81 replies to this topic

[Tombstoner]

I completely agree that MWO could easy rival eve. the role bonuses where from my understanding supposed to be the slots where you plug in air strike and 4x zoom cool shots. that system kinda got tossed to the side. In PGi defense. cant believe i just wrote that.... they encountered coding issues from not purchasing the cyr engine without tech support. they are learning how to use the engin with out help. so lag issues bit them in the ***. then someone decided 3pv was the way to go. over all the game was initially a cut and paste of TT stats with 10 second fire rates. rate of fire was altered and later armor was doubled to compensate. for the next 1 year 4 months or so they only did minor tweaks to relative weapon balance.

From what i have see nothing was done to correct for skill based targeting and balance is done by feel. a mech power was directly tied to the tonnage in TT. in MWO its been altered and no one can quantify it hence balancing by feel.

one thing we should ask our selves is why cant i spend more tonnage on internal structure then an arbitrary 10% of max tonnage. why cant i take an ultra heavy duty chassis design weighing 10 tones for atlas level armor but only use up to 50 tones of space. so 10 tones for the frame and 20 in armor leaving 20 tones for engine and weapons. make the engin xl and you have a massivly armored very fast monster with a respectable amount of fire power.

you can mod just about every aspect of the chassis. PGI just needs to spend time on it. personally i think they should just rebuild the entier thing from scratch and cannon / TT rules set be dammed. cause the BT IP is both a blessing and a detriment. it provided a set of preconceived notions for how the game should be. where as Halken is not burdened by a 30+ yo well loved IP much like EVE.

BTW i also like to reverse engineer game systems kinda why im still here even thought i stopped playing. its a sickness i suppose, but i used to think the devs did listen and we had a role in the development process. but they come up with stuff right out of left field/ the blue yonder and the whole community is like .....ah ...WTF is this.....

I love the idea of role bonuses. but the game has hard core issues when a mech like the panther a light/ slow mech armed with a ppc posably some lrms's its been a while will be DOA. i just cant see how a slow light mech can survive in a game with magical level of accuracy. that level of precision should come with a price in tonnage or in slots. but i'm just on an island when it comes to very small amounts of RNG affecting max range combat.

[ShadowedR]

Tombstoner, on 07 November 2013 - 07:07 AM, said:

I completely agree that MWO could easy rival eve. the role bonuses where from my understanding supposed to be the slots where you plug in air strike and 4x zoom cool shots.

Role Bonusses in the EVE context allow ships to fit or do things that the "normal rules" won't allow.

In the EVE context, a Manticore is a frigate class ship - it simply doesn't have the capability to fit Torpedo Launchers.
Thanks to role bonusses, you can fit 3x torp launchers on him.
Suddenly, it becomes possible to have specialized stealth bomber. Which they are. And they are sexy.

My MWO comparison was an Awesome with 3x PPCs.
The current system would throw in a stack of ghost heat if you alpha all 3.

According to cannon, an AWS was purposely built to fit PPCs in spam.
Thats why its so bulky - all that cooling equipment.
So to allow for this in the current framework, we assign a -30% heat generation for PPCs to the AWS.
Additionally, we up the cap on the amount of PPCs you are allowed to alpha to 3 before ghost heat kicks in.

This allows for builds / loadouts that focus certain chassis / variants and specializes them in a field.
In the event of the AWS, it would be direct fire support.

Well, we don't want them to over specialize mech chassis, I mean - it sort off breaks the idea of having the mechlab.
To compensate, you'll assign different role bonusses to different variants of the same chassis.
That way, an AWS still retains flexibility while preserving some of the intended use from TT.

And it'll make me happy coz I spent all that time to max out a now, defunct, mech.
Except for my Pretty Baby.
Man Mode.

[Almond Brown]

ShadowedR, on 06 November 2013 - 10:01 PM, said:

You hit it on the nose - the game is balanced by feel.

As for analyzing the game, I made peace with a broken system a long long time ago.
I do the analysis more for fun than expecting my post to alert the devs to problems.
It might, but w.e

And has been noted a bazillion times on these Forums, Spreadsheet Warrior does not make a balanced game either. Same issue. Different Mechs with different stats and weapons and level of Skill of the drivers. Just a myriad of things to consume. The feel of it, at least, allows for a decent base for which to tweak.

Besides, the Dev will NEVER, ever satisfy either the Spreadsheet Warrior who think the numbers can't be wrong, or those poor slobs who do not think the game is fair to them when they Lose a Match, they just cannot be the problem right, gotta be the game.

[ShadowedR]

Almond Brown, on 07 November 2013 - 08:20 AM, said:

And has been noted a bazillion times on these Forums, Spreadsheet Warrior does not make a balanced game either. Same issue. Different Mechs with different stats and weapons and level of Skill of the drivers. Just a myriad of things to consume. The feel of it, at least, allows for a decent base for which to tweak.

Besides, the Dev will NEVER, ever satisfy either the Spreadsheet Warrior who think the numbers can't be wrong, or those poor slobs who do not think the game is fair to them when they Lose a Match, they just cannot be the problem right, gotta be the game.

Spreadsheet Warrior.

If you are referring the my number crunching up top, its a means to identify that there is a problem in a certain area.
Stats can't tell you exactly what is wrong, but it can highlight irregularities.
What is important to do with stats, is to use them as a basis for investigation. A tool to solve a problem.
Simply adjusting the numbers to fit a curve or make things seem "OK" won't fix the core problem.

If you are referring to people using Stats to say "A is B, thus C should be in line with A", I just said that by fixing the stats, you don't necessarily fix the problem.

Judging things by feel isn't wrong, not by a mile. But you have to go back and evaluate if your choices made sense.
Did they work out as intended?

You are right, you can't keep the hard core fan, the competitive guy and the casual gamer happy at the same time.
You need to decide in which camp you want to be.

[Trauglodyte]

Mechs should never have been allowed to exceed their TT engine limits. That would have solved a lot of problems. But, we've been allowed to ignore the original concept of the mech and just do whatever we want. This has lead to the only differentiation between mechs is the number/types of hard points and whether it has JJs or not. The Shadowhawk, Griffin, and Wolverine are essentially all the same mechs except for some slight differences with weapon payloads - nothing major enough to winge about - and how they look. Yay for us!

[ShadowedR]

Trauglodyte, on 07 November 2013 - 08:30 AM, said:

...and how they look. Yay for us!

How they look indeed

[Zyllos]

Hey, I am all fine with adding "core rule modifications" for specific chassis/variants dependent to add uniqueness to mechs.

But, personally, I think the major issue with this game is the concept that we are using a random distribution armor system that assumes random damage in a game that weapon's fire is 100% perfect.

But this is kinda off topic relating to tonnage, though.

[ShadowedR]

Zyllos, on 07 November 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

Hey, I am all fine with adding "core rule modifications" for specific chassis/variants dependent to add uniqueness to mechs.

But, personally, I think the major issue with this game is the concept that we are using a random distribution armor system that assumes random damage in a game that weapon's fire is 100% perfect.

But this is kinda off topic relating to tonnage, though.

So are you suggesting we get rid of pin point precision? Or that the add armor/speed to compensate for that fact?

[Bront]

The only graph I'd like to see in the OP that's missing is "Engine Weight to go 64 KPH" (4/6 in TT, basically the weight of the engine (+ HS in MWO) needed to go at that basic speed. Not possible at the moment for 20 ton mechs, but for 25 and above, it's makable. One for mechs going 48 might also be useful (3X weight in engine rating + HS), which would be broken under 30 tons in MWO, but would still be interesting. That's part of the balancing factor of mechs as well.

I'm glad it's not a smooth progression, it makes for some unique quirks about a weight class.

[ShadowedR]

Bront, on 07 November 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

The only graph I'd like to see in the OP that's missing is "Engine Weight to go 64 KPH" (4/6 in TT, basically the weight of the engine (+ HS in MWO) needed to go at that basic speed. Not possible at the moment for 20 ton mechs, but for 25 and above, it's makable. One for mechs going 48 might also be useful (3X weight in engine rating + HS), which would be broken under 30 tons in MWO, but would still be interesting. That's part of the balancing factor of mechs as well.

I'm glad it's not a smooth progression, it makes for some unique quirks about a weight class.

I did it and decided not to post it.
Its not that accurate.
Fitting a STD100 on a locust 81 KPH (no bonuses)
That is the slowest you can go on a locust.
Atlas can't reach that speed.

Other example. Lets say you want too see what engine is needed to reach 60KPH.

The closest you can get a BJ-1 to 60KPH is by fitting a STD170.
The final speed is 61.2
If you try and get an AWS-8Q to 60KPH, you have to fit a STD300.
The AWS' speed ends up at 60.7KPH.

You can see that 61.2 and 60.7 as top speeds aren't exactly comparable.
In order to compare info, you need to keep as much as possible as at fixed values.

What I will do is, if I still have the data, is calculate a coefficient on how much engine weight is needed to move the mech @ 1KPH.

Then we can analyse that

[Tombstoner]

ShadowedR, on 07 November 2013 - 08:07 AM, said:

My MWO comparison was an Awesome with 3x PPCs.
The current system would throw in a stack of ghost heat if you alpha all 3.

Homeless Bill created a post covering one form of balancing system that involved targeting computer load

http://mwomercs.com/...oats-and-clans/

This was posably one of the most popular community supported ideas with valid counter points with compromise solutions for using RNG for game balance on the entire MWO forums. If your not aware of it it comes down to targeting computer load and every TC has a fixed amount it can handle. if you go over the TC limit the accuracy of the grouped wepons does way down. if you single fired them you get precise accuracy. it blends both RNG hit determination and hit location with skill based precision in a way that give PGI an additional degree of freedom for balancing things. PGI acknowledged the threads existence but never commented on it for or against it. Then we got ghost heat and JJ shake.

This system was really good since it would give a reason to have the clan targeting computer. it would have allowed for heat affects on targeting. a corner stone of BT. stock configurations crom cannon could have been given a 100% bonus to TCL making them a very viable alternative to modifying your mech to the flavor of the month with no penalties.

but community originated ideas are not received well.

[ShadowedR]

Tombstoner, on 07 November 2013 - 09:49 AM, said:

Homeless Bill created a post covering one form of balancing system that involved targeting computer load

http://mwomercs.com/...oats-and-clans/

This was posably one of the most popular community supported ideas with valid counter points with compromise solutions for using RNG for game balance on the entire MWO forums.

...

Sounds like a really good idea that doesn't straight up copy other games. Too bad I missed that discussion.

I often wonder if the suggested features we make are too complex to be viably implemented in the game within a reasonable amount of time and budget. As have been said, the PGI team is still trying to figure out some of the oddities around the game engine.

:-/

[Almond Brown]

Zyllos, on 07 November 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

Hey, I am all fine with adding "core rule modifications" for specific chassis/variants dependent to add uniqueness to mechs.

But, personally, I think the major issue with this game is the concept that we are using a random distribution armor system that assumes random damage in a game that weapon's fire is 100% perfect.

But this is kinda off topic relating to tonnage, though.

But would a single Pool of Armor, equal to the allowed Maximum for any chassis, that is player distributed as they see fit, work any better? Would you put all 338 pts allowed for your Medium Mech in the CT, based on current game-play result? Cored out 8 of 10 matches?

That way at least, the enemy would have to test (random sample) the different areas of an enemies Mech to find the current weak spots. Next Match the weak spot may have been moved. Random as hell those players are...

Edited by Almond Brown, 07 November 2013 - 10:07 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

But would a single Pool of Armor, equal to the allowed Maximum for any chassis, that is player distributed as they see fit, work any better? Would you put all 338 pts allowed for your Medium Mech in the CT, based on current game-play result? Cored out 8 of 10 matches?

No but remember PGI can stat mine. PGI can figure out the exact % of the time CT are being hit, and shift the armor values accordingly to better protect the locations of mechs that are getting hit more often.

In battletech your center torso only gets hit 20% of the time. But in MWO your center torso can get hit as often as 100% of the time. Thats potentially five times more damage. So its no wonder CT are so underarmored. Its even worse for side torsos because theyre only supposed to get hit 17% of the time, making it relatively safe to carry an XL in tabletop, but complete suicide in MWO.

The problem is PGI doesnt seem to care about the center torso coring issue, or the fact that other hit locations dont even matter, because CT is so easy to destroy.

Edited by Khobai, 07 November 2013 - 10:15 AM.

[Bront]

ShadowedR, on 07 November 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:

I did it and decided not to post it.
Its not that accurate.
Fitting a STD100 on a locust 81 KPH (no bonuses)
That is the slowest you can go on a locust.
Atlas can't reach that speed.

Other example. Lets say you want too see what engine is needed to reach 60KPH.

The closest you can get a BJ-1 to 60KPH is by fitting a STD170.
The final speed is 61.2
If you try and get an AWS-8Q to 60KPH, you have to fit a STD300.
The AWS' speed ends up at 60.7KPH.

You can see that 61.2 and 60.7 as top speeds aren't exactly comparable.
In order to compare info, you need to keep as much as possible as at fixed values.

What I will do is, if I still have the data, is calculate a coefficient on how much engine weight is needed to move the mech @ 1KPH.

Then we can analyse that

It won't give you a 100% comparable below 25 (and the 25 will be skewed in MWO due to how they handle engine weight), but 30-100 should be fine with the (Mech Weight X 4 = Engine size) comparison, and the (Mech Weight X 3 = Engine Size) works at 35-100.

I was looking for TT Values and even multipliers only because it's a fairly easy comparable that's good on almost all mechs.

Edit: You just have to include up to 10 HS for engines lighter than 250)

Edited by Bront, 07 November 2013 - 10:16 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Khobai, on 07 November 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

No but remember PGI can stat mine. PGI can figure out the exact % of the time CT are being hit, and shift the armor values accordingly to better protect the locations of mechs that are getting hit more often.

In battletech your center torso only gets hit 20% of the time. But in MWO your center torso can get hit as often as 100% of the time. Thats potentially five times more damage. So its no wonder CT are so underarmored. Its even worse for side torsos because theyre only supposed to get hit 17% of the time, making it relatively safe to carry an XL in tabletop, but complete suicide in MWO.

The problem is PGI doesnt seem to care about the center torso coring issue, or the fact that other hit locations dont even matter, because CT is so easy to destroy.

Per Chassis I assume. A Spider and Hunchback, for example, would likely have radically differing data sets. Seems to tad over the top really. They are building a game, not trying to get to Alpha Century... and back.

Why not just reduce ROF across the board by 50%. The Heat and Armor are both affected, positively, while damage should remain relative.

Edited by Almond Brown, 07 November 2013 - 10:20 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Why not just reduce ROF across the board by 50%. The Heat and Armor are both affected, positively, while damage should remain relative.

That would just make poptarting worse because dps weapons would be ineffective with halved rate of fire.

[Zyllos]

ShadowedR, on 07 November 2013 - 08:45 AM, said:

So are you suggesting we get rid of pin point precision? Or that the add armor/speed to compensate for that fact?

That is the thing.

Personally, my view of it is to get rid of pin point precision and add either a simple cone of fire around their respective aiming points -OR- set up unique mechanics to allow for precise aiming but only slowly over time or for firing individual weapons.

But, I am not sure...

Almond Brown, on 07 November 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:

But would a single Pool of Armor, equal to the allowed Maximum for any chassis, that is player distributed as they see fit, work any better? Would you put all 338 pts allowed for your Medium Mech in the CT, based on current game-play result? Cored out 8 of 10 matches?

That way at least, the enemy would have to test (random sample) the different areas of an enemies Mech to find the current weak spots. Next Match the weak spot may have been moved. Random as hell those players are...

True, I have thought about that for a long time. But the problem then becomes an issue that people will below off arms with relative ease, thus will want to start placing weapons on torsos so they don't have to put armor on arms and maximize them into the torsos.

You actually already kinda see this with "Arm Lock". Arms are considered bad, not allowing for precise convergence until Arm Lock came about.

