72 replies to this topic

[Hotthedd]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 May 2013 - 10:45 AM, said:

How do you make sure that people don't just resort to farming C-Bills with cheap, ineffective mechs and tactics because that's more economical then actually fighting?

Currently, AFK farming or suicide farming is stupid. Your team is likely to lose, and you make 25,000 for doing nothing, and your mech si still locked out for the whole match.

But when your Assault with Double Heat Sinks and Endo Steel and and ARtemis LRMs and what not gets destroyed in a tough fight that your team barely lost, you might also just take 25,000 C-Bills due to the repair cost? Why bother?

And if you drive a cheap mech, you suddenly have to fight (possibly Premium and Hero powered) mechs in a subpar build, and losing becomes a likely result.

If you switch constantly between powerful, expensive build and weak, money-making build, your ELO goes up and down and you'll never reach a sweet spot.



He said "R&R was not really immersive". You list stuff that is not immersive either, if you try to make this game "lore-like". You are not really disproving his point.

IIRC, disconnected mechs did not incur damage before R&R was removed. If you were to disco farm NOW, you would still be likely to get a repair bill.

[Livewyr]

Tor6, on 26 May 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

There are SO few designs that you can actually run without DHS that if you made it cost prohibitive no one would ever NOT run it. Because if a team of no DHS fought a team with DHS the DHS team would win EVERY SINGLE TIME. Pretty much all of the OP builds from before DHS are not around and would be laughed at in a game now. All SL hunchie? The SL jenner?

And Endo-steel being expensive would not cause people to weigh its balance, it would just be removed in favor of mech builds that don't use it. And when is the last time you saw an atlas or stalker even run Endo? It's mostly lighter mechs that run it because heavy mechs get crit locked way before they get tonnage-locked. so if anything this would hurt the lighter, cheaper chassis more than the heavies you want to see fewer of.

Bottom line though, NO ONE likes to lose because the other guy *who he doesn't get to choose to face* paid more money for their gear. It's unsatisfying and makes you feel cheated. Especially when you still need to pay repair cost because he wiped the floor with you and you could barely touch him.

If this change were to go into effect It wouldn't effect me. I've almost every IS mech I want to own, and enough saved up for the ones that will come out that I do. I'd still run whatever I want to, as would many here who were here since CB. But the new people? The people we want to attract? Those people would suffer at the hands of people who don't give a crap about cost and who only want to have a fun match. Bringing back repair and rearm as anything other than a low-cost fluff bonus for not dying (say 10k cbills max cost or something just as a 'hey you didn't splode! Good work!' thing) is just a recipe for disaster.

I appreciate you raised your points in a non-hostile way- but I disagree in some ways and agree in others;

There are so few designs right now that run without DHS.. because there is no reason not to run without DHS. (I know when I was maxing out my mechlab.. I wouldn't even run the next variant to elite until I had bought it, and DHS'd/Endo'd it because there is no reason to run anything less right now.

(The only mech in my garage that doesn't run Endo, I think, right now, is my K2, because It uses PPCs and I wanted room to max out DHS's.)

I see that point, and it's valid, kinda. There is no reason any player can't run the supermax builds.. it's just that he can't run it all the time. I'd like to offer making even premium running a supermax build [which is what I'm going to call them now] tough to break even on so even they can't run them all the time...
Grinding your way to your next mech in a supermax is what everyone does.. and there is no reason not to right now.

I'll give up on RnR if you can give me a better method to explore of reducing the requirement to bring everything maxed out. (At this point, they might as well remove SHS when they remove the trial mechs at launch...)

Hotthedd, on 26 May 2013 - 12:02 PM, said:

IIRC, disconnected mechs did not incur damage before R&R was removed. If you were to disco farm NOW, you would still be likely to get a repair bill.

Also a good point (farming might end up being more detrimental to your ends..)

[FupDup]

Livewyr, on 26 May 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

*Big reply to Mustrum about DHS*

For SHS, those could just be modified to increase your heat capacity by a larger amount than DHS but still cool at a much slower rate. (Note that the overall heat cap should be reduced and default dissipation should be increased anyways to help balance out high-energy alphas).

Edited by FupDup, 26 May 2013 - 12:12 PM.

