517 replies to this topic

[AlmightyAeng]

LORD TSARKON, on 27 March 2014 - 08:07 AM, said:

Paul just stated that major weapon tuning will not happen.. they are happy with the current State of weapon Balancing..

Think of the people first

Yeah...this was said in the third Dev Vlog right before he changed up missiles.

[PhoenixFire55]

Even up ACs firing rate, just like its done with lasers and LRMs.

[Ultimax]

Khobai, on 27 March 2014 - 09:35 AM, said:

I'd still argue that PPC/ACs are more accurate because PGI doesnt calculate laser accuracy correctly.

Yes, I posted that I recognize that issue.

As I said however it also demonstrates that you can adjust and do some damage with lasers.

Sure, a "glance" is fairly useless, but if you can manage to get half the damage out of your beam by adjusting it you will still have done more damage than 0.

Some is better than 0.

Regardless, this doesn't address any of the other points I've made with regards to some of the perks that lasers do have.

I know it's easy to ignore those in favor of pushing for a nerf somewhere else, but those advantages exist regardless.



Lastly, you can calculate your lasers damage vs. acc and then compare that to your ballistics damage vs. acc in your pilot stats.

Ghost Badger, on 27 March 2014 - 09:45 AM, said:

Yeah...this was said in the third Dev Vlog right before he changed up missiles.

To be fair from a developer's point of view, the kind of change that LRMs got was probably not a major tuning.

Even though a 45% flight speed increase feels like a lot to a player, it's really a minor tweak in the grand scheme of all of the moving parts.

[Cardos]

hmm.....i hardly hope of some kind of logistical-limitation with community warfare.....you could only bring so much amunnition with your dropship and the longer the campain is running the tighter is the ammunitionstock as u use em.....somthing like that, but would bring a need of some restriction about "instantly" changing weapons on those campains.....well, we will see

[Raso]

Trauglodyte, on 21 March 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

1a - Recalculate extreme range so that the next larger AC doesn't outperform the one above (ie, the AC20 shouldn't out damage the AC10 at range, so on and so forth).

This. A thousand times this.

[Kali Rinpoche]

Two big things come to mind for me.

1.Make ACs not fire when jumping/in the air. (Jump AC sniping eliminated.)
2. Range x2, with slightly longer reloads.

Remove charge time for Gauss after doing #1. Force mechs to expose themselves flat footed to fire AC rounds.



•Reduce maximum range from 3x to 2x
x2
•Reduce projectile speeds
No, increase AC20 speeds again.
•Increase Cooldown (lower rate of fire)
Yes for AC2 maybe UAC5
•Burst fire (beam-like damage)
No, hate this for lasers but understand why its there for them.
•Reduce Ammo per ton
No
•Increase critical slots by 1
no
•Recoil (based on impulse)
Maybe slightly
•Ammo location requirements (ammo has to be in same component or adjacent component)
No
•Convergence (based on weapon tonnage)
Maybe for assaults
•Increase drop-off rate of auto-cannon rounds (from Coralld)
at beyond x2 significantly.

Why they are at it, make PPC not fire while jumping either.

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 27 March 2014 - 10:34 AM.

[Harathan]

My number 1 favorite change to all ammo consuming weapons would be a requirement for it to be in the same or adjacent component. It's in the fluff, it'll force smarter play, it'll actually make people start using CASE, you'll see an improvement in the balance between FLD and other weapons. Everyone wins except the min-max builders who are screwing up the meta anyway.

[stjobe]

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 10:01 AM, said:

Lastly, you can calculate your lasers damage vs. acc and then compare that to your ballistics damage vs. acc in your pilot stats.

You'd have to adjust the values for damage per hit to get a fair comparison, since lasers count a single tick of damage as a full hit for accuracy purposes.

Let's compare my ML and AC/5 stats:

ML (66.96% accuracy)
1576 damage in 685 hits = 2.3 damage per hit (46%)
66.96 * 0.46 = 30.8%

AC/5 (40.04% accuracy)
918 damage in 185 hits = 4.96 damage per hit (99.2%)
40.04 * 0.992 = 39.72%

As you can see, even though the accuracy number says I'm 26% more accurate with the ML, in actuality I deal less than 50% of the damage per hit, which results in the ML being 10% less effective compared to the AC/5.

[Quintus Verus]

I have to agree with Kali on this:

"1. Make ACs not fire when jumping/in the air. (Jump AC sniping eliminated.)"

[Prezimonto]

Harathan, on 27 March 2014 - 10:51 AM, said:

My number 1 favorite change to all ammo consuming weapons would be a requirement for it to be in the same or adjacent component. It's in the fluff, it'll force smarter play, it'll actually make people start using CASE, you'll see an improvement in the balance between FLD and other weapons. Everyone wins except the min-max builders who are screwing up the meta anyway.

It won't do anything really for three reasons:

1st, ammo explosions are very, very, uncommon.
2nd, the vast majority of mechs roll with XL engines not standards, making CASE extra pointless.
3rd, no engine crits means you don't really even need a reason to pad your side torsos to protect those engine slots.

[Ultimax]

stjobe, on 27 March 2014 - 10:52 AM, said:

You'd have to adjust the values for damage per hit to get a fair comparison, since lasers count a single tick of damage as a full hit for accuracy purposes.

Let's compare my ML and AC/5 stats:

ML (66.96% accuracy)
1576 damage in 685 hits = 2.3 damage per hit (46%)
66.96 * 0.46 = 30.8%

AC/5 (40.04% accuracy)
918 damage in 185 hits = 4.96 damage per hit (99.2%)
40.04 * 0.992 = 39.72%

As you can see, even though the accuracy number says I'm 26% more accurate with the ML, in actuality I deal less than 50% of the damage per hit, which results in the ML being 10% less effective compared to the AC/5.

Thank you for that comparison, it's much appreciated.

A few questions/comments:

1) I'm not saying this to be rude, I'm very very far from being a crack shot but that accuracy for the MLas seems a touch on the low side. (Perhaps this is an ELO bracket thing, as I'm a new player and have no illusions about what bracket I'm likely in. - i.e. my accuracy might be higher because my opponents aren't higher ELO themselves)

2) It's kind of a hard comparison, MLAS vs. AC 5. While superficially they both do the same damage per single hit, in all other respects they are apples and oranges. For example, from a raw DPS comparison ACs are nearly 3x as effective by design (3.33 DPS vs. 1.25 DPS).



> Ranges are massively different.
> For the tonnage of 1 AC 5 and 2 tons of ammo you can slot 6 Medium lasers and 4 DHS (which is a 30 point alpha).



Also, wouldn't it be accurate to say that inflated hits/accuracy is unfairly averaging the damage per hit of the MLAS in this scenario?

What if we just roughly assume that your ACC with your lasers is more realistically the same (unlikely, but it's just theorycrafting) as your ACC with your AC 5s.

(I might make a mistake here, feel free to correct me)


ML ACC (66.96)
-40% to adjust for glancing hits
= 40.18 "actual" (Compared to AC/5 40.04% accuracy)

685 hits
-40% to adjust for glancing hits
= 411 "actual" hits

1576 damage in 411 hits = 3.83 damage per hit (76%)

MLAS Adjusted: 40.18 * 0.76 = 30.54%
AC 5 40.04 * 0.992 = 39.72%



So still lower, but not massively so. And it's still a 1 ton, 1 slot weapon vs. an 8+2 (10) ton, 6+2 (8) slot weapon.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 27 March 2014 - 12:09 PM.

[Cimarb]

Tanar, on 27 March 2014 - 07:48 AM, said:

cutting the range down to 2x would be the most important change to me.

of lesser importance the ac20 should not be outdamaging the ac10 in the ac10's primary range as others have said. maybe slight decreases to the ac2 and ac5 ammo/ton, ac10 and 20 are fine. also a bit more of a height drop to acs when firing beyond their normal range so if you aim that AC2 at someone's head at max range it hits them in the feet.

Ammo should be left alone - it doesn't fix anything that needs fixing. Range should be fixed - in fact, all weapons should have the same range modifier across the board.

Coralld, on 27 March 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:

@VXJaeger

ACs never really got a balance over hall. The only thing that ACs got hit with nerf wise is Ghost Heat and a slight bump in heat but that only really effected AC2s but AC2s are still very nasty.

True, and this is dumb, because ballistics are supposed to be the "low heat, high weight and ammo" weapon. Instead, they are "high heat, high weight and ammo" because PGI refuses to fix their damage delivery.

LORD TSARKON, on 27 March 2014 - 08:07 AM, said:

There will be no BURST FIRE AUTOCANNONS....

Paul just stated that major weapon tuning will not happen.. they are happy with the current State of weapon Balancing..

but he did say Autocannons will be "adjusted"...

Look at simpler things to adjust..

Added Heat..

Reduced Range

Reduced Speed

Reduced Ammo


One or some or ALL of those things ARE going to happen... within the next month.....

To radically change an entire weapon system to burst fire is beyond what PGI could probably do right now with Launch module and Clans and Community Warfare coming.... The 3 people they have on these jobs are already complaining of no breaks and vacation..

