176 replies to this topic

[3rdworld]

Zerberus, on 14 June 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

Idea: every time someone creates a thread designed specifically to comment about Post X from Dev Y, please link that post in the OP.

For the simple reason that half the people here are, as usual, "theorizing" (read as "complaining") about something that is ridiculously easy to find info about, and still obviously have no clue what they`re talking about. But as usual, that doesn`t stop them from adding their "highly qualified elite opinions" to the discussion....

as one of the few people that actually knows how the mechlab heat scale works, i imagine am more than qualified to provide feedback for a system that only requires basic arithmetic to understand,

[Pinselborste]

reduce heatcap, so you cant have more than 35 heat without shutting down, make weapons have longer cooldowns when heat reaches 80% and make it longer the higher heat gets.

double the dissipation rate so mechs that sacrifice big weapons for more heatsinks can actually deal way more damage before overheating someone who just boats big weapons. Gauss rifle would need its heat adjusted to prevent everyone just using dual gauss builds.

and change how convergence works, something like this:

arms with vertical and horizontal targeting: 1 second to converge,
arms with verticl targeting: 2 seconds to converge,
side torso: 3 seconds to converge
center torso: 0.5 seconds to converge.

giving mechs quirks that make converging faster or slower would also be good, it would help to differ the variants from each other.

[Skyfaller]

My paint skills are horrid so I'm unable to 'draw' a picture to illustrate the concept.

Imagine this:

You know the weapon indicator in the HUD..the six concentric rods that light up when you fire a weapon. The outer 'edges' of that indicator would where the LT and RT weapons would fire straight ahead (no convergence). The torso crosshair indicator is where the CT mounted weapon, no convergence, would hit.

The arm aimpoint indicator, being the only one that would have convergence, would function would function like this:

1- Target lock provides the arm weapons with range to converge on to.

2- Weapon accuracy is based on weapon min/max range and how narrow or expanded the cone of fire is.

3- Cone of fire narrows/expands based on speed of the firing mech. Keeping the aimpoint inside the target lock box speeds up the convergence narrowing. The cone narrows from fully expanded to fully narrowed in 1 seconds if mech is stopped, 2 seconds if moving between 10 to 40 kph, 3 seconds if 50 to 80 kph and 6 seconds if above 80kph.

4- Cone of fire at fully narrowed convergence = cone narrows to a circle the size of halfway-through the CT target indicator. This means that even at long range it will have a very high chance of hitting the target mech as the cone is narrow enough to 'fill' itself with the chest of the target mech. It is not pinpoint fire ability (which is what we're avoiding) but it will hit within the chest area of a medium or bigger.

5- Cone of fire fully expanded (worst accuracy) = cone is the size of the minimap if it was straightened up and slapped on the HUD with the torso target aimpoint as its center.

6- A % chance indicator could be added to the weapon display screen to indicate the player how narrow/expanded the cone of fire is.

7- All arm weapons when fired will hit somewhere inside the aim cone. Lasers are already split into 'packets' of damage so the laser packets will simply be randomly changed for the duration of the lase.

Note: Understand that this is not auto-aim. If you have your cone of fire fully narrowed and the target mech is moving and you do not keep the mech inside the fire cone then the weapon will miss.

What a system like this does:

Removes the pinpoint accuracy damage from any and all mech builds. This effectively kills off projectile and energy alphaboats which are the plague of the game.

Brings balance between the long range, heavy damage weapons and short range, lighter damage weapons since a long range accurate shot requires narrowing the cone of fire to have a high chance of hitting the target's chest area while the short range weapons which, commonly used in a brawl at high speeds, will be fighting with a not-narrowed cone of fire but at much shorter ranges so the cone of fire will still be able to hit the target's chest area at random.

The CT is the only pinpoint accuracy weapon. LT and RT weapons fire straight ahead. This makes each mech chassis have its own personality,flavor and capability...as mechs with lots of torso/CT weapons have better 'snapshot' capability in close range while mechs with arm weapons have an advantage in turn fighting and in long range engagements (if they aim).

