128 replies to this topic

[Rhent]

Kraven Kor, on 10 October 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

I'd disagree there.

We are missing a ballistics-heavy assault mech such as the Annihilator or Mauler, and, naturally, melee mechs with hatchets and the like. The latter being a twinkle in our eye at best.

You will not see a 90+ ton mech with hard points to carry 2 AC/20's or 3-4 AC/10's any time in the near future. The weapons are so screwed up relying on heat, that a mech with those build outs would become the dominant assault on release.

[Artgathan]

A point I'd like to address on the subject of heat: given a fast enough heat dissipation, heat penalties are essentially meaningless (since you cool down before they really hit you, and they don't hurt you for long).

I throw in the following counter-proposal (as a thought experiment):

• Have a "Heat Damage System"
  
• When a mech is over X% heat, "Subsystem" Bars start to fill (at different speeds). If the mech goes under X% heat, the bars stop filling
  
• The bars fill as a speed that is proportional to how far over X% the mech's heat is
  
• Subsystem Bars never empty or decrease
  
• Once a Subsystem Bar is full, that system is permanently disabled (causing things like permanent speed loss, ammo explosions, slower turning speed, reduced arm turning radius, slower weapon reloads, etc...)

[RandomLurker]

Artgathan, on 10 October 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

A point I'd like to address on the subject of heat: given a fast enough heat dissipation, heat penalties are essentially meaningless (since you cool down before they really hit you, and they don't hurt you for long).

Peak Dissipation (check my post a couple up) solves this rather nicely.

[Xanquil]

Again; Even though I agree hardpoint limitations are still a bit too lax, They will not do anything to curb high damage pinpoint alpha strikes. Which is what ghost heat was designed to do.
Should hardpoints be a bit more restricted, sure. Only because it will make variants seem more different.

Changing the heat cap won't get rid of ghost heat either, again because it was created to combat high damage pinpoint alpha strikes.

High damage pinpoint alpha strikes will only ever be fixed with the removal of pinpoint accuracy.
The high damage part can be modified easily by hardpoint, heat restrictions, and damage balance changes.

[Rhent]

Xanquil, on 10 October 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

Again; Even though I agree hardpoint limitations are still a bit too lax, They will not do anything to curb high damage pinpoint alpha strikes. Which is what ghost heat was designed to do.
Should hardpoints be a bit more restricted, sure. Only because it will make variants seem more different.

Changing the heat cap won't get rid of ghost heat either, again because it was created to combat high damage pinpoint alpha strikes.

High damage pinpoint alpha strikes will only ever be fixed with the removal of pinpoint accuracy.
The high damage part can be modified easily by hardpoint, heat restrictions, and damage balance changes.

I've written before Hardpoint limitations and setting at least 2 different conversions Arms or Torsos would greatly increase mech diversity and allow you to do full damage however you'd only get the hardpoints from the Arms OR Torso landing exactly where you aimed, the other conversion points would spread to other parts of the mech. Now lets say only a few mechs were allowed to boat 3-4 PPC's, lets say there is an awesome variant that can do 2 PPC's in arms and 2 PPC's in Torsos, you have 2 different conversions. It would make having large hard points in the right conversion part of a mech a lot more important.

[Dirus Nigh]

GalaxyBluestar, on 09 October 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

i'll agree to this when GH is no more.

Right. Ghost heat is not a good mechanic. It's unintuitive and in inelegant. While progressive effects due to heat levels is immersive.

[Captain Stiffy]

The way that heat works in this game is almost totally divorced from normal battletech. They strayed way too far and are paying for it now.

Development planners need to re-read CITYTECH and 3050.

[Pht]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 05:28 PM, said:

The developers went the route that HEAT would be the primary limiter of the game for weapon use. They ignored hard point limitations or to have weapon conversion change by mount placement.

At this point I believe I know why they didn't do any sort of weapon conversion thing; russ basically said he doesn't think the idea of non-perfect convergence under the reticule for all similar velocity weapons fired at the same time is "fun," whatever fun means to him, and bryan said he thinks the 'mechs are being well simulated.

