55 replies to this topic

[StaIker]

The poll question is worded wrongly for a start, Mech survival should not be based on anything as arbitrary as time. Survival has to do with 2 factors; armor thickness and the accuracy of incoming fire. Survival will depend on a high number for the first and a low number for the second. If it's the other way around you're going to die, fast.

Ideally what you want is 3 or 4 hits to the CT from a similar Mech should be a kill. An assault should be able to crush a light in 1 or 2 hits, but it would require 4 hits or so to kill another assault of the same weight.

[Krivvan]

I don't think you should make the assumption that a light is somehow inferior to a medium or anything heavier than it. It depends on the situations, the individual loadouts, and how the game goes.

I believe a good light should be able to take on a good assault. But that doesn't mean a good light should be able to take on a good assault that's specced to be better against lights.

[StaIker]

Krivvan, on 01 August 2013 - 11:16 PM, said:

I believe a good light should be able to take on a good assault. But that doesn't mean a good light should be able to take on a good assault that's specced to be better against lights.

That doesn't really make sense. If a good light has similar combat value to an assault, then why do assault Mechs exist at all? Mechs should play their role, and the role of a light is not to engage a mech 3-4 times heavier in direct combat. Doing so should result in a rapid death. You can't possibly evaluate combat endurance unless it is an apples to apples comparison.

[Wolfways]

Haven't answered the poll because...well because of the above reasons.

But, i do wish mechs (or at least some of them) lasted longer. Everyone just goes for the ct all the time and it's really boring. I'd rather see players having to choose between taking the ct armour down or blowing off arms, etc.
The bigger the mech the more damage it should be able to sustain before being destroyed.
I'd like to see all mechs get their ct armour increased, a bigger increase the bigger the mech class.

Of course PGI completely screwed the balance by keeping the armour values from BT (even if doubled). In MWO the bigger the mech the less effective armour they have.
It's fine to say an Atlas has tons of armour, but because players can aim in MWO, as opposed to random hit locations like in BT, you can keep hitting the area you want (usually ct). Even if you're not a great shot you'll probably hit ct and side torso's.
But a faster mech, like a Jenner, is a lot harder to keep hitting in the same place so the damage gets spread around the different areas. That's why most try to "leg" a light first to slow it down.
Basically PGI buffed mechs depending on their size, with lights getting the biggest buff and assaults the least.

[Blackadder]

At this point in time we have 2 basic types of mechs, damage avoidance mechs, aka lights & cicada, and damage mitigation mechs, everyone else. Currently, i would prefer to see 3-4 shots to start to disable a mech, and 6-8 for death, assuming a good shot is in the 20-30 point damage range on a single location.

Currently mediums are the odd man out, they are not fast enough to get into DA style of play, and do not have the tonnage to really carry enough for DM style of play.

The current issue is that focusing damage to a single location to kill mechs faster, is the best way to play, and very few mechs are capable of taking sustained fire to a single location for long. There needs to be enough incentive to make players make the choice to disable a mech, vs killing a mech, be it significant increase in armor/structure and targeted increases to the torso areas of mechs, or even possibly making XL engines require 2 panels to be destroyed vs 1. The only time experienced players do not aim CT is when facing a good light driver, because you miss to many shots, and are forced to make a choice to leg the light in order to kill it. Players need to be forced into making choices regarding battles, do you disable a mech or go for a kill, what are the advantages/disadvantages of both? right now, the choices you make in MWO are so shallow that it does not promote any kind of quality gameplay.

[Khobai]

PGI definitely needs to implement a fix for damage. The way I see it they have three possible solutions:

1) address convergence by adding random cone of fire.

2) increase armor/internals and/or add fixed damage reduction

3) add one-hit protection and/or variable damage reduction (i.e. whenever you take X damage to a location, that location gains Y% damage reduction for Z seconds)


Those are the three options and PGI has to pick one; there are no other viable ways to fix pinpoint alphas. Adding heat penalties and increasing heat was entirely counterproductive and made the whole pinpoint alpha metagame even more prolific by killing off sustained dps builds.

Edited by Khobai, 02 August 2013 - 05:21 AM.

