I like the changes, I think 150% heat threshold to start is a good idea. Set it pretty high test it out make sure you aren't breaking anything and lower it to like 130% over time.
With respect to the Dual ac 20 boats I think they are going to have to handle ballistics differently. I suspect they will have some time of movement jarring affect.
If anyone has ever shot a shotgun you know the kind of kickback it has. Think if you let off a dual barrel shotgun and show both barrels. Your shoulder would be bruised all to hell. My guess they are going to go with some sort of internal damage mechanism and/or it messes with your speed. If you are going 70kph and fire 2 ac 20s in a heavy mech it is going to kick you back. Hell when they put back in knockdown code it should have a percentage chance of knocking you down.
There isn't honestly anything wrong with ac 20 I think it is pretty balanced. I just think there should be consequences firing two at the same time.
So, I've had a chance to sleep on your suggestion about boating penalties, and it's still horribly complex, doesn't do what it's intended to do, and actually punishes the wrong 'mechs and builds.
So here's what needs to be done; it's a two-step process that will involve some developer time and some testing time, but the benefit is that you'll get a game that's easier to balance, lets people build whatever builds they want, and that has heat management and aiming as major skills.
Step 1: The heat system
* Halve heat capacity
* Double heat dissipation
* Optionally: Remove or severely decrease heat cap increase from heat sinks.
I think most of us are familiar by now why this is a good idea, so I'll just say that it puts the amount of heat your alpha can generate without penalty much closer to BattleTech, and encourages both sustained fire over alphas and a diverse weapons load-out. As an added bonus, it also makes stock 'mechs much more attractive.
Step 2: The weapons
Rework all ballistics to fire in bursts of 1 second or thereabouts. After all, they're AUTOcannons and MACHINE guns, right? Something like this (example numbers to be tweaked after testing, of course):
AC/20 - 4 rounds of 5 damage in 1 second, reload time 4 seconds.
Gauss Rifle - 3 rounds of 5 damage in 0.75 seconds, reload time 4 seconds.
AC/10 - 4 rounds of 2.5 damage in 1 second, reload time 2.5 seconds.
AC/5 - 5 rounds of 1 damage in 1 second, reload time 1.5 seconds.
AC/2 - 4 rounds of .5 damage in 1 second, reload time 1 second, or continuous fire.
MG - 4 rounds of 0.25 damage in 1 second, continuous fire.
LB-10X - can have the current mechanic of 10 pellets at once. It'll make it unique, and the pellet spread should keep it from being too powerful.
PPC - Re-implement as a beam weapon. It was never a projectile weapon to start with: "PPCs fire a concentrated stream of protons or ions at a target" (sarna.net).
This will remove all pin-point damage from the game without adding RNG spread or messing with convergence, it actually adds an additional element of aiming skill for getting all your damage on-target, and in conjunction with the heat changes will make a game that's much, much closer to BattleTech than the current abomination of high-heat pin-point alpha strike point-and-click game play.
While i don't agree with the numbers entirely, following up on this idea would solve almost every problem with pinpoint directfire weapons in the game and it is entirely lore friendly. Let's just hope someone relevant from PGI notices it. >.>
i would expect this change to go into full effect regardless of what the community thinks, PGI has shown a total disregard to the communities opinion, in fact i wish they wouldn't bother adding a topic like this. i think i'll go outside and talk to a fence post instead of trying to make any kind of suggestion on these forums anymore
Step 1: The heat system
* Halve heat capacity
* Double heat dissipation
* Optionally: Remove or severely decrease heat cap increase from heat sinks.
I think most of us are familiar by now why this is a good idea, so I'll just say that it puts the amount of heat your alpha can generate without penalty much closer to BattleTech, and encourages both sustained fire over alphas and a diverse weapons load-out. As an added bonus, it also makes stock 'mechs much more attractive.
Step 2: The weapons
Rework all ballistics to fire in bursts of 1 second or thereabouts. After all, they're AUTOcannons and MACHINE guns, right? Something like this (example numbers to be tweaked after testing, of course):
AC/20 - 4 rounds of 5 damage in 1 second, reload time 4 seconds.
Gauss Rifle - 3 rounds of 5 damage in 0.75 seconds, reload time 4 seconds.
