64 replies to this topic

[Otto Cannon]

Grondoval, on 01 July 2013 - 05:47 AM, said:

Because you get several disadvantages with the choice of piloting a 100 ton slow lumbering king crab. Imagine the King Crab would be the only mech to mount AC40. Because its a 100 ton mech its slow and its mobility is gimped (with the upcoming new mech movement restrictions in mind), poeple would actually consider its disadvantages in design before using it.

Look at the Jägermech now. Its even considered a medium in regards of traversing terrain...

*Facepalm*

[Grondoval]

Otto Cannon, on 01 July 2013 - 05:53 AM, said:

*Facepalm*

Would you actually mind to argue?

Its funny you could only come up with an answer like that...

Edited by Grondoval, 01 July 2013 - 06:00 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Grondoval, on 01 July 2013 - 05:11 AM, said:

Give me some reasons please.

Less mechs which could mount multiple ppcs, less mechs which could mount multiple high damage ballistics means less alpha damage overall.

Look at the Battlemaster with its Ballistic-Arm and multiple torso Energy-Slots. Poeple WILL "abuse" this chassis to feed their cheese-needs and mount Gauss + multiple PPCs, i guarantee you that.

In "Ask the Devs 41" PGI said Hardpoint Limitations are under review

How many mechs in PPC can boat 6 PPCs and get away with it.
It's 1 mech. There are several variants of it, of course, but realistically, why use anything else but the 3F?
1 is all you need to get a problem. "Less" is not 0. Do you really believe a min/maxer will say: "Oh, no. I can't use this mechs to boat my weapons ,everyone would do that". He will say "Oh, this mech is good for boating, I should use it and ditch whatever crap I have right now."

Do you remember how many people wrote posts about the Jagermech "Hey, I have a build idea, let's give it 2 AC/20s. It's the only mech that can do it and run an XL engine!"

One mech is all you need. We are not married to the mechs we are currently using. We can switch. PGI wants us to switch, because wanting more mechs is a reason to buy MC. Give the players 200 mechs to play with and only 2 that can be competitive, these 2 will be the most common sight on the battlefield, and only noobs and people that don't care whether they win or lose will use the other 198 mechs.

You need a realistic take on the mind of a min/maxer or competitive gamer. No wishful thinking about what you'd like people to do.

[MustrumRidcully]

Grondoval, on 01 July 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Would you actually mind to argue?

Its funny you could only come up with an answer like that...

The King Crab is as slow as any Assault Mechs. I've seen plenty of short range Atlas build back in the good old days when SRMs were useful and boating PPCs was not common.
If that mech worked, so will the King Crab.

Especially if you consider that the King Crab has 2 unnecessary weapons - a Large Laser and an LRM launcher. You don't need them, replace them with MLs and maybe Streaks or an SRM, and upgrade the engine.

The Jagermech is not that much faster, and it has a lot less armor. And an XL Engine usually, which makes it soft.

For a non-PPC boat, I disagree with 3rdWorld and think it's pretty good (but seriously, not a good idea if you run competitive matches where PPC boats are common), but in the end it's still just a 65 ton Heavy.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 01 July 2013 - 06:07 AM.

[Zyllos]

I had to vote abstain as I think the root of the problem is a combination of problems.

More restrictive hardpoints, changes to convergence, and fixing/balancing the heat is the way forward.

There is a two fold reason for this:

• Downtime between shots to torso twist away
  
• Ability to apply damage to a single hit location

These two criteria are what makes a good mech competative. Heat is there mainly balance non-ammo weaponry with ammo weaponry and to a lesser extent, the short term DPS of a build. Convergence makes weapons tied to a specific crosshair lump into one big weapon. Hardpoints basically defines what a mech is capable of and to a lesser extent, limits the extremes.

Once all three are fixed, the two above criteria will no longer an advantage based on mech loadout.

[Syllogy]

As Mustrum pointed out earlier, there are mechs that naturally boat some of these weapons for high-damage alphas. All of them are notoriously hot and/or have very limited protection and ammunition.

The Warhawk, for example, runs 4 Clan ERPPCs. That's a 60pt Alpha, that's also 60pts of Heat Generation on a mech that cannot cool itself sufficiently.

The Thunder Hawk has an XL Engine, must carry at least one Gauss Rifle in the Torso, and can only carry 6 tons of ammo.

The Awesome (a mech we have now) has room for up to 3 PPCs, but has torsos as big as a house.

Should convergence be looked at? Sure, but I still feel that the root of the problem is the High Damage alpha strikes coming from mechs that were never designed with that kind of gameplay in mind.

[Acid Phase]

Syllogy, on 01 July 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Should convergence be looked at? Sure, but I still feel that the root of the problem is the High Damage alpha strikes coming from mechs that were never designed with that kind of gameplay in mind.

Let's hope non HPR supporters see this one clearly, because they seem to over look that detail a lot.

