517 replies to this topic

[Krinkov]

I think they should go with a simple solution such as dropping AC ammo from 150 damage per ton to 100. They buffed ammo capacity back when hit detection was non existent. They dropped ER and standard PPC heat back then for the same reason. The PPCs have already been rolled back, now it's time to roll back the ammo count for our post Host State Rewind game environment.

Edit: typo

Edited by Krinkov, 03 April 2014 - 04:11 PM.

[Cimarb]

3rdworld, on 03 April 2014 - 02:46 PM, said:

Are you saying AC/2s are OP?

They are abnormally strong for what they should be, yes. They are also so OP that they had to have extreme nerfs put upon them from Ghost Heat. In fact, they are the heaviest penalized weapon, possibly second to the AC20, when neither of these weapons should even HAVE significant heat. Balance the autocannon damage, and you can then remove ghost heat from them.

Rebas Kradd, on 03 April 2014 - 02:54 PM, said:

It has a higher DPS because it requires more skill to repeatedly hit with that weapon. It's a reward for good aim. You cannot balance these weapons in a vacuum like you're doing.

Debatable, and irrelevant regardless. The damage delivery method should not be the differentiating factor between autocannons. For instance, Large Lasers shouldn't do front-loaded damage just because they take up more weight and space than a small laser. A MG shouldn't do more damage than an AC10. All an AC2 is is a long range MG, so why does it do damage equivalent to a burst-fire AC20 instead?

Mirkk Defwode, on 03 April 2014 - 02:57 PM, said:

It'd be a rather daunting task, and a lot for the community to absorb.

This system would also be extremely complex. But it demonstrates there are a lot of ideas on how to implement and correct the current autocannons.

StJobe actually has a great post showing how LITTLE work it would be. All PGI would have to do is adjust the data as he describes, and make 4+ variants of each weapon, from burst-fire to continuous to (rare) single shot versions. Here is his explanation: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3252933

[Roland]

Cimarb, on 03 April 2014 - 04:21 PM, said:

They are abnormally strong for what they should be, yes. They are also so OP that they had to have extreme nerfs put upon them from Ghost Heat.

Uh.. contrary to the hilariously idiotic thread pinned to the top of this forum, having ghost heat impact AC2's was quite obviously NOT intended. It was an unintended consequence of the foolishness that is Ghost Heat.

They merely went on to say, "Since this is an aftereffect of Ghost Heat, it is thus working as intended."

No one ever said AC2's in chainfire mode were OP.

Well, I guess fools might have said that. Whatever.

[Mirkk Defwode]

stjobe, on 26 March 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

So, being a programmer, I was thinking about how difficult it would be to turn ACs into burst-fire weapons (it makes a nice change from bashing my head against trying to get a very peculiar 32-bit COM DLL running on a 64-bit .Net server application).

As it turns out, it most likely wouldn't be hard at all. In fact, I doubt if it would take a programmer more than half a day's work to get it ready for testing. Here's what I figure:

All weapons have an entry in ItemStats.xml that looks like this:

<Weapon id="1020" name="AutoCannon10">
<Loc nameTag="@AC10" descTag="@AC10_desc" iconTag="StoreIcons\AutoCannon10.dds"/>
<WeaponStats Health="10" slots="7" type="Ballistic" projectileclass="bullet" numFiring="1" damage="10" heatdamage="0" impulse="0.06" heat="3.0" cooldown="2.5" ammoType="AC10Ammo" ammoPerShot="1" minRange="0" longRange="450" maxRange="1350" tons="12" duration="0.0" lifetime="10.0" speed="950" volleydelay="0" gravity="0,0,-9.8" maxDepth="10.0"/>
<EffectList>
<Effect name="Projectile" asset="objects/weapons/autocannon_shell.cgf" scale="1.0" mass="10"/>
<Effect name="ProjectileMaterial" asset="mat_ac10"/>
<Effect name="Muzzle" asset="mech_weapons.autocannon_10.muzzle_flash"/>
<Effect name="MuzzleFP" asset="mech_weapons.autocannon_10.muzzle_flash_fp"/>
<Effect name="Sound:Fire" asset="sounds/weapons:cannon:ac10_fire" float="0.0"/>
<Effect name="Sound:PostFire" asset="sounds/weapons:cannon:ac10_tail" float="0.0"/>
<Effect name="Sound:Reload" asset="sounds/weapons:cannon:ac10_reload" float="1.5"/>
<Effect name="DamageBrush" asset="Textures\\decals\\damage_brushes\\ac_20.tif"/>
<Effect name="DamageBrushType" asset="direct" float="32" float2="32"/>
</EffectList>
<Audio OnDestroyedDialogue="BB_AutoCannon_Destroyed"/>
</Weapon>

The interesting part is in the WeaponStats tag:

<WeaponStats Health="10" slots="7" type="Ballistic" projectileclass="bullet" numFiring="1" damage="10" heatdamage="0" impulse="0.06" heat="3.0" cooldown="2.5" ammoType="AC10Ammo" ammoPerShot="1" minRange="0" longRange="450" maxRange="1350" tons="12" duration="0.0" lifetime="10.0" speed="950" volleydelay="0" gravity="0,0,-9.8" maxDepth="10.0"/>

This tag defines, among other things, the damage, heat, cooldown, and duration of any beam.

To make ACs into burst-fire weapons, two new attributes would need to be added to this tag: burstsize and burstspeed. These would define how many rounds per burst the weapon has, and how fast the weapon fires the burst.

(or they could repurpose two of the tags not used for ACs, like numFiring for burstsize and duration for burstspeed)

For our hypothetical burst-fire AC/10, the WeaponStats tag might look like this:

<WeaponStats Health="10" slots="7" type="Ballistic" projectileclass="bullet" numFiring="1" damage="2.5" heatdamage="0" impulse="0.06" heat="3.0" cooldown="2.1" ammoType="AC10Ammo" ammoPerShot="1" minRange="0" longRange="450" maxRange="1350" tons="12" duration="0.0" burstsize="4" burstspeed="0.1" lifetime="10.0" speed="950" volleydelay="0" gravity="0,0,-9.8" maxDepth="10.0"/>

This would make the AC/10 fire a four-round burst, four projectiles of 2.5 damage each, at 0.1-second intervals (so 0.4 seconds for the whole burst) before going on cooldown for 2.1 seconds (making it have the same DPS as before).

The firing code would then need to be modified to fire the weapon burstsize number of times at burstspeed interval before going on cooldown, instead of just firing once (this is the part that actually would need some programmer time), and that's it.

That's the whole change needed to make ACs burst-fire.

There are a few things I'd do in addition to this. But that looks about right for XML files used for the CryEngine as a whole.

This is well put, it'd still be a bit of time for someone to sit and crunch the numbers to produce a bunch of balanced variations. But it's the right step forward.

[FupDup]

stjobe, on 03 April 2014 - 01:39 PM, said:

I disagree on the "unusable" part, but that's neither here nor there. What's bothering me is that it got an almost 20 times buff in damage when most other (non-AC) weapons hover around a 2.5 times damage buff.

Look at the spreadsheet I posted a page back - all the ACs except the AC/20 have gotten higher damage buffs than any other weapon. Combine that with the ballistics damage dealing method (instant damage) and the 3x range buff they also got compared to TT and you don't have to be a genius to understand why they are ruling the roost.

The AC/2 was way, way, WAY overbuffed. It has a higher DPS than the AC/5 - and that's just wrong.

Edit: The average damage buff is 3.71 times the TT damage. The average minus the AC/2 is 3.23, the average minus the ballistic weapons is 2.85.

The AC/2 got a 19.25 times buff, six times the average.

Jobe, you can't actually believe the AC/2 was even remotely viable in Tabletop, can you? From reading your various posts in various threads it's clear that you've played the actual TT game, so I'd assume you'd know the meta of that game, i.e. which strategies work and which ones don't.


The reason the AC/2 got the proportionally largest buff is because it needed the proportionally largest buff. It was a 6 ton weapon that did 2 damage per turn. This meant that it had 0.33 damage per ton of weight. That is abysmally terrible. Horribly, unspeakably terrible. Its long range was also not very impressive at all, just a mere 24 hexes. That is 1 hex further than LRMs. Worse still, its damage to heat ratio was 2:1. For reference, the Medium Laser did 1.6 damage per heat and the Large Laser did 1 damage per heat. The AC/2 was a ballistic weapon with abnormally low damage for its tonnage, and it had a damage to heat ratio closer to energy weapons than ballistics.

You could equip 3 LRM5 for the same tonnage as an AC/2, for basically the same range, and more than seven times the damage output. If you wanted to have similar heat output as the AC/2, you could roll with 2 LRM5 and 2 heatsinks (or 1 LRM10 and 1 heatsink), and still deal five times the damage at basically the same range. Or, if you didn't have many other weapons yet mounted, you could just plop in a PPC for the same weight as an AC/2 + ammo, with five times the damage and a bit of a shorter range (but 18 hexes is still plenty of range, not that much of a weakness) and still be heat neutral. In fact, the PPC was almost always superior to the entire Autocannon lineup (excluding the '20) even before the advent of DHS. The AC/5 and AC/10 in particular were so outclassed by the PPC it wasn't even funny.


I completely get that long range weapons should have a lower damage-to-tonnage ratio than short range weapons, but the long range weapons still have to be capable of dealing respectable damage on their own. Also, the AC/2 sits in a very weird spot for a long range weapon. It has a burst damage of 2. TWO. T-W-O. In a long range firefight, no matter how we balance this game, large frontloaded bursts will always be the best way to win sniper wars. You don't win long-range combat with paper cuts. In close quarters, paper cut damage per shot can be acceptable if it has a reasonable rate of fire to make up for it, because your enemy has a harder time escaping from you up close than far away.

What's worse is that the AC/2 doesn't even have that much of a range advantage in MWO to begin with. Even if we cut down ballistic max range to 2x, the AC/5 could still poke out to 1240 meters. The AC/2's ability to poke out to 1440 meters (if ballistic ranges were reduced) is literally worthless. Competent opponents will not stand at that range and let you paper cut them repeatedly for very long, or at all on most maps (might get a few super-long-range shots off on Alpine or maybe Tourmaline, that's it).


If we keep the AC/2 at only 2 damage per mouse click, it will never be effective in long range combat. Period. Especially not against REAL long range weapons like Gauss, PPCs, etc. This is not an opinion. This is a scientifically measurable fact. Minimal exposure, maximum precision and burst damage. That is how ranged fights work in Mechwarrior.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to end this wall o' text with a question. What the frack is the AC/2 supposed to do, if not DPS? It can't do burst because it's about as threatening as a mosquito bite. It can't do long range, because firing past 1000 meters is almost never practical or even possible in most fights. It can't do low heat, because it matches the heat of the AC/5. And if we set its heat to zero, that wouldn't make an tangible difference. What is there left? Are we to just make the weapon trash just because it was trash in a board game?

(And yes, it was in fact pure trash in Tabletop, even in 3025 against stock builds. Anyone who passed elementary school mathematics can see why this was so).

Edited by FupDup, 03 April 2014 - 04:44 PM.

[Destoroyah]

ACs only need 2 things really the range decrease to 2x and a slight cooldown increase.

Cooldown Samples:
AC2 - 0.70sec Cooldown, heat reduction to 0.3
AC5 and Ultra - 1.8sec Cooldown
AC10 - 3sec Cooldown
AC20 - 4.5sec Cooldown

AC2 is kind of the oddball weapon as it was too hot a weapon considering its caliber and did more damage then a AC5 over time. A pair of AC5s is reasonable heat neutral, but a pair of AC2s built heat very noticable and just didn't feel right. With the sample above it puts the AC2 at almost the same dps as the AC5 and justifies the heat reduction to make the weapon more heat efficient.

Edited by Destoroyah, 03 April 2014 - 04:57 PM.

[Thorqemada]

AC2s need their cooldown increased by 50% to put them into the right place in the AC environment.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Krinkov, on 03 April 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

I think they should go with a simple solution such as dropping AC ammo from 150 damage per ton to 100.

That would held reduce the endurance value of AC weapons - but do absolutely nothing to increase the survival time of people facing said AC weapons.