Be it light or heavy mech using long or short range weapons, both have the ability to inflict pinpoint damage at very close range if they stop/slow down and take the 'aimed' shot.

A Jenner-F at full speed using 6 medium lasers would be able to use its speed and size to rush into close range and its cone of fire (6 arm weapons) would be as wide as half of the enemy mech (because its so close) so it can damage and harrass targets. However, if it rushes and gets behind a mech and slows down or stops and aims (1 sec to fully narrow cone of fire when stopped) it can unload damage to specific spots.

A Jagermech with 4 AC2s would need to stop or slow down to fully aim to hit things 1km away (all over the mech) or get closer in (600m~) and cut speed under 40kph to have good accuracy fire-on-the-move.

Assaults and heavily armored mechs which load the big, heavy weapons can hit targets from afar but need to stop or slow down to do so. This makes combat very tactical in nature and gives each mech size and chassis a niche function which simply does not exist in the game now.

[Ralgas]

Skyfaller, on 15 June 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

4- Cone of fire at fully narrowed convergence = cone narrows to a circle the size of halfway-through the CT target indicator. This means that even at long range it will have a very high chance of hitting the target mech as the cone is narrow enough to 'fill' itself with the chest of the target mech. It is not pinpoint fire ability (which is what we're avoiding) but it will hit within the chest area of a medium or bigger.

And right there is where you run into trouble. the chest of a medium is a good miss chance on lights, slowing down to close it only makes it easier for the light to escape/use cover. You'd reintroduce lagshield, or worse open the gate for "zombie" light trolls (a zombie flea/spider would make kittens cry!!)

[Taemien]

dimstog, on 13 June 2013 - 06:57 AM, said:

In the current metagame, it is very difficult to come inside this range only because of the high pinpoint alpha of boats and the 2xPPC+Gauss or 2xGauss. And ofc the AC40s that hungrily await you to come in that range. Or is there some other build that is lethal beyond that range that I miss ?

Given that PPC and even LL boats are gonna be nerfed, that leaves us with the mentioned builds. So you see, the boats are going to switch to those and we are still going to have a slugfest of 2xPPC+Gauss or 2xGauss vs AC40s. That really makes for some interesting gameplay.

The problem is very simple. Mechs and hit location system were not designed to have more than weapon land on the same location, except on rare occasion. As long as that is in the game you can't balance it. They tried with the doubling of armour. What did that do ? Still the most effective way to take down a mech is a high alpha, in fact it nerfed by a factor of two all non pinpoint alpha builds. Now they are trying with heat penalties on boats. Yes, that will work. Players are still going to have gravitate even more to the mentioned builds.

The only solution that will allow for balancing of weapons is finding a way to not allow more than one weapon land on one location in any shot - except on rare occasion, to keep a surprise factor in.

One way to think about this, is that the highest damage alphas will be 30 and 40. With doubled armor, this makes it the same as 15 and 20 in TT. In TT the Gauss Rifle does 15 to the same location, and the AC20 does 20. However it takes twice as much weapon to make that happen.

In the end, we're coming out ahead on surviviability. Yes it is still going to a location of our choosing. But we're elite pilots (well supposedly). I say give these changes a shot and see if they work. It might be all that we need. If we need more, other things can be added. I'd rather them take it slowly with a scalpel than all at one time with an ax.

Skyfaller, on 13 June 2013 - 07:04 AM, said:

I disagree. I find it very easy to close into range with dual ac20s. 40pnt pinpoint alpha isn't a reward nor is it a play style, its merely an abuse of flawed game mechanics.

Come at me bro.

Just jesting of course.. but only slightly. Getting in range can be easy. But also can be a horrible nightmare if the opponent sees what you have before you close. This is why I don't use such configurations. They can be quite rewarding. But they can also bite you in the rear at times. There is risk involved with that config, alot of risk. And it should be rewarded. As I said above. Its a 40 pt alpha to doubled armor. So you're knocking as much armor off as a single AC20 in TT. It just takes you a crap ton of AC20 to do it.

