172 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Quote

I have. a Player was using 5 Large Pulse Lasers ©, tied to a Targeting Computer -45 armor 5 Structure. 2 Crits CT, both Gyro.

True if you use clan tech. I meant with the tech we currently have in MWO. Which is 3050 IS tech. We all know clan tech is broken as hell and will need to be significantly nerfed if its added to MWO.

[OneEyed Jack]

I've seen numerous mechs die to a 2-point hit to the CT. Snake-eyes, boxcars, three crits, dead. Hell, I've seen it with one crit against a Warhammer IIC.

Using fire initiative, I shoot first with my last weapon before I die. Hit.
"I can take 2 points anywhere."
2 points to... CT possible crit! Roll... only 1 crit.
"Ha, one crit won't kill me!"
Roll... Lower. Roll........
"Who the hell puts MG ammo in the center torso?!?!"

Edited by OneEyed Jack, 13 August 2013 - 10:34 PM.

[OneEyed Jack]

Then there was the time using the aim-high/low/left/right rules when I walked a Mad Cat around a corner into PB range with a Annihilator....

It wasn't a lucky head hit. It was 8 head hits, killing my pilot and leaving a perfectly operational Mad Cat standing there in need of only a paint job.

It should be noted that over the course of many years of regular, weekly BT games, my group used just about every optional rule from the books, Solaris, BatteTechnology, and several other sources for some amount of time. Piece of advice, never let someone talk you into letting them use the External Stores rules for VTOLs.

[Saint Rigid]

Tesunie, I believe the problem most likely lies in my explanation, so I will try another approach.

The premise is that percentage rates are a poor metric to use when comparing the old vs the new point values. Yes, all armor values were doubled across the board evenly, but I am not looking at the total number of armor points in a given match. What i AM looking at is the RANGE of the armor points in a given match.

A = Atlas Armor
C = Commando Armor

I am not saying at 2A/2C is greater than A/C.

What I AM saying is that 2A-2C is greater than A-C.


The first equation is simple fractions. It gives you 4.75 both times. (38/8 and 19/4).

The second equation however yields two different results. 30 and 15. That's twice the range!

The idea is that the increase in armor benefits the Assault MORE than the increase in armor for the light (and the Mediums too!). If the designers wanted matches to last for 2 minutes longer, they did not meet their design goal, because applying the armor increase in this manner increased the match by only 30 seconds for Commando, as opposed to 142.5 seconds for the Atlas (just an example).

This problem is compounded by the difference in firepower of mechs as well, and while I understand that Light mechs are not necessarily designed to keep pace with Assault mechs damage wise it is still a problem. If you look at the increase of armor VS firepower you have another lens through which to see the plight of lights and mediums.
With old armor values, it takes the Commando 1B 70 seconds to core an the Atlas D, now it takes 140 with doubled armor.

With old armor values, the Atlas D (without using the medium lasers) cores the Commando 1B in 4.48 seconds.
... with doubled armor it is now 8.97 seconds.

Clearly the Atlas has an absolutely negligible decrease in effectiveness, while the Commando's already punitive powers are made much worse. Now this is an extreme case, and as I said before, I understand that these mechs are not meant to be compared to eachother by standards of damage. This is the extreme example to help express the idea.

Likewise, I am suspicious this might be a problem that affects speed tweak as well, with lights getting a larger benefit than assaults receive... but alas. Or should I said atlas... lol

-Latenight Cormac

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 13 August 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

True if you use clan tech. I meant with the tech we currently have in MWO. Which is 3050 IS tech. We all know clan tech is broken as hell and will need to be significantly nerfed if its added to MWO.

Why? I know exactly what Clan Tech can do. I expect it to be horrifying. Its why I signed up for House Steiner!

[OneEyed Jack]

Natanael Cormac, on 13 August 2013 - 10:43 PM, said:

Stuff

Again, your numbers are only relevant if both mechs can be hit in precise locations equally. That involves being able to keep it targeted (equal ability to break LOS), hit the mech (equal chance to land fired shots), and to choose the location (equal chance to land repeated shots on the same location).

