1263 replies to this topic

[BlueSanta]

Shout out to an SSRM fix finally!

100% heat should be taken seriously. If you're not going to have high heat affect movement or accuracy, I believe that 100%, not 150%, should be where you draw the line.

ML limit at 6, LL limit at 4, PPC limit at 2 (except for Awesome), AC20 limit at 1, UAC5 limit at 2, AC2 limit at 2-4, LRM limit at 40 total missiles.

Edited by BlueSanta, 11 June 2013 - 12:09 PM.

[PEEFsmash]

Some good suggestions for sure.

The heat thing is overly complicated. The main concern I have is about your laser boating...there are no laser-boating mechs that are too strong. The 4P, Jenner-F, even 6LL Stalker etc, are not overpowered in the slightest. The last thing you should be doing is punishing laser users when lasers are already the highest-skill weapons in the game. Please read my post on the risk/skill/reward balance for lasers: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2442292

The Streak changes are great. Because streaks are low-risk, low-skill-required weapons, they should also be low reward. A good shot using traditional SRMs should beat a Streak user.

Pulse laser changes are a good start. They do need more help, but it seems that you are looking into that. Good work.

I saw no mention of JJ shake in your post. I thought that was being removed (or extremely reduced) for light mechs? On this same note, please don't accidentally nerf light mechs AGAIN when your target is heavier mechs. Several of these recent changes have continued to make lights less and less relevant at the top competitive 8-man level.

Edited by PEEFsmash, 11 June 2013 - 12:29 PM.

[SgtMaster]

Well, yes, i also agree that it should start at 5 = 3xPPC's...

even tho it penalizes the awesome, it also penalizes the Highlander, for which the crappy "shake" was trying to address...

but yes, overall it does seem like a complicated way to address a balance weapon situation.
I hope it does work, and doesn't just complicate the plumbing.

Edited by SgtMaster, 11 June 2013 - 12:00 PM.

[Cubivorre]

Since you're going through with the heat penalties.. the AC/2 should have a very bad penalty - this would stem the tide of jager macro users since you obviously choose to avoid dealing with them in any way presently. So since you're penalizing high alphas, why not penalize another group of people to kill two birds with one stone?

[Mechteric]

I would recommend making 2 PPCs be the "Zero" heat point (3 for large lasers perhaps?), and maybe even increasing the between time to 1.0 seconds. Though until we get our hands on it, I guess its hard to say if 0.5 seconds would be sufficient as is.

Note that the purpose here isn't to make boats unusable, but just to make them consider the penalty for firing all of them at a pinpointed location, thus achieving the desired effect of spreading out those 4-6 PPCs due to being fired a second apart or so.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 11 June 2013 - 12:01 PM.

[TyR]

Kitane, on 11 June 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

The damage ticking should start above 100%, continue to increase with rising heat and the mech should instantly kill itself immediately after reaching 150%, even for a split second.

Seriously, if there wouldn't be an immediate threat of damage to the internal systems, WHY would mech shut down when reaching 100% heat level?

This is pretty much what I thought when reading that too. To me, 100% indicates the threshold of heat that bad things happen when exceeded. Beyond 100% I expect to see ammo explosions, internal damage, permanent speed reductions from engine damage, HUD and targeting problems or death. I could maybe see a small amount of room beyond the (fake) 100% level to allow for some margin of error, but 50% above seems a bit much. Why not simplify things by having mechs shut down at 90% or 95% heat with anything beyond the maximum threshold of 100% causing increasing damage up to that 125% level where the mech just explodes?

As far as this new boating rule, I have not been a fan since it was first suggested months ago. Make stricter penalties like I mentioned above for abusing the heat system and this weapon boating penalty is not needed. Addressing weapon convergence in some way as many have posted on before would also alleviate the need for this, but that is not going to happen. On the plus side, at least this proposed system addresses a possible exploit of using chain fire or different groups on a hotkey to get around the penalty. Additionally, it appears that each weapon system will have its own set limit, so there will not be issues between the examples of medium lasers and PPCs where tweaking the limit for one would definitely cause the other to be unbalanced. Will this be based on mech as well?

The SSRM change looks like a step in the right direction. It may take some tweaking, but it will be nice to not feel like every missile is hitting my CT. Moving the targets to the middle of the sections instead of at joints should reduce the splash damage. Combining the torsos into a single section worth of weight should help as well. I am not sure about the 3/7 number tough as there are 2 legs, 2 arms, 3 torso and the head (unless that is never targeted specifically). Assuming the head is never targeted, the new system should result in chance of a torso targeting dropping from around 43% to 20% and a CT targeting from 14% to 6%. With a bigger spread in target locations, the actual impact should be more significant though.

Edited by TyR, 11 June 2013 - 12:15 PM.

[Tennex]

Kitane, on 11 June 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

3) AC20 should be limited to one, with a significant heat penalty for firing two at once.

A minor penalty for having 2 AC20s will be enough to deter the AC40 build.

However, for firing 3 AC20s, a huge penalty will be needed.

[Phaesphoros]

The beam duration of a medium laser is already 1 s. By nerfing an alpha against two strikes with an offset of .5 s, you effectively increase the beam duration (of some lasers) by 50 %. That's not really an alpha nerf IMO. But using large amounts of MLs will become more difficult, nor sure if I like that.
The same goes for LL. LPL boating is nerfed harder, because their beam duration is only .75 s. But using more than 4 LL/LPL is stupid(ly effective) IMO.

