1080 replies to this topic

[Fut]

Zyllos, on 23 December 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

• Weapons should hit exactly where players want them to aim, to keep skill.

Which is exactly why I think that the "armor chunks" on each Mech need to be reworked.
Currently we have Pin-Point accuracy and barn sized targets. If the Devs want to keep Pin-Point accuracy, our targets need to be smaller. It's simple logic.

[Rhent]

Zyllos, on 23 December 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

I have heard two reasons, but it would be hard to give you citations on it.

• Undo stress on calculating firing paths of individual weapons at the same time (both server and client wise).
  
• Weapons should hit exactly where players want them to aim, to keep skill.

The problem is, you can pop out do full damage instantaneously and hide before anyone has time to react. It gets better with AC's because there is no visible indicator where the damage came from save smoke that is 800M away or nothing if you are firing gauss. Meanwhile, lasers have a highly visible sniper trail of blue and PPC's the same.

There is no requirement for you to expose yourself to enemy fire with AC's and that is the flaw with the system. Every other weapon system, save PPC's require you to expose yourself to fire:
-Streaks have to maintain lock keeping your torsos exposed to fire
-LRM's to do actual damage you need to be in the open with a line of sight on the target to get the artemis damage bonus
-Lasers require you to face your opponents while firing
-SRM's require you to get within 100M to do full damage (ROFLMAO: SRM's could be at 1M and they'd still do 20% of damage due to Piranha Dev team lacking the requisite skill to fix them).

Meanwhile, AC's and PPC's which do all damage in one spot allows you to fire quickly then turn your torsos to protect them. It's almost as if Paul has never played any of the Mechwarrior games before and he's just winging it. The winging isn't working.

[Joseph Mallan]

Zyllos, on 23 December 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

I have heard two reasons, but it would be hard to give you citations on it.

• Undo stress on calculating firing paths of individual weapons at the same time (both server and client wise).
  
• Weapons should hit exactly where players want them to aim, to keep skill.

Then My shots should always hit opposing players in the cockpit. Cause that is where I want to aim! AC40 to the mellon would be very not fun for other players.

The more weapons we fire the less(slower) convergence we should have.

[kapusta11]

Rhent, on 23 December 2013 - 07:12 AM, said:

First:
This is a mecharrior game, not Halo. Splash damage exists all over the place: Lasers, LRM's, SRMS

Second:
Weapons in MWO do NOT fire twice as fast. Lets look at the AC/10 and PPC, that are damage analogues between the AC and Energy weapon family. The AC/10 fire rate is 2.5 seconds and the PPC fire rate is 4 seconds and a TT turn is 10 seconds. Now, I'm not sure what your schooling is or if you are suffering from dyscalculous, However, the AC/10 does not fire "twice as fast" as you wrote, it fires 4X's as fast as TT and the PPC fires about 2 1/2X as fast at TT.

If you actually read the link that I submitted that is the actual firing tables, you'd have an understanding of how Piranha implemented different firing rate to differentiate weapons but they kept the same tonnage, crit space from TT. They mucked around with the heat and range, but the fire rate they widely increased or decreased damage. Again, looking at our friend the AC/10, it is equivalent to an AC/20 in TT after factoring in doubled armor for a 10 second turn now. Something is seriously wrong with the damage output in MWO.

1: I was talking to people who want to remove pinpoint fire weapons altogether making them fire in inaccurate bursts or having cone of fire or anything that makes hitting random.

2: Whatever, I haven't played TT but the point stands - heat based weapons depend on dissipation more than on their actual recycle times, furthermore they share same cooldown pool. If their RoF was doubled through cooldowns then dissipation should be doubled as well.

[Joseph Mallan]

kapusta11, on 23 December 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

1: I was talking to people who want to remove pinpoint fire weapons altogether making them fire in inaccurate bursts or having cone of fire or anything that makes hitting random.

2: Whatever, I haven't played TT but the point stands - heat based weapons depend on dissipation more than on their actual recycle times, furthermore they share same cooldown pool. If their RoF was doubled through cooldowns then dissipation should be doubled as well.

Lasers should have the advantage with Pin point damage (laser accurate!!!), But to see Multiple ballistic weapons hitting a pie plate at 750+ Does not ring well with me. As I have asked. Show me a Navam braodside hitting as accurately as we do and I will joint the opposition. Till then, Convergence is easy.

