176 replies to this topic

[Yult]

Interesting thread. I have a couple comments about convergence and cones. Go easy on me, this is my first post here.

First of all, a dispersion cone makes no sense in the game setting. These are mechs, with highly advanced electronics and materials. Weapons, especially energy weapons like lasers and PPCs, travel exactly where they say they will travel. Presumably, the crosshair in the HUD should also be perfectly calibrated to where these energy weapons are aiming. Furthermore, the structure is relatively rigid, not like a human body firing a rifle, and the crosshair should not be treated like a guesstimate. I think the gameplay issues it would create are enough to scrap the idea, but these considerations make it even less desirable to me.

Second, I'm not really sure how weapon convergence is treated in this game. Do weapons in opposite torsos/arms automatically converge at any range? That is certainly unrealistic. What is not realistic, however, is a pre-calibrated convergence at a certain range. This was done in WWII fighter planes and is recreated in the MMO War Thunder, where you can set how many meters you want your weapons to converge at. Arm-mounted ER-PPCs set to converge at 800 meters would still likely hit the same armor zone at 600 meters, but probably not at 400 meters. More centrally mounted weapons would benefit here. Either way, the solution is NOT to make torso weapons shoot straight ahead - that is absurd and would never be actually engineered into a mech.

Finally I just want to say that I agree with Aim64C pretty thoroughly about hard points. As someone that started with Battletech almost 20 years ago, I definitely feel that certain loadouts, and the impossibility of other loadouts, are pretty absurd. I would even like to see something like the 2D grid system he proposed while removing weapon-type requirements, so that any ballistic/energy/missile combination could be used as long as it fits the grid and # of hardpoints.

[El Bandito]

Snipers can simply use 2-3 ERPPCs combined with Gauss and continue to dominate. There will be no additional heat penalty for that.

[Roland]

Adding a Gauss in the place of a ppc really isn't add trivial as some of you seem to think. You don't just pull an extra. Ten tons plus ammo, plus all the critical slots, out of thin air.

And even if you wanted to run that on a stalker, it would mean driving a misery, which is inferior to the 3f.

Edited by Roland, 12 June 2013 - 07:23 PM.

[Zaptruder]

Roland, on 12 June 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

Adding a Gauss in the place of a ppc really isn't add trivial as some of you seem to think. You don't just pull an extra. Ten tons plus ammo, plus all the critical slots, out of thin air.

And even if you wanted to run that on a stalker, it would mean driving a misery, which is inferior to the 3f.

Or you can drive a Cataphract, Orion when it gets here, Victor when it gets here, Highlanders or Atlases. All those mechs can boat 2ERPPCs, Gauss, ammo, and sufficient heat sinks with varying degrees of success.

[Asmudius Heng]

Zaptruder, on 12 June 2013 - 08:55 PM, said:

Or you can drive a Cataphract, Orion when it gets here, Victor when it gets here, Highlanders or Atlases. All those mechs can boat 2ERPPCs, Gauss, ammo, and sufficient heat sinks with varying degrees of success.

Are those mechs/loadouts a major a problem though?

[The Strange]

Svalfangr, on 12 June 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

They have allready stated that certain weapons will generate more heat when stacked with less IE it only takes 4 PPCs to start feeling heat penalties.

So i would imagine it would only take 2 AC/20s for a massive heat penalty.

I love how everyone tries to pick on AC20s. The range is SO short, and the ammo is 7 shots per ton. That's gets a penalty, while it's still ok to use 3 ERPPCs that do 30 damage at 1000m? Lame.

[MustrumRidcully]

Asmudius Heng, on 12 June 2013 - 06:46 PM, said:

The more you group weapons, the wider the cone might get making group firing a risk reward situation compared to firing single shots.

How do you detect weapon's are fired grouped?

[Demuder]

The new heat penalty system will change nothing except banishing - the already rare - 6 PPC stalkers. It will in fact accentuate the problem.

