94 replies to this topic

[Aeolian]

There is little need for a generic cone of fire for all weapons. It seems evident that different weapons handle differently and as long as you account for this when designing the weapons in this game there shouldn't be a problem - or more relevantly, there shouldn't be two mutually exclusive options.

Lasers are highly accurate but short ranged. They lose power as they hit dust and debris in the atmosphere. It would make the most sense to give lasers pinpoint accuracy at the cost of range. They have unlimited ammo, at the expense of heat. Lasers are very well balanced in this regard. The more powerful the laser, the longer the range and the higher the heat.

Ballistic weapons should have a slight accuracy modifier, because realistically even a hard mounted gyro-stabilised weapon firing 20 shells in fast succession will not hit in exactly the same spot. This however should be dependant on range and rate of fire. A slow rate of fire is more accurate, as is a shorter range. This is not a universal modifier, it would be specific to the gun's traits. This way ballistic weapons are balanced between long range/low heat and lower accuracy/limited ammunition.

PPCs and Gauss weapons are essentially extremes of these two camps. A PPC would be very rare and expensive, hard to maintain and would pump out a lot of heat, in return for high accuracy, damage and range. Similarly, Guass weapons would be (less) rare, have low ammunition, have a slow ROF, be expensive to buy, replace and maintain in return for dealing high damage at long range with next to no heat.

With this approach to weapon balance, the 'COF question' ceases to be relevant and creates a more dynamic, interesting game.

Edited by Aeolian, 14 November 2011 - 11:24 PM.

[Woodstock]

Its not the individual hit allocation that needs balancing its the clustering of weapons.

I don't think anyone is saying that a single laser should randomly hit on the body of the target. What they want to avoid is people ripping out the Hunchbacks AC20 and filling the space with Med lasers (similar range) and heat sinks to handle the heat. And then for those clustered med lasers to all hit the same point and effectively replace the AC20 with a higher damage alpha strike weapon. Which has no ammo restrictions. (With all the damage hitting one small areas)

By introducing a system where by weapon hits from alpha strike cluster shots are spread out around the target mech you simulate the countless canon references to the inaccuracy of weapon systems while also preventing people from exploiting this particular loophole.

Something that might have been tricky to code in days gone past but now I assume would be significantly easier.

You also support the role of light mechs as their armour will last longer if clustered smaller weapons cant one shot them anymore. (of course a PPC or an AC20 would still ruin their day but thats exactly as it should be.

[Aeolian]

woodstock, on 14 November 2011 - 11:17 PM, said:

Its not the individual hit allocation that needs balancing its the clustering of weapons.

I don't think anyone is saying that a single laser should randomly hit on the body of the target. What they want to avoid is people ripping out the Hunchbacks AC20 and filling the space with Med lasers (similar range) and heat sinks to handle the heat. And then for those clustered med lasers to all hit the same point and effectively replace the AC20 with a higher damage alpha strike weapon. Which has no ammo restrictions. (With all the damage hitting one small areas)

By introducing a system where by weapon hits from alpha strike cluster shots are spread out around the target mech you simulate the countless canon references to the inaccuracy of weapon systems while also preventing people from exploiting this particular loophole.

Something that might have been tricky to code in days gone past but now I assume would be significantly easier.

You also support the role of light mechs as their armour will last longer if clustered smaller weapons cant one shot them anymore. (of course a PPC or an AC20 would still ruin their day but thats exactly as it should be.

Wouldn't it make more sense to balance the customisation and head systems? Make heat more balanced so that alpha striking a boat would be feasibly but highly stupid. That way you're allowing people to make a medium laser boat of the Hunchback that in theory has a better 'gun' than the AC20 but it would be impractical and more dangerous to the pilot than the enemy. Hunchbacks shouldn't be able to mount multiple med lasers in place of the AC20 anyway, maybe one on each shoulder? Even if it was possible in game, as long as heat is managed sensibly it wouldn't be much of an issue.

Edited by Aeolian, 14 November 2011 - 11:28 PM.

