Sandpit, on 06 February 2014 - 11:16 PM, said:
Adding armor doesn't change an outcome it only prolongs it.
Player A vs. Player B
Players A wipes the floor with B in 45 seconds
scenario two with suggested armor values.
Player A vs. Player B
Player A wipes the floor with B in 90 seconds
Armor doesn't improve a player's skill, tactics, or build. It just means they can sustain more damage before going down.
You're missing a few important points which invalidate your argument. Craig mentioned one. I mentioned one earlier, being that extra armour benefits close range mechs by enabling them to close the distance and hence getting in weapon range, of their long range enemies.
Being killed at a distance with no opportunity to respond is a far different outcome to being able to close the distance and retaliate somewhat. Having an opportunity to engage offers the chance of winning, however small. No opportunity = no chance.
Adding armour to the mechs and increasing their durability would add all sorts of new tactical opportunities to the game.
I will add at this point that light mechs require a much lower armour increase, or perhaps none at all, due to their high velocities and small profile which already increases their durability significantly compared to bigger, slower mechs. Conversely, the armour currently available to large slow mechs simply does not go anywhere near to compensating for the ease with which they can be hit due to their lack of manouverability.
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Streaks do more damage because they have a longer cool down AND require a lock. They also only fire in sets of two. When they're boated (much like most things) they can be on the beastly side but when taken as a single or dual weapon they aren't anywhere near "op"
Boating weapons accentuates both their strengths and weaknesses. Hence it is only when a weapon is boated that one can truly tell whether or not it is balanced or OP - unless the attribute is blatantly obvious such as the introduction of an AC100 with a 1 second recycle time, which would hardly require boating for people to start screaming OP!
The problem with streaks is that in the not too distant future there will be streak 4s and 6s. There is little doubt that these will be OP with the way streaks are currently implemented. The devs have acknowledged this and frankly it is obvious. The reason 4s and 6s will be OP is that 2s are currently OP - even though they do not appear to be so.
LRM 5s would be ok if each missile did 3 damage and the only LRM system available was the LRM 5. But introduce the LRM 20 @ 3 damage per missile and the problem suddenly becomes obvious.
Exactly the same logic applies to streaks. People are getting confused simply because of the delay between the introduction of the higher number streaks and the current low number streaks. If streak 6s had been introduced at the same time as streak 2s we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion now as the damage per missile would almost certainly be far less than 2.5!
Arguing that streaks are one of the few effective light mech countermeasures, even if true (which I don't believe it is), is not an argument that streaks are balanced - it is an argument that light mechs cause you problems which you find you can overcome to some extent by using streaks. While this may be true for you, it in no way invalidates my position or proves that streaks are not OP.