59 replies to this topic

[Kraven Kor]

Bilbo, on 31 May 2013 - 01:31 PM, said:

Double armor was implemented before closed beta. I believe it was to increase overall match length by increasing mech survivability.

Yeah, without double armor, a 6x PPC mech would core out an Atlas in 2 shots to CT.

[HarmAssassin]

The farther they move from TT values, the more screwed up this game gets.

[Jestun]

Balance > lore every time.

I'm not saying it needs to be done, but if it does I have no problem with it.

[stjobe]

Jestun, on 01 June 2013 - 06:25 AM, said:

Balance > lore every time.

Not every time; just to a point. After that point it ceases to be a BattleTech game and becomes something else.

Personally, I'm more concerned with them keeping to the spirit of the BattleTech Universe than to the letter of the lore.

Currently we are quite far from what I believe the spirit of the BTU to be, what with
* 6 PPC alphas
* 3/4ths of a drop being assaults
* Double armour values
* 1.4 DHS
* Barely limited customization
* Nobody in their right mind going at stock speeds

I'd like to see
* Heat system changed (cap lowered, dissipation increased) to stop high-heat alphas
* Incentives for running lights and mediums
* A rework of weapons so we get closer to BT; probably by dividing the damage by the rate of fire
* A return to BT armour values and 2.0 DHS
* Implementation of BT field repair rules to limit customization
* Somehow rework the engine limits to stop everyone from going faster than stock all the time.

It's a pipe dream, I know, but in my mind that would be a better game than where MWO is heading.

Edited by stjobe, 01 June 2013 - 07:28 AM.

[El Bandito]

stjobe, on 01 June 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Not every time; just to a point. After that point it ceases to be a BattleTech game and becomes something else. Personally, I'm more concerned with them keeping to the spirit of the BattleTech Universe than to the letter of the lore. Currently we are quite far from what I believe the spirit of the BTU to be, what with * 6 PPC alphas * 3/4ths of a drop being assaults * Double armour values * 1.4 DHS * Barely limited customization * Nobody in their right mind going at stock speeds I'd like to see * Heat system changed (cap lowered, dissipation increased) to stop high-heat alphas * Incentives for running lights and mediums * A rework of weapons so we get closer to BT; probably by dividing the damage by the rate of fire * A return to BT armour values and 2.0 DHS * Implementation of BT field repair rules to limit customization * Somehow rework the engine limits to stop everyone from going faster than stock all the time. It's a pipe dream, I know, but in my mind that would be a better game than where MWO is heading.

You forgot dice rolling.

[DocBach]

Bandito I loved your lock on idea for all weapon systems where obtaining a lock meant gaining convergeance. I'd say that'd be great for balance without having to [Richard] around with changing weights and sizes.

[WildeKarde]

El Bandito, on 01 June 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

You forgot dice rolling.

The only dice we are getting are in the cockpit

I think without some sort of BV then we are too unbalanced. A stock atlas is no better than a fully customised one currently, but how many here would play stock in a PUG? Not many.

But if the stock atlas was only 3/4 (or even 1/2) of the cost of the customised one then it might be more even on the teams.

Edited by Jake Hendricks, 01 June 2013 - 11:15 AM.

[Trauglodyte]

Heat is a definite issue. A lot of people don't understand why the high capacity was added but the 2.0 inter engine and 1.4 external engine/post 10 base on 250+ was done because they decided to move all weapons to different recycle times (ie, not the TT 10s base). BUT, they wanted to keep heat dissipation on the TT 10s cycle. That meant, in order to keep builds from being too efficient, they had limit the value of DHSs. But, it also meant that they had to extend the heat capacity to allow mechs to fire more than one alpha before shutting down. That, of course, was due to the fact that they added additional hard points on mechs to keep chassis variants viable. So, now we have a big mess where there is no limitation on hard points which allows extreme high damage alphas with heavy energy weapons causing mass amounts of heat but no restrictions on the heat buildup because these mechs are packing mass numbers of DHSs to extend their heat levels. This, combined with Cool Run and Heat Containment x2 puts us in the situation we're in. Added to capacity is fine via Heat Sinks but it is the level at which it extends that cap. On top of that, reducing the heat dissipation of DHSs outside of the base 10 is fine because it means high heat builds aren't efficient but the lack of heat penalties means efficiency isn't a big deal. Ideally, there needs to be an adjustment between capacity (ie, needs to be lowered) and dissipation (ie needs to be raised) with added heat penalties and the possible inclusion of hard point restrictions.