[HIemfire]

Mass and space wise in Battletech they can (AC20s are heavy and bulky). You can actually reasonably fit 6 Medium lasers and 6 additional heat sinks in the space that the AC 20 and it's ammunition takes up (which is plenty of heat sinks to run and fire all 6 of the additional Medium lasers with out issue, it has 2 medium lasers and 13 heat sinks in the canon HBK-4G). In addition you would have an extra 2 tons left over to throw into more heat sinks or armor or jump jets or go heat crazy and more medium lasers.

Edited by hiemfire, 15 November 2011 - 12:01 AM.

[VYCanis]

well, gausses are actually rarer than ppcs, oddly enough, especially considering their tech exists now and ppcs, well, don't

but part of their balance comes from their capacitors having a tendency to go kaboom when they break. Most games never represented this, hence why so many of the MW games featured a lot of gauss boats.

[Aeolian]

VYCanis, on 15 November 2011 - 12:10 AM, said:

well, gausses are actually rarer than ppcs, oddly enough, especially considering their tech exists now and ppcs, well, don't

but part of their balance comes from their capacitors having a tendency to go kaboom when they break. Most games never represented this, hence why so many of the MW games featured a lot of gauss boats.

Then that balances them even better, I wasn't aware that they were rarer or more likely to suffer 'ammo' explosions. Thanks!

hiemfire, on 14 November 2011 - 11:59 PM, said:

Mass and space wise in Battletech they can (AC20s are heavy and bulky). You can actually reasonably fit 6 Medium lasers and 6 additional heat sinks in the space that the AC 20 and it's ammunition takes up (which is plenty of heat sinks to run and fire all 6 of the additional Medium lasers with out issue, it has 2 medium lasers and 13 heat sinks in the canon HBK-4G). In addition you would have an extra 2 tons left over to throw into more heat sinks or armor or jump jets or go heat crazy and more medium lasers.

Heat just needs to be handled differently. Heat should be exponential. Firing two lasers should take longer to cool off from than firing two separately. Scale this up and firing 5 would be possible but dangerous. Your 5 med laser Hunchback still has one 'gun' more powerful than the AC20 but it can't use it reliably and has to meter out it's weapons on a cyclic basis.

Edited by Aeolian, 15 November 2011 - 12:28 AM.

[Amechwarrior]

Aeolian, on 15 November 2011 - 12:17 AM, said:

Heat just needs to be handled differently. Heat should be exponential.

That kind of heat system devalues stock laser boats like Awesomes, Wolfhounds and the Grasshopper. Heat is not an answer to pin point devastating alphas, he is over heated and you are dead. The problem is, pin point devastating alphas.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

With limited customisation and "stock" mechs it's not going to be a problem at the start of the game. The problem comes with the advent of the Clans and rediscovery of "lostech" when energy alpha's become a frightening reality. It does't matter if IS outnumber the Clans when they can one or two shot kill with relatively little return damage. Given equal piloting skills I would expect legally optimised (not customised) Clan mechs to be able to take out 3 or 4 IS mechs and survive. However the dev's will know what the problems are, even before we started arguing over them and have their own ides on how to avoid them.

[Woodstock]

Yeah messing with the heat mechanics is gonna need constant rebalancing as we introduce new and better heat controling methods as new tech comes in.

It also does not represent the scattergun effect that is constantly referred to in all the books and TT games. I honestly think the MW games only did it the way they did due to programming / hardware restrictions of the day.

[diana]

woodstock, on 14 November 2011 - 11:17 PM, said:

Its not the individual hit allocation that needs balancing its the clustering of weapons.

I don't think anyone is saying that a single laser should randomly hit on the body of the target. What they want to avoid is people ripping out the Hunchbacks AC20 and filling the space with Med lasers (similar range) and heat sinks to handle the heat. And then for those clustered med lasers to all hit the same point and effectively replace the AC20 with a higher damage alpha strike weapon. Which has no ammo restrictions. (With all the damage hitting one small areas)

By introducing a system where by weapon hits from alpha strike cluster shots are spread out around the target mech you simulate the countless canon references to the inaccuracy of weapon systems while also preventing people from exploiting this particular loophole.

