111 replies to this topic

[William Mountbank]

Karl Streiger, on 09 December 2013 - 03:40 AM, said:

Here a polynomic graph with a smooth glide between the values.



However that did not solve the problem that 2 MLAS deal more damage below 200m because MLAS shots will hit the same spot.

So this is just the same as having the current ranges, but polynomic?
The current system looks like this:

Large laser will always have the range advantage, and Mediums have a weight advantage and so can be stacked to give higher damage in their range. Also, if a mech has 5t free and only one energy slot, then a Large Laser offers a compelling advantage over a Medium because of their slot efficiency.
You seem to be referring to the issue of multiple weapon convergence, which isn't one you can solve by changing the ranges of the lasers.

[MustrumRidcully]

ssm, on 09 December 2013 - 04:17 AM, said:

Well, I'm starting to think that it's not actually PGI's fault, and that balancing multiplayer Mechwarrior game is just impossible because it's just too many variables involved.

(All of previous MW titles were even less balanced than MWO, with the exception of MW: LL, but they managed this only by outright eliminating mech customisation)

Meh. I don't believe that. Other games have customization, and add area effects, and healing and lots of debuffs/CC effects to the mix. That is hard to balance.

MW:Os greatest failing might be both the heat system and that they haven't included enough to mitigiate synergy effects when "boating" weapons. Once you fixed this, the rest is mostly the math and following simple guidelines like "x tons of weapon A" should be equally strong as "x tons of weapon B".

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 December 2013 - 04:42 AM.

[ssm]

Reitrix, on 09 December 2013 - 04:18 AM, said:

I never said remove convergence. I said to cap it at the weapons max distance. Torsi mounted weaponry would still converge, albeit locked permanently to the weapons max range. The problem with the Awesome and Dragons hitboxes are somewhat resolved by the inability of every pilot and his puppy to place 6 different shots into that nose from any distance, and from any place in the firing 'Mech.

And no, the Meta wouldn't shift in such a way. Because 'Mechs with weapons solely in arms are easily disarmed and made useless. See the Splatcat, most Commando variants, Jenners, that Victor you decided to point out, hell even my Orions are significantly worse off without their arms, add in Cataphracts and Dragons, the list goes on.

Take two identical 'Mechs, with skilled pilots for each. have one Chain Fire, and the other Alpha everything, tell me which one wins.
The ability to dump 5+ shots into a single specific location in a single salvo is not something we should have. Carefully aiming each weapon system instead of {aim for center of mass and pull trigger} would slow down the death rate and enable us to return to proper armor values, as well as forcing us to create balanced loadouts to cater to a wider variety of ranges.

I disagree.

I'm pretty sure that by the time mechs with weapons solely in arms could be disarmed and made useless, their "carefully aiming each weapon system" counterparts would be turned to scrap twice over by barrage of pinpoint PPCs and ACs.

I stand by my point - nerfing convergence for torso-mounted weapons would be nothing but major buff to mechs that can mount heavy, pinpoint weapons in arms.

[stjobe]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 December 2013 - 04:41 AM, said:

MW:Os greatest failing might be both the heat system and that they haven't included enough to mitigiate synergy effects when "boating" weapons.

Heat penalties. They start at 5 heat in TT, and at 100% in MWO. 5 heat in TT corresponds to somewhere between 37.5% heat and 60% heat in MWO, depending on your amount of heat sinks.

If we had burst-fire ballistics, a beam-duration PPC, and heat over 40-50% impacted aiming, movement, and so on like it should, ghost heat could likely go the way of the Dodo (and we'd all be eternally grateful).

[MustrumRidcully]

stjobe, on 09 December 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

Heat penalties. They start at 5 heat in TT, and at 100% in MWO. 5 heat in TT corresponds to somewhere between 37.5% heat and 60% heat in MWO, depending on your amount of heat sinks.

If we had burst-fire ballistics, a beam-duration PPC, and heat over 40-50% impacted aiming, movement, and so on like it should, ghost heat could likely go the way of the Dodo (and we'd all be eternally grateful).

Yeah.

