437 replies to this topic

[MagnusEffect]

Vach, on 15 November 2011 - 12:05 AM, said:

Even without the Alpha strike coded in, people will still find ways to do that, well in a way.

See, most gaming keyboards have the ability to do macros, which means pressing one macro key will allow someone to do an "Alpha strike" even if it is not allowed in a group in game.

Isn't that easily prevented by coding in a "slight delay" for all other weapons when one weapon is fired? In other words, only a single weapon could be fired at any one time before the next could. This would create a "cascading" effect. Seems like that would be rather simple to do assuming they went that way.

edit: lol.. oops. caveman beat me to it

Edited by MagnusEffect, 15 November 2011 - 12:14 AM.

[Aeolian]

MagnusEffect, on 15 November 2011 - 12:13 AM, said:

Isn't that easily prevented by coding in a "slight delay" for all other weapons when one weapon is fired? In other words, only a single weapon could be fired at any one time before the next could. This would create a "cascading" effect. Seems like that would be rather simple to do assuming they went that way.

edit: lol.. oops. caveman beat me to it

But why? In real life, people would sometimes fire more than one weapon at once if the situation called for it. You can either weirdly make this impossible or just give it consequences (NOT penalties) like exponential heat increase, which could lead to destroyed weapons or ammo explosions.

In fact, heat in general should be exponential in MWO. If you fire two guns, the heat shouldn't just be twice as much. There, alpha strikes and boating dealt with - still feasible but dangerous.

Edited by Aeolian, 15 November 2011 - 12:25 AM.

[CaveMan]

Aeolian, on 15 November 2011 - 12:24 AM, said:

But why? In real life, people would sometimes fire more than one weapon at once if the situation called for it. You can either weirdly make this impossible or just give it consequences (NOT penalties) like exponential heat increase, which could lead to destroyed weapons or ammo explosions.

In fact, heat in general should be exponential in MWO. If you fire two guns, the heat shouldn't just be twice as much. There, alpha strikes and boating dealt with - still feasible but dangerous.

I think you might be misunderstanding what was meant by removing alpha strike. This wouldn't be "fire a weapon, wait around for some mysterious countdown to reset, fire another weapon". This is getting rid of the option to hit your backslash key twice and hear "group fire engaged" then everything shoots at the same time when you pull the trigger.
Chain fire would be the only weapon mode, period.
There would be a fraction-of-a-second delay between weapons built in to stop people from exploiting macros, but for all intents and purposes you can still use all your weapons in a pinch. You just can't pull the trigger once and have everything neatly blast the same spot; if you want everything to hit the same location you'll have to continually aim every single shot while clicking a few more times.

[Aeolian]

CaveMan, on 15 November 2011 - 12:31 AM, said:

I think you might be misunderstanding what was meant by removing alpha strike. This wouldn't be "fire a weapon, wait around for some mysterious countdown to reset, fire another weapon". This is getting rid of the option to hit your backslash key twice and hear "group fire engaged" then everything shoots at the same time when you pull the trigger.
Chain fire would be the only weapon mode, period.
There would be a fraction-of-a-second delay between weapons built in to stop people from exploiting macros, but for all intents and purposes you can still use all your weapons in a pinch. You just can't pull the trigger once and have everything neatly blast the same spot; if you want everything to hit the same location you'll have to continually aim every single shot while clicking a few more times.

I can understand that however if the weapons were balanced along the lines of my thread it wouldn't be an issue, Only energy weapons would be accurate enough for it to be an issue and with proper heat management a purely energy based boat would work but the drawbacks would mean it would still be viable (and why not?) just not overpowered.

[Wraith 1]

If only there was something that could detect when some n00b is Laserboating, and lock their 'mech into reactor-overload.
Oh, it would be so cool to see some dork just randomly blow while running across the battlefield...

Edited by Wraith-1, 15 November 2011 - 12:51 AM.

