166 replies to this topic

[Frankdark]

The Problem is from the Base Line.

They tryed to use TT Numbers but blanked out some details.
Alpha incresed firetime of wepons to around 2.5 seconds
Thats called for a change in armor becouse now mechs dye 4 times faster
Heat management was out of sinc becouse low heat weapons were more efficent.
Incresed Armord lead to more Point damage
with needed ghost heat.
...

Hard to say but,
THIS GAME NEEDS a TOTAL REBALANCE
From Heatmanagement to Weapons.

And there are 2 Way´s.

1. Go 90% TT values
3x slower fire rat to all weapons ( around 7,5 sec )
1/2 Armor
DD heat sinks back to normal

To Prevent Deadly alphas give each Weapon Point a one fix point a bit off the center.
So no 50 alpha hit´s only in close combat.

Tactical Shooter, you wait to make the best out of youre Weapon fire.
You have more time to aim and plan the use of the best weapons

2. Take only 10% of the TT Numbers.
be more flexibible in weapon balance.
Think of new way´s.

AC/20 only 15 Damage but 20% faster shooting for example.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

1) you want the game to be equal with weapons. weapons however are not meant to be equal. Weapons are MEANT to be unequal. weapons that are larger, and heavier and stronger are located (normally) on larger mechs who are supposed to be scary. No one has addressed at all the fact that the ac20 is supposed to be scary. They want to ignore this fact because they want to balance it. They want to balance it based off BT. But they ignore the fact that the ac20 is supposed to be scary in the BT universe.

No, I think you misunderstand what most posters want when they want balanced weapons. They don't want all weapons to be the same or equal. A scale is balanced when both sides have the same weight, even if on one side it holds feathers and on the other side it holds a lead ball and a bottle of water.

The AC/20 is supposed to be scary, because it is a 14 ton weapon. It has to be scarier than an AC/2 (6 tons) or a Medium Laser (1 ton). Let's pretend for a moment that this was everythnig that made out weapons (ignoring range, heat and what not) - if these 3 weapons where balanced, he AC/20 might deal 14 damage, the AC/2 6 damage and the Medium Laser 1 damage.
A single medium laser is a lot less scary than an AC/20 now. But of course, if you somehow could equip 14 of them, they'd be equally scary. Likewise, a single AC/2 is not as scary as an AC/20, but if you take two and add another 2 medium lasers, and you have something just as powerful as the AC/20.

A little bit more complex balance could be, for example:
- The AC/20 deals 20 damage, but also needs 6 heat sinks to operate, so it's effectively 20 tons, and the Medium Laser
produces 4 heat, so it's effectively 5 tons and should deal 5 damage. (If you actually need 1 ton for every point of heat a weaopn produces, else, you need to adjust)
- The AC/20 deals 20 damage at 14 tons and 6 heat, the AC/2 weighs 6 tons but has triple the range of the AC/20 and produces 1 heat, so it should deal only 2.33 damage. (That is assuming that triple the range is also three times as good - you need to verify that it at least can be reasonably often, or pick whatever factor actually fits reality)
And so on, each time adjusting things based on additional mechanical details, like rate of fire, pinpoint capability, range and so on. (And you need to do it again for crit slots)

Whatever a fully operable AC/20 needs to function perfectly fine and be useful for in a typical combat environment, if you equip the same amount of tonnage in medium lasers to function perfectly fine and be useful in a typical combat environment, they should be equal in usefulness.

[Khobai]

Quote

Whatever a fully operable AC/20 needs to function perfectly fine and be useful for in a typical combat environment, if you equip the same amount of tonnage in medium lasers to function perfectly fine and be useful in a typical combat environment, they should be equal in usefulness.

The problem is you cant equip an equal number of medium lasers because of hardpoint limitations and the prohibitive heatscale. That adds a completely new factor that PGI has to balance.Lasers need to be significantly buffed simply because you cant boat enough of them to reach the same level of effectiveness as an AC20.

Plus if you have two identical weapons, except one is pinpoint damage, and one is spread damage, than the one that does spread damage should do more overall damage than the one that does pinpoint damage. We see the opposite of this in MWO: pinpoint weapons often do the most damage in addition to being pinpoint... where spread weapons not only do inferior damage but also do spread damage.

A good example is the PPC vs large pulse laser. They both weigh the same (7 tons). Have approximately the same ranges (90-540 vs 0-400). Yet one is pinpoint and the other is spread. And the one thats spread only does 0.6 more damage? PPCs should be doing at least 20% less damage than LPLs to be balanced because of how strong pinpoint damage is vs spread damage.