Something that might have been tricky to code in days gone past but now I assume would be significantly easier.

You also support the role of light mechs as their armour will last longer if clustered smaller weapons cant one shot them anymore. (of course a PPC or an AC20 would still ruin their day but thats exactly as it should be.

Then make these lasers fire in a straight line, without convergence, then even clustered lasers won't be able to hit one part together. Or maybe a limit to amount of weapons in a cluster.

Or go with canon and make 'vaporised armor' that will diminish laser damage received. One laser will have normal decrease, while many lasers will barely do any damage after initial hit.

[Gawain Emrys]

I'm not positive but I believe that the spirit of the original Battletech designs was that weapons didn't all fire at once, even when mounted in the same location. A Battletech "turn" was 10 seconds and the idea that each weapon fired once during that time is unreasonable unless they operate in a cycling mode, firing one at a time. The fiction supports this with the implication that an Alpha Strike is something unusual.
An exponential heat build-up, as already mentioned, would give a good explanation for this. In the Battletech Universe we are dealing with machines which take months (sometimes years) to design, test and build and that process could easily include "programming" the cycling systems to sequence weapons from different locations and thus optimise firepower to heat buildup.
Take the Flashman as an example. That has a Large and Medium laser in each arm (stock 7K loadout). Cycling left-right-left-right allows these to fire in sequence without additional heat buildup but triggering both weapons in one arm, in addition to requiring an override, would exponentially heat up that arm since part of the mass into which excess heat is dumped would be the other weapon. This cycle would take place fast enough that all weapons can still be fired with the timeframe established in the Battletech boardgame - and then some!
The left and right torso Medium Lasers, on the other hand, suffer no such cycling problems since they do not share the location with another weapon. As such they can cycle as fast as the weapon/heat-dissipation allows.
Overriding the cycling system and firing everything at once would massively overwhelm the heat sinks but the point of such a tactic is that, if your aim is good, you would only need to do it once.

None of which is very useful for game balance unless the process is highly simplified, of course.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

woodstock, on 14 November 2011 - 11:17 PM, said:

Its not the individual hit allocation that needs balancing its the clustering of weapons.

I don't think anyone is saying that a single laser should randomly hit on the body of the target. What they want to avoid is people ripping out the Hunchbacks AC20 and filling the space with Med lasers (similar range) and heat sinks to handle the heat. And then for those clustered med lasers to all hit the same point and effectively replace the AC20 with a higher damage alpha strike weapon. Which has no ammo restrictions. (With all the damage hitting one small areas)

By introducing a system where by weapon hits from alpha strike cluster shots are spread out around the target mech you simulate the countless canon references to the inaccuracy of weapon systems while also preventing people from exploiting this particular loophole.

Something that might have been tricky to code in days gone past but now I assume would be significantly easier.

You also support the role of light mechs as their armour will last longer if clustered smaller weapons cant one shot them anymore. (of course a PPC or an AC20 would still ruin their day but thats exactly as it should be.

HBK-4P - Also called the Swayback, the 4P Hunchback is modified to carry only energy weapons. The Autocannon/20 was replaced with six additional Medium Lasers. In order to handle the incredibly high heat load, the 'Mech has twenty three heat sinks. While this may seem like a downgrade to the design, the combined firepower of all eight Medium Lasers can do twice as much damage as the Autocannon they replaced. BV (1.0) = 960, BV (2.0) = 1,138^[7]
-taken from Sarna

but in the TT damage is randomized; I think lasers in the new game should be made 'accurate enough' where they sorta hit what you're aiming for but are more affected by what your mech is doing at the time.

Edited by Aaron DeChavilier, 15 November 2011 - 07:42 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

diana, on 15 November 2011 - 04:53 AM, said:

Then make these lasers fire in a straight line, without convergence, then even clustered lasers won't be able to hit one part together. Or maybe a limit to amount of weapons in a cluster.