PPCs... just look at a clock. Half a second might be enough if you're already turning your torso or falling after JJing to make the second salvo hit another part of your Mech. Total damage still is the same, and if you're not seeing that 6 PPC Stalker soon enough, the effect of that nerf is 0; it'll maybe shift the meta.

The heat scale btw feels completely artificial. A heat penalty for producing a heat spike? Fine. But a heat penalty for firing weapons of the exact same type? 4 LL + 2 LPL is ok, but not 6 LL?



LPL heat increase.... we'll see about that. ATM, the only reason to take LPL is its heat efficiency, now you'll boost it's DPS (great!) but the heat efficiency goes back to LL / PPC levels.

Btw: PPC should have a drawback for its high alpha; it currently has the same heat efficiency as ML (and soon as LPL) and the DPS is (and will stay) higher than LL. Of course, with the LPL buff, the LPL will have a higher DPS, but IMO the PPC is still not aligned with LL.

Edited by Phaesphoros, 11 June 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Dantiger]

Lasers need way more love to be more viable compared to pinpoint weapons
and pulse lasers MUST FIRE FASTER and not do more damage, its really so hard to understand that ?

Edited by Dantiger, 11 June 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Hauser]

I really don't know what to say.

Heat penalties for medium lasers don't seem to make sense. There is no mech with medium lasers that is overpowered. Hell, the 4P is the only medium mech that can actually pull its weight.

Between running ridiculously hot, being medium range, having nearly all its weapons attached to an easy to hit oversized box and needing to keep them on target for a second, I don't see how anybody can argue they're detrimental to the current gameplay.

They really are quite unlike some of the bang-there-goes-a-torso builds these boating penalties should address.

Edited by Hauser, 11 June 2013 - 12:23 PM.

[Chopsaw]

No no no no no a hundred times no! Please implement something along the lines below. This cheesy method of discouraging high-alphas won't work! Having proper and somewhat logical effects will, and is scalable and sustainable. Simply saying that, "SIX ML's is the magic number" is, quite frankly, stupid.

Please fix this right!!!!

EFFECTS OF HEAT
The effects of excessive heat cause the BattleMech to function less efficiently. It will move more slowly, fire less accurately and possibly shut down or even explode...

MOVEMENT EFFECTS
At 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 heat points, subtract the number indicated for the BM's walking MP...

WEAPON ATTACK EFFECTS
At 8, 13, 17 and 24 heat points, add the number indicated to the MB's base to-hit number

SHUTDOWN EFFECTS
At 14, 18, 22, 26, and 30 heat points, a BM attempts to shutdown its fusion reactor

AMMUNITION EFFECTS
If the heat level reaches or exceeds an AMMO Explosion threshold of 19, 23, or 28 heat points, the ammunition in the BM might explode

MECHWARRIOR EFFECTS
If the life-support systems suffer a critical hit, the MW suffers 1 point of damage for every turn that the BM's internal heat reaches 15 or more...at 25 the MW suffers 2 points of damage.

[Deathlike]

Every single time I read a balance post, I cannot stop facepalming.

With that said...

The problem with the Small Pulse Laser is far more ranging than tweaks. It freaking COMPETES with the medium laser. That is the the standard of which ALL WEAPONS are based around. That tweak is insufficient and insulting.

Large Pulse Lasers are effectively getting a nerf. First off, it's actual problem is its RANGE. Increasing the heat that you've just lowered (is 7.3 heat currently) to make it semi-viable (but still a niche weapon) is INSANE AT BEST. The damage increase is INSIGNIFICANT and is pretty much a further nerf to the weapon.

With respect to the boating issue...

What you've just proposed is effectively duct tape over a more serious problem. Noone has suggested just OUTRIGHT LOWERING of the heat cap. They have asked for an IMPROVEMENT over HEAT DISSIPATION for DHS in trade for a lower heat cap. That would balance things out. A straight reduction of the heat cap as currently constituted is a failure to understand your own system. This will inevitably get worse when more weapons are released and this will get worse instead of a more global solution (heat cap reduction, heat dissipation buff).

So, this is effectively SpreadsheetWarrior fail.

[Mick Mars]

I see people saying that ML should not be involved in this nerf. I wonder if PGI was just using the ML as an example, I have never seen/heard anyone wanting ML boats nerfed. Complaining about getting your *** shot off by a swayback is not the same as wanting said swayback nerfed.

[Kwibl]

Definite step in the right direction, thank you PGI.

Can we get clarification if this is a per-mech system, or a per weapon system? The examples hop from a mech based example to a weapon based one. I hope it's the former as that seems like it would give you far more control to modify individual mechs based on problems that arise. with their boating ability.

[BlackBeltJones]

So the writers from Lost got jobs at PGI.

[Tennex]

Honestly with the clunky unintuitive change proposed here.

I would rather take the hardpoint value (small/medium/large) solution over this.

[Haradim]

I think it would be useful if PGI clarified whether the firing thresholds are applied to weapon types globally, or per weapon type per variant.

The latter seems like it would cause far fewer headaches in the future as more mechs and weapons are added, but it's not very clear what the specifics are.

[New Day]

Well there goes my favorite build in the game (4P).

[3rdworld]

What is funny:

Most 3Fs run 2PPC 2 ERPPC.

If they swap to 4PPCs, they only increase their heat by 4, even taking the penalty.

[Ngamok]

Hauser, on 11 June 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

I really don't know what to say.

Heat penalties for medium lasers don't seem to make sense. There is no mech with medium lasers that is overpowered. Hell, the 4P is the only medium mech that can actually pull its weight.

The CDA-2A can boat 6 ML and go faster than the HBK-4P in the medium department.