408 replies to this topic

[Stelar 7]

DaZur, on 30 October 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

Understood... But in fairness you can't run ballistics without heatsinks... so heatsinks are kind'a a wash.

For the AC2 and to a lesser extent the 20 perhaps, MG, 5 UAC 5 and 10 are all so heat efficient they dont' need more than the 10 engine sinks.

[Sephlock]

Please, I am begging you.

All of you.

Please, can't we just let weapons deal damage, and accept that sometimes our mechs will blow up?

Balance is certainly an issue, but the solution to balance issues is not to reduce the damage on every weapon until we're all firing pop guns and water pistols.

How about we make other things more lethal?

[stjobe]

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

People also tend to ignore the fact that ballistics require ammo, and ammo can explode and kill your mech.

Only if you haven't used it, haven't dumped it, and its bin gets a crit. Which did happen, but not on the scale people seem to think it did.

[Sephlock]

If they ever decide to implement melee, I shudder to think of how horrible the fall from grace will be a few days later.... when all the whining has gotten melee nerfed into the dirt and/or "temporarily" removed.

[Stelar 7]

Sephlock, on 30 October 2013 - 03:29 PM, said:

If they ever decide to implement melee, I shudder to think of how horrible the fall from grace will be a few days later.... when all the whining has gotten melee nerfed into the dirt and/or "temporarily" removed.

All I want is one fully rendered 'Highlander Burial' on YT.

[Sephlock]

Stelar 7, on 30 October 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

All I want is one fully rendered 'Highlander Burial' on YT.

Post nerf, that'll be the "Highlander Cheerleader Pyramid".

[oldradagast]

That being said, energy weapons really are inferior overall.

Ballistics have higher damage, higher DPS, very low heat, and deliver all damage to a single point. The only drawback is they are large, heavy, and need ammo, but most of that means nothing if your mech can carry the weapon since there's no reason not to do so.

Energy weapons, however, have lower damage, lower DPS, and higher heat. Also, a large number of them need to have the beam held on target or are marginally useful at best (pulse lasers, ER lasers, etc.) The only advantages are that they are smaller, lighter, and don't need ammo.

The end result is that if you can bring ballistics, you should do so, and mechs that can carry ballistics are superior. So, something is off balance-wise.

Oh, and don't even get into missiles... buggy hit detection, etc.

[OznerpaG]

Lupus Aurelius, on 30 October 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

The most obvious result are the ACs. AC10 and LB 10X quadrupled it’s damage output, AC5 and UAC5(not counting double shot) 7 times the damage output. The big winner here is the AC2, at over 19 times the damage, and the big loser for ballistics, AC20, at only 2.5 times the damage output.

as soon as i saw this all i could think of this is a perfect example of numbers failing to explain real life. i just spent 3 months being obsessed with the triple ac2 because of it's stat numbers, only to realize recently that a single ac20 is a much better weapon in battle - to get the most out of the triple ac2 you have to point at the target and fire continuously to get results but you are very vulnerable to counter fire since you can't maneuver really when pointing, while with the ac20 you fire,then maneuver while waiting for the cooldown. with the triple ac2 i got more theoretical damage but i got less kills and died more, while with the single ac20 i get more kills and die less

[BrockSamsonFW]

Stelar 7, on 30 October 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

You are also ignoring the elephant in the room, shot travel time, and ammo. Beam weapons trade their lower DPS for increased survivability, (no ammo explosions) and end game viability (Infinate shots). The more a ballistics mech piles in ammo the less it can survive incoming fire.

DaZur, on 30 October 2013 - 01:31 PM, said:

Don't forget weapon and ammo weight, ballistic drop-off at range and the necessity to lead ones target... They are the Hippopotamus and the Rhinoceros in the other corner.

The weight and critical space required for a set of ballistic weapons, and enough ammo for a match, is LESS THAN the weight and critical space required for a set of energy weapons and their heatsinks. Not only that, the lighter and smaller ballistic configuration has SUPERIOR range, dps, damage focus, and other benefits such as camera shake and shot anonymity (no glowing line pointing back to a sniper). This is not a drawback of a ballistic configuration it is an ADVANTAGE.

Shot speed doesn't really act as a meaningful drawback either. At close range it is a complete non-factor and at long ranges the amount of lead required is still minor enough that it's far easier than trying to hold a beam on target for a full second.

DaZur, on 30 October 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

Understood... But in fairness you can't run ballistics without heatsinks... so heatsinks are kind'a a wash.

Heatsinks are absolutely not a wash but it's so obvious how bad it is that I'm thinking maybe you are being sarcastic?

[DJO Maverick]

Lupus Aurelius, on 30 October 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

Ballistics need to be balanced with other weapon systems. More heat and slower firing times to bring them back more in line with BT precedence. A quick fix would be to bring things back to the same relative values in TT.

If it fires 4 times faster than TT, have it generate 1/4 damage and 1/4 of the heat. Hard cap heat at 30, make DHS dissipate at 2.0 instead of 1.4. That would bring things back into the same relative balance from TT, and that that point, you look at armor and heat cap for mechs.

Could easily have kept the original armor amounts from BT, instead of having to had to double them, boating high heat/high alpha builds would never had been possible, and high alpha builds in general would not produce anywhere near the same damage output we currently see, making damage over time a more viable option, and truly making MWO more of a “thinking man’s shooter”.

I agree with you in principle and theory, but I seriously doubt we'll ever see it happen, even in testing. They're too far along to realistically decide to make such a radical shift.

