6 replies to this topic

[Kayne Warden]

We've seen a lot of buffing and nerfing of weapons in this game. Which, in my opinion, is good. I personally prefer to play a Battletech game, as Battletech was intended to be. A PPC for example, is a powerful weapon and only the largest and strongest battlemechs can carry more than one. And that only with big heat problems.
Yes, we need a balancing that avoids mechs packed with the strongest weapons, that can almost instantly kill another (heavy) mech. But I think, there could be a better, easier and faster way, to balance that:

Connecting maximum weapon loadout to engine output

The engine in MWO has only one purpose: Speed. Why is that so? A mech is completely powered by it's reactor. Including his guns. If you gave every gun a certain amount of energy it needs to be fired, a mechwarrior had to balance his mech himself. For example:

We have a Cataphract X1 with a standard 280 engine. That engine has a power output of... 280.
Now we install a ppc, that needs 120 energy and an AC 10 (80 energy). 200 of our 280 energy points are already in use. Now I can decide to put in a single large laser (80 energy) or 2 medium lasers (30 energy each) and two small lasers (10 energy each).

Notice: This is just an example.

That way, you could ban ppc or uac5 (or whatever) boats from the game, without ruining the weapons itself.
Yes, I know, this would lower the overall firepower of mechs. Great. Longer and more interesting fights. If I would want to kill my target instantly, I would play an 1st person shooter.

Just my 2 cents.
Jack

Edited by Jack Warde, 09 September 2013 - 01:07 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

We already have heat, why add another currency? Fix the heat system, instead of inventing a new system.

In fact ,heat is supposed to take the role of energy - the fusion reactor is assumed to produce sufficient amount of energy for pretty much anything that a mech can equip - but it produces waste heat when that energy is actually used, and that is what is causing all the heat.

Yes, it doesn't really make sense that you need a stronger reactor to make your mech go faster but it can power 6 PPCs that can melt 5 tons of armor in 10 seconds, but it's Battletech, not Logitech.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 September 2013 - 01:30 AM.

[Navy Sixes]

The OP makes sense, and it's not a bad idea. If someone wants to put together another mech-based game and do this, I'm all for it. While I don't know much programming, I'm pretty handy with the Blender, so I'll even help out.

That said, this is Mechwarrior, and that's a pretty big departure from what players expect from the brand in terms of mech/weapon performance.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that everything is pretty close to balanced out already. There are some things I'd like to see fixed (Hit Reg, SRM buff, LRM buff/ECM nerf) but not so much that I'm going to quit over them (there were some close moments before 'ghost-heat': The game was getting kind of dumb ...3-4 5 PPC stalkers on an 8-mech team, over and over and over...).

I don't know how PGI divides its labor, but I think they should be devoting more energy toward community warfare and less on tweaking systems back and forth if they can. CW is of paramount importance. They got me with Phoenix and again with the Sabre package. I will eat the 70 bucks I've dropped on this game and uninstall if CW totally sucks (or never happens). It doesn't have to be perfect, but if it's nothing but a big tournament I'm outta here.

[CheeseThief]

Heat is already an engine currency, the bigger the engine, the more heat sinks that come with it and can be stuffed into it.

When building a mech we already have to deal with hardpoints, weight, space, heat and actulators, we don't need another random number layered over the top to deal with, especially one that doesn't allow someone to actually use a stock CTF-1X.

[LegoPirate]

having a larger engine is already a huge advantage. this would make large xl engines that much better then smaller standard ones.

[dwwolf]

As a fix for direct fire boating something like the targeting computer proposal makes much more sense. Cone fire would make alot more sense but PGI is deadset against that for some reason.

[Deathlike]

Cone of Fire exists for the MG. Look how that turned out...