372 replies to this topic

[Malcolm Vordermark]

SaltBeef, on 25 July 2014 - 05:46 AM, said:

I still hold the position that if all mechs from light to assault had thier durability increased by 1 half to a 3rd for both internal and external the issues would be resolved. 50 point alpha could not 1 shot any mech. Slow lights could use thier speed to escape. The overal feel of battletech wouldn't be ruined. The weapons damage should not be increased makes it harder to kill all mechs. Matches have to be extended to 20 mins

This has been suggested a few times. There are two problems with it. First, we have already doubled armor and internal structure health. Second, the pin point, front loaded, long range, big alphas become more of an issue at that point. They may be unable to one shot mechs, but it will increase the gap between them and other forms of damage because they are more efficient at destroying specific sections of a mech.

Edited by Rouken, 25 July 2014 - 06:25 AM.

[SaltBeef]

Increased durability = increased survivability = increased playability = increased fun and manuever time on the battlefeild. I have noticed the battleblobs have been maneuvering alot .

[Jman5]

SaltBeef, on 25 July 2014 - 05:46 AM, said:

I still hold the position that if all mechs from light to assault had thier durability increased by 1 half to a 3rd for both internal and external the issues would be resolved. 50 point alpha could not 1 shot any mech. Slow lights could use thier speed to escape. The overal feel of battletech wouldn't be ruined. The weapons damage should not be increased makes it harder to kill all mechs. Matches have to be extended to 20 mins

The problem with a buff like that is you wind up making them more sturdy than some mediums. Increasing a 35 ton jenner's armor/internals by 50% would put it on par with a 50 tonner. Any major hitpoint boost would likely have to be across the board. Personally, I would like to see every mech get a 100% boost to internal hitpoints (internal hp are currently half the value of armor) It would make critical hits more important and reduce the potency of the very high pinpoint alphas.

[Koniving]

majora incarnate, on 25 July 2014 - 12:04 AM, said:

A similar approach could've been taken here, though armor would be interesting to a degree, the problem is that most of the pre-Clan Invasion era mechs pretty much had ****** armor outside a few cases (the Awesome being one) so there would definitely have to be some flexibility with that option. But I digress, we all know PGI will never implement such a thing either way.

I've gone through the mechs and had a fairly simple idea: Stock armor tonnage + 3 tons = new max armor.
If stock armor is standard, add 96 (3 tons standard). If stock armor is ferro, add 108.

This also gives a real reason to consider ferro.

If turning armor from standard to ferro, divide original armor by 32, add 3, times by 36 to find the new max.
(Example: Raven 2X = 208 stock standard + 96 = 304 max standard. 208 / 32 = 6.5 (+ 3) * 36 = 342 max ferro.) Note if you max with Ferro, you are NOT saving weight.

If turning armor from ferro to standard, divide the original number by 36, round up or down (if already at unit max, round up otherwise you'll have free tonnage), add 3, multiply by 32.
(Example: Raven Heromech Huginn = 232 / 36 = 6.444444444444444 (round up) = 6.5 (+ 3) * 32 = 304 max standard.)

What do you know? After correcting PGI's "+12% for Inner Sphere" mechs to tabletop's standard translation to double of 18 *2 = 36, the Huginn and the Raven 2x both have identical armor values going both ways. So those two are good middle ground scout/brawling mechs as per Sarna's entry. The Raven 3-L already having low armor and Ferro would indeed be a true scout. Meanwhile the Raven 4X as per Sarna would be a brawling Raven that as stated "Could viably take on and defeat mechs much larger than itself with or without support."
---------------
I simply call it intelligent design. The use of 3 tons is essentially "stock + 3 tons" with the intention of preserving the character and nature of every mech. At their very core, armor is part of a mech's identity. Sure it's not enough for MWO due to the poor and lore-unfriendly weapon design (it's tabletop friendly but not lore friendly, and PGI used basic tabletop with little to no understanding of it; they still think everything is "instant" instead of across 10 seconds). But this is why it's stock-enhanced where you have the option to use more.

Now I purposely did not use a percentage, as I noticed percentages screw things up (basically anything with crap armor is screwed and anything with high armor becomes unkillable meta gods).

I also used a single all around number as the genius of the design is if the difference between this mech and that mech is this many tons of armor... it will always be that many tons difference. For example if this mech has 4 tons at stock and that mech has 9 tones, the difference is 5 tons. So enhanced to standard max, it is 5 tons. Enhanced to ferro max, it is 5 tons. No matter what so long as both players do the same thing to their mech, the disparity or difference will always be 5 tons.

