408 replies to this topic

[Lefty Lucy]

Let's look at the current weapons suite in TT balance point of view:

Small lasers: range sucks. Nobody uses them if they have a chance except on lulzy 180 kph munchkin builds.
Medium lasers: gold star weapon. Only limited by short range.
Large lasers: kinda OK, but PPCs generally outshine them.

PPC: If the medium laser is gold, this thing is platinum. Some players on the CBT forum labeled this weapon "the finger of god." 10 damage at long range compared to the other available weapons, with no ammo consumption is just too good to pass up.

ERPPC: It's ok. The regular PPC is actually more efficient with DHS, but most canon builds "upgrade" to ERPPC with DHS (some notable stinkers like the lostech panther don't upgrade to DHS but do switch to an ERPPC, for extra hilarity).

AC2: pathetic weapon. 6 tons for 2 damage when you can get 10 damage for a ton more, large ammo bins waiting to explode. Nobody uses it. Has a minor use for anti-aerospace, but honestly LRMs do that job fine.

AC5: bad. Not a total waste of space for 8 tons + ammo, but at the same time the PPC has the same range, double the damage, and no ammo. Why use one if you have the choice?

Ultra AC5: still very bad. Nobody uses them because a single bad roll leaves you with 9 tons+ ammo useless for the rest of the game.

AC10: kinda like the large laser. Not really good, but not terrible. Weighs more than a PPC, has ammo that can explode, shorter range than PPC, another one of those "why not just use a PPC?" guns.

LB10x: Kinda fun swiss army knife. Can punch like a PPC at range like a PPC, or critseek better than an SRM6 at ranges better than an SRM6, plus gets really good bonuses against aerospace. Very solid choice.

AC20: Fun for the lulz. Still not as good as boated PPCs, but the fact that it will remove entire locations with a hit against anything smaller than 55 tons makes it scary. Very, very limited by short range, as range is a much bigger factor in TT.

SRM2s: Kinda OK, but heat inefficient compared to SRM6s. Had a niche when only 2-tube SRMs could use inferno rounds, which is an out-of-date rule.
SRM4s: Kinda OK, but heat inefficient compared to SRM6s
SRM6s: the gold standard for dedicated critseeking. Very good mix of damage/heat/weight efficiency. Limited by short range.

Streak SRM2s: kinda funny, but not anything worth putting on your mech if you have the choice. Larger launchers that come down the pipe later are more attractive, but still not really as good as the non-streak launchers.

LRM5: very weight-efficient. The munchkin's choice when it comes to LRM launchers.
LRM10: weight and heat inefficient. Nobody likes these.
LRM15: More weight efficient than the 10, a little more heat efficient than 3xLRM5, not a bad choice
LRM20: weighs 2 tons more than 4x LRM5, but uses 2 less heat. Kind of a wash. Not a bad choice if you want to bring LRMs.

note: LRMs in general are kind of OK, but the huge minimum range makes it hard to hit in medium laser melee brawls, which most matches degenerate into in this era. Indirect fire is a waste of time, as in order to have even a minor chance to hit both the firing and spotting units must be stationary, and the spotting unit must forgo weapons fire. More useful with dedicated infantry spotters.

So, as we can see, TT is not anywhere near the balanced game that people make it out to be.

The AC2 and AC5 are remarkably better off in this game, and even then people consider them to be not "optimal" weapons to use. If we had a more faithful translation of TT they would be absolutely worthless in a game with no aerospace to try to get lucky "lawn dart" checks against.

[BrockSamsonFW]

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 05:45 PM, said:

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

The reason there are so many lasers (medium in particular) is because after you choose your ballistic weapons, ammo, armor, and engine, most mechs have a few free tons and only energy/missile slots remaining. With SRMs being "wonky" (and LRMs being another debate entirely) that usually leaves you with a very easy choice: lasers or wasted space.

So you end up with tons of lasers but it's simply due to convenience. The amount of lasers doesn't indicate that they are better than or even competitive with ballistics, it indicates that they are "better than nothing so why not?".

I'm not saying lasers are bad because they aren't, but there is also a reason why you see so many ballistic-based mechs and so few energy-based mechs. I mean really, how often do you run into a Hunchback P or Awesome? How many of them are competitive? How many can go up against a ballistic build? Energy weapons are decent but they simply can't compete when ballistics are better in every meaningful way.