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Dual gauss isnt usually the killer but it is a prime contributor to it since the damage is applied to one armor section per shot. Its not uncommon for a dual gauss to turn most of the opposing team's frontal armor red in at least 1 section before they get into brawling range merely by hitting the RT/LT areas that in most mechs have at most 40 to 50 armor. One hit from a dual gauss there and the target mech's survival time in a brawl drops to near zero. All because of the non-TT pinpoint accuracy issue. If the gauss had cone of fire then each gauss round would've struck a different armor section.

Didn't you just say you had no trouble getting into brawling range? If Gauss can do that, but you can still get in range to wreck their day... then I'd say that is more or less balanced. Not saying you are contradicting yourself, but you're kinda proving my point a bit further.

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The 30pnt alpha does seem to be the limit based on design of the mechs in slot/weight tonnage and only the ac20 and ppcs mountings in a few mechs can break that 30dmg limit. The problem is though, that even if they make it so that 30 is the max, you still have 30 dmg being applied to one armor section instantly per alpha. A 6 PPC stalker would still load 6 ppcs and simply fire 3 at a time and split his once high 60 alpha into two 30's. Does that mean 30 would hit one section and 30 the other? Probably. But, since the magic insta perfect aim/convergence is still in play, the 60 damage can still end up applied in the same section.

This is why the cone of fire modification fully resolves the pinpoint alphaboated damage problem. The arm PPCs in that stalker (4) would need to narrow the cone down to max to be able to hit one armor section while the 2 torso mounted ones will end up striking different hit areas. If the arm ppcs dont get full narrow down aiming then each PPC strike might end up hitting a different armor section. Enemy mech receives the full 60 damage total from the attack but it gets it spread out.

That was the way TT worked. If it is done in MWO the game will cease to be arcade point-click brawl/snipe and become a lot more tactical in nature.

TT firing mechanics were random. They don't work well in MechWarrior. Torso mounted weapons fired just as arm mounted ones do. The only difference was firing in to left or right arcs, which only arms could. In MWO, arms can't fire into those venues without torso twisting. So we already have way more limitations than TT has in Arm and Torso firing locations.

Also there was no penalties for alpha striking in TT. So that is evidence that the weapons in TT converged the same as they do in MWO. The only penalty was heat, which was negated on heat neutral mechs. Also getting heat neutral in TT was much easier. The 10 HS in the engine when DHS, could fire 3 Medium Lasers and run indefinitely. Can't quite do that in MWO.

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My problem with the changes is that they are overly complex by giving each weapon type a specific rule to the heat penalty. If its simplified down to '30 damage max per weapon type being fired at once' you still run into complex issues of equipping a mech without running into heat penalties and worse yet, it might even prevent people from using a weapon or another because of it.

Furthermore, the changes also bring about a loadout that retains high damage alpha and further flushes the game down the toilet: The Kamikaze Driver.

Loads 2 weapons of each type each dual combo does under 30 damage. A 9 energy hunchback for example would end up loading not 9 medium lasers but a mix of 1 ERPPC/1 LL/6 Meds/1 Small laser that will add up to over 30 damage anyway without heat penalty and just rush into point blank range and front load all the damage. Why this will work? Because if everyone else is trying to boat 3 ppcs with other weapons they wont kill him in one or 2 or 3 hits..4 yes. But he can kill them in 2 hits (or just 1) and run off. EXACTLY like what dual AC20 jagers do now. Except this will become the de-facto most effective way to get kills and avoid excessive heat penalties.

In contrast, if the cone system is in place the kamikaze driver wont kill the other mech quickly nor will he be killed quickly unless multiple mechs shoot him at once (focus fire.. imagine that in a mech game?).

I think having a cone is more complex in code than simply applying heat effects. And I like the idea of the penalties being different for each weapon as it can be applied to problem weapons specifically. As in ER PPC fixes won't affect large pulse lasers.

Also if someone wants to put a Loki setup of weapons on to do 40+ alphas. Let them. If they can hit with them all, great.