Or go with canon and make 'vaporised armor' that will diminish laser damage received. One laser will have normal decrease, while many lasers will barely do any damage after initial hit.

The use of "convergence" can work but it has to be preset for each weapon type and size to a predetermined distance. This is easily achieved using canon ranges for Lasers especially (seeing as they are the most likely culprit. Here is a quick example.

Preset Convergence spread.

Any Laser group would have a pin point hit zone but only if they land at exactly their preset convergence range (determined by max range) such that inside the pre-set convergence range the weapons hit/spread based on distance inside that convergence "spot"

All Laser based weapons come with max ranges so groupings of differing sizes/calibers would never be able to converge in one place despite pointing them all at the enemy at the same time. Best bet would be to pick a range of the best Laser and fire when that convergent point is reached.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 15 November 2011 - 10:27 AM.

[Glare]

Personally, much prefer the idea of lasers firing in quick succession instead of a massive cluster of PAIN erupting from wherever the lasers are mounted. Makes much more sense, and they can easily keep the pinpoint accurate nature of lasers without awkward balancing mechanics.

[Joachim Viltry]

The problem here is one of hitscan weaponry - that is the weapon instantly hits POA and does pinpoint damage. if instead the weapons were modeled to account for the motion of the mech (even if it is just each individual weapons have some variance to POA relative to the others), then the problem can be mitigated to some extent. - modeling this effect is the reason why people have been advocating variable accuracy, , and cones of fire. in prior games hitscan was the way weapons worked for the sake of simplicity; but today we have far more potential computational power, and could conceivably model ballistics correctly, so why not model lasers correctly?

- Your laser drew a perfectly accurate and strait line from it's emitter to where that emitter was pointing, but oops your grasshoppers right arm wasn't on target because of your sudden torso twist while running, sorry kid the shot went wide and demolished that orphanage.

there is no reason that a shooter should be easy on the player - it would be nice to have a challenging experience, that captures the frantic feeling of giant warmachines fighting each other, while rewarding the player for practicing and understanding his/her weapons limitations.

we have lots of easy shooters on the market, and they are mostly incredibly dull 'modern' affairs, with generally slow game play and very little actual skill required to play.

[CeeKay Boques]

Easy solution. (well, perpahs hard to code and art, but a simple theory)

Don't increase the hit reticule, or the chance of hitting. Decrease in size the hit boxes, then multiply them by 1000s. This means that "Pin point accuracy" can exist, but those pin points are just those. If a mech thigh can take "multiple pin points" and have them not be cumlative, matches last longer, accuracy matters, and a moving mechs also matters.

Imagine a hex map. Now overlay that on a mechs thigh, and imagine that a laser hits (or strafes along) 1 or two hexes at a time. A autocannon 2 might hit two or three of the hexes. I could fire again, at that that thigh, and miss that first gouge. This is a great solution, and so realistic in my opinion. You could have critcals, heat sinks and actuators hidden beneat a certain section of armor, not the whole panel. If you melt through, you hit that critical. If you some how hit that again, you're in the criticals. This would be difficult at long range, easier at short range...

[Joachim Viltry]

Technoviking, on 15 November 2011 - 10:57 AM, said:

You could have critcals, heat sinks and actuators hidden beneat a certain section of armor, not the whole panel. If you melt through, you hit that critical. If you some how hit that again, you're in the criticals. This would be difficult at long range, easier at short range...

oh damn! I just remember the way MW3 handled showing damage! basically eash hit removed part of the mechs skin, showing some internal structures and stuff. it wasnt implemented like you just descriped, but actually doing so would be neat. both for realism and immersion.

- still want the added realism of difficulties in getting all weapons hitting the same area though- even something as simple as setting a focal point distance for a cluster of lasers- so if you are closer than that distance to the target they do not all hit the same point would be an improvement over strait up pinpoint accuracy

[feor]

I think the simplest way to stymie the Swayback type approach (the in universe slang for a Hunchback replacing its AC/20 with a cluster of medium lasers, as exemplified by the HBK-3P which had 6 Lasers where the AC/20 would normally go) would be to make it such that even if you're alpha striking, or firing an entire TIC, then the weapons don't all fire at exactly the same time, or even in the same sequence every time.