EDIT:

I actually think that still keeping with the pool idea, but instead of having the complete freedom to place anywhere, just modify the maximum values a bit for specific mechs.

Allowing a Hunchback to not have quite as high armor in arms but more points into the torso sections (or specifically the Right Torso for the HBK-4G).

But this falls back to the Eve idea that everything follows base rules, then allow for exceptions around the rule to make unique chassis ideas.

Edited by Zyllos, 07 November 2013 - 12:16 PM.

[ShadowedR]

SPEED / ENGINE / TONNAGE Comparisons

As requested, here are a few charts:



Total W: The weight of the engine + additional heat sink weight to meet the minimum 10 HS
Dry W: Just the engine weight.

We see that the overall chart shows a steady growth in the overall weight of engines - good.
Lets look at the amount of change happening as we progress in engine size

Engine weight seems to constantly increase between 0 - 1t as you move along the engine sizes.
Engine sizes 100 - 200 see the smallest "jumps" in extra weight being added to the engine.
205 - 270 seem to be stable with a constant 0.5 growth.
From there on, engine weights grow exponentially.

So far, so good. Except for a few unusual spikes in Engine Weight, it all seems perfectly acceptable.

OK, lets look at the influence of engines on a mech

The data:

I went and selected an engine size that would give a mech of each weight class a minimum speed of 50KPH.
Locust, Spider and Commando chassis can't go slow enough to reach 50 KPH.
To this, we check how many additional heat sinks do we need to add (min 10).
That gives us a Total Weight assigned to propulsion in our mech.

So, I went ahead an calculated two stats from this info:

Engine Weight / KHP : AKA, To achive a speed of 1KPH, how much engine weight is assign to the chassis?
KHP / Ton : For each ton we spend in engine, how much speed do we get?

And then Finally, the amount of change (Delta) in KHP / T.

Quick Analysis: I'm going to skip the first two, as they always "look" ok
Δ KPH/T: Higher values are better for mechs and an ideal curve would be an even curve.
Looking at the graph, you'll note that the Mediums, again, draw on the short end of the stick.
Medium gets a sub par speed increase per ton spent on engines.
Heck, the 55t range gets less benefit than an Atlas.

Conclusion?
Again, make your own.
Mine is: My Centurion needs a speed buff to be competitive

[Furball42]

Khobai, on 07 November 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

No but remember PGI can stat mine. PGI can figure out the exact % of the time CT are being hit, and shift the armor values accordingly to better protect the locations of mechs that are getting hit more often.

In battletech your center torso only gets hit 20% of the time. But in MWO your center torso can get hit as often as 100% of the time. Thats potentially five times more damage. So its no wonder CT are so underarmored. Its even worse for side torsos because theyre only supposed to get hit 17% of the time, making it relatively safe to carry an XL in tabletop, but complete suicide in MWO.

The problem is PGI doesnt seem to care about the center torso coring issue, or the fact that other hit locations dont even matter, because CT is so easy to destroy.

Without all the number crunching (kerensky knows i do a lot that playing EVE, although my colleague ^^ is doing a fantastic job), what i feel is that we still get cored and killed waaay to quickly. My whole, albeit quiet and personal, crusade is to make the mechs feel more, er, mechy? with survivability. Ok ok, yes, matches are only 15mins long if you don't get roflstomped. And by some standards that is OK.

But i'm thinking pairing up more complex subsystems with role bonus will achieve a level of complexity that won't make this just a TDM game.

Prepare for silly example:
Subsystems and micromanagement. Say you get an engine hit. In TT thats bad. heat for your toasty, anyone? so maybe a gradual increase of heat. so now the pilot must vent/purge./open a window manually to get rid of the heat, BUT this makes it so that one engine hit doesn't kill you. ok yes, you won't be focussing 100% on the battle until you either win or die, BUT you might get to impact the battle still.

i'm not saying the above should be implemented as is, it is just an example of prolonging battle lifetime while introducing something more complex than walking up and CT coring. (ammo dumping? energy rerouting from engine to lasers for more of a phoof at more heat but less speed... {ideas of dubious origin} like that.


edited for grammar

Edited by Furball42, 07 November 2013 - 11:57 PM.