56 replies to this topic

[Krinkov]

Here is a video of a real 1 megawatt pulse laser pistol. Though the pulse is only .0000001 seconds.

[Irreverent]

I just had another post on this, and this was pretty much my point. Lasers are at a huge disadvantage right now to ballistics. Why they insist on throwing over 30 years of functional game balance out the window I don't understand. Lasers as designed and already balanced in the original game did all their damage to a single location. Yes, this makes them more scary. That's the point. In the current game, they're clearly secondary weapons. Is it easy to hit your target with the constant beam? Sure it is. If it's running 130+ kph good luck doing any real damage to them though. Their firing time should be really short, as suggested, maybe 0.2 to 0.3 seconds Would this make a Jenner more effective? Yes, but it also makes it a lot easier to kill as well if you concentrate the damage that's hitting them. This would also give lasers a much needed dps boost to bring them in line with the other primary weapons.

Yes, AC take up space and weight, and have ammo restrictions. Lasers are smaller and lighter but generate significantly more heat and have shorter ranges. That's the trade off. If you disagree that's fine, but you're arguing against 3 decades of established playability and balance, so good luck with that. And you can pretty effectively argue that ammo is not a major consideration in this game due to the short length of the matches. You can build a dual AC/20 build, or quad AC/2, or 6 MG, and give it enough ammo to last through most matches, so that argument really holds little weight for me.

[MustrumRidcully]

SmurfOff, on 18 October 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Maybe it is time to give laser mechanics another review. The current game is dominated by ballistic builds because even with the ammo / weight issues, they are the most effective weapons. I think the core of this issue is the time on target need for lasers to deliver full damage, and it is not clear if there are hit detection issues mid fire on a target. For a ballistic pilot, the only challenge is the lead time, all damage is done in one instant.

So in any situation, the ballistics pilot will outdamage a similar configured energy mech. The ballistics pilot can torso twist and time shots, where the laser pilot needs to manage time on target, cycling weapons to avoid heat penalties, and reducing fire rates to prevent self immolation.

The question to Devel:
Do you feel there are any issues with lasers?
would you be willing to run a test run with different fire times on laser weapons?
I know that the DX11 test has been in works for some time, would it possible to run a laser test before the DX11 test, or would we need to wait?

I would rather revisit the ballistics and turn them into salvo-firing weapons.

Making lasers have a beam duration is basically the best idea that PGI ever didn't have on its
own but took from Mechwarrior: LIving Legends. It severaly neuters (not completely, but severely) neuters the advantage of convergence (and people hoping that convergence will go away or be limited are probably way too optimistic).

Turning auto-cannons into salvo-firing weapons is conceptually pretty simple. I think people can easily believe in an auto-cannon firing a burst of rounds which each trigger.

For PPCs and Gauss it might be harder, but maybe there are other options there. The "charge" idea (not the mechanic) isn't bad. If we say PPC and Gauss draw so much power at once that they can't be fired together on any mech and require at least a 0.5 second delay between each shot, you have limited them, too, and the remaining benefit of single projectile damage you can compensate with these weapons heat efficiency (PPC) or rate of fire (Gauss).

[FupDup]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 October 2013 - 06:19 AM, said:

I would rather revisit the ballistics and turn them into salvo-firing weapons.

Making lasers have a beam duration is basically the best idea that PGI ever didn't have on its
own but took from Mechwarrior: LIving Legends. It severaly neuters (not completely, but severely) neuters the advantage of convergence (and people hoping that convergence will go away or be limited are probably way too optimistic).

Turning auto-cannons into salvo-firing weapons is conceptually pretty simple. I think people can easily believe in an auto-cannon firing a burst of rounds which each trigger.

For PPCs and Gauss it might be harder, but maybe there are other options there. The "charge" idea (not the mechanic) isn't bad. If we say PPC and Gauss draw so much power at once that they can't be fired together on any mech and require at least a 0.5 second delay between each shot, you have limited them, too, and the remaining benefit of single projectile damage you can compensate with these weapons heat efficiency (PPC) or rate of fire (Gauss).

One idea to spread out PPC damage is to use an "arc" effect that splits up damage between nearby body parts. Note that this is different than splash--splash is a pre-set radius that can cause issues on mechs of the wrong size, whereas arc would be hardcoded to jump to "nearby" parts without any regard for distance (treats all mechs the same).

[Cise]

I don't really feel there is a massive advantage. Heck I run laser boats on nearly all my mechs and enjoy great success. If you can manage your heat lasers are amazing, but I guess the ballistics cater to those who can't manage that.

[Roland]

Irreverent, on 19 October 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

I just had another post on this, and this was pretty much my point. Lasers are at a huge disadvantage right now to ballistics. Why they insist on throwing over 30 years of functional game balance out the window I don't understand. Lasers as designed and already balanced in the original game did all their damage to a single location.