The problem, which is simply putting damage of all the weapons you fire on the same location, every single time you fire. It is simple as that. It will do nothing to alleviate the fact that when you fire your 2xERPPC+Guass, AC40, 2xGauss build, all of your 30-40 damage goes invariably to the same location. Meaning, that in real combat conditions in the game, you have at least stripped the armor off of the hardest location at best. Mechs and weapon systems in battletech were simply not designed to deal with that, heat or overheat. The new system will do nothing to alleviate this.

The op's suggestion has merit, I don't think it's the best, but at least he acknowledges the problem and tries to do something about it. In fact, there's a lot of threads with equally good, better or even excellent solutions to the problem.

It is a pity PGI chooses to ignore it. The problem I mean. It is also a pity to delude ourselves that they even pay any attention to the feedback from the open-beat players. If they even happened to casually scan this subforum once in a month, they would have come up with a much better solution to this than the half-baked heat penalties they plan for the next patch.

Edited by dimstog, 13 June 2013 - 04:12 AM.

[Taemien]

Skyfaller, on 12 June 2013 - 05:42 AM, said:

Paul,

The heat solution of adding heat penalties to boated weapons will not work. Why? Because the only thing it will do is push people into the heavier, higher damage weapons which cannot be boated in large numbers to begin with.

There's some things you neglected to add.

Quote

For example, dual AC20 jagers. Is it a boated weapon? No. Its only 2 weapons. But they do 40 damage in pinpoint location.

At 270m. In the current game, its very hard to get inside this range. 2 AC20s comes with its own issues as well as that is a very heavy and restrictive loadout. The 40pt alpha is the reward for this playstyle. Personally these things have never killed me. The AC20 catapult has done more to me only because it was around since CB, and I can count the number of times on one hand that I've actually been killed by one of those.

They aren't as effective as you make it out to be.

Quote

Dual Gauss. What heat penalty when this weapon produces no heat? It does 15dmg per gun.

Same as above, minus the range being a factor. But being fragile offsets this. These mechs are running a high risk weapon and giving up alot to run it just like 2x AC20s. There should be a reward. That is 30 damage with no heat. But they better make good use of it quick.. as it will become 15 dmg and 0 dmg quickly.

Again I haven't met my demise by this config very often, even since CB.

Quote

AC2, AC5 and AC10 would cease to be used. UAC5 would be suicidal to use in more than 1 gun as it would double-tap heat penalty your mech to its doom.

Getting worked up before the pass has happened. Those weapons weren't even mentioned and probably won't see the same penalties. Well they might... if they deal more than 30pts of damage in a single alpha... 3 PPCs and 6 Medium Lasers as thresholds seems to me that 30 is the magic number.

Can any mech mount 6 AC5s or 3 AC10s effectively? If they could... adding more (a 7th AC5 and a 4th AC10) should probably see the same thing energy weapons are.

Personally I like the changes that I see so far. This might have the unintended consequence of buffing some weapons. For example to get those 60 pt alphas back, we might see AC10s being used as some point. Or perhaps 2 LPL and 2 ER PPCs on something else. I like the sound of that, a one two punch.

[Kaldor]

Lyoto Machida, on 12 June 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

Other games have a cone of fire and the players in those games move much faster. Is it that hard to hit a moving target (aside from lights) at range necessarily?

I just feel it turns the shooting from a skill game to a luck game. You are relying on the computer to see where you hit instead of having absolute control like we have now. Shooting at at ranges of 500m+ takes skill whether people want to admit it or not. Another thought about the entire CoF thing, how will lights fair? They HAVE to shoot while moving, or they are dead. The last and most important thing, PGI would have to do some coding to get this working obviously, and yeah I dont see that happening.

You can argue that FPS use systems like this, but this is not CoD. We dont carry 150 rounds of ammo for a gun that can one shot people. This is not WoT where you have a single gun, and its the norm to shoot from a static position. Mechwarrior is about shooting on the move. It always has been.

Convergence is not a broken system. Leave it be. Fix the underlying problem which is the heat system that allows people to stack large amounts of high heat high damage weapons.