Edited by Khobai, 11 March 2014 - 06:02 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

MustrumRidcully, on 11 March 2014 - 05:27 AM, said:

No, I think you misunderstand what most posters want when they want balanced weapons. They don't want all weapons to be the same or equal. A scale is balanced when both sides have the same weight, even if on one side it holds feathers and on the other side it holds a lead ball and a bottle of water.

The AC/20 is supposed to be scary, because it is a 14 ton weapon. It has to be scarier than an AC/2 (6 tons) or a Medium Laser (1 ton). Let's pretend for a moment that this was everythnig that made out weapons (ignoring range, heat and what not) - if these 3 weapons where balanced, he AC/20 might deal 14 damage, the AC/2 6 damage and the Medium Laser 1 damage.
A single medium laser is a lot less scary than an AC/20 now. But of course, if you somehow could equip 14 of them, they'd be equally scary. Likewise, a single AC/2 is not as scary as an AC/20, but if you take two and add another 2 medium lasers, and you have something just as powerful as the AC/20.

A little bit more complex balance could be, for example:
- The AC/20 deals 20 damage, but also needs 6 heat sinks to operate, so it's effectively 20 tons, and the Medium Laser
produces 4 heat, so it's effectively 5 tons and should deal 5 damage. (If you actually need 1 ton for every point of heat a weaopn produces, else, you need to adjust)
- The AC/20 deals 20 damage at 14 tons and 6 heat, the AC/2 weighs 6 tons but has triple the range of the AC/20 and produces 1 heat, so it should deal only 2.33 damage. (That is assuming that triple the range is also three times as good - you need to verify that it at least can be reasonably often, or pick whatever factor actually fits reality)
And so on, each time adjusting things based on additional mechanical details, like rate of fire, pinpoint capability, range and so on. (And you need to do it again for crit slots)

Whatever a fully operable AC/20 needs to function perfectly fine and be useful for in a typical combat environment, if you equip the same amount of tonnage in medium lasers to function perfectly fine and be useful in a typical combat environment, they should be equal in usefulness.

I like what you are saying, but no.

2xAC2=4 damage
2xMedium lasers=10 damage
1x AC20=20 damage

You used the same weight to still do less damage.

Also as of right now a single AC2 does almost the same damage as an AC20.
in 4 seconds an AC2 fires 7 times 14 damage
so for 12 tons (plus Ammo) I can throw 28 points of damage in a stream at you...
For 2 tons more I can crush you for 20 damage to one spot every 4 seconds. That is my preferred way to fight. Keep your low caliber Dakka I want my BFG. That is how I fight, You want to beat it with dervish style fighting... Bring it. I drop to it often enough to know it works when done right.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 March 2014 - 06:10 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Khobai, on 11 March 2014 - 05:56 AM, said:

The problem is you cant equip an equal number of medium lasers because of hardpoint limitations and the prohibitive heatscale. That adds a completely new factor that PGI has to balance.Lasers need to be significantly buffed simply because you cant boat enough of them to reach the same level of effectiveness as an AC20.

I disagree that this is a problem. (Staying on the "simple" balance of only tonnage and damage for the sake of the argument).
it is simply a speical build constraint that you cannot actually built a 14 medium laser mech, so you have to mix weapons. But for the same investment, you can still get the same benefit as the AC/20.

That is true as long as mixing weapons doesn't come with (uncompensated) drawbacks due to imcompatibilities, for example differences in weapon handling. (Different lead times or firing mechanics combined with convergence.) If you have such incompatibilities, you need to compensate them. That is unfortunately not trivial, so it is generally better to avoid this, but it cannot always be helped. If you want to have group fire and convergence and weapons that have different lead times for example. In that case, you will have to find a few reasonable scenarios and add drawbacks and advantages to weapon builds that seem fair enough.

Since you know that some mechs come with the possibility to run builds that equip 14 Mls and some can't, you decide that those that canot and have to deal with lead differences inevitably get a buff to compensate (are faster, more agile, have access to equipment all the other variants don't have). It adds another complexity angle, which is why my originally favored model to deal with burst damage potential of weapons was to get rid of group fire and demand pure chain-fire regardless of weapon loadout. Then you don't need to go to the build level, you know the AC/20 can do somethnig no other weapon can do and you can give it the appropriate drawback (maybe the AC/20 deals only 11 damage for its 14 tons, while the AC/10 would deal 11.2 damage for its 12, and so on, until we arrive at the SL that actally deals exactly as much damage as it weighs because it would need excessive chain-firing to be workable.)