I'd like to know in at least some detail why Russ thinks this wouldn't be fun (and what exactly he thinks de-converging the weapons fire would of necessity involve).


I've also already pointed out to bryan that 'mechs aren't being simulated as far as their weapons handling ... and that this isn't my opinion, it's rather a statement directly from the horse's mouth. No comment back from him on that point yet.

Quote

Welcome to the end of the game, Autocannon Online.

Doubtful. Russ is perfectly ok with continuous balance patches set against whatever thing is "too OP" at any given moment. He does believe that the patches will get less and less punitive, but I think he's wrong on that account. How hard any hammer hits any mole is directly related to how far any given mole is sticking up... and if pgi doesn't give a hard hammer stroke to a mole that's sticking way out, they risk the game becoming a one-tactic game.

The thing about whack-a-mole style balance patches is that you only have two choices with them ... either continuously changing gameplay, or a static gameplay that's stratified and can't change at all.

Edited by Pht, 10 October 2013 - 05:20 PM.

[Gaan Cathal]

Pht, on 10 October 2013 - 05:19 PM, said:

At this point I believe I know why they didn't do any sort of weapon conversion thing; russ basically said he doesn't think the idea of non-perfect convergence under the reticule for all similar velocity weapons fired at the same time is "fun," whatever fun means to him, and bryan said he thinks the 'mechs are being well simulated.

I'd like to know in at least some detail why Russ thinks this wouldn't be fun (and what exactly he thinks de-converging the weapons fire would of necessity involve).


I've also already pointed out to bryan that 'mechs aren't being simulated as far as their weapons handling ... and that this isn't my opinion, it's rather a statement directly from the horse's mouth. No comment back from him on that point yet.

I distinctly remember, although can't find a quote, a thread about this where one of the Devs stated/intimated that either the original removal of convergence-time (we did have it, after all) or the decision not to reintroduce it was because it was causing/suffering from some sort of netcode or processing issue.

This was when I was suggesting converging to locked target instead of whatever's under your crosshair for some purpose or other (related to the suggestion being discussed IIRC, possibly one of those "torso weapons don't converge in BT" threads - which is false, if anyone's interested). Certainly convergence was being discussed a lot in the thread.

I certainly think that convergence being instant is more of an issue than it being pinpoint, but if they can't work around the technical issues, they can't work around the technical issues I guess.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 10 October 2013 - 06:00 PM.

[Xanquil]

I they just made alpha strikes work like an of the other multi-attack weapons (SRM,LRM, LB-X) it would go a long way to getting rid of ghost heat.
What I mean is if you fire more than one weapon at the same time the weapons would spread just like an LB-X. This would have to also be coupled with a .5 second(like chain fire) global cooldown to keep people from using macros to get around it.
It wouldn't be perfect but it is better than what we currently have.(IMHO)
It would give people the option to use pinpoint accuracy attacks, but remove the pinpoint alpha strike problem.
Even better people could have their 4-6 PPC alpha strike without it being overpowered, because all of those PPCs aren't going to all hit the same spot(some may even miss).

This may even get DHS to all be 2.0, but that is wishfull thinking.

[MustrumRidcully]

In general, heat, weight and crits are all about trade-offs in the table top.

A PPC might be lighter than an AC/10, but produces more heat. The overal weapon system weight if you'd try to counter all the heat would be roughly equal. (Once we add DHS, it becomes necessary to replace auto-cannons with gauss, lbx or UAC, or special ammo types, since the heat component becomes cheaper and the PPC benefits more than the AC).

Can can choose to go heat neutral. You will be able to fire (yes, evne alpha) all day long. But someome that didn't go heat neutral will deliver more in a single alpha than you, and if you give that enemy time to cool off, he effectively gets superior firepower. If you're heat neutral, you basically would need to press a non-heat neutral enemy mech.
If you're not heat neutral, you must find opportunities where you (and your team) are allowed to cool off safely.

So it's a trade-off.


At least in the table top.

