479 replies to this topic

[Cerberias]

Played against you Mariks many times mate, I meant someone along the lines of SJR/lords/AS/SWK etc.. who use the best mechs available with the more powerful playstyles. Generally I regard a competitive team as someone who uses every advantage, if you're using mechs that aren't the 'best' for that role, you're probably going to lose, handicapping yourself is hardly competitive.

@Craig, all I'm saying is that if you think lasers are even equal in power to projectile weapons, you probably aren't in the highest tier of play. There's nothing wrong with that, but deluding yourself, and by doing so persuading newer more inexperienced players to try a sub-par build, is something I must object to.

[Risen]

Increasing range may be one way to "balance" beam energy weapons but why not take the other route and decrease pin point weapon distance?

Fist of all ballistic weapons should go back to 2x their optimal range as maximum range like energy weapons have the limit.

A long time ago zooming in into the distance had this horrible grain or blur and the picture in picture zoom module was worth almost nothing.
All these features though helped the meta game to be more brawler friendly so why not roll back to this kind of meta era (not directly by bringing back the grain).

[Sandpit]

Cerberias, on 08 January 2014 - 01:31 AM, said:

Played against you Mariks many times mate, I meant someone along the lines of SJR/lords/AS/SWK etc.. who use the best mechs available with the more powerful playstyles. Generally I regard a competitive team as someone who uses every advantage, if you're using mechs that aren't the 'best' for that role, you're probably going to lose, handicapping yourself is hardly competitive.

@Craig, all I'm saying is that if you think lasers are even equal in power to projectile weapons, you probably aren't in the highest tier of play. There's nothing wrong with that, but deluding yourself, and by doing so persuading newer more inexperienced players to try a sub-par build, is something I must object to.

here's the thing though I can out damage ballistic builds on a regular basis. There's limitations to energy weapons for sure just as there are for ballistics. I can outperform ballistics mechs just as often as the outperform me. Energy aren't useless. They're competitive. It would be like me saying Atlases are useless

Risen, on 08 January 2014 - 01:43 AM, said:

Increasing range may be one way to "balance" beam energy weapons but why not take the other route and decrease pin point weapon distance?

Fist of all ballistic weapons should go back to 2x their optimal range as maximum range like energy weapons have the limit.

A long time ago zooming in into the distance had this horrible grain or blur and the picture in picture zoom module was worth almost nothing.
All these features though helped the meta game to be more brawler friendly so why not roll back to this kind of meta era (not directly by bringing back the grain).

Yes, bring ballistic ranges back to the "norm"
If you fire more than one at a time you lose convergence (which gives targeting computers and pinpoint skill some use) the larger the caliber the more the loss of convergence.
Chain fire them and you dont' lsoe convergence. Alpha or group fire them and you start feeling the effects of it.

[Risen]

Sandpit, on 08 January 2014 - 01:55 AM, said:

Yes, bring ballistic ranges back to the "norm"
If you fire more than one at a time you lose convergence (which gives targeting computers and pinpoint skill some use) the larger the caliber the more the loss of convergence.
Chain fire them and you dont' lsoe convergence. Alpha or group fire them and you start feeling the effects of it.

Good idea, you think this should be added to PPC's aswell?
Maybe a burst fire mode for the ACs could work aswell like 2 5damage burst for AC10s and 2 10damage bursts for AC20s.
(Here you could even add mech or weapon specific quirks to change or have different "burst to damage" ratings)

And I would like to add the idea to finally bring minimal ranges to the Gauss rifle and the low caliber ACs (2, 5, U5).
They should at least have a slight disadvantage for their high ammo payload and good range.
And at least reduce the shake/blind effect.

[Cerberias]

The funny thing is that the competitive community largely believes that Atlai are a bad competitive mech, they perform quite poorly in fire support situations, and the only reason realistically to bring one is an ECM bubble in a heavy brawl team. The reason you 'outperform' a ballistic build with a laser build is because the damage gets more spread, hitting non-essential areas much more often, as I outlined in one of my previous posts. This results in a much higher damage score for a much lower amount of effective damage, compared to the high instant alpha build which almost always hits the location needed, and is much harder to torso twist to avoid. Generally, the higher the skill of the players you're shooting, the more damage you need to get a kill. Ballistics on the other hand, are more personal skill dependent, if you hit a target in a location you damage that location and they can't stop you.

You really cannot use damage as a proper stat for determining how well you did in a game. A high damage stat quite often denotes poor accuracy, and with lasers, the enemy can force you to lose accuracy. Why would I want to use a weapon system that a good opponent can easily negate damage against. Now, I'm not saying lasers are bad, either, they have their uses and their places, generally on lights or as backup/supplementary weapons, but compared to projectile weapons they just don't scale into high skill levels as well.