Think of the people first

You probably didn't read it, but StJobe showed how easy of a change making autocannons burst-fire would be. Look back a page or two. It is actually an easier change than some of the ones you described, and as easy as the rest.

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 08:26 AM, said:

I saw that, but I'm not convinced that's actually a fair change.

I know it might be shocking but there are a lot of situations I find the instant hit and adjustable trajectory as well as perfect trajectory (0 effect of gravity at range, i.e. AC shells start to fall, especially AC 10/20) of lasers to be an advantage.

I can often turn what would be a miss from a laser into "some damage" which is better than "no damage".
I can't do that with a ballistic weapon, it either hits or it misses. All the damage or zero damage.

Where ballistics have a high speed, lasers are instant.

They are not held back by speed at all.

I'd be concerned that a burst fire would have all of the drawbacks of a DoT weapon (laser, instant travel time) while retaining the drawback of either hitting or missing completely (ballistic travel time).

If ballistics went to burst-fire, they would function technically similar to a laser. A laser does damage throughout the beam duration, but not constantly - it is "invisible pulses". For instance, if you slash your laser across a pack of mechs, it may not do damage to some of them, as it only does damage at certain times during the beam.

Burst-fire autocannons would be similar in that the shells fired during the burst would only do damage if they hit, but the short duration of the burst would mean it looks like a line of shells - that doesn't mean it would slash like a sword across six mechs, but could do damage to several of them based upon how you traced across them.

TygerLily, on 27 March 2014 - 08:40 AM, said:

It could be:

MG slot
AC2 = 2 round burst, 1 dmg
AC5 = 3 round burst, 1.6dmg
LB10X = 3 round burst, 3.3 dmg per shotgun volley
AC10= 3 round burst, 3.3 dmg
AC20 = 3 round burst, 6.6 dmg

AC2 calibur
AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg (duh)
AC5 = 2 round burst, 2.5 dmg
LB10X = 2 round burst, 5 dmg per shotgun volley
AC10= 3 round burst, 3.3 dmg
AC20 = 3 round burst, 6.6 dmg

AC5 calibur
AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg
AC5 = 1 round burst, 5 dmg
LB10X = 2 round burst, 5 dmg per shotgun volley
AC10= 2 round burst, 5 dmg
AC20 = 3 round burst, 6.6 dmg

AC10 calibur

AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg
AC5 = 1round burst, 5 dmg
LB10X = 1 shot, 10 dmg
AC10= 1 round burst, 10 dmg
AC20 = 2 round burst, 10 dmg

AC10/Gauss calibur

AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg
AC5 = 1round burst, 5 dmg
AC10= 1 round burst, 10 dmg
AC20 = 2 round burst, 10 dmg

AC20 calibur
One size fits all

Considerations:
UAC...maybe UAC's added bonus is that they ignore slot calibur.

Gauss...this kind of brings up rate of fire for each shot. Since it's long distance, Gauss could be at most 2 round burst for a calibur of 2 or 5, with very little time between shots leaving the barrel. And unchanged for calibur 10 or 20.

Time between shots:
- Should they prevent the AC20 in a 5 slot (3 round burst of 6.6 dmg) from being a crazy, triple barrel UAC 5? It seems horrifying at first, but remember that they are dedicating a lot of weight to the system, only 7 shots per ton, only a range of 270 meters, the whole system is still one weapon/component...I think it would be fine.
- They could also set this to be related to the "distance from the intended calibur". So an MG slot having an AC20 in it has a slower time between each round leaving the barrel (nothing super drastic...nothing more than .5 seconds, etc.) as compared to a faster time if you are trying to get an AC20 in an 10 calibur slot.

Weapon cooldown would start when the final round leaves the barrel.

I like that system, and it is probably the most sensible way I have heard it described.

Joseph Mallan, on 27 March 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

Well that show you see it. I look at the hit percentage AND the damage for a better illustration of my Laser accuracy.

You may, but most people, including even PGI more than likely, don't. When they see "80% accuracy" on lasers, they think, "wow, that weapon must be amazing", when in actuality it is only doing a small portion of its potential damage each hit and is severely underpowered because of that.

Quintus Verus, on 27 March 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

I have to agree with Kali on this:

"1. Make ACs not fire when jumping/in the air. (Jump AC sniping eliminated.)"

No, absolutely not. This isn't about jump snipers, and you are wanting to completely eliminate that style of play, which is wrong.

[Ultimax]

Cimarb, on 27 March 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

If ballistics went to burst-fire, they would function technically similar to a laser. A laser does damage throughout the beam duration, but not constantly - it is "invisible pulses". For instance, if you slash your laser across a pack of mechs, it may not do damage to some of them, as it only does damage at certain times during the beam.

