128 replies to this topic

[John Wolf]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 05:57 PM, said:

There were two things brought up by smarter people than me in closed Beta:

Hard Point limitations:
Lets say Energy:
Small = Small Laser/SPL
Medium = ML/MPL + Small
Large = LL/LPL + Med
X-Large = PPC/ERPPC + Large

All of a sudden, an Awesome that comes with 3 X-Large energy slots and is one of the few mechs that can carry 3 PPC's becomes competitive. It has a huge torso and is easy to kill BUT it can shoot 3 PPC's as well. You also would quit seeing 2 PPC 3L's running around.

Conversion:
Weapons mounted in the arms will converse on the same target on the enemy mech. Weapons mounted on the torsos would converse on the same target on the enemy mech. Firing weapons from different mount areas would not necessarily hit the same area.

I have no incentive now to buy another mech in the game. I have all the hard points in the mechs I'll ever need due to ghost heat.

Ah, got your track now. I've got so many mixed feelings on the restricted hardpoints to the customizable options that I can't really put a response down on paper (or net) on where I stand there.

As for the convergence.. I always felt that the fact that everything hits where we aim is a balance flaw. Leading to boating, etc. I remember waaay back on launch. My first rant was about surgical precision on our weapons. I expected convergence taking much longer, and so if you snapfired 8 medium lasers, it would be like a shotgun of sorts, not all hitting X precisely. That being as close as you can get to the roll 2d6 and figure out where your shots hit. The whole firing cone. You put your weapons on the mech, mostly aiming center mass since thats the BEST chance of hitting, and then your weapons fired in that area.

But again, thats the hard part of moving into a live game. Would a system like that be effective? viable? fun?

As it is, the people who have been able to put this game out for us have decided upon a best path. And we're along for the ride. We can provide as much input and suggestions as possible, and see what we think of the results. Maybe they considered my options already, and it wasn't a viable platform. Whenever we see a live format of a game, we never know what they may have tested or prodded before that and ruled out.

Good points though, and I understand your POV.


(Edit)

To add, I must say I like the idea of mechs having their builds. Yes, the Awesome is fearsome cause its a PPC cannon. And you KNOW that when you see it in TT. Just like a Shreck. You fear a shreck for what the thing is, a ppc turret on wheels, fed by fury and fear.

But, I also like being able to customize things... my favorite miniature in my collection is my personal Warhammer (unseen) with the spotlight torn off, and a ShadowHawk AC on that shoulder instead. (Love kitbashing) So, hence my turmoil!

Edited by John Wolf, 09 October 2013 - 06:08 PM.
Adding thoughts.

[Wilhelm Fraek]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 06:02 PM, said:

If you want a change, quit buying mechs. Everyone has enough mechs now due to ghost heat and unlimited hard points. The best mechs are already in the game, they can't release anything else worth buying now. People are still buying mechs and Piranha isn't seeing a decrease in cash flow, if they were they'd change their weapons.

So far, the only thing Piranha has backtracked on was ECM and Seismic. They have done little on weapons other than playing with heat or weapon velocity. Velocity is meaningless, Heat is what stops DPS in the game now.

I have yet to spend a cent in this game, I want to see some progress in what the community is asking for first.Which is why I said if they do this, something that help make the game better for us it gvies me a reason to spend some cash.

[Erebus Alpha]

It's easier to make a list of what the developers haven't failed at.

Concept Art
Modelling

Hmmm...it's hard to come up with anything else. Really, I play this game when I want to see some pretty mechs. Then I remember what an utter trainwreck of game design this is after a match or two, and go back to Mechcommander 2 or Mechwarrior 4 for a few hours.

Coincidentally, the sites that let you download Mechcommander 2 and Mechwarrior 4 for free seem to have disappeared, but IDC, I have discs. Digital distribution can go *******.

[Alexandrix]

Wilhelm Fraek, on 09 October 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

This right here is the fix we need, hell you put this in and ill buy a phoenix order

Good luck with that.Myself and many others have been begging for a better hard-point system since early closed beta.Along with a slew of other changes that seem like obvious ideas for improvement.

