17 replies to this topic

[Aim-Bot]

This is just an offer from me of how balance could look like to make short range Mechs and loadouts more viable.
Every weapon or item that is not listed works fine in my opinion.

Equip

Jump Jets - 2% heat per secong while burning


Ballistic

AC 5/UAC5 - burst dmg / reduce range to 450 meter

AC 10 - burst dmg / reduce range to 370 meter

AC 20 - burst dmg


Energy

PPC - burst dmg / double heat when fireing 2 or more while the mech is in the air.


I think this should solve the poptart meta.
What are you thinking?

Edited by MetalGandalph, 04 June 2014 - 09:55 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Most of your changes are either bad ideas or poorly formulated, but some of them have the core of a good idea.

1 - ACs moving to burst fire is probably a good plan. I suggest 4-round bursts, with a 0.10s delay between shells in a burst (total burst time of 0.30s). They do not need range nerfs, as the move from 3x to 2x max seems to have reduced that particular area of stupidity sufficiently.

2 - PPC damage spread is a good idea, but burst damage is not a good plan. Neither is the commonly suggested splash idea. The best I've encountered is the idea of damage arcing, where the PPC applies some percentage of its damage on impact, and then arcs to two new locations where it splits the rest of its damage (I favor a 2-jump system with 50% on impact, 30% on first jump, and 20% on second jump). PGI would have a lot of room to play with damage arcing mechanics (random path, or one of several potential fixed paths).

3 - JJ heat increase. Really, it shouldn't have to be much, but adding a bit more (not a percentage, as that varies from build to build based on heat sink total) based on JJ class seems like it'd probably be a good idea (0.50t JJs might be +1.0 heat per second, 1.00t JJs might be +2 h/s, and 2.00t JJs might be +3 hps, but of course PGI would want to play with the numbers). Since more JJs grant more burn time, you wouldn't need to scale by number of JJs, as it would happen naturally if the mech burned more JJ fuel.

4 - Really, though, dynamic precision reduction (I favor a mixed system based on heat %, throttle %, and stability state), the upcoming (soon, hopefully) fall damage rework, and a variant-based max armor rework (similar to Koniving's proposed system) would probably do the most to help the game out without modifying basic weapon behaviors.

[GreyGriffin]

I really don't like the idea of burst fire autocannons or dot PPCs. Although it would probably improve ballistic balance in lieu of a real fix like contextual cone of fire, it robs AC's of the unique characteristic that separates them from lasers. Right now they (or rather the AC/5) works in tandem with the PPC to form the sniper meta, but they are not the real culprit. Instant pinpoint convergence is.

I'd be interested to see how half damage, double ROF, 20% impulse treated autocannons in general, but that is me. PPCs need some kind of fix to pinpoint damage, period. Otherwise with your fix they just turn into really bad ER Larges, or with the commonly touted "arcing" solution they just... turn into reasonably bad ER Larges.

[Scarlett Avignon]

These are pretty bad. Going to burst damage for the ACs would be fine, but the range reductions are redundant penalties that aren't needed. If the PPC needs to be nerfed (which I really don't think it does) perhaps just give it an very short duration damage effect. maybe .2 seconds. Just enough that the damage will be smeared a bit. They need to stay away from long duration, large area affect, because they would just become another laser, then.

[Lykaon]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 04 June 2014 - 11:02 PM, said:

2 - PPC damage spread is a good idea, but burst damage is not a good plan. Neither is the commonly suggested splash idea. The best I've encountered is the idea of damage arcing, where the PPC applies some percentage of its damage on impact, and then arcs to two new locations where it splits the rest of its damage (I favor a 2-jump system with 50% on impact, 30% on first jump, and 20% on second jump). PGI would have a lot of room to play with damage arcing mechanics (random path, or one of several potential fixed paths).

Here is my gripe with PPC arcing damage.There is no degree of skill that can compensate to regain focused damage if the PPC mechanics always disperse damage regardless of the shooters accuracy.

Using a damage profile like a laser allows a skilled and dextrous player to keep the beam on target.With sufficent skill most if not all of the laser's damage will be where the shooter wanted it.The PPC arc idea means no matter how skilled a player is at aiming there will be no reward for that skill because damage dispersal is a mandatory effect of the PPC arc mechanics.

