517 replies to this topic

[LORD ORION]

-AC2: needs a slight nerf. (too much DPS for so little heat/space + comparrison to other ACs)
-Gauss: Remove charge mechanic, set firing delay to 0.5 seconds (sort of like if you fire a missle from a closed bay) [many people who use gauss are doing this with macros anyways]
-AC5/UAC5 could be fine if SRMs ever start to work. (so don't change them until after the patch SRM fix has a chance to be analyzed)
-AC10 is fine
-AC20 is fine

[Col Jaime Wolf]

• "Reduce maximum range from 3x to 2x"

yes. this is good, AC's shouldn't be super special

• "Reduce projectile speeds"

no. small light rounds move fast, bigger/heavier rounds tend to move slower this is like comparing a .223 round to a .45 the .223 is speedy but doesn't have much of an impact compared to a slower heavier harder hitting .45


that said the AC20 is a little slow but other than that projectile speeds are fine.

• "Increase Cooldown (lower rate of fire)"

no. cool down is fine right now leave as is. especially if AC's get burst fire.


do not change the AC2 ROF just because some players don't like its DPS. its part of what balances it compared to (for example) the AC20 which even with burst fire will still tend to land most of its damage on one location whereas an AC2 requires that you adjust your aim constantly and even then tends to spread its damage around.

• "Burst fire (beam-like damage)" correction -> "multiple slugs (4-5) that each deal that a fraction of the total damage from an AC IE an AC20 shoots 5 slugs that do 4 damage each.

yes. burst fire for all AC's like MW3 where you shot a stream of slugs that have a slight spread to take a little of the pinpoint out. and it will actually help you hit lights because you will not have to hit "directly" on target.

• "Reduce Ammo per ton"

no. you already have to pack alot of ammo as is. forcing you to pack more ammo just means you will boat more AC's because you already have all that weight/space invested in AC+ammo, you might as well boat more not less.


IE there should be room for backup weapons and space for heat sinks to encourage varied builds, making someone take more then 3-4 tons of ammo per gun is excessive under most circumstances, and most of the time you should be trying to make every shot count in which case you only should need 2-3 tons of ammo per gun. in fact that should be the benchmark 2-3 tons of ammo per gun is about right because it leaves you with space for other weapons.

• "Increase critical slots by 1"

no. do not change the size or weight of any AC we don't need to waste time shooting in the dark. and see above, an increases in size/weight will just encourage players to boat a single kind of AC over a varied build.

• "Recoil (based on impulse)"

nifty idea but no. mechs already are built to handle weapons of this size and the kick-back suppression should already be built in. at worst a little cockpit rumble, but nothing that would actually affect aiming. remember JJ shake? wrong solution for the wrong problem.


also no FPS "expanding cone" mechs are machines with computers that assist your aim, modern helicopters can keep their autocannons trained on target even on full auto, the same should be here. also you are not a human trying to hold back recoil from a fully automatic AK-47, again you are piloting a mech so it should be like a browning M2 mounted on a tank, it may kick but you don't actually have to control muzzle rise or hold the gun from pushing you back.

• "Ammo location requirements"

in RL yes. in MWO no. why? because then players like me will memorize the location of ammo bins for every mech and it will only make it worse for newcomers as all the veterans aim for the ammo bins and the nubs wonder why they get pasted to the wall.



although i admit in most cases (no pun intended) C.A.S.E is useless, but then it was never meant to be used with every ammo bin just ammo bins in the torso slots. and many mechs in TT have ammo in their torso with no C.A.S.E. mech hardpoints and unique configurations should continue to dictate C.A.S.E. use.

• "Convergence (based on weapon tonnage)"

no. weapons weight should mean nothing. mechs are built to support a certain capacity IE a 50 ton mech will sling 50 tons of gear the same regardless of whether its 20 Med Laser's, a couple of AC's or 25 AMS systems with 10 tons of ammo. engine size should continue to dictate how spry a mech feels.

• "Increase drop-off rate of autocannon rounds (from Coralld)"

only realistic projectile drop that's less(er/ish) on small AC's and more(er/ish) as the rounds get heavier.




extra thoughts

fix the ranges so they are proper IE as others have said the AC20 shouldn't be doing a better job at range then an AC10

get rid of Gauss charge, increase its cycle time. after all capacitors age/wear out faster the more you abuse them (fast charging caps heats them exponentially compared to slow charging). but they do discharge instantly so the "wind up" is really just a dumb idea for the Gauss.

also get rid of ghost heat especially for the AC2 it doesn't deserve the treatment it gets just because PGI refuses to reduce the explosions and shake to an acceptable level.