[Ghogiel]

FupDup, on 09 October 2013 - 05:50 PM, said:

As a Streaktaro player I can assure you that Streaks are not a joke against lights, and even with spread lasers are still useful against them.


30 is the most popularly suggested number, and that's what I'll go with for now. If you fired 3 ERpeeps with a 30 cap, that would put you at 45 heat instantly (not counting ghost heat) and you'd probably cook to death from internal damage. Even just 2 ERpeeps at once would shutdown with a cap of 30. We'd probably have to buff the ER and normal PPCs if we went with a cap of 30 (i.e. increase their projectile speed by a large amount to make them deadlier at long range).

As for heat cooling rate, I'd suggest roughly double our current values for now. I can't know for sure what the exact "just right" numbers should be without playtesting, but these are some good starting points.

Sounds too close to a nerf to energy and indirect buff to ballistics. Particularly the AC5 which is nearly heat neutral on the 10 basic heat sinks as is, and certainly if the cooling rate was faster.

[Khobai]

battletech has both high dissipation and high capacity, but heat scale penalties.

so changing from low dissipation/high capacity to high dissipation/low capacity while still not having heatscale penalties doesnt get us any closer to battletech.

[FupDup]

Zyllos, on 09 October 2013 - 06:04 PM, said:

That is one option but I think an invalid one. The old MechWarrior games limited weapons by slot numbers. Larger weapons took up more slot numbers while smaller ones took up smaller numbers. But there was no limit on the number of weapons that could be equipped.

What needs to happen, in my opinion, is to force a limit of # of weapons that can be equipped (like MWO does now) but limit those hardpoints with a size modifier.

Take the AWS-8Q. It's default loadout is 3 PPCs and 1 Small Laser. With modifications done by PGI, it can now equip not only those 3 PPCs, but also additional energy weapons in the same location.

Instead, what should be happening is that each of those locations has the 1 Large Energy hardpoint to allow the stock build to be created, but the additional hardpoints would be reduced in size.

So, for example, the LT of the AWS-8Q would be 1 Large, 1 Medium, and 1 Small Energy hardpoints.

To me, personally, this is my #2 biggest problem with MWO. With the open ended weapon hardpoints, there is no difference between an Awesome and a Stalker in terms of what can be equipped. And thus, the Stalker was played over the Awesome because it's silhouette was better. But giving the Awesome the only mech to equip 3 Large Energy hardpoints in the assault class, it makes it unique.

And to continue with this subject of odd weapon design, we have issues with pin point accuracy/convergence (#1 issue with MWO). This is leading to the "drilling" effect that we see today, with one section taken out and no other sections rarely hit. This is especially true with arms.

It would be hard for me to give you an exact answer on how to fix this, but there has been MANY suggestions offered on the forums on how to fix this. If more detail is wanted, I would suggest asking either myself directly, or some of the big names like Homeless Bill, HHR Insanity, and a few other names in which you can find their suggestions that dot the forums on why and how this should be fixed.

Personally, my own take on the hardpoint system should be a combination of critical slots and a set # of guns you can fit into those critical slots. For instance, the Hunchback would not change at all because it would get 12 slots for ballistics in the right torso and be limited to roughly 3 weapons in that hunch. A better example would be a Catapult K2. My own brainstorm limitation on the K2 would be 4E slots and limit of 2 energy weapons per arm, 4B slots per side torso with 1 weapon limit, and 2E slots per side torso with 1 weapon limit. Basically, this would allow the K2 to do most of its current normal builds, but would prevent the crazy stuff like the infamous Boomcat or Gausscat.

I feel that hardpoints based on # only like MWO lead to boating of large weapons, while MW4 limiting of slots only leads to too many small weapons. I think that this hybrid system gets the best of both worlds.

