25 replies to this topic

[Baba Yogi]

High alpha builds are big problem in the game atm. It is not fun to turn a corner and be blown up to smithereens in one alpha just because you had the bad luck of walking into one of those builds. Especially after the last patch mech mobility has been nerfed severely therefore indirectly buffing these guys.

Here i suggest a weapon convergence for direct damage based weaponry(ac2/ac5/ac10/ac20/gauss/ppc/erppc) on alpha damage. I suggest it starts from 20(it is a good value, it would guarantee no mech would be cored/crippled with just one shot) with a counter reset at 0.5 seconds(for chain fire grouping), if your alpha is 20 or lower crosshair works as it does now however if you shoot 3 ppcs and a gauss at the same time for example, for each extra point of damage in that alpha cone gets bigger and every weapon fired in that turn is fired at a random location within that cone. This will prevent one shot kills unless they are made from very short range. I agree lasers and pulse lasers dont work this way as they spread out their damage(so does srms) so i'd say they do not necesserily require such implementation. How big that cone needs to be that depends on pgi if they ever implement this since it will dictate the balance as to how effective they want alpha's to be. If any of you are worried about canonical side of things think of it as a weapon kickback, it will be harder for a mech to be steady while firing multiple powerful weapons at the same time.

Now in TT there was always a minimum range penalty for effective long range weaponry in order to balance the weapon. We see some weapons are not implemented with this feature, as it was a buff to them.(mainly acs but gauss was such too). At the moment in current game's state, if we combine this convergence idea with minimum range for weapons like gauss (erppc has extra heat to justify removal of min range) and ac2/ac5, it will guarantee noone will get one shotted(even at short range where cone is less effective) while having a system which rewards good aiming(you just have to do it more often).

I added ac2/ac5 to minimum range list because when high alpha's are removed from the game, high dps weapons will be prime weapons and right now ac2 and ac5 has too much benefits such as constant screen shake and very high dps.(ac2 not so much though) This would be a real problem if alpha's are removed. But as of right now alpha>dps.

Edit: Had to edit top part, i think most people think i involve every weapon in convergence category. I only meant ones in the paranthesis.

Edited by Lordhammer, 07 July 2013 - 10:17 AM.

[Homeless Bill]

I vote no on linking any sort of accuracy penalty directly to damage, and here's why: it nerfs the very weapons you're trying to make viable. Whereas 20 damage from two large lasers usually means anywhere between 2 and 15 damage to the component you're shooting for, the AC/20 guarantees 20 damage to a single spot.

I think it's a mistake to link the high damage of potential of SRMs for being equal to the high, pinpoint damage potential of PPCs and ballistics. Any accuracy penalty needs to factor in all weapon characteristics - not just a single number.

That's why I argue that we need a new set of numbers that can be adjusted independently based on each weapon's characteristics.

[Baba Yogi]

If you noticed pgi are trying to protect the damage value of those direct damage weapons, they are the only ones that has not been changed which then i assume they are taking those values as a base and adjust other weapons. Btw i did put srms away from direct damage based weaponry. They act more like lasers since they do damage everywhere they are not the part of the problem.

You kinda have to take a damage value as a limit because whatever the game balance is, the armor values are constant. Alpha's are problem because how fast and hard they drop armor. I suggested 20 because no weapon single handedly does higher damage (atm hgr is long way down) and it wont make chain firing problem, noone compains about double ppcs but double gauss were a problem as i know everyone remembers first time k2 cats were around. Also another reason for such is that any system we implement must be simple enough for newbies to understand at first sight. There is already so many things they need to learn in order to even understand what is going on. Remember not everyone has a battletech background.

[MustrumRidcully]

Remove group fire for anything that deals more than 5 damage in a single projectile. (That means all lasers, MGs, AC/2, AC/5, Ultra AC/5, LBX-10, SRMs and LRMs don't need to worry, only PPCs, AC/10s, AC/20s and Gauss are limited). IF you fire one fo those weapons, all other weapons of that type should go on a 0.5 second, server enforced cooldown.

You can still boat. You still hit where you aim. But your can't alpha strike for 30+ damage to one spot anymore, if you want to deal 30 damage, you better learn how to aim multiple, separate shots in a row.

And then it's time for some "aggressive" weapon changes that ensure, aside from general balance, that:
- Weapons have standardized recycle times (0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0 as standard recycle times for example. Recycle Times includes cooldown + beam duration for lasers)
- Weapons have standardized projectile speeds
So that mixing weapons doesn't make your life unnecessarily difficult.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 07 July 2013 - 02:56 AM.