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 06:53 PM, said:

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

Except that when you factor in the amount of heatsinks you require, the energy setup actually takes more weight and more critical slots yet does less dps at shorter range with no pinpoint damage or camera shake.

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 07:26 PM, said:

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?

The lasers themselves may be small and light but the heatsinks to power them aren't. My mech has 4xERLL and 22 DHS total, with 14 in the engine and 8 in the chassis. That's as many heatsinks as you can possibly fit into this mech and it gives me a whopping 3.9 DPS. Due to ghost heat I have to fire in groups of 2. This gives me mini-alphas of 18 damage that gets spread out over multiple sections of an enemy mech due to beam duration. It works well for me, but it also takes 32 tons and 32 critical slots, and even then I can only fire a few times before overheating.

In comparison, a single AC10 does 4 DPS, has the same range, does pinpoint damage, shakes the target, and yet it takes only 7 slots and 12 tons. You need ammo of course but with 25 slots and 20 tons still available I can easily add not only enough ammo to last an entire match but also A SECOND AC10. So now for the same 32 tons I can have two AC10 and 8 tons of ammo which combine for more than twice the dps, the same range, a higher alpha strike, pinpoint focused damage, camera shake, and I STILL have 8 critical slots left.

Tell me again how ballistics are big and heavy?

[Roland]

Quote

My mech has 4xERLL and 22 DHS total, with 14 in the engine and 8 in the chassis. That's as many heatsinks as you can possibly fit into this mech and it gives me a whopping 3.9 DPS.

Actually, each ERLL has a DPS of 2.12, so with 4 of them you are putting out a DPS of around 8.5 (although DPS is a fairly meaningless statistic in mechwarrior). I'm not sure exactly where you came up with the 3.9 number.

Quote

So now for the same 32 tons I can have two AC10 and 8 tons of ammo which combine for more than twice the dps, the same range, a higher alpha strike, pinpoint focused damage, camera shake, and I STILL have 8 critical slots left.

With two AC10's, you have a DPS number of 8, which is lower than your 4 ERLL build. It's also an alpha of 20, which is only just slightly higher than the non-ghost-heat alpha of 18 from the ERLL, which can immediately be followed up by another 18 from the other two lasers. (although, in reality, I wouldn't tend to pretend like 4 ERLL is a good build.. It's not really something I would choose to run)

It also depends on ammo, which is spread throughout your body, and which can explode when damaged.

It also requires you to lead your target, since it's not a hitscan weapon like the lasers.

If you believe that balistic weapons are super powerful and energy weapons are useless, then boat up the ballistic weapons dude. That's how you get things fixed.

Personally, I tend to bring energy weapons on every build I have... because they're light weight, small, and reliable.. and I got 20 free heat sinks worth of capacity on every mech just from the engine sinks, so I'm gonna use it.

[Khobai]

Quote

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

And fires faster, does higher dps, and has better range. The pros outweigh the cons.

[MustrumRidcully]

It's kinda frustrating to see discussions like this.

The problem is all the pros and cons are just listing things without being able to set them in relation. Does advantage A outweigh drawback B? Maybe, maybe not. You won't be able to tell them.

Just an example. Ballistics have the drawback of ammo explosions. But, just look at how ammo explosions are implemented: When the chance for an ammo explosion occurs, in MW:O, the chance is 10 %, in the table top, it's 100 %.
So just listing the drawback alone isn't enough. That's an existing variable. Theoretically, the damage could also differ between the two games. A 10 % chance for 140 damage for a single ton of AC/20 ammo is not the same as a 100 % chance for 20 damage. for example.

Saying that energy weapons need a lot of heat sinks is true. but how many do they neeed, vs. how many do ballistics need?
And how does it scale?
If I stick one medium laser in my mech or one AC/5 I dont need to add any heat sinks, the engine sinks wil suffice. If I add another 5 ML, I might suddenly need 20 extra DHS, but if I add 3 AC/5, I might still be fine with 10 DHS.

All you get here is a hence & forth and you have nothing to convince anyone. The drawbacks and advantages of these weapons exist. But how important each are and how much of a factor are they in balance?

I don't have a good solution for all damage in one projetile vs weapons with a beam duration vs weapon damage spread across multiple projectiles.

But I have an approach to measure the one that affects your weight requirements most.
http://mwomercs.com/...rts-2013-11-10/
I am not saying it's perfect ,but if you don't put some numbers to your pros and cons, you just create lists of pros and cons without being able to judge if a weapon is good or bad.