[MustrumRidcully]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 March 2014 - 06:09 AM, said:

I like what you are saying, but no.

As I said, it was just a simple balance model I used to illustrate the point. Weight = Damage. No rate of fire, no heat, no range, no special firing mechanisms, no ammo. Something very primitive to explain why a weapon can be balanced with every other weapon and still be called "scary".

We obviously want more in our battletech games. But t he principle is the same. A weapon that requires more investment in resources grants you more benefit than w eapon that requires less investment, but the two can still be balanced, because if you invest into multiples of the same weapon to be equal to the investment in that "BFG", you get the same return.

[Varent]

Willard Phule, on 10 March 2014 - 02:03 PM, said:

How about this....remember MW3 and MW4? Remember being in command of a lance of NPC's? How did you get them to move to a waypoint or to attack a target? There were preset keys set up for quick comms. What's stopping PGI from implementing a system like that? If I'm in the Company Commander position and hit F6 (because that's what I set it for), everyone in the Company gets a voice message that says "Fall back!"....and...it says it in whatever language the people installed on their computers. You can't tell me that the Germans and Russians are all playing an English version of the game.

The changes of me listening to you are about 1 in 10. I can only speak for myself and other gamers I play with, but no ones going to listen to you that I know of. As I said, moot point. Gamers tend to do there own thing, they are very independent in my experiences. Which leads back to getting on a TS with some people you know and trust to do stuff like that. This isn't an uncommon thing. It exists in every shooter... people get around it ... by getting on a ts.... I don't see why people expect something different of MWO. No other shooter has VOIP that's actually used for tactics... its always just used for trolling.

[Varent]

Sandpit, on 10 March 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

I think that's changed a bit and also why some of us get better responses from them on twitter. It's VERY hard for any of the devs to have any kind of meaningful discussion on the forums because as soon as they post something they're bombarded with responses, questions, etc. and at some point the usual "I hate PGI and MWO but I can't leave" crowd swoops down and just begin the attacks.

I agree though that the Dev team takes some things a little too personally (as do a LOT of players here) when someone points out that their decision wasn't as good as they may have thought

agree on both points. our community is particularly harsh, toxic and divided, most decent thoughts are washed away in a current of raw hate thrown at the developers. So why should we be expecting them to sift through all that to find anything good. Honestly I would probly mostly ignore the forums until the community overall became more amiable. Its human nature to go on the defensive when attacked. Years of genetics are working against you there if your expecting anything different. Probly easier to toss a suggestion in a formal letter written to them ina complaint or something or perhaps through twitter, ive heard a lot of people are getting good respsonses there.

[Varent]

MustrumRidcully, on 11 March 2014 - 05:27 AM, said:

No, I think you misunderstand what most posters want when they want balanced weapons. They don't want all weapons to be the same or equal. A scale is balanced when both sides have the same weight, even if on one side it holds feathers and on the other side it holds a lead ball and a bottle of water.

The AC/20 is supposed to be scary, because it is a 14 ton weapon. It has to be scarier than an AC/2 (6 tons) or a Medium Laser (1 ton). Let's pretend for a moment that this was everythnig that made out weapons (ignoring range, heat and what not) - if these 3 weapons where balanced, he AC/20 might deal 14 damage, the AC/2 6 damage and the Medium Laser 1 damage.
A single medium laser is a lot less scary than an AC/20 now. But of course, if you somehow could equip 14 of them, they'd be equally scary. Likewise, a single AC/2 is not as scary as an AC/20, but if you take two and add another 2 medium lasers, and you have something just as powerful as the AC/20.

A little bit more complex balance could be, for example:
- The AC/20 deals 20 damage, but also needs 6 heat sinks to operate, so it's effectively 20 tons, and the Medium Laser
produces 4 heat, so it's effectively 5 tons and should deal 5 damage. (If you actually need 1 ton for every point of heat a weaopn produces, else, you need to adjust)
- The AC/20 deals 20 damage at 14 tons and 6 heat, the AC/2 weighs 6 tons but has triple the range of the AC/20 and produces 1 heat, so it should deal only 2.33 damage. (That is assuming that triple the range is also three times as good - you need to verify that it at least can be reasonably often, or pick whatever factor actually fits reality)
And so on, each time adjusting things based on additional mechanical details, like rate of fire, pinpoint capability, range and so on. (And you need to do it again for crit slots)

Whatever a fully operable AC/20 needs to function perfectly fine and be useful for in a typical combat environment, if you equip the same amount of tonnage in medium lasers to function perfectly fine and be useful in a typical combat environment, they should be equal in usefulness.

I think your utterly misunderstanding the point of the post. I fully admit im coming from a Battletech Lore standpoint. For me and everything I have read about the ac20 is supposed to be terrifying. Just as you are coming more from a MechWarrior, shooting game standpoint. Both of our opinions are valid in this and need to be respected. Wich is where the problem is coming from within the community. We have a lot of players who all want something different and all want different feels from this game.

[Asmudius Heng]

Varent, on 11 March 2014 - 04:20 PM, said:

agree on both points. our community is particularly harsh, toxic and divided, most decent thoughts are washed away in a current of raw hate thrown at the developers. So why should we be expecting them to sift through all that to find anything good. Honestly I would probly mostly ignore the forums until the community overall became more amiable. Its human nature to go on the defensive when attacked. Years of genetics are working against you there if your expecting anything different. Probly easier to toss a suggestion in a formal letter written to them ina complaint or something or perhaps through twitter, ive heard a lot of people are getting good respsonses there.

This is partly the developers own fault, laying the blame squarly on the community is not exactly helpful either.

Formal letters and complaints have been tried, many forms of decent and well thought out actions have been tried.

It is not that they have said NO to any suggestions ... it is that they have been IGNORED completely for the most part.

A response to well thought out ideas explaining WHY they would not consider them or why they are on the backburner would make the vitriol way less ... but the stoney solence is what hs caused the anger. People can handle robust debate, but being ignored is what really makes a community angry.

As for Twitter, maybe they get back to people in direct messages there but the responses from the devs there are still simplistic and they mainly repsond to anything that puts them in a good light, or they repsond to techical issues (which is good) but i have never seen them answer any questions about game balance for instance which is what most people get all up in arms about.

[Sandpit]

Asmudius Heng, on 11 March 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

It is not that they have said NO to any suggestions ... it is that they have been IGNORED completely for the most part.

It also has to do with the devs repeatedly saying (dozens if not hundreds of times from CB on) that certain things can't be done, aren't a high priority, won't be done, etc. until after UI2.0 hits because that was the primary focus of everything they were working on due to it preventing a lot of other development from being implemented. I don't always agree with it but it's not like they never told people that in regards to a LOT of suggestions players gave.

[Asmudius Heng]

Sandpit, on 11 March 2014 - 05:14 PM, said:

It also has to do with the devs repeatedly saying (dozens if not hundreds of times from CB on) that certain things can't be done, aren't a high priority, won't be done, etc. until after UI2.0 hits because that was the primary focus of everything they were working on due to it preventing a lot of other development from being implemented. I don't always agree with it but it's not like they never told people that in regards to a LOT of suggestions players gave.

That is a bit of an axcuse to not discuss important issues though. This also predates when they were talkign UI2.0 - it has been this way for a very long time.

Balance questions however are the most ignored of them all. Technical stuff they tended to answer, some big picture stuff they answered vaguely and theat probably for the best, but the here and now of the minutae of balance of mechs and weapons and the player experience has always been firmly ignored even during the Ask the Dev posts - they would avoid those like the plaghue or say "We are always monitoring and making changes as needed"

Then we see no changes for months and so we have to assume they either lied, or believe that the current state of balance is fine - either way is enough to cause some serious backlash from the community.

They always forget to add the WHY when they do respond leaving everyone without any context to thier decisions or lack of decisions.

I am not going to give PGI a free ride on this - thier communications overall have been extremely bad. They try new things like the vlog and they put a lot of effort into the ask the devs but the same problem of extreme avoidance on certain issues, and lack of explaination on major and minor decisions that change the gameplay for everyone really lets them down.

I am not giving a fre ride to the community either. Some of us are downright overly agressive and toxic, but a hell of a lot are not, or have only become this way over time. The community craves interaction with the people trying to make an F2P game work and its not an easy job i understand - but there are many examples of other developers who are much more interactive with their community and pull it off well.

It is the us vs them mentality i hate when both sides are at fault, but PGI hold the keys to the information and interaction we crave so the onus does fall to them on how to behave as that will heavily influence how good or toxic a community is.

[Sandpit]

Asmudius Heng, on 11 March 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

That is a bit of an axcuse to not discuss important issues though. This also predates when they were talkign UI2.0 - it has been this way for a very long time.

