744 replies to this topic

[elde]

I'm a bit confused about the HBK-4G and 4H quirks.

4G has 3 ballistic hardpoints in its right torso, 4H has only one. 4G gets buffs for AC20 and 4H gets buffs for AC10.

In those three hardpoints, a HBK pilot could fit in 3xAC2, 3xAC5, 2xUAC5, 2xLB10X or AC10+UAC5 instead of a single big ballistic weapon (using a standard engine as usual in hunchbacks), but instead, because of the huge buffs for AC20, nobody is ever going to use any other kind of setup for this variant.

4H, which only has one ballistic hardpoint, would benefit far more from the AC20 quirks, since they usually (always?) are run with AC20 anyway - you can't fit three AC5's in that one ballistic hardpoint.

I think the quirks on these variants should be switched around, or giving the 3-ballistic 4G a generic ballistic buff.

[Escef]

elde, on 18 October 2014 - 04:25 AM, said:

I'm a bit confused about the HBK-4G and 4H quirks.

4G has 3 ballistic hardpoints in its right torso, 4H has only one. 4G gets buffs for AC20 and 4H gets buffs for AC10.

In those three hardpoints, a HBK pilot could fit in 3xAC2, 3xAC5, 2xUAC5, 2xLB10X or AC10+UAC5 instead of a single big ballistic weapon (using a standard engine as usual in hunchbacks), but instead, because of the huge buffs for AC20, nobody is ever going to use any other kind of setup for this variant.

4H, which only has one ballistic hardpoint, would benefit far more from the AC20 quirks, since they usually (always?) are run with AC20 anyway - you can't fit three AC5's in that one ballistic hardpoint.

I think the quirks on these variants should be switched around, or giving the 3-ballistic 4G a generic ballistic buff.

They're based on the stock load-outs, duh.

[oldradagast]

My thoughts:

1) Any non-weapon quirk / buff is very welcome - THANKS!!!

2) General weapon buffs appropriate to the chassis are always welcome, such as "missile cooldown reduced" or whatever. Again, thanks!

3) Weapon specific quirks I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, you may loose out on them since you might run a built that doesn't take advantage of the quirks. On the other hand, this addition can encourage some diversity in the game. Folks have been complaining for a long time that there are relatively few viable builds, despite all the weapons and configurations in the game. This change might fix that, so the jury's still out on it. Still, you don't suffer any penalties for not using the recommended configuration, so I think this will still work in general even if more general quirks might have been better.

4) The only quirk type I'm not sold on is anything that changes the speed of direct-fire projectiles. For one, it feels a bit odd. I can totally understand a mech designed around an AC20 having better cooling and shorter cycle times for it... but I'm not sure that I can believe that the AC20 shell would somehow leave its barrel at a faster rate compared to the same AC20 put on another mech. Same idea with PPC speed somehow being increased. The second - and more important - issue is that people get used to certain weapons having certain lead distances. Changing that based upon the mech you play could be a bit annoying to the players. In short, "Oh, yeah - now I'm in my Awesome 8Q and I have to lead less distance to hit with my PPC's vs. my Stalker" or something like that.

It's a minor thing - people will probably adapt quick enough, and maybe I'm the only one bugged by the concept of the mech itself somehow increasing the projectile speed, but I figured I'd mention.

Long story short, these quirks overall are very good, and I do hope that the weapon based ones bring some diversity to viable loadouts.

Edited by oldradagast, 18 October 2014 - 04:55 AM.

[oldradagast]

Wintersdark, on 16 October 2014 - 05:51 PM, said:

So, here's the thing. It's a LOT harder to quantify what's a good weapon and what's a poor weapon, when the weapons in question have different stats on different mechs.

Take this 4H. Sure, the AC20 is a superior weapon on it's own. But that 4H can pack 5 Medium Lasers as well, each of which fire 20% faster and generate 20% less heat. That's another 25pts in a strike, a flat 20% DPS increase on those 5 Medium Lasers. The 4G gets an energy buff too, but not nearly that significant, and the 4G has less tonnage available to do that when packing an AC20.

Exactly. Honestly, if the game had COME with bonuses based upon stock loads, much of this problem would have been avoided. People wouldn't be infuriated over the quirks "breaking" their favorite builds, fans of Lore would appreciate the nod to playing mechs closer to stock, and we'd probably have seen more mech and weapon diversity on the battlefield.