[Hotthedd]

FupDup, on 26 May 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

For SHS, those could just be modified to increase your heat capacity by a larger amount than DHS but still cool at a much slower rate. (Note that the overall heat cap should be reduced and default dissipation should be increased anyways to help balance out high-energy alphas).

DHS are an UPgrade from SHS. There is no reason to balance them. (Although basing the maximum heat off the NUMBER of heat sinks, but dissipation off of total ability would make them slightly less of an upgrade)

[FupDup]

Hotthedd, on 26 May 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

DHS are an UPgrade from SHS. There is no reason to balance them. (Although basing the maximum heat off the NUMBER of heat sinks, but dissipation off of total ability would make them slightly less of an upgrade)

EDIT: Oops, I thought your were Livewyr! Disregard this post!

Edited by FupDup, 26 May 2013 - 12:22 PM.

[Livewyr]

FupDup, on 26 May 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

For SHS, those could just be modified to increase your heat capacity by a larger amount than DHS but still cool at a much slower rate. (Note that the overall heat cap should be reduced and default dissipation should be increased anyways to help balance out high-energy alphas).

That idea is pretty good.

That's a start towards fixing it without bringing back a complicated RnR- which I'm perfectly willing to entertain. (I didn't want RnR for the purposes of RnR, I wanted RnR for the purposes of nuking the supermax build requirement, and IMO it added some immersion in decision making on financial means- based on the financial reasons for assault rarity in Lore. A plus towards it, not a mark against other options.)

[Brawnfet]

If somebody already has endosteel, double heat sinks, XL engines, etc. then why would they care about R&R? They already have what they want and need. The only people this would penalize would be those who don't have them yet. If you already have all of these, then you don't have to buy them again anyway.

Seriously, what else are you going to spend your cbills on?

The only way to make R&R matter in a significant way is if it can impact the actual matches. What this would mean is allowing repairs/rearming in match (bad idea), or make it possible to have negative returns from a match. Given you can purchase ingame things for real money, it could potentially be considered a scam to do the second.

Lastly, anybody doing disco farming would use trial mechs, so it still doesn't accomplish anything. Frankly, I'm becoming certain that most 'disco farmers'/'afkers' are just guys who crashed when getting into a match or during the match. MWO isn't very stable.

[Hotthedd]

FupDup, on 26 May 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

I think I'm confuzzled here.

So, you made an RnR thread because you want people to have a reason to not take fully-optimized min-max machines, but then you say you want those items like DHS to be superior anyways?

First, this isn't my thread.

Second, wanting a downside to min/maxing builds and wanting some items to be better than others are not diametrically opposed.

[Livewyr]

Hotthedd, on 26 May 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

DHS are an UPgrade from SHS. There is no reason to balance them. (Although basing the maximum heat off the NUMBER of heat sinks, but dissipation off of total ability would make them slightly less of an upgrade)

While technically, yes.. that doesn't make for good game-play; the same logic could be applied to clan mechs, which would invalidate IS mechs.. because they're upgrades.

Must go for now, will continue when I return-

[FupDup]

Hotthedd, on 26 May 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

First, this isn't my thread.

Second, wanting a downside to min/maxing builds and wanting some items to be better than others are not diametrically opposed.

I confused you for Livewyr, my bad. I hit that dang quote button too quickly. >_<

[Hotthedd]

Livewyr, on 26 May 2013 - 12:21 PM, said:

While technically, yes.. that doesn't make for good game-play; the same logic could be applied to clan mechs, which would invalidate IS mechs.. because they're upgrades.

There is a fundamental difference between equipment and mechs.

You do not need to invest time skilling up your upgrades.

[Tor6]

Livewyr, on 26 May 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

I appreciate you raised your points in a non-hostile way- but I disagree in some ways and agree in others;

There are so few designs right now that run without DHS.. because there is no reason not to run without DHS. (I know when I was maxing out my mechlab.. I wouldn't even run the next variant to elite until I had bought it, and DHS'd/Endo'd it because there is no reason to run anything less right now.

(The only mech in my garage that doesn't run Endo, I think, right now, is my K2, because It uses PPCs and I wanted room to max out DHS's.)

I see that point, and it's valid, kinda. There is no reason any player can't run the supermax builds.. it's just that he can't run it all the time. I'd like to offer making even premium running a supermax build [which is what I'm going to call them now] tough to break even on so even they can't run them all the time...
Grinding your way to your next mech in a supermax is what everyone does.. and there is no reason not to right now.