Khobai, on 09 October 2013 - 06:08 PM, said:

battletech has both high dissipation and high capacity, but heat scale penalties.

so changing from low dissipation/high capacity to high dissipation/low capacity while still not having heatscale penalties doesnt get us any closer to battletech.

It's not intended to get us closer to Battletech, it's just supposed to make energy weapons more comparable in endurance to ballistics. High dissipation and high capacity like TT would let a 30 DHS Clan mech get away with an alpha strike of 4 ERPPCs and not ever worry about heat. With convergence...that could cause some issues.

Edited by FupDup, 09 October 2013 - 06:12 PM.

[Chavette]

Weapon balancing the PGI way:

• Make heat slow dissipation, but high capacity, that encourages high alpha/hiding gameplay.
  
• Get surprised when people figure out JJ mechanic plays straight into it, and nerf JJ into ground.
  
• Get surprised people still aplha without JJ and nerf boating into the ground, by creating an obscure heat system.
  
• Get surprised when people mix some weapons to allow alpha meta, and nerf various weapons into ground.
  
• Still have no clue why it all happened, and still dismiss the low cap, high drain idea.

Edited by Chavette, 09 October 2013 - 06:15 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

It's not intended to get us closer to Battletech, it's just supposed to make energy weapons more comparable in endurance to ballistics. High dissipation and high capacity like TT would let a 30 DHS Clan mech get away with an alpha strike of 4 ERPPCs and not ever worry about heat. With convergence...that could cause some issues.

Id still prefer a system that was more like battletech. That has high dissipation and high capacity, but in order to utilize that high capacity you have to suffer incremental heat penalties. That gives you the choice to alphastrike or not... it doesnt remove alphastriking completely as an option.

Quote

High dissipation and high capacity like TT would let a 30 DHS Clan mech get away with an alpha strike of 4 ERPPCs and not ever worry about heat. With convergence...that could cause some issues.

Exactly convergence is the real problem here. There was nothing ever wrong with the battletech heat system. Convergence is what needs to be addressed. Nothing wrong with firing 4 ERPPCs. But there is something very wrong with them all hitting the same spot. So either convergence needs to be removed or armor ratios need to be redistributed based on MWO hit probability rather than TT hit probability. Messing with the heat system is never going to fully balance convergence.

Edited by Khobai, 09 October 2013 - 06:19 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

@Fup,

So, like go back to the 30 scale hard lock? How fast do you suggest heat dissipates? 3 ERpeeps shutsdown?

@Rhent

We talking about the older game hardpoint locks? Like If it comes with a PPC standard, you can't strip it to add as many Mediums as you want? Sorry, not following you just yet.

I'm not sure what the OP is trying to say. The post really reads as a rant due to frustration.

Auto cannons are balanced because of the weight of the weapon, ammunition, and critical slot requirements.

Energy weapons run hot, but heat sinks will help with that. Heat sinks also take weight and critical slots.

I have thought about having a hard top end on the heat scale, just like in TT. 30 points seems a good place to start. A 1% per second dissapation for heat sinks seems fine. Maybe raise doubles do 1.5.

I would like to see effects caused by high heat. I think that is a missing element to the heat system right now.

[Mechteric]

I think its mostly due to the ghost heat that energy weapons are suffering from. Since PPCs now have finally returned to their proper base heat, I think the ghost heat should be severely reduced or removed to compensate.

[John Wolf]

Dirus Nigh, on 09 October 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

I would like to see effects caused by high heat. I think that is a missing element to the heat system right now.

This is something I had completely forgotten about until this thread. What balance comes into play when you have movement reduction, and possible heat explosions on heat boats? Ammo explosions would be TOOO risky, and would suck to just blow up cause your ammo cooked.. but, how does everyone feel about speed reductions? Do you think that could bring balance to the force if you will?

[Wilhelm Fraek]

Shouldnt the mech size also dictate what weapons it can equipe?

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 09 October 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

Id still prefer a system that was more like battletech. That has high dissipation and high capacity, but in order to utilize that high capacity you have to suffer incremental heat penalties. That gives you the choice to alphastrike or not... it doesnt remove alphastriking completely as an option.