This is the verdict on ballistics vs energy weapons in certain scenarios that seem reasonably "realistic" in terms of damage dealt, time needed, and weight required to make it work (the weight includes only heat sinks you add in addition to those of a 250 rated engine.)

Something for heavy and assault mechs:


And one for Light and Medium Mechs:



What does it tell us:
At short ranges, energy weapons need a lot less weight to achieve the same damage output as ballistics.
Small Lasers and Medium Lasers are very, very efficient here, it's notable that the puse lasers don't fare so well. The MG isn't bad, either (but more something for heavier loadouts. Light and Medium mechs can do a lot better with energy weapons here, probably because they live off engine heat sinks.)

Mitigating factors,a s mentioned, I ignore here are: The value of single shot damage vs beam duration vs continous stream of bullets vs projectile groups (though the altter only gets relevant when we get to LBX)
So if you think that the MG is still vastly inferior to the SL for the same range, then it might be because a continous stream of bullets is notably worse than short beam pulses in handling and precision.

If you think the AC/20 is superior to a bunch of MLs, then it might be because single projectile damage beats beams with a duration.

When we get to the longer ranges, we see that Auto-Cannons perform vastly better at extended engagement times. So if you plan to stay in a fight for some time (typically when fighting short range combat), ballistics will perform notably better, while in sniper type situations where you only fire one or two shots and than retreat, energy weapons can compete.

So if people really deem ballistics superior, then it might have something to do with the duration of typical engagements, or it might have something to do with single projectile damage vs beams with duration advantage again.
And if the LBX-10 sucks to most, it might have somethnig to do with its multiple-projectile grouping type of attack that spreads damage a lot.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 October 2013 - 11:44 PM.

[Demos]

MustrumRidcully, on 30 October 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

No, it is not the most accurate. It's completely idiotic, actually.

How much damage can a single MG deal in 10 seconds in the table top game.
2..
How much damage can a single MG deal in 10 seconds in the Solaris 7 game?
8.
How much damage can a single PPC deal in 10 seconds in the table top game?
10.
How much damage can a single PPC deal in 10 seconds in the Solaris 7 game?
10.
How much damage can a single Medium Laser deal in 10 seconds in the table top game?
5.
How much damage can a single Medium Laser deal in 10 seconds in the Solaris 7 game?
10.
These two games do not represent the same game world.
That's like having one planetary simulation where the Earth follows an elliptic path around the sun, and the other flies in a helix around Sun and Jupiter.
They don't describe the same planetary system.

The idea of splitting the TT 10 second turns into 4 2.5 second turns wasn't bad, but they did it pretty badly. The responsible designer's math teacher is probably rolling in his grave whenever Solaris VII gets mentioned.

---

Nope, IMHO the CBT TT is just a simplification. Not all weapons do need magically 10sec to reload.
Of course, in S7 some weapons could fire faster, but they also built up heat more drastically; save the MG, this was one weakness of the system.
The second weakness was the short engagement ranges, which made long-range weapons basically underpowered and MGs the super-weapons.
But from the pure concept, S7 was a better reflection of BT weapons then the TT.

BTW, to all people who think that weapons should fire once in 10 seconds.
The other game systems (BattleSpace, BattleForce) have longer turn times like 1 minute. So the weapons should fire once per one minute, heh?

[MustrumRidcully]

Demos, on 30 October 2013 - 11:47 PM, said:

Nope, IMHO the CBT TT is just a simplification. Not all weapons do need magically 10sec to reload.
Of course, in S7 some weapons could fire faster, but they also built up heat more drastically; save the MG, this was one weakness of the system.
The second weakness was the short engagement ranges, which made long-range weapons basically underpowered and MGs the super-weapons.
But from the pure concept, S7 was a better reflection of BT weapons then the TT.

BTW, to all people who think that weapons should fire once in 10 seconds.
The other game systems (BattleSpace, BattleForce) have longer turn times like 1 minute. So the weapons should fire once per one minute, heh?

Yes, they build up more heat, but that doesn't compensate. The cost of a weapon system in your build is its weight of the weapon itself plus the heat sinks required for it. Increasing the rate of fire of a weapon only increases the heat sink part of the equation, so if you double your rate of fire you only increase the heat sinkk part of the weapon's build cost, and that means your weapon will always become more effective, and increasingly so the more of the weapon system's total weight is made up by the weapon weight itself.

