459 replies to this topic

[ExtremeA79]

Tombstoner, on 14 June 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

http://www.sarna.net...ne_%28Kraken%29

Easily modified under the existing hard point system to take advantage of the low heat... now people are saying gauss is op thus we need to increase the cool down to make it fair.

Bane variant 4 is equipped with 2x ultra -20's please explain how to balance that combo. 40-80 alpha or 80-160 within 4 seconds assuming you dont jam. This is the i win button of the future.


BTW

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Thunder_Hawk

Oh. My. God.
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING???
I REALLY hope that the devs never put THAT in the game.

[Volthorne]

DaZur, on 14 June 2013 - 10:57 AM, said:

Actually... Mechs don't need to pump their arms as the biomechanical motion of "swinging / pumping" ones arms is a bipedal balance function that our lovely Mechs are not required to do as the gyro performs this function in theory.

FWIW what your seeing in these animations is the de-harmonization of the segregated aim-point reticles for the LT mount, Center Mount and RT mount...

What I'm seeing is - using an Atlas as a model - a 'Mech going along swinging their arms like a cheerleader. Again - as I stated in my first post - stomp down a hallway flatfooted (that means no using the ball/heel of your foot to soften the impact) while holding your arms like an Atlas and see what happens. I can guarantee there is ZERO side-to-side movement.

If you want pompoms, we'll give you pompoms, but then you have to give up your man-card.

[Lostdragon]

A big cause of the problems this game has is the inconsistent approach to how TT rules and mechanics are implemented. Some are a 1:1 transfer from TT to MWO, some are heavily modified, and some are completely ignored.

Modifying heat generation and weapon fire rates, ignoring chance to hit, but keeping high damage values for heavy weapons has resulted in the mess we have now. Personally I don't care if they follow the letter of the TT rules if they remain true to the spirit and the game is fun to play.

The thing is once you modify or ignore one thing you basically have to rebalance every other aspect of the game in order to make it work. Choosing to ignore hit chance (i.e. remove convergence) but not decrease damage while giving the freedom to cram as many heavy weapons as possible into a mech results in the huge damage we see getting slung around now.

PGI would have been better off if they had just approached the game as an interpretation of the TT rules rather than arbitrarily using or ignoring them because the rules for TT were in place to all work together. When you remove or heavily modify one it creates a domino effect and so you are better off to design from the ground up with playability of the game in mind. I am afraid the game will never be balanced in time to be successful due to the need to constantly put out fires caused by tweaking systems that depend heavily on one another for balance.

Edited by Lostdragon, 14 June 2013 - 01:07 PM.

[VanillaG]

Another option would be to remove the option to fire multiple weapons at the same time a force chain fire for multiple weapons. Instead of a fixed chain fire interval you could make make interval based on the amount of damage the weapon produces. Once a weapon fires it would prevent the next weapon from firing, regardless if it is in the same group or not, until the chain interval is completed. Normal weapon cooldown and beam duration still apply, this only a mechanism for slowing down the rate of fire for multiple weapons.

For discussion purposes lets use 0.5 second interval per 10 damage to determine scale. A player fires a medium laser and would have to wait 0.25 seconds for the next laser to fire. Another player fires an AC/20 and would have to wait 1 second before the next weapon would fire. These are rough guidelines and individual weapons could have their values tweaked.

All this would do is slow down the damage a single mech could do. Slowing down the damage might lead to a reduction in armor amounts because it would harder to core out single sections.

[Vodrin Thales]

One Medic Army, on 14 June 2013 - 12:25 PM, said:

Sounds doable. What about gauss/AC20? Changing PPCs into super-short duration lasers would help spread their damage out a bit, but doesn't help with the ballistics boat issues. Of course, that issue will only start to be big when we get a ballistics boating assault. Double AC/20 Jagers are total glass cannons to anyone who can reliably hit their side torso, same with most double gauss builds.

