437 replies to this topic

[Sporkosophy]

MagnusEffect, on 14 November 2011 - 11:32 PM, said:

An Awesome can't fit 5 PPCs EVER. That *should* be an impossibility. A Masakari can (or should) barely fit 4 PPCs. I'm not against boating, but I am VERY much against all weapons having pinpoint accuracy to the degree that they hit the same place, at the same time, all the time, everytime!? you pull the trigger.

Bottom line: The MW franchise's current method is not the answer in my opinion. A sentiment apparently most agree with...

There's a 4 PPC Awesome variant, fitting five is possible, but it severely curtails other important aspects of the mech.

[MaddMaxx]

Carrying 5 ERPPC's and Firing 5 ERPPC's all at the same time is two vastly different things. LOL! BOOM!

[Wriddle]

I didn't read through all the pages of the thread so I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet or not. Limit each Mech to one AS. After the battle in which it is used require repairs to be able to use it again.

As you said an alpha strike is a huge surge of power to nearly all the systems in the Mech. What happens when your surge protector or fuse box gets a power surge? It shuts it down.

Alpha Strike Pros-Huge amount of damage potential.

Alpha Strike Cons-Requires lengthy shutdown to disperse heat (no matter the amount of heatsinks available), repairs required afterwards to fix all the wiring you just cooked, only usable once in desperate situations.

[Pvt Dancer]

As I posted on another thread about what seems to me to be the same subject...

This is all moot... till we know how combat works and what tech level we are using.

If the game starts out with Standard, base everything, the first thing that comes up is massive heat build-up to support all of the guns if you do customize it that way. Heat is a balancing factor, because if you risk shut-down every time you alpha strike. Thus, Alpha strikes are now /dangerous/ and not used often. Standard tech also means your weapons cost more for Tonnage and your heat sinks can no keep up with the curb. Really, it was a fantastic balance and served the game well for many a year. Problem was some children didn't like the fact that a mech might survive longer than 3 turns and wanted to 'speed up' the game.

IF the game starts out with lost tech or (God forbid) Clan tech, it makes it easier to alpha strike and makes Alpha strikes more powerful and less of a consequence because the Mechs can handle the heat better. These are the reasons why threads like this are started.

If the Devs are sane, we will start out with standard tech and allowed to upgrade via in game cash to better tech. The balance then comes down to if they makes you grind cash and how much they give you per battle and how much upgrades will cost (I am thinking triple). Thus, if someone grinds out enough cash to actually pay for upgrading and fully customizing their mech, I do not have an issue with that. In the end of the day, tonnage is tonnage.

What you have to avoid is being able to spend RL money to do this. If they do a system like WoTs, the exchange is 40-1. Might seem like alot, but when a Tiger tank costs you 1.6 million credits that price becomes mighty steep.

The second part is combat... BT was set up where you really couldn't target one area of the mech over another. If you could, well, they would have to re-work how armor works. This is because every mech has a max of 9 points of armor to the head and 3 IS... from a Atlas to a Stinger. If you have targeting be that precise, you almost have to get rid of how a mech takes damage. This is a huge hurdle to overcome, because it impacts how weapons interact with it. You almost have to do a hit point system. I am really interested in how they are going to approach this.

Edited by Pvt Dancer, 02 March 2012 - 01:36 PM.

[Sporkosophy]

MaddMaxx, on 02 March 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

Carrying 5 ERPPC's and Firing 5 ERPPC's all at the same time is two vastly different things. LOL! BOOM!

Yea, fitting the heat sinks to fire 3 continuously is hard enough.

[Cifu]

Pvt Dancer, on 02 March 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

As I posted on another thread about what seems to me to be the same subject...

This is all moot... till we know how combat works and what tech level we are using.

