388 replies to this topic

[LowSubmarino]

It is the same as with individual agenda's of players in pug games. Everybody has a different agenda and understanding of what to do in the game.

Same goes with believes of what is op and what not in the game.

Everybody believes some things are op and some too weak and the next best person will completly contradict that at which point the third person introduces a different weapon type which is supposedly much much better anyway and is long overdue with balancing.

From the developers point of view they should change things very slowly and carefully. And so far they have more or less done that. Only after many months of whining about hitboxes and a kazillion posts have they made slight modifications. I think there would have to be a smallish hurrican of a ****storm for a few months raging about ac20 for them to at least consider changing them.

I haven't really seen any huge numbers of complaints about ac20 really though you'll prolly have to wait a long time for any fixes hehe.

[Lightfoot]

@ IceCase88

I am not here QQ-ing. I adapt easily to whatever comes down.

It's about whether MWO will support Battletech and MechWarrior. It doesn't right now. It is GunWarrior.

If MWO was MechWarrior the stock AWS-9M would fire 3xERPPCs in a single salvo without shutting down very much and no one would mind it doing so. That's Battletech functionality and balance. However in MWO the Devs and many players can't stand for this to happen. They want GunWarrior, I guess, so the stock AWS-9M blows up on the 2nd or 3rd salvo (Battletech says it could fire 9 salvos before missing a turn to cool down).

Anyway, the bad part is how diminished MWO will be with a third of the mechs unusable because of over zealous Heat nerfing.

That's all. If that's what happens, oh well, but we all lost probably the best part of MechWarrior which is having all the mechs and weapons competing evenly and the map determining which type loadout is best suited for the enviornment. MechWarrior can be a very tactically rich game. GunWarrior requires little planning, just bunch-up and go really.

[Garth Erlam]

The Justicar, on 06 November 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

It is not an opinion. It is a fact. Ballistics are WAY more powerful than energy based weapons. The proof is in the math. The following post's calculations don't even factor in instant damage vs. beam duration, which would even further skew results in favor of AC's.

See:
http://mwomercs.com/...t-fire-weapons/

[color=cyan]I appreciate that post, and it does point out good information, but it doesn't take into account:
1) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which runs out.
2) Ballistic weapons are harder to hit with.
3) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which explodes. That's a pretty big deal.
4) Ballistic weapons are heavier.

Lasers are better late game, as you have '100%' ammo guaranteed. I'm not saying nothing could be better, but the post you point to says, simultaneously, that ballistics are better because they fire faster, but worse because they then overheat quicker (than the TT) - particularly with the AC2/AC5/UAC5... which are the very weapons you're claiming everyone is using. So I'm confused, are you saying you want, as the post you like to says, an AC2 to do "1/4" (.5) damage a shot, but create "1/4" (.25) heat a shot?

Also, and I think this needs to be in bold endo-plating across every 'New Posts' screen, this is NOT the tabletop. It's not turn based, there's no 'pilot skill' to prevent you from hitting things outside of your own skill at gunnery, tactics, battlefield awareness, etc.[/color]

[RickySpanish]

Garth Erlam, on 26 November 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

[color=cyan]I appreciate that post, and it does point out good information, but it doesn't take into account:[/color]
1) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which runs out.
2) Ballistic weapons are harder to hit with.
3) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which explodes. That's a pretty big deal.
4) Ballistic weapons are heavier.

Lasers are better late game, as you have '100%' ammo guaranteed. I'm not saying nothing could be better, but the post you point to says, simultaneously, that ballistics are better because they fire faster, but worse because they then overheat quicker (than the TT) - particularly with the AC2/AC5/UAC5... which are the very weapons you're claiming everyone is using. So I'm confused, are you saying you want, as the post you like to says, an AC2 to do "1/4" (.5) damage a shot, but create "1/4" (.25) heat a shot?

Also, and I think this needs to be in bold endo-plating across every 'New Posts' screen, this is NOT the tabletop. It's not turn based, there's no 'pilot skill' to prevent you from hitting things outside of your own skill at gunnery, tactics, battlefield awareness, etc.