My guess is that this idea did come up privately, but some higher up then asked, "so why's it called an AC/20? Or AC/10? What does that number even mean?" They likely decided that altering the ballistic damage values would somehow unduely confuse new players in some silly way... some version of which is probably why the ballistic damage values have remained sacrosanct and never been tweaked, even when it has defied common sense, but altering energy weapon damage has been fair game.

[BrockSamsonFW]

oldradagast, on 30 October 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

That being said, energy weapons really are inferior overall.

Ballistics have higher damage, higher DPS, very low heat, and deliver all damage to a single point. The only drawback is they are large, heavy, and need ammo, but most of that means nothing if your mech can carry the weapon since there's no reason not to do so.

Energy weapons, however, have lower damage, lower DPS, and higher heat. Also, a large number of them need to have the beam held on target or are marginally useful at best (pulse lasers, ER lasers, etc.) The only advantages are that they are smaller, lighter, and don't need ammo.

The end result is that if you can bring ballistics, you should do so, and mechs that can carry ballistics are superior. So, something is off balance-wise.

Oh, and don't even get into missiles... buggy hit detection, etc.

Not only that, but once you factor in heatsinks, the combined weight and critical slot requirements of a ballistics configuration is actually LESS THAN that of a still-inferior energy build.

[BrockSamsonFW]

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

People also tend to ignore the fact that ballistics require ammo, and ammo can explode and kill your mech.

Except that ammo can only explode IF you have no armor left, IF it takes a crit, IF it takes enough damage, and IF you still have ammo in that location.

If all of those factors describe your situation then the ammo explosion is irrelevant because you were about to die anyways.

If you wouldn't have otherwise died than you should be using CASE, as even with it, your overall configuration is still smaller and lighter than an energy configuration.

[Roland]

BrockSamsonFW, on 30 October 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

Except that ammo can only explode IF you have no armor left, IF it takes a crit, IF it takes enough damage, and IF you still have ammo in that location.

If all of those factors describe your situation then the ammo explosion is irrelevant because you were about to die anyways.

If you wouldn't have otherwise died than you should be using CASE, as even with it, your overall configuration is still smaller and lighter than an energy configuration.

I think that perhaps your perspective here is kind of skewed, and not really in line with how the game actually works.

There isn't any shortage of energy weapons in usage.

[Khobai]

Quote

CBT is a tabletop game.

I don't know if you know this. That's why you can't port stuff straigh tfrom it.

The problem is PGI did port straight from it. And now the game is a complete balance nightmare.

Whoever thought using tabletop numbers was a good idea should be fired.

Edited by Khobai, 30 October 2013 - 06:12 PM.

[Matthew Ace]

Let's increase chances of ammo explosion.

[FerrolupisXIII]

It's not about making everything just like table top.

It's about the fact that AC's all got a significant boost due to the faster fire rate, while taking little to no downside, while Energy Weapons have little to gain from it due to the woefully insufficient cooling abilities of our mechs.

there is NO way to carry the same DPS worth of medium Lasers as AC-5's and be able to keep up the output. you WILL overheat, and generally VERY quickly, at which point you are reduced to firing 1-2 mediums.

Game play currently allows us to build mechs with no ammo problems, or realistically if you run out of ammo you've probably done so much damage you really have already done your job. and ammo explosions are no where near as common as in table top. so that point is fairly moot.

people need to stop perpetuating the "fact" that ballistics being bigger balances them, because it doesn't. the heat sinks required to even be able to fire your weapons a few times on a laser boat are far more significant an investment than the AC's weight and crit size.

[Khobai]

Quote

people need to stop perpetuating the "fact" that ballistics being bigger balances them, because it doesn't

Exactly. If you can carry enough ammo that you never run out during a game, youve effectively turned the ballistic weapon into an energy weapon.

[Roland]

An energy weapon that takes up more slots and weighs far more.

[General Taskeen]

Just make em burst weapons with the total damage spread out between a specific number of shells per caliber. Problem Solved.

There I fixed Ballistic Weapons.

[Roland]

General Taskeen, on 30 October 2013 - 07:07 PM, said:

Just make em burst weapons with the total damage spread out between a specific number of shells per caliber. Problem Solved.

There I fixed Ballistic Weapons.

No one would ever use ballistic weapons then.

They'd effectively just be ridiculously heavy, large, lasers then.

I'd never take an AC5 if it spread damage around, when I could just take a medium laser for ONE ton and ONE slot.

That's the thing that folks don't really seem to grasp when it comes to the difference between energy and ballistic weapons... Because energy weapons weigh so little and take up so few slots, they are infinitely easy to boat, which results in very high alpha strike loadouts. The lasers have burn time issues, but PPC's still crush things.

Ballistics can't be boated nearly as easily.

In tabletop, boating energy weapons wasn't nearly as devastating, because firing 6 medium lasers would hit 6 different locations. But in MWO, it's a 6 ton weapon that does 30 damage. Basically a 6 ton dual gauss.

Also, while folks seem to be thinking that energy weapons are so much hotter than balistics, this seems to be missing the fact that I've got TWENTY free heat sinks just sitting in my engine..... So you basically can take a bunch of energy weapons for free anyway.

The end result is that the best configs tend to mix both energy and ballistic weapons. And that seems like it's exactly what we'd want, isn't it?

Edited by Roland, 30 October 2013 - 07:27 PM.