[Caballo]

As i stated above, and now that Aeolian (Nice scale BTW) brought it back, i'm into a heat buildup to control people axiety for firing all at once, Getting rid of linked fire for the weapons you want is not funny. If i want to link a group of medium lasers and an AC5 to fire when the target reaches 500 m. from me, i should be able to do it... Paying the cost of a high increased heat, of course.
I've been watching the video some times and, if it's ingame footage as it says, aiming in this one is not going to be any easy.

[rollermint]

Aeolian, on 15 November 2011 - 12:24 AM, said:

But why? In real life, people would sometimes fire more than one weapon at once if the situation called for it. You can either weirdly make this impossible or just give it consequences (NOT penalties) like exponential heat increase, which could lead to destroyed weapons or ammo explosions. In fact, heat in general should be exponential in MWO. If you fire two guns, the heat shouldn't just be twice as much. There, alpha strikes and boating dealt with - still feasible but dangerous.

Because real life is not a game. In RL, people don't care about balance, they don't care about the fun of an even competition, they only care about getting the biggest guns or the biggest set of guns.

Since this is a game, balance issues is paramount. You cannot use RL solely to dictate and judge what works in a game or not. In real life, people die. Perhaps they should include perm death to mech pilots as well?

Caballo, on 15 November 2011 - 01:37 AM, said:

As i stated above, and now that Aeolian (Nice scale BTW) brought it back, i'm into a heat buildup to control people axiety for firing all at once, Getting rid of linked fire for the weapons you want is not funny. If i want to link a group of medium lasers and an AC5 to fire when the target reaches 500 m. from me, i should be able to do it... Paying the cost of a high increased heat, of course. I've been watching the video some times and, if it's ingame footage as it says, aiming in this one is not going to be any easy.

Except that scenario of "I just want a couple of med lasers to work with my single AC5" will not be the general case.

No, my friend, it will be "HAW HAW 12 MED LAZERS PEWPEW IN UR FACE!". Min-maxing will overwhelm all game balance without strict game checks and balances and it will simply devolve into everyone being forced to boat for maximum efficiency. Who wouldn't pass up the chance to take out an enemy in one shot? Thats what the game will devolve into : poptarting boat mechs. Don't forget that urban combat is going to be a major focus in MWO so poptarting will be even worse if nothing is done to restrict alpha striking. Perhaps striking off AS altogether may be extreme (altho I wouldn't be concerned), I would be ok if they limit it to 2-3 weapons max at a time.

Re: the video, as I understand it, its a stand-alone scripted video running on UE3. Its not even a working game prototype. So I wouldn't use that to gauge how the game would be like. I might be wrong but thats what I read.

[Linkin]

I like the cone of fire suggestions that have been tossed around... reducing the issue of coring a target. Takes the fun out of it when you have everyone just running around with the same few laser builds.

I do not think AS should be removed completely; players should have an 'Oh **** Button' for when they need. However on the flip side, I think it should have a much more pronounced effect on the mech. Maybe some type of random thing like the poll suggests... loss of targeting, automatic shutdown until the heat reaches safe levels, overloading the weapons system so one or more becomes unusable, or even a greater chance to go critical as soon as you AS, something to deter people from using only AS.

That said, given what has been released about the game so far (role warfare and all that jazz) makes me think either will not be a problem. I would hope they will not release a MW game where the only viable tactic is to run around one shoting each other the whole time.

Edited by Linkin, 15 November 2011 - 04:08 AM.

[zax]

Aeolian, on 15 November 2011 - 12:24 AM, said:

But why? In real life, people would sometimes fire more than one weapon at once if the situation called for it. You can either weirdly make this impossible or just give it consequences (NOT penalties) like exponential heat increase, which could lead to destroyed weapons or ammo explosions.

In fact, heat in general should be exponential in MWO. If you fire two guns, the heat shouldn't just be twice as much. There, alpha strikes and boating dealt with - still feasible but dangerous.

Exponential heat buildup seems like the best solution. Instead of limiting a players options (usually a bad, un-fun idea), just implement a penalty if a player fires all their weapons at the same time. If someone carries 6 large lasers and fires all of them at the same time, they should shut down, if not outright self-destruct, from the heat generated. On the other hand, if that player fires their lasers in 3 groups of 2, they should spike their heat but not to the point of shut down.

