59 replies to this topic

[Peiper]

I recently read another thread on how to fix the Awesome. This was my response, which was really an explanation of, very simply, how to fix the balance problems in MWO once and for all.

The Awesome should be the ONLY mech that boats 3 PPC's. Because every other assault can boat energy weapons and/or other LARGE direct fire long range weapons better, the awesome ceases to have a purpose. Many players would risk the size and scale of the Awesome if it was the only way they could equip a third giant weapon like a PPC on a mech (before ghost heat). There is nothing wrong with the Awesome. There is something very wrong with the mechlab and ghost heat.

Let's put this in perspective: If hardpoints were SIZE restrictive, we would have:

Large lasers, PPC's each take a large energy hardpoint.
Gauss, AC10, AC20's take a large ballistics hardpoint.
Medium and small lasers take a small energy hardpoint.
AC2's and 5's, take a small ballistic hardpoint.
Machine guns can are their own type of hardpoint.

(Or, another way to do this is make sure that no mech could replace their weapons with a weapon larger than it was delivered with.)

The Atlas RS would be the only Atlas that could take 2 PPC's and a large barrel autocannon.

The Highlanders could take a large AC in one arm (or PPC) and NO PPC's or large lasers.

Only two Battlemasters would sport a LLaser or PPC and no autocannons.

No stalker could take more than two PPCs.

No Victor could take a PPC or Large Laser, and have only one large bore autocannon.

Two Awesomes could sport THREE PPC's.

To toy with the opposite end of the spectrum:
No light mechs would have autocannons.
No light mechs would have PPCs or Large Lasers.

Also, from then on, there would be NO NEED for desyncing gauss rifles, messing with projectile speed, tweaking ranges, or having ghost heat! Woohoo! Balance problems solved! We can play a Battletech Simulator!

If you need me, I'll be on the island...

Edited by Peiper, 12 January 2014 - 08:22 PM.

[Clydewinder]

Awesome 8 series engine caps are way too low

[FupDup]

If we'd do sized hardpoints, I'd personally prefer to use critical slots (i.e. ML is 1 slot, AC/5 is 4 slots, etc. etc.) instead of qualitative sizes (large medium small etc.).

[Iron Riding Cowboy]

I thank some form of hardpoint limitation is needed in this game to help baiance the mechs... so thay can stay within there inintended builds and if a mech is overpreforming a small change in hard points can help with this.. we can do away with the BS gost heat and no more BS crape like AC40s and that new clan mech who can have a AC80....

but it seems the dives do not care for baianceing the game the right way but instead add weird sistems like gost heat witch harts the game than fix it....

Edited by Iron Riding Cowboy, 12 January 2014 - 08:55 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

They said a while ago they were still considering sized hardpoints.

I think they are not anymore considering all the other changes such as ghost heat etc.

I would love HP sizes but its probably too far gone to change sadly.

Instead I advocate mech quirks and encourage usage of the mech as it was originally intended but without forcing people to do it. These could be used to balance and to add character and personality to mechs so they are more differentiated.

Quirks can be good and bad mind you and should just be related to agility and mobility which is what they have done so far.

Awesomes should totally have some bonus to using PPCs for instance ...

[Peiper]

Asmudius Heng, on 12 January 2014 - 08:54 PM, said:

They said a while ago they were still considering sized hardpoints.

I think they are not anymore considering all the other changes such as ghost heat etc.

I would love HP sizes but its probably too far gone to change sadly.

Instead I advocate mech quirks and encourage usage of the mech as it was originally intended but without forcing people to do it. These could be used to balance and to add character and personality to mechs so they are more differentiated.

Quirks can be good and bad mind you and should just be related to agility and mobility which is what they have done so far.

Awesomes should totally have some bonus to using PPCs for instance ...

Most of what you are saying are band-**** for the original design mistake rather than a solution.