When we get the ability to make our own M:WO servers and access to the source code, will you open a public Git server or should I?


Realistically speaking, however. If PGI can#t do it when it's their full-time job; I probably won't be able to do it when it's a hobby. I would be willing to edit the itemstats.xml, however.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 December 2013 - 04:52 AM.

[OneEyed Jack]

Locking convergence isn't significantly better than removing it. It still leaves the player basically guessing where his shot is going to go a considerable portion of the time, especially in widely-spaced locations. Trying to imagine a line from the gun to an effectively arbitrary range, which you have to estimate, since there's no indicator of exactly where that point is, and then estimate whether the target is on that line somewhere, is close enough to pure guesswork as to make no substantial difference.

It would not have the effect you think it would.

You wouldn't see "balanced loadouts," which is a misleading term, anyway. You're referring to a mixed loadout, and implying that mixed is balanced, because it's what you want. On topic, you wouldn't see it, because most of the guns would be too hard to hit with to even bother taking. As was said, no one would take any mechs besides those that met the criteria to allow their arms to converge (or with guided missiles), because everything else would be too hard to hit with. The vulnerability of the arms being removed wouldn't matter, because anything relying on torso weapons wouldn't be able to selectively target the arms well enough to exploit that vulnerability.

There are ways that the convergence issue could be solved to reduce the impact of pinpoint alphas, but this is not one of them. There are more factors than you are taking into account. In short, the solution is so short-sighted that hell, PGI just might do it.

MustrumRidcully, on 09 December 2013 - 04:41 AM, said:

MW:Os greatest failing might be both the heat system and that they haven't included enough to mitigiate synergy effects when "boating" weapons. Once you fixed this, the rest is mostly the math and following simple guidelines like "x tons of weapon A" should be equally strong as "x tons of weapon B".

Nah, the greatest failing is that they didn't just pick sim or FPS and stick with it.

[ssm]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 December 2013 - 04:41 AM, said:

Meh. I don't believe that. Other games have customization, and add area effects, and healing and lots of debuffs/CC effects to the mix. That is hard to balance.

Nope, actually it's a lot easier - because it's not only a matter of number of variables, but of PGIs control over them. They are extremely limited by IP - and I don't mean only things like tonage and crits, but things like "we have a weapon called medium laser, that should roughly do this and that compared to Large Laser and Small Laser", "this mech should have arms low slung, because of 80s artwork", "25 ton mech should have max armor of XX".

Quote

MW:Os greatest failing might be both the heat system and that they haven't included enough to mitigiate synergy effects when "boating" weapons. Once you fixed this, the rest is mostly the math and following simple guidelines like "x tons of weapon A" should be equally strong as "x tons of weapon B".

You actually proved my point - optimal/ideal way to mitigate synergy effects when boating weapons don't exist, because of the above limitations (for example, what to do about "canon boats"?)

We'll never (never did and never will) get to the point of needing only math and simple guidelines to balance things around, because there is just too much intermingling layers (Heat & Boating being only two of them) that relate to each other in a lot of ways (and some of them, because of human/player factor are unpredictable), while too often having hands tied by 30 year old IP.

Edited by ssm, 09 December 2013 - 05:19 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

OneEyed Jack, on 09 December 2013 - 03:59 AM, said:

So... we should fix ranges by nerfing short-range weapons?

I'm not sure you even know what it is you're arguing for.

No I don't argue about nerf or buffing anything. OK range is reduced - its doubled medium range not doubled long range as it is actually. This drop off should only simulate a rule set that was ignored by PGI completely.

Same drop off would be applied for all weapons - for example a AC 20 would only deal 42% of damage at 270m
Or a Gauss at 660 - same 42%

With some modification of the slope you can also increase the disparity of weapons (for example an increased negative slope for Pulse Lasers (but with a highly increased base damage) resulting in extremly high point blank damage and only cosmetic damage at long range.

