- All weapons lose individual convergence to the crosshair (basically shoot straight, including arm mounted weapons).
- Arms will physically point to the center of the arm crosshair (basically weapons shoot in the physical pattern that they are mounted on the arms), thus give their convergence in this pattern.
- Torso mounted weapons will point directly straight from their respective locations and not converge their aim at all. The torso crosshair is basically just used to tell what perpendicular line the torso is facing, from the center of the torso.
- All ballistic weapons (and ballistic style weapons, like PPCs) have small Cones of Fire. The Cones of Fire are small, not enough to miss targets except against Small mechs at extreme distances 800m+. The Cones of Fire shrink down to firing directly straight, like other weapons, in a linear function to throttle. Machine Guns will also be effected in the same manner.
- Missiles will ripple fire their weapons at a rate of 0.1s per salvo. SRMs (and SSRMs) shoot 1 SRM per salvo while LRMs shoot in 5 LRMs per salvo. If you shoot more missiles than is physically seen on the mech, there will be a 0.5s delay between each complete ripple fire.
- SSRMs and LRMs will home in the same manner. Each missile or salvo (5 LRMs) will home onto a random location on the mech.
- More restrictive hardpoints will be introduced. A "Large", "SRM", "LRM", and "Multi-Missile" hardpoints will be added. Large hardpoints allow for the largest of the class of weapons to be equipped. PPC/ERPPC, AC/20, LRM/20, SRM/6 is what is considered "Large" weapons. "SRM" and "LRM" is used to separate those mechs that actually distinguish between these weapons (Stalker) while "Multi-Missile" is used for those that do not (Catapult).
- Some changes to how heat is done (there is a multitude of ways, just take your pick). But most importantly, DHS need to have the same values across both mounts (inside/outside engine).
- Critical seeking weapons (LBX, Machine Gun, and SRMs) will have greatly increased critical damage due to their natural multi-shot style. LBX pellets will deal 5.0 damage for each critical hit, Machine Gun will deal 1.0 damage per critical hit, and SRMs will deal 5.0 damage per critical hit.
- The LBX will be modified to shoot a flak canister, which explodes when within 50m of a solid object.
- Pulse lasers will be modified to be a weapon with a RoF, to allow more control of what heat is expended and be some of the best DPS weapons for energy weapons in exchange for their heat and range.
With all of the above introduced, this should balance out any use of any combination of weapons. If you boat all ballistic style weapons, you have to either be standing still or have a small Cone of Fire introduced into your shots. And if you stand still, you still have to compensate for your shots based on their location, arms will physically point at the arm crosshair, torso weapons will need need some time to aim, alpha striking all those weapons will hit different locations. This is to be balance to those weapons that place all their damage up front on a single location (not all weapons hitting the same location, but a single weapon placing all their damage on the location they hit). The LBX will be the special case ballistic weapon which sacrifices all damage onto a location for spread damage, like Missiles, but gain the ability to shred internal equipment and do it at extended ranges.
Laser weapons will still be the king of accuracy but require continued aiming. They can easily be adjusted to when firing to get their damage to where they need to be duration their duration. Pulse lasers allow for even more flexibility in that you can stop firing them, to not use heat, until you know where they are landing. Pulse lasers are not useful in alpha strikes but they will be amazing DPS weapons for exchanges in extra heat, tonnage, and range.
Missile weapons will be weapons either used for indirect fire or superior range weapons, or used for fast strikes for their tonnage. For single launchers, they require little aiming as they ripple fire their shots in short order (0.5s for the SRM/6). They do spread their damage if your aim is off but SRMs will be good at destroying internal equipment on a mech with an unarmored location. LRMs and SSRMs will still be the kings of getting damage onto the mech with ease but with LRMs spread and SSRMs smaller warheads, dealing less damage than SRMs, they are mainly used either to weaken mechs overall or to get in almost guaranteed strikes against fast targets.
The arm convergence and torso convergence changes is to make arms useful for allowing easy aiming of (but not all damage from arms hitting a single location easy) the weapons mounted here. They will be extremely useful in sniping situations due to pointing directly where you aim. Torso mounted weaponry are for weapons to be protected from incoming fire due to lots of torso armor. They generally suffer from aiming issues due to only firing straight from the torso, thus will most likely be fired independent of arm weapons due to hitting different locations.
The differences in convergence will enforce the idea that shooting at arms of players will hurt their accuracy if you blow off the arms, but arms will be a bit harder to hit due to where they are located, but is dependent on the mech. This also is further enforced with more spreading of damage, in general, so it's not extremely easy to just blow off a side torso and ignore the arms.
Missile changes for rippling their fire is used as a way to balance out large blocks of missiles being fired at the same time. If a mech can mount many Missile weapons, it will take longer to fire all those missiles, thus more aim is needed.
I have other balancing ideas that I would like to do but I think these listed above are some of the worst offenders in this game.
Edited by Zyllos, 08 June 2013 - 09:36 AM.
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Mechsniper, on 08 June 2013 - 07:15 AM, said:
