408 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

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I'm not going to throw around any math here, but I feel that ACs in general fire too quickly and have too much ammo per ton.

I wouldnt mind ballistic weapons being more powerful but having significantly reduced ammo. Because if ballistic weapons can boat enough ammo to never run out of ammo then whats the point of even having ammo? Its self defeating. Ammo should be balanced around the premise that you WILL run out of ammo. However ballistic weapons should be stronger as a result of ammo being exceedingly limited. Its that type of assymetrical balancing that makes games interesting... do you take the ballistic weapon thats very strong but runs out of ammo halfway through the match, or do you take the energy weapon thats mediocre but fires infinitely?

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Lets look at them in a heatneutral build

But nobody runs heat neutral builds because its stupid. Its much smarter to ride the heatcurve because it gives you a tremendous amount of free heat that you can tap into. So your comparison isnt accurate. When doing comparisons like that it makes far more sense to aim for 50% heat neutral, because thats closer to what people actually run.

Also it should be noted that not everyone fires their weapons constantly. Some people hide in cover, pop out, fire, then retreat back into cover and cool down. This is one of the reasons why PPCs are one of the best weapons even though the on-paper comparisons indicate otherwise.

Edited by Khobai, 31 October 2013 - 07:39 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 31 October 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

I wouldnt mind ballistic weapons being more powerful but having significantly reduced ammo. Because if ballistic weapons can boat enough ammo to never run out of ammo then whats the point of even having ammo? Its self defeating. Ammo should be balanced around the premise that you WILL run out of ammo. But ballistic weapons should be stronger as a result of ammo being exceedingly limited.

You are giving up weight that could be other weapons for that ammo...

[stjobe]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 October 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Then I don't want this.
Lasers- Time on Target is the rule.
Missiles- Sand blasting damage
Ballistics- All or nothing damage per round fired.

More choice is better if I remember correctly!?!

Sure, but you can also look at it this way:
Energy - Spread (except the PPC, which behaves like a ballistic weapon)
Missiles - Spread
Ballistics - No spread (except the LB-10X by design, and the MG by sheer stubborn idiocy)

Is it any wonder people love their ballistics? Only weapons in the game without some kind of artificial spread, and the main culprits behind the pin-point alpha plague (together with the faux-ballistic PPC).

[mike29tw]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 October 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Then I don't want this.
Lasers- Time on Target is the rule.
Missiles- Sand blasting damage
Ballistics- All or nothing damage per round fired.

Ballistics still differentiate themselves from the rest with lower heat, higher RoF, DPS, etc.

Joseph Mallan, on 31 October 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

More choice is better if I remember correctly!?!

You know it's a lot more complicated than that. If PGI added an "I win button", is it gonna be better?

[Joseph Mallan]

stjobe, on 31 October 2013 - 07:31 AM, said:

Sure, but you can also look at it this way:
Energy - Spread (except the PPC, which behaves like a ballistic weapon)
Missiles - Spread
Ballistics - No spread (except the LB-10X by design, and the MG by sheer stubborn idiocy)

Is it any wonder people love their ballistics? Only weapons in the game without some kind of artificial spread, and the main culprits behind the pin-point alpha plague (together with the faux-ballistic PPC).

I wouldn't call it an artificial spread St. Guided Missiles are insanely accurate flying into windows, bu they are exceptions. Lasers do damage though transfer of heat on point. and finally Ballistics that o their damage by penetrating armor with directed brute force. And it is not stubbornness with Machine guns. They are not Pin Point Accurate weapons.

[mike29tw]

Khobai, on 31 October 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

I wouldnt mind ballistic weapons being more powerful but having significantly reduced ammo. Because if ballistic weapons can boat enough ammo to never run out of ammo then whats the point of even having ammo? Its self defeating. Ammo should be balanced around the premise that you WILL run out of ammo. However ballistic weapons should be stronger as a result of ammo being exceedingly limited. Its that type of assymetrical balancing that makes games interesting... do you take the ballistic weapon thats very strong but runs out of ammo halfway through the match or do you take the energy weapon thats mediocre but fires infinitely?

I doubt reducing ammo per ton is going to achieve as much as you hope it will. I mean, what's stopping me to downgrade my engine, take out one DHS, or reduce armor on non-essential parts to add another ton of ammo? Players will always find a way to bring enough ammo to either last a whole round or at least heavily wounded their enemy to make a game changing difference before they run dry.

The downside of ammo-based weapon should really be ammo explosion, and right now a 10% chance to explode when critted doesn't remotely pose a serious threat. If we have 70%-80% chance of ammo explosion with reduced damage, then that might be a real way to discourage players filling ammo all over their mech.