[FatBabyThompkins]

Stelar 7, on 01 August 2013 - 07:36 PM, said:

Anyway, I would like to see how lights survive with proper hit detection. Can not balance firepower to armor until that is sorted.

And you still won't be able to balance firepower to armor until convergence is fixed. Light pilots still suffer one shot syndrome more than I would classify as "lucky". Fixing hit detection, lights, and mediums to an extent, will be one shot in all but light vs. light engagements. I realize hit detection is an issue, and I know how hard it is to kill a spider, even from my 6ML Jenner, but fixing hit detection without convergence will become a turkey shoot for those skilled twitch gamers.

[FatBabyThompkins]

StaIker, on 02 August 2013 - 12:36 AM, said:

That doesn't really make sense. If a good light has similar combat value to an assault, then why do assault Mechs exist at all? Mechs should play their role, and the role of a light is not to engage a mech 3-4 times heavier in direct combat. Doing so should result in a rapid death. You can't possibly evaluate combat endurance unless it is an apples to apples comparison.

I'm sorry, but no. A light should not just die to an assault. Light should be the counter to an assault, else it reinforces an entire assault based army as there would be no counter to it. The way I theoretically look at it Assault>Heavy>Medium>Light>Assault. That is, an assault should kill a heavy in a one on one match, but take damage doing it. A heavy should kill a medium in a one on one match. A medium should kill a light. And finally, a light should kill an assault. A veritable game of roshambo. The way you describe it is Assault>Heavy>Medium>Light with nothing capable of countering the assault and making the light the worst effective mech you can take. Note: this is not a hard and fast rule, rather the general balance of things. As the saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Luck and skill could allow the assault to come out ahead. Just don't expect to track and keep up with a light mech allowing you to get your anti-Heavy weapons to bear with every shot (convergence/hit box jab).

"But light mechs have different roles!" Which aren't rewarded or outright frowned upon. Conquest capping has very little reward. Assault capping is very much frowned upon (unless you're losing badly and can steal the win). Spotting has little rewards (and could be argued your slot [which is worth an assault in match maker eyes] could be used for said assault, which is the logical conclusion of your argument). Scouting has rarely much use past initial engagement. So, if lights are not a good soft counter (lets be honest, with the varying degree of weapons, nothing is a hard counter) to assaults, then what is their role?

As a side note, (good) wolf packs are seriously OP (but fun, especially against the cheese).

[Khobai]

Quote

Assault>Heavy>Medium>Light>Assault.

That also is a poor way of looking at it. Light mechs should not really be good in direct combat. It was a huge mistake to ever give a light mech like the Jenner access to 6 weapon hardpoints.

Light mechs are not meant for combat. Theyre for scouting, spotting, capping, electronic Warfare, etc... they basically excel at all the non-combat roles. But unfortunately, none of those non-combat roles matter in MWO.

[Tombstoner]

Khobai, on 02 August 2013 - 04:57 AM, said:

PGI definitely needs to implement a fix for damage. The way I see it they have three possible solutions:

1) address convergence by adding random cone of fire.

2) increase armor/internals and/or add fixed damage reduction

3) add one-hit protection and/or variable damage reduction (i.e. whenever you take X damage to a location, that location gains Y% damage reduction for Z seconds)


Those are the only three options and PGI has to pick one. There are no other viable ways to fix pinpoint alphas. Adding heat penalties and increasing heat is entirely counterproductive and only makes the whole pinpoint alpha more prolific since it kills off sustained dps builds.

Changing / fixing hit detection actual nullifies any game balance changes made before the fix. once the fix is in a new base line needs to form. then changes can be made accordingly. this is part of the reason PGI is slow in changing values. HSR is still not working as intended. its getting better but its not finished so balance changes are not going to happen unless gross irregularities occur.

Its obvious that PGI will not add in a COF for primary combat targeting. hitting is not 100% guarantee and your skill with a mouse dominates. its the pin point group fire . they are trying with ghost heat. but movement modifiers are needed. overlay a COF the gets worse with more weapons added and .5 second delay modifier of COF gets Added would be the best.