Note that I'm NOT saying this to bash PGI, but rather to point how difficult it can be to balance a game and how sometimes the difference between a very popular feature and one that gets some people angry is simply the time at which the feature is introduced.

Gremlich Johns, on 06 October 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

Nothing re: the Information Warfare pillar? And rewards for that role?

Quirk bonuses to Tag and Narc would be an interesting idea to fit this role

[V3nturis]

oldradagast, on 18 October 2014 - 04:55 AM, said:

4) The only quirk type I'm not sold on is anything that changes the speed of direct-fire projectiles. For one, it feels a bit odd. I can totally understand a mech designed around an AC20 having better cooling and shorter cycle times for it... but I'm not sure that I can believe that the AC20 shell would somehow leave its barrel at a faster rate compared to the same AC20 put on another mech. Same idea with PPC speed somehow being increased. The second - and more important - issue is that people get used to certain weapons having certain lead distances. Changing that based upon the mech you play could be a bit annoying to the players. In short, "Oh, yeah - now I'm in my Awesome 8Q and I have to lead less distance to hit with my PPC's vs. my Stalker" or something like that.

Ar-15s chambered in pistol cartridges have higher velocities. If you see a fireball at the end of a barrel you are seeing mostly unburned powder. Longer barrels cause longer burn-times, thus causing more energy to be transferred to the projectile and increases its velocity. May not be the case but thats what id claim. Also, posting on a mobile sucks...

[V3nturis]

http://www.google.co....77648437,d.eXY

The mosin nagant in this study showed a linear reduction in velocity as the barrel size was reduced. I propose they adjust barrel lengths to reflect the changes. Give more visual diversity too.

[Wintersdark]

V3nturis, on 18 October 2014 - 09:08 AM, said:

Ar-15s chambered in pistol cartridges have higher velocities. If you see a fireball at the end of a barrel you are seeing mostly unburned powder. Longer barrels cause longer burn-times, thus causing more energy to be transferred to the projectile and increases its velocity. May not be the case but thats what id claim. Also, posting on a mobile sucks...

Yeah, this forum's text box entry is really unpleasant on mobile browsers. All of them, as far as I can tell.

But indeed, it's not "the same AC20" or "the same PPC"; for IS mechs things aren't modular. You're not just unbolting one weapon and bolting another on - our mechlab belies how IS mech customization works.

So, the HBK's AC20 has a tremendous amount of additional hardware supporting it. Perhaps it uses different AC20 shells (an abstraction at the mechlab level, we don't need multiple types of AC20 and ammo there), perhaps it's barrel is different. The AWS-8Q's PPC's could be wired differently; perhaps their speed is determined by the power subsystem devoted to them. There's easy handwaving solutions to all these things in the game, many of which are entirely reasonable.

As the quote above shows, there's lots of reasons similar "real life" weaponry performs very differently. If not, you'd not see the intense debates over why (brand/model)(caliber of weapon) is so much better than (other brand/model)(same caliber of weapon).

Now, I'd have preferred different manufacturers of weapons having different stats in the first place (an idea proposed by Koniving on numerous occassions) but I'll accept this as the "Next Best Thing".

[Asmosis]

quick question about laser cooldowns.

All the perks listed are +xx% cooldown for laser weapons, which for me would mean if a laser had a 4 second cooldown, +25% would then be 5 seconds.

Is that the correct way to read it? or should it be read:

reduce cooldown by +25%

[JesterMWO]

Asmosis, I read this as a 25% increase to the rate of cooldown so time to fire again. Using your example your 4 second cooldown would become 3 seconds not 5.

My thoughts on the quirks are that overall they are a good thing, especially as it should make more chassis viable again.

[JesterMWO]

*edit* should have said reduced time to fire again in my first sentence.

[Asmosis]

Thanks "rate of" cooldown makes more sense, that's probably what it means since they are supposed to be buffs.

And yeah, I think it will bring the specialized builds on par with clan mechs, a fully buffed ac20 with weapon mods will be vastly superior to clan ac20 variants, and the centurion essentially has a "free" lbx10 which is a very good weapon on its own, used a pair of them on DDC for a long period to good effect.