• "-AC2: needs a slight nerf. (too much DPS for so little heat/space + comparrison to other ACs)" <- no AC2's require skill to use unlike bigger ac's which just require you to shoot then twist while you wait for the recycle. IE AC2's need "face time" which requires that you face your opponent at all times. which means while someone with AC2's is constantly facing and aiming at a target an opponent with an AC20 can shoot a salvo then turn to spread damage while the AC2 user is still taking all that damage to the face. Also AC2's generate way more heat then any other AC and in general are already nerfed compared to most weapons.

• "-Gauss: Remove charge mechanic, (good) set firing delay to 0.5 seconds" <- bad. this was hell with PPCs and would be worse then the current charge mechanic

post thought, PGI fix your editor it already takes to long to do basic formatting.

Edited by Mellifluer, 05 April 2014 - 10:33 PM.

[wanderer]

Cimarb, on 04 April 2014 - 05:35 PM, said:

That would work quite well. Just reverse engineer it to get the respective cool downs, and apply. You now have range decreasing proportionately to damage, which is how it should be.

And that, ladies and gents is how you harmonize tabletop into MWO. You can adapt many tabletop solutions into MWO- because some of these balance problems have existed in TT for decades and at least addressed.

We oldtimers have been in this rodeo before. Take a KISS solution and implement it, or you're getting proof here that like ghost heat, PGI is obfuscating the game to death.
And as Sturm's noted, Battletech tends to "scale" to simplify/add complexity to the rules. Going to a 1/4 scale lets stuff like rate-of-fire show. Upscaling the hexes to a more strategic scale makes BT weapon ranges feel more like modern weaponry. And so on. And so forth.

At this point, I'm wondering who sucked the soul out of Mechwarrior Online.

[shellashock]

I am not going to get too invested in this discussion, but I have a question about Trauglodyte's suggestion to make ballistic slots have a bore size similar to missile tube count.

How are you going to change ammo to fit this model?


To me, it sounds like you would now need to have several different variants of ammunition magazines that could hold anywhere between 1 and 10 bullets for every kind of AC. That could put quite a bit of bloat on the current window if you are buying ammunition. Not to mention that all of those ammunition magazines will have to be balanced ammo count and detonation chance wise.

The idea sounds cool and I bet that PGI would love to implement something like this along with manufacturer specific weapons if they had the time and resources to do so. Quite frankly, they don't have that right now. I would much rather have them implement stjobe's idea of burst fire weapons simply because of the apparent ease of implementation and the amount of dev time saved compared to Trauglodyte's idea.

It's kinda like my idea to make the Gauss Rifle's charge up dynamically related to its range and damage. It's (IMO) a cool idea and could help with weapon balancing, but it is simply too much work to do when a much simpler solution is available that is just as effective (allowing gauss to fire without charging for reduced damage and range or allow full charge up and fire with current values).

[wanderer]

shellashock, on 05 April 2014 - 09:45 AM, said:

I am not going to get too invested in this discussion, but I have a question about Trauglodyte's suggestion to make ballistic slots have a bore size similar to missile tube count.

How are you going to change ammo to fit this model?

You don't. A burst of smaller caliber rounds is a "shot", just as a shorter burst of larger caliber rounds is still one "shot" for two different AC's both rated as, say "AC/5" but have different barrel sizes.

TT does the same thing. A single shot's worth of AC ammo is the same "one cassette per firing" regardless of an AC/5 being a 120mm, 90 or 60mm, whatever, and MWO can go the same route.

[Cimarb]

wanderer, on 05 April 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

You don't. A burst of smaller caliber rounds is a &quot;shot&quot;, just as a shorter burst of larger caliber rounds is still one &quot;shot&quot; for two different AC's both rated as, say &quot;AC/5&quot; but have different barrel sizes.

TT does the same thing. A single shot's worth of AC ammo is the same &quot;one cassette per firing&quot; regardless of an AC/5 being a 120mm, 90 or 60mm, whatever, and MWO can go the same route.

I agree. It would work similar to missiles, in that a trigger fires one salvo of missiles (5/10/15/20) and the launcher fires them out of whatever number of tubes are available. So, an LRM20 fired out of a four-tube launcher would fire once per trigger, but in four 5-missile clusters, expending the same 20 missiles as it would out of a 20-tube launcher. So an AC20 in a five-barrel slot would fire a burst of five 4-damage rounds per trigger, taking a single "shot" worth of ammo.