[Thomas Hogarth]

Biased poll is still getting trounced.

Normally speaking, balance>lore, but when the lore is set up to be balanced in the first place, and you ignore a key component of it, guess what?

It's not going to be balanced any longer.

You can work with this and tweak that until it's sort of balanced again, but by that point it won't resemble the source material at all. Remember the Shadowrun game?

Yeah.

[edit] it occurred to me that some might think that I'm implying that this game is headed in the direction of the SR game in terms of quality. I didn't think about it like that at the time, but yeah, I'll own that.

Edited by Thomas Hogarth, 01 June 2013 - 02:13 PM.

[Xeno Phalcon]

Its hard to walk the line between TT, multiplayer shooter and battletech lore/story. TT armor was much lower, and the pilots stats were as important as the mechs stats and even then shots were pretty much random across the board unless you aimed at a specific spot, which had to-hit penalties involved.

In lore/books a combination of convergence, crosshairs and weapons locks were used to various degrees. Personally I prefer the book stuff above the tabletop info, leave the heavy handed TT rules to mechwarrior tactics but in the same stride, if we go adding and doing stuff too willy nilly we are little better then hawken. (im looking at you seismic sensor, cant wait for the repairmech!)

[Tarl Cabot]

Bilbo, on 31 May 2013 - 01:31 PM, said:

Quote

El Bandito, on 31 May 2013 - 06:28 AM, said:


How is it "unbalanced"? No explanation at all?

I can understand about DHS but how was double armor game breaking? I wasn't in close Beta but wasn't double armor in response to two-shotting mechs with most weapons?

Also, MW2--which was more faithful to TT values was no way balanced for multiplayer.

Double armor was implemented before closed beta. I believe it was to increase overall match length by increasing mech survivability.

(nods) Compared to the previous MPBTs which ran with stock mechs while in a lance vs lance encounter. Or another way of looking at it is that PGI increased the health points of armor from 1pt to 2pts. Besides doubling the armor they also give many of the components health points so that they are not destroyed right away. In other games, both board and video, once a component was destroyed, be it a heat sink, laser, etc, that component was rendered inoperable.

Other items not in play is the heat scale effects as heat went higher on the heat scale with slower and more sluggish mechs with target difficulties. Andthe other elephant in the room is the heat effect from engine crits themselves. For the first engine crit it would be 5 additional heat then the 2nd crit heat another 5 heat for a total of 10 constant heat based on internal heat sinks being damaged.

Without both the heat scale effects and engine crit effects things will be a mess when Clans arrive with their own XL engines, being affected only by the loss of equipment on the destroyed side.

1. Increased mech encounters from 4vs4 to 8vs8 and soon to be 12vs12
2. Almost complete customization (on board games we restricted each unit/palyer to one customized mech), increasing overall mech firepower over time.
3. Double armor
4. Increased component life with health points
5. No real heat scale effects except shutdown/damage w/override, and max heat level increased by adding Heat Sinks
6. No engine damage effects except death upon 3 engine crits.
7. Next, increase the health of internal structure..(just kidding../looks around).

As to the poll itself on weight values it would not have the desired result because the counter balances for some of the issues we are seeing are not in place. And if they change one thing they will have to change other things with regard to weight. And with their crew, it could be really become broken when there is nothing to fix with the weight of items. It is like some of their patches, they patch one thing in but have to delay its counter til later.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 01 June 2013 - 02:40 PM.

[verybad]

Leave the weight as is, balance the items armor and weapons in a manner that suits real time. There's no reason to change weights as everything has multiple systems that can be adjusted in order to make it balance.

[stjobe]

El Bandito, on 01 June 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

You forgot dice rolling.

Actually, I didn't. I just think that if we are to be the MechWarrior, our actions should affect the outcome. I too want to hit where I aim

But to be perfectly honest, I do not mind a bit of RNG where it's appropriate; I wouldn't protest much if all weapons got a bit of a cone of fire. Not enough to make it impossible to hit where you aim, but enough to not make it 100% certain you placed all your shots on the same pixel.

Although the same effect could probably be implemented with a better convergence system.

So no, I don't want MWO to be the table-top BattleTech game (that's for MW:Tactics), I want it to be a real-time, first-person interpretation of 'mech combat in the BattleTech Universe.

[3rdworld]

Thomas Hogarth, on 01 June 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

lore is set up to be balanced

It may have been set up that way, but it is completely not balanced.