SRMs and LBX definitely need higher damage. Accuarcy trumps spread, so spread needs higher damage to compensate. Now that the new SRM pathing means SRMs are spread weapons at all ranges, rather than being precision up-close they can get an apropriate damage for spread weapons without causing massive QQ. LBX is already an inferior AC/10, and AC/10s aren't all that hot to begin with right now. If we get an assault that can mount 3 (possible with one of the Victor variants) they might start to get used more.

Actually a number of the ACs (particularly the 10's and 20's) that are described as firing multiple times in a burst each TT turn. They could easily be made into weapons with a short burst similar to what Peef is proposing with the PPC.

Gauss is the only ballistic weapon that is described as a pinpoint weapon in battletech. It would need a significantly lower rate of fire to balance in this scenario, but it should be doable.

Edited by Vodrin Thales, 14 June 2013 - 12:43 PM.

[Aslena]

If it's a matter of wanting it to be like tabletop then we should target the enemy launch our weapons and the targeting computer do the rest kinda like with LRMs.

If it's a matter of pinpoint damage being high how about just cutting the damage of all weapons in half or quarter. It would encourage taking out that shoulder a little more often instead of everyone just going for CT all the time.

Mind you I'm not totally against this, however it would be a MAJOR overhaul of the game for any kind of balance and I doubt PGI would want to do this.

[Artgathan]

3rdworld, on 14 June 2013 - 08:54 AM, said:

It would be really hard to put all my weapons in the same 1 or 2 locations.....

OR you would just completely screw over all mechs which that isn't possible.

You decide.

It definitely gives certain chassis an advantage, but that's just another game to play in the mechlab. Some builds will always be superior to others unless the game is perfectly balanced.

As for not being able to hit the same location, players with good gunnery / piloting skills will.

[Lostdragon]

VanillaG, on 14 June 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

Another option would be to remove the option to fire multiple weapons at the same time a force chain fire for multiple weapons. Instead of a fixed chain fire interval you could make make interval based on the amount of damage the weapon produces. Once a weapon fires it would prevent the next weapon from firing, regardless if it is in the same group or not, until the chain interval is completed. Normal weapon cooldown and beam duration still apply, this only a mechanism for slowing down the rate of fire for multiple weapons.

For discussion purposes lets use 0.5 second interval per 10 damage to determine scale. A player fires a medium laser and would have to wait 0.25 seconds for the next laser to fire. Another player fires an AC/20 and would have to wait 1 second before the next weapon would fire. These are rough guidelines and individual weapons could have their values tweaked.

All this would do is slow down the damage a single mech could do. Slowing down the damage might lead to a reduction in armor amounts because it would harder to core out single sections.

Not being able to fire groups of weapons or alpha strike goes against the IP. It would also slow the game down so much I think it would be really boring. It would also make it pointless to have more than 3-4 weapons on a mech. Such a system would pretty much make heat pointless because it would be really hard to get to high heat firing like that.

If they ever remove group fire I would move on to another game.

[PEEFsmash]

Lostdragon, on 14 June 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

Well Doc has already proven he is a top tier player with verifiable information but all you can provide is anecdotal evidence of your own skills. I feel like I am above average ELO wise based on my win ratios and the tactics I see in matches, but honestly I could be wrong and so could you.

So he posted getting 10th on an old leaderboard challenge so...

Latest leaderboard challenge:



Also, I stream 100% of the matches I play at www.twitch.tv/peefsmash. You can see all of my past matches there. I hide nothing.

BTW, Ultra-AC20s should never be brought into this game.

Edited by PEEFsmash, 14 June 2013 - 01:30 PM.

[MasterErrant]

DocBach, on 13 June 2013 - 05:39 PM, said:

Rather than a completely random cone, I'd rather have an expanded reticule where weapons would only converge so far to where they didn't all hit in the same location.

