Shumabot, on 14 June 2013 - 11:54 AM, said:
Because "customization" in MWO means "how many of a single gun I can fit on this mech". And if that "custom" mech doesn't pass a certain bar it gets sold as vendor trash. That's 90% of this games mechs. Customization is worthless WHEN EVERYONE ALWAYS USES THE SAME DAMN THING.
Then figure out why people alwas want to use the same damn thing and remove that reason.
Why do people always want to boat?
Because it's simple.
- All weapons fire at the same time.
- They have the same projectile speed or beam duration.
- If you fire them together, you hit the same spot with every weapon and can deal massive damage.
Options:
1) Remove / Limit Group-Fire.
You don't fire weapons together any more, at least not for single shot projectile weapons (AC/s, U/ACs, PPCs, Gauss). When a weapon of the restricted type is fired, all other weapons of the restricted type immediately go on a 0.25 cooldown.
Fixed Problems:
* Single Spot Damage
2) Standardize Fire Rates / Recycle Times (this means Cooldown + Duration)
Boil it down to 2 to 4 fire rates, ideally so that the highers are multiplies of the faster ones.
Say, one weapon fires every second. The next every 2 seconds. The next type every 4 seconds. Most weapons are already operating in these ballparks, and those that do not often suck.
Fixed Problems:
* Mixing weapons screws up weapon rotation
3) Standardize Projectile Speeds and Beam Durations
Boil beam duration down to two types. 0.5 seconds beam duration and 1 second beam duration.
Boil Projectile Speeds down to 3 types. Fast (Current AC/2/PPC Speed) and Medium (Current AC/10 Speed), Slow (SRM). Maybe a 4th for LRMs, since LRMs don't need lead.
* Mixing weapons screws up lead times and time to hold on enemy.
You can still build a Dual AC/20 boat. But you still need to fire each seperately, so no 40 damage alphas anymore. ANd if you mixed an AC/20 and 2 Large Lasers, you would probably fire on a 4 second cycle, so the weapon rotation is easy on your kinetic memory.
Quote
The Awesome can have 4 PPCs now, and it's an awful build. This whole debate is set around the awesome and that's silly, the whole debate should be set around what created balance, variety, and reduces the commonality and efficacy of "extreme" builds. In my opinion hardpoint sizes does all three, and it does all three in a way that new players and veterans can understand easily. It removes the worst of the most exploitative builds currently in the game, and in my view there are very few mechs with canon builds that could be considered as bad as something like the 3ppc+goose highlander or the 4ppc stalker we have currently.
The operative word for me here is "currently in the game": I want a solution that's reasonably future-proof, and if I can already dig out a list of mechs that could be problematic in the future, I see this just as not future proof.
And I also find it extremely questionable if you say that a slot normally holding a Large Laser should be completely incapable of carrying a PPC.
If you downgrade a weapon in one hard point, you need a way to upgrade it somewhere else. If you can't do that, you end up under-weight and undergunned. That basically means taking away a huge amount of customization, and all because the game system can't handle 4 PPCs in one boat?
Edited by MustrumRidcully, 15 June 2013 - 08:50 AM.