In M:WO, it's more a race to the CT hit points of your target and the heat scale maximum your build can carry. If you can reach the end of the enemies hit points before you overheat, all is good. And hit point, usual accuracy and the heat scale work out to usually benefit the very hot mechs.

PGI is probably "scared" of heat neutral mechs because in earlier titles, these mechs could deal mech-crippling alphas. That means going non-heat neutral was just an overkill. A big reason for the destructive capabilities of mechs in earlier abilities was the perfect convergence of lasers coupled with hitscan and no beam durations.
But thanks to the guys at MW:LL that apparantly came up with laser beam durations, PGI already has this problem partially solved. With beam durations, damage isn't coming as precise, and the alpha boat super killer mechs are not possible.
They only need to look closer at ballistics and PPCs.

And beyond that, they can als consider that a lower heat cap per se limits a lot of alpha capability. (But not all, ballistics again.)

---

One take on ACs I'd like to try... (If only we could make our own servers with their own mods.)

3 types of (Standard) Auto-Cannon ammunition. Light and Heavy ACs
Light AC Ammo: 2 damage per shot, 720m normal range. (Max range 1440m perhaps?)
Heavy AC Ammo: 5 damage per shot, 540m norma range (Max range 1080m perhaps?)

AC/2: Fires a single shot of light AC ammo.
AC/5: Fires a single shot of heavy AC ammo.
AC/10: Fires 5 shots of light AC ammo over 0.5 seconds. Recoil spreads this damage, at 450m the first and last shot are at a distance of xto each other.
AC/20: Fires 4 shots of heavy AC ammo over 0.5 seconds. Recoil spreads this damage, at 270m the first and last shot are at a distance of x to each other.
x is a distance we deem suitable to mark a significant drop in precision at that range. Basically, x could be somehting like the distance between the left and right torso on an Atlas, however many meters that is.

Cooldown and heat of these weapons are balanced around these base assumptions (plus the natural weight and crit slots required).

AC/2 and AC/5 would be pinpoint precise auto-cannons with good range. Sniper weapons, basically.
AC/10 and AC/20 would lack precision but have a far better damage output. While they can shoot far beyond their normal range, the combination of recoil and firing duration makes it very unlikely you can actually deliver all damage to the target.

Since AC/2 and AC/10 share the same ammo, and AC/5 and AC/20 share the same ammo, it becomes "natural" to mix these - they require the same lead. They can even be somewhat effective in the same range brackets, with the heavier parts of course losing a lot of their effective firepower from spreading the damage

You could also add special modules or mech efficiencies that allow the pilot to select how many shots an AC actually fires - so if need be, someone with the "Customizable Fire Limiter" could configure his AC/20 to fire only a single shot and use it as an ineffecient AC/5.

Ultra Cannons simply have the option to double the amount of shots fired, at the risk of jamming.
The canonical UAC ranges would be the point where recoil spreads the projectiles between first and last to the distance of x, with the caveat that in double shot mode, the distance increases to 2x.
So an UAC/10 in "normal mode" would have less recoil than an AC/10, spreading to to x only at 540m, but in "ultra" mode it would be 2x at 540m.



The challenging part is what to do with the Gauss. It doesn't lend itself as well to be weapon with a lot of bullets fired. But maybe one could fix the Gauss already by just doubling its rate of fire and halving its damage per shot. The charge-up thingy I don't think suffices (and has negative effects as well. Boating Gauss is fine, mixing with other guns - rather not.)

[Lupus Aurelius]

MustrumRidcully, on 10 October 2013 - 11:01 PM, said:

One take on ACs I'd like to try... (If only we could make our own servers with their own mods.)

3 types of (Standard) Auto-Cannon ammunition. Light and Heavy ACs
Light AC Ammo: 2 damage per shot, 720m normal range. (Max range 1440m perhaps?)
Heavy AC Ammo: 5 damage per shot, 540m norma range (Max range 1080m perhaps?)