[Zyllos]

I believe they also give a specific example for the first point above. PGI said that doing multiple ray traces would degrade performance.

My issue with this statement is that, at most, you need 2 ray traces, ever. One for the arm crosshair and the other for the torso crosshair.

With those two ray traces, you can calculate a heading of a bullet, laser beam, or initial facing of a swarm of missiles. Once you have an initial heading, all you have to do is have a characteristic "randomness" added to the calculated facing to get the new "cone of fire" trajectory.

Then you can get fancy by making weapons that are fixed to the same position (like the two Energy Points in the CT of an Atlas) by giving them the same bullet paths.

But the reasons they are stating on why they don't want to do this stuff is not true at all.

The only reasons for not wanting to do this is either to not add more workload to the engineers (then I say get more engineers and do it) or they believe it will unbalance things (things are completely out of wack now).

[Zyllos]

Joseph Mallan, on 23 December 2013 - 08:31 AM, said:

Then My shots should always hit opposing players in the cockpit. Cause that is where I want to aim! AC40 to the mellon would be very not fun for other players.

The more weapons we fire the less(slower) convergence we should have.

Maybe "want" was a poor choice of words. Where the player's aim at.

[Joseph Mallan]

Zyllos, on 23 December 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

Maybe "want" was a poor choice of words. Where the player's aim at.

Yes. Yes it was

I have fired a few rounds in my day. We are way to accurate here.

[Prezimonto]

Rhent, on 22 December 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

ECM was fixed.

lol I was with you up to this point.

[Tesunie]

Rhent, on 23 December 2013 - 08:25 AM, said:

There is no requirement for you to expose yourself to enemy fire with AC's and that is the flaw with the system. Every other weapon system, save PPC's require you to expose yourself to fire:
-LRM's to do actual damage you need to be in the open with a line of sight on the target to get the artemis damage bonus

You can still launch LRMs, hide, then pop back out and have the damage hit. Here is how you manage it.

Gain a lock. Shoot LRMs. Duck back into cover. Wait a moment. Poke back out and regain lock for missiles still in the air till they hit. (I do this all the time personally.) Time based on distance to target.

Also, as far as LRMs go, don't forget that, as long as one of my allies has a lock on you, I can shoot my LRMs from behind cover.

As a final note, just wanted to add that Artemis has a bug in it (last I knew) that gives it's bonuses to targets whether you have line of sight or not. Unless this was ninja changed in a patch and not announced.

LRMs, however, do not tend to do direct pinpoint damage though, and will spread over a target, at least a little. I do not argue with that part of your observations.

[Felicitatem Parco]

This, and any game, will be dominated by front-loaded impulse weapons as long as we need to take fleeting shots.

Fleeting shots are always best taken with a weapon that requires no charge-up and has no duration mechanism, so as long as we are taking shots at targets moving in-and-out of cover while personally maneuvering likewise, then the PPCs and ACs will dominate. This is almost universal across all shooter games. The only way to reduce the dominance of front-loaded direct-fire impulse weapons without nerfing their base stats into the ground is to make them less front-loaded or give them a firing quirk such as a charge-up or a cone of fire. That's it.

If we were standing in formation in an open field, then the other weapons would be fine. Since we are popping in and out of cover, though, front-loaded weapons *will* dominate.

[Mcgral18]

Tesunie, on 23 December 2013 - 09:24 AM, said:

You can still launch LRMs, hide, then pop back out and have the damage hit. Here is how you manage it.

Gain a lock. Shoot LRMs. Duck back into cover. Wait a moment. Poke back out and regain lock for missiles still in the air till they hit. (I do this all the time personally.) Time based on distance to target.

Also, as far as LRMs go, don't forget that, as long as one of my allies has a lock on you, I can shoot my LRMs from behind cover.

As a final note, just wanted to add that Artemis has a bug in it (last I knew) that gives it's bonuses to targets whether you have line of sight or not. Unless this was ninja changed in a patch and not announced.

LRMs, however, do not tend to do direct pinpoint damage though, and will spread over a target, at least a little. I do not argue with that part of your observations.