Damage shields would balance out 2-1 or 3+-1 situations but favors one or one engagements. the game does have damage shields already in the form of LRM door covers i think they grant 10% reduction.

Over all armor need's to be scaled based on the surface area of the hit location. good luck hitting a spider at all let alone the CT as compared to an Awesome. on that mech if you aim for the arm your gonna hit CT. this sort of situation completely alters what makes a good mech and how long its going to last.

yes it comes down to the skill of the pilot. but thats kinda miss leading... pilot skill in knowing when to pop out and shoot. often that becomes when the opfor is shooting your team mates.

[StaIker]

FatBabyThompkins, on 02 August 2013 - 05:21 AM, said:

I'm sorry, but no. A light should not just die to an assault. Light should be the counter to an assault, else it reinforces an entire assault based army as there would be no counter to it. The way I theoretically look at it Assault>Heavy>Medium>Light>Assault. That is, an assault should kill a heavy in a one on one match, but take damage doing it. A heavy should kill a medium in a one on one match. A medium should kill a light. And finally, a light should kill an assault. A veritable game of roshambo.

Different Mechs have different roles. What you're saying is that Lights actually have a role in the main battle line against enemy Assault Mechs, rather than say providing scouting and harassment functions. And that is undoubtedly why you get killed a lot.

[Tombstoner]

Khobai, on 02 August 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

That also is a poor way of looking at it. Light mechs should not really be good in direct combat. It was a huge mistake to ever give a light mech like the Jenner access to 6 weapon hardpoints.

Light mechs are not meant for combat. Theyre for scouting, spotting, capping, electronic Warfare, etc... they basically excel at all the non-combat roles. But unfortunately, none of those non-combat roles matter in MWO.

Why should light mech not be allowed to have front line weapons.... modern combat vehicle design is moving to small light fast heavy fire power armored cars. The end of the MBT is on the horizon.

6 ml jenners are from TT. within TT they work fine. it the pin point group fire that's problematic. yes current game modes dont support scouting very well but hit and run tactics do work. more game modes may open up more options in the future. a good game design allows for future flexibility. add in a COF and the 6 ml jenner is not as dangerous. because the ML's are back to TT damge function and are not working together as an ac-30 for 6 tones and 30 heat. add to that the heat cap and you get off 60 points to the back befor shutdown....

So yea the game as lots of distorted spots and issues but it does have one thing going for it and you get to smash other fairly fast. i have to admit that i can and do have fun in this game but i no longer concernmyself with 1- winning, 2-money, 3- score, 4- damage

Iwas using the 4x mg spider befor the buff and it sucked but it was hella fun. after the buff and i can make stalkers turn and run. that is also hella fun.

[Khobai]

Quote

6 ml jenners are from TT. within TT they work fine

Theyre fine in TT because each of those lasers hits a different location randomly. Convergence makes Jenners a bit too strong in MWO. Especially with hit detection being wonky again.

In Battletech, Light mechs are not intended for anti-mech combat though. They are primarily anti-infantry, scouts, and fill other non-combat roles like spotting/electronic warfare.

The first real combat mech in Battetech is the medium mech. Part of the reason mediums have a weak role in MWO is because light mechs are so good in combat when they shouldnt be.

[Seddrik]

While I understand your attempt to analyze a variety of situations... this poll/question is a bit over complicated.

The short of it is there are at least three major variables that affect battles: Teamwork, mech build and pilot skill.

Just a note (I hope PGI reads this) I love jenners over every other mech. But consecutive changes are slowly eating away at the ability to play lights as successfully. Terrain catches/slowdowns and increased SRM damage (which means more people use it now) mean you get hit a lot more/take more damage and do not last as long. Plus the heightened damage taken from overheating even a little... result in a more difficult, less fluid gameplay for lights. You end up being forced to hide more and fight less. Thus, less fun. I understand light builds for spotting and capping... that just not my style of play in a light. I fervently enjoy skirmishing in a jenner.