Lighter mechs actually benefit more from additional armor because of these factors. A laser can be reasonably held on a large target for it's full length, while doing so on a Light means either a very good shot or a very poor Light pilot. While a pinpoint weapon can take a significant portion of armor from a Light, it's much harder to follow that up with additional damage to the same location than on a larger, slower mech. Spread weapons waste much more of their damage firing at smaller targets, even when the shot hits. All of which means that the same amount of damage out-put results in a much smaller amount of damage applied. Even the best shots can't honestly claim to as easily hit a Light as an Atlas. And all that's assuming you can even get a shot at a mech that can choose to not engage at all or spend much of the fight out of the shooter's LOS and/or firing arc.

[Tegiminis]

Nobody is arguing for a flat doubling of armor values. You are arguing against a strawman here, and doing it poorly.

As for everyone complaining about convergence: your cries are like the braying of donkeys, your words like the babbling of children. Get on my level. Bench what I bench.

[Saint Rigid]

Clever puns aside... let's keep it civil noble mechwarriors

Come on guys, you're in the same faction and everything

Also, not that it really adds much to the sentiment, but I forgot to add earlier that part of the Medium's plight is that the Heavy is such a good Predator right now, it certainly does not help. Thus creating a hostile environment for Mediums (their natural prey) and possibly a boon to Lights (as there are not enough mediums to effectively control their population).

It's like that chart of the population of Foxes and Rabbits that they show you in grade school... except... with missiles!

[Taxxian]

@OP

You are simply completely wrong, while your math is correct we do not primarily need to compensate for turn length vs real time, we would need to compensate random assigned damage vs targeted damage and this is where the system fails!

Your Commando/Spider needs all his armor, since it will get hits all over his tiny body, your Atlas wont ever need its 160 leg armor! Nobody accidentally hits the Atlases legs... never... all those tons are wasted. Essentially the Atlas`s CT is as big as a Spider/Commando and if you compare the Atlas CT Armor vs Spider/Commando armor you will see that the light Mech has nearly double the armor per square inch surface than the Atlas has....

Right at the moment on some of the Maps, a team of 12 Spiders is nearly unbeatable (in CONQUEST MODE) if you don't counter with dedicated "light hunters"...

On the other hand, in table top BT. There are good Mechs and Bad Mechs, thats why they have BattleValue. In MW:O every Mech shall be equally viable for play, that means smaller Mechs need some kind of advantage, they don't normally have in TT...

[MrZakalwe]

Doubling armour has actually been good for lights- as internals haven't been doubled and everybody frontloads their armour it means mechs die proportionally quicker when shot in the rear.

[MustrumRidcully]

stjobe, on 13 August 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

Since weapon damage uses TT values, but firing rates are doubled or even tripled or quadrupled (or in the case of the AC/2, vigintupled - that is, multiplied by 20), weapons do two to three times the amount of DPS compared to TT (or 40 times, in the case of the AC/2). Of course single armour values won't suffice at that point.

So they doubled armour, and it worked for what they wanted to achieve; matches lasted longer. What they didn't think of though (or didn't care about), was that the fear of facing an opponent with a single AC/20 was gone - and a lot of the spirit of BattleTech with it.

An AC/20 was truly a weapon to be feared in TT; it could one-shot any 'mech if it hit the head (TT heads were capped at 9 armour + 3 internal structure), and lights if it hit them at all. Double AC/20s were simply overkill; much better to use those tons for other weaponry so you could be effective at all ranges and against multiple opponents.

This doubling of armour also had effects on the other end of the scale; the MG, which was a rather fearsome weapon against TT lights, and a very nice heat-less extra crit chance against heavier 'mechs, suddenly wasn't able to do much of anything. Its damage (which incidentally got the least DPS boost of any weapon in the game when translated from TT values) just wasn't enough to put a dent in double armour.

It's taken them over a year to get the MG into something resembling usefulness, and the single AC/20 probably never will be feared in MWO, not even by lights.

So what could you do?

I don't know if there is much to do at all, to be frank. Since they chose to dramatically increase the rate of fire while keeping the TT damage values, armour must double or we get matches that are over after first contact. I don't see them going back to 5-10 second (individual) cooldowns either, but that would solve the issue pretty neatly. It would never fly with the current generation of gamers though (and I don't mean that in any disparaging way, it's just that they've grown up with faster games than I did).

So I think we're stuck with our double armour and anaemic weapons, sadly. Never will I tremble in fear as I realize I'm up against an opponent mounting the monster-weapon of the BattleTech Universe, the BFG, the big Kahuna - the feared AC/20. I'll just shrug my shoulders and thank my lucky stars he's not mounting a pair, because that would have been dangerous.