Didn't they change the mid air correction after people were making the missiles turn 90-180 degrees to fire from behind cover/very large rock?

And to my knowledge the only artemis bug is with Streaks, getting ton free lock on bonus.

[Joseph Mallan]

Prosperity Park, on 23 December 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

This, and any game, will be dominated by front-loaded impulse weapons as long as we need to take fleeting shots.

Fleeting shots are always best taken with a weapon that requires no charge-up and has no duration mechanism, so as long as we are taking shots at targets moving in-and-out of cover while personally maneuvering likewise, then the PPCs and ACs will dominate. This is almost universal across all shooter games. The only way to reduce the dominance of front-loaded direct-fire impulse weapons without nerfing their base stats into the ground is to make them less front-loaded or give them a firing quirk such as a charge-up or a cone of fire. That's it.

If we were standing in formation in an open field, then the other weapons would be fine. Since we are popping in and out of cover, though, front-loaded weapons *will* dominate.

Finally someone saying something I like reading about front loading damage. Nice explaination Prosp.

[Haji1096]

With regards to bad hit detection,

Why would it effect only SRMS ? If hit detection is bad for SRMs, then it should be bad for LRMs and the LBX. All weapons consist of multiple projectiles spread over an area.

Maybe we are only noticing it because you fire LRMs from further away...same with the LBX. We expect LRMS to do less damage because of range, cover, enemy having AMS. Could it be masking hit detection problems for LRMS ?

IMHO, Ballistics are the only weapons that are working correctly. Energy Weapons are borked by ghost heat and missles don't reliably hit.

[kapusta11]

How can you adequately compare ACs with anything that generates heat, they are the only viable weapons. They outspd any energy weapon because PGI forgot to match dissipation to recycle times, and outperform SRMs because of hit registration issues. You can't compare something that works fine with something that is broken.

First fix heat system and hit detection, until then any discussion on the matter of convergence, pinpoint or anything else is pointless.

Edited by kapusta11, 23 December 2013 - 10:20 AM.

[Sandpit]

Blurry, on 23 December 2013 - 03:43 AM, said:

No-
just the same tired people coming into the forums doing the same dumb thing over and over?
arent you tired?

Besides you really think weapons are balanced - great for putting that point forward - have some hyperbole:

This is PGI - We dont Balance, We dont Program, We do arty - buy buy buy!

Ya they really dont care - but buy clan mechs please - and dont forget to be golden!

You mean like the same tired people who keep posting "AC this" and "AC that" all over the forum?

[Trauglodyte]

Sandpit's mech touched my mech and I didn't like it. Actually, Sandpit's mech and a bunch of his friends' mechs did it. I got gang touched it was awful.

Back on target, would it be awful if PPCs were a LITTLE spreadable? No. Would it be awful if ACs fired 3 rounds every 0.15s? No. The thing is, would it make any real difference? No. The biggest issues with the game right now isn't so much the damage that people put out but rather how little you can take. If I'm in a mech with only 20-40 armor on a torso or leg, a single alpha puts me in a major problem. Whether it be because you can instantly change from a target infinity away to my location when I'm 20m away and not have any issues OR because you can bypass any "crit padding" that I have in a location and destroy the already under armored internal structure, it isn't right. Even worse is that the slowest weapon in the game is 4.75s recycle. And the AC20 breaks the DPS factor on all ACs by being 5.0 instead of 4.0.

Honestly, people need to get past the implication of a lot of damage and focus more on why it is occuring.

[Lyoto Machida]

Rhent, on 22 December 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

The main flaw with weapons in MWO is:
-Focused instantaneous damage

Lasers, LRM's and SSRM's are implemented in a way that they are not game breaking.

However, PPC's and AC's are game breakers. No if's, and's or butt'. Why? It allows a player to do damage without exposing themselves to return damage. When you are firing a Laser, you have to expose yourself for a second to do concentrated fire, meanwhile you yourself are opened for concentrated fire. Meanwhile, with a PPC or AC, you locate an enemy mechs target signature, pop up in the air for 1 second, fire, then immediate hire OR you crest a hill and fire for a second.

All that has to be done to fix this broke game is to force AC and PPC's to do stream damage. The other solution is to force a charge up time like Gauss.