If the game starts out with Standard, base everything, the first thing that comes up is massive heat build-up to support all of the guns if you do customize it that way. Heat is a balancing factor, because if you risk shut-down every time you alpha strike. Thus, Alpha strikes are now /dangerous/ and not used often. Standard tech also means your weapons cost more for Tonnage and your heat sinks can no keep up with the curb. Really, it was a fantastic balance and served the game well for many a year. Problem was some children didn't like the fact that a mech might survive longer than 3 turns and wanted to 'speed up' the game.
....

The problem is actually several versions of the chassis are actually boats, like the Hunchback 4P, which have 8 MedLas. And whit 8 MedLas, the 4P actually much better than the standard 4G version with the AC/20 (which is ammo limited) + 2x MedLas + SmallLas...

Yes, we don't know the actual damage / heat generation stats in game, But if you can choose between the two, it's a clear call -> You choose the 4P. Even when only use 7 MedLas (BT rules: 7x3 heat = 21 heat generation, the 4P have 23 heat sink, so it's capable to handle this heat level for a time), you have larger damage in your hand, without the ammo limit problem.

[Kartr]

I don't think "boating" and alpha strikes can be dealt with by any one system. Rather there needs to be a series of factors that together make boating difficult and alpha striking a desperate last ditch option.

1. 'Mech customization: In this thread I detailed a 'Mechlab concept that would make it impossible to create "boats" unless the 'Mech variant you were modifying was already designed to be a boat (like the Hunchback in the trailer).

2. Coolant: There shouldn't be a coolant flushing in this game, just like there isn't in the original TT or in any of the books I've read.

Spoiler

If there is coolant for you to flush then you should have a harder time dissipating heat after a flush. Flush once you get rid of half your current heat, but until you get back to base and refill your coolant lines you dissipate heat 75% as efficiently. Flush a second time and you dissipate 50% as efficiently (if you have double heat sinks they now act like single heat sinks). Flushing a third time is not an option.

3. Heat Scale: The heat scale in the TT is an excellent way to keep people from Alpha Striking every couple of seconds. The TT scale is also fairly easy to port into a video game and a house rule that I've heard where anything over 40 heat overloads your reactor and blows up your 'Mech could be implemented to really force people to be careful about alpha striking, after all if you alpha strike generates more than 40 heat you'll get your shot off and immediately explode. Anyway a rough example of the scale in online format would look like this:
30: Shut Down, cannot restart until below 14 heat
28: 67% chance your ammo explodes.
26: 84% chance override fails and you shut down, cannot restart until below 14 heat
25: -50km/h walk speed -75km/h run speed
24: +34% increase in reticle size
23: 50% chance your ammo explodes
22: 67% chance override fails and you shut down, cannot restart until below 14 heat
20: -40km/h walk speed, -60km/h run speed
19: 34% chance your ammo explodes
18: 50% chance override fails and you shut down, cannot restart until below 14 heat
17: +25% increase in reticle size
15: -30km/h walk speed, - 45km/h run speed
14: 33% chance override fails and you shut down, cannot restart until below 14 heat
13: +17% increase in reticle size
10: -20km/h walk speed, -30km/h run speed
8: +9% increase in reticle size
5: -10km/h walk speed, -15km/h run speed

Any time your 'Mechs heat rises it checks to see which marks it has passed and the highest in each type automatically kicks in. Fire two PPCs and you instantly see your speed reduced by 40km/h walking and 60km/h running, plus there's a 34% chance any ammo you have explodes, plus there's a 50% chance your override fails and you shut down plus your aiming reticle increases in size by 25%.

4. Heat Dissipation: in the TT heat is dissipated every 10s. This is a function of the TT turn based format and needs to be changed for the videogame format. A straight port would have heat dissipate at a rate of: (x heat sinks/10)/second and (2x heat sinks/10)/second depending on which kind of heat sink you have. At this rate it would still take a 'Mech with 20 heat sinks 10 full seconds to dissipate the heat from firing 2 PPCs.