I agree. something like mass effect ( i make no claim to being a shooter expert.but this reflects Real life realities of shooting...)where you start out with a wide ring which gets smaller (and thusly more accuratge) as you hold on target. the more you move and maneuver the slower the pipper tightens. you'ld probably never get perfect accuracy poptarting. but you'ld get pretty good. and thus pay a price for safety as you should... the jump shake thing is an answer to it but a poor one.(Overdone quite a bit)

[Mechsniper]

No on the diverging the fire from the reticle as a general rule. Maybe a small amount when jumping to reduce jump snipers range a small amount, but nowhere near what it is now. When running, no. If current gyro systems are able to stabilize weapons, then when we have mechs they will be too easy and basic tech to use. Gyro's are NOT even new tech in this day and age. Reticle divergence dumbs down the game for me. No thank you.

[MasterErrant]

DaZur, on 14 June 2013 - 12:19 PM, said:

This point seems to pass right in one ear and out the other on most people who clamor for closer adhesion to TT.

There is nothing in TT that can be easily translated from TT to real-time to compensate for pin-point accuracy and the subsequent focused damage save some form of damage / heat manipulation and or a mechanic to apply some aspect of deviation.

you are partly right. they should have started from scratch on mech design. but the way mechs are built and how crits work is designed around the TT lack of precision and rare free crits. they kept it so they have to moderate accuracy somewhat. especially when it's possicle to hit with high damage aimed shots from beyongd long range.

Edited by MasterErrant, 14 June 2013 - 09:38 PM.

[Lostdragon]

PEEFsmash, on 14 June 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

So he posted getting 10th on an old leaderboard challenge so...

Latest leaderboard challenge:



Also, I stream 100% of the matches I play at www.twitch.tv/peefsmash. You can see all of my past matches there. I hide nothing.

BTW, Ultra-AC20s should never be brought into this game.

Gratz, impressive score. I still think you should maybe tone down the elitist rhetoric a bit if you want people to listen to you. And I personally don't like the idea of PPCs having a duration as you proposed earlier. I think the weapons now have a good variety of mechanics that are fun and interesting. I would prefer to see balance done by tweaking weapon values and modifying underlying mechanics.

The reason for this preference is that giving PPCs a duration would make them less powerful against heavier mechs that can torso twist but more powerful and easier to use against lights. With current all or nothing PPC hits it does take some skill to hit a light mech. But if you can sweep a PPC like a laser and it delivers damage over .3 seconds that means even a brief touch with multiple PPCs is going to hurt pretty bad.

So while this concept does nerf the PPC in one aspect it is a buff in another way that would probably impact lights more than any other class.

Edited by Lostdragon, 14 June 2013 - 01:52 PM.

[PEEFsmash]

Lostdragon, on 14 June 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

Gratz, impressive score. I still think you should maybe tone down the elitist rhetoric a bit if you want people to listen to you. And I personally don't like the idea of PPCs having a duration as you proposed earlier. I think the weapons now have a good variety of mechanics that are fun and interesting. I would prefer to see balance done by tweaking weapon values and modifying underlying mechanics.

The reason for this preference is that giving PPCs a duration would make them less powerful against heavier mechs that can torso twist but more powerful and easier to use against lights. With current all or nothing PPC hits it does take some skill to hit a light mech. But if you can sweep a PPC like a laser and it delivers damage over .3 seconds that means even a brief touch with multiple PPCs is going to hurt pretty bad.

So while this concept does nerf the PPC in one aspect it is a buff in another way that would probably impact lights more than any other class.

It might not nerf PPCs much for bad players where people usually miss their PPC shots vs lights. However, in competitive play, it would be a strong nerf to PPCs because it would spread damage around the mech rather than all hiting one spot. People with good aim might not always hit CT of a light, but they will hit somewhere. As PPCs currently stand, if a PPC boat hits just component on a light, you are either legged, dead, or neutered. Usually just dead. With this duration, it will probably spread between 2-3 components, and at least you won't die in one shot.

Edited by PEEFsmash, 14 June 2013 - 02:01 PM.

[Wolke]

I am for a cone of fire, but I don't think it is the only possible solution.