William Mountbank, on 09 December 2013 - 04:39 AM, said:

So this is just the same as having the current ranges, but polynomic?
The current system looks like this:

Large laser will always have the range advantage, and Mediums have a weight advantage and so can be stacked to give higher damage in their range. Also, if a mech has 5t free and only one energy slot, then a Large Laser offers a compelling advantage over a Medium because of their slot efficiency.
You seem to be referring to the issue of multiple weapon convergence, which isn't one you can solve by changing the ranges of the lasers.

It won't change fundamentally as you have said. The only difference is that the range bracket were the large laser is better is slightly increased. (Its ~ 280m currently would be 200m with a constant drop off)

And yes I don't know that range alone will not solve convergence (although reduced range could help a little bit)


...Last words (for now)
You can also use the same range classes for all weapons:
However the major issue about damage should be solved by accuracy. An AC 20 bullet with a initial velocity of 500m/s or a long burst for a duration of 1sec would decrease the damage delivered to a target. (could also solve convergence)

OneEyed Jack, on 09 December 2013 - 05:02 AM, said:

Nah, the greatest failing is that they didn't just pick sim or FPS and stick with it.

QFT

Edited by Karl Streiger, 09 December 2013 - 05:08 AM.

[ssm]

stjobe, on 09 December 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

Heat penalties. They start at 5 heat in TT, and at 100% in MWO. 5 heat in TT corresponds to somewhere between 37.5% heat and 60% heat in MWO, depending on your amount of heat sinks.

If we had burst-fire ballistics, a beam-duration PPC, and heat over 40-50% impacted aiming, movement, and so on like it should, ghost heat could likely go the way of the Dodo (and we'd all be eternally grateful).

You made simple mistake - heat in MWO doesn't correspond to heat treshhold in TT. Heat penalties are apllied after we substract amount of heat dissipated by heatsinks.

Heatsinks work differently in real time fps shooter (heat dissipation as a process) than in abstract TT game - where it's applied in arbitrary 10s/turn increments.

Essentially - while the effect of reaching 100% heat in MWO and auto-shutdown treshold in TT is the same (automatic shutdown) is the same, the don't correspond in any way, because heatsinks behave differently.

Edited by ssm, 09 December 2013 - 05:24 AM.

[Belorion]

Oh my aching convergence...

Seriously quit trying to get them to nerf aiming. It will never happen.

[Joseph Mallan]

I disagree on range... to a point. These are big honking weapons of mass destruction. Present date ranges are much greater than what we have in game(miles over Meters). I do understand the desire to make it a more face to face encounter, so I just ignore the silly of it.

Convergence, the game is based off TT which has fluff that explains why our weapons could be aimed at the right side f a Mech and hit Left torsos!

But, I have fired enough rounds t know that in real life... I could never hit 5 weapons on a quarter at 400m.

So lets loosen up the Convergence a bit and make it feel a little more realistic.

[Belorion]

The TT rang values are ridiculously small. Extending the ranges was a good idea. Its not a full powered blast to boot.

[Karl Streiger]

Belorion, on 09 December 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

The TT rang values are ridiculously small. Extending the ranges was a good idea. Its not a full powered blast to boot.

The funny part is they didn't extend the ranges not really.
Next to that a increase of range also means you have to increase the speed.

[MustrumRidcully]

ssm, on 09 December 2013 - 05:07 AM, said:

Nope, actually it's a lot easier - because it's not only a matter of number of variables, but of PGIs control over them. They are extremely limited by IP - and I don't mean only things like tonage and crits, but things like "we have a weapon called medium laser, that should roughly do this and that compared to Large Laser and Small Laser", "this mech should have arms low slung, because of 80s artwork", "25 ton mech should have max armor of XX".

They limit themselves, and mostly arbitrary. There isn't a good reason why an AC/20 must deal 20 damage. The LL doesn't deal it's canonical 8 damage per shot anymore. All weapons have fire rates that don't mimic anything fitting the table top rules (including those badly made Solaris rules that failed to translate TT weapon stats from 10 second turn to 2.5 second turns)
Why slavishly adhere to this weapon stats if you don't slavishly adhere to others? The AC/2 is a low heat weapon in the table top, it's the hottest ballistic in MW:O.

Those armor values are chosen as they are in the table top game because the table top game uses a hit location roll to determine hit locations, and those values work reasonably well with that. If you don't use hit location rolls, you can make up your own armor values.

