58 replies to this topic

[Fooooo]

Foust, on 30 May 2013 - 05:42 AM, said:

This. Your reward as a brawler for making effective use of cover to close in on the mechs specializing in long range fire power is to take the full brunt of that fire power at your optimum range.

A quad PPC boat is not a threat under 90m, nor a pure LRM boat under 180m. Apply the same logic to the ER PCC and Gauss. Give them a minimum range as well.

A lot of people asked for this in CB.

Most were shot down, the gauss mainly because people said "Realistically why would a gauss have less power up close when the projectile is probably at its peak speed hence most powerful etc......"

You can't argue "game balance" as a reason with types like that from my experience. (high power long range weapons lose dmg up close for balance against short range weapons.)

If it were a full on sim, then I would agree with them, but its not.....

Edited by Fooooo, 30 May 2013 - 06:05 AM.

[Volthorne]

Fooooo, on 30 May 2013 - 05:58 AM, said:

A lot of people asked for this in CB.

Most were shot down, the gauss mainly because people said "Realistically why would a gauss have less power up close when the projectile is probably at its peak speed hence most powerful etc......"

You can't argue "game balance" as a reason with types like that from my experience. (high power long range weapons lose dmg up close for balance against short range weapons.)

If it were a full on sim, then I would agree with them, but its not.....

I suppose you also want every AC but the 20 to take damage penalties for firing under X distance, because that's also a thing.

There are better ways to balance than arbitrarily adding a damage penalty for shooting below X range. Nerfing the ammo/ton of the Gauss would be a good place to start. So would cranking up the recycle time some more.

[jeffsw6]

Volthorne, on 30 May 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

There are better ways to balance than arbitrarily adding a damage penalty for shooting below X range. Nerfing the ammo/ton of the Gauss would be a good place to start. So would cranking up the recycle time some more.

I've been saying that for months.

[Thundercles]

Volthorne, on 30 May 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

I suppose you also want every AC but the 20 to take damage penalties for firing under X distance, because that's also a thing.

There are better ways to balance than arbitrarily adding a damage penalty for shooting below X range. Nerfing the ammo/ton of the Gauss would be a good place to start. So would cranking up the recycle time some more.

I dunno, I'd pay good money to see the look on someone's face if some sort of magnetic field feedback spacemagic loop caused that someone's Gauss Rifle to explode when they fired it under 60m...

[jakucha]

I do fine with a single AC/20. In my mind MW4 multiplayer was much worse for many reasons, including the even worse JJ problems.

[Roland]

Thomas Hogarth, on 30 May 2013 - 12:42 AM, said:

You do know that IS LRMs fired faster than Clan LRMs, right?

Yes, and it didn't matter. They were trash weapons in MW4. No one used them.
If you used LRM's, you used clan LRM's.

[keith]

Roland, on 30 May 2013 - 11:08 AM, said:

Yes, and it didn't matter. They were trash weapons in MW4. No one used them.
If you used LRM's, you used clan LRM's.

only decent IS lrm where the A LRM even then, clan were still much better. and A LRM were made by mektek and they made a bunch of OP weps, such as assault lasers. mektek even made some of the most OP mechs with hitboxes, anyone say ares:P(love that mech)

[FupDup]

keith, on 30 May 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

only decent IS lrm where the A LRM even then, clan were still much better. and A LRM were made by mektek and they made a bunch of OP weps, such as assault lasers. mektek even made some of the most OP mechs with hitboxes, anyone say ares:P(love that mech)

Ah yes, MekTek heavy rocket launchers. Oh the fun I had with two of them on an Owens using linked-fire.


Anyways, Heavy Large Lasers were overall superior to Assault Lasers due to way more range, less heat, and only slightly less damage. I think they also reloaded faster, I'm too lazy to startup MW4.

[FupDup]

SicksGunz, on 30 May 2013 - 12:19 PM, said:

OP:

I don't know what MW4 you played. There was only one weapon: the ER Large Laser. Everything else was window dressing. All in all this is a much more balanced game weapons wise.

MW4: Mercs was ERPPC, Gauss, and Jump Jets.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 30 May 2013 - 12:22 PM, said:

MW4: Mercs was ERPPC, Gauss, and Jump Jets.

I'm pretty sure there was many a references to Novacats (and other energy boating mechs) and boating ER Large Lasers until you bleed red from your eyes.

[Livewyr]

FupDup, on 30 May 2013 - 12:22 PM, said:

MW4: Mercs was ERPPC, Gauss, and Jump Jets.

On a blackknight, executioner (gladiator), or Highlander.

[Roland]

The ERLL accounted for around 80% of all weapon usage in MW4.

[johnyboy420]

mech 4 sucked big donkey diak that game waz nothing but clan ER LL clan ER PPC's and clan gauss and light gauss in most games there waz 2 or 3 madcat mkII's rocking 2 light and 2 clan gauss jump snipeing waz just as bad if not worse that game waz the worst mechwarrior ever, never seen bal tweeks no XL's no TT mechlab just garbage in general on top of that all there hardpoints are more OP then any mech in TT life span look at the old hindy that thing be so OP if i had its hard points in MW:O

and gauss waz so OP in MW4 best wep, no heat, not glass

Edited by johnyboy420, 30 May 2013 - 01:46 PM.