Or...make the LRM20 a single missle that does 20 points of damage and make lasers have a 0.1 second duration. Also, add a 1.5 ton item that shuts down direct fire weapons...game balanced, problem solved.

[Sandpit]

Trauglodyte, on 23 December 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

Sandpit's mech touched my mech and I didn't like it. Actually, Sandpit's mech and a bunch of his friends' mechs did it. I got gang touched it was awful.

With lasers I might add

and that was supposed to be our little secret!

Edited by Sandpit, 23 December 2013 - 10:58 AM.

[Lykaon]

Four pages in and no one has figured out what the actual problem is?


PGI's choice to pull the armor mechanics directly from the Battletech table top game while at the same time failing to place that mechanic into a an enviorment designed to support it's functioning.

Here is a description of the Table top game armor mechanics (and by the way MWo's armor system as well)

Armor values are specific to individual mech body location,a mech's leg armor only effects the armor value of that specific leg.The armor on the leg has no bearing on the armor values of any other location.

The maximum armor values that can be applied to any given location are base on the internal structure value for that location.The internal structure values increase proportionaly as mech weight increases, a 20 ton mech has the lowest structure values a 100 ton mech has the highest.

Once armor has been depleted on a specified location the internal structure and any components carried in that body location are vulnerable to damage.If the structure value is also depleted the body location is destroyed.

The formula used for max armor per location for table top is structure value x 2 = max armor value MWo uses structure value x 4 = max armor value. This is the only variance in the armor mechanics used for MWo.

Fundamentaly these are the rules that govern how our mech's armor functions.


But how are these mechanics failing for MWo when they work fine for table top?

The answer is simple the table top game uses the armor mechanics in conjunction with several support mechanics.When taken as a whole the armor and support mechanics creates a functional system.

Some of the supporting mechanics are...

Heat generation used to limit the volume of damage produced.

Heat scale penalties causing damage in access of the heat generation mechanics limits to become increasingly inaccurate or difficult to apply (heat penalties for TT are accuracy and movement debuffs)

Escalating target numbers for hitting targets: The target numbers for hitting a mech in TT are based on a core value equal to the mechwarrior's gunnery skill.This value is then modified by distance to target,movement of the shooter,movement of the target and any enviormental conditions like partial cover,smoke or other obstructions.This mechanic leads to fewer shots connecting with targets.This translates as another means of limiting the damage applied to the armor over a single turn.

Individual to hit rolls for each distinct weapon: If a mech has 10 medium lasers it is rolling to hit for each,that's ten to hit rolls there is no group fire mechanic in TT.This leads to less overall damage being applied to a target in a single turn.

Random hit locations: Each weapon that does hit is also randomly assigned a location that it's damage is applied to.This is probably the single most important support mechanic for the armor system.The use of random hit location prevents intentional concentration of damage onto singular mech body locations.

After reviewing my incomplete list of support mechanics it becomes evident that MWo lacks all of them with exception of using heat as a damage limiter.

It also becomes evident that not only are supporting mechanics neccissary for the armor mechanics to function missing but conditions that those same mechanics were designed to prevent are present in MWo.

We can consistantly aim at desired body locations with group fired concentrations of damage in a very short period of time.All conditions that the Table rules try to prevent.

Our problem stems from the use of the table top armor system without sufficent supporting mechanics to allow that armor system to function.

Why are people complaining about PPCs and ACs all the time? Because these weapons can be grouped together to apply large amounts of concentrated damage to specific body locations in very short time frames.These weapons create situations that the armor mechanics as they exist in MWo can not handle.

Why are people complaining that Lasers and SRMs are under powered? Because these weapons best emulate the missing support mechanics.Lasers produce damage over longer durations causing dispersed damage patterns while also generating high heat (with heat as our only support mechanics lasers are more effected by this mechanic) Missiles also have dispersed damage patterns lacking the ability to apply concentrated damage to specific body locations with ease.

No amount of weapon tweaks or ghost heat will alter the core cause of the problem.

The trick is how do we repair the armor mechanics since it is far to late to replace them we are pretty much stuck with the core mechanic of X armor value on Y body part.

Many of the table top support mechanics simply do not translate to MWo.

We can't use to hit rolls

We can't use random hit locations

What can we do?