63 replies to this topic

[Zaptruder]

As per the thread title.

What's your solution to the primary meta-problem in Mechwarrior Online?

We're not really going to debate whether or not it is; but let's assume for arguments sake that the ability to cause 30-60 points of damage on a single part of a mech in a single instant (or 30-60+splash as was the case for splat cats cheese era), irrespective of what weapons are doing it, is what's ruining the game.

What would you do to solve this problem?

[topgun505]

Set the hard heat-shutdown threshold at 30 ... maybe 35, and heat sinks do NOT increase this value ... they only increase your heat dissipation rate. So if you volley off 4 or more PPC, or 3 or more ERPPC that's an instant shutdown.

Additional tid bits.

There should be considerable falling damage inflicted on mechs that shut down in mid air. You are NOT a cat. If you are shutdown you are not going to land on your feet and there will be serious consequences.

Currently, if you hit the override and fire weapons that go past the current threshold you end up taking damage. Why then can a 6-PPC Stalker volley off 6 PPCs when its at 99% heat and as long as it doesn't override it takes no damage? There HAS to be serious consequences for going above a certain point on the heat scale, regardless of whether or not you override or shutdown. Not sure where that starting value should be ... 110%? 120%? The damage should probably also vary by how far you overshoot the shutdown threshold. The worse you overheat the more damage you do. In older versions of MW if you exceeded the threshold too much you BLEW UP THE ENGINE. Not sure if we should take it THAT far (my instinct says probably yes though).

[Renalvic3312]

Perhaps if more than 20-40% (don't know an exact amount) of armour is taken away in a single shot or under a certain amount of time, it should spread to the parts around it.

Atlas takes 60 damage to chest,
30% of max armour (max is 124) = 37 damage to CT
Random variable will decide where other 23 damage will go
perhaps 7 damage to LT
10 damage to RT
4 damage to RL
2 damage to LL

Although I don't know what the exact values are or could be, I think this would help.

Edited by Renalvic3312, 08 June 2013 - 05:54 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I prefer the half heat cap, double dissipation approach for this and other reasons, but here's another:

Whenever you fire a weapon, all weapons not seated in the same hit location go on a server enforced 0.25 second cooldown.

You will have a hard time finding a mech that can put 30+ damage in one hit location, and if you've found it, you'll likely have a mech that has one attractive target for any enemy mech. Seems fair.

Examples: My current favorite mech, the Dual AC/20 Jagermech:
One AC/20 in the left arm, one in the right arm. Currently I just shoot them together, for 40 points of pinpoint damage at close range.

With the change, I need to fire the right or left first, wait 0.2 5second, and then can I fire the others.

In turn, the Hunchback 4P - 8 medium lasers in the "hunch". Can all be fired together. The enemy goes for the hunch first, and you lose all firepower. AT least you got some nice alpha damage out of it for your troubles!

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 08 June 2013 - 05:58 AM.

[AndyHill]

Remove group fire / alpha functionality, weapons can only be fired x amount of time between them. Lasers have a long lasting beam, ACs and perhaps gauss fire streams of bullets (with possible slight spread). PPC is a long stream of plasma. It would be interesting to test these and see how far we'd get.

[Renalvic3312]

As I said, an example, perhaps it could be put to 15-20% meaning that 4 PPCs shot at once would spread damage around

AndyHill, on 08 June 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Remove group fire / alpha functionality, weapons can only be fired x amount of time between them. Lasers have a long lasting beam, ACs and perhaps gauss fire streams of bullets (with possible slight spread). PPC is a long stream of plasma. It would be interesting to test these and see how far we'd get.

Wouldn't that require a lot of coding..... A complete redesign of the weapons

(Trivia: If you play Mech Warrior Tactics, you will see that lasers actually fire an instant beam, doing the same as a PPC.)

[El Bandito]

Introduce real convergence.

http://mwomercs.com/...t-fire-weapons/

Edited by El Bandito, 08 June 2013 - 06:48 AM.

[Zaptruder]

El Bandito, on 08 June 2013 - 06:02 AM, said:

Introduce real convergence.

Can you elaborate more on this?

[AndyHill]

Renalvic3312, on 08 June 2013 - 05:59 AM, said:

Wouldn't that require a lot of coding..... A complete redesign of the weapons

(Trivia: If you play Mech Warrior Tactics, you will see that lasers actually fire an instant beam, doing the same as a PPC.)

I don't think so. Besides removing the option to group fire the only real change would be the plasma stream and I think that could work pretty much like an auto cannon salvo but with different graphics.

[Donnie Silveray]

Many of these solutions are overly complicated for implementation and possible balance tweaking. You need to remember, the weapons are functioning as intended. There is simply no consequence for taking advantage of a set of weapons to achieve a certain performance.