I understand the idea that PGI is (at least for now) moving towards... in reducing constant high alphas and PPC long range battles. I just hope they don't consider that as they correct one problem they can easily create others by adversely affecting mechs that were working well before without being over powered. For example, speed is life in a light, yet it seems that even speed is becoming less useful to keep you alive with the huge, game changing terrain movement blarg. Add the huge SRM buff which means everyone carrying the equivalent of multiple shot guns so that they always hit you for solid damage even if they aim poorly... and you have bad news for lights.

In the end, I don't mind losing matches if I had fun fights. Oh I love winning, but I hope PGI considers that not everyone wants to walk around in a slow assault mech in the gutters between insurmountable mazelike walls while stacking SRM 6s.

I know... people will argue that "light mechs are not intended for" that kind of combat... but in the end if it isn't as fun, you won't have as many people playing. This is not table top. I'm not looking for a dice rolling game, but a mech shooter.

Edited by Seddrik, 02 August 2013 - 06:44 AM.

[FatBabyThompkins]

StaIker, on 02 August 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

Different Mechs have different roles. What you're saying is that Lights actually have a role in the main battle line against enemy Assault Mechs, rather than say providing scouting and harassment functions. And that is undoubtedly why you get killed a lot.

I take it you didn't read my second paragraph. I'll repost it.

Quote

"But light mechs have different roles!" Which aren't rewarded or outright frowned upon. Conquest capping has very little reward. Assault capping is very much frowned upon (unless you're losing badly and can steal the win). Spotting has little rewards (and could be argued your slot [which is worth an assault in match maker eyes] could be used for said assault, which is the logical conclusion of your argument). Scouting has rarely much use past initial engagement. So, if lights are not a good soft counter (lets be honest, with the varying degree of weapons, nothing is a hard counter) to assaults, then what is their role?

Khobai, on 02 August 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

That also is a poor way of looking at it. Light mechs should not really be good in direct combat. It was a huge mistake to ever give a light mech like the Jenner access to 6 weapon hardpoints.

Light mechs are not meant for combat. Theyre for scouting, spotting, capping, electronic Warfare, etc... they basically excel at all the non-combat roles. But unfortunately, none of those non-combat roles matter in MWO.

I agree they shouldn't be able to take on a battle force, or even a medium or heavy for that matter. But against an assault, their speed and ability to put shots on vulnerable (and large) points of the assault mech should be a valid tactic. It's speed vs. brawn. In fable, it is David vs. Goliath. In real life, look at UFC 3 Keith Hackney vs. Emmanuel Yarborough.

As a light mech pilot, my most feared mechs are mediums and heavies. Their movement and torso twist rate is generally too good to go one on one with. But against assaults, I can almost always stay out of their cross hairs (unless I screw up). In the battle force, I try to spot and scout, letting my force engage first. Then I try to flank and skirmish. I hit mechs from behind and force them to turn around, giving my team a chance to push forward. Mediums just do not have the speed or have a small enough profile to perform this function. I can only fire my 6ML Jenner 2-3 times before a retreat and cool down (full armor > more heat sinks against PPCWarriors). That is rarely enough to core someone, especially someone who actually reacts to the damage they just received. So now, I go for components. Take out the AC/20 or PPC arm. Hell, shoot the arm or leg, they don't usually know where the damage came from.

Now saying light mechs are not meant for combat is just silly, however. We're playing a combat focused game. Having effective light mechs is the only reason I play. If you want combat effectiveness to only scale with tonnage, then you're not creating a balanced game, you're creating a power game.

[Stelar 7]

FatBabyThompkins, on 02 August 2013 - 04:58 AM, said:

And you still won't be able to balance firepower to armor until convergence is fixed. Light pilots still suffer one shot syndrome more than I would classify as "lucky". Fixing hit detection, lights, and mediums to an extent, will be one shot in all but light vs. light engagements. I realize hit detection is an issue, and I know how hard it is to kill a spider, even from my 6ML Jenner, but fixing hit detection without convergence will become a turkey shoot for those skilled twitch gamers.

