1263 replies to this topic

[BR0WN_H0RN3T]

Ok...something else pgi. You have made the alpha strike issue worse by introducing arm-lock. Seriously get rid of it. I created a macro so everytime I alpha strike it's with pinpoint accuracy. That's just not on. It's P2W. If u can't afford a ptogrammable mouse or leyboard u r at a disadvantage.

[Carnelian]

Regarding "boating" and convergence:

Has anyone suggested making chainfire (or a similar mechanic with less delay or delay based on weapons) mandatory? This would solve both the convergence issues as well as indirectly adressing the boating problem, since adding weapons over the amount that can be fired during the first shots cooldown would be useless. All without adding layers of additional rules, in its most basic form.

Smaller weapons could even be exempt from this restriction, if the designers want to keep medium laser alphas, for example.

It would also be within the spirit of competitive gaming, as no randomness is introduced, instead adding to the level of skill required to land multiple shots in the same location.

[C12AZyED]

This is most definitely a step in the right direction, I'm glad they are taking measures to address high alpha boating. So far, I agree with the method of implementation, we'll have to see how it goes but I'm all for it.

[Kmieciu]

Victor Morson, on 13 June 2013 - 12:32 AM, said:

Every problem people have with "alphas" would go away if assaults made up less than 20% of the battlefield. Nobody is going to get mad about the kinds of alphas that Trebs & Centurions can deliver, accuracy be damned.

Constant alpha striking and weapon boating will never go away, as long as there is perfect convergence. It's not about Assault mechs. It happens in every weight class.

What's the best light weapon right now? Medium laser. Put 6 of them on a Jenner and you're golden. It hits the same spot. Every time. In fact, you don't even have 6 weapons anymore, you've got one big heavy medium laser. 30 damage, 24 heat, 6 tonnes 270 meter range.

Large pulse laser will never ever going to compete with it. 10 damage 7,3 heat 7 tonnes 300 meters? It's a joke!

If those 6 medium lasers hit 6 different components, then we would see some Jenners mounting large pulse laser instead.

Why is a Spider an inferior mech to a Jenner? Because it cannot mount 6 medium lasers. When PGI gives us a hero Spider with 6 energy slots, you'll see more Spiders than Jenners.

Edited by Kmieciu, 13 June 2013 - 01:08 AM.

[stjobe]

Selbatrim, on 12 June 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

Also, add recoil to Dakka weapons and missiles. You got 4 AC2s going mental? then good luck hitting the same spot twice. bigger weapons = more recoil.

Don't forget the PPC:

"The Particle Projector Cannon (or PPC) is a unique energy weapon. PPCs fire a concentrated stream of protons or ions at a target, causing damage through both thermal and kinetic energy. As such, despite being an energy weapon, it produces recoil." (sarna.net)

Also, please notice that the PPC is supposed to be a beam weapon - "a concentrated stream of protons or ions". It was never intended to be the faux-ballistic it is currently.

Perhaps reworking it to be a beam weapon would solve a lot of issues people have with it currently...

[Shiro Matsumoto]

Original BT used target numbers to roll to avoid Shutdown and to avoid ammo explosions from running too hot.

They should put that in.. 100% Heat... chance your ammo cooks off and explodes.

[Bloody Moon]

Kmieciu, on 13 June 2013 - 01:08 AM, said:

What's the best light weapon right now? Medium laser. Put 6 of them on a Jenner and you're golden. It hits the same spot. Every time. In fact, you don't even have 6 weapons anymore, you've got one big heavy medium laser. 30 damage, 24 heat, 6 tonnes 270 meter range.

And this is where you are wrong even if you are staring in the right direction. A Jenner with 6 medium lasers will never deliver the full damage to one spot unless he slows down/stops entirely and in that case he is very vulnerable. This is why usually streaks are dominant in a light fight.

The current meta revolves around pinpoint alpha weapons and while lasers can be boated they:
1. Require more effort than PPCs, Gauss or AC/20.
2. Give some time for the victim to react (torso twisting).

Edit: Let's review a more dangerous laserboat as an example.

5 or 6LL Stalker.

Some may consider this imbalanced due to the fact that it is a boat.
BUT, while the build handles itself fairly well in a fight, it will get overpowered both on short and long range by superior range or DPS. The strong point of this build would be that it can play on the enemies' weak points by careful maneuvers, staying out of the range of brawlers and forcing the snipers into brawling. Considering this build is slow and lacks Jets, it is a Stalker after all, if the pilot can still abuse his opponents' weaknesses then the fight was not even to begin with as either the Stalker pilot was clearly better OR the enemy pilot made mistakes.