Because things are different in a shooter.

In the tabletop game, there is no notion of hitscan weapons. So that advantage that exists in mechwarrior is not there.

Likewise, in battletech, weapons do not converge, while they do in mechwarrior. This gives a huge benefit to weapons that can be grouped, which tends to be energy weapons, since they are light weight and do not take many critical slots.

This is generally what we saw in prior mechwarrior games, where energy weapons dominated, despite direct attempts to nerf them down.

[Wolfways]

Cise, on 19 October 2013 - 07:21 AM, said:

I don't really feel there is a massive advantage. Heck I run laser boats on nearly all my mechs and enjoy great success. If you can manage your heat lasers are amazing, but I guess the ballistics cater to those who can't manage that.

Ballistics don't need to manage heat anywhere near as much as lasers. It has nothing to do with a players ability.

[mike29tw]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 October 2013 - 06:19 AM, said:

I would rather revisit the ballistics and turn them into salvo-firing weapons.

Making lasers have a beam duration is basically the best idea that PGI ever didn't have on its
own but took from Mechwarrior: LIving Legends. It severaly neuters (not completely, but severely) neuters the advantage of convergence (and people hoping that convergence will go away or be limited are probably way too optimistic).

Turning auto-cannons into salvo-firing weapons is conceptually pretty simple. I think people can easily believe in an auto-cannon firing a burst of rounds which each trigger.

For PPCs and Gauss it might be harder, but maybe there are other options there. The "charge" idea (not the mechanic) isn't bad. If we say PPC and Gauss draw so much power at once that they can't be fired together on any mech and require at least a 0.5 second delay between each shot, you have limited them, too, and the remaining benefit of single projectile damage you can compensate with these weapons heat efficiency (PPC) or rate of fire (Gauss).

Agree and agree, that ACs are probably better off firing a burst of shells MW3 style.

About Gauss and PPC, I actually have an idea for it.
PPC needs 0.5 sec to charge it, AND you can only charge one single weapon at each time.
Wanna group fire 2 PPCs? you need to charge them one by one for a total of 1 sec.
A Gauss and a PPC? 1.25 sec of charging.
The more you boat, the more time you need to preemptively charge your shot, adding additional time to your group cooldown, and also adding the difficulty to manage them because you will have a smaller window to release your shots.

[focuspark]

Strum Wealh, on 18 October 2013 - 03:50 PM, said:

Actually, the current AC muzzle velocities aren't terribly far off from the higher ends of where they arguably could/should be...

Really, in all cases when I follow the links and compare the MWO muzzel velocity vs the real world equivalent, the MWO velocity it least 50% greater and in some cases 300% faster.

Slow ballistics and they'll be on par with energy. Nothing else needs to change.

[Almond Brown]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 October 2013 - 06:19 AM, said:

I would rather revisit the ballistics and turn them into salvo-firing weapons.

Making lasers have a beam duration is basically the best idea that PGI ever didn't have on its
own but took from Mechwarrior: LIving Legends. It severaly neuters (not completely, but severely) neuters the advantage of convergence (and people hoping that convergence will go away or be limited are probably way too optimistic).

Turning auto-cannons into salvo-firing weapons is conceptually pretty simple. I think people can easily believe in an auto-cannon firing a burst of rounds which each trigger.

For PPCs and Gauss it might be harder, but maybe there are other options there. The "charge" idea (not the mechanic) isn't bad. If we say PPC and Gauss draw so much power at once that they can't be fired together on any mech and require at least a 0.5 second delay between each shot, you have limited them, too, and the remaining benefit of single projectile damage you can compensate with these weapons heat efficiency (PPC) or rate of fire (Gauss).

Pretty sure in BT, if the first shell of any burst hit the target, full damage was rewarded. How do you convert that to MWO when the current LBX10 is seen to be rubbish as it spreads its 10 1 damage pellets, and in a circular cluster. Any Stream based Ballistics profile would be a nightmare to get proper, let alone maximum, damage done to target with, unless you had 10K rounds per ton and could hold down the Trigger while you tracked your target as it ran across the horizon from 450m to 1000m out. LOL

There is not enough cheese in the cellar to handle the amount of whine such a mechanic would generate.

P.S. If this ballistics stream was so tight as to always score the damage when fired, it solves nothing and is not better than the current model.

Simply increase the Heat on the other Ballistic weapon to suit. The AC20 is brutally crazy hot already...

[Zyllos]

Lowering/removing the increase in heat capacity and increasing the dissipation a bit, but not much, would fix the alpha meta and help energy based weapons a bit.

Adding spread to ballistic style weapons (this includes PPC) would greatly balance these weapons for their ability to apply all their damage up front, all onto a single location. It would also balance out ammo based weaponry because it would require more ammo per kill, so this would allow energy weapons a chance to out last ammo based mechs. Right now, pin point accuracy is making ammo based weapons too efficient, allowing multiple kills of mechs, easily.