Doubling dissipation and dropping capacity may do this though my gut tells me it still wants some kind of capacity modification going around. I highly doubt that unless there is something deeply complicated with the code, adjusting this heat mechanic should be simple. Additionally PGI has suggested a type of heat scale to seriously penalize pure boaters. Boating a crapload of small lasers aren't likely to raise the scale much if you've got a decent heat sink setup, but going 6ERPPC (along with internal damage) is likely going to make you go nuclear and ignite the atmosphere of the planet.

The pin-point damage problem isn't truly so much the problem. Again, it's that there is no discernable consequence for abusing it, especially in the case of PPCs. The ability to pinpoint is working as intended due to the FPS nature. A fix to the heat system will make going absurdly hot less encouraging.

[The Cheese]

No matter what you load up, all you get is machine guns.

And that's why I don't make my living by balancing video games.

[NachoFoot]

Pinpoint damage > Area damage

What you have is the best pinpoint damage weapons: PPC + Ballistics rule. Funny because Lasers are supposedly pinpoint but they come in 3rd place at best.

[El Bandito]

Zaptruder, on 08 June 2013 - 06:03 AM, said:

Can you elaborate more on this?

Sure thing. Wrote a full thread about it. Here.

http://mwomercs.com/...t-fire-weapons/

Edited by El Bandito, 08 June 2013 - 06:18 AM.

[Felbombling]

The current heat system is horrible, but you get the distinct feeling that the development team likes it exactly the way it is. Just read the interview here in the Game Balance forum done by Summer. They think the game is very close to their vision at this point. Or read the Quickdraw fluff... the pin-point blasting goes on for three to four alpha strikes, if memory serves, and only then does the pilot even care to take a look at his heat situation.

Assuming the game isn't too far gone to undergo a major face lift, put movement modifiers into weapon convergence that might represent a circle that gets smaller as the weapons 'aim' or converge. If you are running around, it effects your aim and convergence. Put in a more punishing heat system that slows you down, causes potential for ammunition explosions and messes with your reticule to varying degrees as the temperature rises. At the heat cap you auto shutdown and everything on the Mech ceases, save the heat sinks. When you start up again, you are in the exact same situation before the shutdown, and your weapons start to reload/recycle from that point, etc.

There are other things I would do, too, but suffice to say the game is good right now, but could be tenfold better. Looking ahead to when/if we can have access to Clan technology, I just look at a popular Cataphract right now. The 3D can mount four Jump Jets with four PPC and fifteen double heat sinks... and still reach 80km/h depending on the engine you throw in there. When Clan tech becomes available, you could switch the armament over to four Clan Large Pulse Lasers and toss in four more heat sinks to make it 19 doubles. No minimum range, focused damage into one armour location... and the heat sinks to use it more effectively than the current four PPC Inner Sphere build. If they introduce a penalty for multiple weapons fired of the same time in the same space of time, I'll just swap out a pair of the Large Pulse for two ER PPC or three ER Large Lasers... same devastating effect... without their heat penalties. So be it.

Regardless, if they honestly think they can balance the game by minor weapon value tweaks to heat, range and damage, they are missing the core issues altogether.

[AndyHill]

I very much see the pinpoint damage as the problem. After all, it's the biggest difference between the tabletop game and the simulator. In the tabletop game, the biggest point damage weapon is AC/20 with 20 points at short range, which makes the Hunchback G a fearsome opponent. In MWO The Hunchback P does 45 points of pinpoint damage at comparable ranges and Stalker does 60 to a much greater range. This makes the 'mechs die faster and encourages shoot and cool down tactics instead of brawly DPS competitions where 'mechs are hacked to bits piece by piece.

[Livewyr]

Fix PPCs.

Lasers are easily dealt with- turn your mech.
Ballistics are heavy and can't be boated. (AC40s are the closest they get.. they're short ranged, and a K2 can't aim up/down or mount an XL, and the Jager is a kite.)
Missiles aren't pinpoint.

[cyberFluke]

MustrumRidcully, on 08 June 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

I prefer the half heat cap, double dissipation approach for this and other reasons, but here's another:

Whenever you fire a weapon, all weapons not seated in the same hit location go on a server enforced 0.25 second cooldown.

You will have a hard time finding a mech that can put 30+ damage in one hit location, and if you've found it, you'll likely have a mech that has one attractive target for any enemy mech. Seems fair.

Examples: My current favorite mech, the Dual AC/20 Jagermech:
One AC/20 in the left arm, one in the right arm. Currently I just shoot them together, for 40 points of pinpoint damage at close range.

With the change, I need to fire the right or left first, wait 0.2 5second, and then can I fire the others.