The thing about ammo running out though is that so does your opponent's health. With the exception of LRMs and to a lesser extent, AC20s, it's pretty easy to load enough ammo into your Mech to not worry about it running out.

Also while ammo does explode, keeping it in your legs kind of mitigates this, as losing a leg is a pretty big problem in and of itself, so two tons of ammo going up in flames would be the least of your worries at that point. You can also afford a ton in your head, totaling 5 tons of relatively carefree ammo storage.

[Sandpit]

RickySpanish, on 26 November 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

The thing about ammo running out though is that so does your opponent's health. With the exception of LRMs and to a lesser extent, AC20s, it's pretty easy to load enough ammo into your Mech to not worry about it running out.

Also while ammo does explode, keeping it in your legs kind of mitigates this, as losing a leg is a pretty big problem in and of itself, so two tons of ammo going up in flames would be the least of your worries at that point. You can also afford a ton in your head, totaling 5 tons of relatively carefree ammo storage.

So, is it safe to assume that your accuracy is 100%?

[RickySpanish]

Sandpit, on 26 November 2013 - 01:58 PM, said:

So, is it safe to assume that your accuracy is 100%?

Is it safe to assume that yours is 0%?

[Jman5]

Garth Erlam, on 26 November 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

[color=cyan]I appreciate that post, and it does point out good information, but it doesn't take into account:[/color]
1) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which runs out.
2) Ballistic weapons are harder to hit with.
3) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which explodes. That's a pretty big deal.
4) Ballistic weapons are heavier.

Lasers are better late game, as you have '100%' ammo guaranteed. I'm not saying nothing could be better, but the post you point to says, simultaneously, that ballistics are better because they fire faster, but worse because they then overheat quicker (than the TT) - particularly with the AC2/AC5/UAC5... which are the very weapons you're claiming everyone is using. So I'm confused, are you saying you want, as the post you like to says, an AC2 to do "1/4" (.5) damage a shot, but create "1/4" (.25) heat a shot?

Also, and I think this needs to be in bold endo-plating across every 'New Posts' screen, this is NOT the tabletop. It's not turn based, there's no 'pilot skill' to prevent you from hitting things outside of your own skill at gunnery, tactics, battlefield awareness, etc.

Hi Garth, I don't pretend to know for sure what is and isn't imbalanced. You guys have metrics at HQ and it will give you a clearer picture than my anecdotal feelings.

What I will say about ballistics is that there are some distressing advantages for ballistics that have me concerned.

1. Max range on ballistics are 3x the optimal range, but lasers have only 2x, while missiles immediately zero out right after optimal range. What I find in my games is that a lot of damage exchanges take place in this space between optimal range and max range. So in this area ballistics are doing more damage because their damage drop off is much more gradual and far reaching.



2. The heat build up of autocannons combined with the free 10 DHS on your engine make a lot of these builds too easy to make heat neutral. Many of these popular builds can fire continuously for over a minute. I'm not saying this is imbalanced, just worrisome how little impact the heat system has on so many ballistic mechs.

3. Weight/Slot size. I feel like this is more of a toss up than it seems at first glance. I think when you factor in the number of heatsinks required to be close to the heat values of the ballistic builds with similar DPS, it's close to a wash.

4. The way critical damage to items work give ballistics (and the PPC) a major advantage over lasers and missiles to a certain extent. It's exceptionally difficult to knock out the weapons of an exposed component with lasers because the way laser damage has those micro pulses. Each pulse has a chance to crit which means it will invariably spread to every other item in the component about equally. An AC/10 on the other hand will 1-hit KO a laser or heatsink regardless of how much buffering you do. So basically the one major disadvantage autocannons and missiles have (ammo explosion) you need autocannons yourself to realistically take advantage of that weakness. (Either that or grind through an atlas' entire leg armor/internals for a 10% chance to trigger an explosion on the off chance that there is even ammo in there)