Balance questions however are the most ignored of them all. Technical stuff they tended to answer, some big picture stuff they answered vaguely and theat probably for the best, but the here and now of the minutae of balance of mechs and weapons and the player experience has always been firmly ignored even during the Ask the Dev posts - they would avoid those like the plaghue or say "We are always monitoring and making changes as needed"

Then we see no changes for months and so we have to assume they either lied, or believe that the current state of balance is fine - either way is enough to cause some serious backlash from the community.

They always forget to add the WHY when they do respond leaving everyone without any context to thier decisions or lack of decisions.

I am not going to give PGI a free ride on this - thier communications overall have been extremely bad. They try new things like the vlog and they put a lot of effort into the ask the devs but the same problem of extreme avoidance on certain issues, and lack of explaination on major and minor decisions that change the gameplay for everyone really lets them down.

I am not giving a fre ride to the community either. Some of us are downright overly agressive and toxic, but a hell of a lot are not, or have only become this way over time. The community craves interaction with the people trying to make an F2P game work and its not an easy job i understand - but there are many examples of other developers who are much more interactive with their community and pull it off well.

It is the us vs them mentality i hate when both sides are at fault, but PGI hold the keys to the information and interaction we crave so the onus does fall to them on how to behave as that will heavily influence how good or toxic a community is.

It's been my experience that devs rarely communicate directly with communities. You usually get a bit more of that in smaller companies and indy developers but it's still rare. It would be much better if they had just kept up with regular updates in general but as far as responding to players on forums and such it's just not generally a common thing.

[Asmudius Heng]

Sandpit, on 11 March 2014 - 05:40 PM, said:

It's been my experience that devs rarely communicate directly with communities. You usually get a bit more of that in smaller companies and indy developers but it's still rare. It would be much better if they had just kept up with regular updates in general but as far as responding to players on forums and such it's just not generally a common thing.

I do not mean responding to every thread, but taking the pulse of your community and responding through regular updates is not that hard. They have done a lot of interacting via various means but it is the quality of that interaction I am calling into question not the quantity.

[Khobai]

Quote

it is simply a speical build constraint that you cannot actually built a 14 medium laser mech, so you have to mix weapons..

Not all mechs can mix weapons though. Some mechs only have energy hardpoints. That puts them at a distinct disadvantage to mechs with a mix of energy and ballistic hardpoints.

[Varent]

Asmudius Heng, on 11 March 2014 - 05:44 PM, said:

I do not mean responding to every thread, but taking the pulse of your community and responding through regular updates is not that hard. They have done a lot of interacting via various means but it is the quality of that interaction I am calling into question not the quantity.

I hate to possibly rain on the parade. But you listed meaningful posts you think would help. Have you considered perhaps they disagree and are simply responding to the posts they argee with themselves. Not that that is always the right answer. But everyone is entitled to there opinion. They may be going off of that or simply making decisions they feel will be the least intrusive and non overpowering to any one group. Honestly I don't know. But I don't want to assume that I do know either. I also don't want to assume there is the 'best' answer lingering out there. Usually what people consider the best answer is just usually someones opinion that works from there point of view.

[Asmudius Heng]

Varent, on 11 March 2014 - 08:05 PM, said:

I hate to possibly rain on the parade. But you listed meaningful posts you think would help. Have you considered perhaps they disagree and are simply responding to the posts they argee with themselves. Not that that is always the right answer. But everyone is entitled to there opinion. They may be going off of that or simply making decisions they feel will be the least intrusive and non overpowering to any one group. Honestly I don't know. But I don't want to assume that I do know either. I also don't want to assume there is the 'best' answer lingering out there. Usually what people consider the best answer is just usually someones opinion that works from there point of view.

There is rarely a best answer given the different types of players we have in MWO and the different kinds of experiences they are looking for.

I know I am not going to get exactly what I want personally but that is ok, i also understand they are making a game that needs to attract new customers while still appealing to a core crowd of whales.

It is not an easy thing to get this balance right this is correct.

However I am not arguing there is a best decision, i am saying that PGI have not explained pretty much ANY balance decisions they make and they have not explained why it takes so long to make any changes. This leads to an incredible amount of frustration.

What most of the people who are not happy with PGI think is that the decisions they make are based on flawed assumptions and misinterpretation of data - but because we get no detail on why they make balance changes, or make a single change without considering the larger balance ecosystem people will assume the worst.

It is not about makeing the only best decision, it is about explaining the reasons why those deicisons are (Or are NOT) made.

If this happened you would see a lot more informed debate and decisions that were not the best could be altered faster and there would be more of a diaglogue between players and developers.