AC/2: Fires a single shot of light AC ammo.
AC/5: Fires a single shot of heavy AC ammo.
AC/10: Fires 5 shots of light AC ammo over 0.5 seconds. Recoil spreads this damage, at 450m the first and last shot are at a distance of xto each other.
AC/20: Fires 4 shots of heavy AC ammo over 0.5 seconds. Recoil spreads this damage, at 270m the first and last shot are at a distance of x to each other.
x is a distance we deem suitable to mark a significant drop in precision at that range. Basically, x could be somehting like the distance between the left and right torso on an Atlas, however many meters that is.

Similar to TT. Autocannons did not fire single rounds:

Sarna= said:

An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts. It is, basically, a giant "machine gun" that fires predominantly cased explosive shells though models firing saboted high velocity kinetic energy penetrators or caseless ordnance do exist. Among the earliest tank/BattleMech scale weaponry produced, autocannons produce far less heat than energy weapons, but are considerably bulkier and are dependent upon limited stores of ammunition.

Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage versus armor.[1] The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors. Autocannon are grouped into the following loose damage classes:

Autocannon/2
Autocannon/5
Autocannon/10
Autocannon/20
Beyond the "standard" models, variants include the shotgun-like LBX, quick-firing Ultra and the gatling-type Rotary. Light-weight variants and capital ship scale models also exist. The experimental Hypervelocity Autocannon has also entered limited production.[2][3]

[edit]Caliber

Caliber is fluff for the size of the barrel that the shell or shells are fired from and no standard caliber has been set for any of the classes of Autocannon. Autocannon in a class vary by manufacturer and model. With the fluffed number of shells and caliber being specified, no Autocannon has been specified to be one shell fired for each "round" or burst of fire. Probable exceptions are the 185 mm ChemJet Gun Autocannon/20 mounted on the Demolisher combat vehicle and Monitor Surface vessel or the 203 mm Ultra Autocannon/20 on the Cauldron Born A BattleMech.

As such, they were not pinpoint weapons in that you had 1 shell delivering all the damage, instead you had a burst of shells that did the damage cumulatively.

[MustrumRidcully]

Lupus Aurelius, on 11 October 2013 - 04:48 AM, said:

Similar to TT. Autocannons did not fire single rounds:

In the fluff they didn't mechanically they did. The idea is of course inspired by the fluff.

Quote

As such, they were not pinpoint weapons in that you had 1 shell delivering all the damage, instead you had a burst of shells that did the damage cumulatively.

Well, an AC/20 was "kinda" a pinpoint weapon. It dealt 20 damage to one point on the mech. With the caveat - the hit location was random, which is very different from mouse aiming. Players don't have 100 % accuracy, but they can significantly affect their chance to hit whatever hit locations they wished to hit, where the options in the table top where very limited.
Even then, dealing 20 damage to one random location was an advantage over dealing 4 x 5 damage to a random location each, which is why an AC/20 with heat sinks and ammo is far heavier than 4 medium lasers with heat sinks.

[Turist0AT]

and it begins. the road to AC nerfs...

[culverin]

I don't get what's so hard to understand.

Tabletop is balanced.

• Weapon damage
  
• Weapon range
  
• Mech speed
  
• Mech mobility (jump jets)
  
• Weapon heat
  
• Weapon weight
  
• Weapon inaccuracy based on mech's movement.
  
• An extremely punishing heat scale
  

The game will remain inherently unbalanced no matter how you tweak the range, damage, speed (engine caps) and nerf jump jets.

Throw the 2 biggest balancing factors out the door.
But you still want to use all the BattleMech designs, weapon profiles and ranges?
Well duh we will have problems!!!


You are not supposed to place 4 ER PPC shots in a single location.
1. That alpha heat spike would shut down the mech for 30 seconds.
2. Mechs aren't that accurate, that far out!

[Karl Streiger]

Turist0AT, on 11 October 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

and it begins. the road to AC nerfs...

Not necessary -

[Aeolus Drift]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 06:04 PM, said:

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!

my god, what is this world where Moderators actually engage in and frame constructive arguments, rather than playing "pat the flames before it reaches the ammo rack".

