124 replies to this topic

[Troutmonkey]

http://mwomercs.com/...age__p__2439093 /thread

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

You can fool the automated system by not running in straight lines - which you can of course do to a human as well, but a human won't miss systematically like a computer in such situations. Also, lasers would be pretty pinpoint accurate all the time.

Yes, the "systematically wrong" issue could be problematic. Lasers wouldn't be anymore pinpoint accurate, though, then they are now - the system only calculates lead, and lasers always need a lead of 0, just as now. A Laser will still only remain as accurate as you can hold the crosshair on the target over its duration. That means fundamentally that lasers will need to be treated as potentially less accurate as projectile weapons, and be balanced accordingly (just like the LBX or SRMs need to be treated this way) The uncontrolled synergy from boating would be gone, however.

[MustrumRidcully]

Troutmonkey, on 06 August 2013 - 05:10 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...age__p__2439093 /thread

The developers have already stated that changing convergence could become problematic, as HSR would also need to be applied for convergence calculations, which could make the whole system unfeasible or at least very suspectible to network latency changes. Maybe they can do it, but maybe they can't do it. So while I think the idea has some merits, it might fail due to technical limitations.

We know that cooldowns and similar delays work in MW:O. Removing or limiting group-fire requires only dealing with more or less known technical components, and also known GUI elements.

[Blackadder]

Removing group fire just leads to players mounting the biggest weapons they can fit in a mech. so instead of putting ML's on , a player will strip the mech down to mount PPC and AC20. or whatever large scale weapon they can fit, other then the lights.

you would be better off to limit group fire to specific areas of a mech,, basically you can group fire arms together, RT & CT , LT & CT , CT & Head. That would reduce some of the issues, but frankly its a complex solution that still will not solve much, because players will just revert to mechs that have ideal hardpoint layouts under the new rules, and new players will just become more frustrated.

I would still prefer to have group fire have a direct impact on reload/recharge rates on weapons, as thats the best soultion. People who group fire incur a penalty for it, and allow others to exploit that penalty if they are smart. Again, another complex solution that would require specific balancing in regards to high damage pinpoint weapons.

[Hotthedd]

Blackadder, on 06 August 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

Removing group fire just leads to players mounting the biggest weapons they can fit in a mech. so instead of putting ML's on , a player will strip the mech down to mount PPC and AC20. or whatever large scale weapon they can fit, other then the lights.

Not necessarily. I believe there would be many builds that would take advantage of faster weapons as well for sustained DPS.

[MustrumRidcully]

Blackadder, on 06 August 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

Removing group fire just leads to players mounting the biggest weapons they can fit in a mech. so instead of putting ML's on , a player will strip the mech down to mount PPC and AC20. or whatever large scale weapon they can fit, other then the lights.

Just one quick math examples for you:

2 Medium Lasers: 10 damage, 8 heat, 270m range, cycles every 4 seconds, 2 tons.
1 PPC: 10 damage, 8 heat, 540m range, cycles every 4 seconds ,7 tons.
How is the 5 ton difference justified in MW:O? Is twice the range worth 3.5 times the weight?
I think the single shot advantage of these weapons is already build into their stats, for the most part.

There are areas where it breaks down due to the translation steps taken between M:WO and TT ,but generally, high damage weapons are a lot heavier than a similar total damage package of ligher weapons. (The cost of heat is easier to quantify in the table top game - where the stats were derived from. You suffer heat penalties even with only a small level of difference between heat generation and heat dissipation, so the cost of heat is basically 1 ton per point of heat, or 1 ton per 2 points of heat with Double Heat Sinks. Also, of course weapons flight characteristics . e.g beam vs projectile vs missile swarm vs shotgun blast - affect balance considerations)

Knowing about all these elements that went into balance considerations for weapon statistics is the first step. Afterwards, you need to see how your game diverges from assumptions (and also where the original stats broke down and are inconsistent with expectations) to figure out better values. You also have to consider if some of the divergences you make are not easy to compensate, and if you should change these divergences. I think the heat system is a prime candidate for this - not being able to guesstimate* how much tonnage heat is worth due to a giant heat cap is very, very problematic.

