37 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

Oh, oh, but it used to be just for a gold mech. Now it comes with all that.

Personally I'm considering going the 240 route. But I need to know a LOT more about the clan mechs before I can justify it. Most importantly, I need to know what they are going to do about clan ballistics. Because not only are there the UACs, but the RACs, and if they start churning out 5 damage per shot for an RAC 5 with the ability to spam 6 shots within the time that an AC/5 can fire once... that's 30 damage spread out in 6 shots for only 10 tons... why use anything else? But, if they were to spread it out in an MG-style, say a minimum of 2 shots to do 5 damage, then 12 shots to do the full 30, would spread it out a lot more.

Also, UAC/20s which take less space than an AC/10, and only consumes 12 tons (exactly as much as an AC/10), if they get the single shot function with a double tap... then there's no point in balancing the game anymore.

If it were spread over multiple shots, as all autocannons should be, we'd have far fewer balancing issues and more balance. The PPC + AC combinations would greatly diminish and lasers would gain in value.

But, meh. We'll see.

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Koniving, on 21 January 2014 - 06:31 AM, said:

AC balancing

I seem to remember this being suggested to the devs (maybe it was you, Kon?) and it getting the response that they'd 'have to balance AC's completely differently' and that's why they weren't going to do it (even before hitreg issues). Despite that kind of being the point behind the suggestion.

I honestly really want to see multi-shot AC's. Moar dakka, pls.

[Koniving]

I was one of many, but not the first. When I learned of it and thought back to MW2 (20 shots for an AC/20) and MW3 (all ACs were 3-shot bursts in audio and animation; although the actual weapon damage was delivered in a single shot due to internet limitations as most were on dial-up), it seemed like the perfect solution.

Autocannons would need to be balanced akin to how the lasers were. Essentially regular autocannons spread into multiple shots wouldn't need any changes. But to also include UACs and RACs, they would need 1 to 2 second counts for attack durations. AC/2s, AC/5s, and AC/10s would need more time between damage-rating-hits. (Their actual shots will be as fast or faster, but for example the AC/2 hits its damage rating every 0.52 seconds. It'd need to be something like every 1 second instead. The AC/5 hits it every 1.5 seconds, perhaps every 2 seconds instead. The AC/10 gets it every 2.5 seconds, really that'd be fine or it could be pushed to 3 seconds.) AC/20 wouldn't need it, but making the AC/2, 5, and 10 slower would make the AC/20 need to be pushed over a bit too in order to make room for the UACs and RACs. At least the single shot version to 5 seconds, with the multi-shot versions to 4 seconds to offset the difference in them -- assuming we were going with variants and not one-size-fits-all.

More on it. With a comparison of two disturbingly similar weapons near the end, MWO's AC/2, and lore's Crusher Super Heavy Cannon (10 shot AC/20 with 2 damage per shot). It demonstrates that even without a single change to how the game was already balanced, both weapons would have their niches, perks, and downfalls. There's also an old, dated video on burst-fire AC/20 types Crusher and Chemjet (incorrect shot count as I learned, but the concept is sound).

Spoiler

For what's below, if you want more information on the difference between a 'burst fire' and 'MG-style / Fully automatic' Autocannon variant, refer to this post of mine linked here. The thread is locked so I cannot quote it.

Koniving, on 30 October 2013 - 09:32 PM, said:

Thank you. . Far as the AC variants, I'm soon to be working on another video. The AC/2 heat penalty has been really hurting any attempts. But this old one, though the info on it isn't entirely accurate (Devastator is the name of the Hunchback IIC's UAC/20. The book I read refers to trying to mount the Ebon Jaguar's UAC/20; the only single shot one mounted on a mech, on an Atlas. Though it is still as of today, unproven that any Inner Sphere mech can use a single shot AC/20 (the 203mm size is how you know it's a single shot).

Again, this vid isn't entirely accurate (Chemjet is, in a book, a 4 shot AC/20. Here I made it into a 3 shot based on an image of what inspired me to research and make this). I need to make a new one correcting information as well as delivering more variant concepts based on lore, as well as UAC and LB variant concepts. Many of these will require 3DS Max animations using the game's models.



On the other hand, the Crusher is 100% accurate. But there are 3 subvariants of Crusher (made by different competing manufacturers). Info given: One is belt-fed slower firing MG-style (constant rate of fire) and another is a burst-fire magazine fed version. No info on the third sub-variant.