[ego1607]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 11:48 PM, said:

HBK-4P


they do on a regular basis. Fact, not opinion.

HBK-4p is a great example. I've just recently sold mine as AC20 based 4H was a convincingly better performer.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 07 January 2014 - 10:01 PM, said:

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).

No it doesn't. Seriously, people need to be ok with the fact that their 'toon is merely mortal!

[Lykaon]

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

You're good for a laugh now and again really all lrg laser boats? most not getting over 4 sustained DPS ?

Seriously? lasers are by nature sustained damage dependent while the AC/PPC boat is diffinativley NOT it's a burst machine.

Laser Battlemaster Vs AC battle master.

Let's go for a reasonable 5 lrg laser boat.OK first we have ghost heat limiting the group fired lasers to 2 every .5 seconds.Next we have time facing target to consider aim,pull trigger,keep beam on target what would you say that is? 2 seconds?.Then we have Dispersed damage effects because if the target reacts it can spread the damage around.this leads to less effective damage applied.

So sure this build will work if no one is paying any attention to it.God forbid if this next build squares off against the "competative" large laser boat.

Now a real Battlemaster build that actually works. 320std engine 2 AC5s 1 ER-PPC shave a bit of armor of each leg (66 points each I think) fill the rest with heatsinks.

This build has no Ghostheat issues,actually runs cooler overall (60% efficency vs 40% yes 50% more efficent use of heat),has higher DPS (5.26 vs 4.24 that's around 25% higher DPS on top of the 50% more efficent heat use) Frontloads it's damage pinpoint style.Has around a 25% longer effective range than the lrg lasers, And No XL engine extending it's survival time under fire. The 5 large laser Battlemaster is dead if facing off against this alpha shooter.No ifs ands or buts the dummy build 2 AC5s and 1 ER PPC I literaly slap together in my head wins the stats and tactical application game hands down.

But if you like playing hard mode feel free to use the laser boat.

Stats say the ballistic PPC build is better,Tactics play out in favor of the pinpoint front loaded damage allowing for maximizing cover use (no need to stand exposed for 2-3 seconds to hit with 2 lrg lasers every .5 seconds.)

Oh and do a head count see how many AC/PPC battlemasters you see compared to large laser boats it's probably easily 20 to 1.

Just stop the propaganda and do some math.

Edited by Lykaon, 08 January 2014 - 05:10 AM.

[Lykaon]

Sandpit, on 08 January 2014 - 01:55 AM, said:

here's the thing though I can out damage ballistic builds on a regular basis. There's limitations to energy weapons for sure just as there are for ballistics. I can outperform ballistics mechs just as often as the outperform me. Energy aren't useless. They're competitive. It would be like me saying Atlases are useless

Is it effective damage? or is it 2 points here 4 there a little off the top a tad off the side when instead you can be slinging 40 point CT crushers.

Sure some players can squeeze performance out of a substandard mech or build.

I have a half dozen matches now where I made over 700 dmg 3 kills with a wolverine armed with a med laser an ER PPC and 3 streaks launchers.This is not a meta humping build but I did squeeze some good numbers from it. (got around 4 hours total elapsed playtime on it so far)

Is that wolverine performing better than my Jager with twin 20s that I get 300ish damage and kills 5 mechs?

Now because some players can make a second rate machine work and do it well doesn't mean it's good it means the pilots are good.

I've never been paired with or against you that I recall but you do seem to believe that a laser boat is competitive so I would venture that you are a good pilot getting superior results from an inferior design.(I myself have a stalker with 4x ER lrg lasers that I get decent results from)


The majority of the players are not pulling 3 kills 700+ damage from non meta build medium mech They are actually getting lit up in two shots by the meta builds and retiring the mediums in their hangars.

If you balance of the best players performance the average player will be fighting a steep uphill battle to make most non meta build mechs function never mind perform well with them.

[Joseph Mallan]

Lykaon, on 08 January 2014 - 05:08 AM, said:

You're good for a laugh now and again really all lrg laser boats? most not getting over 4 sustained DPS ?

Seriously? lasers are by nature sustained damage dependent while the AC/PPC boat is diffinativley NOT it's a burst machine.

Laser Battlemaster Vs AC battle master.

Let's go for a reasonable 5 lrg laser boat.OK first we have ghost heat limiting the group fired lasers to 2 every .5 seconds.Next we have time facing target to consider aim,pull trigger,keep beam on target what would you say that is? 2 seconds?.Then we have Dispersed damage effects because if the target reacts it can spread the damage around.this leads to less effective damage applied.

So sure this build will work if no one is paying any attention to it.God forbid if this next build squares off against the "competative" large laser boat.