Convergence can be fixed with cof, or armor and heat. The latter two mechanics have the advantage of actually existing. Personally I am not a fan of COF. Assaults fare the worst since they have to work harder to spread incoming damage. I would not be opposed to a small amount of torso damage mitigation to encourage shooting out the legs and reduce the horror of a 6ml alpha to the rear right torso. That should also encourage folks to put armor on their legs.

However if lights are hit with more than glancing laser shots, they should fold up.

I do agree with you that lis have a place in the brawl as skirmishers. A wolfpack of them can be awesome to behold, but can also be so many dead mechs if the targets focus on the lights. For what it is worth I have also been seeing wolf packs of mediums, snd that too is effective.

[Unbound Inferno]

Viktor Drake, on 01 August 2013 - 09:08 PM, said:

Lets make it simple shall we.

Mech battles are too short. I would prefer it if mechs were more durable overall.

So far, it seems we are all on the same page there.

nitra, on 01 August 2013 - 09:23 PM, said:

cant help to be curt but my answer is. The mech should last for ever how long the pilot manages to pilot it well and avoid stupidity.

i.e. me for example.

i have a bj 1/x i run off alone (as usual). i come across 5 mechs 3 heavys 2 assults (sticking together for some reason)

i decide to engage . i last maybe 120 seconds if lucky .

should i last longer ? just because i feel like i can blow up everything ?

the opposite example .

i.e. me again in the bj 1/x this time for some odd reason i stick by my team (what the hell am i thinking) i engage targets that are occupied by friendly fire or other mechs maybe occasionally taking out the lone straggler lrm boat .

i usually last the whole game .

it all depends on the pilot and how one engages the enemy . expectations should be based on this not on what mech they pilot.

That's a part of what changes - but I am talking about where you are in continual fights.

As always, good teamplay atmosphere like you described, and its not that hard to see lasting a whole match.

BJ are in an almost sweet spot if the pilot knows what they are doing, and it sounds like you've got some good runs sometimes.

xRatas, on 01 August 2013 - 09:55 PM, said:

Yep, poll options are bit weird, not voting those, sorry.

But I say light vs light and assault vs assault duels should last bit longer, medium vs medium and heavy vs heavy should be fast duels.

Basically I'd see balance like this:
Lights should avoid direct confrontation, or die easily. Only light firepower. Excellent mobility.
Mediums should die easily, but hold good firepower. If you want to do hit&runs, this should be the class for it. Good mobility.
Heavies should carry the heaviest weapon loadouts, but not that good survivability. Ok mobility.
Assaults should have easily best survivability, but worse weapons than heavies. Bad mobility.

Introducing hardpoint sizes, that could be easily done too...

But in general, I'm quite happy about the average lifetime of mechs, sometimes getting one-shot is annoying, but one-shot others is so much fun, I'd be happy to die like that every now and then too.

Fair enough, but you are also brining up what it seems most that vote see too, or at least in the relative sense if we are all on the same page.

Interesting interpretation of Heavies with more firepower than Assaults though.

StaIker, on 01 August 2013 - 10:34 PM, said:

The poll question is worded wrongly for a start, Mech survival should not be based on anything as arbitrary as time. Survival has to do with 2 factors; armor thickness and the accuracy of incoming fire. Survival will depend on a high number for the first and a low number for the second. If it's the other way around you're going to die, fast.

Ideally what you want is 3 or 4 hits to the CT from a similar Mech should be a kill. An assault should be able to crush a light in 1 or 2 hits, but it would require 4 hits or so to kill another assault of the same weight.

Damage + Shots Fired x Recharge times = Time you last

That's the idea, and what is seen in MW:O, so how many shots, for how long is the rough idea.

Krivvan, on 01 August 2013 - 11:16 PM, said:

I don't think you should make the assumption that a light is somehow inferior to a medium or anything heavier than it. It depends on the situations, the individual loadouts, and how the game goes.

I believe a good light should be able to take on a good assault. But that doesn't mean a good light should be able to take on a good assault that's specced to be better against lights.

All a part of luck there then. The good loadout vs the bad one for the situation, or the chance against the one that'll tear you to pieces.

Wolfways, on 02 August 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

Haven't answered the poll because...well because of the above reasons.

