388 replies to this topic

[LowSubmarino]

Jman5, on 26 November 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

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.

You are most likely talking about premade teams that drop in random pug matches. Those random puggers play purely on instinct with not much communication and virtually no use of terrain whatsoever.

Those games turn into brawls really quickly with often times very uneven battles. Careless groups run face first into the main bulk of enemy mechs. In those fights ballistic weapons are devastating.

But I have seen organized teams use multiple long range laser points in conjunction to great success.

Ac 20 and ac 10 need to get very close to do lethal damage.

I dropped with 3 stalkers all loaded with er lls and we were killing mech after mech at ranges around 800+ meters.

Lasers are incredibly accurate and, as ppl have mentioned here, don't require ammo. On mechs with good energy hardpoints they are an awesome weapon but you have to take advantage of what they offer.

And how effective they can be is not determined by observations about random pug games. Naturally everybody will use what is effective in random games. Those often turn into brawls so of course ppl will equip weapons with burst damage.

A lot of maps have great potential to use terrain very effectively. I rarely - if ever - see that though.

Lasers are great. And if they get buffed then I wouldnt do 1000 + dmg every other game with my stalker but 1500 or 2000. And that would be unbalanced.

Edited by oneda, 01 December 2013 - 08:10 AM.

[stillnight]

You have to remember AC weapons come at a significant weight cost to equip even one of them you also need the ammo to even make them function. Though I do admit the energy weapons could use a bit more bite to them. But I thing PGI should seriously take a look on the balancing of the weapons.

[Whatzituyah]

stillnight, on 01 December 2013 - 01:41 PM, said:

You have to remember AC weapons come at a significant weight cost to equip even one of them you also need the ammo to even make them function. Though I do admit the energy weapons could use a bit more bite to them. But I thing PGI should seriously take a look on the balancing of the weapons.

If there is even the slightest calculation mistake the game can take a whole new meta like for ACs its the pinpoint damage with less heat then energy.

[The Justicar]

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

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.

Since you brought up the fact that this is not tabletop, do you think that the cooldown buffs that ballistics received in the translation are where they ought to be? Stated differently, are you, or the development team in general, okay with AC/2 being the highest DPS weapon in-game? A weapon that was supposed to be basically a wet noodle in tabletop?

[Cimarb]

Thorqemada, on 26 November 2013 - 08:02 PM, said:

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

I think this is very much true, but it should be a spread damage weapon, like a small-cone LBX, as opposed to a pinpoint one.

MustrumRidcully, on 01 December 2013 - 01:50 AM, said:

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.)

I strongly, strongly agree with this. PGI, at least look into this adjustment! (And let us know what you think) It would balance ballistics vs. energy IMMENSELY. Treat autocannons as ballistic versions of lasers, and PPCs as energy versions of the LBX (or Gauss, with charge), and it will be much easier to balance them all.

[Sug]

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

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.

I'ts probably been said already but:

1) Rarely an issue.
2) A hit is not a hit though, only damage matters. I have 90% accuracy with medium lasers but only about 3 damage per hit. My ac/2 is at 48% accuracy but just under 2 damage a hit, almost 100% of the possible damage was dealt with every hit. Ballistics are harder to hit with but they do full damage in their optimal range with every hit, to a single location.
3) Not a big enough deal. If you're taking crits you're almost dead anyways and the chance of one happening is pretty low. Even on training grounds I only see ammo explosions like 20% of the time.
4) The heatsinks needed for energy weapons balances that out. Try to make a mech that can fire an ERPPC or a Large Pulse Laser non stop.

[Zyllos]

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.

Weapon convergence makes ammo based weaponry much better than they are suppose to be. No player should ever be able to equip enough ammo to kill 6+ mechs with a single weapon but can easily accomplish this due to convergence.

When weapon damage is not spread out enough, you end up with mechs that only use up-front damage, like PPCs and ACs, so they can control the amount of damage being spread out on their target.

Ammo explosions are extremely low right now. Taking off a section only destroys ammo 10% of the time (normally it's never in TT so that is a penalty) but only 10% when weapons destroy an ammo bin, which is a HUGE buff to ammo based weapons. Then, on top of that, critical hits happen 100% of the time when you hit internal structure but in MWO, it's only ~44% of the time, depending on the weapon fired. Ammo is no where nearly as dangerous as you think it is...

Saying lasers are "better" late game due to ammo is a logical fallacy. Lasers are only better late game IF ammo is gone, but it's extremely rare for a mech to be out of ammo late game due to the nature of MWO. Thus, having a laser late game does not automatically make it better because your not guaranteed that the guy firing at you will not have ammo left to fire weapons.

Lasers are a hedge to allow yourself to fire weapons late in the game when ammo based weapons have ran dry, not a hedge to have a better weapon system against opponents with ammo based weapons.

But, I don't see this as an issue of ballistics vs lasers...it's an issue between all weapons fired at the same time hit the same location.

[Viges]

I really hope devs wont listen to that whine about ballistics.
Just adjust srms, pulse lasers, flamers, narc and maybe gauss and lrms a little.

[Cimarb]

Zyllos, on 02 December 2013 - 11:07 AM, said:

Weapon convergence makes ammo based weaponry much better than they are suppose to be. No player should ever be able to equip enough ammo to kill 6+ mechs with a single weapon but can easily accomplish this due to convergence.

When weapon damage is not spread out enough, you end up with mechs that only use up-front damage, like PPCs and ACs, so they can control the amount of damage being spread out on their target.

...

But, I don't see this as an issue of ballistics vs lasers...it's an issue between all weapons fired at the same time hit the same location.

Exactly. Autocannons and PPCs need to have their damage spread, not reduced. Make PPCs do a small cone of damage, like an LBX, and make autocannons do damage over time like a laser. Same damage, same cooldown, different application of damage.

Viges, on 02 December 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:

I really hope devs wont listen to that whine about ballistics.
Just adjust srms, pulse lasers, flamers, narc and maybe gauss and lrms a little.

Sure. Let's adjust FIVE weapon systems instead of a single one... That makes total sense...