[Kommisar]

If you are going to stick with TT rules flavoring, then LRMs are going to suffer. Why did you bring LRMs in a table top battle? Wasn't massive damage. Wasn't just range. It was because you rolled separate hit locations for every grouping of 2 missiles. Each hit location roll gave you another chance to throw those box-cars and get a free critical hit. Or snake eyes and get a cockpit hit... roll for consciousness check. Or, for the more tactical minded, we took them for when the big guns started popping. OH, got that armor off that side torso or right arm? Let's throw 20 missiles at it and see if we can get lucky and get a crit.

They were crit weapons. This is why I loved my Zeus so much in TT. A PPC or AC/5 (later ERPPC!) to punch holes in armor at range. Then I fire my LRMs to find the hole.

SRMs were a finisher. You got that sweet hit with the large pulse laser (+2 to hit for the win!). No doubled armor, so 10 points can leave a hole in a mech. The follow on SRM spray upped your chances to pile on to the first hit. The LB10X? Brutal. You could fire at a wounded mech at really good range and roll multiple hit locations.

Without that mechanism being in play here, sticking with their TT combat values makes them less than optimal. Here, they are just straight damage dealers competing with all the other weapons. Competing with the following downsides:

• No effective dumb-fire. You have to maintain lock for the entire flight of the missiles.
  
• Worse, the projectiles are slower than any other weapon in the game.
  
• Worse x2 : This means you have to stand there in the open facing your targets direction the whole time.
  
• It spreads damage all over. The advantage in TT is the detriment in MW.
  
• To be effective, you find yourself mounting all sorts of extras. BAP, Artemis, TAG, modules.

The only upside is you can do indirect. To pull it off, however, means putting in a lot more effort than any other weapon in the game for less payout (currently). There were days past where it was worth it and whole teams boated them.

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

Roland is also incredibly correct. Clan LRMs blow IS LRMs out of the water. There is a reason that Mad Cat can mount all of that! I also believe that Roland is correct that the Devs are play testing with a lot more stuff that we know about. Very much including Clan Tech. Clan Tech is the Killer. The destroyer of balance and bringer of woe.

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

The big, easy fix is rather simple. Put the PPCs back to their original heat values. To finish this move, add penalties for pushing your heat that far up. Suddenly, you see why no one fielded 5 or 6 PPC mechs in TT.

[Rebas Kradd]

OP has some awful selective memory of MW4.

[Thomas Hogarth]

Kommisar, on 30 May 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

If you are going to stick with TT rules flavoring, then LRMs are going to suffer. Why did you bring LRMs in a table top battle? Wasn't massive damage. Wasn't just range. It was because you rolled separate hit locations for every grouping of 2 missiles.

You mean 5 missiles? Cluster size has always been 5, unless there was some shenanigans going on with the Solaris rules.

LRMs were somewhere between critseekers and hole punchers. An LRM20 could be expected to get 2-3 hit locations on average, and usually at least one of those would be a 5 pointer - same as a AC5 or ML. Multiples of 5 are the magic armor punch numbers for a lot of chassis, so there you go.

[Fate 6]

jeffsw6, on 29 May 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:

I really think the AC/20 is good except it eats too many crits (because it occupies 10 slots.) This problem is amplified by the huge damage from currently-popular PPC/Gauss weapons.

However, AC/20 projectile speed could really use a buff. I don't mind that I can't hit someone at 500m with it. Fine. I mind that I often miss at 200m or 300m because my opponent is simply ... not stupid ... and is moving at any reasonable speed. Forget about trying to hit a light mech with an AC/20 because that's just a waste of ammo most of the time. I miss Stalkers with it, though. Stalkers are slow and big, and it should be pretty easy to hit them with AC/20, but it's just too slow.

I have to agree. When I'm in my YLW it's actually REALLY hard to hit targets with my AC20 while running 107kph (because now everything is fast, relative to myself). I miss as much as I hit, and a decent amount of the hits STILL don't register (I hit a guy in mid-air today and got no hit marker despite a very obvious explosion animation on his chest). Given the extremely limited ammo of the AC20 (which is another huge flaw - less ammo/ton than Gauss and needs more heat sinks but takes up more crit slots), missing and non-hits are very frustrating.

[Kommisar]

Thomas Hogarth, on 30 May 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

You mean 5 missiles? Cluster size has always been 5, unless there was some shenanigans going on with the Solaris rules.

LRMs were somewhere between critseekers and hole punchers. An LRM20 could be expected to get 2-3 hit locations on average, and usually at least one of those would be a 5 pointer - same as a AC5 or ML. Multiples of 5 are the magic armor punch numbers for a lot of chassis, so there you go.

Bah, you are correct. Grouping of 5 for the LRMs. I'm getting old and forgetful!

You still get to roll multiple locations though, which was the big factor for the larger LRM launchers. And you still rolled for every 2 SRMs that hit.