[Av4tar]

The real problem is the weapons, they should be removed from the game.
That will fix everything in the game. No more crying about poptarts, high alphas, lrm ppc boats.

[Otto Cannon]

This is the best solution I've seen.

http://mwomercs.com/...active-reticle/

[Hotthedd]

The biggest argument against a cone of fire is that people feel entitled that their shots must land directly on the crosshairs (as if that is how moving and firing works IRL). However, this is what people want, so we mustn't stray too far from that ideal.

The best way to ADD a layer of skill, and remove randomness from the equation, is to have player-set (in the mechlab) convergence. Each weapon can be set to hit the crosshair at a specific distance (or fire straight ahead, if you wish), making pinpoint alphas POSSIBLE, but requiring skill and patience to work. This is called "Harmonics"- -think WWII fighter planes.

You could further allow chain-fire to always hit the reticle (using the excuse that you are aiming a particular weapon). There could even be slight heat penalties for firing multiple weapons at once.

Heat penalties could (and should) affect the size of the reticle, but that is a different topic altogether.

Taken together, this would add skill and realism (immersion) into the dynamic, without taking away the ability to accurately alpha strike.

[Baba Yogi]

Otto Cannon, on 07 July 2013 - 08:10 AM, said:

This is the best solution I've seen.

http://mwomercs.com/...active-reticle/

This looks like it would make aiming unnecesserily hard(basically a crosshair for every body part?) and not to mention how are you going to keep convergence when you have to aim with lead on weapons and when you want to use your arm weapons and you aim further or behind of the target depending on which arm your weapon is mounted on. As i said before whatever new mechanic is introduced it should be simple and solve the problem. Making the game harder to play will only frustrate players further.

Btw to everyone, if you didnt like the solution i offered can you elaborate on which part you didnt like and why? Feedbacks are always useful when suggesting about change in game mechanic, it provides different points of view.

[Baba Yogi]

MustrumRidcully, on 07 July 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

Remove group fire for anything that deals more than 5 damage in a single projectile. (That means all lasers, MGs, AC/2, AC/5, Ultra AC/5, LBX-10, SRMs and LRMs don't need to worry, only PPCs, AC/10s, AC/20s and Gauss are limited). IF you fire one fo those weapons, all other weapons of that type should go on a 0.5 second, server enforced cooldown.

You can still boat. You still hit where you aim. But your can't alpha strike for 30+ damage to one spot anymore, if you want to deal 30 damage, you better learn how to aim multiple, separate shots in a row.

And then it's time for some "aggressive" weapon changes that ensure, aside from general balance, that:
- Weapons have standardized recycle times (0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0 as standard recycle times for example. Recycle Times includes cooldown + beam duration for lasers)
- Weapons have standardized projectile speeds
So that mixing weapons doesn't make your life unnecessarily difficult.

ac2s are not problem since you have to mount 10+ of them at once to enter cone of fire zone.And as far as i know, only one clan assault mech mounts such weaponry. ac5s however would be a problem in the future, you can technically pull of 6 of them in an IS assault chassis (8 for clan). there is no such mech at the moment but devs might decide to add later. At the moment you can put 4 ac5s in a chassis(i think i did see a 4xuac5 build in some matches). It deals very high dps, only saving grace is that it only deals 20 alpha at a time. Adding them to the list doesnt do anything negative to them. Only if they are boated in very large numbers(currently there is none) Or if they are mixed with other direct damage weaponry. What we want to prevent is having mechs losing a single armor section in hit or two, for example having red ct while everything else is untouched.

[MustrumRidcully]

Lordhammer, on 07 July 2013 - 10:02 AM, said:

ac2s are not problem since you have to mount 10+ of them at once to enter cone of fire zone.And as far as i know, only one clan assault mech mounts such weaponry. ac5s however would be a problem in the future, you can technically pull of 6 of them in an IS assault chassis (8 for clan). there is no such mech at the moment but devs might decide to add later. At the moment you can put 4 ac5s in a chassis(i think i did see a 4xuac5 build in some matches). It deals very high dps, only saving grace is that it only deals 20 alpha at a time. Adding them to the list doesnt do anything negative to them. Only if they are boated in very large numbers(currently there is none) Or if they are mixed with other direct damage weaponry. What we want to prevent is having mechs losing a single armor section in hit or two, for example having red ct while everything else is untouched.