Modifying the pin point accuracy between torso mounted and arm mounted so that they don't all hit the same location. This is especially important for those 4 and 6 Large Laser "death star" builds that do all their damage onto a single point.

Adding more restrictive hardpoints to keep certain mechs from overlapping others while keeping some mechs from being built into something that they are not suppose to be.

[Screech]

Wolfways, on 19 October 2013 - 02:45 PM, said:

Ballistics don't need to manage heat anywhere near as much as lasers.

Quad AC2's.

Only lasers that need a look at currently are pulse lasers, namely a range increase.

[MustrumRidcully]

Almond Brown, on 21 October 2013 - 09:06 AM, said:

Pretty sure in BT, if the first shell of any burst hit the target, full damage was rewarded. How do you convert that to MWO when the current LBX10 is seen to be rubbish as it spreads its 10 1 damage pellets, and in a circular cluster. Any Stream based Ballistics profile would be a nightmare to get proper, let alone maximum, damage done to target with, unless you had 10K rounds per ton and could hold down the Trigger while you tracked your target as it ran across the horizon from 450m to 1000m out. LOL

There is not enough cheese in the cellar to handle the amount of whine such a mechanic would generate.

P.S. If this ballistics stream was so tight as to always score the damage when fired, it solves nothing and is not better than the current model.

Simply increase the Heat on the other Ballistic weapon to suit. The AC20 is brutally crazy hot already...

Frack Table Top. Table Top also says that lasers deal all their damage in one go. No individual laser pulses or anything like th at. You fire a large laser? That's 8 damage to one location on a hit. Fire a Large Pulse Laser? That's 10 damage to one location on a hit.
The lore claims that ACs can deal their damage in burst of projectiles. The rules say they always deal full damage to a single location.

We already diverged from the table top, and there are good reasons for it. We're not making a game that 2 consenting adults play in their basement with the limits of a board that must fit on your table and dice that must be 6-sided and you want to play more than one combat during the school year. We don't have to limit ourselves to those limitations, we already have enough on our own. But we definitely have the processing power to simulate individual bullets in a salvo of auto-cannon fire, so use what we have.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 21 October 2013 - 11:03 AM.

[Wolfways]

Screech, on 21 October 2013 - 11:00 AM, said:

Quad AC2's.

Only lasers that need a look at currently are pulse lasers, namely a range increase.

I meant individual weapons. If you boat the same weapons you choose to get the ghost heat.

[Warge]

SmurfOff, on 18 October 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Do you feel there are any issues with lasers?
would you be willing to run a test run with different fire times on laser weapons?

2 pulses for pulse lasers. Shorter duration.

MustrumRidcully, on 21 October 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

The lore claims that ACs can deal their damage in burst of projectiles.

Hope to see it in MWO.

Edited by Warge, 21 October 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[Khobai]

IMO lasers could use a few tweaks:

1) decrease medium laser heat to 3.5
2) increase small laser range to 120m
3) remove ghost heat on firing 3 large lasers, er large lasers, large pulse lasers at once
4) increase pulse laser damage by ~20% across the board

[RandomLurker]

Khobai, on 21 October 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

IMO lasers could use a few tweaks:

1) decrease medium laser heat to 3.5
2) increase small laser range to 120m
3) remove ghost heat on firing 3 large lasers, er large lasers, large pulse lasers at once
4) increase pulse laser damage by ~20% across the board

Increasing pulse laser damage would be significantly OP. They already have an effective increase in damage due to the shorter duration- more of the damage goes where you want, and that's what matters. An increase in their maximum range (long range is fine, don't want to outclass standard lasers) to make them more useful will make them attractive for specific purposes.

Heartily agree with the rest.

[focuspark]

I always like making Pulse Lasers into Laser Machine Guns.

Back on topic: to make energy weapons more balanced vs ballistics, just make the ballistics less accurate by lowering their muzzle velocities.

Right now ballistics win the point-damage game, the range game, and the damage per heat game. Seems incredibly unfair and it is. Today ballistics > energy weapons.

[Screech]

Wolfways, on 21 October 2013 - 11:16 AM, said:

I meant individual weapons. If you boat the same weapons you choose to get the ghost heat.

Yeah I suppose I was just referencing its common build. But a single AC2 runs hotter then a single medium laser, the weapons high DPS is balanced by its heat. Also ghost heat on an quad AC2 is not much of a factor when alpha'd.

[New Day]

Krivvan, on 18 October 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

MLs are common enough already that you can't make any big changes to them.

Cut the duration to 1/3 of the current? Are you insane?

Maybe I should support that, because it would make all those Jenner-Fs beyond ridiculously strong.

Edited by NamesAreStupid, 21 October 2013 - 12:32 PM.