5. Structural effects: Firing every weapon on a 'Mech simultaneously cannot be good for its structural members. Because of this you would only get a couple of Alpha Strikes before they actually started doing damage to yourself. First three times you fire an Alpha Strike no damage is done to yourself, after that any time you Alpha Strike 10% of the damage your weapons can do is dealt directly to your internals. If you're in a Hunchback and you Alpha Strike, you take 2 points of damage to your right torso internals and 0.5 damage to your arms and anywhere else you have a medium laser.

Number 5 would hopefully not be necessary if the first 4 are true. However if the first 4 just aren't enough to keep people from boating and alpha striking then 5 can be added in to punish alpha spamming.

Also the idea of a reticle that changes sized is based on Mass Effect and World of Tanks. The circular reticle is really the pilots view of a cone of probability where his/her shots will land. The reticle gets tighter depending on the pilots skill level and the type of weapon. The reticle gets bigger with movement, walking having a bigger effect than torso twisting and running having a bigger effect still, and heat.

Edited by Kartr, 02 March 2012 - 04:40 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Surely lasers dont produce any "recoil" when fired therefore no structural effect. The proper implimentation of the heat scale effects has been brought up many times, to be honest I think that we will see something like this. Energy weapons should always produce a heat "spike" which the heatsinks take time to dissipate. Heat management needs to be something that has to be continually thought about otherwise it is never worth the drawbacks of AC's whose only real pro is low heat, and perhaps the "knock" effect.

[Zervziel]

I'd like the ability to fire all my weapons and hopefully get that one last devastating strike in, but at the same time I don't want MW4 gameplay to surface again. As much as I like that game, I was never a fan of "Who can twitch faster" especially when it came to MW4. I'd like to keep the weapon groupings as they were. Will I'd like to be able to AS whenever I need too, it is in serious need of balancing outside of simple heat restrictions.

[Elizander]

I'll go with the accuracy. Let's just say it might be impossible to aim all weapons at exactly the same spot so it:

1) Could be very ineffective at long range where most of the shots still miss
2) Weapons hit a large general area so even up-close Alpha Strikes will spread weapon damage over adjacent areas where it hit (meaning if you go Torso some will hit left and right not all center).

If there is no coolant, then Alpha Strikes will be quite limited enough as it is for energy boats. If they vary the following things:

1) Weapon travel time for ballistics and PPCs
2) Firing delay for 'instant' weapons such as lasers (or they make lasers into welding beams that do damage over time)

...will also significantly hinder sending all damage into one specific location unless whatever you are hitting is not moving and in close range. If that's the case, then you have every right to make it suffer for not being mobile.

Edited by Elizander, 02 March 2012 - 09:31 PM.

[Kartr]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 02 March 2012 - 06:23 PM, said:

Surely lasers dont produce any "recoil" when fired therefore no structural effect. The proper implimentation of the heat scale effects has been brought up many times, to be honest I think that we will see something like this.

No lasers don't produce recoil, but the do produce heat which is a stress on the materials that make up the structure and before anyone brings it up, no even with enough heat sinks you're still going to have massive temperatures that will affect the materials. In fact the rapid heating and cooling might be worse for the structure of a 'Mech than the recoil.

As for the heat scale I figured it'd been brought up but I didn't feel like wading through 19 pages to make sure and I needed it to make my point.

Zervziel, on 02 March 2012 - 09:09 PM, said:

I'd like the ability to fire all my weapons and hopefully get that one last devastating strike in, but at the same time I don't want MW4 gameplay to surface again. As much as I like that game, I was never a fan of "Who can twitch faster" especially when it came to MW4. I'd like to keep the weapon groupings as they were. Will I'd like to be able to AS whenever I need too, it is in serious need of balancing outside of simple heat restrictions.

You should be able to get in that last devastating strike, just expect it to shut you down for a while. At least however long it takes you to get back under the heat threshold to restart and go through your restart sequence. It should be longer than 10s at the very least as thats how long it takes for a 'Mechs heat sinks do dissipate their full rating worth of heat.

