479 replies to this topic

[Myomes]

In TT:

Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short Range: 450
Max Range: 1350

ER Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short Range: 630
Max Range: 1710

In MW:O

Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short(long in MWO) Range: 450
Max Range: 900

ER Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short (long in MWO) Range: 675
Max Range: 1350

In TT, damage is fully retained, but you get to-hit modifiers for further away.
In MWO, damage scales down linearly from 100% to 0%.

The heat of these weapons has remained the same, while the firing rate goes up.

Lasers already have the ill effect of Damage Over Time, a mechanic introduced to spread damage out like you're watering a garden and thus preventing the surgical destruction of lasers like in TT or old mechwarrior titles. No longer does a medium laser do exactly 5 points of damage to a 40 point Atlas torso, Now it does 2 damage and some change as the atlas rolls around. Even worse damage is applied for outside range. The same thing happens to large lasers as well, making them non-competitive with AC5 and AC2.

Both of these weapons have a max range triple their "long" range. Lasers do not. Lasers have DoT, damage reduction for "over'range, and have had 1/3 of their TT range neutered. That means a sharper decline in damage for being outside "long" range.

This is what makes AC20, AC5, AC2 so powerful compared to lasers. It has nothing to do with people wisely choosing the weapons which aren't nerfed into the ground. It's really about how lasers have been dealt a bad hand every time.

lasers should either have more maximum range, thus extending their damage drop to at least compete with AC, if not be superior (they still generate more heat and LESS DPS), or lasers should do their full damage over their entire much shorter range.

Messing around with projectile speeds on guns and making everything suck isn't the way to go.

[FupDup]

There is a multitude of game mechanics that indirectly nerf lasers. Some of these include the range boosts (already mentioned), slow heat dissipation, beam duration (also mentioned), and their beam duration time counts against their cooldown. What the last item means is that an ML with a 3 second cooldown and 1 second duration actually has an "effective" cooldown of 4 seconds...on-par with the PPC and AC/20. The LL is one of the slowest firing weapons in the game at 4.25 seconds.

[Khobai]

Lasers are perfect. Beam duration was the perfect solution to pinpoint damage. And that same solution needs to be applied to both Autocannons (burst fire) as well as PPCs (splash damage).

[Varent]

the large laser er large laser and large pulse laser could all use a range increment increase. Makes sense since they are all used mostly on medium and higher mechs which wont inadvertently effect the balance too much.

[OneEyed Jack]

Myomes, on 07 January 2014 - 09:44 PM, said:

In TT:

Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short Range: 450
Max Range: 1350

Not sure if you're aware, but your "short range" is actually max range, and I'm not sure where you even got your ER ranges. Any longer ranges are optional advanced rules.

[Peiper]

It's actually not an issue of which weapons are better or worse, though it has become that. The true problem has been with us since the beginning: Hard Point SIZE restrictions. The biggest, baddest weapons in the game only existed on certain mechs, or were highly specialized mechs (like the Hunchback). Since we can frankenmech everything, it's caused major balance headaches since the beginning. For example: the 3 PPC Awesome may be fat, but if you want to boat more than two PPC's, you'd have to take it - and it would be a blast, for all it's other drawbacks. But because so many other mechs can do the same thing, why take the flawed, fat, slow Awesome? Why take a single hunch Hunchback when you can take a double non-hunch K2 or Jagger? When the Annihilator has only a 35kph top speed, it doesn't seem so scary or broken, right? Well, if you brought in the Annihilator now, you'd have a quad AC/5ultra monster! It would move much faster, be totally armored, etc... If you restricted the hardpoint size to only LARGE weapons, the Annihilator would be stuck with it's giant guns and small engine...

Tweaking mechs in the mechlab is cool, but frankenmechs are for Solaris VII, not regular military or shoestring budget merc groups. Standardization is the key to all large militaries.

Okay, going back to my island...