5. The high performance competitive teams are overloading their loadouts with ballistic biased mechs. Highlanders, cataphracts, Shadowhawks. I was hestitant to even mention this, because it's hard for me to substantiate, but I feel like sometimes where there's smoke there is fire. There is obviously some non-obvious advantages to these builds that focus on autocannons or else some team would have come along by now and would be beating the snot out of them with a new meta. I play the Hunchback 4SP pretty religiously and I am overwhelmingly eclipsed in damage by decent pilots in ballistic jumpsniping shadowhawks. My personal opinion is that it's the max range disparity that is the largest issue. Bring autocannons down to 2x the range and things become less unfair.

Sorry for dumping this all here. I've been thinking about ballistics lately.

Edited by Jman5, 26 November 2013 - 03:21 PM.

[Sandpit]

RickySpanish, on 26 November 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

Is it safe to assume that yours is 0%?

I'll take that as a no. Which means that every shot you miss is 0 DPS and 0 damage. My lasers don't have to hit when I click the button which is yet another trade off (a big one in my opinion) so all those mathematical equations and statements of xx weapon is "better" because it does pinpoint damage and more dps over time, yadda yadda yadda, does not take into account that when you miss with a ballistic, you miss, completely, 0 damage. Lasers don't. So without taking into account a pilot's accuracy all of those numbers are skewed for 100% accuracy.

And yes, my accuracy is 0%, I'll show ya if I ever see ya on the battlefield

[juxstapo]

Oni Ralas, on 06 November 2013 - 03:44 PM, said:

. AC2's aren't a large mech weapon, nor would they be a mainline weapon on something that big (lore and physics wise anyway).

I've always known there was something "wrong" with the Mauler

EDIT: ok, to actually participate in teh discussion. I've long been the opinion that rampantly swinging the nerf bat wasn't the way to handle things, rather buff the other weapons to suit... specifically: If ghost heat went away, the world would promptly rebalance itself.

Edited by juxstapo, 26 November 2013 - 06:53 PM.

[IceCase88]

Yes, yes... nerf a weapon to swing the meta in another direction. Buff a weapon to swing it another direction. No one will be happy until the red team is nerfed and the blue team is buffed. There are more cons to the ACs then there are pros. Some examples are: ACs are extremely heavy and you still need to add ammo, ammo explodes, you have to face your opponent for an extended period of time making you a huge target, missing causes 0 damage (their is no grazing), etc..

I am for the removal of ghost heat especially with the fact overheating causes engine damage. Make the consequences for extreme overheating dire and make PPCs explode when critted. Or how about have the critted PPCs cause an EMP which shuts down a mech for a brief period of time. That will stop the PPC boating everyone was so annoyed with.

[Thorqemada]

1) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which runs out.
If ever Ammo runs out at the very end of a match and we all know that most matches are decided mid fight.

2) Ballistic weapons are harder to hit with.
Really? Tell that my Lasers that do 1 dmg when they should do 10.
Ballistic is hit or miss but most Mechs are to slow to not get hit and the Crit Hit System favours Big Hitters (aka Ballsitics and PPC).
Also the Big Caliber Ballistics blend most good into a Mechs defensive movement.

3) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which explodes. That's a pretty big deal.
Is it still a 10% Chance to explode?

4) Ballistic weapons are heavier.
Which only is a Problem for Lights and a few Mediums.

Ballistics are KING!
Lasers are ok.
Missiles suck...even when exploited.
MGs/Flamers are fluff.

PS: The PPC is functionally an Energy Based Ballistic Weapon.

Edited by Thorqemada, 26 November 2013 - 08:03 PM.

[RickySpanish]

Sandpit, on 26 November 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

I'll take that as a no. Which means that every shot you miss is 0 DPS and 0 damage. My lasers don't have to hit when I click the button which is yet another trade off (a big one in my opinion) so all those mathematical equations and statements of xx weapon is "better" because it does pinpoint damage and more dps over time, yadda yadda yadda, does not take into account that when you miss with a ballistic, you miss, completely, 0 damage. Lasers don't. So without taking into account a pilot's accuracy all of those numbers are skewed for 100% accuracy.

