152 replies to this topic

[GreyGriffin]

Please?

So many of the balance issues that arise come from pinpoint targeting single body parts, especially at extreme ranges. A modest cone of fire dependent on hardpoint position can only help spread the damage out.

I am prepared to endure the slings and arrows of the lern 2 play crowd, and the pseudo realism pedants. But I stand by the position that it is a good balance move for a game that relies on its 'mechs battlefield endurance to really capture the spirit of Battletech.

[Bhael Fire]

I would support this idea if armor was reduced by half to normal values.

[Bhael Fire]

Also, I'd only support this idea if the cone tightened up the longer you stood still.

So basically you could stand and aim for a few second to get a really tight grouping (akin to what we have now) but when you're moving the cone (i.e.target reticle) widens making the shots less accurate.

So basically, no way to get a tight grouping when running or jumping.

[Moromillas]

Would prefer other balance mechanics over random rolls.

[Bhael Fire]

Yeah no random rolls. RNG has no place when targeting.

[Moromillas]

Perhaps a tiny variance (excluding sniper weapons) would be acceptable, maybe even a recoil mechanic, something that wouldn't be noticeable at short and medium range. I donno, maybe it's something that needs testing, to find out how it goes.

I do know that, any game where you are wrestling with RNG, it just makes gameplay not fun.

[Gideon Grey]

So much instant resistance to these ideas. The "skilled aim" community rejects any variance idea out of hand, but I ask: Is there really any doubt that the biggest balance issue around is massive pinpoint strikes? Nothing like this existed in TT without epic luck. The multiplying effect of weapons is over he top on all chassis. It's not even just the 2PPC/AC20 and such, but the 2-9ML strikes from lights and mediums that throw off the offense/defense balance.

Now, I don't want completely random aiming either. There needs to be skill required, but can we admit there are multiple options that would help a lot but still maintain skill?

Examples:

Extreme: forced chain fire. No simultaneous firing. Slows down damage dealt but aiming still paramount. May hurt lights most of all however.

Interesting: fixed targeting for non arm weapons. Torso weapons fire at a discrete but repeatable point and don't auto converge with arm weapons. They would have their own reticles. This allows grouping of arm weapons which unfortunately would make certain chassis better by default, but spreads arm and torso weapon damage apart. Still not random though because you could still aim the torso weapons as well as today, just not simultaneously.

Clever: Add slight divergence for each additional weapon fired. Chain fire remains perfectly accurate, alpha strikes shotgun a bit.

Apparently too difficult: Add the mechanic that we all thought was originally in place. Convergence takes time. Show the reticle a for each weapon and have them converge on the target point over a short period of time. Make this time be effected by movement/jump maybe? Make the elite skill "pinpoint whatsit" have some value?

Overly complicated: add varying amounts of divergence based on type and number of weapons fired. Call it Ghost Targetting and don't document it anywhere.

That's just a few ideas. I really think there are lots of options that could be helpful and palatable if people just opened their minds. Too many people are locked into their current style and don't want to have to change. But this could really fix a lot of problems with balance if we can all just admit there is an underlying issue with the massive pinpoint meta.

[Moromillas]

A lot of those suggestions are for curbing heavy alpha strike builds, yet they already implemented a mechanic to balance that, ghost heat. Is ghost heat not doing its job? Maybe an increase on the amount of ghost heat.

I still think they should have buffed internals when they buffed armor.

I have another idea to spread damage.

Lasers, they're designed to be damage over time. To dish out the entirety of a lasers damage, requires you to hold it on a specific point, so IF you want pinpoint damage to a location, it's very difficult to do.

Ok, why not a similar mechanic for ballistics? At the moment, you fire an AC10, and it shoots out 1 round that deals 10 damage. If instead, it fired 10 shots in increments that did 1 damage each, you'd see some damage spread. For example, you fire an AC10, and it finishes firing 10 rounds after 0.5 seconds (maybe 1 second?), and with each hit, it deals 1 damage. It might look better too.

[HammerSwarm]

Bhael Fire, on 18 February 2014 - 09:07 PM, said:

Yeah no random rolls. RNG has no place when targeting.

Roll a dice, on a roll of 6+ your post is valid, on a roll of one you lose all your mechs. I'm in a bad mood so you have a roll modifier of -1. If you understand the sarcasm of this you must have a high Intuition value so you can have a +1.

Roll now to see if your thread gains traction.

See how stupid RNGs are?

[Mechteric]

Moromillas, on 19 February 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

A lot of those suggestions are for curbing heavy alpha strike builds, yet they already implemented a mechanic to balance that, ghost heat. Is ghost heat not doing its job? Maybe an increase on the amount of ghost heat.