[3rdworld]

culverin, on 11 October 2013 - 06:01 AM, said:

I don't get what's so hard to understand.

Tabletop is balanced.

Because TT isn't balanced.

That is the entire purpose of the BV system.

[Karl Streiger]

3rdworld, on 11 October 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

Because TT isn't balanced.

That is the entire purpose of the BV system.

That became necessary with those Star league stuff and DHS and Endosteel and Clan Tech....

Would have been interesting to see the 3025 Tech balanced before moving on to SL Tech - but those Clan Wanabees made it not possible to start MWO in 3017

[ArmageddonKnight]

Hardpoint restrictions, individual mech traits, and a better heat system, NEED,... NEEEED... implimenting if this game is to become truley balanced and playable with a variety of play styles.
Without it, people will ALWAYS find the best high alpha setups and use those to keep the current meta going.

With a hardpoint restritcion system there would be a need for mech traits so that its fair across the board, and a lower heat cap with increased cooldown speed along with both the hardpoint limits and the traits will allow mechs to become more unique in what they are capable of but whislt still maintaining customisation.

A common example, the AWS-8Q is perfect for such discussion.
Trait: Reduced PPC heat.
Notable hardpoint limits: 3 Large (or XLarge) energy points

The way i forsee hardpoint limits being implimented would be as follow.
it would work on 'physical size' and the ability to mount them on the chassis.

3 types: Energy, Ballistic, Missile.
3 or 4 Sizes : Small, medium, Large and/or XLarge.
Each individual weapon would have their slot alocation size changed to fit within the hardpoint design.
So for example.
Catapult K2
Left arm and Right Arm = 1 Large/Xlarge Energy hardpoint each.
These hardpoints could contain 1 Xlarge weapon or 1 large weapon, or 2 medium weapons, or 3 Small weapons. or 1 medium and 2 small or 1 large and 1 small.
Left and right torsor would have 1 Small Energy hardpoint each and 1 medium ballistic hardpoint each.
Allowing for example 1 Small laser + ac5 each side.

Some possible loadouts could then result in.(if tonnage allowed)
2 PPC + 2 Slaser + 2 Ac5.
or
4 Mlaser + 4 SLaser + 2 Ac5/2
or
2 Mlaser +6 Slaser + 2 Ac5/2
etc

Bassicaly each 'size' of hardpoint Small to large/Xlarge would be given a number.
So say Small was given a number of 2
Medium 3
Large 4
Xlarge 6
Meaning a Xl could have any combination of the lower sizes that fit. So 3 Smalls or 2 mediums or a large + a small.
Im sure PGI could find better firgure to still allow more customisation whilst restricting silly loadouts.

Kinda hard to explain fully but im sure i get the point across.

PGI would then have to work Structure Upgrades into this system.Like how would Endo Steel affect hardpoints. The way i see it is bassicaly the same as now. Except that certain slots within the current design are allocated a size for weapons as explained above, the other slots are universal but unuseable by weapons, meaning if u add endo-steel it uses up these universal slots that would otherwise be used for Heatsinks, ammo, ams, ecm, JJ's, etc etc.

i hope those reading have been able to keep up wuith what im tryign to explain, im not the best at writing down my thoughts, though i could easily explain this in person lol.

The main point i would put across to PGI with a system like this is that. There would still be alot of customization. A mech doesnt have to be symetric. the K2 for example could have 1 PPC in the left pod and 2 Medium lasers in the right or some such. The same with other mechs. The customisation would survive, but boating (unless the chassis is designed for it) would be reduced dramticaly and the alpha meta would be gone wiht hte implimentation of the better heat system. Mech traits would allow those designed for certain purposes but unabele to fullfill them right now ..like the JM6-DD... to fullfil lthem once again.
I.E JM6-DD Small And Medium AC weight reduced by X%.
Allowing 6 Ac2's with enough ammo to be used properly.

Edited by ArmageddonKnight, 11 October 2013 - 06:47 AM.