This gives you the choice. This mech with 3 tons less possible armor but jumpjets, or that mech with 3 tons more armor but no jumpjets.

In the end... Meta becomes choices where an Urban mech is truly viable as a walking 30 ton bullet tanker with great firepower. The Spider will always be fast (and with a proper engine revamp, faster than it is now and as fast as the Locust; and after the changes with standard armor it'd only gain 2 points more than the current max). All but one Locust would be on par with the Jenner D, half the Commandos, half the Cicadas. The Locust that isn't happens to be the one intended to carry the heaviest weapons while still being insanely fast (and poorly armored). So there's a choice. Armored, modest hardpoints and fast or poorly armored, fantastic weapons and fast.

Every mech would provide choices, with no clearly superior choice. Most of the meta mechs currently would be partially meta rather than "You must have this to be competitive." After all a poptart like the Cataphract 3D that's great at destroying things but fragile isn't the one true go-to, when you can have a mech like a Dragon 1-C which is a fast moving heavily armored tank (its stated tonnage in armor is equal to the most armored Stalker) that can get there and fry that bear just enough firepower to quickly fry that 3D.

Garbage mechs tend to be those that had lots of armor and couldn't fit much in hardpoints. Well, they have a lot of armor. And they'd be among the most powerful tanks. The Wolverine instantly becomes the best 55 tonner in the Inner Sphere.

[Lefty Lucy]

Any mechs that you handicap with less-than-maximum-possible armor will simply not be used.

[Koniving]

Magnakanus, on 25 July 2014 - 02:12 AM, said:

Hey Koniving,
I usually love most of your ideas, but there are a couple of things I would like to pick at here:
FLD: Currently FLD is the only advantage the IS has over the raw number of Clan weapons any given clan mech can bring to bear. Placing the same mechanic on IS mechs as is used for Clan mechs makes IS mechs vastly inferior. There is not a single IS mech that can bring the amount of bundled firepower a Direwolf can (Hex UAC5 for example) and few IS mechs can field the number of weapons of a clan mech of the same weight class. Yes, in theory you can spread out the damage, but with frequent 1000+ and even 1500+ damage results I have seen for Direwhales, it does not matter apperently. The time it takes you to get out of the firing line compounded with the amount of armor you have makes it so. With 6xUAC5 the initial burst is the same as FLD with the added bonus of more damage the longer your target takes to get out of the way.

Compound that with forcing people to stand still to get a good shot off (bobing reticle). It is going to kill the game for people that already have difficulties hitting the enemy anyways, but do enough on average to still keep them relatively effective. The whole mechanic will have the same effect that the gauss charge mechanic did; the more skilled adapted and the gauss died out for the less skilled, but in that case it may be a loss of players instead of the disuse of a single weapon. It also makes clan weapons even more effective because their target is standing still trying to get a good shot off themselves and making it easier to put all of your burst fire where you want it, making the solution effect of burst fire moot to boot. It will also kill lights even more and maybe even mediums since these weight classes depend on mobility to stay alive, need to shoot on the run, and the current reward system is geared towards damage+kills=C-bills. Imagine a jenner stopping for a split second to get a shot off because the pilot can't handle the added reticle bob... dead jenner and potentially lost player.

I agree with you on the LRM part (Reduced ROF/AMMO), but am not quite sure placing the heat values for ERLL back to 12 and leaving PPC at 10 would be a smart move to reduce FLD. More likely it would just replace the ERLL with the PPC on the field thus increasing FLD unless you changed the PPC to a burst fire weapon as well.

I'm not really sold on the idea of stock armor as a base value for max armor. It sounds like it will kill more chassis in game than those that are already dead, but that is just a gut feeling.

Far as armor it'd kill the metas which would become significantly more diverse.
It'd bring life to the dead ones. Think about the dead mechs.
What does the Awesome have? Armor.
What does the Dragon have? Armor.
What does the Wolverine have? Armor.
What does the Thunderbolt have? Armor.
What does the Hunchback have? Armor.
What does the Urban mech have? Armor.

For these and many others, they all have armor going for them. But they're dead... why? Because everything else can do armor too and bring much more firepower or speed or both. Know why a 4X isn't popular despite having VASTLY superior armor to every single Stalker? One the Stalker can slap on more. Two the 4X is slow. Three the 3D can equip the same armor despite being inferior in that aspect, bring better hardpoints (which only came at the sacrifice of armor) and jump.