The vid has the burst fire Crusher all figured out. Burst fire weapons will have an equal number of trigger pulls as a single shot weapon. Simply call the trigger pulls "cassettes" or magazines. In MWO 1 ton of ammo gives you 7 shots for a single shot AC/20. For a burst fire AC/20, it gives you 7 cassettes/magazines of x amount of shots each per ton.
The MG-style I figure would work like this:

• To hit 5 DPS (an AC/20's damage rate), the Crusher fire its full amount of shots to deal full damage within the same amount of time it takes the MWO AC/20 to fire and reload, so within 4 seconds. To accomplish this we take the time slice (4) and divide by 10. 4/10 = 0.4 seconds per shot.
  
  • The mathematically proposed MG-style Crusher variant would fire like this: 0 seconds, bang. 0.4, bang, 0.8, bang, 1.2, bang, 1.6, bang, 2.0, bang, 2.4, bang, 2.8, bang, 3.2, bang, 3.6, bang, 4.0, start over.
    
  • The MWO AC/20 fires like this: 0 seconds. Bang. 1, 2, 3, 4 bang. 1, 2, 3, 4 bang.
    
  • So we've got an identical rate going. Now given Battletech rules, all AC/20s have an identical ideal range. This is reasoned by lore as: "Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage versus armor. The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors."
    
  • Thus, despite being much smaller shots what prevents it from being super effective at longer ranges isn't that the smaller bullets stop doing full damage beyond 270 but because recoil makes it really difficult to focus the shots.
• But what about heat? According to the lore's rules, all AC/20s produce exactly 7 heat (6 in MWO -- combined with a threshold of 60 or higher is it any wonder it'll never overheat?). Let's figure it for 7 and then 6.
  
  • Figuring for 7 heat, it'll be 0.7 heat generated every 0.4 seconds (every shot) starting at 0. By the time we reach the 10th shot at 3.6 seconds we've made 7 heat.
    
  • Figuring for 6 heat, it'll be 0.6 heat generated every 0.4 seconds (every shot) starting at 0. By the time we reach the 10th shot at 3.6, we've made 6 heat.
    
  • MWO's current AC/20 generates 6 heat at 0 seconds, and doesn't generate another heat spike until 4 seconds later when it fires again.
    
  • Our version's cycle resets at 4 seconds just like MWO's, and thus a new heat rise will begin at 4 seconds.
    
  • Though the MG Crusher's heat spikes much less, it ultimately generates the same amount of heat.
• Now, what about ammo count? Unlike burst fire, MG styles can stop firing at any time!
  
  • For this we take the number of shots the AC/20 requires to do full damage, 10. We multiply that with the number of times a single shot AC/20 can be fired for 1 ton of ammo, 7. 10 shots * 7 = 70 shots per ton.
    
  • For comparison, if 10 shots = 20 damage, then 70 shots = 140 damage. Single shot AC/20, if a single shot does 20 damage and there are 7 shots in a ton, we deal 140 damage. We're equal!
• So what are the pros of the slower firing MG variant over the faster firing burst variant?
  
  • No pauses in firing rate.
    
  • Control over your ammunition, you don't lose 10 shots just because you got spooked and pulled the trigger.
    
  • Could, in theory, use 'tamed' fire control to effectively treat the Crusher like an unsteady 14 ton AC/2. But likely PGI would crush this concept.
    
  • Smoothly spread out heat spikes allow better control over heat generation.
    
  • Ability to space out shots to make them count and last.
    
  • An MG style AC/20 is ready to put a round down range at any time.
• What are the cons of using the MG variant over the Burst variant (what makes the burst better)?
  
  • The MG variant would/should have a tougher time handling recoil as its constant even if mild, where the burst fire is hit strong and stop.
    
  • Burst fire ACs would have a much easier time concentrating a lot of fire power in close to one spot very quickly for pop-and-shoot fire. MG styles take considerable time to accomplish this and need a constant line of sight.
    
  • Because burst fire (and single shot) AC/20s have to wait to reload, they are given time to 'rest' and cool off rapidly. An MG style doesn't have any real time to rest and so it's constantly fighting against its cooling.
    
  • Burst fire AC/20s would sound cooler due to ejecting magazine sounds.

But, what about comparing the Crusher with MWO's AC/2?




