704 replies to this topic

[Homeless Bill]

Traigus, on 10 June 2013 - 04:40 PM, said:

(edited a little format)
Seems a little too complicated to me.

Kind of a AC/20 to kill roaches thing

*snip*

Now you can wait for them to converge and alpha like a maniac (after each alpha different weapons will drift a bit, but not back to default points. Changing targets and immediately aiming at it, will continue convergence where it is, decay will happen when there is no target, or it is out of the lock cone (to either side or behind your viewpoint)

OR

You can fire where the markers are NOW by treating each as a crosshair for wepons on that body part (ballistic speed still and laser aiming still apply, so you may not want to group your AC/20 wit ha lase, just ike now)! CT would be easiest to aim of course

*snip*

I'll move this to another thread if you want.

Your solution sounds like it will have the same effects as mine, but in a different order. My system assumes convergence and penalizes the player by taking it away for undesired actions. Your system assumes non-convergence and forces the player to gain it through desired actions.

Though I'm not necessarily opposed to it, I think your system actually ends up being much more complicated in practice than mine. It forces players to actively think and work for convergence when they want it, while mine is a quick slap on the wrist for when they shoot too many weapons too quickly. I think the former drifts too far into the table-top realm, and it would fundamentally alter the dynamics of combat. At the end of the day, this is a first person shooter, and I'm not sure sure you'll get non-simulation players to buy into the wait-for-accuracy thing.

What I'm saying is that I don't think the current situation is dire enough that we should default to non-convergence. I think that convergence should be taken away for high burst damage, but the rest of the time the twitch-shots should be rewarded for their ability to aim accurately and quickly.

And no need to move it. Though I think it's worthy a discussion of its own, I appreciate detailed feedback / alternative solutions.

Edited by Homeless Bill, 10 June 2013 - 05:02 PM.

[Traigus]

Homeless Bill, on 10 June 2013 - 05:00 PM, said:

Your solution sounds like it will have the same effects as mine, but in a different order. My system assumes convergence and penalizes the player by taking it away for undesired actions. Your system assumes non-convergence and forces the player to gain it through desired actions.

Though I'm not necessarily opposed to it, I think your system actually ends up being much more complicated in practice than mine. It forces players to actively think and work for convergence when they want it, while mine is a quick slap on the wrist for when they shoot too many weapons too quickly. I think the former drifts too far into the table-top realm, and it would fundamentally alter the dynamics of combat. At the end of the day, this is a first person shooter, and I'm not sure sure you'll get non-simulation players to buy into the wait-for-accuracy thing.

What I'm saying is that I don't think the current situation is dire enough that we should default to non-convergence. I think that convergence should be taken away for high burst damage, but the rest of the time the twitch-shots should be rewarded for their ability to aim accurately and quickly.

And no need to move it. Though I think it's worthy a discussion of its own, I appreciate detailed feedback / alternative solutions.

Yeah, I agree system-wise it may be more complicated. I always feel like building is better for gameplay than taking away.

I'd rather have a player with no skill but a tutorial go... "OK, I can shoot these different aim points if I have to, or I can wait to Blammo someone all at once" over "huh, I just shot that guy 17 times, why are my guns going all over the place, how many guns can I actually shoot? It depends? err..."

Your method has no real backstop.

If i shoot too much I suck, there is nothing I can really do about it, but buy a targeting computer, and hope I have few enough weapons to not suck still. They have to slow down, but how much? When? Where is this shot going to go?

My method lets people still have control of their shots, but spaces them out by active participation (moving mouse to another recticle). The force is still there, but it is participatory.

They still get to do something if they don't want to wait for convergence.

In your model.. They have to wait (granted, not a long time)... or miss all over the place. Is that fun?

I'd rather have player agency over easier system to program/balance.

(Your model is still buckets better than what we have now BTW).

[Ningyo]

My main thought is this.

Fire 6 PPC's at once, is the random loss of aim applied before those shots or after? If after then ho fast do you recover your targeting, under 15 seconds? If its before the shots then didn't you just make things like the Stock awesome, have random damage using their basic configuration properly?