[3rdworld]

Acid Phase, on 01 July 2013 - 06:56 AM, said:

Let's hope non HPR supporters see this one clearly, because they seem to over look that detail a lot.

Don't overlook it, don't find it relevant.

Not playing stock mechs online. Playing mechwarrior.

I couldn't care less what a stock mech's loadout is.

[Acid Phase]

3rdworld, on 01 July 2013 - 06:59 AM, said:

Don't overlook it, don't find it relevant.

Not playing stock mechs online. Playing mechboatwarrior.

I couldn't care less what a stock mech's loadout is.

Fixed that for you.

[Syllogy]

3rdworld, on 01 July 2013 - 06:59 AM, said:

Don't overlook it, don't find it relevant.

Not playing stock mechs online. Playing mechwarrior.

I couldn't care less what a stock mech's loadout is.

The point isn't about a mech's stock loadout. The point is to create an incentive for people to play mechs that are being thrown to the wayside because of their design limitations (Awesomes), as opposed to enabling mechs that were not meant to fill those roles (like Highlanders) and therefor cause balance problems.

[3rdworld]

Syllogy, on 01 July 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:

incentive

That word doesn't mean what you think it does.

An incentive, isn't make it the only option.

An incentive to use an AWS as a PPC boat would be something like. "PPCs do 10% more damage on the AWS-8Q". Not "The only mech that can use 3 ppcs is the AWS-8Q".

perhaps you miss-typed?

[Trauglodyte]

3rdworld, on 01 July 2013 - 07:05 AM, said:

That word doesn't mean what you think it does.

An incentive, isn't make it the only option.

An incentive to use an AWS as a PPC boat would be something like. "PPCs do 10% more damage on the AWS-8Q". Not "The only mech that can use 3 ppcs is the AWS-8Q".

perhaps you miss-typed?

Your level of bias is astounding.

[Butane9000]

This is my take on it (mind you it's a really crude mock up using paint and a image from Smurfy's mechlab)



So you've got a total of 4 Missile (2 in each arm), 2 ballistic (1 in each arm) and 2 Energy (1 in each side torso).

My favored idea would be this kind of restriction.

Simply put:

The ballistics could only support up to a Ultra Auto-cannon 5.

The Missile hard points could be worked to support a variety of options. Either 1 LRM20 in each arm, an LRM15 and LRM10 in each arm, A LRM5 and LRM10 with artemis in each arm, a single LRM15 with artemis in each arm or 2 LRM5's with artemis.

The energy hard points could support up to the Large/ER large/Large Pulse lasers but not PPCs.

also these same critical slot limits could be filled by upgrades such as Endo Steel and Ferro Fibrous.

That would be for me an idea solution. And it'd be different from mech to mech.

[Marj]

Use variant quirks to deal with canon boats. Lower speed, lower twist rate etc. Increasing convergence will fundamentally change how the game is played. Worse convergence = more spread damage...which is wasted damage...which means tonnage spent on many weapons is a waste of time. Do you really want everyone running around with 1 or 2 guns and max armour/engine?

BUT CHAINFIRE!

Chainfire requires you to face your opponent for an extended time to fire all your weapons. If you take 4 PPC's with an 0.25 recycle time that means your spending a MINIMUM extra 0.75 seconds facing your target to unload. More if you adjust your aim between shots. How much time will be left for defensive piloting? Will it be worth popping out of cover to snipe if you're exposed for so long? And that's with 4 guns...mounting 9 guns would force you to constantly face your target to fire them all accurately. Do we really want to force every fight into a circle of death? Do we want to eliminate piloting as a skill? Or should people just not use half their guns? There's no reason to fire an alpha strike if you KNOW half those guns are going to hit the fully armoured side torso when all you want to do is core the CT. In fact, there's no reason to take that many guns at all. Maybe we should just turn this into COD and give every gun a cone of fire whether it's a 6 PPC alpha strike or a single medium laser.

And think about it from the opposing side. If a sniper with four PPC's steps out of cover and has to spend an extra second aiming + firing how much return fire will it be exposed to? Will mechs really last longer? How long does it take you to draw a bead on a sniper now? How much easier will it be when they stand out of cover for an extra second, especially when that target has to keep facing you to fire and you've got multiple shots to follow to a source? How many more mechs will be able to shoot at the exposed target? Would the average pug be willing to break cover in this scenario? It could easily degenerate into whoever sets up a defensive firing line and waits wins.

So sniping will be nerfed...what will that result in? Remember when PPC's missed due to lag and SRM's were all the rage? Are you going to stop a lance of dedicated brawler assaults or heavies with chained PPC fire? How will a mixed loadout do against that? Most of the maps we have already have too much cover...and SRM's will get buffed eventually.

I see nerfing convergence as trading alpha boats for circles of death. Trading builds with lots of weapons for those with few weapons. It's not more balanced, it's a different kind of broken. It'd be great if someone could explain how you can reduce convergence enough to stop alpha strikes or rapid chain firing without drastically reducing the opportunity to manoeuvre or nerfing sniping to the odd mech hiding behind a team of brawlers.