I am not sure we have the "order of operations" right.
I used to think that increasing armor was a reaction to increasing ROF, but that might not be the case.

The example you cite, the AC/20 one-shot wonder - that is a real problem in a game where aiming is done with a mouse (we don't even need to talk about convergence!"). 2 AC/20 hits to the same spot are very, very likely under these conditions, and can kill (and if not kill, cripple) most mechs easily.

Doubling armor avoids that.

Yes, rate of fire was also increased (possibly only later, after they didn't like the game with canonical values for everything during their friends & family beta). That can mean combat takes shorter than the table top would suggest, but it ultimately doesn't really matter. If a table top encounter between 2 Atlai takes, say, 8 turns on average, it might suggest a fight going for over a minute, but for the player, this time isn't felt. What is felt in the table top is all the time rolling this combat out, which takes a lot longer than a minute. So the 80 second Atlas combat might "feel right" on the table top, but it might actually turn out to be too long or too shor tin the real time game.

When you double armor, you probably don't do it because combat is faster or slower than the table top, you do it because the pace of combat is too fast for the gameplay feel you're going for.

It could very well be that the process of operations looked like this:
AC/20 one to two hit wonder (and similar weapon configs) made combat too fast paced.
=> Doubled Armor
One-Hit Wonder is gone, but an individual engagement now moves from a 2 second event to a 10-20 second long engagement with long pauses.
=> Triple Rate of Fire. Thanks to doubled armor, the one-hit kill is still impossible, but now you get something to do every 3-4 seconds, which feels satisfyingly active.

[stjobe]

Oh I agree. I wasn't in F&F so I have no way of knowing other than what the devs have stated; that armour was doubled because 'mechs died too fast. Whether that happened before or after the rate of fire increase or not I can't tell, but since I haven't ever heard anyone talk about a game where the RoF was slower and I have heard devs talk about the game when armour wasn't doubled, that suggests the RoF increase was done before the armour was doubled.

Either way, if we wanted to go back to single armour values, it could possibly be achieved in two ways:
1. Increase cooldowns (not a popular option from what I've seen).
2. Decrease weapon damage (not a popular option either, people seem to want to keep the "AC/x = x damage" paradigm).

Neither are likely, and from what I've understood, the devs are more likely to increase IS (and possibly armour) rather than decreasing it.

Edited by stjobe, 14 August 2013 - 12:44 AM.

[Kunae]

You should never use "poor hit registration" as a balancing factor. Once hit-reg is fixed, all of the "balancing" done to compensate for it will make the subject mech/class vaporize into a fine mist.

[Jzaltheral]

stjobe, on 13 August 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

So I think we're stuck with our double armour and anaemic weapons, sadly. Never will I tremble in fear as I realize I'm up against an opponent mounting the monster-weapon of the BattleTech Universe, the BFG, the big Kahuna - the feared AC/20. I'll just shrug my shoulders and thank my lucky stars he's not mounting a pair, because that would have been dangerous.

This is, unfortunately, very true in MWO.

[Braggart]

I have made several posts about this in the past, but the vast majority of the public are incapable of understanding why doubling made this game so much worse.


All mechs should have been given a flat 25 point armor boost. This maintains the games in armor levels between all mechs, instead of widening the gaps.

Doubling the armor was a rich get richer change that has crippled medium mechs even further, giving huge advantages to heavy and assault mechs who already had plenty of armor, and firepower.

Now any mech not mounting absurd amounts of firepower has no chance in a prolonged fight against a heavy or assault mech.

Here is my post on the subject, and a little snippet.

http://mwomercs.com/...18#entry2602418

Quote

The first step in fixing medium mechs is fixing armor. The doubled armor was a huge mistake. All mechs should have simply been given a flat even increase in armor. Possibly by class of mech.


Heavy and assault mechs benefit from that doubled armor far to much.

Figure if all mechs had 25 base armor, then add in their normal amount on top.

The results would be as such.

Raven before fix 44, after 47
Hunchback before fix 64 after fix 57
Cataphract before fix 88 before, after 69
atlas before fix 124, after 87.

The armor gap should have been maintained, not increased.

Edited by Braggart, 14 August 2013 - 07:44 AM.

[Lightfoot]

It's the 2xRecharge that is unbalanced.

