1263 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

OneEyed Jack, on 13 June 2013 - 02:54 AM, said:

Ever here of Autohotkey? It's a completely, 100% free software macroing tool. You were saying?


Do people really not understand that chain-fire already puts in a .5 sec delay with most weapons? Lasers can be chained faster if you spam the key, but take even longer if you're holding it Besides which, assuming the shooter and target aren't just standing still, having a high-noon shoot-out, reacquiring aim will make the speed at which you can "chain groups" rather a moot point.

Chain-Fire works on each weapon individually. No one smart will want to go through the "reacquire-aim" step 6 times when he only would need to do it twice.But a key aspect is that sometimes you may be able to reacquire your aim in 0.5 seconds or less, but you have to wait until the 0.5 seconds are over. And you don't want to wait too long either.

I suppose you could do it indirectly without macros.
Decide which weapons are supposed to be fired first, and each put them their own group, and then assign each of these group also one of the weapons to be fired second. Kinda akwkward to describe it, but works without macros.

[Asmosis]

having another 24 hours to think about it, few more observations.

Although the OP was focused on boating, im pretty sure everyone can agree its not the actual boating of same weapons that's the problem, but the end result, large alpha strikes.

Paul posted as much, this isn't an anti-boat measure, its an anti-alpha measure. otherwise they would be adding tonnage/crit penalties to prevent you from equipping them in the first place.

With that in mind ...

Whats the issue with alphas? usually being able to take out a single section in one shot without requiring much ability to aim. Yep, my ability to hit the same section twice might have the same probability as lightning, but if (like lightning) I destroy whatever I hit on the first shot, it doesn't matter. THAT is the main problem with high alphas, which is generally from boating (but not always. boating = rectangle, alpha = square).

On the other hand, you can't simply remove group fire. there are mechs with 8,9,10 weapon slots and without group fire you simply can't chainfire the weapons fast enough if the 0.5sec is enforced. with large lasers for example, if I just chainfire in a stalker, my first LL is coming off cooldown while im still firing the 4th, let alone the 5th or 6th. hunches and anyone using more than two ac2's would have the same problem.

My new suggestion is staggered group fire.

when you hit fire for a group of weapons, they don't all go off at once. they autochain fire, but at a higher speed, say 0.1 or 0.2 second gap. You can still hit backspace to set them to classic chainfire of 0.5sec.

That's it pretty much. with a 0.2 sec delay between weapons even in group fire, you can fire those 9xML's (that aren't an issue at all currently) and it'll take you 1.8 seconds to unleash hell. er, moderate damage.

You could even make it weapon dependant. You can broadly group weapons into small 0.1sec (SL, SPL, ac2, ac5, lrm5, srm2/4) medium 0.2sec (ML's, ac10, lrm10/15, srm6) and of course large weapons, being the biggest in each class 0.3sec (ac20, lrm20, ppc, LL, LPL, guass).

I think that would work. you can fire a full payload without silly heat penalties. You can even hit that atlas reasonably confidently with 6 PPC's, heck that example is only slightly longer than it takes to hit him 100% with a single large laser, but to get all 6 shots in the same section (much like group firing LL's right now) would take a reasonable amount of skill.

Actually that's a thought. beam weapons should probably only have half the delay penalty, since they are already DOT effects. Missiles are sortof, but they do higher damage per ton so regular delay for them.

*edit*
wtf is up with this editor? make it compatible with IE10!

TDLR;

put a slight delay between weapons in group fire 0.1-0.3 seconds which will prevent unskilled people hitting the same mech location with 4-6 (ppc, gauss, ac20etc) heavy weapons aka alpha problem.

*edit*
it should go without saying, but there would obviously need to be something to prevent you from firing multiple groups simultaneously to prevent having groups 1-6 contain 1 ppc each. the delay (0.1 - 0.3) would need to be global, not just group specific.

Edited by Asmosis, 13 June 2013 - 04:07 AM.

[Havok1978]

Victor Morson, on 13 June 2013 - 12:29 AM, said:

An idea was pitched. A terrible idea everyone calls bad, because it is in fact a very, very bad.

What does this have to do with a million things you think Paul might or might not say about future nerfing? The core system is an awful, awful idea with no redeeming value. Why even put it there in the first place?

"everyone" is a pretty broad range term that doesnt apply here cuz not "everyone" is opposed to it. mainly a vocal minority. through hundreds of posts there are a handful of return posters who continue to debate the topic (myself included) but that by no means constitutes "everyone"

I'd rather see this change than no change...

my idea of an ideal balance mechanism would be a hardpoints sizing system like MW4.
disclaimer, dont attempt to twist my words into saying i want the same exact system from MW4 either.