And yes, my accuracy is 0%, I'll show ya if I ever see ya on the battlefield

The point I was making is that despite missing, you get enough ammo per ton with ballistics to get the job done. You don't need to hit with all 200 rounds of UAC ammo to do your job.

[Sandpit]

RickySpanish, on 26 November 2013 - 08:31 PM, said:

The point I was making is that despite missing, you get enough ammo per ton with ballistics to get the job done. You don't need to hit with all 200 rounds of UAC ammo to do your job.

That's odd, I didn't see any of those "points" in your post. Can you point out where you said that?

Amount of ammo plays no role in determining the amount of damage you do. 500 rounds don't do you much good if you miss 75% of them now does it? So in other words, as I stated previously, it's another, in a ever increasing, list of trade-offs between energy and ballistics whether you want to "like" the trade-offs or not

RickySpanish, on 26 November 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

Is it safe to assume that yours is 0%?

just to reiterate

[RickySpanish]

Sandpit, on 26 November 2013 - 08:45 PM, said:

That's odd, I didn't see any of those "points" in your post. Can you point out where you said that?

Amount of ammo plays no role in determining the amount of damage you do. 500 rounds don't do you much good if you miss 75% of them now does it? So in other words, as I stated previously, it's another, in a ever increasing, list of trade-offs between energy and ballistics whether you want to "like" the trade-offs or not


just to reiterate

Holy cow. Ok here goes, try to keep up!

You made a useless point about my hit rate - you get enough ammo to not need a good hit rate to do enough damage to decide a game.

Therefore I made a similarly useless point, that your hit rate was 0%, implying that you weren't good enough to use ballistics. This is rubbish. Everyone is good enough to use ballistics, with the exception of maybe the gauss rifle which is a royal ***** to use without practice.

Once again - you have to be reeeeally rubbish to miss so much with your ballistics that ammo actually becomes an issue. With just a little practice, you can load 4 tons of ammo into your big guns and that will be enough to take out a third of the enemy team.

The current meta basically favours building Mechs around their ballistic hard points, or at the very least, matching energy with ballistics. There are some exceptions, such as Stalkers, but by and large the distribution of ballistic hard points on your Mech determines how good it actually is.

[Sandpit]

RickySpanish, on 26 November 2013 - 08:57 PM, said:

Holy cow. Ok here goes, try to keep up!

You made a useless point about my hit rate - you get enough ammo to not need a good hit rate to do enough damage to decide a game.

Therefore I made a similarly useless point, that your hit rate was 0%, implying that you weren't good enough to use ballistics. This is rubbish. Everyone is good enough to use ballistics, with the exception of maybe the gauss rifle which is a royal ***** to use without practice.

Once again - you have to be reeeeally rubbish to miss so much with your ballistics that ammo actually becomes an issue. With just a little practice, you can load 4 tons of ammo into your big guns and that will be enough to take out a third of the enemy team.

The current meta basically favours building Mechs around their ballistic hard points, or at the very least, matching energy with ballistics. There are some exceptions, such as Stalkers, but by and large the distribution of ballistic hard points on your Mech determines how good it actually is.

No, I pointed out that all the graphs, math, examples, etc. concerning how "op" ballistics are never take into account that thsoe numbers only apply with 100% accuray while lasers do not suffer from that as you can miss your initial shot with a laser and still get a hit and damage before the beam expires.
Let's see...
Stalker energy boat? Check
Bmaster energy boat? check
Tbolt energy boat? check
Shawk SSRM and ML no balistics? check
Jenner energy boat? check

That's 5 off the top of my head that use no ballistics and I do quite well in. I could give more but it would be pointless. You can feel lasers are useless, up, pointless, acs are op, etc. all you want. It won't stop me from using my energy boats and doing well in them. You can limit yourself if you'd like to, they're your mechs, build em and play em how you want. That doesn't mean anything is "broken" though.