Edited by mike29tw, 31 October 2013 - 07:40 AM.

[Khobai]

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You are giving up weight that could be other weapons for that ammo...

Not really. Because you hit a brickwall with heat way before you hit a brickwall with weight. Once you reach a certain heat output it makes no sense to continue adding more weapons.

[stjobe]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 October 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

I wouldn't call it an artificial spread St. Guided Missiles are insanely accurate flying into windows, bu they are exceptions. Lasers do damage though transfer of heat on point. and finally Ballistics that o their damage by penetrating armor with directed brute force. And it is not stubbornness with Machine guns. They are not Pin Point Accurate weapons.

You are conflating the real world with the imaginary BattleTech Universe again.

If you want to argue that MGs aren't pin-point accurate and shouldn't be, let me point you to the Autocannon fluff which describes them as firing "streams of bullets", and 10-100 round "bursts". That's not pin-point either, and defeats your argument nicely.

There's no two ways about it; either both ACs and MGs are pin-point accurate, or neither.

Since you don't seem to want ACs to have spread, I fully expect you to do the intellectually honest thing and support the removal of the MG cone of fire as well.

Edited by stjobe, 31 October 2013 - 07:45 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

mike29tw, on 31 October 2013 - 07:32 AM, said:

Ballistics still differentiate themselves from the rest with lower heat, higher RoF, DPS, etc.

This right here! PPC (including ER) should be doing the exact same DpS as a AC10. Lower heat should be expected and rate of fire... Which do we want our ACs Big boom sticks or rapid fire? We have enough DpS weapons, so I like the front loaded damage.

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You know it's a lot more complicated than that. If PGI added an "I win button", is it gonna be better?

Whats that got to do with choices?

[Demos]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 October 2013 - 07:30 AM, said:

You are giving up weight that could be other weapons for that ammo...

Yeah, but not enough.you see the Dakka builds w/o any secondary weapons because an additional ton of ammo bring more damage value than an additional ML.

Current ACs need something like an ammo limit. E.g. 3tons per canno,with one ton less per additional cannon.
So 3 ton of ammo (at max) for one AC,
5 ton of ammo for two ACs
6 ton of ammo for three AC.

The the high damage/high RoF would be acceptable and we would see builds with more energy weapons as back-up.

Edited by Demos, 31 October 2013 - 07:44 AM.

[Khobai]

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The downside of ammo-based weapon should really be ammo explosion, and right now a 10% chance to explode when critted doesn't remotely pose a serious threat. If we have 70%-80% chance of ammo explosion with reduced damage, then that might be a real way to discourage players filling ammo all over their mech.

Then thered be no reason at all to use ballistic weapons. Unless CASE was substantially improved to prevent all ammo explosion damage. Which actually might work because then no one would hide ammo in arms or legs anymore and CASE would actually get used.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 31 October 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

Not really. Because you hit a brickwall with heat way before you hit a brickwall with weight. Once you reach a certain heat output it makes no sense to continue adding more weapons.

I just get excitable as to choice- like to have my options open.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 31 October 2013 - 07:49 AM.

[Khobai]

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just get excitable as to choice- like to have my options open.

Yeah and thats fine on a frankenmech like the Shadowhawk that has one of everything lol.

But on the higher end competitive mechs, you typically see two PPCs, and that gets them to the heat brick wall. Then beyond that they use an AC/20 or dual AC/5s and stuff in as much ammo as weight permits. But they dont keep taking weapons, because the PPCs already max them out on heat. So really youre not giving anything up by taking extra ammo... because theres nothing else to spend the tonnage on (except maybe a bigger engine but I think more ammo is better).

Edited by Khobai, 31 October 2013 - 07:56 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

So lets get rid of everything else Khobai. Cause if you cannot compete with anything but two weapons why have anything else? And as for balancing, once PPC/AC combo is ruined, something new will continuously replace it, until all we have is weapons doing 5 damage, 3 heat 270M max effective range. I may not be the best player in the game... but apparently I am the most competitive.

[Roland]

mike29tw, on 31 October 2013 - 07:19 AM, said:

Remember, lasers spreading damage over one sec period is the best decision PGI has ever made. That's part of the reason why ML and LL are the most balanced weapon in the game(except when you exceed the ghost heat limit lol). Why not do the same to ballistics?

Are you going to then make ballistics hitscan weapons like lasers? Are you going to make PPC's into some kind of stream weapon too? And then make them hitscan?

You seem to be unable to appreciate the actual benefits of lasers currently... perhaps because that's all you use and you aren't really aware of the issues with other weapons, I dunno.