Doesn't matter if the AC/20 has 140 damage per ton potential or 60 - an AC40 Jager only needs to hit you 2-3 times to kill you.

[Roland]

The ac20 is supposed to have unparalleled killing power. That's why it weighs so much and takes up 10 slots.

The problem isn't weapons like the ac20. It's that you can do things like take 4 medium lasers and dump just as much damage on a single location as an ac 20 can.

[Dan Nashe]

Burst fire (like lasers) would be cool but will not happen. That is a core reprogramming task/major overhaul.

Damage drop off from 3x to 2x? I think that could happen without really changing the feel of weapons. It would actually seriously nerf the AC20.

Weapon speed? I would not lower it, it makes weapons less fun, not more. Especially with lag. In fact, if you lower aC max range to x2, you could easily increase the AC20 speed a little. It feels like you're lobbing a slow grenade. Not what it is.

Cooldown: AC2 is fine: It's fun but it spreads damage so much that the UAC5 is better, and the AC5 is probably better. Pinpoint matters a Lot.

AC5: fine
AC10: after they lowered projectile speed so much, the AC10 is a pretty bad weapon. So do not nerf.
UAC5: Inherently great, but I see no real need to nerf it and the AC5 right now. The problem is that setting the UAC5 at 2.0 base cd and the AC5 at 1.5 base CD would just be weird. I think adding range to the AC5 was a nice touch. AC5 could use a tiny boost of some maybe to make it closer? Then again, I am absolutely fine with the AC5 right now, it fills a niche - you care about 1 ton, 1 critical, or you are pairing it with a slower firing weapon (like a PPC), or you care about that little extra range. It's fine for a weapon like the AC5 to be worse than the UAC5 80% of the time, as long as that 20% niche continues to matter in competitive (the extra ton or two matters on the CTF3D).

AC20: increase projectile speed, increase cooldown to 5 seconds. I'd be cool with that. Right now the "lob" is obnoxious-feeling but not a true nerf to competitive/most(?) pilots.

I disagree with any suggestion about weight, ammo, or critical. Two of those would break cannon builds and are a non-starter, I am not sure why a lot of people don't quite get that. [E.g., stock mechs would crash the game :-p].

The ammo thing is just kind of a poor balancer, it's an attempt to make ACs heavier. It also reduces fun-factor (being Out of Ammo not fun). I'm just not sure that they need to be heavier. More importantly: is there a reason you have a moral objection to letting a cicada take an AC5? Because if you make a weapon HEAVIER you BUFF heavy and assault mechs, especially assault mechs, which have a much easier time finding an extra 2 tons for their primary weapon. Weight increases hurt lighter mechs big time.

Recoil: as long as it also came with a projectile speed buff? :-).

/my thoughts.

Bigger change this game needs?
Increase SRM (not streak) range by 50%. No damage drop off.
Every other weapon does 50% damage at 150% range.
SRMs would do 0 damage at 151% range, so still different. Still no more powerful compared to canon than other weapons.
The natural weapon spread is nerf enough.

[stjobe]

DanNashe, on 03 April 2014 - 06:50 PM, said:

Burst fire (like lasers) would be cool but will not happen. That is a core reprogramming task/major overhaul.

I disagree. It's half a day's work.

[Cimarb]

Roland, on 03 April 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:

Uh.. contrary to the hilariously idiotic thread pinned to the top of this forum, having ghost heat impact AC2's was quite obviously NOT intended. It was an unintended consequence of the foolishness that is Ghost Heat.

They merely went on to say, "Since this is an aftereffect of Ghost Heat, it is thus working as intended."

No one ever said AC2's in chainfire mode were OP.

Well, I guess fools might have said that. Whatever.

The issue where chainfired AC2s still caused ghost heat buildup because the cooldown was shorter than the ghost heat threshold was likely not intended, but ghost heat affecting AC2s definitely WAS intended, as they were on the list of affected weapons.

A quintet of AC2s, by the way, is quite powerful, even though it eats up ammo like crazy. It's like having a RAC20.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 03 April 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Not really since autocannons would have way more range, way less heat, and ideally different ammo types. They still have major advantages over lasers.