Quote

You actually proved my point - optimal/ideal way to mitigate synergy effects when boating weapons don't exist, because of the above limitations (for example, what to do about "canon boats"?)

My solution(s) to boating don't forbid "canon boats" in any way, nor do they give them an undue advantage. I am not one of those hard point restriction fanbois. I suggest dealing with it via turning more weapons in DOT weapons or outright disallowing group fire for (high) pin-point damage weapons.

Quote

We'll never (never did and never will) get to the point of needing only math and simple guidelines to balance things around, because there is just too much intermingling layers (Heat & Boating being only two of them) that relate to each other in a lot of ways (and some of them, because of human/player factor are unpredictable), while too often having hands tied by 30 year old IP.

They let their hands be tied for no good reason.

Here is my bold claim: You can make a table top translation to real time game with mouse aiming where mechs still have the same weapon overall key features (weapons loadut, mech speed, jump capabilties, weights) that is better balanced than MW:O and even the table top game. You might not end up with PPCs that deal 10 damage per hit, or per 10 seconds, or whatever, but that's okay. That are just numbers, they don't define the flavor or feel of Battletech.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 December 2013 - 05:50 AM.

[Prezimonto]

OneEyed Jack, on 08 December 2013 - 04:25 PM, said:

Personally, I feel that convergence shouldn't be instant, but that's beside the point.

This is really the issue. Convergence times should be linked to actuators (the more you have the quicker it is). I wish they'd add a targeting computer that would allow convergence times to synergize with TAG/NARC/Spotting to give more reason to use those as well. I actually would love to see an upgraded targeting computer give a lead dot on moving mechs after you get full convergence/target information.

MustrumRidcully, on 09 December 2013 - 04:36 AM, said:

Convergence is unlikely to become non-instantenous, as the developers explained themselves (someone else dig up the post). The problem is the interaction with HSR - suddenly, the convergence point would also have to be rewound, which wojuld make the process more difficult and behavior potentially even less predictable for players.

I actually hadn't heard that before. It makes me sad. I don't think they even need a difficult mechanic (something similar to the lock on timer). But adding back in targeting has the potential to enrich the game in terms of roles, team mate synergy, balancing of mechs/weapons/loadouts. There's lots of advantages to be gained through the addition of this mechanic.

Edited by Prezimonto, 09 December 2013 - 06:10 AM.

[ssm]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 December 2013 - 05:48 AM, said:

(...)

Here is my bold claim: You can make a table top translation to real time game with mouse aiming where mechs still have the same weapon overall key features (weapons loadut, mech speed, jump capabilties, weights) that is better balanced than MW:O and even the table top game. You might not end up with PPCs that deal 10 damage per hit, or per 10 seconds, or whatever, but that's okay. That are just numbers, they don't define the flavor or feel of Battletech.

For some reason, nobody did so far - every MW game so far had balance issues. I agree that by reducing number of arbitrary limitations of IP you could eventually arrive at point of "rough balance", but not before crossing the "no longer feels like Battletech" treshold of majority of potential players. If you think they aren't that prickly - look at all those "don't nerf our OP Clantech" threads

Edited by ssm, 09 December 2013 - 06:16 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

ssm, on 09 December 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

For some reason, nobody did so far - every MW game so far had balance issues. I agree that by reducing number of arbitrary limitations of IP you could eventually arrive at point of "rough balance", but not before crossing the "no longer feels like Battletech" treshold of majority of potential players. If you think they aren't that prickly - look at all those "don't nerf our OP Clantech threads"

Wouldn't be possible because you should not be able to compare anything.
How do you want to compare a TT system with 8 hit boxes 15 damage for a (C) ER-PPC - with a system with 20 hit boxes and 113e/10X damage for a ER-PPC vs an armor with multiple thresholds and damage reduction
and critical systems that could be hit by weapon fire - that have different internal armor values....

[stjobe]

ssm, on 09 December 2013 - 05:17 AM, said:

You made simple mistake - heat in MWO doesn't correspond to heat treshhold in TT. Heat penalties are apllied after we substract amount of heat dissipated by heatsinks.