*) Well, actually you can, but not on a weapon by weapon level, only by a mech build level. But that means you could only balance mech builds, not mech weapons. That's terrible for a system with customziation!

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 06 August 2013 - 05:48 AM.

[Nebelfeuer]

Think the OP would solve a lot of issues and most weaponstats and probably even armor could return to TT level and it´s tested balance. Multiple shot autocannons would also help and be more fun then the current one

Edited by Nebelfeuer, 06 August 2013 - 06:30 AM.

[AndyHill]

Troutmonkey, on 06 August 2013 - 05:10 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...age__p__2439093 /thread

In short; I don't believe either convergence or cone of fire will be a sufficient solution to MWO gameplay issues. There's an explanation in the OP, but if you're interested in the discussion, let me know and I can try to explain myself a bit more.

Blackadder, on 06 August 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

Removing group fire just leads to players mounting the biggest weapons they can fit in a mech. so instead of putting ML's on , a player will strip the mech down to mount PPC and AC20. or whatever large scale weapon they can fit, other then the lights.

Mustrum already gave a pretty good answer, but... Why would the above be a bad thing? High alpha weapons are very powerful in BTech and their alpha capability has been factored into their weight, ammo, range and heat. Also if single weapons were too strong they could be adjusted with group fire gone. Things like burst length, flight time and maybe even outright damage could be adjusted - unlike in the current group fire ecosystem where I believe it's actually impossible to make a weapon useful by itself while still not being op when fired in a group.

Also things such as hardpoint size limitations might help a bit, but when designing weapons balance we can't assume their existence, since boats exist and the balance must work in every case.

Quote

you would be better off to limit group fire to specific areas of a mech,, basically you can group fire arms together, RT & CT , LT & CT , CT & Head. That would reduce some of the issues, but frankly its a complex solution that still will not solve much, because players will just revert to mechs that have ideal hardpoint layouts under the new rules, and new players will just become more frustrated.

I would still prefer to have group fire have a direct impact on reload/recharge rates on weapons, as thats the best soultion. People who group fire incur a penalty for it, and allow others to exploit that penalty if they are smart. Again, another complex solution that would require specific balancing in regards to high damage pinpoint weapons.

I'm afraid this could lead to even more campy-snipy gameplay. As long as group fire is possible, both snipers and brawlers benefit from it, but snipers are less affected by heat or cooldown penalties.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think group fire is needed in the first place? I kind of thought of it as given in MW games earlier, but since I've come to believe it actually obliterates the BTech-based damage and weapons system and really hurts the gameplay. Removal is still a pretty drastic measure, so I'd like to hear the reasons in favor of keeping group fire, after all I might have missed something important earlier.

[Volomon]

You it's been a long time since I've seen the concept, but it looks like pin point alphas could be fixed just by adding in a stagger effect.

When a mech which has mostly long range / sniper weapons engages a mech designed for closer range combat the staggering effect would make a lot of people miss period. Right now I can take very shot the enemy has and still not miss. Definitely the targeting system needs to be redone. The whole C3 thing should be implemented. If we all weren't auto locking all day long there would be so many more tactics in play.

[Shae Starfyre]

I would have loved it if they made weapon links a piece of equipment, and you had to decide how to link your weapons which dynamically created the group for it.

If the piece of equipment gets destroyed (crit shot or what have you) then you default back to one weapon firing per single click of your left mouse button.

This would allow for the current meta, but put a deterrent in place that assumes risk of use.

Also, the placement of the link needs to coincide with where the weapons are located to make it even more risky (linking two arm weapons might mean you need a link in the CT, and two Links, one in each torso, to link the links together - this could be 1.5 tons of weapon links and 3 different places to knock it out of commission).

Aside from convergence, which should still be something done, this would also be a nice addition to the complexity of Mech design, and not allows focusing on the CT, and the convergence fix (if they ever do) would add more to the game as I see it.

Edited by Aphoticus, 06 August 2013 - 07:11 AM.

[AndyHill]

I guess it's reasonable to post in this thread about the recent Ask the Devs replies (http://mwomercs.com/...vs-45-answered/). Here are some direct quotes (Paul Inouye, I think):

"Previous versions of MechWarrior suffered from the arms race or high alpha usage. Alpha strikes were a RARE occurrence in BattleTech. They were last ditch efforts against enemies. All previous MW games allowed this mechanic to become almost the norm of gameplay."