AC/10 - 4 rounds of 2.5 damage in 1 second, reload time 2.5 seconds.
AC/5 - 5 rounds of 1 damage in 1 second, reload time 1.5 seconds.
AC/2 - 4 rounds of .5 damage in 1 second, reload time 1 second, or continuous fire.
MG - 4 rounds of 0.25 damage in 1 second, continuous fire.
LB-10X - can have the current mechanic of 10 pellets at once. It'll make it unique, and the pellet spread should keep it from being too powerful.
PPC - Re-implement as a beam weapon. It was never a projectile weapon to start with: "PPCs fire a concentrated stream of protons or ions at a target" (sarna.net).
This will remove all pin-point damage from the game without adding RNG spread or messing with convergence, it actually adds an additional element of aiming skill for getting all your damage on-target, and in conjunction with the heat changes will make a game that's much, much closer to BattleTech than the current abomination of high-heat pin-point alpha strike point-and-click game play.
Step 1: I agree with this but had a different method. A standardized cap. Found here on page 14.
Step 2: Sometime in the late 20s of Ask the Devs, someone asked for the "variants" of weapons. Bryan replied that it was doable and in the works. I believe the standardization of the pulse lasers is a prelude to this.
Lordred who frequently plays with me said this interesting realization: (Paraphrased) "Somehow I bet all the weapons we have now will all be thrown under one manufacturer as some sort of standard. Then we'll have to buy the other variants."
We're very likely to have things like the ChemJet Gun and the Super Crusher Heavy AutoCannon (which are both AC/20s). Though I have the feeling we'll still have the current AC/20 as well.
All will have the same weight, same shots per ton, etc. (as TT left no room for variation), but will likely have slightly different ranges, bullet velocities, and will definitely vary in damage per bullet (to account for the number of bullets fired per 'shot' or trigger pull).
Besides, most of the guns you just described are akin to clan weapons as made in Mechwarrior 2. How they functioned is there was "1 bullet" per number in the name. AC/2 fired two shots. AC/10 fired 10. AC/20 fired 20.
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Though, I recently seen someone play who essentially did something much like this with headshots using twin PPC and a Gauss Rifle.
And people wonder why the series died with MW4 for who knows how long?
I also found this. One of the key things is that autocannons in Living Legends (though they fire like machine guns) drop off at longer ranges. AC/20 especially drops quite a bit by the time it passes 270 meters.
MustrumRidcully, on 12 June 2013 - 06:42 AM, said:
What does this help? The canon Assault Mech that uses 2 AC/20s is the King Crab. And it uses 2 AC/20, an LL and an LRM (20?) launcher. That's even deadlier than the AC/40 Jager and Cats. That mech won't need an XL Engine even, and has lots of extra armor.
If the AC/40 mech is overpowered (and I might actually disagree on that), then restricting the AC/40 to a small number of mechs does nothing to help the problem. As long as overpowered game elements exist, they will be played, and they will be played a lot, and underpowered or "balanced" mechs will be played less.
Hardpoints are primarily a cosmetic tool, and a tool to make different mechs feel different.
PGI already solved the "cosmetic" problem of AC/20s on K2s and Jagermechs. I hope they'll do the same for all mechs and all weapon types.
If weapons are fired together - ie dual ac 20 - you hit 1 spot with all the dmg. If a heat penalty is applied to this instead - chainfire becomes prefferred to manage heat.
this cuts down on all damage hitting 1 spot, and that helps mechs survive longer and requires more piloting skill.
1) Treat ER PPC and PPCs as a one type of weapon, ER LL and LL too.
2) Set the PPC limit to 2, 3 PPC + Gauss builds should already be affected by a penalty.
3) AC20 should be limited to one, with a significant heat penalty for firing two at once.
4) 150% heat limit is not going to have any noticeable effect on the game. Most builds will never get that high even if they tried.
I will talk for the minority, everybody that think simple mindly enough to think that "3 PPC's" are too much and should be penalise should take a hard look at themselves. The Awesome 8Q stock build has 3 PPC's on it. This is from both the table top and the lore, Just because it is effective for other mechs to take 3 PPC's in combinations of other weapons such as the gauss rifle does not mean another entire mech chassis that revolves around PPC's should be nerfed beyond worth taking. I mean hell Awesomes are terrible in MWO so before people start clicking mindlessly liking some person's dull witted response actually take time to think about some constructive feedback to give the developer's.