Galenit, on 12 June 2013 - 02:59 PM, said:

If you hold the cone over the enemy it shrinks, if you go near to him it shrinks, if you slow down it shrinks, .... No luck, just more skill. You need to hold your aim longer on the moving target, you have to consider of firing at the moment and not hit the wished location or wait a moment to hit the aimed part. It reduces the simple point and click mechanic a trained ape or aimbot can do .... Should i explain it with apples and peaches for you?

Once again, this is not CoD or WoT. You are effectively taking a large portion of the players skill out of the equation, or better yet, nerfing the players skill. And bad players that cant hit the broadside of a barn, will fair even worse because of a system like this. With PGIs stressing of stats as they do now, do you think they will even consider this?

stjobe, on 12 June 2013 - 03:27 PM, said:

There's another solution to the pin-point issue that doesn't muck about with convergence or introduce cones of fire: Simply make ballistics fire in bursts of about 1 second (e.g. the AC/20 would fire 4 shots of 5 damage each at 0.25s intervals, then cool down/reload as usual). That would completely eliminate the current pin-point problem, and as an additional benefit it would reward skill in aiming as the better your aim is, the more you can focus damage. It'd also make energy and ballistic weapons work the same and require the same skill. The heat problem, from my perspective, can only be solved by drastically lowering heat capacity and equally drastically raise heat dissipation; this would curtail high-heat boating in a very effective way. Also, I propose redesigning the PPC/ERPPC to be the beam weapon it's supposed to be, not a faux-ballistic.

What will they do with the other ACs then? Break their shots down too? There were different styles of AC20s in canon. Their were the weapons like what your describing, then there was the single big cannon like what we have in MWO. The problem is, this is not a tabletop game, where we have damage over a round, this is MWO where its not turn based. Changing PPC mechanics is also a slippery slope. Maybe making them a very short duration beam weapon might work. The problem is not one or two PPCs though. The problem is 3-4 PPCs and or gauss all boated together to alpha fire, and not just once, but time after time, with no penalties, other than a shutdown.

Asmudius Heng, on 12 June 2013 - 03:27 PM, said:

I have been calling for these changes for a looong time now. The heat one seems really easy to implement and would give some reason to use SHS. I have made many posts about this. The actual numbers used can change based on gameplay testing of course but the concept that they do diffeent things to the heat scale so you get a different effect is a way you can keep upgrades from being no brainers but give you MEANINGGUL choices in the mechlab and the battlefield. Cone of fire ... jeez the crying about this. People seem to think it would be this massive cone that would make you miss every second shot. 1. The cone could be quite small even when running and overheating. That would be enough to spread the damage slightly essepcially at longer range. 2. The skill when it comes to CoF is positioning your mech. Knowing when to slow, when to hold your shot, when to chin fire and when to alpha. YOU control how accurate your cone is by your piloting SKILL. Yes skill, funny word that. 3. Modifiers to the cone could be minimised by holding your shots and letting your targeting systems bring the cone to a minimal level as well as controling moveemnt and heat etc. Snipers would probably wait a bit before they fire to gain max efficieny while spray and pray players will output more damage thogh it might be spread a lot more. In a brawl at very close range the cone would make little difference in fact - and a weapon like the LBX as a snap shot would have some more use. I do not care if they do or do not add CoF - i doubt they will in fact - but the murderous rage at the idea of it being 'luck' based baffles me. If they cannot change pinpoint convergeance then they need to at least look at the heat system as a halfway point and the current idea they have is not really going to work ...

Single heatsinks are meant to be the bottom of the barrel. Thats the way it is. Double heatsinks are supposed to be a full upgrade, not a sidegrade. And certainly not the bastardized implementation we have in MWO with 2.0's in the engine and 1.4s outside the engine. Why do you think they came back into the game around 3050, because they found the Helm Memory Core. The newer canon mechs are supposed to have an advantage, because alot of them have DHS in them. Stop trying to rewrite canon to suit what you want.

Your cone argument holds no water and only nerfs player skill. Also, slowing down for some mechs is not viable. Can you imagine what would happen to lights and mediums if they had to slow down or stop to take an accurate shot? Look at autocannons as well. Because they dont rely on a single shot, they have to lead the target, and convergence on ACs at range is effectively broken. So yeah, lets actually nerf them more by giving them what would be a shotgun effect.