[Asmosis]

^^ the majority of people are against it going by thread replies, read pretty much the whole thread including your little spat with Victor.

on this post though, MW4 hardpoints wont fix anything. there are cannon heavy boats like awesomes (and a lot of future mechs), it opens up a massive bag of worms with small weapon boating and you still have exact problem this topic is trying to address. Unlike 9ML hunchbacks though, MW4 style small weapon boats would be a problem.

Theres always going to be a "biggest alpha" build, there has been right since closed beta. Back then dual gauss were "OP alpha strikes", and theres always been something better the whole way through. I quite like the idea of having 7 machine guns in every atlas torso, basically free dps if they go laser/missile route and drop the gauss/ac20. not balanced though and that's the problem with crit slot allocations instead of weapon hardpoints.

Edited by Asmosis, 13 June 2013 - 04:19 AM.

[AndyHill]

Asmosis, on 13 June 2013 - 03:48 AM, said:

On the other hand, you can't simply remove group fire. there are mechs with 8,9,10 weapon slots and without group fire you simply can't chainfire the weapons fast enough if the 0.5sec is enforced. with large lasers for example, if I just chainfire in a stalker, my first LL is coming off cooldown while im still firing the 4th, let alone the 5th or 6th. hunches and anyone using more than two ac2's would have the same problem.

The current cooldown times as well as the delay between chain fired weapons are all semi-arbitrary numbers that can be changed for gameplay design reasons. In fact the current cooldowns are massively accelerated from the tabletop's approximately 10 seconds. And for some reason the devs feel that 'mechs are dropping too fast.

Edited by AndyHill, 13 June 2013 - 04:24 AM.

[sC4r]

at first the 150% seems to be a bit too much... now only quad/hexa LL/PPC reach that much heat but i believe they set it so high because of their heat penalty... so if you fire ehm 3 ppc you get 24 heat... fire 6 and its 48+20 seems enough for mech to kick the bucket imediatelly from 0 heat

though i believe this way of doing it is not the best idea out there but who knows we ll see if it works

for mg,flamer YES MORE BUFF
for streaks i hope this will address the thing of ssrms hitting ct exclusively

[CGB Behemoth]

Thanks PGI for not touching all 2xPPC+Gauss builds (3xPPC+Gauss also).
We'll continue play PPCGAUSS-warrior-online!
As for me i'm quiting the game after prem-time end & will go play BF3 or Sniper-Elite (there are real snipers, not your parody).
Thanks again for all yours "balancing".

[Bloody Moon]

Havok1978, on 13 June 2013 - 03:56 AM, said:

I'd rather see this change than no change...

Despite the fact that this change will barely even shift the metagame?

Snipers can go as low as 2PPCs or even one if they mount 2Gauss+1PPC.
That is still 35-40 points of almost pinpoint damage.

In a sense this "solution" is just another splash damage, which needs to be removed after the original problem was solved.
I'd rather see PGI work on something that truly solves the problem instead of futile tries to limit it.

Edited by Bloody Moon, 13 June 2013 - 04:37 AM.

[sarelk]

So most of what is being proposed seems legit...

I am understanding that streaks are being nerfed even though they don't do a lot of damage except in large bundles...

Pulse laser nomiliztion i think I can understand... however looking at how the Large Pulse acts now (which works well) and going that much more heat will not be a good thing in my opionon more poeople will still opt for PPC now than look at this as option... the damage boost is negligalbe to the heat... this really saddens me...

The heat management and heat threshold ideas as well as boating limits I think and hope will work out for the best... although I am mainly an energy guy , I have a share of balistics as well... I do not have crazy ppc stacck builds but do have some med. laser stacks... we will see how it works out... however on the flip side

balsitics should then pay for ammo at the end of the match or something to help quntify for what energy demeands need.... going double heat sinks costs and if you use coolant that costs... but dual ac/20 jagers or others are flat out devastating on the battle field with little or no ramification

[warner2]

Asmosis, on 13 June 2013 - 04:18 AM, said:

^^ the majority of people are against it going by thread replies, read pretty much the whole thread including your little spat with Victor.

on this post though, MW4 hardpoints wont fix anything. there are cannon heavy boats like awesomes (and a lot of future mechs), it opens up a massive bag of worms with small weapon boating and you still have exact problem this topic is trying to address. Unlike 9ML hunchbacks though, MW4 style small weapon boats would be a problem.

Theres always going to be a "biggest alpha" build, there has been right since closed beta. Back then dual gauss were "OP alpha strikes", and theres always been something better the whole way through. I quite like the idea of having 7 machine guns in every atlas torso, basically free dps if they go laser/missile route and drop the gauss/ac20. not balanced though and that's the problem with crit slot allocations instead of weapon hardpoints.