Not, of course, the the point that you get a gatling laser effect, of course, but with even a tiny bit of weapon "cone of fire" for each weapon, even 0.1 or 0.2 of a second difference against a moving mech can have a significant difference in terms of where the weapon actually strikes. Easily explained away as not every system charging at exactly the same rate.

[KnowBuddy]

Technoviking, on 15 November 2011 - 10:57 AM, said:

Easy solution. (well, perpahs hard to code and art, but a simple theory)

Don't increase the hit reticule, or the chance of hitting. Decrease in size the hit boxes, then multiply them by 1000s. This means that "Pin point accuracy" can exist, but those pin points are just those. If a mech thigh can take "multiple pin points" and have them not be cumlative, matches last longer, accuracy matters, and a moving mechs also matters.

Imagine a hex map. Now overlay that on a mechs thigh, and imagine that a laser hits (or strafes along) 1 or two hexes at a time. A autocannon 2 might hit two or three of the hexes. I could fire again, at that that thigh, and miss that first gouge. This is a great solution, and so realistic in my opinion. You could have critcals, heat sinks and actuators hidden beneat a certain section of armor, not the whole panel. If you melt through, you hit that critical. If you some how hit that again, you're in the criticals. This would be difficult at long range, easier at short range...

While this probably isn't much more difficult to code, the issue with your suggestion is the bandwidth required to communicate this level of information between server and client.

Also, this probably wouldn't diminish the effectiveness of alpha-striking. If armor penetration results in weapon-damage/system-damage/ammo-explosion, then having a finer armor hitbox grid just makes it more important to have pinpoint accuracy and the largest alpha damage possible to punch through in one hit.

[Daneiel]

Aeolian, on 14 November 2011 - 10:56 PM, said:

There is little need for a generic cone of fire for all weapons. It seems evident that different weapons handle differently and as long as you account for this when designing the weapons in this game there shouldn't be a problem - or more relevantly, there shouldn't be two mutually exclusive options.

Lasers are highly accurate but short ranged. They lose power as they hit dust and debris in the atmosphere. It would make the most sense to give lasers pinpoint accuracy at the cost of range. They have unlimited ammo, at the expense of heat. Lasers are very well balanced in this regard. The more powerful the laser, the longer the range and the higher the heat.

Ballistic weapons should have a slight accuracy modifier, because realistically even a hard mounted gyro-stabilised weapon firing 20 shells in fast succession will not hit in exactly the same spot. This however should be dependant on range and rate of fire. A slow rate of fire is more accurate, as is a shorter range. This is not a universal modifier, it would be specific to the gun's traits. This way ballistic weapons are balanced between long range/low heat and lower accuracy/limited ammunition.

PPCs and Gauss weapons are essentially extremes of these two camps. A PPC would be very rare and expensive, hard to maintain and would pump out a lot of heat, in return for high accuracy, damage and range. Similarly, Guass weapons would be (less) rare, have low ammunition, have a slow ROF, be expensive to buy, replace and maintain in return for dealing high damage at long range with next to no heat.

With this approach to weapon balance, the 'COF question' ceases to be relevant and creates a more dynamic, interesting game.

The problem is not in the weapons accuracy the problem is to avoid boating the same weapons as woodstock pointed it - the solution of that problem is very simple and is the right way for the game - Battlemechs - no replacing of one weapon with other - only replacing with same weapon other manufacture - if it isn't manufacture in your house the ammo and maintenance to be higher then these in your house .
2nd Omnimechs - full customisation of the mech for high price and maintenance , less accuracy .

That is my opinion - but if the if the MW4 system is accepted for such customisation of the mech we will see that problem no mater of the accuracy .

i am apologies for my english .


P.S. One other thing if the full customisation is allowed some mechs will be so rare even they are most common ones.

Edited by daneiel varna, 15 November 2011 - 11:38 AM.