[Undead]

I picked lower AS usage. In the case of laser weapons you should build up extra heat points per additional lasers fired after the first. Perhaps add a recoil modifier for multiple autocannons that might cause your mech to fall over. Hell, there's alreay a canon rule for this regarding Heavy Gauss usage, expand it to heavy autocannons as well. Suddenly you don't look so slick firing 4 AC10's simultaneously when your mech falls on it's a**.

Removing group fire altogether is silly. I'm pretty sure targeting systems in the 3040's will be advanced enough to allow firing multiple weapons at once. Only allowing a certain number of the same weapon on a chassis is also silly because you'd eliminate mechs like the Flashman, Black Knight, Penetrator, Nova and many others that have groups of one weapon type.

I can't agree with making grouped weapons less accurate either. If a player is skilled enough to head-shot you with a pile of lasers in group fire, too bad. Perhaps it's time to brush up on your piloting skills.

Edited by Undead, 15 November 2011 - 05:47 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Missile "boats" with LRM's or SRM's are not such an Alpha Strike problem as their weapons inherently spread the damage around. If you upgrade the standard IS fire support mech (Catapult) to an assault using Artemis IV, Narc and a "spotter" you can add 2 LRM20's giving a total of 70 missiles in an Alpha. with a fair chance of most hitting, somewhere, depending on how fast the target is moving.In urban settings you will also have the problems of buildings getting in the way, not to mention AMS taking out missiles. I think the dev's can balance out LRM boats without too many problems. SRM's are more of a problem as not much will get in the way. Can certainly fit 6 Streak 6's and 3 ERLL's to an assault but not fire everything at once. The lasers at longer range and the missiles at short giving 72 damage on the SRM's. The thing is both these boats are expensive, both to build and probably to run and could easily be made just not effective to bild and use, that is if you could ir just don't allow that level of customisation. That to me seems to be the way out of most of the problems. After all, it's only those who played MW3 &4 who would expect that level of customisation. Take that out, ie limit what you can do ie Omni mechs can only fit allowed pods and I think many of the problems will go away. Balancing the game has to mean that no one mech, or combinaation of mechs will suit all circumstances and that choosing a variety of types and classes will be necessary, allong with teamwork, to succeed in any situation. Given e lentgth of time the dev's have, and the amount of thought that must have gone in already it may well be that we are worrying bout nothing. They wan't to make money and they can only do that with wide appeal and longevity. There just are not enough existing fans to make things sustainable.

[Merf]

If one is to have a classical mechlab I am rather in favour of the diminishing returns approach. meaning some sort of punishment is given for boating the same type weapons. This could be added heat load or a damage debuff for the boated weapons (easy to make up a fluff reason for why this would be so I think.). Just something that would promote variants with diverse weapon loadouts. Many of the canon variants are of the mixed weapons variety, but when targeting is done by a player and not by rolling a couple of dice it offers a very important easy of use attribute to boating the same type weapon. If one want to retain the usefulness of mixed loadouts (which I personally consider to be a very battletech accurate thing) something must be done to promote them.

So, what does varied loadouts have to do with alpha striking? Well, when you have a loadout consisting of many different weapon types alpha striking becomes less beneficial since it will be rare that you can get all the weapon on target with the same amount of lead. Promoting mixed loadouts as such would swat flies with one strike. It would be making alpha striking into a situational panic button rather then the default behaviour as well as getting variants on the field that takes a bit of thought to use to their max potential. It also lets the player be more involved in that the player is more likely to find itself in posession of a weapon system that can contribute in the situation the player happens to find itself.

/Merf - Sees many game play advantages from only allowing DEV decided variants (preferably canon ones).

[Joseph Mallan]

CaveMan, on 15 November 2011 - 12:08 AM, said:

I addressed this one in my earlier post. Build in a cooldown time between weapon shots and macros become no more useful than firing the weapons one at a time. Probably less useful actually because the macro will keep activating shots long after the target has moved out of the sights.

Thugs don't need much cool down time as they have more sink capacity than heat produced. Their heat scale spikes but drains off quickly. They are a great Alpha Strike Mech.