If you want to have a ML fire twice per 10 seconds in a 2.5 second turn game system, you need to lower the damage and heat per shot accordingly. Not suddenly dealing 5 damage twice in 10 seconds, but dealing 2.5 damage twice in 10 seconds.

Is that so hard to understand?

[FerrolupisXIII]

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 07:26 PM, said:

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.

those 6 medium lasers make 24 heat per shot. and with those 20 heat sinks you seem to think will do such a good job, they wont. Even with elite skills with just the 20 engine sinks, you dissipate a whopping 2.3 HPS. your heat cap is 60. you will get three shots off, the 4th will overheat you. you're doing a a 30 point alpha over 1 second burn that i can spread all over my mech. its 7.5 DPS. which is 0.84 more DPS than those Dual AC-5's that will just keep on chugging, because those 20 engine heat sinks dissipate more heat than 2x AC-5 makes.

care to place a bet on who wins that fight? because i dont. AC-5's will win almost every time.

[Joseph Mallan]

Vassago Rain, on 30 October 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

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 simple solution is for MW:O to change the duration of a turn. For Combat, 10 seconds is a stupid long lifetime. Cut it in half and that includes heat dissipation.

[Tahribator]

Excellent analysis, thank you. Ballistics really need to be brought in-line with energy/missile weapons. Increasing ammo explosion chances is good for a start before a large scale balance pass.

[MustrumRidcully]

Tahribator, on 31 October 2013 - 04:44 AM, said:

Excellent analysis, thank you. Ballistics really need to be brought in-line with energy/missile weapons. Increasing ammo explosion chances is good for a start before a large scale balance pass.

No, ammo explosion chance is a bad start. Don't add unfun mechanics like that.

Unless ammo explosions also get a significant reduction in damage. (There is no logical reason why an ammo explosion would deal the exact same damage as using the ammunition as intended. And even if there was, it's a game.)

Fixing the heat system woul be neat. A lot of these issues would be easier to resolve if we had a better heat dissipation but a lower heat threshold. less insane alpha striking, better sustained firepower even for energy builds (Very important since there are energy only mechs like some Awesomes, Jenners, Hunchbacks, Commandos...)

[MrMadguy]

Most players have wrong judgments about weapons' balance, cuz they're using only 2-3 parameters to compare them, while they have more then 16 different parameters, they are balanced around: damage, heat, cooldown, weight, slots, min range, nominal range, max range, projectile speed, shoot duration, amount of ammo, etc. DPS is just multiplicative (i.e. pessimistic) criteria, combined from just 3 parameters: damage, cooldown and duration. How about other parameters? My spreadsheets has 16 parameters and they are telling me, that if we won't take range into account, lasers are best weapons in this game. AC/2 is on par with them only due to high range. And even this assumptions are wrong, cuz you can't judge about weapons' effectiveness, if you don't know the context, they're used in: how many heatsinks mech have, how many ammo loaded, how many free weight is has, how many free slots, etc. So, builds should be balanced, not individual weapons.

Edited by MrMadguy, 31 October 2013 - 05:12 AM.

[Almond Brown]

We also got 2X Armor, which in theory increases TTK by 50%.

[MrMadguy]

I'll tell you something. I used ballistic-boats (AC/2-boat Jagger for example) very widely in the past and was getting relatively good results. But now the most effective mechs I have are laser-boats. And it's really not surprise, that all hero mechs are laser-boat variants. Firebrand - is the only mech, on which I can do almost 1k damage per match. Ballistic variants are overheating too fast. Ballistics are nerfed to the ground now. If you don't see it, then you're dumb.

[Roland]

FerrolupisXIII, on 31 October 2013 - 04:09 AM, said:

those 6 medium lasers make 24 heat per shot. and with those 20 heat sinks you seem to think will do such a good job, they wont. Even with elite skills with just the 20 engine sinks, you dissipate a whopping 2.3 HPS. your heat cap is 60. you will get three shots off, the 4th will overheat you. you're doing a a 30 point alpha over 1 second burn that i can spread all over my mech. its 7.5 DPS. which is 0.84 more DPS than those Dual AC-5's that will just keep on chugging, because those 20 engine heat sinks dissipate more heat than 2x AC-5 makes.

care to place a bet on who wins that fight? because i dont. AC-5's will win almost every time.

Dude, you're comparing 6 tons of weapons to 16 tons of weapons.

If they were equivalent, then NO ONE would ever take the 16 ton option.