There's no point in having variety for variety's sake. If you make 4 PPC/9 medlas loadouts objectively worse than a loadout with less guns...people will just take mechs with less guns. You might as well just bring in hardpoint limits and remove those variants from the game or give them variant restrictions....big CT's, low torso twist limits etc. Then at least there's be a point to taking a mix of many large and small weapons.

[tenderloving]

CutterWolf: Will the Dev team consiter using "Weapon Slot Limitations" as a game balancing tool?
A:
It’s under review.

From Ask the Devs 41. This question pops up about every other time they run Ask the Devs.

This is the best answer yet. Usually they say something like "We haven't ruled it out." But don't really mention that they are actively looking at it. I think they are starting to realize they are going to have to do something because eventually there will be a ton of redundant mechs and no reason to buy different chassis.


And if you are against restrictions: What build are you afraid of losing exactly? As long as your build is reasonable and non-exploitative there will be a mech that can run it.

Edited by tenderloving, 01 July 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[DeadlyNerd]

I'd call Syllogy a hypocritical a$$, but he finally learned the ways of hard point restrictions people have been suggesting for over 2 months(3?).

As one of those who advocated these changes from the start I'll just leave this here : "Told you so."

[tenderloving]

DeadlyNerd, on 01 July 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

I'd call Syllogy a hypocritical a$$, but he finally learned the ways of hard point restrictions people have been suggesting for over 2 months(3?).

As one of those who advocated these changes from the start I'll just leave this here : "Told you so."

It's been longer than 2 or 3 months. People were warning PGI about this in Closed Beta. The Guassapult really got a discussion going.

It's the same reason we don't have a good drop weight balance. PGI has a weird view of players being free to do whatever they want and an engaging colorful game will just magically emerge. It's like they don't understand that people will do whatever it takes to win even if it creates boring and repetitive gameplay.

[Acid Phase]

DeadlyNerd, on 01 July 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

I'd call Syllogy a hypocritical a$$, but he finally learned the ways of hard point restrictions people have been suggesting for over 2 months(3?).

As one of those who advocated these changes from the start I'll just leave this here : "Told you so."

It was a shock to me too, however, I'm sure he as many others will admit that weapon tweaking hasn't been the answer PGI believed it would have been to balance weapons. Since closed beta they have worked on just about all weapons (buffing/nerfing). It get's them nowhere. Let's also admit that we have to try this alternative and test it along with strict heat penalties (Damage incurred from 110%) and pinpoint convergence removed.

And another would be eliminating the DHS from becoming heat thresholds and making them heat dissipation.

Edited by Acid Phase, 01 July 2013 - 09:59 AM.

[Sybreed]

tenderloving, on 01 July 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

It's been longer than 2 or 3 months. People were warning PGI about this in Closed Beta. The Guassapult really got a discussion going.

It's the same reason we don't have a good drop weight balance. PGI has a weird view of players being free to do whatever they want and an engaging colorful game will just magically emerge. It's like they don't understand that people will do whatever it takes to win even if it creates boring and repetitive gameplay.

I'll take credit to be one of the first to make a thread about hardpoint sizes and the Gaussapult pretty much a year ago

Glad to see a poster like Syllogy aboard the hardpoint size crew, it's really the best way to fix a lot of balancing issues (LRMs being a prime example of a weapon system that can't be balanced without hardpoint sizes) and I've used the Awesome example a million times to explain the other good side of hardpoint sizes, which is mech variety on the battlefield.

[MustrumRidcully]

Acid Phase, on 01 July 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

It was a shock to me too, however, I'm sure he as many others will admit that weapon tweaking hasn't been the answer PGI believed it would have been to balance weapons. Since closed beta they have worked on just about all weapons (buffing/nerfing). It get's them nowhere. Let's also admit that we have to try this alternative and test it along with strict heat penalties (Damage incurred from 110%) and pinpoint convergence removed.

And another would be eliminating the DHS from becoming heat thresholds and making them heat dissipation.

You're confusing PGI being bad at weapon balancing with "weapon balancing is impossible". It's not.

I also still haven't seen anyone but me offer a future proof hard point system,and my system doesn't even require hard points. If I am the only one that bothers to come up wiith a hard point system that could deal with Thunder Hawks and Warhawks and Annihilators and what-not, I have no reason to believe PGI will come up with something similar.

It seems, only when you people realize that you cut a lot of the fun of mech customization to fail to fix the problem you limited customization will you realize the error.

I don't want the Mechwarrior 3 Gunbags back, but I see no real problem with a mech like the Stalker holding 4 PPCs in its arms, or a mech like the Catapult using 2 Gauss Rifles. But in the latter case, I think the Gauss Rifles belong into the arms, because that's where Catapults carry their main weapons. I see a problem with such loadouts being superior in any way to non-boats or stock Level 2 Tech versions of these mechs.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 01 July 2013 - 10:14 AM.