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With cone of fire system each mech class really gets its role niche.

Lights can harrass, scout and weaken enemy forces without being 1 or 2 shotted by alphaboats, mediums can finally use their speed and turn rate in brawls and hit and runs because they too wont die to one or 2 hits from alphaboats.. heavies and assaults make use of their thicker armor and heavier weapons to fight it out...and those fights would be reminiscent of TT & BT lore where mech battles is a wear-their armor down & blow their components till the core drops type of combat.

In short, like this:

http://www.youtube.c...ZZ4RNng#t=3m37s

There's no issue with lights currently. They perform their roles and do it well. Mediums have issues that go beyond high alpha builds. Centurions and Trebs are as big as Atlases and their agility needs work. Those two things would fix mediums for long and short ranges respectfully. But those things are taboo to talk about for some reason. Most of the community is afraid of mediums posing any sort of threat.

[MustrumRidcully]

3rdworld, on 14 June 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

as one of the few people that actually knows how the mechlab heat scale works, i imagine am more than qualified to provide feedback for a system that only requires basic arithmetic to understand,

You have gathered knowledge that was not meant for mankind, and we will all suffer for it.
Best to Mollath you immediately before you can do any harm!

[Skyfaller]

Taemien, on 15 June 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

One way to think about this, is that the highest damage alphas will be 30 and 40. With doubled armor, this makes it the same as 15 and 20 in TT. In TT the Gauss Rifle does 15 to the same location, and the AC20 does 20. However it takes twice as much weapon to make that happen.

Right, thats why the problem is precisely the high damage long range boated weapons. AC20 is medium range since it can still do high damage out to 400m and pinpoint.

Also note we have double armor but also literally 3x the rate of fire. In TT the AC20 would fire once per 10 seconds here it fires two to three times.

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Getting in range can be easy. But also can be a horrible nightmare if the opponent sees what you have before you close. This is why I don't use such configurations. They can be quite rewarding. But they can also bite you in the rear at times. There is risk involved with that config, alot of risk. And it should be rewarded. As I said above. Its a 40 pt alpha to doubled armor. So you're knocking as much armor off as a single AC20 in TT. It just takes you a crap ton of AC20 to do it.

Its not really a risk. You can use cover and advance to point blank range relatively easy.

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Didn't you just say you had no trouble getting into brawling range? If Gauss can do that, but you can still get in range to wreck their day... then I'd say that is more or less balanced. Not saying you are contradicting yourself, but you're kinda proving my point a bit further.

Not really. If I'm using a gauss I don't need to get into brawling range because the weapon will apply full damage at long range anyway. What I'm saying is such high damage long range weapon is used to severely cripple single armor sections before the target mech enters brawing range. PPCs do the same.

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TT firing mechanics were random. They don't work well in MechWarrior. Torso mounted weapons fired just as arm mounted ones do. The only difference was firing in to left or right arcs, which only arms could. In MWO, arms can't fire into those venues without torso twisting. So we already have way more limitations than TT has in Arm and Torso firing locations.

Eh? You can definitely move the arm aimpoint to max left/right without moving the torso. When arm lock is disabled, using freelook key will also move the arm aimpoint.

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Also there was no penalties for alpha striking in TT. So that is evidence that the weapons in TT converged the same as they do in MWO. The only penalty was heat, which was negated on heat neutral mechs. Also getting heat neutral in TT was much easier. The 10 HS in the engine when DHS, could fire 3 Medium Lasers and run indefinitely. Can't quite do that in MWO.

There were penalties for alpha striking in TT. High heat (generated from an alpha) degraded mech performance. SSRMs for example would receive penalties to their reload time if you had more than 2 or so equipped. There was no convergence in TT because it was random hit location which is precisely what the cone of fire would be introducing but with a little player control so its functional in 1st person.

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I think having a cone is more complex in code than simply applying heat effects. And I like the idea of the penalties being different for each weapon as it can be applied to problem weapons specifically. As in ER PPC fixes won't affect large pulse lasers.