[Stelar 7]

MustrumRidcully, on 31 October 2013 - 12:57 AM, said:

If you want to have a ML fire twice per 10 seconds in a 2.5 second turn game system, you need to lower the damage and heat per shot accordingly. Not suddenly dealing 5 damage twice in 10 seconds, but dealing 2.5 damage twice in 10 seconds.

Is that so hard to understand?

It is not that it is hard to understand, it is that it is nonsense. You are continuing to perpetuate the myth, both that TT weapons timing was a cannon hard limit, or balanced, and that DPS is the stat that best measures a weapons effectiveness. Both those ideas are {Scrap}, is that so hard to understand?

The people talking about DPS and laser spread are also ignoring that an AC using DPS, versus the 10 or 20 with solid single shot damage, can also be spread by torso twisting and spinning, not to mention the target needs to hold still, and refrain from entering cover, but that happens all the time.

If you are advocating an AC nerf, or laser buff, please have the fortitude to be honest with your stats, all this DPS multiplication and TT nonsense are just that nonsense.

[General Taskeen]

Roland, on 30 October 2013 - 07:26 PM, said:

No one would ever use ballistic weapons then.

You wouldn't, but I would.

Tell me again how an AC/20 spread out with 4 bullets, doing 5 damage each would be terrible? Do you have evidence? I'd like to see it if possible.

If you didn't notice yet, a UAC/5 in this game shoots 2 shells. Granted, it should be doing 2x3.5 instead, but you get the picture. The shells land practically on top of each other, rather than "spread around."

Lefty Lucy, on 30 October 2013 - 08:51 PM, said:

The AC2 and AC5 are remarkably better off in this game

And yet the heat sink system doesn't not allow TT efficient AC/2 to exist in MWO with Single Heat sinks. Remarkably not better off.

Edited by General Taskeen, 31 October 2013 - 06:14 AM.

[Mordin Ashe]

Lefty Lucy, on 30 October 2013 - 08:51 PM, said:

Let's look at the current weapons suite in TT balance point of view:

AC2: pathetic weapon. 6 tons for 2 damage when you can get 10 damage for a ton more, large ammo bins waiting to explode. Nobody uses it. Has a minor use for anti-aerospace, but honestly LRMs do that job fine.

AC5: bad. Not a total waste of space for 8 tons + ammo, but at the same time the PPC has the same range, double the damage, and no ammo. Why use one if you have the choice?

Ultra AC5: still very bad. Nobody uses them because a single bad roll leaves you with 9 tons+ ammo useless for the rest of the game.

WTF?! AC2 pathetic, AC5 bad? Oh gods, please have mercy on his soul. Right now you can have only two or thee of these weapons and you should generally be capable of dealing over 500 damage in any match. Those two are the workhorses or most ballistic builds...

EDIT: UAC5 still very bad? You, sir, are the troll master.

Edited by Mordin Ashe, 31 October 2013 - 06:13 AM.

[Stelar 7]

General Taskeen, on 31 October 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

You wouldn't, but I would.

Tell me again how an AC/20 spread out with 4 bullets, doing 5 damage each would be terrible? Do you have evidence? I'd like to see it if possible.

If you didn't notice yet, a UAC/5 in this game shoots 2 shells. Granted, it should be doing 2x3.5 instead, but you get the picture. The shells land practically on top of each other, rather than "spread around."

If you don't think the damage will spread why ask for a new mechanic with no effect? I'd like PGI to program stuff that changes the game for the better. My guess is you do think it will spread, I certainly do.

Mordin Ashe, on 31 October 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

WTF?! AC2 pathetic, AC5 bad? Oh gods, please have mercy on his soul. Right now you can have only two or thee of these weapons and you should generally be capable of dealing over 500 damage in any match. Those two are the workhorses or most ballistic builds...

Try reading the top again, the quote you used was discussing how the weapons worked in the Original TT game. In that game, AC 2 was a joke weapon. AC 5 was not much better.

[General Taskeen]

Mordin Ashe, on 31 October 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

WTF?! AC2 pathetic, AC5 bad? Oh gods, please have mercy on his soul. Right now you can have only two or thee of these weapons and you should generally be capable of dealing over 500 damage in any match. Those two are the workhorses or most ballistic builds...

EDIT: UAC5 still very bad? You, sir, are the troll master.

Mordin... re-read what he is saying. He is talking about those weapons in the "table top game" not MWO.