Interesting, thanks for the clarification.

Is it known how frequently they pulse or how many there pulses are within the 1s duration of the beam?

Cimarb, on 27 March 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

Burst-fire autocannons would be similar in that the shells fired during the burst would only do damage if they hit, but the short duration of the burst would mean it looks like a line of shells - that doesn't mean it would slash like a sword across six mechs, but could do damage to several of them based upon how you traced across them.

The only way I could see this being a fair-handed change would be to then increase the speeds a bit on several of the autocannons.

Otherwise they are now functioning in burst/pulses (as you described) like a laser while retaining their travel time drawback (one that lasers don't have).

(Particularly AC 10 & AC 20)

Edited by Ultimatum X, 27 March 2014 - 12:41 PM.

[stjobe]

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 12:07 PM, said:

that accuracy for the MLas seems a touch on the low side

I used my current stats, and since it's only been about a week, there's still some sample size bias to the numbers.

We can use the same calculations using my archived stats:

ML (87.82% accuracy)
74,568 damage in 28,713 hits = 2.6 damage per hit (52%)
87.82 * 0.52 = 45.7%

AC/5 (45.82% accuracy)
11,353 damage in 2,262 hits = 5.01 damage per hit (100.2%)
45.82 * 1.002 = 45.9%

So with a bit better accuracy on the ML historically, the ML and the AC/5 are basically dead even in efficiency, even though my accuracy percentage is almost twice as high for the ML.

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 12:07 PM, said:

2) It's kind of a hard comparison, MLAS vs. AC 5. While superficially they both do the same damage per single hit, in all other respects they are apples and oranges.

Yes, I'm fully aware. I just used them since they had the same damage, so it was easy to compare effectiveness of damage dealt.

We could try a comparison of the LL and the AC/10 instead (archived stats):

LL (82.65% accuracy)
40,953 damage in 8,765 hits = 4.67 damage per hit (51.8%)
82.65 * 0.518 = 42.8%

AC/10 (52.58% accuracy)
8,129 damage in 805 hits = 10.09 damage per hit (100.9%)
52.58 * 1.009 = 53.05%

Here again the AC has a 30% lower accuracy but a more than 10% lead in effectiveness.

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 12:07 PM, said:

Also, wouldn't it be accurate to say that inflated hits/accuracy is unfairly averaging the damage per hit of the MLAS in this scenario?

No, a hit is a hit, and it can't be counted as a disadvantage here while maintaining it's an advantage in other arguments.

The average damage per hit for a beam duration weapon is roughly half of the average damage per hit of a instant-hit weapon, that cannot be disregarded.

So you *have* to hit more often with the laser to keep up with the damage that the instant-damage weapon does - even if it's just partial damage.

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

Is it known how frequently they pulse or how many there pulses are within the 1s duration of the beam?

Ten ticks of damage for a 1 second duration beam.

Edited by stjobe, 27 March 2014 - 01:28 PM.

[Prezimonto]

Prezimonto, on 27 March 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

UAC's I'd turn into auto fire weapons, hold the button down and they start churning out low damage rounds every fraction of a second. Basically make them long range MG's. I'd consider giving the weapon an overheat counter or bar so as it fires it overheats... let if fire long enough to do around 1.5 damage of a regular AC of the type and then the heat has to bleed before it can be fired again. If it overheats it locks up for an extra second or two. This normalizes the damage, but the cool down could be slow relative to cool down of the non-ultra version so that it gives a single big burst and then a long time to do more big burst and so the relative damage output of the UAC's is roughly equal to AC's, but more about hit and run tactics.

I just wanted to expand on my earlier idea after thinking about it for a bit and lets do this graphically. It's just better that way.

Say the UAC weapons function like a mini-gun. Give it a 2 second spin up time, and a barrel cool down time of 5 total second for full cooldown. This is completely divorced from heat sinks as it's to balance the engagement windows of UAC's.

I would set it up so a UAC in a weapon group starts spinning with the first click, starts firing with the second click and shuts off with a third click and then starts cooling off. This works with the weapon grouping system in the game and doesn't involve multiple buttons to control the weapon, just it's own weapon group.

So an AC5 can fire every 1.5 seconds for 5 damage. A UAC5 spins up, and then fires a 3 damage shot every 0.5 seconds that you hold the button down after the 2 second spin up time. Having the barrel spin doesn't build barrel heat, but also doesn't let the barrel cool off. So you can prep-spin, but you have to wind down to ready the next burst.

https://docs.google....VkE&usp=sharing
https://docs.google....zx=icucqfn30q5t


https://docs.google....zx=7eux8cxd3cdk

Note that the two stay in fairly tight lockstep for overall dps over time, but are used in very different ways, and would have a very different feel in game play each with their own pros and cons.