"The way we picture combat in MechWarrior Online is to bring back that aspect of first stripping armor, then going for internals/crits and then finally going for the kill. The problem with high damage alphas was that people tend to try to build Mechs that punch holes through other Mechs instead of the aforementioned layered combat. Our intention is to increase the time to kill, not reduce it."

"There was a critical flaw in the BattleTech translation to real time gaming and it was starting to rear its ugliness with the impending Clan technologies."

I have an opinion on what that critical flaw was. Yours might be different, but I'm willing to debate the issue.

Of course we now know that the solution was the bad ghost heat mechanism. It's excruciating to see them get so close to the problem but come up with insanely daft "solutions". In the direct quote it says that alpha strikes are supposed to be RARE in BattleTech, but can Paul or anyone else for that matter please explain me why they should be rare and in which situations they should be used? The cold truth is that alpha strikes are a universally superior tactic in every situation if it's allowed. But what is the magical alpha moment so crucial for BattleTech/MechWarrior that PGI choose to murder weapon balancing and learning curve so that the theoretical possibility for the rare event can exist?

Personally I'm starting to feel that it's time to give up on this game. If that happens it'll be a sad goodbye, since I had such high hopes for this one and I still think there was immense potential in it.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

Personally I'm starting to feel that it's time to give up on this game. If that happens it'll be a sad goodbye, since I had such high hopes for this one and I still think there was immense potential in it.

I know the feeling. But it will take time to leave it behind.
I still occasionally check into Startrek Online...

[JingleHell]

If group fire were removed, it would nerf weapons that can't efficiently be chainfired, namely, small weapons. Net result, buff to high pinpoint alpha weapons.

By current standards of development, I expect to see this implemented within 2 months, as an attempt to stop high pinpoint alphas. Since it wouldn't work.

[AndyHill]

Alphas would be removed quite effectively if they were simply removed, so it would probably work in that respect. As for nerfing smaller weapons, yeah, it probably would. Luckily, the ability to do a lot of damage has been included in the weight, heat and space requirements for the weapons (which are very small for small weapons), so they would be balanced. If the high pinpoint hitters would be still too strong after that - as they probably would - there would be measures such as burst length and time on target requirement for all weapons that could be used to further reduce pinpoint ability. After that there are still a number of measures suggested on the forums, but I would only test things such as cone of fire after other options have been exhausted.

[Pac Man]

What about limiting the grouping of weapons to a single portion of the mech at a time? You can't fire both your arms at the same time, but you can fire one arm, then a torso, then a different arm, then the other torso, then your center torso, all with the OP's suggested timing. That basically slows things down, I don't think there are any mechs that fit 3 ppcs in one arm, or one torso. (Maybe Battlemaster can in side torsos? But firing all three would cause heat issues with heat scale.)

Anyway, the fluff behind this could simply be that the targeting systems on a mech can only account for one part of the mech at a time. Then those with SRMs all banked up in a few places can fire those all at once, but obviously can't stack them with ppcs and gauss.

[JingleHell]

Pac Man, on 27 August 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

What about limiting the grouping of weapons to a single portion of the mech at a time? You can't fire both your arms at the same time, but you can fire one arm, then a torso, then a different arm, then the other torso, then your center torso, all with the OP's suggested timing. That basically slows things down, I don't think there are any mechs that fit 3 ppcs in one arm, or one torso. (Maybe Battlemaster can in side torsos? But firing all three would cause heat issues with heat scale.)

Anyway, the fluff behind this could simply be that the targeting systems on a mech can only account for one part of the mech at a time. Then those with SRMs all banked up in a few places can fire those all at once, but obviously can't stack them with ppcs and gauss.

Hurts LRMs significantly, you NEED big volleys to punch through AMS. Hurts smaller weapon systems, as when you're using them they tend to be crammed all over your mech in a half dozen hardpoints, and fired quickly in a group before twisting your CT away from your target.

Big weapons get the least nerf, because you have the fewest of them to rotate through before you can torso twist away. That's the problem with ANY blanket nerf. If you nerf everything, it doesn't change the hierarchy itself.