My feedback by just reading the new changes is simply this if Large Pulse Lasers will have their damage increased to 10.6 but their heat is also increased to 8.5 they will be no longer worth taking in retrospect to their current stats which are 10 damage and 7.3 heat. Hardly anyone takes LPL and you definitely don’t see many people at all boat them. Paul I really don’t get why you feel the need say "Pulse Lasers are being normalized" to make a weapon class with a flat ratio across 3 very different weapons just to "balance" them. This is complete nonsense and a terrible way to go about things. I’m not sure how many people work on weapon balance but it sickens me that you are still in charge with planned changes such as these. Do you not look at the game data us beta testers provide you at all?? I am tired of having to literally stop using certain types of weapons whether it be SRM's one month then Pulse Laser's the next.
The fact that the weapon balancing team cannot even give more than 1 weapon type "balance changes" or "proposed changes" with months of testing leads to pointless speculation as well between the community such as dual ac 20 builds being penalised ect ect is just out right pathetic. You claim to make balance changes every single patch and completely leave such important changes out of the patch notes in complete disregard to the community and make a single command chair post that never explains the "vision and path to Launch" you speak with such high regard to.
I really hope for the community's sake that there is a big announcement soon that actually gives us tangible evidence that this game is going to amount to anything such as community warfare because with the lack of information you give us I have lost nearly all hope that this game is going to turn out like anything we or even PGI had envisioned.
Also dont get me wrong I actually like the changes that the weapon balance team is trying to implement to stop the "high alpha meta" but if you can not deliver a complete blanace update to keep the little weapons we have available to us actually worth using. Because at the end of this current "meta" it all came about from what PGI as a "dev team" changed about the game to make the community react in a certain way. IE making missles useless for over 2 months and creating 2 huge maps so everyone is obviously going to boat high alpha long range weapons, which in turn had no other counter then to do the exact same thing but with better skill in return. Months from now when this game actually get's enough content to be considered a complete polished game all of these unnecessary changes will only hinder the game in the future.
The more i think about it the worse this solution sounds. you are implementing a ton of complexity to fix a relatively simple and ultimately minor problem. that is bad design at its core.
Of course this seems to the PGI go to solution. If you keep over engineering every fix this game will become unmanageable and unplayable.
Here's something more like what I think would be appropriate, where there would only be a slight penalty for firing low quantities, but higher as you fire more along a curve rather than a hard set number.
To summarize, firing 4 PPCs would be similar to firing 6 PPCs currently, while firing 3 would be just less than firing 4 currently, and firing 2 wouldn't be bad at all. Medium lasers would only really start to get effected once you're over 5 or so.
It's too late to rewrite entire mechlab. Also - how MW4-style mechlab would prevent boating?
You can argue that Annihilator is bad example, but as far as I remember you could do things like that with lots of the mechs. In MWO those that couldn't boat would still be useless, and we'll be back to square one.
I'm pretty sure that heat penalties proposed by Paul are really aimed not at Swaybacks and 6xPPC Stalkers, but at upcoming Clan Mechs - Novas, Masakaris etc.
Dunno, but maybe it'll work?
MW4's mechlab wasnt perfect, it didnt consider space taken by endo steel or ferro fibrous, and the classic mechlab is ancient!
Maybe they should consider it for UI 3.0.
My idea of a mechlab is have each section of the mech show available slots color coded, lets say for example the Jagger 6A that has 1 ballistic and 2 missile hardpoints in each arm, stock config is 1 AC2 and 1 LRM15, not counting actuators and stuff it has a total of 10 slots per arm, one idea is have 5 yellow slots, and 5 green slots. So you can fit an uAC5 and LRM20 in that particular variant, but not an AC20. If it were a 6S with 2 ballistic hardpoints, we could have all 10 yellow slots, so either an AC20 or two smaller ACs since it supports 2 ballistic hardpoints.
In the case you dont use one of the hardpoints, say the green slots in the Jagger 6A, you could be allowed to convert it to gray slots. Gray slots should support ammo, endo steel, ferro fibrous, heat sinks, equipment, and no weapons of any kind. Any weapon slot should be allowed to be converted to gray type, but not to another weapon type of course.