[Kyle Wright]

Strum Wealh, on 05 April 2014 - 01:03 AM, said:

The M256 120mm Smoothbore Gun, the main gun of the Abrams MBT, has a maximum effective range of approximately 3000 meters.

The 120mm GM Whirlwind AC/5 (the dorsal gun of the MAD-3R Marauder) fires three-shell bursts of 120mm shells and has an effective range of 18 hexes.
Under standard BattleTech rules, one hex equates to 30 meters and the AC/5's effective range (18 hexes) equates to the familiar 540 meters.
Under BattleForce rules, one hex equates to 180 meters and the AC/5's effective range (18 hexes) equates to 3240 meters (which, obviously, compares far more favorably with real-world ranges).

Likewise, using BattleForce scaling would also mean that TT LRMs (at 8.33 kg/missile & with an effective range of 21 hexes (630 meters for CBT, 3780 meters for BF)) would also compare more favorably with their real-world counterparts (the FIM-43 Redeye - 8.3 kg/missile & an effective range of 4500 meters).

However, using BF scaling for MWO would mean that even the smallest maps would have to be at least 10000 meters (10km) in diameter, once extreme ranges & damage drop-off were taken into account.

Right on! I just bought the TT Boxset so its cool to see someone bring some science into this conversation. I agree some maps like Rivercity and Forest Colony need to eventually be revamped and made bigger. If Rivercity was twice the size currently it would make for some interesting game play.

[shellashock]

wanderer, on 05 April 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

You don't. A burst of smaller caliber rounds is a "shot", just as a shorter burst of larger caliber rounds is still one "shot" for two different AC's both rated as, say "AC/5" but have different barrel sizes.

TT does the same thing. A single shot's worth of AC ammo is the same "one cassette per firing" regardless of an AC/5 being a 120mm, 90 or 60mm, whatever, and MWO can go the same route.

So if you equip an AC5 to a ballistic slot, it will automatically change any AC5 ammunition to whatever kind of "cassete" is required by the slot? Ok, that makes more sense.

[Cimarb]

shellashock, on 05 April 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

So if you equip an AC5 to a ballistic slot, it will automatically change any AC5 ammunition to whatever kind of "cassete" is required by the slot? Ok, that makes more sense.

Kind of. LRM ammo is LRM ammo, and AC5 ammo would still be AC5 ammo. When you pull the trigger once, there is a stat for the weapon that determines how many "rounds" are used up.

That being said, I would rather have a manufacturer variant system, not this dynamic tube system. With manufacturer variants, each one would have specific ammo for that specific variant. This would then allow PGI to balance them by reload cost as well as other factors. See the link in my sig for more info on manufacturer variants.

[stjobe]

shellashock, on 05 April 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

So if you equip an AC5 to a ballistic slot, it will automatically change any AC5 ammunition to whatever kind of "cassete" is required by the slot? Ok, that makes more sense.

No need to change anything: Every AC/5 uses "AC/5 ammo", which comes in lots of 30 shots per ton. AC/5 ammo is a generic term that says little to nothing about how many projectiles there are in those 30 shots.

TT calls one such shot a "cassette", so for AC/5 there's 30 cassettes to the ton.

That one make of AC uses 10-round cassettes and another uses 5-round cassettes or 100-round cassettes doesn't matter; one cassette is one burst is one shot.

You just tell your MechTech to load your 'mech up with X tons of AC/5 ammo and let them worry about the calibres, cassette sizes, exact number of rounds, and so on

Edited by stjobe, 05 April 2014 - 02:28 PM.

[Mirkk Defwode]

stjobe, on 05 April 2014 - 02:18 PM, said:

No need to change anything: Every AC/5 uses "AC/5 ammo", which comes in lots of 30 shots per ton. AC/5 ammo is a generic term that says little to nothing about how many projectiles there are in those 30 shots.

TT calls one such shot a "cassette", so for AC/5 there's 30 cassettes to the ton.

That one make of AC uses 10-round cassettes and another uses 5-round cassettes or 100-round cassettes doesn't matter; one cassette is one burst is one shot.

You just tell your MechTech to load your 'mech up with X tons of AC/5 ammo and let them worry about the calibres, cassette sizes, exact number of rounds, and so on

I would handle Cassettes differently. I think they should be viewed like Magazines for a rifle, it speed loads a box of rounds fitted for the weapon, then each weapon has a reload time associated with that for a decreased "recharge" time between shots or bursts. That way you fire of your rounds from a Cassette in a relatively quick fashion and then the reload kicks in.

This mechanic would be done away with for RACs once introduced as those would be entirely belt or chain fed systems.