Case in point: The heat penalties do not remove the problem of alpha strike pinpoint damage. They only address how often they can be fired (which is the 2nd half of the problem). If you put penalties on PPC so that if I fire 6ppc alpha with a stalker and insta-shut down I won't care if im offline for 10 seconds .. I did those 60 dmg hits on one spot and now my team just needs to pump a little more hurt in there to kill the enemy mech. If they make it 3 ppc limit per volley before heat penalties then I'll just macro the 6ppc to fire to avoid the penalty as best as I can. CTs are not hard to miss and 60 dmg still gets applied even if its in 2 volleys 0.5 seconds apart.

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Also if someone wants to put a Loki setup of weapons on to do 40+ alphas. Let them. If they can hit with them all, great.

Its not 'if' .. its 'it will' ...and pinpoint.

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There's no issue with lights currently. They perform their roles and do it well. Mediums have issues that go beyond high alpha builds. Centurions and Trebs are as big as Atlases and their agility needs work. Those two things would fix mediums for long and short ranges respectfully. But those things are taboo to talk about for some reason. Most of the community is afraid of mediums posing any sort of threat.

No issue with lights? You joking? Light gets hit by boated alpha and it goes into insta red or insta zero armor. Lights can boat weapons and pinpoint fire them while moving at very high speeds. Mediums die stupid easy to heavy and assaults..even to lights.. in just 2 alpha hits. The cone of fire system literally gives lights and mediums their role back as harrassers, scouts and support damage mechs.

Ralgas, on 15 June 2013 - 07:45 AM, said:

And right there is where you run into trouble. the chest of a medium is a good miss chance on lights, slowing down to close it only makes it easier for the light to escape/use cover. You'd reintroduce lagshield, or worse open the gate for "zombie" light trolls (a zombie flea/spider would make kittens cry!!)

No it isnt a good miss chance. The light has the speed to close into range so its on-the-move cone of fire hits the medium mech. There would be no lagshield at all since the player still controls the cone where the weapons may hit in. If you fire the with the cone aimed with no lead on the light then yes, most of your shots may land behind the light...lead it and they have a high chance of hitting the light. Again, this is just complaining about a system that in games like WOT is proven to work.

Edited by Skyfaller, 16 June 2013 - 10:09 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

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Its not really a risk. You can use cover and advance to point blank range relatively easy.

if it that was so easy, we wouldn't discuss Alpha Boat Snipers all the time. It's easier to snipe at range then it is to get through cover to your enemy.

[Bluemaxx]

I commend the OP on this thread, i think some of the ideas put forward are excellent and have been worth discussing.

Edited by Bluemaxx, 16 June 2013 - 11:39 PM.

[YueFei]

MustrumRidcully, on 16 June 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

if it that was so easy, we wouldn't discuss Alpha Boat Snipers all the time. It's easier to snipe at range then it is to get through cover to your enemy.

People tend to go for high-alpha because, if you're going to exchange blows 1 for 1 with an enemy, it is to your advantage to hit him harder than he can hit you in each salvo. It's also to your advantage to have more armor than your opponent. If your heat efficiency sucks, you just get behind cover and maneuver to maintain the distance as long as you can. Keep that up for a few salvos, and by the time the enemy mech makes it into range to brawl, it'll be in tatters.

Given these facts, any build that revolves around DPS rather than a humongous Alpha Strike is *forced* to try to close in to create a sustained battle where it will have the advantage over an Alpha Strike oriented mech. Hence, the DPS builds suffer badly as they try to cross open ground between pieces of cover in order to create that situation. Faster weapon cycle times also doesn't help, because whereas in the TT a mech might cross a piece of ground and only get hit once to do it, here in MWO that same mech is gonna eat 3 salvos trying to cross the same span of ground.

[Arctic Legacy]

Just have grouped weapons fire each weapon one at a time with 0.1 sec delay if they want to get rid of pinpoint convergence.

Oh and have all double heatsinks dissipate at 2.0 and singles dissipate at 1.4.
And I like the idea of singles having a higher max heat capacity.