I'll give up on RnR if you can give me a better method to explore of reducing the requirement to bring everything maxed out. (At this point, they might as well remove SHS when they remove the trial mechs at launch...)



Also a good point (farming might end up being more detrimental to your ends..)

The biggest problem with trying to use cost to balance anything is that it disproportionately affects poor and new players over rich ones and requires that the expensive items be straight upgrades over their cheaper brethren which simply isn't the case. You can't balance XL engines on cost for instance because some mechs benefit greatly from them while others become just fodder the moment they mount them. A catapult with an XL is a faster, more dangerous opponent because of its hitbox profile while the Jager of the same weight becomes significantly more vulnerable and essentially a glass cannon with one due to its elephantine side torsos. The Cicada requires one to do well, the Hunchback becomes a deathtrap with one. If you had to choose between a mech which was roughly as effective as another of the same weight class, but one required an XL to be as effective as the other which did not, which would you choose?

Some mech builds need Endo to work, while some equally effective ones on the same chassis do not, much the same way the XLs work in some mechs but not others. Restricting it based on cost would just make people run builds which don't require it far more often.

In other words because all the mechs are good at some things and bad at others because of their hitboxes and how they're built, you can't just say 'XL engines are a straight upgrade so they need to cost X amount more to repair'. Because they're not. If all mechs had the same hitbox and ran roughly the same loadouts then this would be a valid argument, but it really isn't in this state of the game. Sure if you m make XL engines crazy expensive you'll screw over all the cat pilots out there, but will the phracts care? NOPE. Will the huncback and cent pilots even notice? I doubt it. But every light pilot will feel it. Every cicada pilot will drop their mech in a second for something cheaper. Atlases and stalkers and highlanders, the ones that you see way too many of? They won't care about ENDO and Ferro and XLs suddenly being crazy expensive, because they don't run them.

XL engines don't need to cost more to repair. That they did in canon is irrelevant because you're trying to balance a game, not write a novel. Could hitboxes be more normalized so that it's a roughly even risk between chassis? Probably, as that'd be the only way to make it balanced across various mechs. But cost? That won't actually change whether people think to mount it. It'll just make all the builds and variety brought about by its incorporation into the game extinct.

Balancing on cost means the death of variety as everyone is discouraged from actually using the tools we have available to make a mech. And this goes for DHS too. Before DHS the gausscat was king because it had WAAAAY higher DPS per unit of heat generated than anything else. The small laser ruled the field and people laughed at you for taking even one PPC. Now, while obviously weapon balance still needs work, we see a far bigger variety of weapons and builds on the field because we actually have the Heat Dissipation to use them.

A further problem is that you have no control over who you will face and who your teammates will be. You could wind up running your souped up mech that you spent 5 rounds saving up to run... only to drop with 7 guys running their gimped farming builds. So you get totalled with no real hope of victory or survival and your teammates don't care. They're running cheap mechs and have no skin in the game. But you're screwed. Or you run a farming build and your teammates hate you because they lose in their expensive mechs. Or you fight a team running all farming mechs and roll them. If you think Elo is crap now, it'll be five times worse with this system in place that encourages wild swings in player effectiveness from match to match based on their loadout price.

TL;DR Balance on cost doesn't work when all the mechs have unique geometry and hardpoints that make the 'upgrades' common on some but not others. Trying to use R&R will hurt variety of builds and mechs seen while doing little to actually balance the game. And it'll lead to a ton of irritation at ones teammates because you still have no control over who you drop with.

[FupDup]

Hotthedd, on 26 May 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

There is a fundamental difference between equipment and mechs.

You do not need to invest time skilling up your upgrades.

Upgrading your tech tends to take longer than leveling your mech, at least if the variant doesn't some stock with all of the upgrades. When leveling my Trebs, I was completing the basic pilot optimizations long before I got enough C-Bills to buy another variant or upgrade it with Endo, DHS, etc.

Hotthedd, on 26 May 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

Second, wanting a downside to min/maxing builds and wanting some items to be better than others are not diametrically opposed.