Now, bringing ER LL back up to 12 heat would do exactly 4 things.

• It would stop ECM lights from racking up 2,000+ damage every match. This would in turn allow non-ECM lights to be viable again.
  
• It would effectively cripple the Clan's BEST and MOST OVERPOWERED weapon to keep it from being overused.
  
• It would REMOVE the need for Ghost Heat. Which Ghost heat only exists to simulate what would happen if you tried to fire 3 ER LL at 12 heat each with 30 threshold. That is the only reason it exists.
  
• It would allow beam times to be reduced, effectively making the ER Large (and thusly Large, Medium, etc.) weapons to be much more useful for everyone.

Currently the PPC was given more range than the ER LL. But that isn't canon. ER LL is supposed to have longer range (by 30 meters). On top of that, with the higher heat we can cut the beam time down to 0.8 seconds or lower. In return even without changing the cooldown, this would change the effective refire rate from (1 second beam + 3.25 cooldown = 4.25) to (0.8 second beam time + 3.25 cooldown = 4.05 seconds).

In MWO we have thresholds between 40 minimum (10 SHS) all the way up to 100+. Ever wondered why 6 ER PPCs didn't actually require ten seconds to be able to fire them and instantly kill you before ghost heat? That's why. 6 * 15 = 90.

In return, we can also bring the heat down on brawling weapons back to canon values. A small laser is supposed to bring you up to a heat of 1. Not 3. 1. Uno. One. A medium laser is supposed to bring you to a heat of 3. Not 4. 3.
Clan heat is about correct on all their weapons. But IS weapons (except long range) all fired COLDER. But they're not colder..

Even if IS gets a burst fire mechanic, it'd still be fewer shots than what the Clans would do.
Also heat on AC/20, UAC/20, LB-20 needs to get back up to 7-ish instead of 6. There's 3 reasons we need ghost heat on AC/20s. 1) front loaded damage. 2) PGI reduced the goddamn heat. 3) With typical thresholds of 70+, "12" heat per shot is nothing. But with a proper 30 threshold, 12 heat is 40% heat. Except it's supposed to be 14 heat for 2 AC/20s [or a single UAC/20 double tapped] which is 46.67% heat. Even without ghost heat we'd NEVER need to worry about a 4 AC/20 Annihilator, as it'd never work without chain fire.

[nehebkau]

You are not going to get people to change their habits giving exp or c-bill rewards.

You want more people in lights you are going to have to give people a reason to view lights has having some type of advantage over heavies that they value more then the advantages heavies have over lights. For example:

• Add a variable to heat-sink dissipation based on mech's maximum speed. (i.e. The faster you go the more air you move across your heat-sinks and the faster you dissipate heat.)
  
• Give light - only modules like Arty/air strike, radar dep, sensor range. (modules for the role your weight-class mech is expected to fill) (conversely you would have med, heavy and assault only modules)
  
• Fix the fall damage -- getting leg damage running down a hill is absurd!
  
• Remove the 15-kph slow-down on taking damage on legged mech
  
• Remove the 40 kph upper limit for speed on legged mechs.

You want a better game fix these (they will also help light and medium populations):

• Give rewards for capping resource points
  
• Adjust rewards based on mech drop weight (i.e. it costs more to drop an assault so that cost should be built into rewards)
  
• Convergence shouldn't be instant and should be limited to specific weapons in specific locations

PGI needs to realize that, more often then not, the issues that assaults and heavies have with lights are the fault of the heavy or assault players (or their rig or their internet connection) and not the design of the light itself.)

Koniving, on 25 July 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

• It would stop ECM lights from racking up 2,000+ damage every match. This would in turn allow non-ECM lights to be viable again.

Lol 2000 damage -- you are worried about the .000000001% of times that happens? I've never had a 2000 damage match in a 2-erll light. The games where I have been over 1000 damage, and there have been a few, have been in ERPPC lights -- so are those not producing enough heat either?

Heat is already a pain in the a$$, convoluted and sometimes completely borked -- and you consider that a good mechanic for balancing? Convergence, convergence, convergence. If you are unable to have your 2 Chest-mounted AC20s hit the same spot on a mech because they fire in a straight line haven't you fixed the problem in a much less convoluted way?