FupDup, on 12 January 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

If we'd do sized hardpoints, I'd personally prefer to use critical slots (i.e. ML is 1 slot, AC/5 is 4 slots, etc. etc.) instead of qualitative sizes (large medium small etc.).

This is an idea I've also thrown around. Mechs would also have to be looked at closely. For example: do the two hardpoints on each of the Atlas RS's arm mean it can take two weapons, or should that be reduced to a single large hardpoint. This becomes especially important on mechs like the Jaggermech, or Cat A1. In any case, hardpoints need to be completely redone, AND the player base will have to be fully prepped for the change. If there was a way to segregate Solaris VII type stuff and planetary warfare/Battletech simulator stuff, that would be ideal. People could have the best of both worlds.

All mechs would have to be looked at closely, but I do believe that the current system is way too permissive. What is the point of having dozens or even hundreds of mechs when certain mechs trump everything else in their weight class? The variety of mechs available is part of what makes Mechwarrior/Battletech so cool.

I think hard point changes could also bring about a revival of the medium mech, many which carry one large hardpoint and would have more of a chance to shine if they weren't facing off against the uber-alpha builds we shouldn't, but do have now.

Edited by Peiper, 12 January 2014 - 10:24 PM.

[luxebo]

Peiper, on 12 January 2014 - 08:19 PM, said:

No light mechs would have PPCs or Large Lasers.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...ab#i=26&l=stock
Commando 1B stock...

[Peiper]

luxebo, on 12 January 2014 - 10:24 PM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...ab#i=26&l=stock
Commando 1B stock...

LOL. I forgot the Commando was a mech. I've been playing with the Lyrans too often, and they classify that mech as 'battle armor.'

However, a mech like this, and the Panther could get a new lease on life with the above ideas! Hell, even an Urbanmech MIGHT find a place... shudder....

[Asmudius Heng]

Yes what I suggested is a band aid and I believe I stated that I prefer hard point sizes but being realistic PGI will never do it. The game is too far gone and they don't have the stomach to suddenly change things so drastically and **** off a lot of the community.

So I simply tried to offer something that could be done without causing much fuss and would require minimal work from PGI even if its not the best option overall

[Scrawny Cowboy]

Asmudius Heng, on 13 January 2014 - 12:54 AM, said:

...
So I simply tried to offer something that could be done without causing much fuss and would require minimal work from PGI even if its not the best option overall

It ain't simple, many are gonna be upset of the restricted customization, and it sure as heck not gonna be an overnight patch.

Just look at what they're doing with the hitbox revisit. They're putting all the hitbox size/locations into a cookie cutter format. I'd hate to think what would happen with a hardpoint revisit...

[Blacksoul1987]

If this were to get implemented then what would happen to the hero mechs? Dragonslayer would end up head and shoulders above other victors same with Protector. and this approach wouldn't help at all with upcoming clan mechs. 4erppc warhawk? this type of system would not allow them to ever add mechs such as the Devastator or thunderhawk. Those mechs all make the awesome look like {Scrap} anyway why? because IS double heatsinks are too large so a proper min max IS mech would have both ballistics and energy. hardpoint restrictions as the only means of balance will mean that we cannot add some of our favorite mechs or if they do the game will become all about power creep.

[Peiper]

Blacksoul1987, on 13 January 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

If this were to get implemented then what would happen to the hero mechs? Dragonslayer would end up head and shoulders above other victors same with Protector. and this approach wouldn't help at all with upcoming clan mechs. 4erppc warhawk? this type of system would not allow them to ever add mechs such as the Devastator or thunderhawk. Those mechs all make the awesome look like {Scrap} anyway why? because IS double heatsinks are too large so a proper min max IS mech would have both ballistics and energy. hardpoint restrictions as the only means of balance will mean that we cannot add some of our favorite mechs or if they do the game will become all about power creep.