Oddly enough the only ones telling anyone that they need to change something are the ones who are posting threads that complain of some sort of imbalance. Any time someone gives them several examples of how their universal and unilateral statements of how useless certain things are or how op others are not in fact true, they consistently and constantly ignore it.

If everything you said was fact then I wouldn't be able to use my energy boats and win. We would see absolutely nothing but 3-4 mechs in game all sporting some kind of shiny AC. The fact that you DON'T see that proves all of these "energy boats are up" and "ballistics are op" to be factually wrong.

oh and one more "LOL"

so you regularly take out 4 mechs every game with 4 tons of AC20s? That would put your kdr upward of over 4.0 with an AC20 right?

[RickySpanish]

Sandpit, on 26 November 2013 - 09:12 PM, said:

so you regularly take out 4 mechs every game with 4 tons of AC20s? That would put your kdr upward of over 4.0 with an AC20 right?

SHADOW HAWK SHD-2H 76 41 35 1.17 130 38 3.42 31,170 72,804 09:04:25
The games won have evened out as I arose from the base Elo, however at it's ridiculous peak, I had a 33 kills to 0 deaths in that 3xAC2 Hawk. That's a 3.42 KDR, so not quite 4.0. I have 5.4 in my Highlander 733C with 2 UAC5s and 2 PPCs, but the number of games is something like 30 which isn't really enough.

I'm not complaining about imbalance mind you, energy weapons have their place - to soften up the target, or to use on fast moving lights that have so little armour you can just breathe on them for a minute or two and they explode. But ballistics bring home the bacon, they chunk components and bring down the target all the while remaining cool (with the exception of the AC20 which is {Scrap} anyway when in something slower than 80-90kph) and a handy 500-600 metres from the idiots running brawler builds.

Also the Battlemaster and Thunderbolt Mechs are pants. No really.

Edited by RickySpanish, 26 November 2013 - 10:23 PM.

[Kilrein]

Sandpit, on 25 November 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

It's also very convenient for you to quote a post that's 3 weeks old. At the time of the post it was valid. And for the most part still is. Thank you for playing though? You might want to pick someone else to try and troll lol

Ah the old ad hominem post. Reminds me why I don't post often. But then I forget and try again and get the same result. And no, at the time of your post it was still not relevant as there have been numerous posts that included what you decided to ignore WELL before your post on November 6th.

How about addressing the points instead of insulting the poster?

Can you handle that?

[Kilrein]

Sandpit, on 26 November 2013 - 01:58 PM, said:

So, is it safe to assume that your accuracy is 100%?

Ad Hominem.

But here's some stats for you:

Notice the damage per hit as I will take shots past 270m. I can't give you an exact ratio but probably about 20-25% of my hits are at more than 270m.


AC/20 557 11,158 7,253 65.00% 1 day 23:39:32 144,267

Average damage per hit is 15.75. For slightly higher than 75% of potential damage per hit.

MEDIUM LASER 1,752 69,611 60,026 86.23% 6 days 18:46:30 171,614

Average damage per hit is 2.88. 57.6% of max potential damage per hit.

Yes, lasers provide hitscan but the triple max range for ballistics is an issue.

Edited by Kilrein, 30 November 2013 - 10:05 PM.

[anonymous161]

We need more weapons in this game clearly, not enough to the point that only a few are regularly used for victory. We need twice what we have to make for a more diverse experience in game types...and need a lot more game modes. This game clearly has gotten on every ones nerves lately, either they make stuff happen now or they are gonna find themselves closing down their studio due to lack of funding...again.

With next gen here though not truly started I'd say by spring I will no longer bother signing on, I'm much more excited about future mech games on the next gen systems by devs that are experts in making games. Just about any other developer out their would have made this game a gem, what we have is an insult, a simple game for milking stupid fans thats all of you idiots spending hundreds of dollars on a free to play game and dont tell me you are so hardcore that you will personally fund these devs when they haven't released any new weapons, or game modes in 2 dam years! You are all idiots to blindly spend money on these stupid pheonix packages...you would have a whole game for almost half the price! The game is ugly, and lacking in depth, there is no story element in this game, and the mp which is what this purely is...is broken!