MG-style Crusher Super Heavy Autocannon/20 versus MWO's single shot AC/2.
Firing rates.
Crusher: 1 shot per 0.4 seconds.
AC/2: 1 shot per 0.52 seconds.
Damage.
Crusher: 2 per shot
AC/2: 2 per shot.
Range.
Crusher: 270 optimum.
AC/2: 720 optimum.
Recoil.
Crusher: Mild jerks.
AC/2: Next to none.
Weapon heat (per shot).
Crusher: 0.7
AC/2: 1.0
Weapon weight.
Crusher: 14 tons, 10 slots.
AC/2: 6 tons, 1 slot.
Ammunition.
Crusher: 70 shots per ton. (With my threshold fix and lower ammo counts, 50.)
AC/2: 75 shots per ton. (With my threshold fix and lower ammo counts, 45.)
Weapon health (based on MWO values).
Crusher: 18 health (but easier to damage due to slots)
AC/2: 10 health (very difficult to damage)

So as you can see there are pros and cons either way.

The implementation of recoil would also give the upcoming feature, crouching, a genuine function as you could crouch to reduce recoil.

Hope you enjoyed!

But back on topic... I'm still very saddened that my Founder's Atlas still has cosmetic issues. The missile pods don't work/show correctly, and it is disheartening. I bought a regular Atlas D so I could see how it's supposed to look.

Edited by Koniving, 21 January 2014 - 07:09 AM.

[Modo44]

Ghastous, on 21 January 2014 - 05:32 AM, said:

i just looked at that clan page and dammmmmm $500 for a gold mech are they right in the head lol

Those are collector's items. Similar to thousand dollar whatevers in other FTP games, most people will not buy that. Those that will, pay for the free game others get.

[Jody Von Jedi]

Arahantius, on 20 January 2014 - 07:33 PM, said:

Does this mean the Battlemaster will come out for c-bills. I really would like one of them

Battlemaster comes out today for C-bills.

Jody

[Koniving]

If the patch is today, then 1 PM Eastern is when we'll see the servers go down for the patch.

That's 10 AM Pacific.

[Buckminster]

At least they're putting out something more than cockpit glass. I was initially all excited - I thought "cockpit glass" included moving HUD elements to the in-cockpit monitors. But no, it's apparently just a "glass look effect" in the cockpit. I suppose it'll be cool if you start to see condensation when you overheat and that sort of thing, but still kind of a let down when compared to my expectations.

[Jody Von Jedi]

Koniving, on 21 January 2014 - 08:49 AM, said:

If the patch is today, then 1 PM Eastern is when we'll see the servers go down for the patch.

That's 10 AM Pacific.

Correct.

I listened to the NGNG pod cast with Russ Bullock from last week. He said the Battlemaster comes out in today's patch. It's a really good podcast if you haven't listened to it yet.

He also said there was a new Hero mech coming out with the Feb 4th patch that is a completely new chassis we haven't seen in MWO before.

Jody

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Koniving, on 21 January 2014 - 07:01 AM, said:

post

I remember that video from a while back - we can but hope! Thanks for digging it all up again

[Buckminster]

Jody Von Jedi, on 21 January 2014 - 08:58 AM, said:

He also said there was a new Hero mech coming out with the Feb 4th patch that is a completely new chassis we haven't seen in MWO before.

Curious.

The cynical side of me says "hopefully this isn't PGI throwing us a bone because UI 2.0 isn't done". But if things pan out as promised, this will be very good news indeed. A new UI, plus another mech - it's like Christmas! I better pull out my lights and tree decoration for my cockpit!

I wonder what the next chassis will be. Probably not a medium...

[TercieI]

Buckminster, on 21 January 2014 - 09:15 AM, said:

Curious.

The cynical side of me says "hopefully this isn't PGI throwing us a bone because UI 2.0 isn't done". But if things pan out as promised, this will be very good news indeed. A new UI, plus another mech - it's like Christmas! I better pull out my lights and tree decoration for my cockpit!

I wonder what the next chassis will be. Probably not a medium...

He said it's a light. <squueeeeee>

[Buckminster]

Are we maybe getting the Flea?

[TercieI]

Buckminster, on 21 January 2014 - 09:31 AM, said:

Are we maybe getting the Flea?

He said no, apparently

Second hand from this thread:

http://mwomercs.com/...ch-on-the-28th/

[Flying Judgement]

Koniving, on 21 January 2014 - 07:01 AM, said:

I was one of many, but not the first. When I learned of it and thought back to MW2 (20 shots for an AC/20) and MW3 (all ACs were 3-shot bursts in audio and animation; although the actual weapon damage was delivered in a single shot due to internet limitations as most were on dial-up), it seemed like the perfect solution.