On MW4 hard-points, the point made by the poster above was hard-point restrictions "something like" MW4 not exactly like it.

So, the one weapon per hard-point restriction can stay in-place. If you take one weapon off, you can only put one weapon on. I think MWO did this right.

What I don't like is taking a MG off and putting an AC20 on. That's the reason you can make 6PPC Stalkers. So taking a cue from MW4 you could have maximum hard-point sizes that basically restricted how much you could "upgrade" a weapon. Take a MG off, perhaps you could only put an AC2 in it's place. Take an AC10 off, and you could put either an AC20 or Gauss on. Take a SL laser off, you can only replace with a SMPL, ML, or MPL.

I think this change alone would alleviate the issue but probably wouldn't solve it entirely since certain stock configurations still allow for boats. Perhaps they could be dealt with on an individual basis.

[DeaconW]

Behemothk, on 13 June 2013 - 04:31 AM, said:

Thanks PGI for not touching all 2xPPC+Gauss builds (3xPPC+Gauss also).
We'll continue play PPCGAUSS-warrior-online!
As for me i'm quiting the game after prem-time end & will go play BF3 or Sniper-Elite (there are real snipers, not your parody).
Thanks again for all yours "balancing".

" I hate the fact that sniper builds exist in MWO! I'm going to play Sniper-Elite!"

Irony.

Bloody Moon, on 13 June 2013 - 04:33 AM, said:

Despite the fact that this change will barely even shift the metagame?

Snipers can go as low as 2PPCs or even one if they mount 2Gauss+1PPC.
That is still 35-40 points of almost pinpoint damage.

In a sense this "solution" is just another splash damage, which needs to be removed after the original problem was solved.
I'd rather see PGI work on something that truly solves the problem instead of futile tries to limit it.

So, what is your solution? Not allow sniper builds?

[grayson marik]

There is a simple, macroresistant sollution to the boating problems:

Implement a proper transfer of the BT heat rules. Problem solved, immersion trippled, more easy to understand for new players than the thing, that Paul suggested.

Imagine a new player:

I fire 3 PPC and get 24 heat alright. But if I fire 4 I get 32 +10 ? WTF?!? --> illogical to anyone.

Furthermore, If i think about a future implementation of MASC TSM, which needs a certein "window" of temperature to work best, why not implementing the BT heat rules? The MASC TSM system could then utilize the same rules it does in BT.
3 toppics solved in one step.:
bad heat management gets punished in a generic, easy to understand way which is most easy to explain to new players:
" If you go hot, no more good aiming and running. If you go very very hot ---> BOOM!"

And secondly the groundwork for TSM already done

and a Third:

No pain with macros.

Edit: Scratch MASC, set triple strenght Myomer (TSM)

Edited by grayson marik, 13 June 2013 - 09:23 PM.

[AndyHill]

grayson marik, on 13 June 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

There is a simple, macroresistant sollution to the boating problems:

Implement a proper transfer of the BT heat rules. Problem solved, immersion trippled, more easy to understand for new players than the thing, that Paul suggested.

Easier to understand and would have the bonus of introducing proper heat management tradeoffs into the game, but as far as stopping instant alpha -boats: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Annihilator

[Ursus_Spiritus]

One of the major aspects of heat vs weapons vs load outs is that PART of being a pilot and a HUGE part of the immersion is that you NEED discipline for controlling the rate of fire and which weapons you use.

I think that lesson is lost on many, especially the "insta-kill" mentality that plagues many FPS.

Heat management is a foreign concept for many (except we table top/MW vets for the most part).

You can not always, nor should you be able to consistently fire ALL of your weapons every cool down refresh (heat phase).

The heat threshold should be at 100% as it is in TT and as your heat spikes above 4 -40%? that you start to see long and some short term effects of persistent heat build up.

THAT would be immersion, it would force those that really want to learn how to play, to learn and those that lack the maturity/patience to want to learn, to move on to another game that caters to their style.

Oh and by the way, this is coming from someone that spent countless hours trying to figure out how I could alpha strike and manage heat when I started playing Table top so I understand the impulse to want to insta-kill all too well and I have spent many an hour playing other FPS.

This game is different and it should play as such PGI. Please don't cater to the "kiddies", this is a thinking man's game.

Edited by 8100d 5p4tt3r, 21 June 2013 - 02:30 PM.

[Milt]

• problem - alpha strike hitting one location
  
• solution - increase time to converge wpns based on #of wpns fired from diff locations
  
• problem - high damage alpha
  
• solution - make heat matter ala internal damage and longer convergence times and longer shutdowns
  
• problem - jj shake making ppl ill
  
• solution - revert change and let the 2 solutions above take care of the problem

[Bloody Moon]

DeaconW, on 13 June 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

So, what is your solution? Not allow sniper builds?