Even though my previous reply was made too quickly and mistakenly directed at you, I'll respond to the second point anyways. Those are literally the exact same thing. The first half says you want a downside to min-max. The second part says you want direct-upgrades. The contradiction you're making is that min-max is just another word for direct-upgrade. It's called min-max because it makes you better than everyone else who isn't min-maxxing as well.

If there was a downside to being superior, you wouldn't be superior. Can you see what I'm getting at here? Those two things are mutually exclusive because they overwrite each other.

Edited by FupDup, 26 May 2013 - 02:26 PM.

[PeekaBoo I C Ju]

I will never be FOR R&R returning, no matter how many times you try and push it

[Livewyr]

Tor6, on 26 May 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

The biggest problem with trying to use cost to balance anything is that it disproportionately affects poor and new players over rich ones and requires that the expensive items be straight upgrades over their cheaper brethren which simply isn't the case. You can't balance XL engines on cost for instance because some mechs benefit greatly from them while others become just fodder the moment they mount them. A catapult with an XL is a faster, more dangerous opponent because of its hitbox profile while the Jager of the same weight becomes significantly more vulnerable and essentially a glass cannon with one due to its elephantine side torsos. The Cicada requires one to do well, the Hunchback becomes a deathtrap with one. If you had to choose between a mech which was roughly as effective as another of the same weight class, but one required an XL to be as effective as the other which did not, which would you choose?

Some mech builds need Endo to work, while some equally effective ones on the same chassis do not, much the same way the XLs work in some mechs but not others. Restricting it based on cost would just make people run builds which don't require it far more often.

In other words because all the mechs are good at some things and bad at others because of their hitboxes and how they're built, you can't just say 'XL engines are a straight upgrade so they need to cost X amount more to repair'. Because they're not. If all mechs had the same hitbox and ran roughly the same loadouts then this would be a valid argument, but it really isn't in this state of the game. Sure if you m make XL engines crazy expensive you'll screw over all the cat pilots out there, but will the phracts care? NOPE. Will the huncback and cent pilots even notice? I doubt it. But every light pilot will feel it. Every cicada pilot will drop their mech in a second for something cheaper. Atlases and stalkers and highlanders, the ones that you see way too many of? They won't care about ENDO and Ferro and XLs suddenly being crazy expensive, because they don't run them.

XL engines don't need to cost more to repair. That they did in canon is irrelevant because you're trying to balance a game, not write a novel. Could hitboxes be more normalized so that it's a roughly even risk between chassis? Probably, as that'd be the only way to make it balanced across various mechs. But cost? That won't actually change whether people think to mount it. It'll just make all the builds and variety brought about by its incorporation into the game extinct.

Balancing on cost means the death of variety as everyone is discouraged from actually using the tools we have available to make a mech. And this goes for DHS too. Before DHS the gausscat was king because it had WAAAAY higher DPS per unit of heat generated than anything else. The small laser ruled the field and people laughed at you for taking even one PPC. Now, while obviously weapon balance still needs work, we see a far bigger variety of weapons and builds on the field because we actually have the Heat Dissipation to use them.

A further problem is that you have no control over who you will face and who your teammates will be. You could wind up running your souped up mech that you spent 5 rounds saving up to run... only to drop with 7 guys running their gimped farming builds. So you get totalled with no real hope of victory or survival and your teammates don't care. They're running cheap mechs and have no skin in the game. But you're screwed. Or you run a farming build and your teammates hate you because they lose in their expensive mechs. Or you fight a team running all farming mechs and roll them. If you think Elo is crap now, it'll be five times worse with this system in place that encourages wild swings in player effectiveness from match to match based on their loadout price.

TL;DR Balance on cost doesn't work when all the mechs have unique geometry and hardpoints that make the 'upgrades' common on some but not others. Trying to use R&R will hurt variety of builds and mechs seen while doing little to actually balance the game. And it'll lead to a ton of irritation at ones teammates because you still have no control over who you drop with.

I see your point, but it doesn't seem to account for the other parts of my suggestion.
Balancing on economy alone would be bad, that is a well known and fairly universal opinion.

The idea; why I brought up the thread, is that RnR could be used as a motivator to not run the most overpowered build at all time, and in fact use others to make money.
Another facet would be tier-matching: A BV bracket that puts your mech based on BV (sum of all your parts/upgrades) so you are matched against another person of your weight class, with a similar ELO, with a similarly decked out build.