Autocannons would need to be balanced akin to how the lasers were. Essentially regular autocannons spread into multiple shots wouldn't need any changes. But to also include UACs and RACs, they would need 1 to 2 second counts for attack durations. AC/2s, AC/5s, and AC/10s would need more time between damage-rating-hits. (Their actual shots will be as fast or faster, but for example the AC/2 hits its damage rating every 0.52 seconds. It'd need to be something like every 1 second instead. The AC/5 hits it every 1.5 seconds, perhaps every 2 seconds instead. The AC/10 gets it every 2.5 seconds, really that'd be fine or it could be pushed to 3 seconds.) AC/20 wouldn't need it, but making the AC/2, 5, and 10 slower would make the AC/20 need to be pushed over a bit too in order to make room for the UACs and RACs. At least the single shot version to 5 seconds, with the multi-shot versions to 4 seconds to offset the difference in them -- assuming we were going with variants and not one-size-fits-all.

More on it. With a comparison of two disturbingly similar weapons near the end, MWO's AC/2, and lore's Crusher Super Heavy Cannon (10 shot AC/20 with 2 damage per shot). It demonstrates that even without a single change to how the game was already balanced, both weapons would have their niches, perks, and downfalls. There's also an old, dated video on burst-fire AC/20 types Crusher and Chemjet (incorrect shot count as I learned, but the concept is sound).

Spoiler

For what's below, if you want more information on the difference between a 'burst fire' and 'MG-style / Fully automatic' Autocannon variant, refer to this post of mine linked here. The thread is locked so I cannot quote it.

But back on topic... I'm still very saddened that my Founder's Atlas still has cosmetic issues. The missile pods don't work/show correctly, and it is disheartening. I bought a regular Atlas D so I could see how it's supposed to look.

ur AC variants are awessome i could adopt a hunchy or a BJ fast to it. i would use the 3 rapid burst
will u make the new video?

will you be able to see the pilote from outside with the new glass?

[Koniving]

Flying Judgement, on 21 January 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

ur AC variants are awessome i could adopt a hunchy or a BJ fast to it. i would use the 3 rapid burst
will u make the new video?

will you be able to see the pilote from outside with the new glass?

No to pilot from the outside with new glass -- but I do have a video where there was a moment that you could see the pilot inside the mech. The pilots are not positioned at the appropriate spots, so it'll never happen. Wish I could find the picture, but I know it's in a semi-recent Spider video. I want to say the flamer spiders but I can't recall which of the three.

Thank you, and really they're my hashing out how the books' AC variants are described to work in a little bit more detail.

I'll be making a new video soon, but given ghost heat on AC/2s and other factors, it'll be really hard to work with the same timings. I'll probably have to work without showing a comparison to the current single shots (far as damage to target) and use AC/5s instead of AC/2s. A corrected Chemjet Gun should be incredibly easy to do. It's variants of AC/5s and AC/2s that I worry about.

There's a 100 shot AC/2, a 10 shot AC/2, 4 shot, and depending on what you look at either a 2 shot or 1 shot. That's gonna be about impossible to do within MWO.

The AC/5s are just difficult to do with damage restrictions, but the patterns are doable. The AC/10s and 20s will be easy... but info on the AC/10 variants is really limited. Apparently they weren't much of an author's favorite in the books. They practically don't seem to exist.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Koniving, on 21 January 2014 - 11:44 AM, said:

Thank you, and really they're my hashing out how the books' AC variants are described to work in a little bit more detail.

If it is any help I would fully expect that that kind of balancing is on the "Eventually" list (sort of like how it took blizzard until catalcysm to do some of what they wanted to do at launch)
IE
Eventually we will probably get (at least something similar to) that, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

(I put ECM rebalance into that same 'eventually' category - somewhere I am sure I saw one of the developers say they wanted to do all the little variants of ECM)

[Koniving]

Shar Wolf, on 21 January 2014 - 12:50 PM, said:

[/size]
If it is any help I would fully expect that that kind of balancing is on the "Eventually" list (sort of like how it took blizzard until catalcysm to do some of what they wanted to do at launch)
IE
Eventually we will probably get (at least something similar to) that, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

(I put ECM rebalance into that same 'eventually' category - somewhere I am sure I saw one of the developers say they wanted to do all the little variants of ECM)

From what's going on in the podcasts, we're getting a very different kind of variants. "Barrels" with range and heat increases/decreases. ....Heat and range both being the only two things that could never actually change with weapon variants in the books and tabletop.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Koniving, on 21 January 2014 - 12:52 PM, said:

From what's going on in the podcasts...........

I still keep thinking of how Blizzard went about it - alot of less than fun changes before they got it worked out.
I am not saying it will be all cake and rainbows - but that eventually it will (probably/maybe/hopefully) work out.

Of course, until then....