If it recovers targeting in faster than 10 per second it does nothing against most cheese builds as they fire then cooldown for 10+ seconds now most of the time. It would wreck most builds that put out continuous fire though and these are already in the worst place. I may be misunderstanding, but this seems like it would not end up helping in my mind. Well thought out in many ways though so maybe I just am missing something.

[Hobietime]

When your targeting computer load is past 100 it says that you loose convergence. Does that mean all your weapons keep the last good convergence distance or do they suddenly focus at infinity?

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

@ Ningyo - the way I understand the OP is:
- when you pull the trigger (click the mouse) and cross the 100 point threshold, the weapons fired that shot will not converge on a single point because you overloaded your targeting computer ...
- the stock Awesome could still fire 3 PPCs at once, they just all travel parallel to each other, rather than converging on one spot (or you could chain fire them, time your clicks about half a second apart and fire a 3-round burst with no penalty)
- the TCL recovers at 100 points/second (not 10)
- the only ways to get over 200 (i.e.: shots start doing weird things, not just going straight) would be to fire several massive weapons at once or in very quick succession, or a few low damage / high rate of fire weapons continuously ... you would have to continuously fire 6x AC/2s for over five seconds to break 200

@ Homeless Bill ... did I get it right? ... very interesting idea, and shouldn't be too hard to display visually ... once your TCL gets above 100, your HUD starts to flicker (already have that mechanic in place) ... after 200, the HUD turns off

If this (or somthing like it) is implemented, the next meta game will be matching TCL, Heat and Damage ... find the 99-point TCL Alpha build that does the most damage for the least heat.

[VonRunnegen]

I actually really like this solution. Been trying to come up with ways to reduce big alphas always being best and hadn't been happy with any, am happy with this. I think it'll be harder than you expect to message to players how loaded their TCL is or will be though as it'll seem like that should be referring to missile locking or similar. Maybe just 'Weapon Management System' or something generic

[MustrumRidcully]

I agree fundamentally - hitting the intended target with 2 20-damage shots requires more skill than hitting the intended target with 1 40 damage shots.

I do not believe your solution will be one PGI will adopt. I am not even sure they understand their problem fully, but even if they do, I do not believe they would adopt your solution.

And if I was trying to make a Battletech based "FPS"-like Mechwarrior Simulation, I would also try to find another solution.

If you want to keep it simple, you could just enforce chain-fire as the only way to use your weapons. Alpha Strikes are either removed entirely (an alpha strike in the table top just means shooting all your guns in a 10 second time period, it doesn't say that they are fired instantenously.) ,or be a special ability with its own limitations.

[Brilig]

At first this does seem like a pretty complicated fix, and from a programing standpoint it might be. However I think it would actually be pretty intuitive to the gamer. You hit it on the head when you compared it to burst fire to control recoil in your more standard FPS.

The idea has a lot of merit, and would be better than just adding heat penalties. Though I still think there should be heat penalties.

Edited by Brilig, 11 June 2013 - 12:40 AM.

[Slashmckill]

Well bill, your idea is pretty solid in terms of bringing the game back into a more balanced simulation/fps oriented mechwarrior game, i honestly really like it. I don't think pgi will ever even consider it though, sorta why i don't post any of my suggestions really, hell i even stopped writing in "ask the devs" since they don't really even comprehend the questions they are answering.

MustrumRidcully, on 10 June 2013 - 11:18 PM, said:

If you want to keep it simple, you could just enforce chain-fire as the only way to use your weapons. Alpha Strikes are either removed entirely (an alpha strike in the table top just means shooting all your guns in a 10 second time period, it doesn't say that they are fired instantenously.) ,or be a special ability with its own limitations.

Enforcing chain-fire mode... i've pondered this myself for weeks and honestly the benefits are completely out weighing the potential problems i see with it.

Making every weapon fire separately does seem to make MWO simulate the boardgame better, my only problem with the idea is that boating several small weapons now becomes a severe hassle to fire them all in a timely fashion. What i mean is that you would have to alter the chain-fire mechanic abit and add in a small fire delay between multiple weapons fire, otherwise someone could just write a macro to press their weapon groups as fast as possible completely eliminating the purpose of chain-firing.