Overall this build is a relic from the time when there was no HSR on ballistic weapons, sure it can still leg lights and mediums fairly well, but by the time it does that a design with pinpoint weapons already decimated 2 more mechs.

Edited by Bloody Moon, 13 June 2013 - 01:55 AM.

[Haniwa]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 11 June 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

This heat penalty system sounds great, but it appears that it won't do anything to deal with dual AC/20 boats or dual gauss boats. Does PGI not feel that dual ac/20 boats or dual gauss boats are an issue? or is other balancing in the pipes for this? How about 4 lrm 15's?

I'd continue to prefer a system that stacks heat based on the damage output of the alpha rather than the # of weapons fired as the big instant alphas of same weapons are the continued problem rather than the # of weapons - like 9 small lasers.

Also 150% is way too high. Whats wrong with 100% and forcing mechs to be built for more heat efficiency rather than just DHS in the engine and then as many guns as you can cram onto the mech?

how about a nerf for every weapon until all as good as machine guns?

[Kmieciu]

Bloody Moon, on 13 June 2013 - 01:25 AM, said:

And this is where you are wrong even if you are staring in the right direction. A Jenner with 6 medium lasers will never deliver the full damage to one spot unless he slows down/stops entirely and in that case he is very vulnerable. This is why usually streaks are dominant in a light fight.

The current meta revolves around pinpoint alpha weapons and while lasers can be boated they:
1. Require more effort than PPCs, Gauss or AC/20.
2. Give some time for the victim to react (torso twisting).

This was true when the Streaks did 2.5 damage a missile. Right now in 8vs8 light fights are about who can leg the other guy faster. In a fight between 2 Jenners with 6 ML each and two Ravens with streaks, a Raven is going to loose a leg before one of the Jenners looses the center torso.

Edited by Kmieciu, 13 June 2013 - 01:40 AM.

[Nik Reaper]

And one again we see why MW4 had that hardpoint system it had , while still not the best solution ( since they really don't want the engine to have an energy output so that you can alpha energy weapons only as much as your engine can power them and slow down the recycle rate when a few PPCs and gausses are charging ) knowing that people will boat if allowed, then don't let them boat , put in the same restriction and know that if a mech is too powerful , it's because they made it such and to nerf it they wouldn't need to change weapons but just change the hardpoint restrictions....

There wouldn't be a 6 ppc, 4 ppc and 3 ppc+1gouss builds if there were no mech that can fit them... or just have the engine have a power limit witch will force a partial chainfire from the high alpha builds... and in all of this SRMs need a damage buff , at least back to 2 per missile.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

To be honest boats haven't been a real problem since MechWarrior 3. In MW2-3, there were NO hardpoint restrictions, which resulted in every single 'mech just being a skin and there being actual cheese builds because TT construction rules need HPs as bad as the MechWarrior games do, to be honest.

TT rules needed them less, because if you fired 12 Clan ER Medum Lasers at a mech, you were not likely to hit the same hit location. FOr massive damage, going massive size (AC/20, Gauss, PPCs) was more sensible.

It changes when you have targeting computers, pulse lasers and Clan warriors. This made pinpoint aiming possible and to what I heard, if you got to that point ,you easily wrecked the table top game. It was just not designed to deal with easily chosen hit locations.

Which is the problem the Mechwarrior games face. Aiming for a hit location is easy. Doubling armor served as a stop gap here, but it doesn't really change the structural problem of mixing TT armor distribution with non-random hit location determination.

[Kmieciu]

Nik Reaper, on 13 June 2013 - 01:59 AM, said:

And one again we see why MW4 had that hardpoint system it had , while still not the best solution ( since they really don't want the engine to have an energy output so that you can alpha energy weapons only as much as your engine can power them and slow down the recycle rate when a few PPCs and gausses are charging ) knowing that people will boat if allowed, then don't let them boat , put in the same restriction and know that if a mech is too powerful , it's because they made it such and to nerf it they wouldn't need to change weapons but just change the hardpoint restrictions....

There wouldn't be a 6 ppc, 4 ppc and 3 ppc+1gouss builds if there were no mech that can fit them... or just have the engine have a power limit witch will force a partial chainfire from the high alpha builds... and in all of this SRMs need a damage buff , at least back to 2 per missile.

MW4 had even bigger problems with high alpha builds, since lasers were instant hit and ballistics were hitscan. Coupled with perfect convergence and coolant flush it used to be alpha strike after an alpha strike.