Rant over. Gotta get more beer.

[MustrumRidcully]

RickySpanish, on 26 November 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

The thing about ammo running out though is that so does your opponent's health.

This might be the fundamental aspect of ammo in the balance equation. Your ammo runs out, but your enemies health does too. You just need to ensure your enemies health runs out before your ammo (or your own health) runs out.

The matches could be 60 minutes long, as long as it's 12 mechs vs 12 mechs, the amount of health avialable to both teams is limited, and so, you don't need infinite amounts of ammo.

That doesn't mean ammo is an irrelevant limitation - but it means that you can figure out how much ammo you need and the effective weight and size of a ballistic weapon boils down to the weapons own stats plus the ammo plus the heat sinks needed to keep it "cool enough".

Cool enough is yet another aspect - you don't need to be able to fire non-stop and be unable to overheat. Without heat penalties, the only concern you have is that you don't want to shut down either before the enemy is dead or you (and your team mates) are out of plain sight. That's always been a major aspect of the trick of the various sniper/long range/poptart metas.

Garth Erlam, on 26 November 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

[color=cyan]I appreciate that post, and it does point out good information, but it doesn't take into account:
1) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which runs out.
2) Ballistic weapons are harder to hit with.
3) Ballistic weapons use ammo, which explodes. That's a pretty big deal.
4) Ballistic weapons are heavier.

Lasers are better late game, as you have '100%' ammo guaranteed. I'm not saying nothing could be better, but the post you point to says, simultaneously, that ballistics are better because they fire faster, but worse because they then overheat quicker (than the TT) - particularly with the AC2/AC5/UAC5... which are the very weapons you're claiming everyone is using. So I'm confused, are you saying you want, as the post you like to says, an AC2 to do "1/4" (.5) damage a shot, but create "1/4" (.25) heat a shot?

Also, and I think this needs to be in bold endo-plating across every 'New Posts' screen, this is NOT the tabletop. It's not turn based, there's no 'pilot skill' to prevent you from hitting things outside of your own skill at gunnery, tactics, battlefield awareness, etc.[/color]

This is a much better post than those one-liners. Thank you.

But to get into more specifics:
1) Ammo I covered above. You can equip enough ammo to last a match. Add this ammo to the weight a weapon needs.
2) I know, leading is a non-trivial task, but: How true is this? Have you looked at the damage statistics of weapons, and calculated how much damage weapons should have inflictedif every shot hit, and how much damage was actually dealt? The statistic you list as accuracy in the mwomercs/profile/stats page counts even a single laser pulse hitting as a hit, but that's not the same as all damage finding its target.
3) The ammo explosion chance is still 10 %, isn't? It's not such a big deal. And it might be terrible if it was, I'd say that ammo explosion is one of the major reasons ballistics sucked in Battletech, regardless the tech level.
4) Ballistiscs are heavier, but need less heat sinks.


Regarding ballistics like the AC/2 dealing 1/4th damage and 1/4th and the like - yes, this is something some of us want, if we turn ballistics into burst fire weapons. (one press of the fire button fires 3-10 shells over 0.25 to 1 seconds, then the cooldown starts, similar to lasers). That would remove the pinpoint damage advantage and you might have solved all your biggest convergence problems.
Just forget that the 2, 5 10 and 20 in those weapon names are standing for the table top damage. As you say, this isn't table top. If you feel it's confusing, just rename them Small, Medium, Large and Assault Auto-Cannons and you can give them whatever cadence, damage and heat values that seem fair for their weights, not confuse anyone with arbitrary numbers in the name, and remain forwards compatible with future ballistics introduced in the battletech lore (there will be light auto-cannons eventually, so instead of a light AC/2, you can have a light small auto-cannon.)

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 01 December 2013 - 01:51 AM.