It would make boating small weapons a little asinine, however at least it would be better than what we have currently. (i see a few other things that would be a bit screwed up by it as well, but that was the only problem i really had much of an issue with.)

Edited by Slashmckill, 11 June 2013 - 12:47 AM.

[Almeras]

I think this would cost to much in terms of PGIs development time and I think it would detract from the game. I do think we need to limit Pinpoint alpha boat I think the best way is with Battle value modifier.

BV exists in Battletech tech precisely because for the problem of superior weapon system making other ineffective.

As well as the heat scale property punishing you, I think they need to bring in BV to balance matches. PGI can use BV to tune down strong weapons and builds esp since tonnage and clan tech never mix (what ever you do don't look how good the clan mechs are *whispers*WARHAWK)

They can even add an anti-boat modifier to weapons, where stacking to many on one mech will equal diminishing returns;

2 PPC = 20 BV
3 PPC = 30 BV
4 PPC = 50 BV
5 PPC = 80 BV

You want to be that guy with 5 PPC stalker you just made the rest of your team weaker and your self prime target.

The great thing with BV is it can be tune without direct nerfing a single weapon or a blank nerf on all of them. If a weapon is very strong it gets a high BV if it very strong when boated then it get BV multiplier added.

[Kwibl]

I wasn't convinced by the first post but the subsequent posts defending and explaining it got me. At first i was worried it would overly nerf brawlers and you'd still end up with a meta favouring long range, but staggered fire. Making the penalty simply turn off convergence would still allow brawlers to brawl pretty effectively and lights to hit.

As far as the question for heat vs TC, for smaller weapons like medium lasers, heat would still be the limiting factor to prevent the days of 8 medium laser awesomes being FOTM. TC can be tuned to allow repeated firing of a medium laser boat, but then the heat scale kicks in to balance them.

Both systems would compliment nicely. This is really well thought out.

[Jonneh]

Too complicated, will not gel well with a f2p mass market appeal.. which is the only way the game will succeed.

[MustrumRidcully]

Slashmckill, on 11 June 2013 - 12:44 AM, said:

Well bill, your idea is pretty solid in terms of bringing the game back into a more balanced simulation/fps oriented mechwarrior game, i honestly really like it. I don't think pgi will ever even consider it though, sorta why i don't post any of my suggestions really, hell i even stopped writing in "ask the devs" since they don't really even comprehend the questions they are answering.



Enforcing chain-fire mode... i've pondered this myself for weeks and honestly the benefits are completely out weighing the potential problems i see with it.

Making every weapon fire separately does seem to make MWO simulate the boardgame better, my only problem with the idea is that boating several small weapons now becomes a severe hassle to fire them all in a timely fashion. What i mean is that you would have to alter the chain-fire mechanic abit and add in a small fire delay between multiple weapons fire, otherwise someone could just write a macro to press their weapon groups as fast as possible completely eliminating the purpose of chain-firing.

It would make boating small weapons a little asinine, however at least it would be better than what we have currently. (i see a few other things that would be a bit screwed up by it as well, but that was the only problem i really had much of an issue with.)

Considering that the devs don't generally hand out many hard points, it might not be a big issue, but I see that as the real potential probem of the solution. One might be able to tweak this in having weapons cause different global cooldowns. A Small Laser or Medium Laser might only cause a 0.1 second global cooldown, while an AC/20 or PPC causes a 0.4 second cooldown.
Maybe 4 values would be enough, based on damage per shot values:
[0-2] damage: 0 seconds. (Machine Guns, AC/2, SRM2, SSRM2)
]2-5] damage: 0.1 second. (Small to Medium Laser, AC/5, Ultra AC/5, SRM4, LRM5)
]5-9] damage: 0.2 seconds. (Medium Pulse to Large Laser, SRM6)
]9-infinity] damage: 0.4 seconds (Large Pulse Laser, AC/10, AC/20, PPCs, LRM10 to LRM20)
I might even make SRMs, LRMs and LBX exempt from this, since they don't deal precision damage anyway. This can also create some interesting value in mixing different weapons...

But this is not likely to happen either.

