4 replies to this topic

[Phantomime]

So.. I hate the ideas possed in the last Command Chair regarding balancing Clan tech with InnerSphere. most of these were very ridiculous which means that you dont have any real idea as to what you are going to do that doesnt involve completely reinventing the wheel.

It doesnt need to be this painful. for any of us. here are some ideas to balance the game that dont involve making a new one, or throwing out everything except the name..

WEAPONS:

PROBLEM - big guns kill things (especially medium and heavy things) very fast, especially when you have a lot of them.

SOLUTION #1 - make mechs fit less big guns - add in size catagories in addition to the current hardpoint system, so that small hardpoints only have small weapons, medium hardpoints only have small or medium weapons, and large hardpoints can hold anything.
ex. 1 Large Energy hardpoint would be equivilent to the current 1 Energy hardpoint.
-by making this change, you reduce the number of LLas, PPC, AC10, AC20, Gauss weapons capible for being fielded from a single mech.
this is also more in line with battletech cannon as, well, most InnerSphere mechs had very few hardpoints, let alone large weapons.

SOLUTION #2 - smaller heatscale, better dissapation. you cant alpha 6 weapons generating 10 heat each if your meter only goes to 30.

SOLUTION #3 - decaying accuracy. the more you move, the more your accuracy is disrupted. this was the critical principal behind battletech that kept people from simply focusing CT with every shot from every weapon.
-accuracy decays to say [90%] based on your throttle setting = [1%] decay (inaccuracy) per 10% throttle. this means that light mechs wont be able to snipe locations at speed, but it also means that while moving 100kph out of 160kph max throttle, means it would be MORE accurate than an assault moving 40kph out of a max of 65kph.
-this plus being small would make them hard to kill, and things that dont move are great targets for LRMs.
-increase the amount of ammo for each direct fire weapon by 20%.


MECHS

PROBLEM - Clan Omni's vs. the InnerSphere and the 'mech builder approch'

SOLUTION #1 - currently the only thing on InnerSphere mechs that restricts you as to what you can do are the Hardpoints, Max Engine Size, Jump Jets, and ECM. Keep that, add sizes to the current hard points (see above: Weapons Solution #1), and add a new 'Omni' hardpoint type availible (currently) only to SOME Clan mechs (not all Clan mechs are Omni's).

SOLUTION #2 - Only InnerSphere mechs get 'Quirks'. use the Quirks system to buff these mechs so that they are a bit more inline power wise with Clan mechs
ex. Quirk: Swimmer: when in deep water this mech's engine heastsinks are doubled in effectiveness.
ex. Quirk: Large Heat Vents: extra cooling from maps is doubled in effectiveness for extra heatsinks in this mechs side torsos.
ex. Quirk: Efficient Loaders: all ammo locations hold 10% more ammo, and all ammo based weapons increase their RoF by 5%.

SOLUTION #3 - Pilot Skill Tree could be used to HEAVILY define InnerSphere mechs as more heat efficient/durable and the Clan tree could be more about consumables, better sensors, better vision (range of low light vision and heat vision increased up to 30%), ect..


MATCHMAKING

PROBLEM - Clan is too overpowered compaired to InnerSphere Mechs. Clan mechs carry more weapons per mech 1v1.

SOLUTION #1 - Drop unbalanced teams. few Clan mechs vs many IS mechs. Use a player's ELO as a percentage of the Average ELO for all players and multiply that by the battlevalue of the mech they are using - new battlevalues would be needed to reflect all MW:O mechs and equipment and could be refined easily over time.
-this allows you to drop balanced ELO teams using Clan or IS tech but unequal numbers of players.. Clans pack more weapons onto 1 mech, InnerSphere brings more mechs.

SOLUTION #2 - for 12v12 matches, drop Clan vs Clan and IS vs IS. (this is honestly the way it should be for like the next few years according to cannon.)

Edited by Phantomime, 23 December 2013 - 07:25 PM.

[Livaria]

A lot of these solutions have been mentioned to death i'm afraid.

From what I can tell, there is no simple way solving any of these problems. While a lot of ideas presented is valid...

The biggest challenge right now is not only being able to solve the problem but rather solving the problem in such a way that players can all embrace the solution in the best way possible. (The bottom line being that they will have very little room to complain.)

You can probably find one or more of your solution(s) somewhere in this link. http://www.qqmercs.com/?p=2780 (It's pretty long to read, but that sort of thing is up to you.) This also explains Homeless Bill's idea which is a balancing idea that is popular right now.

But that's not the point I'm trying to get across.

If you scroll down the page far enough you should find a list named "Rebuttals II: Alternatives". There's a whole list of suggested ideas, and why people might hate these fixes.

Edited by Livaria, 23 December 2013 - 11:36 PM.

[Lightfoot]

Seems like alot of paranoia, but MWO is the paranoid version of MechWarrior to be sure.

What's most hilarious to me is that the two Inner Sphere weapons that are almost identical to their Clan tech counterparts, the Gauss Rifle and PPC were nerfed out of MWO due to whining. Well you got your wish.