-------------------------------------
I'm not completely stuck on the idea of RnR, but I would like to find some motivation for mechs to not *always* bring the most top-notch killing machine.. I would even be satisfied if there was a legitimate downside to bringing Endo steel and DHS..

14 out of your 50+ crit slots doesn't make for much sacrifice unless you're planning on boating a bunch of ALRM20s or heavy ballistics. (or PPCs with gross HS needs) 3 Critslot DHS doesn't mean anything when you have a base 20HS from your engine, and can cram up to 6 more in it.
----------------------------------

As I mentioned before, with one exception, every build I have has Endosteel, and EVERY build I have has DHS.. because there is no reason not to. As a matter of fact, NOT bringing DHS is failing a standard, making you a detriment to your team.
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The elephant in the room for me (and why I even thought about this), is the coming clans, and their clan tech. By definition, they're imbalanced.. and the only two things the IS had going for them, were the clan honor crutch (RP) and extreme cost of the sweet technology. (Econ)

Currently, we have neither.

We need something.

Peekaboo I C JU, on 26 May 2013 - 02:08 PM, said:

I will never be FOR R&R returning, no matter how many times you try and push it

Thank you for your contribution.

[Keifomofutu]

Well see why not go the other way with it. It is fairly well known that assaults and heavies will make the most cbills per battle because they do the most damage/kills/components. Rather than try to bring in a R&R system that failed once already and isn't trusted to return why not give the lighter chassis a bonus to cbill earnings. Letting meds and lights earn as much as assaults would let those pilots feel like they aren't wasting their time by grinding in a lighter chassis. This rewards the use of those chassis without making the heavy and assault players feel like they are being arbitrarily punished for choosing a certain weight class.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 26 May 2013 - 03:09 PM.

[Pater Mors]

If MWO was a single player, story driven experience then I would agree that R&R would be great and provide immersion. As it stands it is PvP and having to spend a % of my earnings after every match doesn't increase immersion, it increases frustration and makes the grind boring and long. Unfortunately, many many gamers don't have time to devote to a full experience. I only get maybe an hour or two of gaming time per day and if it's suddenly filled with decisions on which Mech is going to net me the most profit rather than which Mech I am going to have the most fun piloting, then chances are I'll move to a game that provides the fun factor. I don't think I am alone in this assertion.

This is the type of mechanic that should definitely be introduced into a game like MechWarrior: Tactics and definitely left out of a game like MechWarrior: Online. The only way this will ever be viable is if each house/clan/faction has a pool of resources which is drawn on after each battle to repair Mech's and the c-bills aren't taken out of the pilots pockets. Even then it doesn't really do much to improve gameplay for anyone who doesn't want to play AccountsPayable: Online.

[Livewyr]

Keifomofutu, on 26 May 2013 - 03:09 PM, said:

Well see why not go the other way with it. It is fairly well known that assaults and heavies will make the most cbills per battle because they do the most damage/kills/components. Rather than try to bring in a R&R system that failed once already and isn't trusted to return why not give the lighter chassis a bonus to cbill earnings. Letting meds and lights earn as much as assaults would let those pilots feel like they aren't wasting their time by grinding in a lighter chassis. This rewards the use of those chassis without making the heavy and assault players feel like they are being arbitrarily punished for choosing a certain weight class.

Because there is no real reason for one or two weight classes to get bonuses to their combat.
(They SHOULD however provide bonuses for doing non-combat things as well, like scouting for the sake of information.)

[Tor6]

Livewyr, on 26 May 2013 - 02:11 PM, said:

I see your point, but it doesn't seem to account for the other parts of my suggestion.
Balancing on economy alone would be bad, that is a well known and fairly universal opinion.

The idea; why I brought up the thread, is that RnR could be used as a motivator to not run the most overpowered build at all time, and in fact use others to make money.
Another facet would be tier-matching: A BV bracket that puts your mech based on BV (sum of all your parts/upgrades) so you are matched against another person of your weight class, with a similar ELO, with a similarly decked out build.