Well Blacksoul, I see what you're saying about Clan mechs. I think the answer there might be mixed tech. Another answer could be weight and numbers restrictions. Battle value? (for those non battletech people out there, battlevalue is a value given to a mech derived from it's weight, armor, weapons and equipment. Clan mechs had a SIGNIFICANTLY higher battle value, and to find an even game in which multiple technology levels were used, the battle value could illustrate that one mech - though the same weight - might be significantly more powerful than another, and so it would be an unfair matchup.) Otherwise, clan technology and mechs will have to be balanced and tweaked so that they are no better despite having twice the weapons, more range, etc...

As far as not making old mechs obsolete with clan mechs - if battle values and/or weight and tonnage restrictions weren't used - you'd have to allow inner sphere mechs to be upgraded with clan technology. Hardpoints would have to be looked at closely, too, to ensure that mechs had a chance. No point in saving a bunch of weight if you can't put on a ton of weapons and more heat sinks, right? Also, Clan mechs should not be customizable at all. You can buy or pick different variants, but you can't alter them other than that. Most clan mechs can't use their entire arsenal, including the Warhawk, without overheating big time. They also have no more armor than any inner sphere mech can take which is another equalizer.

Regarding the Dragon Slayer and other Hero mechs, well, like all the mechs, their hardpoints would have to be looked at in comparism with their sister mechs.

The biggest problem is that all the weapons up until now have been balanced and rebalanced due to people breaking the mechs (frankenmeching) and using exploits. Players will do that, sure, but why let them? The second biggest problem is that of reimbursement or otherwise 'making up for lost time' when they rebalance all the hardpoints and stuff that I suggest. Fortunately, the game is still in BETA, as far as most honest players are concerned. Sarcasm aside, they only have to worry about money spent, not time, so they can just allow for a hero/phoenix echange program to allow for people to trade in their MC spent mechs for different ones (exchange, not refund).

All in all, though, this stuff COULD be done if PGI has the guts to do it and us players have the patience to learn the new metagame that would follow.

[Blacksoul1987]

well clan tech isn't the only problem the devastator and thunderhawk are both IS designs from our current era that many people including myself would love to have in this game and if hardpoints were the only balancing factor these mechs would be ridiculously OP devastator mounts 2 gauss 2 ppc and 4 medlas, thunderhawk mounts 3 gauss 4 medlas. There are STOCK mechs in lore that make our current "frankenmechs" look absolutely pathetic. you are right that hardpoints would balance our current mechs fairly well but then after that it is all power creep. 2 uac5 2 ppc? that's weak. Battlevalue is certainly something worth looking at though but with that you wouldn't need anything more.

[Zyllos]

What, in the Devastator and Thunderhawk, does it make them better than other mechs if hardpoint size restrictions were to be added?

The Devastator and Thunderhawk runs an XL engine on a large 100t frame. It's a mech that sits in the back and blows stuff up but would be crushed in a close ranged fight due to those XL engines. And there is no real way to fix this by going to a Standard engine in an attempt to make it survive longer in close range.

Plus, the Thunderhawk and Devastator still won't obsolete the Awesome due to it still being the only mech to equip 3 PPCs and 20t lighter for when tonnage limits come.

Peiper, on 12 January 2014 - 08:19 PM, said:

Let's put this in perspective: If hardpoints were SIZE restrictive, we would have:

Large lasers, PPC's each take a large energy hardpoint.
Gauss, AC10, AC20's take a large ballistics hardpoint.
Medium and small lasers take a small energy hardpoint.
AC2's and 5's, take a small ballistic hardpoint.
Machine guns can are their own type of hardpoint.

(Or, another way to do this is make sure that no mech could replace their weapons with a weapon larger than it was delivered with.)

A suggestion on the classifications of large and small hardpoints, honestly, it would be better to seperate them out to large/medium/small and allow a hardpoint classification to equip one classification lower (so a large can equip mediums but not smalls, medium can equip small, and small is small only).