[Varent]

Peiper, on 07 January 2014 - 10:10 PM, said:

It's actually not an issue of which weapons are better or worse, though it has become that. The true problem has been with us since the beginning: Hard Point SIZE restrictions. The biggest, baddest weapons in the game only existed on certain mechs, or were highly specialized mechs (like the Hunchback). Since we can frankenmech everything, it's caused major balance headaches since the beginning. For example: the 3 PPC Awesome may be fat, but if you want to boat more than two PPC's, you'd have to take it - and it would be a blast, for all it's other drawbacks. But because so many other mechs can do the same thing, why take the flawed, fat, slow Awesome? Why take a single hunch Hunchback when you can take a double non-hunch K2 or Jagger? When the Annihilator has only a 35kph top speed, it doesn't seem so scary or broken, right? Well, if you brought in the Annihilator now, you'd have a quad AC/5ultra monster! It would move much faster, be totally armored, etc... If you restricted the hardpoint size to only LARGE weapons, the Annihilator would be stuck with it's giant guns and small engine...

Tweaking mechs in the mechlab is cool, but frankenmechs are for Solaris VII, not regular military or shoestring budget merc groups. Standardization is the key to all large militaries.

Okay, going back to my island...

Ya know it could be an interesting idea that would also quite possible solve the jump sniping issues. If they limit the amount of ppc that certain jump capable mechs can take it could cut down on it a lot.

[Sparks Murphey]

Agreed with OneEyed Jack. In standard table top rules, you can't do any damage to a target at 451 metres with your large laser, it's outside your range. Even if you include the optional rules for extreme ranges, a large laser will only reach to 600 metres, not 1350. An ER Large Laser will reach 570 metres, 840 with extreme range. MWO already increases these values; 60 extra metres of full power damage for the ER large laser, and scaled damage well beyond the maximum dead-stop damage range for both weapons.

Not quibbling about your other points (personally, I prefer lasers over ACs, possibly because I have a steady enough hand to keep them on the target location for duration, or possibly because I'm such a bad shot that it gives me a chance to use the beam as a tracer to walk it back over the target til I get some red. Who knows?) but your basis on tabletop rules is wrong. And irrelevant anyway; MWO isn't tabletop.

[The Flying Gecko]

You left out "Pulse lasers are (almost) always inferior to their regular laser counterparts."

Yet another one of these threads? I must have read at least a dozen all stating the same thing. I don't think PGI has any intention of fixing things. At least not any time soon. They are SO far behind there projections (community warfare? UI2.0?) that big changes to the weapons are probably too time consuming, and don't have an immediate dollar value attached to them, and thus aren't worth looking into.

On the one hand, the game is pretty good. On the other hand, it should/could be SO much better.

[Craig Steele]

Yup,

TT max range on anything was Clan ER LL at 750m (25 hexes) from memory

I think IS was ER PPC at 690m? (23 hexes)

There was a rule set that had a 10+ base To Hit roll at anything up to 100% (?) of max range for all weapons but I never used it, don't quote me.

But its not TT anyway.

[Mekwarrior]

Yeah lasers could be made more powerful in general.


One factor is that lasers have the advantage of not needing ammo, in previous games with long multi objective missions this was a big factor, but in MWO there is only one battle per game, so running out of ammo is rarely a big problem.

So therefore lasers could be made more powerful to compensate for this different gameplay duration.

[Asakara]

Myomes, on 07 January 2014 - 09:44 PM, said:

In TT:

Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short Range: 450
Max Range: 1350

ER Large Laser

Min range: 0
Short Range: 630
Max Range: 1710

...

Huh? Where did you get those TT values from?

See the IS weapons chart from (35000) BattleTech Master Rules:

1 hex = 30m



So based on the official published (non-optional) rules we get:

Large Laser
Min range: 0
Short Range: 150m (= 5 x 30m)
Max Range: 450m (= 15 x 30m)

ER Large Laser
Min range: 0
Short Range: 210m (= 7 x 30m)
Max Range: 570m (= 19 x 30m)


Edit:

Even after looking at the optional rules in (35013) Maximum Tech for Extreme Range I still do not see how you got your numbers. Per the rules on page 23, Extreme Range = Max Medium Range X 2 hexes added to Long Range... So:

Large Laser
Extreme Range: 1050m (= ((10 x 2) + 15) x 30m)

ER Large Laser
Extreme Range: 1410m (= ((14 x 2) + 19) x 30m)

Edited by Asakara, 07 January 2014 - 10:58 PM.