[AndyHill]

Allowing for group fire from one section at a time would still allow for some pretty significant pinpoint alphas and mess with the weapon balance, it would also make for some interesting 'mech balancing (I can't say immediately if it would be bad or good). Also note that ghost heat would be completely unnecessary if there was no group fire in the first place. What would you consider the main benefit of having the ability to group fire from 'mech sections?

Big weapons would definitely get a natural boost due to their ability to deliver a lot of damage quickly into a single location, that is true and the ability to torso twist would be a very useful bonus. The thing is, big weapons are supposed to be powerful. 4 MLAS at 4 slots, 4 tons, 12 heat without ammo requirements isn't supposed to rival AC/20 with 10 slots, 14 tons and 7 heat plus ammo for instant damage potential - like they do in MWO.

However, far more importantly: if you are only allowed to fire one weapon at a time you are balancing single weapons against single weapons. Unlike balancing virtually infinite numbers of weapon group against each other, that is actually possible, in fact quite trivial. If AC/20 is too powerful, it can be nerfed with number of different variables so that it's in line with the rest of the weapons.

[FupDup]

AndyHill, on 27 August 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

...
Big weapons would definitely get a natural boost due to their ability to deliver a lot of damage quickly into a single location, that is true and the ability to torso twist would be a very useful bonus. The thing is, big weapons are supposed to be powerful. 4 MLAS at 4 slots, 4 tons, 12 heat without ammo requirements isn't supposed to rival AC/20 with 10 slots, 14 tons and 7 heat plus ammo for instant damage potential - like they do in MWO.
...

You made a number of errors in your comparison:

1. Each ML in MWO generates 4 heat, meaning that 4 of them together generate 16 heat.

2. MWO's AC/20 had its heat lowered to 6.

3. ML have a nifty mechanic called beam duration, which makes it very very difficult to get all of that damage into a single location. This also results in the ML mech having to expose itself a little bit longer. Beam duration is probably the mechanic that makes the biggest difference.

4. Energy weapons (particularly the bigger ones) have this phenomenon called "hidden weight," ever heard of it? Their upfront slot and tonnage costs are lower, but you also need to pack more heatsinks to handle the extra heat output and thus the "effective" weight and slots are higher than the initial costs.



The funny thing is that this forum has seen a lot of whining about the infamous AC/40 Jagerbomb, but virtually nobody ever complains about a 9 ML Swayback (other than back in CB when engines were unrestricted?) even though 4 ML supposedly "rival" an AC/20.

Edited by FupDup, 27 August 2013 - 12:35 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

One - Group Firing is part of lore.

Two - I only have 4 buttons I can use to fire weapons which means even with groups alot of times I have trouble having enough buttons for all my different weapon types.

Removing Group Fire doesn't fix anything and in fact breaks the ability to have any sort of mixed build. For example, I said I have 4 buttons. Instead of having a Group set up for my 2 LL, a Group set up for my 3 ML and Group set up for my 2 SRM6s, I will assign PPC 1 to button 1, PPC 2 to button 2 and Gauss 1 to button 3. Then I will just push all three buttons at once so they fire as a "Group".

All you accomplished it to make it so I perfer to run a boat with fewer weapons, rather than a mixed build of different weapon types.

[FupDup]

Viktor Drake, on 27 August 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

One - Group Firing is part of lore.

Two - I only have 4 buttons I can use to fire weapons which means even with groups alot of times I have trouble having enough buttons for all my different weapon types.

Removing Group Fire doesn't fix anything and in fact breaks the ability to have any sort of mixed build. For example, I said I have 4 buttons. Instead of having a Group set up for my 2 LL, a Group set up for my 3 ML and Group set up for my 2 SRM6s, I will assign PPC 1 to button 1, PPC 2 to button 2 and Gauss 1 to button 3. Then I will just push all three buttons at once so they fire as a "Group".

All you accomplished it to make it so I perfer to run a boat with fewer weapons, rather than a mixed build of different weapon types.

When people ask for removing GF (group fire), what they mean is basically forcing every weapon into one group and locking chain-fire to being forced-on all the time.

You are still correct that it messes up mixed builds and promotes boats with few weapons, however.

Edited by FupDup, 27 August 2013 - 12:34 PM.