Skyfaller, on 12 June 2013 - 05:09 PM, said:

Again, WOT uses it and people have no problem taking lead shots while on the move. The chance to hit on a desired area or hit at all is reduced however. Closing in on the target increases the hit chance while moving so you dont need to lead so much and the weapon will very likely hit. What I find hilarious is all the whining about the cone convergence system when again, the proposal is that only ARM weapons can converge while torso weapons shoot straight (no convergence). A stalker for example, would only converge the arm weapons while the torso mounted weapons fire straight ahead. Heck if its so hard to wrap the arm convergence around your mind just simplify it even further: make the arm weapons converge at the distance of the currently locked target. Voila. No more leading convergence problems (which is a ******* joke since now the weapons insta-converge on the aimpoint range...and if you're leading a target that means the aimpoint is not over the target but likely aiming and converging at something 1km behind it). My proposal fixes 3 things: Alpha pinpoint boating lack of chassis uniqueness..aka arm weapon mechs have an advantage. lack of purpose for single heatsinks over dual heatsinks. You're welcome.

No, Im not welcome and I dont want your fix. Your fix doesnt fix anything and just nerfs player skill. THIS IS NOT WOT! I can agree that convergence on ballistic weapons is bad. Ive asked the devs as far back as closed beta if they can get ballistics better convergence via "R" locking a target, thats where your convergence would be, but its been shot down. But making it so only arm weapons converge is just more reason to only run those types of chassis. Make that happen and suddenly we stop seeing mechs without arms because the chassis with convergences will be that much better than a the ones without.

Yult, on 12 June 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

Interesting thread. I have a couple comments about convergence and cones. Go easy on me, this is my first post here. First of all, a dispersion cone makes no sense in the game setting. These are mechs, with highly advanced electronics and materials. Weapons, especially energy weapons like lasers and PPCs, travel exactly where they say they will travel. Presumably, the crosshair in the HUD should also be perfectly calibrated to where these energy weapons are aiming. Furthermore, the structure is relatively rigid, not like a human body firing a rifle, and the crosshair should not be treated like a guesstimate. I think the gameplay issues it would create are enough to scrap the idea, but these considerations make it even less desirable to me. Second, I'm not really sure how weapon convergence is treated in this game. Do weapons in opposite torsos/arms automatically converge at any range? That is certainly unrealistic. What is not realistic, however, is a pre-calibrated convergence at a certain range. This was done in WWII fighter planes and is recreated in the MMO War Thunder, where you can set how many meters you want your weapons to converge at. Arm-mounted ER-PPCs set to converge at 800 meters would still likely hit the same armor zone at 600 meters, but probably not at 400 meters. More centrally mounted weapons would benefit here. Either way, the solution is NOT to make torso weapons shoot straight ahead - that is absurd and would never be actually engineered into a mech. Finally I just want to say that I agree with Aim64C pretty thoroughly about hard points. As someone that started with Battletech almost 20 years ago, I definitely feel that certain loadouts, and the impossibility of other loadouts, are pretty absurd. I would even like to see something like the 2D grid system he proposed while removing weapon-type requirements, so that any ballistic/energy/missile combination could be used as long as it fits the grid and # of hardpoints.

Finally someone with some common sense and good first post BTW. Convergence sets automatically as you increase or decrease your range. The only weapons that suffer from convergence issues in this game are ballistic style weapons that require you to lead them. In those cases when you lead (read: aimpoint not on the target) your convergence is set at whatever object or terrain you are pointing at. Its kind of a PITA, but you learn how to work around it as you play more. As far as setting convergence manually, it was asked for, and the devs shot that down back in closed beta. From a year 3050 technology basis, I think the targeting computer can handle it.


What I dont understand is why everyone is asking for crazy changes like COF on some personal want list. This is not WoT or CoD. Stop trying to turn it into that. Mechwarrior has always been a game with pinpoint damage, get used to it. The devs will never change that core function, get used to it.