Burst auto cannons and lasers will have the reward for skill and a superior gunner can get superior results from these weapons.PPC arcing however will always give you dispersed damage patterns and likely shift the PPC weapons to the bottom of the barrel where our lasers and missiles are sitting now.

What we have currently are the following damage application mechanics.

Hit scan: Lasers and pulse lasers use this mechanic for applying damage to a target.A durational damaging effect (beam,pulse beam) applies damage over the course of it's duration AND contact on a target.

Front loaded damage: Autocannons and PPC weapons use this method of damage application.A single shot applies 100% of it's damage potential to a single location hit by the shot at the instant it hits.

Clustered: SRMs and LBX weapons use this mechanic for damage application.With this method the total damage potential is spread across several projectiles that have a open and dispersed pattern in flight resulting in the damage being applied per projectile that impacts a target and applied to the location each projectile strikes.This genrally spreads the total damage value across several body location and also has potential for individual projectiles to miss entirely.

Random targeted: Stream SRMs use this mechanic to apply damage.At the moment the SSRM is fired it has a randomly assigned point of impact that will recieve the damage from the projectile.This creates a mandatory random spread of the damage but is largely compensated for by the self guiding mechanics streaks use.

Cone of fire: Machine guns and LRMs use a damage mechanic that is essentially a cone of fire mechanic.With this method a cluster of projectiles are spread out in a cone pattern and patterned around the center of the cone for possition relative to target impact point.This of course disperses damage and prevents high concentrations of damage to singular locations.

Out of all of these damage application mechanics only one grants the user the luxary of producing tightly focused high volumes of damage in an extremley brief amount of time.
Front Loaded Damage is the outside element here.All of the other damage application methods create effects that reduce concentrated high volume damage.

When looking to correct his mechanics error we should be very careful not create unwanted side effects like PPC performance falling to far below other weapon mechanics so that it becomes a poor choice.

If Lasers keep their current mechanics and ACs become burst fire while PPCs become arcing the AC and laser damage application methods will be superior because they allow for player skill to reduce the loss of concentrated damage application while PPC arcing removes player skill from improving results per shot on the PPC since the arcing mechanics assign the damage regardless of player ability.

[Aim-Bot]

I am from germany and its maybe right that my post is not that good formulated as it would be in german.
Anyways the idea behind the reduced range for ac 10 and ac5 is that this would make them more a medium range weapon wich is not that good for jumpsniping anymore.

[Lykaon]

GreyGriffin, on 04 June 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

I really don't like the idea of burst fire autocannons or dot PPCs. Although it would probably improve ballistic balance in lieu of a real fix like contextual cone of fire, it robs AC's of the unique characteristic that separates them from lasers. Right now they (or rather the AC/5) works in tandem with the PPC to form the sniper meta, but they are not the real culprit. Instant pinpoint convergence is.

Give it a good long look and see if it actually is a convergence issue or a front loading damage issue.

If it was simply a convergence issue then why are we not seeing lasers as being meta.If convergence is the issue then wouldn't the ability to hit instantly (like a laser) and correct misses ( like a laser can) coupled with no ammo dependency and relativley good damage to heat outputs make them ideal for use in groupfired clusters?

Go look at the listed tournament winners mechs.there are none over 35 tons that even use a laser or a weapon that is not FLD at all. All of them are AC5 + PPC with a rare gauss thrown in. FLD is the meta and it is seperate from convergence.A single FLD weapon still produces the damaging mechanics that make them superior to all other damage application methods.

So let's say we get a fix to instant pinpoint convergence what now?

the new meta is chain fired Front loaded Damage weapons since they still posses the superior damage dealing mechanics.
FLD weapons still rule the roost with all other weapons being second and third class.

Why use two large pulse laser to apply dispersed damage all over a target and have to deal with the nerf to convergence if a solo AC20 is superior in every way mechanicaly speaking?

Addressing convergence to fix what is actually a FLD mechanics issue will be about as effective as addressing heat as a means of handling FLD (ghostheat) our meta shifted very slightly but still revolved around the FLD mechanics.

Now as for robbing AC of thier unique character.Part of the problem is their unique character is breaking the game.The FLD needs to go.But FLD is not the only unique character ACs posses.

