TyGeR STD, on 13 January 2014 - 09:35 PM, said:
I think serveral ppl here have some very good ideas to help balance he weapon issues that most ppl feel this game has.
I find that many of the ideas are being drawn from a similar context.They are focused on how weapons work with our current damage mechanics and as such are generaly focused on altering the weapons themselves as opposed to altering interaction with damage mechanics.
What I mean,to simplify is there is an assumption that any "fix" will be used with our current (failing) armor and damage mechanics.
Now,what if we shifted the damage caused to mechs into three distinct catagories with weapons effecting each in distinctly different ways we may be able to balance weapon damage effects to their firing mechanics.
Armor damage: first line of defense.The armor must be breached to cause meaningful damage to a mech.Until the armor is depleted a mech suffers from no ill effects.
Structural damage: The skeleton of a mech that holds all the pieces together.After armor is depleted the internal structure becomes vulnerable to attack.Once the structural damage cap for a given location is depleted that body segment is destroyed with all equipment contained in that segment.
Critical component damage: Every time a body segment that has no armor value is hit for damage the damage is allocated to structure or a component mounted in this location.If the hitpoints of a component is depleted it no longer functions.If it is an ammo location it may detonate.
To support this design we would need to adjust armor values (by 20% or less)
Seriously buff internal structure hit points (probably to nearly equal armor values)
Increase component hit points (between 50-100% depending on components)
Increase targetable components to include all internal components including Gyros,Actuators,sensors etc.
Apply meaningful penalties to component distruction (if a gyro is damaged the mech will have a wobbly target reticule if it moved if a foot actuator was destroyed the mech loses top speed etc)
Increase ammo counts per ton to meet the needs of higher overall mech "health".
Mechanicly damage is applied exactally as it is now to armor.When the armor is depleted is when the changes take effect.
When an unarmored location sustains damage the damage is applied to either internal structure or a component with any excess component damage being applied to structure.So an AC 20 hits an unarmored leg the AC's damage is applied to either a component or structure,in this case let's say the AC hit the foot actuator and the actuator is destroyed (causing movement penalties) any remaining damage over the health of the actuator is now applied to structure)
My thoughts are that weapon characteristics are to be balanced against their effectivness at one of the three damage effects.
Front loaded damage has the advantage of snap fire and pinpoint damage.As such these weapons are idea at punching through armor.The downside is they do less damage to internals and components.
Beam weapons have the advantage of accuracy but lack in concentrated damage.These weapons are a good choice to seek weakened armor or depleted armor.Beam weapons deal full damage to any armor,structure or component but the damage to unarmored locations is assigned per "tick" of damage.Beams lose no damage effectivness against structure and components but lack the punch to take out large portions of either structure or component health since each tick is assigned independantly. A large laser does 9 damage but never all 9 to structure or a component it is spread across all components and structure.The advantage is beams will have higher chances to destroy severely damaged structure and components.
Missiles lack the capacity to concentrate damage by nature of their design.Missile weapons have low damage per projectile but high volumes of projectiles.This makes them ideal sand blasters.Good at scouring armor off of targets making them more vulnerable to concentrated damage or beams seeking weakened armor.
Missile also inflict full damage values against armor,structure and components but each projectile is assigned seperatley.This causes missile damage to be spread fairly evenly between structure and components when hitting unarmored location.
Our last catagory of weapons is the crit seeking weapons like LBx cannons and MGs.These weapons do normal armor damage and structure damage.If a component is hit the damage inflicted is higher than list values. Ie: Armor 100% Structure 100% components 250%.Each Lbx pellet or MG damage "tick" is allocated seperatley to components or structure.
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