[Zervziel]

Kartr, on 02 March 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

You should be able to get in that last devastating strike, just expect it to shut you down for a while. At least however long it takes you to get back under the heat threshold to restart and go through your restart sequence. It should be longer than 10s at the very least as thats how long it takes for a 'Mechs heat sinks do dissipate their full rating worth of heat.

I'm fine with that. Heck I remember alpha striking a heavy mech in MW3 in either a Nova or a Supernova. Can't remember which. Was running hot already, but my armor was shredded. Basically I was fine with the concept of MAD so I alpha striked it. It was basically two explosions linked by lasers.

Elizander, on 02 March 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:

I'll go with the accuracy. Let's just say it might be impossible to aim all weapons at exactly the same spot so it:

1) Could be very ineffective at long range where most of the shots still miss
2) Weapons hit a large general area so even up-close Alpha Strikes will spread weapon damage over adjacent areas where it hit (meaning if you go Torso some will hit left and right not all center).

What the heck do people on these forums have against aiming? That is a horrid way to balance it. I can aim and I'd like my skill at being able to do so to translate into the game. Yes, even with alpha strikes. there are plenty of ways to balance it without hiding behind randomized hit locations.

[Kartr]

Zervziel, on 02 March 2012 - 10:51 PM, said:

What the heck do people on these forums have against aiming? That is a horrid way to balance it. I can aim and I'd like my skill at being able to do so to translate into the game. Yes, even with alpha strikes. there are plenty of ways to balance it without hiding behind randomized hit locations.

Personally I'm a huge fan of the "cone of probability" reticle. The idea is that in real life no weapon is ever 100% accurate, there's going to be drop, wind, recoil effects, etc. Even when you're on the rifle range shooting you're not going to hit exactly where you aimed, the rounds are going to land in an area round where you aim. The better shot you are and the better weapon you have and the closer the range the less deviation you're going to see you you're going to have a tighter group.

The "cone of probability" displays as a circle on your screen and your shots will land anywhere within the circle as you see it. The further away something is the smaller it is in your circle and the more chance your shot could miss it, just like shooting a real rifle on a real range. The circle's size is modified by the gunners skill, the type of weapon, movement, heat, and recoil. This also allows for more ways to "grow" you pilot, with tech trees that could include making the sights tighter representing the fact that your pilot is more accurate at longer ranges. Or the skill points could be spent to increase the speed at which the reticle decreases in size, reflecting the pilots skill at snap shots.

The only weapons that should always land directly where they're aimed are lasers and maybe PPCs. But even then since they're not all mounted directly behind each other they're either going to converge at a specific distance or all travel in parallel, meaning they won't necessarily all strike the exact same point. Plus you have the fact we're going to have two reticles, one for arm mounted weapons and one for torso mounted weapons. That right there means we're not going to be hitting with everything on the exact same spot.

[Vtack]

Looking at this from a design prespective the reason that alpha strikes and the various boats they came on worked was because of damage output. There wasn't a more efficient way to damage the enemy. If there was it would have been the dominate form of mech seen through 3(ish) iterations of the MW franchise.

The restrictions bounding the maximum available damage output for a weapon are the obvious places to look for a solution to the problem. Recycle rates are one way of bounding the damage output of a weapon. Another is the heat scale. Range is also a factor as is ammunition dependance.

How we look at the problem depends alot on what we set as our goal. Is the goal to eliminate alpha strikes altoghether? Or is the goal to make it a smaller part of the game? How small of a part? Should they be used as often as single fire? Should alpha strikes be more of a situational use? The overall design decision should be one that makes the game itself more fun. Fun being difficult to define exactly.