I'd actually prefer if there was an "aimpoint" for every active weapon in the group and they'd wander around within a larger than now targeting circle and only converge by accident.
You could still alpha and all weapons would fire towards "their" aimpoint.

Now if you switch to chainfire you would only see the aimpoint of the currently active weapon and you could adjust your aim before firing again.

The speed at which the aimdots move around and how far could depend on the weapon. You could even add special rules like ... all weapons within a component (right arm, RT,etc) aim maybe not at the same spot, but move as a group in a cluster, its tightness depending on the weapon weights.

But hey, that's just another of the countless ideas floating around, all with their own problems that might be fixable or not, but yet with many advantages over what we currently have, with all the glaring issues.

[SilentWolff]

NO CONE OF FIRE

You want that crap go play WoT, which also, is why I stopped playing that game. Theres no reason in a battlemech, you shouldnt hit what your aiming at. This issue quite frankly, is brought up by people who cant compete with the big boys and need a crutch to compete.

Edited by SilentWolff, 14 June 2013 - 02:06 PM.

[Lostdragon]

PEEFsmash, on 14 June 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

It might not nerf PPCs much for bad players where people usually miss their PPC shots vs lights. However, in competitive play, it would be a strong nerf to PPCs because it would spread damage around the mech rather than all hiting one spot. People with good aim might not always hit CT of a light, but they will hit somewhere. As PPCs currently stand, if the entire shot hits 1 of ANYTHING on a light, you are either legged, dead, or neutered. Usually just dead. With this duration, it will probably spread between 2-3 components, and at least you won't die in one shot.

I am unable to participate in competitive team play but I find it hard to believe even in that environment people hit every time with PPC. I have a 69% accuracy rating with PPCs but a 98% accuracy with MLs because of the laser mechanic.

I think that changing direct fire weapons into DOT weapons is just a bandaid when we need a tourniquet.

[DocBach]

PEEFsmash, on 14 June 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

So he posted getting 10th on an old leaderboard challenge so...

Latest leaderboard challenge:



Also, I stream 100% of the matches I play at www.twitch.tv/peefsmash. You can see all of my past matches there. I hide nothing.

BTW, Ultra-AC20s should never be brought into this game.

oh I see... because I wasn't able to participate in a recent event and I don't have a stream my skill or experience is negated.

[PEEFsmash]

Lostdragon, on 14 June 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

I am unable to participate in competitive team play but I find it hard to believe even in that environment people hit every time with PPC. I have a 69% accuracy rating with PPCs but a 98% accuracy with MLs because of the laser mechanic.

I think that changing direct fire weapons into DOT weapons is just a bandaid when we need a tourniquet.

Medium laser accuracy is so high for everyone because SOME of almost every shot will hit, but usually it isn't much. That tiny tick still counts as a hit.

Do this for me: Take your total # of medium lasers shot, multiply that by 5. This is the total damage you could have done. Now divide your actual medium laser damage done/that number you just calculated. That is your "real" medium laser accuracy. I'd bet good money that if you've taken thousands of medium laser shots, your "real" accuracy ill be lower than your PPC accuracy.

DocBach, on 14 June 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

oh I see... because I wasn't able to participate in a recent event and I don't have a stream my skill or experience is negated.

I'm not negating anything of yours or trying to 1-up you. I was responding to someone else asking for leaderboard cred from me. But, while we are at it, the most recent couple leaderboard events (Spring Clean Up and Med vs World) were far more measures of skill and far less functions of grind time as the old ones. Your win ratio was only 1.12.

Edited by PEEFsmash, 14 June 2013 - 02:25 PM.

[DocBach]

The idea is at this stage of the game we are in a beta state in which 50% of the game is still not in, this part being the clans. If the clans are allowed customization like omnimechs allow the current alpha strike in a single location will allow them to one shot most of the mechs in the game. The idea is to figure out a way to remedy that with allowing less convergence based on the players actions , rather than letting this game become one where as soon as you are seen you are smoked in one shot by pinpoint clan weapons.