Edited by Asmosis, 19 October 2014 - 05:25 AM.

[Thor Grimm]

I think the quirks are awesome. Not only are you bringing seldom used mechs back to the battle, you're also bringing weapon variety back at the same time. As I joined the battle tech universe back when the figurines still had lead in them, I'm probably biased, but I love that more people will be inclined to take "stock" mechs. In the lore most mechs remained much closer to stock than you see in today's MWO because the IS mechs weren't modular.

[jper4]

i like the quirks i've seen so far except for the minior detail that none of the mechs i own that have been listed use the setup that would get the quirk bonuses to kick in kintaro 18- lrm boost- i use streaks/srms, oxide w/ srm quirk- i use streaks. hunchy 4G i prefer using an ac10 to the ac20 but don;t own the hunchy that gets the ac 10 bonus.

[Appogee]

So it seems PGI have in effect given up on creating a balanced system within an overall customization framework.

This chassis-specific quirk system is creating The Min-Max Recipe Book of Mech Variants. There will be an optimal build per variant which delivers combat advantages well beyond standard weapon systems and armor values

When you combine the cumulative effects of quirks and modules, some Mechs will have ranges, cooldown rates and armor locations up to 50% (?) more than the standard balancing system would have delivered.

I'm just not sure how this is going to play out, frankly. I guess we'll have a couple of weeks of everyone dusting off their unused chassis, and loading them out to best exploit the quirks.

Edited by Appogee, 19 October 2014 - 08:16 AM.

[990Dreams]

My thoughts on the quirks:

If the Mech chassis does suck, then giving it specials should encourage it's use. Thus, although the quirks make it a more viable chassis, it still (apparently) sucks. on the flip-side, if a chassis has a really nice hardpoint set, speed, armor, etc, then it will be penalized. Thus, it's use won't be discouraged but it will be hindered.

[Escef]

DavidHurricane, on 19 October 2014 - 08:50 AM, said:

My thoughts on the quirks:

If the Mech chassis does suck, then giving it specials should encourage it's use. Thus, although the quirks make it a more viable chassis, it still (apparently) sucks. on the flip-side, if a chassis has a really nice hardpoint set, speed, armor, etc, then it will be penalized. Thus, it's use won't be discouraged but it will be hindered.

Nothing is being penalized. In fact some mechs (Victors notably) are having penalties removed. The idea (whihc may or may not work long term) is to make some of the less competitive mechs stronger, in order to diversify the mechs seen in the drop queues. It's less interesting when, for example, each 12 man consists of a D-DC, 2 Dire Wolves, 3 Timber Wolves, 2 Stormcrows, a Shadowhawk, 2 Raven 3Ls, and a Kit Fox.

[990Dreams]

Escef, on 19 October 2014 - 08:58 AM, said:

Nothing is being penalized. In fact some mechs (Victors notably) are having penalties removed. The idea (whihc may or may not work long term) is to make some of the less competitive mechs stronger, in order to diversify the mechs seen in the drop queues. It's less interesting when, for example, each 12 man consists of a D-DC, 2 Dire Wolves, 3 Timber Wolves, 2 Stormcrows, a Shadowhawk, 2 Raven 3Ls, and a Kit Fox.

Well, however it works, I'll still figure out how to blow the enemy to glowing embers. Doesn't take a tier system to do that . And if I can't blow it up, I can dodge it.

Edited by DavidHurricane, 19 October 2014 - 09:03 AM.

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

Do buffs for ER large lasers and regular large lasers fall under the same umbrella. Noticed you differentiate between them a bit.

Mostly asking because of what you put down for the jester.

[Kirkland Langue]

Bartholomew bartholomew, on 19 October 2014 - 05:22 PM, said:

Do buffs for ER large lasers and regular large lasers fall under the same umbrella. Noticed you differentiate between them a bit.

Mostly asking because of what you put down for the jester.

The prevalent thought seems to be that LL is different than ERLL and both are different from LPL.
I'd argue that they should all fall under LL, simply because Ghost Heat counts them as the same thing.

[Hoax415]

Its all separate, they have said they can use umbrella weapon families but at this time if you see Large Laser, that is only Large Lasers not ERLL or LPL.

PPC means PPC only not ERPPC.