That is the entire point of the BV system. To assign artificial and arbitrary values to items to balance them in aggregate. You can't do that here, because we do not play in aggregate.

[Monky]

I vote option three (bad idea) because there are plenty of options to persue without resorting to that.

The problem is PGI does not experiment - hopefully the PTR will allow them moar freedum to mess with ****. I'd consider adding heat to the Gauss rifle, for instance, before adding weight/crit slots.

[Lykaon]

El Bandito, on 31 May 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

For weapons and equipments only. I realize that even though they had changed damage, heat, RoF and armor values around, PGI still haven't touched the weight of weapons and equipments (actually, by increasing shot per ton, PGI already indirectly changed ammo weight).

I have no clear idea on whether allowing such change will lead to something better or worse but I do know that by allowing flexible TT weight value will open up another avenue for balancing. IMO Pulse Lasers and Narc might need such change.

You thoughts on this matter?

It may open up additional avenues for balancing equipment but...

If we change mech weights equipment criticals,equipment tonnages etc why bother using the Mechwarrior name let's just call it Giant Space Robot Destroy Wars and be done with it.

If this is adopted then the obvious next thing that needs to go is Canon Mech Builds and varients since these run the risk of being invalidated by equipment changes.

If we no longer use in canon designs why restrict ourselves with published Battletech materiel?

Why should we even stick to source materiel for what weapons we use? if they design a weapon from scratch it will be by definition "functioning as intended/designed" so screw the large laser or ER PPC we can have beamo cannons and zortch blasters!

Actually why pay for the I.P. at all PGI should have just gone off and designed some robot fighting game maybe call it "Rawken" or maybe um..."Armored Robo Core" or maybe "Metal Battalion".

[El Bandito]

Lykaon, on 02 June 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

It may open up additional avenues for balancing equipment but...

If we change mech weights equipment criticals,equipment tonnages etc why bother using the Mechwarrior name let's just call it Giant Space Robot Destroy Wars and be done with it.

If this is adopted then the obvious next thing that needs to go is Canon Mech Builds and varients since these run the risk of being invalidated by equipment changes.

If we no longer use in canon designs why restrict ourselves with published Battletech materiel?

Why should we even stick to source materiel for what weapons we use? if they design a weapon from scratch it will be by definition "functioning as intended/designed" so screw the large laser or ER PPC we can have beamo cannons and zortch blasters!

Actually why pay for the I.P. at all PGI should have just gone off and designed some robot fighting game maybe call it "Rawken" or maybe um..."Armored Robo Core" or maybe "Metal Battalion".

See, this is what I call overreacting. I had played the original Mechwarrior long time ago and while it was first person shooter, and the loadouts weren't anything close to what we had (heavy missiles, really?), it was still a Mechwarrior game. Mech Commander is Mechwarrior game. Hell, even Mech Assault is acknowledged as Mechwarrior game.

This game can have 6 ton LPL and still call itself Mechwarrior. I will just shrug off the change, even though I played all the MW game that came out on PC before and own all the BT novels pre-Dark Age.

Most importantly, PGI has to think very hard about the whole balance issue if they wish to implement the Clans using TT values. And weight is one huge factor in the OPness of Clan tech.

Edited by El Bandito, 02 June 2013 - 04:09 AM.

[TheForce]

i vote no because this game is supposed to represent MechWarrior. it doesn't do this now, and it won't do this if the TT values are changed.

in its current state, the game looks like MechWarrior, but it feels like GenericRobotWarrior.

PGI needs to deal with group fire and pinpoint accuracy to make this game feel like MechWarrior.

Edited by TheForce, 02 June 2013 - 07:41 AM.

[El Bandito]

TheForce, on 02 June 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

i vote no because this game is supposed to represent MechWarrior. it doesn't do this now, and it won't do this if the TT values are changed. in its current state, the game looks like MechWarrior, but it feels like GenericRobotWarrior. PGI needs to deal with group fire and pinpoint accuracy to make this game feel like MechWarrior.

You do realize that Mechwarrior 1, 2, 3 and 4 all had pin-point alphas, and sniping was the best way to fight, right? MWO is just following the trend.

And what exactly do you mean by generic robot warrior? MWO, Hawken, Armored Core, Zone of the Enders and Gundam are all very different games featuring mechs.

Perhaps you want dice-rolling in this game so it will stick to TT rules?

Edited by El Bandito, 02 June 2013 - 09:40 AM.