[Doomstryke]

Man up the armor in lights lol I'd love it!! My jenner is easly my best assault mech. Unless I get rolled early on I usually deal min 400 damage, average about 600 with 4-6 kills on a good round, usually at least 2. I'd love to increase that number to about 800 and kill half or more of the enemy team........
But no as everyone else has been saying I'd argue that armor should be dropped but at the same time i'd rather say lets wait for HSR to be fixed up properly and see how survival goes. I can tell you for one soooo many people can't aim which is the only reason lights live so long. (or at least my pugs can't ever aim when I'm watching them) When fighting against competent players that's when my games fall more in line to where they should be. Run scared for my life since I know they can cripple me. Which brings us back around to the f*** match maker. If people were paired off with people of the same level of skill i'm sure most of these posts wouln't exist....soon match maker soon...

Edited by Doomstryke, 14 August 2013 - 10:37 AM.

[Wolfways]

Tennex, on 13 August 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

and as such there is still a maximum of only 2 light mechs per game. and maybe 6 assaults.

Where are these matches? How do i get into them? Seriously, i see people talking about these matches full of assaults and hardly any lights. Why do i never get into these games?!
I get nothing but lights everywhere

Edited by Wolfways, 14 August 2013 - 12:42 PM.

[Zargar The Barbar]

I play lights and find them very survivable. I have my best K/D ratio with lights. Lights do not need additional armor, In my opinion...

[Lykaon]

Natanael Cormac, on 13 August 2013 - 04:00 PM, said:

There is a difference to folding like cardboard... and folding like cardboard that has been soaked in kerosene lol

The problem is not armor values it's how armor works.

The current model for armor values specific to each discreet body location is lifted directly from the table top game.The only notable difference is MWo has doubled those values.

The doubling of armor values is to increase time to kill and that is in a direct response to increasing the rate of fire of weapons by an average value of 2.5 times per "turn" based on table top 10 second turns.

So we have two distinct problems.

1: Using the table top armor mechanics without also incorperating the supporting mechanics to balance the inherent weaknesses in that armor mechanic.

The table top game uses several mechanics to balance the armor mechanics to prevent exploitation of the inherent weaknesses in the damage and armor mechanics.

First we have a random element of dice rolling to determine if a hit occurs.The target numbers used to determine successes are standardized based on several factor like target speed distance terrain effects and the attackers movement.The end result is a much higher chance of missing a target than is expressed in a real time shooter game.

Since applying a random number generator to a real time shooter game is in my opinion contrary to the desired mechanics of the real time shooter I can understand why this mechanic was not adapted.
However my point remains this was a support mechanic to balance the armor system for table top and is lacking in MWo.

Secondly: When a hit does occur the location of the mech is randomly determined.Since this is also determined by a random number generator (dice) I feel it is not applicable to MWo.
Yet again however a supporting mechanic was excluded with no substitution to assist in prevent exploitation of the core armor mechanic.

Thirdly: Another mechanic used to mitigate the effects of rapid damage aplication is the table top game's heat scale.
MWo does use a heat mechanic yet I feel it lacks the ability to function as a damage mitigation tool with the exception of the extreme cases (6X PPC or mechs with much more firepower than cooling).

To simpify the table top heat mechanics applies progressivly increasing penalties that reduce the ability to accuratley apply damage to a target.MWo's heat mechanics apply no penalties until shutdown.The heat system in MWo is all or nothing and honestly this is supporting the use of alpha strikes that are also all or nothing prospects.

MWo's heatscale is not penalizing as it should and in some ways it is synergistic to alpha striking.

And lastly,not only does MWo eschew supporting mechanics to mitigate exploitation of the armor mechanics that are lifted directly from the table top game MWo adds a mechanic that actually assists in exploiting the armor mechanics.

I am refering to group fire.Not only can we aim at and likely hit specific armor locations on a target without any mechanics hindering this exploitation of the weakness of the armor mechanics but we can concentrate massive damage values onto those armor locations with grouped weapon fire.

2: Using a 2X armor value in a 2.5X damage mechanic.

This is a matter of simple math.

Table top derived armor values set to 2X table top values

Weapon damage (mostly) retained at 1X table top values.

Weapon rate of fire increased to 2.5 X table top values

This still means an overall increase in damage delivery within a set time frame of 10 seconds (as derived from the table top turn length)

What we have is mechs apply more damage than intended with the capacity to do so with pin point accuracy that the armor mechanics were never intended to contend with.