Personal Observation Rant
I have to laugh at you guys. Whining about Alpha Strike, Clan v IS, Assault v Lighter chassis. You wanna make it so others can't do/cant be/can't have what they want. Those are weak *** statements! You might as well say that Steiner's cant have Atlas's, Zeus's and Banshee's because you don't like Assault Mechs(... wait some of you are!!!)! I understand the whining, I have done it at my own table.

The Dev's have to TRY and accommodate as many users as possible, without breaking the game completely! There are lots of different fighting styles and tactics. I play assaults because I like providing heavy fire power and the ability to soak some damage for my friends who like the "speedy death by 1000 paper cuts to your weak back armor" tactics (MoTown Scrapper for instance), and my "stand back and rain death and destruction" players(Big Red 88). We come together to make up a darn good combination of fighting styles under the right leader.

[itchies]

None of the above. Wasn't an option on the Poll.

[NoMovingParts]

No need to change -
Although AS/boating may not be a "canon" strategy, the game we are involved in is not merely a strict replay of the Mech-literature universe.
As players, we've been given a background to play against, and our play evolves as necessity dictates. In a strict canon universe, a load-out is set up not knowing what a pilot may face in combat, hence a variety of weapons on a single mech, but in game, we know the map, have some idea of the opponents, and have the entire mech arsenal to equip from.
If we were straight-up canon pilots, wouldn't we drive whatever mechs we could, with a wide weapons variety, and drive them "till the wheels fall off"? An AS/boat strategy would fail miserably in a real-world scenario, but when you know you're only going to be in a drop for 30 minutes, then the map & mechs change, why wouldn't you tailor your team to those specs? A pilot with any sort of self-preservation would likely never drive a 2xArtemis20 Owens with zip for armor in the real world, but a few of them on a the right map (with respawn!) is a different situation.
AS/boating is a reasonable point in the evolution of strategy in a game. As such, it dies out if it doesn't work, and survives if it does. No need to force the issue. If designers did limit this ability, at some point players would necessarily ask, "why can't I do this...."?

[Yeach]

Also another none of the above.

If each battle was a randomize map (city to wide-open terrain) would you really opt for a boat?
(I guess the answer is maybe if you pair a close-range boat with a long-range boat)

[MaddMaxx]

Maps are the key of the Dev allow full customization. We know Heat will factor in, so that is good. How is yet unknown but if done right, it too will **** off a lot of people because Heat management means proper build compensation.

You want 5 LRG Lasers, fine. Please also add 15 HS's in place of that armor you wanted, or you cannot Save the build. Or allow a min. # of HS's but then firing all 5 lasers at once means that Betty will slap you with a "Shut Down Imminent!" (override prevents the SD) but your Mech slows to a crawl for the SD period instead.

That way if your target survived that AS, you will not live through the return volley(s). Sounds fair.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 15 November 2011 - 12:14 PM.

[Mechteric]

Programatically trying to prevent Alpha striking is just counterproductive to solving the problem (and is likely impossible anyway). Battletech has a system for handling this, its called heat and about every weapon generates it to some significant degree. How it can be solved from a gameplay standpoint I'm sure won't be easy, but it will likely involve ensuring the proper penalties for building up heat (and not just "maximum" heat threshold penalties), and hopefully no more of this coolant flushing nonsense. Fortunately these developers have the benefit of knowing what that can do to gameplay beforehand by using MW4 as a model case for how not to do it.

[TheRulesLawyer]

The problem with alpha isn't boats. That's an artifact of virtually unlimited mechlabs, and will remain with or without boating.

The problem with alpha is that you hit the same location. If the weapons scatter all over the place on alpha, carefully aimed timed shots will be more effective and alpha will remain the province of the n00b.

Alphas already suffer a huge heat spike and you can risk a short shutdown. Without the reward of everything hitting, that's a big risk to take.

Fix the aim issue and you fix alpha.

[Bubba Gump]

The alpah strike should be in the game but should have very high risk involved with using it. I personaly think it's the customation problem that is going to be a issue. Think we should brain storm on that for a bit on another thread.