"I was aiming at his CT and one AC20 hit his right torso and 1 AC20 hit his left torso because 1 AC20 is in my right torso and the other AC20 is in my left torso and they shoot straight ahead"

is better than

"I fired my 2 ac20s at the same time and my 2d20 roll on the ghost heat table rolled a 15 which required I roll 1 d4 2d6 to determine heat grade. Now multiply that result by my total damage output divided by the ambient temperature and subtract my heat-sink dissipation value gives me the heat my shot generated but since my shot occurred on an even day of the month that amount is halved but since my day of the month was divisible by 5 that amount is tripled."

EDIT:
So I thought about convergence some more and, I think that your aiming reticule should be where your currently selected (i.e. the next weapon to fire if you were in chain mode) will hit. That would make it possible to aim your body-mounted weapons and hit what you want but hinder alphas since you could only guarantee that the one weapon you have selected would hit where you aim. I also thought that some weapons should always converge instantly (like a TAG) and arm mounted weapons should have a time to converge based on the weapon damage (aka size)

Edited by nehebkau, 25 July 2014 - 11:11 AM.

[Training Instructor]

You know what, no one playing Battletech ever got jazzed up about lights, because they were cannon fodder you used to fill out spaces in your BV after you slotted in your real mechs.

This would be a better game if the super fast gunboats were never introduced.

[CeeKay Boques]

Training Instructor, on 25 July 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

You know what, no one playing Battletech ever got jazzed up about lights, because they were cannon fodder you used to fill out spaces in your BV after you slotted in your real mechs.

This would be a better game if the super fast gunboats were never introduced.

It must be AMAZING to know everyone. How do you find the time?

[Lefty Lucy]

Training Instructor, on 25 July 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

You know what, no one playing Battletech ever got jazzed up about lights, because they were cannon fodder you used to fill out spaces in your BV after you slotted in your real mechs.

This would be a better game if the super fast gunboats were never introduced.

Nah, I love running a Locust 5M. There are some great lights in the game once you get past intro-tech.

[Be Rough With Me Plz]

nehebkau, on 25 July 2014 - 10:39 AM, said:

You are not going to get people to change their habits giving exp or c-bill rewards.

If that were the case then why would companies use Incentive programs to boost productivity? The comparison is a little loose but it's along the lines of figuring out different ways of doing things to, ultimately, maximize earning. In this case, it would be piloting a Light instead of whatever Mech you're using now in the hopes of obtaining higher rewards. Everything else you've suggested have already been voiced pages ago.

nehebkau, on 25 July 2014 - 10:39 AM, said:

• Give light - only modules like Arty/air strike, radar dep, sensor range. (modules for the role your weight-class mech is expected to fill) (conversely you would have med, heavy and assault only modules)

In warfare, I wasn't aware only sniper/scouts had the ability to request Artillery/Air Strike. If any unit deemed it necessary to hold/support their position then the request would be relayed and provided. "Sorry, guys in Alpha Lance. Even though you're taking a shitload of incoming fire and you holding the flank is instrumental in the rest of the force pulling off an effective pincer, you're not authorized to request support. Hope you survive~" Sound ridiculous, right?

Every point about "roles" is moot. This game has no "role" for any Mech other than to PEWPEW SMASH! Stop arguing "role" bullsh*t when it's not even applicable in the game environment. That being said... Limiting this support capability is an arbitrary punishment for all the other Weight Classes. Please, stop bringing this up without providing a clear reason why you believe restricting Artillery/Air Strike to Lights only will suddenly make people stop piloting Heavies and Assaults in PUG matches (read: How will it increase Light pilot population).

Edited by Be Rough With Me Plz, 25 July 2014 - 02:19 PM.

[Mercules]

Training Instructor, on 25 July 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

You know what, no one playing Battletech ever got jazzed up about lights, because they were cannon fodder you used to fill out spaces in your BV after you slotted in your real mechs.

False! I used to bring a company of Light Mechs with low BV and take on a lance of higher BV Heavy/Assaults and my friends would start swearing and cursing. The issue is that PGI has this mystical belief that it has to be 12 vrs 12 and that a stock Locust and customized Ember are an equal "slot" on a team.

[HantuDuppy]

I exclusively play light, but I'm still doing well. Since the clan invasion, my game stats have been stable at about 3 kills and over 300 damg per match. The changes that the clans have brought have been benificial, in my opinion. Teams are spreading out and brawling more. I have noticed a reduction in the ankle bitter mechs, and I susspect that the high alpha-strikes that the clans can unleash are the reason lights aren't zipping around in front of their faces anymore. If you want to pilot a light, use your speed to flank and keep your distance. Ballistics and PPCs have a hard time hitting a fast light at range.