Lasers produce no impulse to the target ACs do.
Lasers produce higher heat and have longer recycle times on average than an AC.
Lasers fire easy to see beams ACs are not as easily "traced" to their source.

Just think about the battletech table top game. In that game mechanicaly speaking the laser damage and the AC damage were treated exactally the same yet players still opted to use the ACs because they had more characteristics than a single differentiating feature like FLD.

We need to bite the bullet and realize that preserving one characteristic of a weapon is not worth having a garbage mechanic dictate the meta.I personaly have grown quite bored with only having 20% of MWo as viable in competition.

MetalGandalph, on 05 June 2014 - 12:06 AM, said:

I am from germany and its maybe right that my post is not that good formulated as it would be in german. Anyways the idea behind the reduced range for ac 10 and ac5 is that this would make them more a medium range weapon wich is not that good for jumpsniping anymore.

Removing the front loaded damage mechanic would make them not good at jump sniping AND solve a host of other issues.

Many of the suggestions are redundant solutions to an issue or outright sledgehammering a mechanic into submission to the point that it becomes utterly useless.

Small adjustments done after careful consideration is the way to go.

[Alex Warden]

Lyakon, it´s the MIX of pinpoint and convergence that makes pinpoint weapons so attractive...

on the other hand, if you´d re-add the convergence, that would impact lasers too, which means their effective cycletime would rise even more i guess... aim-converge-burntime-recycle-aim-converge... move on...

i start to get some BIG doubts that there is ANY way to bring TRUE balance into this game other than COMPLETELY redesign the whole system...

like:
no group/alpha fire AT ALL..
-no convergence, so FIXED weapons unless in arms...
-jumpjets flying in an arch, not straight/ close to straight upwards
-no indirect fire for LRMs unless you have a scout with proper TARGETDESIGNATORS
-no customization of loadouts other than paintjobs,/ cockpit/ maybe structure, enginesize and heatsinks

just to name a few things that MIGHT change something... everything else that has been done or has been suggested are just shifting the problem, not erasing it...

NOTE: i am not promoting any of those things above, it just ghot to my mind that REDOING THE WHOLE GAMES MECHANICS might be the only true solution, which is NOT gonna happen... and even if so, i am not sure if that would change anything but AGAIN shifting problems ...

Edited by Alex Warden, 05 June 2014 - 12:28 AM.

[GreyGriffin]

Alex Warden, on 05 June 2014 - 12:26 AM, said:

Lyakon, it´s the MIX of pinpoint and convergence that makes pinpoint weapons so attractive...

QFT

Front-Loaded damage is only OP because of pinpoint aim. The ability to pull the trigger for 30 damage and have it land exactly on target is endemic to the way Battletech (and by extension, MWO) treats its 'mech's armor. If weapons had dynamic inaccuracy, then FLD could be balanced much more effectively by a number of factors like cone of fire and rate of fire, while lasers would actually gain a huge buff because of their ability to track fire from a slightly off aim onto a targeted area.

For the record, the "Swiftback," the 350XL small laser boating hunchback, was one of the premier 'mechs of choice during early closed beta, before chassis-specific engine size caps brought the the Splatcat and Gausscat front and center. b33f actually recently did a video about his "Partyback," which is still legit.

Edited by GreyGriffin, 05 June 2014 - 12:52 AM.

[Lykaon]

GreyGriffin, on 05 June 2014 - 12:38 AM, said:

QFT

Front-Loaded damage is only OP because of pinpoint aim. The ability to pull the trigger for 30 damage and have it land exactly on target is endemic to the way Battletech (and by extension, MWO) treats its 'mech's armor. If weapons had dynamic inaccuracy, then FLD could be balanced much more effectively by a number of factors like cone of fire and rate of fire, while lasers would actually gain a huge buff because of their ability to track fire from a slightly off aim onto a targeted area.

For the record, the "Swiftback," the 350XL small laser boating hunchback, was one of the premier 'mechs of choice during early closed beta, before chassis-specific engine size caps brought the the Splatcat and Gausscat front and center. b33f actually recently did a video about his "Partyback," which is still legit.

Ok let's take this a little bit at a time.