[Skyfaller]

MustrumRidcully, on 16 June 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

if it that was so easy, we wouldn't discuss Alpha Boat Snipers all the time. It's easier to snipe at range then it is to get through cover to your enemy.

I will quote another player that replied to your post as part of my answer:

YueFei, on 16 June 2013 - 11:50 PM, said:

People tend to go for high-alpha because, if you're going to exchange blows 1 for 1 with an enemy, it is to your advantage to hit him harder than he can hit you in each salvo. It's also to your advantage to have more armor than your opponent. If your heat efficiency sucks, you just get behind cover and maneuver to maintain the distance as long as you can. Keep that up for a few salvos, and by the time the enemy mech makes it into range to brawl, it'll be in tatters.

and add: the problem is not alpha boat SNIPERS. its alpha boat pinpoint damage at ANY range.

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Given these facts, any build that revolves around DPS rather than a humongous Alpha Strike is *forced* to try to close in to create a sustained battle where it will have the advantage over an Alpha Strike oriented mech. Hence, the DPS builds suffer badly as they try to cross open ground between pieces of cover in order to create that situation. Faster weapon cycle times also doesn't help, because whereas in the TT a mech might cross a piece of ground and only get hit once to do it, here in MWO that same mech is gonna eat 3 salvos trying to cross the same span of ground.

The issue is that all alpha strike builds are also dps builds. damage per second by boating 9 medium lasers with a refire rate of 3 seconds each is lower, per second, than a dual ERPPC + 1 gauss build alpha build with a refire of ~3.5 seconds. Why? Because the 9 med laser mech cant sustain firing more than 2 such volleys while the 2ppc+gauss can fire up to 4 before overheat issues. In the end the DPS of the boated high damage weapons not only outdamages the 9 med lasers but also out-performs it due to pinpoint damage ability.

Arctic Legacy, on 17 June 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

Just have grouped weapons fire each weapon one at a time with 0.1 sec delay if they want to get rid of pinpoint convergence.

A good idea however it does not address the problem with pinpoint convergence completely. In this scenario a mech that has no lateral movement relative to your location (aka walking towards or away from you) still gets slapped with pinpoint high alpha.

Edited by Skyfaller, 17 June 2013 - 10:04 AM.

[StalaggtIKE]

Not bad ideas. I would love to see these implemented on the upcoming test server.

[Skunk Wolf]

How about limit all the mechs to stock variants until the OmniMechs come out?

[Alkospike]

HARDPOINT SIZE LIMITATIONS!
All the trouble with high-alpha builds comes from the ability to cram AC20 in same place tiny Mgun was in.
Same with PPC in place of Small Lasers.
STK was never designed to carry 6xPPC's, yet we have it. Makes no sense and near-impossible to balance.

[MaddMaxx]

Alkospike, on 17 June 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

HARDPOINT SIZE LIMITATIONS!
All the trouble with high-alpha builds comes from the ability to cram AC20 in same place tiny Mgun was in.
Same with PPC in place of Small Lasers.
STK was never designed to carry 6xPPC's, yet we have it. Makes no sense and near-impossible to balance.

So the K2 would be restricted to what? 1 AC20 and 1 AC10, or swapping out the MG's for 2 AC5's?

The Stalker has 6 Energy slots and the weight to carry them. Despite the Heat efficiency being in the *******, the 6 PPC Stalker is just a gimmick.

We have seen many many slot restricted ideas and charts and none of it solves anything in the long run. Once in place, the best builds are found and off we go again, back to min/max, need to WIN land, but now we have no recourse because we restricted **** so much it can't ever be changed.

[NextGame]

I have some concern around the heat penalties system. In principle I think it is a good idea, in practice it is going to have the following consequences:

No more brawling as more complex to manage your mech properly and less effective due to lack of efficiency with alpha strikes + People will just start boating from range even moreso than at present = boring gameplay

Edited by NextGame, 18 June 2013 - 04:39 AM.