Balancing work would have to be done to determine the size of each hardpoint for each variant of each mech. Smaller mechs like the Spider would certainly not be allowed to mount a PPC. The Stalker for instances could have 4 energy slots in each arm (one PPC possible, or two LL) and 2 energy slots in the torsos (ppc not possible), along with 5 missile slots in the arms and 2 in the torsos.
ObsidianSpectre, on 11 June 2013 - 11:16 AM, said:
The heat penalty system described is pretty much exactly what I understood it to be when it was first discussed. I still think it's a bad idea. You're heaping complexity on an already complex system, this is a very inelegant solution, and it's going to bring a bunch of problems down the road if it gets implemented.
Balance the weapons individually so you don't need the heat penalty system. Any balance problems you see with boating weapons are just the balance problems with the individual weapons, but exaggerated from having a bunch of them.
I really don't understand PGI's regular reluctance to address balance problems directly. Why do we keep seeming to go the Rube Goldberg route of game balance?
They have little choice. The player base has shown repeatedly that any Weapon that is considered even slightly Hot is simply shelved (bad for game play btw) for those that are not. Gauss for PPC's, until the PPC heat was reduced. Been there, why ever go back.
I appears they have settled on a 30 point, no penalty, alpha. Wait .5 secs go again. Moving targets should be more difficult to re-hit in the exact location. A quasi fix to a known issue. Gotta start somewhere.
I do agree though, 150% is just a random crazy number, hit OR and then Alpha 4 PPC's from 90% to get there.
Nicholas Carlyle, on 11 June 2013 - 05:04 PM, said:
I'm going to ask what I consider an obscenely stupid question.
Why doesn't PGI use the same tactic they've used with UI2.0?
Instead of telling us what you are going to do with the "TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT" type of post, why not share with us what your thoughts are, and ask how for input? And of course, actually read it and use it.
The social aspects of UI2.0 have benefited greatly from player input. It's one of the more impressive changes I've seen from the dev team.
Why can't we implement a similar style of dialogue with regards to major aspects of weapon balancing? Obviously we don't need 100 people posting about you upping the damage on MG's by .02 or whatever.
But when it comes to something like damage due to overheating, or trying to penalize alpha builds, I feel like there are a lot of good ideas floating around from accomplished players, who are in the trenches day in and day out playing your game.
I do send each and every one of those (non ranty, as in real 'Suggestions' and not 'you're idiots for not doing this already' posts/comments) to design, in an email, regularly.
The only way to fix this problem is to look at your hard point system, the best and easy way to do this is to give each hard point a crit slot cap. it will stop gauss cats 6 ppc stalkers , unrealistic PPC spiders
I do send each and every one of those (non ranty, as in real 'Suggestions' and not 'you're idiots for not doing this already' posts/comments) to design, in an email, regularly.
So they do see it.
Garth we only have your word on that, I am yet to see any tangible evidence that any of the community's feedback is taken into account. One of these rational type suggestion you go on about is the "balancing" of SRM's found in countless threads in patch feedback and the current situation with hit registration degrading every single patch. Here is a few examples, http://mwomercs.com/...-still-useless/ http://mwomercs.com/...ot-registering/
The hit registration one even had to be "revived" because it got archived without a single respones from a IGP or PGI member.
The OP in the SRM thread is a terrible example but it was the only one left on the first 2 pages of the patch feedback thread..
As i get it is that those heat penaltys are per chassis i.e. the AWS 8Q can fire 3 PPCs without penalty, while the AWS 8V will get a penalty at say 2 PPCs, because the standard layout only has 1 PPC on that mech. Stalkers could also be penalized for the second PPC because none are there per default.
If done right, this could bring back chassis to the Battlefield which we do not see at the moment, much like the Torso twist and acceleration, ...
I disagree. Reducing max heat threshold would nerf high heat weapons. Ballistic weapons would become more popular, maybe even more than the PPCs. And this would be a good thing.
And since heat dissipation would not change, this would shift the balance from high [alpha] to high dps builds. We would even see Awesomes being used once more.
Not too sure about the rest of you, but to me this would be a good great thing for MW:O.
High Alpha shots would still have their place in the game, but it would no longer be the meat and potatoes.
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