[DocBach]

El Bandito, on 02 June 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

One thing I love as much as playing Mechwarrior games is reading classic Battle Tech novels. From them I got this idea to change the current stale meta of long range sniping. It is a long post so please bear with me and finish reading my post before you vote/comment.


First, read the following parts I specifically took from the BT novel "End Game".

"The khaki-painted BattleMech was scarred along its right side from earlier damage. Careful of the buildings behind the Cestus, Pierce worked to lock his targeting computer over the wounded flank.
The targeting crosshairs burned a deep golden hue, and he pulled into the trigger. Both of his rotary cannon spat out several hundred rounds, the slugs tipped with depleted uranium for 'Mech-stopping power."

"Pierce's targeting computer couldn't grab an angle on the Cestus's already-damaged side, and his crosshairs flashed the alternating gold and black of partial lock."

"The hard-hammering blows left Peter's ears ringing as he dragged his own crosshairs over the wispy gray cloud and searched for the Viking. The reticle changed from red to a flashing gold, and then burned steadily as his targeting system found a solid lock. Peter braced the Fafnir forward, leaning into the heavy recoil as each of his gauss rifles spat out a hypersonic mass."

"Tancred knew the Nightstar and the kind of hurt it was capable of dishing out among other 'Mechs. He swallowed dryly, facing his old ride, then toggled in his large laser with his rotary autocannons. His crosshairs burned a deep gold as the Templar's targeting computer grabbed a hard lock, and Tancred drilled a good measure of scarlet energy and hot metal into the Nightstar's chest."


Basically the parts I selected all talk about novel's characters trying to lock on to the enemy with direct fire weapons such as Rotary AC, Gauss Rifle, and Lasers. That's right, to make an accurate shot they need to wait for a solid lock using direct fire weapons. (not even guaranteed then).

Why not use the novel's idea of targeting in MWO to address pin-point shooting with direct fire weapons (non-missile) from 1000 meters away? With some tweaks?

Suppose every mechs' targeting computer--being Inner Sphere junk--can only give you 100% accurate shots with ballistics and lasers/PPCs within 400 meters (actual distance is subject to change--it can be 500 or 600 depending on balance). To shoot accurately over 400 meters you will need to lock on to the enemy and hold your targeting reticule for 0.5-2 seconds (also subject to change) depending on how far the enemy is. Further away the enemy is, longer you will have to keep you cross hair over the enemy before it achieves hard lock.
Once a hard-lock is achieved, the cursor will change color and/or give you a warning sound (or have some different animation), and the direct fire weapon will hit the exact spot when fired.

You can still immediately fire (ie, without hard lock) any direct fire weapons if you choose to, but it will only hit targets accurately up to 400 meters. More than 400 meters and without a hard lock, the shot will not go straight forward, instead it will shoot at slight angle (the path of the shot is random within certain limit). How wide the shot will go will depend on the distance. For example, if the enemy is standing at 600 meters, your shot without hard lock will most likely still hit the enemy but might not hit the section you targeted. If the enemy is over 1000 meters your shot will probably completely miss him even if he is standing still, without hard lock.

Unlike Missiles, direct fire hard-lock will end immediately if the enemy move out of your reticule zone. There is no target decay time.

In regards to leading shots: Without a hard lock, the shot will not be 100% accurate. With hard lock, you can accurately lead the target.


To repeat for clarification--In order to accurately shoot a target over 400 meters (did I mention that it is subject to change?)...

1. You must have a lock onto the enemy. Your allies can spot for you to achieve such lock if the enemy is further away from your max targeting range.

2. After you lock onto the enemy you must keep the cross hair on the target for 0.5-2 seconds (subject to change) depending on the distance. Longer the distance, longer the lock time.

Reminder: You can still shoot your guns without hard lock but over 400 meters its accuracy will not be guaranteed and it gets worse as the bullet/laser/PPC travels further.


I believe with these changes, snipers and poptarts will now have to expose themselves longer for retaliatory fire and lights/mediums will have much better survival rate crossing the field.

With such drastic change comes pros and cons. I do not yet know the all specifics about them since I just wrote this thread but IMO:

Biggest con--Introducing RNG, or luck in this game. Your shots might still hit the moving enemy at long distances even without lock depending on the random path of the shot. Or you might completely miss a target that is traveling around 600 meters without hard lock.

Biggest pro--Making the game feel more Battle Tech, less common FPS.

this is so much better than tweaking weight and sizes of stuff