But, i do wish mechs (or at least some of them) lasted longer. Everyone just goes for the ct all the time and it's really boring. I'd rather see players having to choose between taking the ct armour down or blowing off arms, etc.
The bigger the mech the more damage it should be able to sustain before being destroyed.
I'd like to see all mechs get their ct armour increased, a bigger increase the bigger the mech class.

Of course PGI completely screwed the balance by keeping the armour values from BT (even if doubled). In MWO the bigger the mech the less effective armour they have.
It's fine to say an Atlas has tons of armour, but because players can aim in MWO, as opposed to random hit locations like in BT, you can keep hitting the area you want (usually ct). Even if you're not a great shot you'll probably hit ct and side torso's.
But a faster mech, like a Jenner, is a lot harder to keep hitting in the same place so the damage gets spread around the different areas. That's why most try to "leg" a light first to slow it down.
Basically PGI buffed mechs depending on their size, with lights getting the biggest buff and assaults the least.

That brings back an earlier idea of just increasing armor again - to make those larger targets harder to kill. Might be worth exploring.

Otherwise we'd need a completely new armor system installed.

[Unbound Inferno]

Khobai, on 02 August 2013 - 04:57 AM, said:

PGI definitely needs to implement a fix for damage. The way I see it they have three possible solutions:

1) address convergence by adding random cone of fire.

2) increase armor/internals and/or add fixed damage reduction

3) add one-hit protection and/or variable damage reduction (i.e. whenever you take X damage to a location, that location gains Y% damage reduction for Z seconds)


Those are the three options and PGI has to pick one; there are no other viable ways to fix pinpoint alphas. Adding heat penalties and increasing heat was entirely counterproductive and made the whole pinpoint alpha metagame even more prolific by killing off sustained dps builds.

Fascinating idea on the damage reduction received, I might have a thought needing to flush out with that sometime...

[FatBabyThompkins]

Stelar 7, on 02 August 2013 - 07:51 AM, said:

However if lights are hit with more than glancing laser shots, they should fold up.

I agree, but let us consider how lights were survivable from inception (read TT). The worst they ever had to worry about was 20pts from the AC/20. PPC are 10 pts and Gauss are 15 pts. Any component in full armor can survive one of those hits (rear LT/RT being an exception with the AC/20, but then again that is a short range weapon hitting a very small area making this a true lucky shot rather than skill). With the TT rules, each weapon would more than likely hit different areas (3 shots for 2 PPC and 1 Gauss would only all hit the CT .7% of the time with 2 hitting the CT only 9% of the time). This made lights at least able to spread those high damaging shots over the mech. Sure they were now hurting in many areas now, probably even down to internals, even after one shot depending upon random location. As it stands now, with perfect convergence, even at moderate range (trying to hit a light mech running perpendicular to you at anything other than close to moderate range require leading the target and thus borking convergence), I have been one shot increasingly so. Good shooters wait until there is that fraction of a second where the light is running parallel and firing that combined with very fast projectile speed actually causes true convergence with at least the PPCs.

I, personally, do not like CoF, even if that is the most realistic representation of real physics. Even lasers go out of alignment with running and taking fire. But true random damage would just break immersion. I would like to see a system that enforces a stepped chain fire. You only have so much energy reserves at any one time. You can only fire so much energy weaponry (Gauss is part energy/ballistic). Firing more than that causes each to be reduced in effectiveness (range/damage what have you). Ballistics would become OP in this scenario so counter with lower ammunition rates. You can do more burst damage with ballistics, but sustained DPS comes from energy weapons. Limit mechs "capacitance" from tonnage. Give the Awesome 3 PPC a higher capacitance. Not enough to fire all 3, but maybe 2 and then a second later a 3rd.

Confusion? Yep. Which is why it'll never truly work when combined with heat. Heat was designed to do what I described in capacitance, but looking at it in a way that doesn't limit your present capability, but hinder your future capability by over extending yourself. Capacitance works to hinder your current capability and maintain that over the life span. Of course, another reason it would never happen is it is not "lore", so I digress.

[Unbound Inferno]

Paul's heat penalties aren't lore either, so I don't see a problem exploring the option.