I think the Sextuple AC/5 is not that likely to happen, and it would "only" be a 30 damage alpha for 48 tons. Currently, you can get 30 damage alphas for 30 tons, and 60 damage alphas for 42 tons. But should it happen, we can expand the list of weapons with a Global Cooldown.

[Hotthedd]

MustrumRidcully, on 07 July 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

Remove group fire for anything that deals more than 5 damage in a single projectile. (That means all lasers, MGs, AC/2, AC/5, Ultra AC/5, LBX-10, SRMs and LRMs don't need to worry, only PPCs, AC/10s, AC/20s and Gauss are limited). IF you fire one fo those weapons, all other weapons of that type should go on a 0.5 second, server enforced cooldown.

You can still boat. You still hit where you aim. But your can't alpha strike for 30+ damage to one spot anymore, if you want to deal 30 damage, you better learn how to aim multiple, separate shots in a row.

And then it's time for some "aggressive" weapon changes that ensure, aside from general balance, that:
- Weapons have standardized recycle times (0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0 as standard recycle times for example. Recycle Times includes cooldown + beam duration for lasers)
- Weapons have standardized projectile speeds
So that mixing weapons doesn't make your life unnecessarily difficult.

This would make the Jenner-F imbalanced, IMO.

[Otto Cannon]

Lordhammer, on 07 July 2013 - 09:43 AM, said:

This looks like it would make aiming unnecesserily hard(basically a crosshair for every body part?)

No, you didn't read it properly. One crosshair that shows how wide the spread of groupfired weapons would be. You can see exactly where your shots would land when leading a target, and use single fire instead if the grouped shot would be too spread for you.

[Livewyr]

Voted no, for two reasons.

1: If you want to fix Alpha strikes and Boating- fix the weapons. (Give the weapons weaknesses. I.E.Make the PPC have its high heat again so it can't shoot as often, and give Gauss a CD of 5 or 6 to offset being wonderful in most other categories. Weapons that can both snipe and brawl without much drawback are going to be boated.

2: PGI doesn't exactly have a huge history of entirely reworking their core systems- and if there is a viable solution without doing so, I'm ok with that. (I mean c'mon.. anyone still here remember collisions before they were removed to be reworked? I'm starting to think PGI is just going to leave them out permanently)

Easily done solutions:
Adding penalties to the current heat system at different heat %'s (They already have you cooking CT slowly at 120%- they can add other things at lower percentages to gradually punish higher and higher heat.)

Working heavily with (non-canon) Weapon attributes.
Projectile Speed
Cooldown
And then working gently with Canon attributes
Heat
Ammo Per Ton
Damage (LLasers/LRMS/SRMS)
Range (bring Ballistic overrange down to 2x)


If they can balance the weapons.. they'll be fine.
Balancing includes partitioning the weapon. If it is long range, don't make it exceptional for brawling, and vice-versa.
---------------------

These are all things they can do within the current system, easily compared to the complicated ideas people are throwing out there.

[Baba Yogi]

MustrumRidcully, on 07 July 2013 - 10:36 AM, said:

I think the Sextuple AC/5 is not that likely to happen, and it would "only" be a 30 damage alpha for 48 tons. Currently, you can get 30 damage alphas for 30 tons, and 60 damage alphas for 42 tons. But should it happen, we can expand the list of weapons with a Global Cooldown.

Problem is you deal that alpha every 1.5(1.1 if uac) secs both high alpha and high dps. I dont think that build is too far, i am expecting mauler(alot of ppl wait for a ballistic assault chassis) to be announced one day. You can bet then ppl will be mounting 6xac5. The thing is you cannot repeat those 40+ ppc alphas without oveheating unlike ac5s which has 5 dph ratio. Also ppc boats have a very long cooldown period afaik.

[Baba Yogi]

Otto Cannon, on 07 July 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

No, you didn't read it properly. One crosshair that shows how wide the spread of groupfired weapons would be. You can see exactly where your shots would land when leading a target, and use single fire instead if the grouped shot would be too spread for you.

I think i got it. Basically bad shots has to fire one by one but if you want to fire more than one weapon you have to lead one more time for an expanding/contracting reticle(constantly changing crosshair). Problem is faster the mech goes harder it would be for them to use group fires.(lights are especially nerfed that way). Nonetheless his suggestion adds bunch of new rules while making shooter part of the game imo, rather bad. As i said unnecesserily complex.

Can you explain what part of my suggestion do you find lacking or disaggree? DocBach's suggestion has its own tread, i'd rather discuss positives and negatives of the topic's.

