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[Taemien]

Over the last couple of months I have played quite a bit of the TT game and have been observing what goes on in there as well as what goes on in MWO. There are some correlations between the two styles of game. This mainly comes from the statistics of MWO's weapons being derived from TT.

Obviously there are differences, Lasers do damage over time and not normally to the same location. Armor values are doubled, cooldowns are halved, and the like. But that is where I'd like to discuss. Now first I want to make it known that I don't intend to suggest every weapon being 10s cooldown, and need a lock to fire. We have Blender BattleTech for that. Google it if you want to check it out. Its great as a side thing to play once in a while. But I don't think it'd be good for MWO.

But here is what I think would help bring Short Range weapons back inline to what their role is for. BUT without upping the damage all around.

First take the double armor values into account. This is a good thing. I like doubled armor because it prevents a stray shot from crippling a mech. A Jenner can take an AC20 without being crippled by a lucky shot. It cannot take much more than that however. And I tolerate this because we have pinpoint aiming rather than a dice roll.

However. There is an issue we have. We've doubled armor values. But we've also quartered the cooldowns. What this means is we have effectively halved the Time To Kill (TTK) from the original values. Again I want to reiterate that I'm not suggesting a 10s cooldown across the board.

What I am suggesting is raising the cooldown on long range weapons. This will not prevent people from jump sniping, hill sniping, or high alpha configs. It will however FORCE them to do those roles exclusively.

Why is this a good thing? Well right now, a PPC boat can snipe, and halfway brawl. With my suggestion it wouldn't be able to do the latter. He will have to make a more conscious choice to stay at range and avoid short range like the plague.

For long range weapons I would raise their cooldowns by 2-4 seconds on top of what they have right now. For short range weapons, I would leave them be. For LRMs, because they cannot be used at short ranges, I wouldn't touch their cooldown much if at all.

The idea is to make the long range game last longer. I think we can agree that 5min matches are too short. Nerfing damages would make weapons near useless. But cooldowns wouldn't make a weapon useless, instead it would force it into its intended range.

This has the side effect of artifically buffing Small Lasers and Small Pulse Lasers, which many wish to see buffed. I don't think these weapons need a damage buff. But their cooldown could also be lowered slightly as well if it seems they still need another push.

This turns long range weapons into Low DPS, long range burst. Short range into High DPS close range, and medium range weapons into something inbetween.

Would this cause Short Range become the new Meta? That really depends on how much people love their long range. Personally I don't think it would change what we see in the field. Short range weapons will still do what they do now. They would just be more effective in short range than their long range counterparts. You still have to get close. This only gives you on average 20-33% more time to do so.

Would this fix high heat builds and the like? It does not, and isn't meant to. There are fixes coming down the line that addresses this. This suggestion is only to help slow down the long range game and give short ranged mechs a fighting chance. This is the only purpose of this suggestion so if you're looking for fixes to many of the other common issues you will need to look elsewhere.

Some short range weapons are already performing well. Namely the Streak SRM2 and the AC20. These could see their cooldowns increased slightly as well. But I would personally only do this after doing a pass on the long range to see how they turn out.

In addition this could hurt weapons like the AC10, LBX10, AC5, Ultra AC5, and AC2. I would leave these alone as well to see how they fare with the change. Basically start with ER PPCs, Gauss, ER Large Lasers with a 2-4 second cooldown increase, PPCs and Large Lasers get a 1-2s increase.

To summarize the suggestion. Long Range would be slowed down, short range kept the same. Overall increasing the match length and TTK for mechs.