Fix the problem, which is the heat system, and put in something that is close to canon. Changing the way HS function is a huge departure from canon. The simplest, and quickest solution is to simply change the heat cap. Dropping cap 50% and increasing dissaption 50% is the easiest change. It is just a number in the code. By doing this you force people to get away from big high heat alphas. Also by doing this you encourage build diversity. Instead of 4 PPCs on a Stalker you might see 2 PPCs, 2 LLs, and 2 MLs, as boating 4 PPCs doesnt get you anywhere because if you fire all 4, you run the risk of overheating and damaging your mech. But if you fire 2 PPCs, then follow with some lower heat weapons, you can manage your heat more effectively and suddenly the AlphaPPCWarrior:Online metagame dies. Once you have a truly functioning basic and easy to understand heat system in place, you can go back and adjust weapons, both in the heat department, and RoF department.

The last consideration is time. Time is money. It costs time/money to pay a developer to code new features. Would you prefer an easy to use and understand sysytem that new players can pick up on easily or some convoluted mess that you need to pay someone to develop? Id rather they put the devs time into community warfare, lobby system, new UI, new mechs, more maps, more gameplay modes, than rewriting the entire heat and convergance system. This game suffers enough from "1 step forward, 2 steps back" syndrome.

Also from a time standpoint, they need to get moving, and get some of the promised features out. By taking time to change the core of the game you delay eveything else. People are tired of waiting. You can cater to the casual player who doesnt want to spend any money, but in the end its the guys like me that are willing to buy mech bays, premium time, hero mechs, etc, that keep the lights on and the servers running. The guys like me that have been playing for over a year now will leave, and we wont be back. Ive seen it in House Marik and my unit, MGA. Around the first of the year we had over 100 people a night on our TS server, with easily half of them founders. Now we might have 25, and this includes new recruiting. This is telling me the community is shrinking, not growing.

The simplest solution is often the best one.

[Demuder]

Taemien, on 13 June 2013 - 05:53 AM, said:

At 270m. In the current game, its very hard to get inside this range. 2 AC20s comes with its own issues as well as that is a very heavy and restrictive loadout. The 40pt alpha is the reward for this playstyle. Personally these things have never killed me. The AC20 catapult has done more to me only because it was around since CB, and I can count the number of times on one hand that I've actually been killed by one of those.

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.

Edited by dimstog, 13 June 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[Skyfaller]

armyof1, on 12 June 2013 - 05:51 PM, said:

You've still not explained why it would be a good idea to force this convergence cone even when you're firing a single weapon. So shooting a single AC10 I would suddenly need to try and keep my aim on a JJ Spider running all over the place to have a decent chance to hit. And then I have to lead it and fire. This does not fix boating and alpha, this makes any weapons used at range to be bad. It's just a general nerf of all kind of mid- to long-range shooting. This just make anything but lasers gimped since you can immediately adjust if the laser is fired a bit to the side. Or are lasers supposed to wobble about inside this cone too when fired?

I use convergence as a term because it covers the cone system concept better. As I've stated, what I want is for MWO to have the same aiming cone system WOT has. A single gun still needs to be aimed (aka cone narrowed down) to have the best chance to hit..the longer the range the more narrowing of the cone is needed. Convergence as a term is used because only arm weapons should converge in my opinion. If you have a single weapon on the arm then theres no convergence but you still need to aim it for long range fire.

Lasers do wobble inside the cone of fire area as each laser has a 'pulse' of damage. The narrower the cone the smaller the area it may wobble in. Also, this is not a nerf to long and medium range weapons...it is in fact balancing them with short range weapons. If you have not noticed, all the long range weapons also happen to be the ones with the highest damage and most of them are front-loaded damage. For such weapons to be balanced in the game they need to be balanced by requiring more precise aiming via the aiming/convergence cone system. Again, similar to WOT's system.

The Strange, on 12 June 2013 - 09:46 PM, said:

I love how everyone tries to pick on AC20s. The range is SO short, and the ammo is 7 shots per ton. That's gets a penalty, while it's still ok to use 3 ERPPCs that do 30 damage at 1000m? Lame.