Im not really against front loaded damage. Im against precise aiming. I have zero problem with AC20s doing 20 damage to one location. What I have a problem with is being able to do that 20 damage consecutively to the same location. Battletech has random hit locations and doesnt allow you to predictably land shots in the same location over and over. Because MWO uses battletech armor ratios, it means MWO needs to put restrictions on precise aiming to retain some semblance of balance.

If MWO is going to allow precise aiming then one of two things needs to happen: damage needs to spread to emulate random hit locations OR armor values need to be significantly redistributed to protect torso sections better. You should not be able to kill an Atlas in less than 200-250 damage EVER. Because thats how difficult it is to kill an Atlas in battletech... excluding cheeseball clan tech.

I know what you are saying but I will disagree with the words Never and Ever. Lots of folks don't like random... Unfortunately/Fortunately random happens! It IS a fact of life. Now how often Random happens is the key. ONCE I spun, shot and decapped an Atlas... just like that. One Alpha Bang he died. That is bragging rights for me. ONCE just once I snapped off a beautiful round kick and kicked a bee out of the air. (Right after I had said, "And someday, if you practice enough, you Might be able to o this...")

Random Happens... and I for one welcome it!

[Khobai]

Quote

Unfortunately/Fortunately random happens! It IS a fact of life

Games arnt life though. And the more randomness you have in a game the less its based on skill. Im personally of the opinion that a competitive team-based game like MWO should have as little RNG as possible.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 04 April 2014 - 06:04 AM, said:

Games arnt life though. And the more randomness you have in a game the less its based on skill. Im personally of the opinion that a competitive team-based game like MWO should have as little RNG as possible.

I am not proposing more randomness, We have a good amount as is. Missiles hit randomly, Ballistics hit where pointed... a little to accurately but I can work with it. MW:O has no 1.5-2.0 damage for a crit hit... and I am good with that, even though that happens an can be just as much skill as not.

[Cimarb]

Khobai, on 04 April 2014 - 06:04 AM, said:

Games arnt life though. And the more randomness you have in a game the less its based on skill. Im personally of the opinion that a competitive team-based game like MWO should have as little RNG as possible.

Yeah, if I want a skill-less random game, I'll fire up Candy Crush or Farm Heroes on my phone...

Shoot, if I had ANY luck with the RNG, I would still be playing board games - dice absolutely DESPISE me, though...

[Mirkk Defwode]

stjobe, on 03 April 2014 - 09:16 PM, said:

I disagree. It's half a day's work.

To get the current weapons converted to have a very small burst fire setup it'd take about a half day including cursory tests to ensure they work properly.

If we wanted to expand on the weapons and add manufacturer variance it'd probably take a good month to properly created, implement, and test internally before pushing out to the general public.

[Roland]

Mirkk Defwode, on 04 April 2014 - 09:02 AM, said:

To get the current weapons converted to have a very small burst fire setup it'd take about a half day including cursory tests to ensure they work properly.

If we wanted to expand on the weapons and add manufacturer variance it'd probably take a good month to properly created, implement, and test internally before pushing out to the general public.

Adding in manufacturer variance would be a total cluster-****.

If you can't balance 20 weapons, you sure as hell can't balance 200.

[3rdworld]

Cimarb, on 03 April 2014 - 04:21 PM, said:

They are abnormally strong for what they should be, yes. They are also so OP that they had to have extreme nerfs put upon them from Ghost Heat. In fact, they are the heaviest penalized weapon, possibly second to the AC20, when neither of these weapons should even HAVE significant heat. Balance the autocannon damage, and you can then remove ghost heat from them.

What they should be? So you think they should be worse than the complete waste of tonnage they are now?

Do you understand what balance is? Or are you just butthurt this game isn't TT a simulator.

[Mirkk Defwode]

Roland, on 04 April 2014 - 10:28 AM, said:

Adding in manufacturer variance would be a total cluster-****.

If you can't balance 20 weapons, you sure as hell can't balance 200.

True, it'd be a mess for a bit - which is why the balance needs to be redone from the ground up and some of the mechanics need to be outright questioned and redone with a different skewed opinion. As it stands we can try to patch together the current system or look to have it redone from scratch.