For instance, with ballistics, do you know that there are actually certain situations where it is literally impossible to hit a fast moving target due to convergence issues? You either aim at the target such that the weapons converge on it, but miss behind the target, or you lead the target but convergence issues cause the weapon to miss behind it due to the convergence separating.

Most folks don't really understand that this happens, and it's one of the prime reasons why spiders so frequently seem to drop damage. Their extremely thin profile makes this problem worse with them than other mechs. There are situations where the convergence point being far behind the mech (or at infinity when they are jumping) causes a situation to arise where it is impossible for the weapons to hit the mech.

Lasers never have this issue, since they are hitscan and are always going to converge on target... but then have the issue of needing to track the target during the burn time.

The reality is that ballistics are currently strong... but most definitely NOT strong to the exclusion of energy weapons. Virtually every build in the game uses some form of energy weapon. That's why the suggestion that ballistics are too strong is silly.

[Khobai]

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So lets get rid of everything else Khobai. Cause if you cannot compete with anything but two weapons why have anything else? And as for balancing, once PPC/AC combo is ruined, something new will continuously replace it, until all we have is weapons doing 5 damage, 3 heat 270M max effective range. I may not be the best player in the game... but apparently I am the most competitive.

Game design 101. If youre going to give players choices then all choices should be equal in terms of pros and cons. Clearly MWO has not achieved that equilibrium with weapons balance as certain weapon combinations are clearly better than others.

I think the biggest unbalancing factor right now is pinpoint damage vs long range. I dont think pinpoint damage is a problem on its own (AC/20 is fine). Nor is long range a problem on its own (ERLL is fine). But when pinpoint damage is combined with long range it creates a combination of attributes that make those weapons superior to most other weapons (PPC and AC/5).

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 31 October 2013 - 08:20 AM, said:

Game design 101. If youre going to give players choices then all choices should be equal in terms of pros and cons. Clearly MWO has not achieved that equilibrium with weapons balance as certain weapon combinations are clearly better than others.

I think the biggest unbalancing factor right now is pinpoint damage vs long range. I dont think pinpoint damage is a problem on its own (AC/20 is fine). Nor is long range a problem on its own (ERLL is fine). But when pinpoint damage is combined with long range it creates a combination of attributes that make those weapons superior to most other weapons (PPC and AC/5).

Even though those ERPPCs are doing the same amount of damage as a Single AC20? 2 PPCs is just as deadly as one AC20. Don't get me wrong I agree with you on Convergence. But if an AC20 is fine then 2 PPCs converging is not really any different damage wise.

[Khobai]

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But if an AC20 is fine then 2 PPCs converging is not really any different damage wise.

The difference is the range. AC/20s do full damage upto 270m. While PPCs do full damage upto 540m.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 31 October 2013 - 08:33 AM, said:

The difference is the range. AC/20s do full damage upto 270m. While PPCs do full damage upto 540m.

I know what you are saying, I am just asking why is it unacceptable to take the same amount of damage at the greater range?

[mike29tw]

Roland, on 31 October 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

Are you going to then make ballistics hitscan weapons like lasers? Are you going to make PPC's into some kind of stream weapon too? And then make them hitscan?

You seem to be unable to appreciate the actual benefits of lasers currently... perhaps because that's all you use and you aren't really aware of the issues with other weapons, I dunno.

I said spreading damage. Where in my post did I mention hitscan ?

Roland, on 31 October 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

For instance, with ballistics, do you know that there are actually certain situations where it is literally impossible to hit a fast moving target due to convergence issues? You either aim at the target such that the weapons converge on it, but miss behind the target, or you lead the target but convergence issues cause the weapon to miss behind it due to the convergence separating.

Most folks don't really understand that this happens, and it's one of the prime reasons why spiders so frequently seem to drop damage. Their extremely thin profile makes this problem worse with them than other mechs. There are situations where the convergence point being far behind the mech (or at infinity when they are jumping) causes a situation to arise where it is impossible for the weapons to hit the mech.

This is where you need to manually compensate for the convergence by aiming HIGHER than you normally do, aside from leading the target. I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion.

Roland, on 31 October 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

Lasers never have this issue, since they are hitscan and are always going to converge on target... but then have the issue of needing to track the target during the burn time.

The reality is that ballistics are currently strong... but most definitely NOT strong to the exclusion of energy weapons. Virtually every build in the game uses some form of energy weapon. That's why the suggestion that ballistics are too strong is silly.

So I guess no further changes to ballistic weapons are required unless everyone runs with only ballistic weapons right?