Ghost heat just moved the meta from 4 PPCs to 2 PPCs and ballistics. Same effect, no ghost heat.

[Moromillas]

CapperDeluxe, on 19 February 2014 - 07:44 AM, said:

Ghost heat just moved the meta from 4 PPCs to 2 PPCs and ballistics. Same effect, no ghost heat.

That, sounds like ghost heat isn't doing its job.

[wanderer]

Quote

That, sounds like ghost heat isn't doing its job.

That's because it never could fix the real problem in the first place.

Single-point, instant-damage-on-demand weaponry. About the only one that might get away with it in the end is Gauss Rifles, but AC's and PPCs have that "put all the damage in one point, no muss no fuss" ability that even MWO managed to NOPENOPENOPE with lasers, yet failed to realize why it was the right idea in the first place.

Battletech's damage modeling assumes damage spreads across a target- either by the pilot actively doing so, the target moving as damage is applied over even a small amount of time, or the weapon inherently spreading damage, like missiles or LB-X.

A weapon gets increasingly more broken as it can avoid spreading damage. There's where the fix needs to be in.

[Tyrnea Smurf]

I've been told machine guns work kinda like lasers in that their damage is in a stream that effects its targets over time. If that's the case then presumably you could simply make AC/5, UAC/5, AC/10, and AC/20 all fire a stream of pellets over a 1 second duration which cause an amount of damage equal to the autocannons rating.

This would also allow you to separate the LBX class of autocannons as they instead of a stream of pellets, would continue to fire a expanding cone of pellets from a single burst.

But from my point of view something should be done, as ballistics especially autocannons have a distinct and significant edge over lasers on the battlefield.

[Gideon Grey]

I don't know.... Making nearly all weapons Into Dps weapons seems to kind of miss the point. An AC20 is supposed to deliver a massive punch to a single location... Making that single weapon (and others) less effective instead of dealing with the fact that we can effectively create Ac40s or pseudo Ac30s or ML30s etc is kind of taking the long way round, don't you think?

[GreyGriffin]

The instant rejection of cone of fire remains baffling to me, too.

Guess what, there are a ton of random factors that enter into the game already. Missile spread and tracking, what 'mechs you drop with on your PUG, which lance you're in and what position you start on on the map, what enemies you're fighting... all of that is random or semi-random.

TONS of shooters use cone of fire to limit the range and precision kill ability of weapons. The weapons that don't have any scatter (AWP in Counterstrike and Pistol in Halo, for instance) create enormously frustrating situations with players who prefer diverse play styles. The game's various skills should not end in a narrow pyramid with PPC jump sniping at the apex. Missile support, brawling, sniping, spotting, and skirmishing should all be effective play styles. Unfortunately, the only way to do that and still have a game is to reduce the effectiveness of sniper weapons, and the way to do that is to reduce the effectiveness of massed precision fire beyond short range.

Also, ghost heat doesn't work, it just offloads the burden onto the next super effective weapon combo, and actually makes things worse for brawlers who rely on high impulse short range weapons more than massed AC 2's at 800m or single bursts of PPCs from 40m in the air, before dropping back down behind cover to cool.

Massed precision fire is the broken game mechanic. Fixing that is the solution.

[TehSBGX]

I may take flak for this, but if a cone of fire effect was added, I could learn to live with it. The only thing I'd want is that it's heavily tested first.

[Tombstoner]

GreyGriffin, on 19 February 2014 - 03:15 PM, said:

The instant rejection of cone of fire remains baffling to me, too.

Massed precision fire is the broken game mechanic. Fixing that is the solution.

I personal think they dont understand what COF means and default to an extreme. The roll a six sided dice get a 6 and you win get a 1 loose your mech is a great example of not understanding the concept.

Any one who has been advocating a COF is looking for a small cone suficant to spread damage over the entire mech with the understanding the yes you could some times miss but but only if your moving at full speed and shooting at a target at long range.

When you stop moving and single fire you get pin point accuracy as you should. Thats the part they miss and dont bother considering.. its OMG NO RNG in my game

[invalidusername]

If something like this was implimented, I'd completely stop playing.

[Roadbeer]

GreyGriffin, on 18 February 2014 - 08:41 PM, said:

WITH FIRST PERSON ONLY DEAD...

Hi, I'm August 2013, have we met?

[GreyGriffin]

Roadbeer, on 19 February 2014 - 03:58 PM, said:

Hi, I'm August 2013, have we met?

Some of us put the game down for awhile.