The weapons themselves should be classified in this manner:

• Small
  
  • Small Laser
    
  • Small Pulse Laser
    
  • Medium Laser
    
  • Medium Pulse Laser
    
  • Flamer
    
  • Machine Gun
    
  • AC/2
    
  • SRM/2
    
  • SRM/4
    
  • SSRM/2
    
  • LRM/5
• Medium
  
  • Large Laser
    
  • Large Pulse Laser
    
  • ER Large Laser
    
  • AC/5
    
  • UAC/5
    
  • AC/10
    
  • LBX/10
    
  • SRM/6
    
  • LRM/10
• Large
  
  • PPC
    
  • ERPPC
    
  • AC/20
    
  • Gauss Rifle
    
  • LRM/15
    
  • LRM/20

Overall, this gives good customized limitations to mech layouts. The Medium sized hardpoint is good for almost all hardpoint types in the game. Generally, if a stock mech originally had multiple Medium Lasers, it would probably best to set one of those hardpoints to Medium and the other to Small to still allow players to upgrade in size but not overboard them with a bunch.

This also tells the player that side grade weapons are for customization within the same classification. So UACs/LBXs for ACs and Pulse/ER for Energy. Missiles contain Artemis upgrades for there side grades.

The Large classification is used to give a mech something unique, like the future Hollander or Hunchback. The Small classification is used for restrictiveness. Good examples of Small hardpoints is the Raven's and Catapult's Ballistic hardpoints.

A good example of this combined is the Stalker. Every player places either 5 or so Large Lasers or multiple SRMs/LRMs. This isn't the point of the Stalker. It's a design to support closer ranged mechs with all ranged weaponry. So, those arms would be containing Small Energy hardpoints while the body would have Medium Energy hardpoints. This tells the player that it's an all purpose, generalized mech. The missile hardpoints can be customized to either focus at short range or long range, with it containing 4 Medium Missile hardpoints.

Now many would suggest that once mechs come out that follow the current meta, they will just be the top tier mechs, this is an issue that hardpoints doesn't fully fix. This is a flaw between the mechanics of pin point aiming and the armor system. Hardpoints would only fix the grossest of the meta builds.

Edited by Zyllos, 13 January 2014 - 11:40 AM.

[zagibu]

It's not easy to get this system right, though, because it will of course remove layout flexibility and might invalidate many a chassis if done wrong. But I agree, it would establish another tool with pretty fine-grained controls to balance certain builds.

Maybe instead of an arbitrary classification, hardpoints could have tonnage limits. So there could be a 0.5 ton energy hardpoint (only for small lasers), or a 5 ton (allows up to large lasers), etc. This would provide even finer control.

[Corbon Zackery]

I'm not having any issues with the Awesmo 4000 Was a great build. 11 matches played:

AWESOME AWS-8Q 11 7 4 1.75 11 6 1.83 3,172 11,764
01:14:29


You just need to know how to build them.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...edb1f7fb448214e

Everybody wants a Awesmo 4000 to be there best friend.

[luxebo]

After rereading the entire post, I think maybe this idea could be implemented, but there shouldn't be too many restrictions, plus it still wouldn't fully fix the Awesome, as the size of that thing is ridiculous.

[Roland]

I made a big writeup of such a system, and essentially how to implement it a while back.. Not gonna bother digging up the thread though, cause I don't think it's got a chance of being implemented. We got Ghost heat instead.

But yeah, just associating a number of critical slots with each hardpoint would effectively solve the issue and make the overall system better. Mechs would have the same hardpoints they have now, most likely, but you wouldn't be able to put any weapon into any hardpoint.. some would be limited to smaller weapons.

[Vegetal Maldito]

Anyone here remember MW4? It was like that back then, and it was very interesting...

[Peiper]

Roland, on 13 January 2014 - 07:53 PM, said:

I made a big writeup of such a system, and essentially how to implement it a while back.. Not gonna bother digging up the thread though, cause I don't think it's got a chance of being implemented. We got Ghost heat instead.

Me too. I think I did something more comprehensive too a year or so ago. Just keeping the dream and the discussion alive.