I still agree that the cassette system should be picked up and used appropriately within the weapon systems though. It'd allow for a larger dynamic and a further difference in behavior from other systems.

[stjobe]

When we talk about burst-fire from ballistics, we talk about one press of the firing key firing the whole cassette. In essence, the size of the cassette is the size of the burst.

But one could also imagine a system where you'd need to keep the firing key depressed for the whole burst duration, and in which a quick tap of the firing button would fire just one round from the cassette. That single round would then of course only do (total damage / cassette size) damage, e.g. 5 damage from a single round of a 4-round burst AC/20.

Firing a single round from a cassette would not start the cooldown of the weapon, so the other three rounds in the example could be fired at a moment's notice. Only when the cassette is completely empty does the cooldown start (and signifies the time it takes to eject the spent cassette and load a full one from the ammo bin).

[nimdabew]

I don't think any of these suggestions will happen. It would be awesome, but I can imagine some kind of jamming Nerf for ACs like with UACs to tone down their fire rate. I personally think burst fire is an awesome idea and would give me my dakkadakka fix every few games.

[Cimarb]

stjobe, on 07 April 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

When we talk about burst-fire from ballistics, we talk about one press of the firing key firing the whole cassette. In essence, the size of the cassette is the size of the burst.

But one could also imagine a system where you'd need to keep the firing key depressed for the whole burst duration, and in which a quick tap of the firing button would fire just one round from the cassette. That single round would then of course only do (total damage / cassette size) damage, e.g. 5 damage from a single round of a 4-round burst AC/20.

Firing a single round from a cassette would not start the cooldown of the weapon, so the other three rounds in the example could be fired at a moment's notice. Only when the cassette is completely empty does the cooldown start (and signifies the time it takes to eject the spent cassette and load a full one from the ammo bin).

This is just from my own experience in the military with small arms, but when your M16 is set to "semi", it fires a burst of three rounds every time you pull the trigger. You can pull the trigger as quickly as you want, but it will fire those three-round bursts every trigger pull until the clip is emptied. I don't think it is (at least humanly) possible to fire less than three rounds in this mode, as it happens BRAAT, not BAM-BAM-BAM. When the M16 had a full auto mode, that would be a continuous stream as long as you held the trigger (or the clip ran out).

I think this is also the issue that a lot of people have with burst fire, as they think it will work like an AC2, which it wouldn't. It is a very, very quick burst (maybe 0.1-0.3 seconds) to fire the entire burst, though larger ACs could fire a longer burst if it is enough rounds. Regardless, it would be about a 0.1 or less duration between shells, and firing a single shell would be feasibly impossible.

I like what you propose about the cooldown not starting until the clip/magazine is expended, though.

[stjobe]

The machine gun I was trained on (FN MAG variant) had a variable fire rate of 600-900 rpm, and you could do single-shots with that if you practised a bit.

That was a continuous-fire weapon though, not a burst-fire one

[Cimarb]

stjobe, on 07 April 2014 - 11:45 AM, said:

The machine gun I was trained on (FN MAG variant) had a variable fire rate of 600-900 rpm, and you could do single-shots with that if you practised a bit.

That was a continuous-fire weapon though, not a burst-fire one

Yeah, I have to admit it's been a while since I was in the military, so I could be wrong. I do remember you could have decent success single-shot firing weapons like the SAW or M60, but it wasn't easy, but I think the M16 actually shoots three rounds in a burst no matter how short of a pull you made, as long as it is in that mode, of course.

[Tombstoner]

Effectz, on 03 April 2014 - 12:43 PM, said:

When Paul is finished with this game there will be nothing left except to use sticks and rocks,and people will probably cry to nerf them too.

Clan sticks and rock are OP...... they need to be nerfed.....


But seriously the only reason i can see them looking at Ac's now after all this time is they completed the first draft of clan tech and did some internal testing and found them in need of a little "adjustment".

[Darian DelFord]

I just can not wait until they nerf these damn things, most OP weapons in the game right now. Little to no heat ammo is a joke for an excuse of a balance equation. All you see is AC 2 AC5 UA5 and AC 20. That should tell you something.

[Roland]

Darian DelFord, on 07 April 2014 - 07:39 PM, said:

I just can not wait until they nerf these damn things, most OP weapons in the game right now. Little to no heat ammo is a joke for an excuse of a balance equation. All you see is AC 2 AC5 UA5 and AC 20. That should tell you something.

You never see any ppcs, lasers, or missiles?

[MustrumRidcully]

Max Range decrease, projectile speed increase for some weapons and burst fire sounds worth exploring to me.