ERPPC does not do 30 damage at 1000 range. It does 22ish. Energy weapons have 2x max range damage output (dropping).
AC20 does full 20 damage at 270m but since it is a projectile it has 3x max range damage output (dropping). This means that at 400m it does ~14 damage. That is still 28 damage on a single hit location on a dual boat mech...and thats if the dual ac20 mech decides to fire at 400m. When I run such a mech I can always , easily, close in to under 200m and blast away.

Taemien, on 13 June 2013 - 05:53 AM, said:

At 270m. In the current game, its very hard to get inside this range. 2 AC20s comes with its own issues as well as that is a very heavy and restrictive loadout. The 40pt alpha is the reward for this playstyle. Personally these things have never killed me. The AC20 catapult has done more to me only because it was around since CB, and I can count the number of times on one hand that I've actually been killed by one of those.

They aren't as effective as you make it out to be.

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.

Quote

Same as above, minus the range being a factor. But being fragile offsets this. These mechs are running a high risk weapon and giving up alot to run it just like 2x AC20s. There should be a reward. That is 30 damage with no heat. But they better make good use of it quick.. as it will become 15 dmg and 0 dmg quickly.

Again I haven't met my demise by this config very often, even since CB.

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.

Quote

Getting worked up before the pass has happened. Those weapons weren't even mentioned and probably won't see the same penalties. Well they might... if they deal more than 30pts of damage in a single alpha... 3 PPCs and 6 Medium Lasers as thresholds seems to me that 30 is the magic number.

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.

Quote

Personally I like the changes that I see so far. This might have the unintended consequence of buffing some weapons. For example to get those 60 pt alphas back, we might see AC10s being used as some point. Or perhaps 2 LPL and 2 ER PPCs on something else. I like the sound of that, a one two punch.

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?).

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

[jakucha]

Really hope we get the beta test server around next patch. It would be the perfect time to test the new heat changes. At any rate, I really don't like a lot of WoT's mechanics. I don't think the answer is to add convergence issues to a healthy mech. I'd be fine with aiming issues popping up when your mech is staying near shutdown too often though, along with other internal dangers.

[stjobe]

Kaldor, on 13 June 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

What will they do with the other ACs then? Break their shots down too?

Yes. To put in in the simplest terms I can, instead of autocannons going "boom, wait a couple of seconds, boom!" they will go "boom-boom-boom-boom, wait a couple of seconds, boom-boom-boom-boom".

The "boom-boom-boom-boom" part will occur over the course of a second or so, I gave example values in a post in the feedback thread, basically something similar to this:

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 in effect spread ballistic damage in much the same way laser damage is now spread, and remove much of the pin-point accuracy we now have.

Kaldor, on 13 June 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

There were different styles of AC20s in canon. Their were the weapons like what your describing, then there was the single big cannon like what we have in MWO. The problem is, this is not a tabletop game, where we have damage over a round, this is MWO where its not turn based.

While I do appreciate that the Autocannons are only loosely grouped and that an AC/20 can be anything from 30mm to 230mm, I doubt very much that we'll see that variation in MWO.

Kaldor, on 13 June 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

Changing PPC mechanics is also a slippery slope. Maybe making them a very short duration beam weapon might work.

I'd suggest making them have the same beam duration as a large pulse laser, or perhaps even a bit shorter.

Kaldor, on 13 June 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

The problem is not one or two PPCs though. The problem is 3-4 PPCs and or gauss all boated together to alpha fire, and not just once, but time after time, with no penalties, other than a shutdown.

And that's why they also need to rework the heat system, lowering the cap and raising the dissipation.

Edited by stjobe, 13 June 2013 - 07:12 AM.

[Galenit]

Kaldor, on 13 June 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

Mechwarrior has always been a game with pinpoint damage, get used to it.

No, it has tables and rolls to determine where you hit.
Just read the old rulebooks or look at sarna ....

[3rdworld]

Galenit, on 13 June 2013 - 07:09 AM, said:

No, it has tables and rolls to determine where you hit.
Just read the old rulebooks or look at sarna ....

Mechwarrior is not Table top.