Also note at the 4.5 to 6 second mark (4 to 5 AC5 shots) the weapons are doing about equal damage. So for short firing engagements they have rough parity. The UAC5 user gets a heavy benefit for staying engaged for the additional 4 to 5 seconds, but then would want to be looking for cover at the end of it with a 7 second break (5 seconds of cooldown and 2 seconds of spin up) about to happen.

The barrel heat mechanic linked to the barrel spin up ensures that a player isn't going to pull more dps out the weapon over time than is intended, so macros won't benefit anyone.

Also, I realize I just wasted a hour of my life on an aside for this thread, should I go post this as it's own thing, or is it redundant at this point?

Edited by Prezimonto, 27 March 2014 - 01:56 PM.

[oldradagast]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 21 March 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

(I wanted to make this a Poll, but either I am too dumb to figure out how to make one, or naive enough to believe a public forum was a good place for gathering consensus)

Paul said autocannons are getting an adjustment, what do you think it should be and why? (Note these changes only apply to autocannons, not other projectile weapons like Gauss and PPC).

• Reduce maximum range from 3x to 2x

Yes. i have no idea why they get special treatment. If anything, beam weapons should have super-long range and projectiles should not.

• Reduce projectile speeds

No. The AC20 is already a slug thanks to this change, and with the hit registration issues having the worst effects on slower shots, this is a bad idea.

• Increase Cooldown (lower rate of fire)

No, though maybe AC2's could stand this a bit... generally not worth it.

• Burst fire (beam-like damage)

Maybe. If the game engine could handle it, but I have my doubts given how badly it handled SRM's.

• Reduce Ammo per ton

I'd prefer not since this seems to fix the problem from an odd angle vs. actually comparing the effectiveness of energy weapons vs. ballistics.

• Increase critical slots by 1

NO! This violates Battletech cannon and buggers up stock builds. It also makes it impossible to fit AC20's in arms of mechs that could previously fit them, etc. Very bad idea.

• Recoil (based on impulse)

Maybe - this should really only happen if you're jump jetting and firing a ballistic weapon, IMHO.

• Ammo location requirements (ammo has to be in same component or adjacent component)

Blah... the problem here is that the legs become totally useless since there are no other components that can fit there, which takes away some creativity.

• Convergence (based on weapon tonnage)

Maybe. The problem is that they have basically admitted that they are not sure how to fix the pinpoint convergence issue.

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

Again, I would prefer not. The AC20 already feels like a football, and this wouldn't really stop the rapid-fire lighter AC rounds... unless they had huge dropoff, in which case the heavier rounds would fly like lead balloons and be useless.

[Cimarb]

Ultimatum X, on 27 March 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

The only way I could see this being a fair-handed change would be to then increase the speeds a bit on several of the autocannons.

Otherwise they are now functioning in burst/pulses (as you described) like a laser while retaining their travel time drawback (one that lasers don't have).

(Particularly AC 10 & AC 20)

Yeah, speed of the weapons would go up, as it would be determined by the firing rate, so an autocannon that fires very fast would also have a fast projectile speed and little drop at maximum range, while a slow firing autocannon would have a slow projectile speed and lots of drop at max.

[TexAce]

They wont add anything new, its just Paul, he will nerf them by tweaking some numbers and thats all, like he always does. Nerf everything.

Edited by TexAss, 27 March 2014 - 01:49 PM.

[ArchSight]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 21 March 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

• Increase Cooldown (lower rate of fire)
  
• Burst fire (beam-like damage) = Ultra AC, not AC

Increasing the cool down is the best option because energy based weapons also have a mechanic that prevents refiring them like a cool down but more like taking the time to reload a gun but in the form of heat build up. Ammunition based weapons don't have to reload though they only have to wait for a cool down that energy based weapons also have. Instead of increasing cool down, maybe add a reload time mechanic to ammunition based weapons after a certain amount of shots fired.

The lower ton AC's out damage the higher toned AC's because of the fire rate(cool down) even though the accuracy could spread the damage around if the player has bad aim.

The low heat and the fire rate is what I think is causing autocannons to out perform other weapons.

The burst fire idea is only going to change auto cannons into ultra autocannons which we already have, going to get more of soon, and player's accuracy isn't going to be that bad using them that way either.

Edited by ArchSight, 27 March 2014 - 02:31 PM.

[PropagandaWar]

Recoil for all AC and PPC weapons. That is all.