Sometime the decision can sort of be looked at from the opposite side of the coin. Why aren't alpha strikes and the boats created to provide the best alpha stirkes fun? The answer, I assume, will vary from person to person but for me it boils down to this; It's boring and repetative. It leads to the same situations occuring over and over. It leads to players making the same decisions about how and where to engage over and over. It limits how creative a player can be in the design of their ride and the tactics they use if they expect to remain competative with other players. That sucks.

If boating and alpha stiking after popping up from behind a hill for the 5000th time isn't the best method to engage an enemy in most situations it won't be used in most situations. If a combat situations presents itself fairly regularly that makes the alpha stike the best available option after a pilot correctly diagnosis and responds to that situation we've added a real element of gameplay. We've made it so that alpha strikes have a proper place where they provide momentary advantage but aren't always the correct solution. The number of variables involved in making that happen is stagering and could then varey wildly based on non obvious things like terrain, selected perks, how difficult it is to hit a particular mech based on desing of the mech, its speed, and pilot skill... well you get the idea. The number of available variables may make it essentially impossible to do more than speculate what the best available solution is. Which is also part of why this thread is fun as hell I suspect.

The only effective way to find a best solution to this problem is to keep playing the game to fgure out what works. Essentailly the devs should test the available solutions in a methodical way. Take the best results and see if they can tweak those results to make them better. Rinse, repeat as desired.

It would be best it they tried even the oddball solutions at first like artifical alpha strike timers on long cooldowns, or hard limits as to the number of alpha strikes that can be performed. To make their job even tougher trying combinations of two or more distinct ideas such as having both a maximum number of allowed alpha strikes and an alpha strike cooldown timer at the same time might turn out to be ideal (but don't do that devs it seems really artificial...). I'll be interested to see the solution they come up with because I have no idea what will work best.

Boating is probably the simpler solution, and we already have some major clues as to how this will be solved. First we know that there will be variants of mech designs. The Hunchback has already appeared in two very distinct flavors. The regular hunchback with its AC/20 and the swayback which replaces that AC/20 with a boatload (I'm so sorry I couldn't resist. I really tried) of medium lasers and I think some heat sinks. This implies steep limitations on the abilty to customize your mech. Why offer and reward using variants (and spend time creating art assets) if you could just go into the mechlab and make your very own.

ofcourse my thought is that the devs have already got a very good handle on how they plan to limit alpha striking and boating because the deisgn choices we are aware of so far have been pretty thoughtful. Limiting customization in order to prevent boating is a major first step to making the alpha strikes less effective.

[Smurf O Pax]

I haven't read all the stuff....stopped on page 13 or so because the discussion somehow goes in circles

A few thougts from me to this thematics.

A comparable game is World of Tanks because actually the Tanks in WoT feel more like Mechs then real Tanks.

Reality:
Point a Jagdtiger at 95% of the Tanks implemented in WoT and he will kill the Target at 2000m or more with one Shot. Pinpoint Accuracy was nearly given up to the same distance because of superior Optics in German Tanks compared to Allied Tanks. Normal engagment distance was around 800m or more. Front Armor was never penetrated by Enemy Fire in WW2

Game:
Jagdtiger isn't able to onehit any High Tier Tanks because of HitPoints. Accuracy is PinPoint as long as you are below 100m as soon as you have higher distances you need more luck than skill to Hit the exact location you want to Hit. Normal engagement distance is something between 200m-400m. Nearly every High Tier Tank can easily penetrate a Jagdtiger Front Armor when he knows where to Hit.

And for the Game it works out fine because no one want's to play a game where you are killed before even noticing your killer or where your weapons can't even scratch the Armor of your OneHit Wonder opponent.

Now lets look at Mechwarrior Universe.

Battletech Ruleset and backround actually say/dictate that Weapon Accuracy is implemented like in World of Tanks . One Hitting a opponent in most cases only is possible if you are lucky enough to hit the Head with a strong enough Weapon or you are much Heavier then your opponent and fire enough Weapons to create a Critical on the Torso. Normal engagement distance is something between 200m-400m dictated by Weapons and Targeting. Every Mech can penetrate every other Mech if you give him Time .