FLD has the advantage of in no way what so ever EVER dispersing it's damage over multiple locations.this effect is exclusive and seperate from convergence since a single FLD weapon posseses this capacity and even when taken singularly has a vast advantage over the other damage application mechanics in MWo.

So,if a singular FLD weapon has the most favorable damage dealing mechanic then obviously more is better.So we see grouped FLD weapons in use.

Now,we look at convergence and how it applies to this situation.

Instant convergence allows all of these grouped FLD weapons to maximize damage with pinpoint accuracy.This is of course bad because it magnifies the effects of FLD mechanics.This is an obvious to recognize problem because it has several negative effects on gameplay with the top issue being the deminished value of armor that is not on the mech's core and vital areas.The tactic is aim several FLD grouped weapons at center mass and take armor belonging to all other locations out of play by never allowing it to absorb incoming damage. (a mechanics failure event with our armor mechanics being so heavily derived from the table top game)

So let's see what happens if only the convergence issue is addressed and FLD mechanics are left untouched.

All weapons no longer instantly converge on target and are all equally treated by an accuracy "nerf" for grouped weapons.

Since the superior FLD mechanic still exists why would we be using inaccurate hit scan or cluster fire weapons that already dispersed damage ?Now without benifit of instant convergence hitscan weapons are clearly inferior choices the lack of convergence compounds pre existing mechanics that dispersed damage.

Hitscan weapons take two hits to accuracy one from the hitscan mechanic and a second from convergence mechanics

Meanwhile FLD weapons only have the convergence issue and still retain the superior snapfire mechanics that make them idea for poptarting and poke and shoot tactics.The FLD weapons still enjoy superior damage application methods and superior defensive tactics do to snapfire.

Results: Mechs will continue to use FLD weapons other weapons will still be under powered and under represented and the meta will still consist of less than 20% of the total of MWo as being competitivley viable.

Essentially same situation same sh*t sandwitch different toppings.Just like how ghost heat shifted the meta from 4x PPC to 2x AC5 2X PPC the meta was the same FLD was the key effect it revolves around.

Edited by Lykaon, 05 June 2014 - 04:13 AM.

[Lykaon]

Now if you want a nice and elegant quick fix for pinpoint convergence this may work.

When a group of weapons discharged with group fire there is a brief delay between firing on the next and consecutive weapons.

For example a Hunchback with 6 small pulse lasers all grouped into a single weapon group fires.

0.0 seconds small pulse one is discharge
0.2 seconds small pulse two is discharged
0.4 seconds small pulse three is discharged
0.6 seconds small pulse four is discharge
0.8 seconds small pulse five is discharged
1.0 seconds small pulse six is discharged

If a second weapon grouping is discharged before the first has finished it's cycle the cycle is interupted at the most recently fired weapon and a 0.2 second delay is applied before the first weapon of the second grouping is discharged.

This prevents avoiding the delay by firing several groupings together.

The dispersal of damage is a result of the firing mechs movement and the targets movement.A stationary firing platform would have an easier time at lining up all the shots for improved accuracy and of course a stationary target is always easy pickins.

The advantage to this option is it does not touch the quirky convergence mechanics that Cryengine uses and apparently PGI can't fix.

Edited by Lykaon, 05 June 2014 - 04:04 AM.

[DaZur]

While I appreciate the intent behind burst damage, doing so simply turns an ID weapon into a DOT weapon. making them essentially behave like lasers.

We need more diversity not less... even if it's in the name of pseudo-balance IMHO...

[Lykaon]

DaZur, on 05 June 2014 - 03:31 AM, said:

While I appreciate the intent behind burst damage, doing so simply turns an ID weapon into a DOT weapon. making them essentially behave like lasers.

We need more diversity not less... even if it's in the name of pseudo-balance IMHO...

At some point we need to accept that a bad mechanic is bad for the game and it needs to be removed for the good of the game.

And ironicly normalizing damage application mechanics will add diversity. If in basic damage application mechanics an AC and a laser were equals the other characteristics of ACs or lasers would differentiate them.

Lasers have unlimited ammo but high heat burdens generally lower ranges than AC counterparts.Lasers also have nigh instant "projectile" speed having significant accuracy benefits as a result.