Edited by Lordhammer, 07 July 2013 - 12:35 PM.

[Baba Yogi]

Livewyr, on 07 July 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

1: If you want to fix Alpha strikes and Boating- fix the weapons. (Give the weapons weaknesses. I.E.Make the PPC have its high heat again so it can't shoot as often, and give Gauss a CD of 5 or 6 to offset being wonderful in most other categories. Weapons that can both snipe and brawl without much drawback are going to be boated.

Weapons are rather balanced, ppc is just fine by itself and erppc has %40 more heat to justify removal of min range and extra range. Long range ballistics has minimum range normally in TT and i did suggest implementing them to the game in op. Naturally though, weapons spreading damage by its delivery system(dot or srms) should have higher dps in regards to tonnage/heat. Even if we fix that though a weapon that can reliably deal damage to one body part will always have higher value if alpha mechanics stay as they are.

[WildeKarde]

Simple solution is: Cooldown = number of weapons fired x cooldown on a single weapon.

If you fire differing weapons they will cooldown at differing times.

[Lightfoot]

I use an Alpha-Strike as a tool of last resort really. Firing 3xPPCs is not an Alpha-Strike, that is called Group-Fire and is a fairly standard MechWarrior attack in spite of MWO.

An Alpha-Strike is where you fire all your weapons regardless of type, range, projectile speeds. It even has a dedicated command, ( \ ). Usually it is used at close range against a superior mech, but may also be used on mechs that have overheated and shutdown.

As a tool of last resort it should be accurate as a mixed bunch of different weapons can be. However, to ensure that the Alpha-Strike is being used as a last resort attack, it can have other serious drawbacks, such as.

1. Your Mech overheats badly, maybe shutsdown.
2. Your mech comes to a stop and can't move for a few seconds.
3. You lose your HUD for 4 seconds and it takes 8 seconds to restore full functions. (best one probably)

These things create an interrupt that is best to avoid, but does not remove the reason you hit Alpha-Strike in the first place which is to fire all weapons into an oncoming mech. Probably a very dangerous one.

[Hotthedd]

Lightfoot, on 07 July 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

I use an Alpha-Strike as a tool of last resort really. Firing 3xPPCs is not an Alpha-Strike, that is called Group-Fire and is a fairly standard MechWarrior attack in spite of MWO.

An Alpha-Strike is where you fire all your weapons regardless of type, range, projectile speeds. It even has a dedicated command, ( \ ). Usually it is used at close range against a superior mech, but may also be used on mechs that have overheated and shutdown.

As a tool of last resort it should be accurate as a mixed bunch of different weapons can be. However, to ensure that the Alpha-Strike is being used as a last resort attack, it can have other serious drawbacks, such as.

1. Your Mech overheats badly, maybe shutsdown.
2. Your mech comes to a stop and can't move for a few seconds.
3. You lose your HUD for 4 seconds and it takes 8 seconds to restore full functions. (best one probably)

These things create an interrupt that is best to avoid, but does not remove the reason you hit Alpha-Strike in the first place which is to fire all weapons into an oncoming mech. Probably a very dangerous one.

While you are technically correct, on these forums group fire and alpha strike are pretty much the same thing.

The problem of pinpointing multiple weapons with one click is the same whether it is 3 PPCs or whatever number of other weapons. At least mixed weapons WILL hit multiple locations, or hit-scan over multiple locations.

[Livewyr]

Lordhammer, on 07 July 2013 - 12:19 PM, said:

Weapons are rather balanced, ppc is just fine by itself and erppc has %40 more heat to justify removal of min range and extra range. Long range ballistics has minimum range normally in TT and i did suggest implementing them to the game in op. Naturally though, weapons spreading damage by its delivery system(dot or srms) should have higher dps in regards to tonnage/heat. Even if we fix that though a weapon that can reliably deal damage to one body part will always have higher value if alpha mechanics stay as they are.

If a weapon is fine by itself, but overpowered en masse, then that is a problem.

Different aspects people don't often consider about weapon- what disadvantages does it have in mounting in the first place?

AC10, Weight, Size, Ammo. Can't boat because it's too large and heavy.
Gauss, Weight, Size, Ammo Can't boat because it's too large and far too heavy
AC20, Weight, SIZE, Ammo Can't boat because it's way too large and far too heavy.
PPC, Heat. (Well, at least it should be) Shouldn't be able to boat because it's too hot to use when boated. Right now, that is not the case, and therefore the PPC is NOT balanced...not even balanced before it leaves the Mechlab