The usual shitbag posters will still be there but really its not hard to simply gloss over people who post drivel and focus on people who provide some level of insight.

Sticks and stone etc etc

People want to know the WHY about balance decisions and want to know what might be on the roadmap but we are left thinking the current state is considered close to perfect which many would very strongly disagree with. If they are just responding to thos they agree with then they need to learn that is not how you make informed decisions.

A manager at my work was like that, never listened to any criticism, only acted on things he liked and agreed with.

... he got fired pretty quick because his business decisions were terrible and when asked to explain he was left looking very foolish because he could not produce the level of analysis that is required to be a good manager.

[Khobai]

Paul always seems to state his reasons for balance changes. Theyre usually just bad reasons.

For example, heat was increased on the ERPPC because everybody was using ERPPCs on every mech. So instead of actually balancing the ERPPC he just increased the heat so much that no one could use it anymore. It wouldve made far more sense to leave the heat alone and balance other attributes like range and damage instead. Then the ERPPC could still be used at least.

[Navy Sixes]

Varent, on 08 March 2014 - 02:01 PM, said:

1) you want the game to be equal with weapons. weapons however are not meant to be equal. Weapons are MEANT to be unequal. weapons that are larger, and heavier and stronger are located (normally) on larger mechs who are supposed to be scary. No one has addressed at all the fact that the ac20 is supposed to be scary. They want to ignore this fact because they want to balance it. ...they ignore the fact that the ac20 is supposed to be scary in the BT universe. I recall a specific book where light mechs stood in awe of two assaults duking it out simply because they knew whoever one the combat would basically decide the overall battle because of the fact that they simply would not be able to handle an assault mech by themselves due to the weapons they carried.

You're right that the AC20 should be scary. You're right that the big mechs that carry scary AC20s should be scary. What you sort of breeze past is they're not scary. Not because they've been over-nerfed, but because everyone and their mother is running a big, scary mech that can field a big, scary AC20 (or it's 2xPPC/AC5 equivalent). You remember a novel where the lights were in awe of two assaults going at it? I remember that happening in a game. It lasted about 12 seconds, at which point the other 14 assaults in the match came over the hill and then the two were just a couple of faces in the crowd, lost amid the usual PPC/big-ballistic boredom.

I'm of a mind that an overabundance of big mechs have totally diminished the game. We can't have weapons that really outshine others, not because too many people want them to be "equal," as you suggest, but because as soon as a weapon is marked as being "good," The big-mech drivers (to be read as "just about everyone") cram as many as they can into their chassis and suck the fun out of the game for the few who were happy to run with just one. I can't wait to see how the game changes with these class limits that are supposed to be coming soon. I still hold out hope for tonnage limits.

In the meantime, every match is a 70+ ton circle jerk, with most being run by steering-wheel clowns that no IS house -let alone a clan- would let near one of their assault-class mechs. They crutch on tonnage, and then have the nerve to come to the forums to cry and winge about anything that might be a drawback to running the biggest, most armored, most armed mechs available: maps are too big, weapons are too hot, arty/air is OP, capping is OP, lights are OP, on and on and on.

I've pretty much lost all respect for anyone running over 65 tons in this game.

[MustrumRidcully]

Khobai, on 11 March 2014 - 05:52 PM, said:

Not all mechs can mix weapons though. Some mechs only have energy hardpoints. That puts them at a distinct disadvantage to mechs with a mix of energy and ballistic hardpoints.

It can, but it doesn't have to.

The simple balance model again:
Let's say another mech can equip 2 AC/20s. That gives it 28 damage.
Another mech can only equip 8 lasers the most. If he only equips MLs, he cna only get to 8 damage. That would be a lot weaker. But if there is also an LL, that weighs 5 tons and thus deals 5 damage, he could equip 5 LLs and 3 ML and be equal in damage.

Now ,this is the simple balnace model, where we only have damag and weight. If you add range, this can feasibly create a scenario where you might not be able to create a short range brawler with your 8 energy hardpoint mech because you don't get to the damage a 2 ballistic hard point mech could get in short range. That is indeed a drawback.


But the real reason that in MW:O, that 8 energy hard point mech is inferior to a 2 ballistic hard point mech is that laser and ballistic weapons are imbalanced. A part of that is the pinpoint damage issue, another part is the heat system (which is, in MW:O, definitely not a model where heat on a weapon is not linearly related to tonnage investment, tahnks to elements like the heat threshold and the way heat penalties work.)