Take a look at Mechwarrior 4 what a lot of people take as reference.

You have Pinpoint Accuracy for nearly every Weapon (minimum spread on LRM's). One Hitting a opponent isn't really hard to manage even when you fire with a Medium on a Assault mech (works in the MekTek Version just fine). Rest is ok Distance 200m-400m and you can Kill anything.

When you look at all this stuff WoT is a much better MechWarrior simulation (ok no Mechs) then MechWarrior 4.

I think best implementation of MechWarrior backround would be something like the Targeting Circle in WoT. And to keep up with the crappy targeting computers they use in Mechs the Circle gets Bigger the more Weapons you add to your Weapon Group. Let's make a few examples.

Every Weapon has other features of the Circle (bigger/smaller, gets smaller faster/slower) so that a Large Laser has a circle that is relativly small and gets small fast compared to a big circle that gets small slowly on a LRM 20.
So now you group 2 Large Lasers and receive a circle that's a little bigger then with a single one but got the same speed in getting smaller. Naturally it takes now longer to receive highest accuracy because of the bigger circle but with enough time you hit as good as with a single Large Laser.
Now you group 1 Large Laser and a LRM 20 in one group. You will reveive a even bigger circle that takes more time to get highest accuracy and will end with a bigger circle then you will get with 2 Large Lasers.

That implementation wouldn't prevent Alphastrikes but actually would support usage of Big Guns (Gauss) if you want to hit single modules on the other mech. And you have a easy way to get different Weapon Range into the Game. For a small Laser the Circle is so big that aren't able to Hit a Mech at 150m with accuracy. Sure you can shoot on 200m with the small Laser but you need to be very very lucky to hit something with it on this distance. (don't know the range of a small laser has been a long time)
Alphastrikes would also be very deadly but you need to get really close if you want to hit with all grouped Weapons. And you need to Hug the other mech if you want to Hit a single Module with it.

I hope nobody had this Idea since Page 13 . What do you say?

Regards

[Kartr]

Lol look up two posts. I had very similar ideas also based on WoT, but threw in some Mass Effect because they have a more fleshed out leveling system than WoT.

[Smurf O Pax]

damn ok should have read the page but somehow after 13 pages bla bla i just wanted to post my opinion

[BlackFlag]

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

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 agree. Heat should build exponentially anyway. Increased heat = increased electrical resistance. Energy weapons should also loose some of their yield at yellow/red zone temperatures.

[Scar]

WOW. first time i see a poll which is looking like a wall of text. TL:DV anyone else? Still, interesting question in OP.

[LackofCertainty]

If a person builds a boat, then they typically have a few weaknesses The LRM boat is going to pound you at range, but if you can catch it or cripple it it's weak and it's super ammo dependent. The laser boat is a pain to deal with, but you can keep it at extreme range and plink it down, or you wade into close range with it, and trust your extra armor to keep you alive until it overheats itself into a coma, and finish it off then. SRM boats are mostly ignorable if you can keep them at range. A boat is going to be great at what it does, at the cost of versatility. That is how it should be.

I don't like the idea of having my options artificially limited to prevent people from (over)specializing their mechs.

One of the things I always liked doing was making a mech designed around constant alpha'ing. I would load less weapons overall, but compensate with a ton of heat sinks, so that my burst wasn't as high, but I could maintain it for a (relatively) long period. Limiting me to be able to alpha only 1 time every X seconds/minutes would just force me to use a mech design similar to what everyone else is using.



Edit:Apparently people are worried that this 2012 game is going to use the exact mechanics from a 199X game. Really? Do you people -really- think that the dev team is going to outright copy those mechanics without any thought on how multiplayer fps-type games have developed in the past 10/15 years? Calm down and let them show their work before you start drama-queening it up. >_>

Edited by LackofCertainty, 03 March 2012 - 06:14 AM.