Now a real Battlemaster build that actually works. 320std engine 2 AC5s 1 ER-PPC shave a bit of armor of each leg (66 points each I think) fill the rest with heatsinks.

This build has no Ghostheat issues,actually runs cooler overall (60% efficency vs 40% yes 50% more efficent use of heat),has higher DPS (5.26 vs 4.24 that's around 25% higher DPS on top of the 50% more efficent heat use) Frontloads it's damage pinpoint style.Has around a 25% longer effective range than the lrg lasers, And No XL engine extending it's survival time under fire. The 5 large laser Battlemaster is dead if facing off against this alpha shooter.No ifs ands or buts the dummy build 2 AC5s and 1 ER PPC I literaly slap together in my head wins the stats and tactical application game hands down.

But if you like playing hard mode feel free to use the laser boat.

Stats say the ballistic PPC build is better,Tactics play out in favor of the pinpoint front loaded damage allowing for maximizing cover use (no need to stand exposed for 2-3 seconds to hit with 2 lrg lasers every .5 seconds.)

Oh and do a head count see how many AC/PPC battlemasters you see compared to large laser boats it's probably easily 20 to 1.

Just stop the propaganda and do some math.

So after saying all this you still want to Nerf AC20s instead of Fix Lasers???? And you call yourself competitive?

[Lykaon]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

Anyone who drops with me or aces off against them knows they do

That's you.

Most Hunchback 4ps are sitting in the hangars not being fielded because 2 AC 20 hits breaches the RT potentially removing 6 of it's 8 lasers.

[Joseph Mallan]

Lykaon, on 08 January 2014 - 05:37 AM, said:

That's you.

Most Hunchback 4ps are sitting in the hangars not being fielded because 2 AC 20 hits breaches the RT potentially removing 6 of it's 8 lasers.

Just like One AC20 did on TT.

[wanderer]

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

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%.

Incorrect. TT weapons at extreme ranges (which you're showing there) do actually inflict lower damage when fired at extreme-to-maximum range. Long range for a TT laser is a comparatively humble -450- meters, which is what you're listing there as SHORT range for a large laser.

If you're going to use TT examples for an argument and get them that wrong, that badly, you've shot the argument in the foot for your opening statement.

[Alienfreak]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 11:48 PM, said:

HBK-4P


they do on a regular basis. Fact, not opinion.

HBK-4P

Thank me later, bro.

[Khobai]

Quote

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

And if the game only gave you the choice between LLs and MLs, you might actually be correct.

However, the moment your reasoning completely falls apart, is once you realize the game has ballistic weapons. The reality is MLs complement ballistics far better than LLs, which makes MLs superior in all regards.

[Bhael Fire]

I'd rather see weapons be deadlier to force players to think before they run around each corner and to use cover liberally.

Making weapons DOT soft-hitters will make matches last longer for careless, reckless and/or aggressive players but ultimately it does nothing for the "thinking man" who'd rather use tactics and caution to reduce the deadly effects of weapons.

In other words, I'd much rather see lasers get buffed instead of ACs nerfed.

[Risen]

AC's should be changed slightly so mechs don't drop too quickly from enemy fire because this does not result into "smart" or "tactical" play but into "duck in cover - snipe - wars" there are enough first person shooters out there for that.

With the actual "meta builds" it is obvious that they need to be put into line with the other weapons.

MWO should settle down a bit in that pace and make fights more drawn out.

Edited by Risen, 08 January 2014 - 06:22 AM.

[Craig Steele]

@ Cerberius

I am on neither side of this one, I just don't care enough about the meta physics of 0.25% of damage output in a computer game to get excited. I just thought the comment could be read as a little elitest and wanted to clarify. Seems by some of the subsequent assumptions about the tier I play in suggest it was.

But I am willing to bet that a few months ago people were saying, "Hey, ditch those AC 20's for LRM's man, you'll get torn to shreds otherwise"

Meta's change with tweaks and tactics and everyone should be ok to play their own game, who knows, it might be the new Meta next week and everyone is knocking on Sandpits door.

But i do find your comments a little condescending. Maybe you can find it in your heart to take pity on a poor simple scrub like me instead of mocking me for asking questions. After all, if it weren't for scrubs who would you have to pad out your KD ratio?

[Khobai]

Quote

I'd rather see weapons be deadlier to force players to think before they run around each corner and to use cover liberally.

Yeah lets also shrink mechs down, give them roller skates, and rename the game to heavy gear online.

[3rdworld]

Lasers are not damage efficient enough in heavier mechs to overcome the inherent downside of Direct damage vs Beam duration.

LLs are really where the problem is. MLs work just fine on lighter chassis, but for Assaults to be relevant using lasers, they must be the most efficient weapons in the game, in pretty much every category, simply to overcome their disadvantages to the PPC.