In turn, the Hunchback 4P - 8 medium lasers in the "hunch". Can all be fired together. The enemy goes for the hunch first, and you lose all firepower. AT least you got some nice alpha damage out of it for your troubles!

I am *really* not a fan of this at all. Why use an arbitrary extra timer when heat can do this for us? Lower the cap, up the dissipation, buh bye alpha boats.

StaggerCheck, on 08 June 2013 - 06:18 AM, said:

The current heat system is horrible, but you get the distinct feeling that the development team likes it exactly the way it is. Just read the interview here in the Game Balance forum done by Summer. They think the game is very close to their vision at this point. Or read the Quickdraw fluff... the pin-point blasting goes on for three to four alpha strikes, if memory serves, and only then does the pilot even care to take a look at his heat situation.

Assuming the game isn't too far gone to undergo a major face lift, put movement modifiers into weapon convergence that might represent a circle that gets smaller as the weapons 'aim' or converge. If you are running around, it effects your aim and convergence. Put in a more punishing heat system that slows you down, causes potential for ammunition explosions and messes with your reticule to varying degrees as the temperature rises. At the heat cap you auto shutdown and everything on the Mech ceases, save the heat sinks. When you start up again, you are in the exact same situation before the shutdown, and your weapons start to reload/recycle from that point, etc.

There are other things I would do, too, but suffice to say the game is good right now, but could be tenfold better. Looking ahead to when/if we can have access to Clan technology, I just look at a popular Cataphract right now. The 3D can mount four Jump Jets with four PPC and fifteen double heat sinks... and still reach 80km/h depending on the engine you throw in there. When Clan tech becomes available, you could switch the armament over to four Clan Large Pulse Lasers and toss in four more heat sinks to make it 19 doubles. No minimum range, focused damage into one armour location... and the heat sinks to use it more effectively than the current four PPC Inner Sphere build. If they introduce a penalty for multiple weapons fired of the same time in the same space of time, I'll just swap out a pair of the Large Pulse for two ER PPC or three ER Large Lasers... same devastating effect... without their heat penalties. So be it.

Regardless, if they honestly think they can balance the game by minor weapon value tweaks to heat, range and damage, they are missing the core issues altogether.

Actually, I think they have some semblance of a plan, I just can't figure out why they've done it the way they have. While positing in another thread with similar scope, tired as all hell, it all fell into place in my brain...

cyberFluke, on 07 June 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

This has nothing to do with wanting to pop tart or boat. It's about wanting a greater depth of skill than the mere manual dexterity than we've all been training since we started using a computer.

I suspect PGI are attempting to "balance" accuracy by differing projectile speeds, lasers being DoT and missiles being counterable. As "Boating" the same weapons is the counter to these accuracy measures, this would be why they are thinking up some kind of additional "anti-boating" heat penalties.

I'd just honestly love to know why they've not used the heat capacity to prevent alpha boating, it is after all, what it's for...
Why increase heat capacity and lower dissipation from base values? All you've done is made boated builds more possible.

If heat cap was lower, say 35, 3xERPPCs and you're near max heat, what's the point in taking 4, or 6, PPCs?
There isn't one, so you'd load up on what, heatsinks? And have a load of tonnage spare. Maybe some missiles in some of those criticals instead? Ammo for em, maybe a TAG to guide em in past ECM. What about some small lasers, streaks and BAP to deal with the lights instead?

Hey look, a semi balanced build that's more desirable than a PPC Boat, just by lowering the heat cap. Of course a new balance for heatsinks would have to be found, but now is the time (beta), and the sooner the better, right?

Edited by cyberFluke, 08 June 2013 - 06:36 AM.

[BillyM]

Don't just spread simultaneously-fired damage, reduce it! I can only speak to what would make my 4-ppc Cata1x less deadly, and that is forcing me to not fire them at the same time or suffer reduced damage. Want to play alpha-warrior? Fine, but you're seeing reduced damage!

The scientific reason could be that PPC pulses have magnetic forces that dissipate one-another upon barrel-exit when in close proximity (-7% for each simultaneously-fired ppc). So, your simultaneous-fire damage looks like this:

1ppc=10dmg
2ppc=20dmg-14%=17.2dmg
3ppc=30dmg-21%=23.7dmg
4ppc=40dmg-28%=29.0dmg
5ppc=50dmg-35%=32.5dmg
6ppc=60dmg-42%=34.8dmg

We would see a lot more multi-ppc boats chain-firing them giving opportunity to twist the damage to other components. There would have to be a 0.2sec delay timer to avoid nearly-simultaneous-macro firing but otherwise this would be fairly easy.


AC's would scientifically have to create some sort of inaccuracy if simultaneously...