The problem with going with a battle value system for upgrades is, as I touched on previously, upgrades are not often a straight upgrade (other than double heatsinks) and they benefit some chassis a lot while offering nothing for others. Even if you have weight class matchmaking, how do you balance a cicada which -requires- an xl and endo and such to be viable vs a centurion/hunchback which does great with only endo (or even without it, as it's not really required)? How do you balance the dragon, which requires an xl to be anything other than a big slow target (with its colossal CT) vs any other heavy? Its only advantage is that it can run an xl fairly safely, and even that isn't enough to bring it into common use. Catapults without xl engines can't deal with much because they lack the manueverability and speed to protect their massive cockpits and CTS. Compare with a cataphract which usually mounts only DHS (like every other mech in the game) and has enough tonnage to get away without using endo or ferro. Endo and ferro are a poor choice on an atlas, but under this system such a build would actually be matched as being more effective than a -more- competitive build which doesn't have them.

You'd need an absolute ton of exceptions for a system like this to work and it would likely still be full of exploitable holes. At that point people wouldn't be working within the system to have fun and build mechs. They'd be working to game the matchmaker. :/

Livewyr, on 26 May 2013 - 02:11 PM, said:

-------------------------------------
I'm not completely stuck on the idea of RnR, but I would like to find some motivation for mechs to not *always* bring the most top-notch killing machine.. I would even be satisfied if there was a legitimate downside to bringing Endo steel and DHS..

14 out of your 50+ crit slots doesn't make for much sacrifice unless you're planning on boating a bunch of ALRM20s or heavy ballistics. (or PPCs with gross HS needs) 3 Critslot DHS doesn't mean anything when you have a base 20HS from your engine, and can cram up to 6 more in it.

As I mentioned before, with one exception, every build I have has Endosteel, and EVERY build I have has DHS.. because there is no reason not to. As a matter of fact, NOT bringing DHS is failing a standard, making you a detriment to your team.

----------------------------------

Some builds need Endo and some don't. On mechs below 70 tons its almost always an upgrade and on those above its almost always unnecessary/bad.

However, I disagree that we should want people to build low-upgrade low effectiveness farming builds. If I have to pay for repairs (or even if I don't), I want to know for certain that every time I press launch that my teammates are trying to win and bringing something they think they can win in. Not because I want to win at any cost every game and fun be damned. But because losing because your teammates are just farming and brought intentionally gimped equipment sucks. I don't want to press the launch button and have to pray that my teammates decided that they actually want to win. I don't want to drop with mechs that are running half of my mech's armament becuase $$$ is getting in the way of that player running the build that they find fun. I want a game where you can use all the tools available to you to build the mech you want to pilot and have fun with.

Additionally, what is to stop people from simply running farming builds while playing solo (for fear of losing money because they have no control over their teammates) and then just running high end gear in 4 mans to farm the poor underequipped farming masses? I don't want to play such unbalanced games.

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Livewyr, on 26 May 2013 - 02:11 PM, said:

The elephant in the room for me (and why I even thought about this), is the coming clans, and their clan tech. By definition, they're imbalanced.. and the only two things the IS had going for them, were the clan honor crutch (RP) and extreme cost of the sweet technology. (Econ)

Currently, we have neither.

We need something.



Thank you for your contribution.

The clans are not supposed to be balanced, but cost is not what you can use to balance them. Numbers, not cost were the big deciding factor in the IS win. The clans were almost always greatly outnumbered, and we'll most likely see two lances vs. one star (8 v 5) as a balance for the clans (or at least an attempt at one).

[Hotthedd]

FupDup, on 26 May 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

Upgrading your tech tends to take longer than leveling your mech, at least if the variant doesn't some stock with all of the upgrades. When leveling my Trebs, I was completing the basic pilot optimizations long before I got enough C-Bills to buy another variant or upgrade it with Endo, DHS, etc.




Even though my previous reply was made too quickly and mistakenly directed at you, I'll respond to the second point anyways. Those are literally the exact same thing. The first half says you want a downside to min-max. The second part says you want direct-upgrades. The contradiction you're making is that min-max is just another word for direct-upgrade. It's called min-max because it makes you better than everyone else who isn't min-maxxing as well.

If there was a downside to being superior, you wouldn't be superior. Can you see what I'm getting at here? Those two things are mutually exclusive because they overwrite each other.

Maybe I should explain what I mean by "downside". What I mean is that there must be a trade-off for taking better equipment. Initial cost is a "downside", more expensive repairs would be another. Yes, the equipment is better, but there is a risk associated with the reward.