The only way I will accept size limitations of Clan Hardpoints is if they are Omni-points and fit any weapon. Otherwise the Clan Omnimechs will actually be less Omni than Inner Sphere mechs, and that pretty much chucks lore out the window, of course this is MWO.

Heatscale and global nerfs have to be identical or it's just a cheat.

MWO's problem remains that the Mechs are a bit too weak and instead of fixing that they nerfed Inner Sphere tech with some heat nerfs. But how can you have a Clan Invasion when you can't even support Inner Sphere damage levels? Answer: You can't.

[Livaria]

Paranoia you say? Perhaps...

I've seen people whine about a lot of things, a lot of which I feel is undeserving. I just hope this sort of **** doesn't go to far to the point where it becomes too much of a problem.

All I'm doing, is pointing out why people could hate these reasons and why it might not be used at all. It's food for thought that can be adapted to make an idea better.

It might not be a matter of paranoia, but rather being self-aware of decisions that are made. Some ideas are certainly better than others.

Every idea topic posted here is pretty much hypothetical unless if it actually comes into practice. The best we can do is improve on ideas and hope that it goes through.

I want to do this for my own missile accuracy topic and get help for my own ideas and single out a lot of pro's and con's. (If you are interested then I'll mention that the link should be in my signature.)

Edited by Livaria, 24 December 2013 - 07:17 AM.

[Phantomime]

Livaria, on 23 December 2013 - 11:27 PM, said:

A lot of these solutions have been mentioned to death i'm afraid.

ya, kinda figured.. I can understand that there are reasons some/all of these might not be well loved by all, but I would think that they might even allow many of the 'nurf's to be undone.. if you limit mechs to having only 1-2 large weapons for example
(1 energy and 1 balistic as is fairly often the case in early IS mechs) then the whole 2 ppc, 2 gauss thing cant happen, and thus a tonne of nurfs dont need to happen...

I cant really say im whining about the way they are handeling it.. more, that they are CLEARLY handeling it badly - how do you build a game based on another game and NOT see these issues before you start writting code? - and that I would like to see them pull some direction out that isnt simply a knee-jerk fix going away from everything that already exists called mechwarrior/battletech.

EDIT: I read that link, not a huge fan of his solution, though I like his approch. If massed alpha is the issue (it is) then buff hp, or nurf damage/rof uniformly and limit the number of BIG guns you can stuff on a mech. the current hardpoint system is ridiculous but salvageable. basing the 'cone of fire' off speed (as its done on the table top) could be tweeked in favor of lighter mechs for balance's sake. or they could scrap it all and give us stock mechs that we cant mess with until omni's come out.. that would be viable as well, but then the game would be called battletech and not mechwarrior.

Yes we all have ideas, no we dont agree on what is best, I just prefer a method that doesnt reinvent the wheel - there are enough variables already, we dont need more, why add a new 'targeting computer' value when we already have speed? - this was how the game was designed to originally be balanced, so saying we cant know how it might impact the game is, a rather moot point. Assaults were ment to be slow and ponderous when they moved, and when they wanted to kill they generally stood still - and made great targets for those already in position.. movement was for repositioning, not doing the 'circle of death' (unless you were a light - and even still that was dangerous because there was almost always an arm that could get you, and you were sacrificing speed (defence) for positioning.)

Now, I agree this would make the game more campy as it stands, but that's because we have no weapons that reliably remove static targets. originally this was a light, getting a lock as it ran circles around static mechs, forcing them to deal with it and move, or stand and ignore it, MEANWHILE flights of LRM's rained from the sky.. all this DIED with ECM. ECM makes camping possible. your light now must TELL in CHAT his team where the enemy is, so they dont walk in and die - which is death for the light or just more commonly, not done.
Anyways, you need someone with TAG, that is fast enough to get in and either lock someone on the edge of their formation, or maybe get the actual ECM mech, and then it moves and breaks the LoS-Direct Fire thing with the TAG, target's gone, LRM's go wide, hopefully the TAGer had ECM lest he now gets owned.

@Lightfoot - yes, Omni slots would also have size catagories imposed as per the above.. it would only make sense.. so a madcat's arms would be like 1 large omni, 1-2 medium omni. which basically means you can put in anything you want. the limiting factor is that you wouldnt be able to stuff in, like, 3 large lasers into each..

@Livaria - as for your SRM revision, with Artemis you could more simply have it allow SRM's to Lock normally like SSRM's, but where SSRM's will 'chase' their target, SRM's would simply launch in a direct line to the target (possibly with some sort of leadfire) and if the target jinked, they would go wide.. thus good for 100m but probably not the full 270m unless the target was standing still. the 3rd cursor option gets too cluttered, though its a neat idea.
Something like this needs to apply to TAG's as well, the idea of needing to look at your target to hold lock is native to MW:O and not cannon, better would be you get w/in LoS and paint your target manually and hold it on them for 2-3sec. after that, for the next 6-10 seconds your target is TAG'd and will remain so as long as you can draw LoS from your mech to theirs or until the timer runs out.

Edited by Phantomime, 24 December 2013 - 05:38 PM.