always remains 10m above ground level till they reach 20m from their target (or maybe 10m away from terrain). Raise Speed to 300. (This should make them significantly better at hitting than other SRM's most of this is to balance with modified SRM's) (possibly modify damage, I have not used them enough to be certain)
SRM's: (first off make these be guided lockon weapons) Make dmg/missile 2 (or average of 2 from splash if you wish to add splash dmg to them but with numbers of missiles this should be minimal in noticability and effect IF ->) Make it so missiles fire at different random parts of enemy mech not all at same exact point. Raise cooldowns to 5 for all three types of them (alot of the problem with missile dmg is the spam firing not the damage itself if you need to balance try modifying cooldown not damage) Reduce flight Speed to 200, do not give them as fast of a turning radius as streak.
MRM's: (ADD these they actually are meant to be dumbfire) have them spread alot like LB 10-x does now but a bit moreso even.
LRM's: Raise Cooldown to 7 seconds for each, raise flight speed to 200, Raise flight arc by 5-15 degrees and raise range to compensate for increased arc (so they actually can hit over some hills, but not sheer walls). make them lock onto random parts of enemy mech so the damage is properly spread (alternatively for ease of programming have it all lock onto one point, but missiles hit randomly up to 5m away, and reduce this spread with Artemis/Narc/Tag, also have this spread be focused on narc or tag instead of center torso maybe?) <this is an attempt to increase their ability to hit things but decrease their focused damage>
Niche Weapons (Flamer, Machine Gun, LB 10-X, Narc, TAG, AMS)
?unsure what your raised crit chances are on flamer and machine gun but I played around with them some and never saw one knock out a XL engine or anything even leaving them on unprotected internals for long durations. These might need looked into might be that they crit alot but do such low dmg no internal parts ever actually get destroyed?
Flamer: Make flamer do damage to all parts it is hitting this should raise its damage about 3-5 fold depending on aim. Possibly raise its dmg or reduce heat from using it beyond this, but should be tested like this first since it is fairly major change.)
Machine Gun: Raise damage to 0.1 (at 10 rounds/second is 1.0) Make Ammo/ton 1000
LB 10-X AC: Reduce spread maybe 20-50% have to test to get it right (be cool to let it use regular AC/10 ammo too and switch between them)
Narc: This should remain on mech until mech takes damage on location it hit, and should give a constant lock to all friendly mechs regardless of LOS
TAG: raise range to 2000, this is a spotting tool and requires teamwork to use it properly, also is very difficult to do well since it needs to remain on target entire time missiles are in air
AMS: to compensate for increased missile speeds raise range to 120m (this will still shoot down a few less missiles targeting you, but will also add more coverage to teammates so it will likely come out about even unless you run solo)
Ok I think that covered Weapons themselves now onto other issues
Convergence: make all torso weapons have no convergence (make a HUD option to show yellow lines along which these weapons aim, with a small red dot sliding along them matching the distance you are presently targeted at <or just the dot maybe as another option>) This should reduce alot of the problems with people hitting the same spot with a massive alpha, although a good player could still indepently fire them while moving the target slightly to aim each one.
Still allow arm weapons to converge like they do now (possibly remove arm convergence on mechs without real arms like Cicada(my favorite mech ATM) or Stalker).
Heat: I believe presently the internal heatsinks for engines do 1 heat dispersal for single heatsinks, and 2 for double? If so raise for single to 1.5 on heatsinks internal to engine only. This should make single heatsinks slightly more viable.
For Heat to work properly I think you should at least partially reinstate repair and rearm (or fully we can get into that later) Make it so if you overide shutdown any damage caused to mech within the next 5 seconds(including incoming fire and dmg from overheating) has to be paid for in repair and rearm.
Make it so overheating has a chance of dealing damage = amount overheated by to a random internal excluding the engine (could include engine, but it might be a bit harsh). Have it do this at (% over max heat /10) each second you are overheated. (I am not entirely certain on all numbers involved internally in the heat system so some of these may need to be modified accordingly)
Falling damage (If not using pinpoint accuracy you could switch that to a reduced falling damage skill it as part of piloting in TT if I remember right)
Falling damage needs drastically increased with larger distances fallen. Using jumpjets as you descend to reduce falling speed should be able to negate this (also increases skill needed with jumpjets). Sliding down a mountain should not be near as drastic as directly falling off a shear cliff, or falling from using jumpjets. Also when a shutdown mech falls it should take 3-4 times regular falling damage since it cannot use its legs to properly cushion the impact. (to offset need to use jets to land maybe increase fuel slightly)
ECM: ok two possibilities here I think the second might be best.
First its too powerful, at minimum let people target a mech inside range, but remove the missile targeting and gaining data. Also could reduce its range to make incrementally balance it if needed (10m at a time till it seems right)
Second totally change it to be more fitting with lore. Remove all targeting and missile prevention from it (AMS is for missiles, ECM specifically says it is not) Change it to what it says it should do: Block artemis, Narc, BAP. And prevent infrared, radar(360 target retention), and sonar(said to be introduced soon). For the infrared I would have it just fuzz out the whole 180m radius in thermal view for the enemy. I feel this leaves it reasonably useful, but testing would of course need to be done.
Mechs
Light Mechs: in general these are a bit too survivable, and I would actually include cicada with these I think they should have their internal points reduced by 25% maybe.
Medium Mechs (excluding Cicada): These are slow enough they can be hit easily, but have little armor making them very fragile, the trebuchet in particular needs made a bit smaller probably (I sometimes think its a highlander for a moment). Overall I think this weight class needs a very tiny buff (?maybe reduce the gyro size on center torso to 3 for light and medium mechs, for light mechs it will make minimal difference, since they often have plenty of slots even with ferro-fibrous armor, but mediums it could fit a double heat sink there or such, just a thought?) If R&R were reintroduced (I bet R&R is very hard to balance properly in and of itself) these could maybe get a slightly reduced repair cost as the small buff. The buff should be small though.
Ok overall pretty much only other thing I can say is make a few small modifications to some mech sizes maybe (only 5-10%) catapult(smaller), stalker(bigger), maybe some others.
(I also have not played every mech yet so may well be missing some other things)
(Also there is what I can only consider a bug, and it primarily effects armed mechs since they have a different firing angle. Alot of shots hit invisible walls within 1-2m above ground level, you notice this with all mechs when firing over a ridge, but armed mechs sometimes seem to hit a bumb in the ground right in front of you that they should easily shoot over.)
Ok I and getting bored of writing this I may Edit this post, or post again in continuation on other facets.
I am sure I am making just as many mistakes in this as the devs did in the game, but sometimes having another view can let you see the right way to do things, hope this helps.
Edit: SRM speed, LRM arc, added AMS
Edited by Ningyo, 18 May 2013 - 11:52 PM.