Edited by Kmieciu, 13 June 2013 - 02:05 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Ragnar Darkmane, on 12 June 2013 - 02:01 PM, said:

What a great fix. The devs even TOLD the 6x PPC abusers how they can avoid the new balancing changes....
Isn't that a bit counter-productive?

I don't like their fix, but the point is - The 6 PPC "abusers" don't get told to avoid the balancing change. They get to avoid the heat penalty, but if they do that, they must fire and aim their PPCs with a time delay. Unless a shooter is really skilled, this will usually lead to less precision and the damage being spread, and even if the shooter is really skilled, the target now has a 0.5 second window to react in some way - and if it's just torso twisting to turn the other side.

---

A bigger issue will be the macro-ability of this. Not because it circumvents the penalty, but because macroing makes the timing easier and less likely to get wrong.
Basically, a macro that works like this:
- Bind a key to each weapon group.
- Macro it so that the 2nd key press is ignored if less than 0.5 seconds have passed since the 1st key press.

Not sure if such Macro programming can be done with standard tools.
(Making a macro that defaults to you firing another shot after 0.5 seconds sounds like a bad idea, but I could be wrong.)

[Bloody Moon]

Kmieciu, on 13 June 2013 - 01:39 AM, said:

This was true when the Streaks did 2.5 damage a missile. Right now in 8vs8 light fights are about who can leg the other guy faster. In a fight between 2 Jenners with 6 ML each and two Ravens with streaks, a Raven is going to loose a leg before one of the Jenners looses the center torso.

That is true only if they fight on open grounds where the chances on interrupting a beam is lower. Not to mention the 6ML build would be far less effective if SRMs wouldn't be almost neutered.

Edited by Bloody Moon, 13 June 2013 - 02:15 AM.

[AndyHill]

Hardpoint restrictions will not solve pinpoint alphaing, because some designs are meant to be boats. Like for example practically all omnimechs.

[jozkhan]

What really makes no sense from a game design perspective is that There is already a system in place for heat

and the fix is to create multiple new systems to run on top of this, why not just use the existing heat system.

Firing alpha strike of say 6 medium lasers in your example is already penalised in terms of the fact any alpha suffers the heat penalty of firing all those weapons at once. You know 'running hot'

Spamming Alpha also has an effect: shutdown

Any fix needs to stick to these principles not come with a mech variant chassis and weapon system special rules submanual.

You created the the cheese option of over ride and coolant flush by the way.

Just make the shutdown ceiling a harder one if you must. The designers suggestions are a pandoras box in terms of unintended consequences that are going to take gameplay further away from where we all want to be going.

It's becoming crystal clear that 'Launch Date' is going to be an extension of beta for a very long time.

Edited by jozkhan, 13 June 2013 - 02:22 AM.

[Big Giant Head]

Boating itself isnt problem, there are mechs that are designed just for that.
Problem is when you allow boating to all mechs, without any pushback (not even heat or cooldown one)

http://mwomercs.com/...t/page__st__140

[OneEyed Jack]

Brown Hornet, on 13 June 2013 - 12:40 AM, said:

Ok...something else pgi. You have made the alpha strike issue worse by introducing arm-lock. Seriously get rid of it. I created a macro so everytime I alpha strike it's with pinpoint accuracy. That's just not on. It's P2W. If u can't afford a ptogrammable mouse or leyboard u r at a disadvantage.

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

MustrumRidcully, on 13 June 2013 - 02:08 AM, said:

A bigger issue will be the macro-ability of this. Not because it circumvents the penalty, but because macroing makes the timing easier and less likely to get wrong.
Basically, a macro that works like this:
- Bind a key to each weapon group.
- Macro it so that the 2nd key press is ignored if less than 0.5 seconds have passed since the 1st key press.

Not sure if such Macro programming can be done with standard tools.
(Making a macro that defaults to you firing another shot after 0.5 seconds sounds like a bad idea, but I could be wrong.)

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.

[Tennex]

LPL are hardly used as it is and you are going to increase its heat by 1...

[Rashhaverak]

I think its important to distinguish builds that are actually "boats" from other builds. The issue here is where a build is min-maxed such that it does not fit into the mechwarrior genre and also utilizes a very high damage alpha as a regular fire mode.

Dual gauss and dual AC20 don't qualify as boats. Two weapons is hardly a boat. Additionally, the idea that dual builds need nerfs because they are boating or because they are high alpha is not reasonable. It's two weapons... In addition, those builds have real limitations such as limited ammo and xl engines. A build with two missile racks doesn't qualify either.