[Onmyoudo]

Pretty good, OP. I like it - a lot more than moving/heat penalties or enforced chain fire. Seems to work well for most weapons loadouts I can think of (bar that one laser on the 4P that it's not optimal to fire) except perhaps something like the UAC5 Muromets, which is already a lucky man's ride. It's a shame that I doubt PGI will employ a system such as this.

[John MatriX82]

I like this thread, however I think things might be made simpler, and I'm going to post some thoughts about an hardpoint restriction system, that won't need heat penalites, nor convergence/accuracy penalties (this to keep the game simpler).

The idea it's easy, it's to address weapons in different tiers and then allow a certain number of tiers to be mounted on a chassis and on a variant basis, so that every variant has a certain flavor and we won't be able to bring in more than 3 ppcs or 3 lls and so on. This without limiting a certain weapon to a precise location on the mech, but once you've placed 2 PPCs, then you can't mount anything more than mediums/mpls/smlasers in the remaining hardpoints. A similar sys I've been thinking also for ballistics, while missiles and srms are going to be limited by the available tubes in a mech's section.

EDIT: here's my thread if you'd like to take a read: http://mwomercs.com/...g/#entry2440556

Edited by John MatriX82, 11 June 2013 - 02:35 AM.

[Onmyoudo]

The problem with flat hardpoint restrictions like that is that they suck a lot of the fun from the game. The main draw of Mechwarrior is being able to customise your mechs the way you like - limited customisation is not customisation at all and everyone might as well be running stock 24/7.

[Liberator]

I support this suggestion, but I will bet that it goes unheard.

[Ningyo]

Hmm that was a good explanation Kageru Ikazuchi. Rereading his I think you are correct, and this does remove most of its problems. I do not think this would be a bad method then, though I still prefer just making only arm mounted weapons with lower arm actuators converge (yes 1 Awesome, 1 Highlander, and 1 Atlas could still pull major pinpoint alphas), and have torso mounted weapons never converge. Mechs with the high arms like jaggermechs and Stalkers which gain the extra crit slots, ability to easier fire over terrain and such would lose pinpoint accuracy too reducing most hill humping strategies, and problems with AC40 builds.

[MustrumRidcully]

Ningyo, on 11 June 2013 - 04:11 AM, said:

Hmm that was a good explanation Kageru Ikazuchi. Rereading his I think you are correct, and this does remove most of its problems. I do not think this would be a bad method then, though I still prefer just making only arm mounted weapons with lower arm actuators converge (yes 1 Awesome, 1 Highlander, and 1 Atlas could still pull major pinpoint alphas), and have torso mounted weapons never converge. Mechs with the high arms like jaggermechs and Stalkers which gain the extra crit slots, ability to easier fire over terrain and such would lose pinpoint accuracy too reducing most hill humping strategies, and problems with AC40 builds.

While I am not sure it is the best way to go and that all implications are resolved by limiting convergence to only weapons taht are installed in fully actuated locations, there is some elegance to it.

1) PGI tends to give mechs without lower arm actuators a fairly wide torso twist and high mounted weapons. This means they have the advantage of 2 extra crit slots and no drawback from losses in their firing arc.
By allowing convergence only for fully actuated arms, they finally had some drawback.
2) Fully Actuated arms are often sitting lower on mechs than not-fully actuated arms. This means they are worse for firing over cover. Giving these at least full convergence benefits is a perk that might be worth the lost in crit space and dirt-shooting.
3) Some mechs - but especially the Hunchback - have a lot of firepower located in a single hit location. That makes them easier to disarm and neutralize than mechs that have their weapons spread across the body. But without torso weapon convergence, the clos eposition of these weapons actually means you are more likely to hit the same location then with a more "damage-tolerant" mech.

[Wildgrin]

bumping the Thread because I think this could solve a lot of problems.

I think the numbers and tuning sounds like a good place to start from but have a suggestion for the UI/usablity. Using the standard recoil solution(expanding the reticules when accuracy is affected) would be immediately recognizable to new players and convey a sense of how high the tcl was without having to add bars to be tracked. Perhaps add a number that floats along side so that more advanced players would be able to anticipate the affect when they are below the 100, but I suspect that it would not be necessary given the tcl recovery rate.