Technically you could still alpha...as long as your total heat load was less than whatever we set the capacity to.

Khobai, on 09 October 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

Exactly convergence is the real problem here. There was nothing ever wrong with the battletech heat system. Convergence is what needs to be addressed. Nothing wrong with firing 4 ERPPCs. But there is something very wrong with them all hitting the same spot. So either convergence needs to be removed or armor ratios need to be redistributed based on MWO hit probability rather than TT hit probability. Messing with the heat system is never going to fully balance convergence.

The primary intention of heat system tweaking isn't to balance convergence so much as it is to just let people use energy weapons at a much higher rate of fire than we can now, although it would certainly make landing consecutive shots with high-heat loadouts much more difficult (resulting in some damage spreading in most situations). Admittedly, this doesn't affect ballistics because of their low heat per shot, but there are other ways around that if we are forced to keep having convergence (i.e. the smaller ACs already have fast RoF to spread damage, the bigger ones can possibly be split into multiple shells).

Edited by FupDup, 09 October 2013 - 06:27 PM.

[Davers]

Assuming that major changes to convergence and hard point sizes are off the table, energy weapons need a lot of help. My 3 UAC Illya NEVER overheats while firing the autocannons. But the 2 medium lasers on it cause the heat to jump. It would probably be better to just remove them for more ammo and remove overheating possibilities. AC/Gauss ammo is also too high. It is very easy to equip enough ammo, even for an AC/20 (or two), for the entire battle.

[BeardedGlass]

One would think that if your heat was really high, the movement would be the most defining factor for determining what weapons you mount. For example a spider with a PPC that had the 30 heat scale as well would be severely slowed by using that weapon, but if they used a medium laser for example, they would generate far less heat and be able to maintain speed. This would leave those usually heavy weapons with the slower mechs, as they have the armor and additional firepower to maintain the damage combined with their already slow speed, it has less of an overall effect on them.

[Davers]

I don't like movement penalties from heat. It will punish medium and light mechs while heavier mechs couldn't care less.

[FupDup]

Davers, on 09 October 2013 - 06:30 PM, said:

I don't like movement penalties from heat. It will punish medium and light mechs while heavier mechs couldn't care less.

On the other hand, if our heat system were designed in a sane fashion, lights and mediums wouldn't run nearly as hot as they do now unless they deliberately chose a high-heat loadout (a few Medium Lasers and SRMs should NOT overheat you in only a few shots, especially if you're using a lot of DHS!).

[BeardedGlass]

It would only punish light and medium mechs for equipping weapons like large pulse lasers, which in the other MechWarrior games they really couldn't equip anyway. and even then, having the appropriate weapons like small/ medium lasers wouldn't have as much as an impact on your speed as would going all out with a large pulse.

[Dirus Nigh]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 06:21 PM, said:

This is something I had completely forgotten about until this thread. What balance comes into play when you have movement reduction, and possible heat explosions on heat boats? Ammo explosions would be TOOO risky, and would suck to just blow up cause your ammo cooked.. but, how does everyone feel about speed reductions? Do you think that could bring balance to the force if you will?

I and some others have been suggesting addapting heat effects to MWO sense closed beta.

The one thing I think should never be a part of the system is ammunition explosions. With the one exception of damage due to heat levels being so high they go above the automatic shutdown. Right now a mech takes damage after going over 100% on the heat scale. That damage can cause crit chances in locations. Not a very large chance mind you. Just enough to make it possible.

Ideally heat effects would effect the fallowing.

Mech speed: Max speed, acceleration, and deceleration.

Movement: Turning speed, torso, and arm movement speeds.

Targeting: Delays in weapons convergence, lock on times increasing.

Weapons: increasing weapon cool down rates, damage drop of rates after effective range. Increasing jam rate of UAC.

Target data and sensors: Target data updates take longer, sensors range is decreased, ECM/BAP effected.

HUD: Hud starts flickering in and out and fuzzing/wobbles.