Heatsinks work differently in real time fps shooter (heat dissipation as a process) than in abstract TT game - where it's applied in arbitrary 10s/turn increments.

Essentially - while the effect of reaching 100% heat in MWO and auto-shutdown treshold in TT is the same (automatic shutdown) is the same, the don't correspond in any way, because heatsinks behave differently.

While I agree in principle that they behave differently in TT and MWO due to one being based on a 10-second turn and the other being real-time, there is considerable similarities; have a look at this illustration I did for a similar thread (although it is primarily intended to illustrate that the TT and MWO heat capacities are similar, it might suffice for this discussion as well):



The MWO heat scale goes from 0 to 100% heat, whereas the TT heat scale goes from 0 to 30 starting after the number of heat sinks.

Every box is 1 point of heat, and you may notice there's no red on the MWO scale. That's what I'm getting at. There's no penalty for running hot in MWO whereas there was rather severe penalties for doing so in TT (although it was harder to heat up in the first place, since only residual heat was applied to the heat scale).

Edited by stjobe, 09 December 2013 - 07:15 AM.

[Noesis]

stjobe, on 09 December 2013 - 04:06 AM, said:

That's arguably MWO's single biggest issue; that 2xML effectively is a single weapon. 4xML is 20 points of damage to a single spot, same as an AC/20 (disregarding beam time for the moment) but for just 4 tons.

They have to address this issue sooner rather than later.

Laser weapons are already balanced by heat, the ML having 4 instead of 3 heat and the beam time shouldn't be simply discarded as it effectively reduces the pinpoint effect and in lots of cases ends up reducing the damage applied (nominally by 50%). Thus when you look at dps stats for effective hitting in a larger way, the ML actually looking as a weapon providing 2.5 to 3 damage. Something an AC20 slug as a single round to a point does not suffer from on an equivalent basis when talking about pinpoint accuracy.

So they are not "completely" equivalent models to compare and still have their own balancing components. To be able to compare them for all cases as equals with pinpoint accuracy you'd have to make MLs have instantaneous damage to a point with no beam effects as result.

If anything in comparison the ML might need a boost or reduction in heat to help the short game. As such the idea of perhaps reducing the effective range of long and extreme weapons beneficial to the argument here of helping to move the Meta away from the current domination with long range direct fire "support".

Edited by Noesis, 09 December 2013 - 07:38 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

ssm, on 09 December 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

For some reason, nobody did so far - every MW game so far had balance issues. I agree that by reducing number of arbitrary limitations of IP you could eventually arrive at point of "rough balance", but not before crossing the "no longer feels like Battletech" treshold of majority of potential players. If you think they aren't that prickly - look at all those "don't nerf our OP Clantech" threads

I don't think so.

One thing to consider is that previous Mechwarrior titles weren't so interested in balanced.

MW3 did definitely want you to upgrade your mechs and make you feel happy about taking out an enemy mech so you could take it over and keep all its cool clan tech equipment.

MW1 to MW4 were predominantly single player games. Balance isn't a big concern there, so if you didn't get it right the first time, you only fixed the most glaring issues.

The table top game probably also introduced power creep because it would sell, and the designers didn't want to change the core rules and stats of game elements. (Which isn't unlike the PGI stance on some matters), but they tried to reintroduce balance by giving us battle value. (Where as it's evident that originally, tonnage was intended to be the biggest balancing factor.)

MW:O is the first official PvP only game in the entire franchise. Balance isn't merely a neat design goal - it becomes a lot more important once it's about players vs players, egos and competititon.
It's a bit pointless to specualte if MW:LL could have achieved the goal of a balanced and customizable Mechwarrior title. I would see their chances higher since they already came up with good ideas (like lasers as damage-over-time hitscan weapons). (But would they able to unravel IS Level 1Tech vs IS Level 2 Tech vs Clan Tech?)

That doesn't mean they won't **** off some people. But I think not getting balance right will hamper than more than no 3PV or alienating some "Clan-Tech-must-be-uber" fans.