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Please share you comments. For any criticism, identify what you are criticizing, what you feel is the issue, and what you would do to resolve it. Where possible, use game scenarios to help illustrate your poin to others who may not play in the same style.
I’ve been thinking about the differences between Clan mentality and IS mentality, and think we could use a very loose interpretation of the lore as a starting point for improving the balance between the two groups without simply giving them identical weapons, which we don’t want. I'm going to focus on laser energy weapons, and see how that goes.
Goal: To differentiate weapons using features available to us in a first person shooter. This allows the reduction of a weapons effectiveness without making that weapon similar to other weapons of the same class. Where possible, use any limitations of an online play system to help defenders, not attackers. This is perceived as more fair.
Restriction: Where possible, avoid solutions that require new game code. Strive for easier to perform changes that allow rapid, repeated testing via variable adjustments. Such testing would also give us the outline of any possible code changes that are deemed necessary.
IS Lore Assumption: Generations of warfare have worn down the ability to field effective armies, with support, repair and supply all compromised or intermittent. MechWarrior’s depend on striking first and striking hard, knowing that enemy mechs have little redundancy and will often lose equipment or mobility if they can only be struck decisively. Little quarter is given or expected, and salvage is highly valued as a method of sustaining battle readiness.
IS Simplification: An armoured knight with a big sword. Patched and dirty he may be, but if he can land a blow you are going to be hurt.
Clan Lore Assumption: As a small isolated group, their leaders quickly realized that unlimited internecine warfare was unsustainable. Battle became ritualized, with the seeking on honour considered more important that outright damage or destruction. Victory and spoils came to those who were judged best, not those who performed best. This thinking took over day to day society, with trials and rituals becoming the path to advancement, and a team mentality pervading your role in society. Unthreatened by direct conflict, industry and technology bent towards the furthering of status and rank.
Clan Simplification: The fencer. Quick and nimble, he seeks out technical strikes, and will turn aside damage that would stop lesser men.
What that means to us in MWO:
Clan energy weapons:
Clan energy weaponry is radically changed, not in damage or heat or range, but in implementation. Instead of lengthening the burn and recycle time on lasers, we drastically shorten it:
Clan ER Medium Laser:
- Duration: 300ms
- Damage: 1.6
- Cool down: 400ms
- Range: 450m
- Heat: 1.45
This gives us the same DPS and HPS, but with much more player skill required to maintain contact with an enemy mech. Players must remain steady even when tapping the button to apply damage to one section.
This also turns something that is currently a disadvantage for the enemy mech into an advantage: Latency no longer hurts them, in benefits them. EG: Firing mech has 50ms of latency. Enemy mech has 200ms of latency. With long duration lasers, I can put 450ms of damage into a single section before they can turn away (50ms up + 200ms down +200ms up), which for a Clan ER Medium, gives us about 2 dmg. The more latency, the more damage the firing mech can impart before the enemy mech can turn to disperse it.
In this new system, there are enforced blanks that are shorter than the average latency. The firing mech can impart not more than one complete strike before the enemy mech can respond, so maximum ‘initial’ damage is no more than 1.2dmg before the enemy can turn to disperse to evade the follow-up shot.
Now, it becomes a contest of pilot skill, not of ping.
Lore tie-in: These technical hits showcase the ability to aim accurately and quickly, to strike with skill at an injured or weak section, but reduce the chance of a killing blow. They allow honourable surrender instead of destruction, and fit into the fencer mentality.
Knock on effects:
I’ve seemingly turned the regular clan laser into a pseudo pulse laser, haven’t I? Well, sort of, but the clan pulse laser is also slated for adjustment.
Clan Medium Pulse Laser:
- Duration: Infinite
- Damage per pulse: .3
- Pulses per second: 5
- Range: 360m
- Heat: .2 * (Duration in milliseconds * N)
- Cool down: (Duration of last fire / X)
These are machinegun lasers. Just hold down the trigger and they will keep firing. Note, however, that heat grows exponentially with duration, and cool down grows linearly. You can resume firing before cool down, but the heat calculation works out how many milliseconds remained, and pick up from there.
Proposed initial value for N is .035 and X is .5.
(Note: We may have to implement an input rate limiter, to stop people scripting pressing the fire button thousands of times a second to avoid the heat penalty.)
If we imagine the weapons as modern rifle, the Clan ER Medium is a blend of single shot and three round burst, and the medium pulse is our full auto setting.
The large and small versions of these weapons are extrapolated from the medium versions. For small lasers, the performance is very close, with more range or more damage+heat being the variables that set them apart.
IS Energy Weapons:
The IS main line energy weapons don’t gain any new mechanisms, the Small, Medium, Large and ER Large are the starting weapons around which other energy weapons vary. Tuning them within their existing variables (range, duration, cycle, damage and heat) is fine.
The IS pulse weapons gain a new ability: double tap
IS Medium Pulse Laser:
- Duration: unchanged
- Damage: unchanged
- Range: unchanged
- Cycle time: standard fire: unchanged, double tap: -250ms
- Heat: standard fire: reduced, double tap: increased
Double tap brings an ultra-auto cannon type effect to help differentiate pulse lasers. You can fire the weapon early, but take extra heat for doing so. This is shown in game by the countdown meter turning from a red bar to an orange bar before turning green. You can fire during the orange bar, but you will pay for it with added heat.
There is no lore for origin for this, it’s pure invention. To provide continuity, this double tap ability could also be applied to the clan ER <size> lasers.
Along with this ability could come a new interface feature: the weapon group double tap toggle. Just like you can toggle a group from alpha to chain fire, you can also toggle whether holding the mouse button down will double tap or standard fire the weapons therein. You can bind a group to a fixed key, or select it using the arrow keys and use a universal toggle (plus sign?). This applies to any weapon in that group that supports double tap.
Again, when commenting, please describe scenarios showing situations where this solution would not work, or would cause unfair advantages to one side over the other, and how such advantages would play out in game.
Thanks.