Lasers are easily traced to their sources AC are more difficult to trace to the source.ACs are a better choice for sniping because of this.

AC's have generally higher DPS and lower heat burdens at cost of crit space and mass.The high cycle rates of AC5s make them idea as both long range support and suppression and close in DPS since they will be sustaining damage pressures longer than energy weapons will.

ACs produce impulse shaking their targets and reducing the returning fire's accuracy.Lasers produce no impulse to targets hit.

Look at it this way the table top game treated lasers and ACs damage exactally alike yet players used both types of weapons frequently.A weapon is more than a single characteristic.

As it is now when you carefully analyze the data MWo has nearly no diversity if you want to play with ideal mechanics (without a handicap is a better way of putting this)

The recent tournament winners mechs are listed on this sight and taking all 15 mechs listed into account I can sum up what diversity is.

Dragon Slayer Victor
Shadowhawk 5M
Cataphract 3D
Ember firestarter
Jenner F
Spider D

AC5
Gauss Rifle
ER-PPC
PPC
AC20
Medium Laser
Machine gun
Er-Lrg Laser
ECM
Artillery/airstrikes

If we removed the light mechs as being out laying factors not ideal to the meta play (evident from matchmaker frequently showing under 20% light mech use)

Remove 3 chassis and 3 weapons and ECM from the list.

There is a tiny whisper of diversity in this game and it's only because players haven't come to terms with non meta is crap.

Edited by Lykaon, 05 June 2014 - 04:08 AM.

[Bobzilla]

I don't think burst would work with the ac5, how long will it burst for? Pulse lasers burst, but are short enough to mostly land the damage in one spot, and thats 0.6 seconds. 1 dmage every 0.1 seconds for 0.5 seconds. Wouldn't change anything that much, the meta will still be to keep people at range, they'd just potentially have to do it for a tiny bit longer.

[Joseph Mallan]

Lykaon, on 05 June 2014 - 03:58 AM, said:

At some point we need to accept that a bad mechanic is bad for the game and it needs to be removed for the good of the game.

That Mechanic is not bad for the game only those unwilling to accept their toon's mortality/vulnerability.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 04 June 2014 - 11:02 PM, said:

Most of your changes are either bad ideas or poorly formulated, but some of them have the core of a good idea.

1 - ACs moving to burst fire is probably a good plan. I suggest 4-round bursts, with a 0.10s delay between shells in a burst (total burst time of 0.30s). They do not need range nerfs, as the move from 3x to 2x max seems to have reduced that particular area of stupidity sufficiently.

2 - PPC damage spread is a good idea, but burst damage is not a good plan. Neither is the commonly suggested splash idea. The best I've encountered is the idea of damage arcing, where the PPC applies some percentage of its damage on impact, and then arcs to two new locations where it splits the rest of its damage (I favor a 2-jump system with 50% on impact, 30% on first jump, and 20% on second jump). PGI would have a lot of room to play with damage arcing mechanics (random path, or one of several potential fixed paths).

3 - JJ heat increase. Really, it shouldn't have to be much, but adding a bit more (not a percentage, as that varies from build to build based on heat sink total) based on JJ class seems like it'd probably be a good idea (0.50t JJs might be +1.0 heat per second, 1.00t JJs might be +2 h/s, and 2.00t JJs might be +3 hps, but of course PGI would want to play with the numbers). Since more JJs grant more burn time, you wouldn't need to scale by number of JJs, as it would happen naturally if the mech burned more JJ fuel.

4 - Really, though, dynamic precision reduction (I favor a mixed system based on heat %, throttle %, and stability state), the upcoming (soon, hopefully) fall damage rework, and a variant-based max armor rework (similar to Koniving's proposed system) would probably do the most to help the game out without modifying basic weapon behaviors.

Lol, so turning PPCs into LBX energy cannons.....

[Eddrick]

MetalGandalph, on 04 June 2014 - 09:53 PM, said:

PPC - burst dmg / double heat when fireing 2 or more while the mech is in the air.

What are you thinking?

Ghost Heat needs to be removed. Not copied.

Edited by Eddrick, 05 June 2014 - 05:35 AM.

[BillyM]

AC10's need further nerfing?

...wow.

--billyM