Table top has dice for shots, Mechwarrior has pinpoint damage.

Learn the difference, it could save you from having more embarrassing moments like this.

[Galenit]

3rdworld, on 13 June 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

Mechwarrior is not Table top.

Table top has dice for shots, Mechwarrior has pinpoint damage.

Learn the difference, it could save you from having more embarrassing moments like this.

This came out prior (1986) the first Mechwarrior computergame (1989) , it is based on the BattelTech rules and uses dices for hit determination ....

Quote

MechWarrior is a role-playing game (RPG) based on and set in the BattleTech universe.
......
Because the term "MechWarrior" was used for the new game, the existant third edition of the RPG was re-published by CGL with a new cover and renamed to Classic BattleTech RPG, without changing its content except for errata.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/MechWarrior_(RPG) (Edit: The link misses the last ")", dont know why...)

Maybe you were confused by the renaming?

Edited by Galenit, 13 June 2013 - 07:51 AM.

[BigMekkUrDakka]

stop whine please! if u cant play this game as it is play some other that have 3pv, random hit detection, and take 30-60 seconds to kill some one!
lots of people happy with game as it is now, and playing it instead of filling forums with pointless cries about such nonexistent thing as "balance"
loser will always loose!

Edited by BigMekkUrDakka, 13 June 2013 - 08:05 AM.

[Kaldor]

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

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.

Yes, your system could allow lights to live longer, maybe, but what about lights needing to actually hit a specific spot a mech while running at 150kph? Forcing them to use a cone to determine damage is a huge nerf. Some of the best light pilot out there are very predatory, looking at a target, shooting where it is weak with a single volley, and moving on.

And way to avoid the entire discussion on the time/money cost to add in a CoF system. As well not even bothering to look at the heat system, which is really what is broken. Put the devs time into expanding the game, please.

stjobe, on 13 June 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

Yes. To put in in the simplest terms I can, instead of autocannons going "boom, wait a couple of seconds, boom!" they will go "boom-boom-boom-boom, wait a couple of seconds, boom-boom-boom-boom".

The "boom-boom-boom-boom" part will occur over the course of a second or so, I gave example values in a post in the feedback thread, basically something similar to this:

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 in effect spread ballistic damage in much the same way laser damage is now spread, and remove much of the pin-point accuracy we now have.


While I do appreciate that the Autocannons are only loosely grouped and that an AC/20 can be anything from 30mm to 230mm, I doubt very much that we'll see that variation in MWO.

I'd suggest making them have the same beam duration as a large pulse laser, or perhaps even a bit shorter.

And that's why they also need to rework the heat system, lowering the cap and raising the dissipation.

I would say just leave the ACs alone. What your suggesting is very much so a nerf. Looking at AC20s. Now it is instant, with a 4 sec cooldown. What your suggesting is a total of 5 seconds. They would need to reduce the cooldown to keep them at 4 seconds total. Another solution is creating 2 different AC style weapons, one with a burst fire mode, but faster cooldown. The other with a single shell, but longer cooldown. Just throwing a thought out there on that one. I honestly dont know what I would run.

I could see a .25 second pulse for PPCs. But them again I support .5 second duration pulse lasers. My biggest issue with that is you just created a hitscan weapon. I use PPCs, and I think convergence actually makes them slightly more difficult to use at longer ranges when I have to lead someone. Would be a big rework to code this as a semi ballistic weapon, so it doesnt become an instant hitscan weapon.

Preach it. Heat cap down, raise dissipation! I suggested it about 9 months ago, and everyone thought I was crazy, lol.

Galenit, on 13 June 2013 - 07:09 AM, said:

No, it has tables and rolls to determine where you hit.
Just read the old rulebooks or look at sarna ....

Yeah, but this is not tabletop. This is a videogame that uses some of the tabletop rules. Not all the rules will transfer well from paper to silicon....

[Galenit]

Kaldor, on 13 June 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Not all the rules will transfer well from paper to silicon....

Thats the problem, as stated above:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2446487

Edited by Galenit, 13 June 2013 - 07:54 AM.