--billyM

Edited by BillyM, 08 June 2013 - 06:40 AM.

[Blackadder]

there are a number of solutions that would work, however the real question comes down to what would be the easiest to implement with the least use of resources, given pgi's handicaps. we could put together a perfect solution, but if it required 6 months of coding and another 3 months of bug fixing it really wont help much.

1) HEAT MECHANIC REVAMP:

Revamping heat as described in many well thought out posts will solve the pinpoint issue to an extent, because it puts a hard cap on the number of weapons that can be fired. putting in penalities for high heat generation will also help.


2) MECH HARDPOINT REVAMP

Another major issue is that any mech can mount any weapon of the 3 basic types, as long as it has the critical slots and tonnage. To address this, you could put in a series of hardpoints, small , medium , large. on a per mech basis, and put each weapon in a size class as well as basic weapon class. To allow players more ability to customize mechs, you could allow for weapons to use the smaller hardpoints on a radio. IE 2 small hardpoints = 1 medium laser/srm6/1 medium pulse laser/1 ac2-ac5.

There would need to be redesign on some hardpoints on some mechs to address some of the problems, but it would allow hard limits on the large scale weapons. this would also probably give some benefit to what are seen as a weak varient, as the phract 4x now becomes a good dual ac20 build mech, with its mass of ballistic hardpoints.

3) DISPERSION/CONVERGENCE/COF/BLOOM

Along with heat the lack of any kind of limiting factor on aiming multiple weapons at a single point is non existent. Contrary to most of the arguments, putting in some kind of dispersion will not reduce the skill levels. it will in fact increase skill requirements for players overall. the problem with doing this is its going to be very time consuming and i am not sure if its possible even for PGI to implement it at this point in the game. Currently though, auto convergence of multiple weapons on different parts of a mech all hitting the exact same point is a huge issue, as it pretty much removes strategy and tactics from the game.

4) INCREASED RELOAD/DELAY FOR SAME WEAPONS.

Another option is to increase the reload/recharge rates of weapons that are fired at the same time. This should be pretty easy to code and a quick solution to the issues. It could class weapons in groups so that people who mix the typical ppc/large ballistics cant circumvent the issue. Basically , if you fire one weapon you can fire again at the regular reload, if you fire 2 you suffer a delay, 3 a larger delay, 4 a much larger delay.

This puts a significant risk factor into people boating all ppcs for example, as using alpha strikes will force them to wait. It could even be a stacking delay so that players who try to repeat alpha strikes suffer more, possibly linked with heat as a governing factor. This also allows players to exploit a strategic and tactical weakness.


5) WEAPON RANGE REVAMP ELIMINATE SOFT RANGE LIMITS

One of the major issues the game has currently, is that all weapons have soft range caps, with the exception of the LRM and PPC on the short end, and SRM/SSRM on the high end. This has created a situation in which some weapons are seen as better while others are worse, because you can gain advantages without the designed drawbacks from TT. If PGI would set both minimum and maximum ranges it would solve much of the issue, because players would be allowed to boat, but would open themselves to being exploited.

If all weapons had both minimum and maximum ranges, it would force players to create more diverse builds, or create weaknesses in specialist builds, that can be exploited. It also gives the weapons of less value, a place because they could then be slotted into the holes on the range chart. Then tonnages, fire rates, duration, damage and heat could all be relatively balanced out, with range being the deciding factor in what weapon to select. the real issue with this, although i cant see why, is that the "book says" players will scream to high heaven, even though doing something like this could improve the game by a large factor.

Example Laser Range Chart
SPL = 0 - 125
SL = 0-180
MPL = 100-300
ML = 0-450
LPL = 150- 400
LL = 350 - 850
ER LL = 700 - 1350

Edited by Blackadder, 08 June 2013 - 06:40 AM.

[Mechsniper]

OMG I am being killed by people who hit my mech multiple times, devs nerf everything quick!!!! STOP with the QQ!!! PLEASE! Here is a clue. This is MECHWARRIOR!!! Guns are dangerous!!!! They hit where they are aimed and kill and destroy when they do!!! That is the ENTIRE IDEA!!!!!! If you want your magical mech to frolick in the flowers while you play tag(conquest, capwarrior in assault) this was the wrong choice of game for you. If you derp into the open alone and 3 mechs appear and rip you into pieces in 2 seconds, you made a poor life choice. The massive QQ is leading devs to make over nerfing weapons a monthly occurance to try to sedate the noobies. If guns shoot flowers and confetti and hit anywhere but where the reticle is aimed, rename it fairy warrior online and I will be out. Give us the Pew Pew, the explosions, destruction, and when your mech happens to take its turn in going down in flames, smile, that's what its all about!!!