[Varent]

don't get me wrong, I loved TT and I loved the lore of the game.... but I think we need to step away from that to make a good game. Medium lasers are in a good place. Large lasers are not and for there weight and heat could use abit of a buff. Not a huge one but the range values being increased would make sense for them and would help a lot of the mechs that need it. It would make this game more well rounded.

[Sandpit]

STK-5M
BLR-1G
BLR-1G
BLR-1G
TDR-5SS

uhm yea....
all of those are more than competitive as dead enemies will attest to but yea no nerfy ballistics

[Noesis]

Varent, on 07 January 2014 - 10:50 PM, said:

don't get me wrong, I loved TT and I loved the lore of the game.... but I think we need to step away from that to make a good game. Medium lasers are in a good place. Large lasers are not and for there weight and heat could use abit of a buff. Not a huge one but the range values being increased would make sense for them and would help a lot of the mechs that need it. It would make this game more well rounded.

I will get you Wrong, because you are wrong.

Medium lasers have less demonstrated effectiveness than LL. And whilst LL might also need something to help them, MLs are in fact in more need of improvement.

Also Mediums and especially Lights tend to use MLs as an option to their more "limited" build arrangements as opposed to LLs which are more prevalent on Heavy or Assault platforms but of course these having much more build options and flexibility to utilise other weaponry also like MLs. So overall the ML needs to be considered as it is has more significance to some platforms.

[OneEyed Jack]

Noesis, on 07 January 2014 - 11:13 PM, said:

Medium lasers have less demonstrated effectiveness than LL.

I certainly hope so for 1/5 the weight....

[Noesis]

OneEyed Jack, on 07 January 2014 - 11:22 PM, said:

I certainly hope so for 1/5 the weight....

I'm speaking in terms of their relative potentials as per their design parameters (please see this thread for clarification). This since this incorporates balance mechanics and all other aspects associated with their applied use in game.

The ML of course also being less heat efficient, having less range and less damage than a LL as a result.

[Varent]

medium lasers are already HEAVILY used and HIGHLY effective. In fact they are my most used weapon by far and away and the one I have the most damage with. Large lasers on the other hand could see a great resurgence and make mechs like the awesome feel more useful once again. This also would not upset the already fragile balance of rock paper scissors there currently is with mech chasis.

[Noesis]

Varent, on 07 January 2014 - 11:31 PM, said:

medium lasers are already HEAVILY used and HIGHLY effective. In fact they are my most used weapon by far and away and the one I have the most damage with. Large lasers on the other hand could see a great resurgence and make mechs like the awesome feel more useful once again. This also would not upset the already fragile balance of rock paper scissors there currently is with mech chasis.

Opinions, people have them, doesn't make them right.

LL are showing to be about 10% more effective in terms of their potential than MLs, fact.

As has been commented above LL's seem to operate well for Assault and Heavy platforms, but if small additions in range will help them compete with other Meta I similarly wont object.

As to the logic of rock, paper, scissors. Effectiveness is not a logic issue, since these things are measured in terms of relative effectiveness.

E.g. if it takes 2 mediums to be as relatively effective as an Assault for their role then on paper to do the job, then you need 2 bits of scissors to beat the rock.

The rock, paper, scissors analogy is only there to help understand what kind of roles perform well at certain tasks, but the reality is it is still about relatives not logic.

Edited by Noesis, 07 January 2014 - 11:40 PM.

[ego1607]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

STK-5M
BLR-1G
BLR-1G
BLR-1G
TDR-5SS

uhm yea....
all of those are more than competitive as dead enemies will attest to but yea no nerfy ballistics

Yeah, those totally destroy 2xAC20, 3xUAC5 amd similar configs...