I've already explained in this topic.
My proposed solution was turning most of the pinpoint weapons into ones that fire several projectiles so that aiming them is harder.
They would be similar in aiming to our current lasers. The amount of projectiles and the intervals between them would be unique to each weapon and maybe later on to each manufacturer.

Lore friendly, does not introduce a new mechanic, makes aiming more skill based AND gives the victim time to react.

[Corison]

All in all, pretty bad.

Your trying to "fix" a mechanic you broke by increasing the fire rate of weapons. In addition your doing it in a very poor way to try to target a very small selection of mechs that upset a small portion of the players.

There is zero reason from the history of Btech to add this. There is even less real reason to add it in game.

How about fixing some of the real issues, and not worrying about 2-3 mech designs that boat weapons on mechs designed for them... Heck even some of them are STOCK mechs!

[Fooooo]

Bloody Moon, on 13 June 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

I've already explained in this topic.
My proposed solution was turning most of the pinpoint weapons into ones that fire several projectiles so that aiming them is harder.
They would be similar in aiming to our current lasers. The amount of projectiles and the intervals between them would be unique to each weapon and maybe later on to each manufacturer.

Lore friendly, does not introduce a new mechanic, makes aiming more skill based AND gives the victim time to react.

Tbh I don't really mind your idea there.

So your saying maybe make the PPC fire 2 bolts per shot.Each bolt doing 5dmg.(at what interval I don't know)

Meaning you would have to get both to hit to get the full 10 dmg.

Somewhat like what mw2/3/4 AC's were like.


I guess you could do the same for most of the upfront dmg weapons, say the ac/20, splitting it into 2 shots , each doing 10dmg. etc.

Tho im not really for adjusting the ac/20 like that anyway, its a close range weapon, so splitting the shots won't make a real difference in accuracy unless it was split into 5 - 10 shots each delayed by 0.5sec or something, and its just not needed for them imo.



Its not that bad of an Idea, and would make dmg spread a little more from the upfront dmg weapons. Moreso the long range ones tho.


Still, I would prefer they just removed convergance altogether.

Edited by Fooooo, 13 June 2013 - 05:41 AM.

[Bloody Moon]

Fooooo, on 13 June 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

Tbh I don't really mind your idea there.

So your saying maybe make the PPC fire 2 bolts per shot.Each bolt doing 5dmg.(at what interval I don't know)

Meaning you would have to get both to hit to get the full 10 dmg.

Somewhat like what mw2/3/4 AC's were like.


I guess you could do the same for most of the upfront dmg weapons, say the ac/20, splitting it into 2 shots , each doing 10dmg. etc.


Its not that bad of an Idea, and would make dmg spread more from the upfront dmg weapons.


Still, I would prefer they just removed convergance altogether.

Well maybe not 2 bullets for every weapon, but the idea is along those lines.

This would work well with the Factions of CW aswell.

For example one manufacturer produces an AC/20 that fires 2 bullets under 1 second.
The other one produces an AC/20 with 5 or 6 bullets but the duration is less, roughly 0,6-0,75 seconds.
The third produces a double barreled AC/20 that fires 3 bullets per barrel, under 0,8 seconds.

Obviously right now one gets chosen for balance purposes, but later on this can really liven up the CW.

[Bagheera]

Aim64C, on 12 June 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

Perhaps you should re-read my posts. Then realize why my instinct is to insert a derogatory remark, here.

Once was plenty. I can only hand so much passive aggressive "I want to insult you but see how I am a better person than you because I am not." in a single week.

I know you have what you consider to be a well thought out way to change hard-points, but your suggestion - like all the exactly identical ones before it that have come along since CB - won't solve the issue at the core of the problem. Yours may have been one of the more verbose, but it was hardly original in the context of suggestions made to the developers of MW:O.

Regardless of how you change the mech-lab, hardpoints, weight, heat, whatever, there will always be a handful of builds that are measurably tactically superior to the majority of builds.

Make a stock only game and people will run the same 3-5 stock mechs. This isn't PGI's fault, it isn't the player-base's fault, it's the reality of a game like this.

Regarding adding more than 1 smaller weapon to a large weapon hardpoint - please give that some serious thought. Take 10 minutes and think about what you are saying. Think about the implications of an AWS--8Q which can put 3 lasers in each of its PPC slots. Now think about ways to abuse that on mechs that don't suck. This half of your suggestion creates way more problems than putting 1 large caliber weapon in a given hardpoint regardless of its original size.