418 replies to this topic

[Eddrick]

Gorgo7, on 07 October 2014 - 06:30 PM, said:

Well, what do you suggest?
And I must disagree. There will most definitely be exceptions.
Look at the Hunchback or Hollander (no one would play a stock Hollander) or an AC20 Blackjack...if you want a simple, easy to implement system, than mine has advantages.
If you want to do a complete breakdown of EVERY mech and variant. You can go with a more detailed system.
At the end of the day the current system is excellent, what it lacks is Geometry to compliment the build system.
That is most certainly at the crux of the problem.
This whole post is a red herring and lots of people are going for it.
Fix the geometry and no new system is required.

I admit, I don't have the best answer. I'm kind of on the fence with the issue. But, if I had to choose. I would go with the size of Hardpoints being the exact size the stock weapons have (Can only go smaller. Not bigger).

If we ever do get TRUE role warfare. A Hollander would be much better with its Gauss Rifle then a Hunchback with it.

The shape and size of the Mechs themselves are a problem. Granted, the root cause of almost all the problems is Instant Pinpoint Convergance. Fix that and geometry isn't that big of a deal, either. But, a resize and shape could help on top of it.

Edited by Eddrick, 07 October 2014 - 06:58 PM.

[Xanquil]

Eddrick, on 07 October 2014 - 06:33 PM, said:

It is true that, size of the Hardpoints is open to interpritation of the person making the system. Russ wasn't specific on what size the Hardpoints had to be.

The people in favor of sized Hardpoints fall into two groups.

#1. People that want Mech to stay close to stock.
#2. People that want to limit the number of large weapons specific Mechs can carry.

Given the choice between the two. I prefer #1. I don't like the possibility of #2 leading to double standards and bias.

The only reason I'm not for it is because it is just another band-aid like ghost heat that in the end doesn't even get rid of ghost heat. Simply because there are stock mechs that already use a loadout similar to the meta, or would be massively overpowered without ghost heat. In addition It would seriously make most of the current T2-4 mechs T5 (although it would make a few T1-2 status)

I do like it from an esthetics point of view, but it just wouldn't do much good for game balance. (likely to do more harm to be honest)

[Maxx Blue]

Ok, I've been thinking about this, and I'm starting to think the Medium Laser needs to be a Class-1 item. Why? Well the medium laser (and the clan ERML) is one of the most important weapons in the game. It has just about the best balance of range, heat, damage and tonnage, and tons and tons of builds carry at least a couple medium lasers. Furthermore, lights in general rely heavily on 'upgrading' to medium lasers, and restricting them to smalls-only for some percentage of their laser hardpoints is going to hurt quite a bit since they already rely heavily on energy weapons for weight reasons.

Another interesting point: I am not much of a light jock, but when I was looking at my weapon stats in my profile, the two weapons I had dealt the most damage with, by far, were the IS and Clan Medium Lasers. For both Clan and IS weapons, I have done about 50% more damage with Medium Lasers than the next highest weapon, and this is just since the stat reset. It doesn't even include any of the time I spent mastering my HBK-4P! What I'm saying is that the Medium Laser, on both sides, is a crucial go-to weapon and I think we should consider allowing it in ANY energy slot. I feel it is the most important weapon in the game, and taking it away from some hardpoints is going to have a much bigger effect, especially on lights, than you might expect.

Edited by Maxx Blue, 08 October 2014 - 06:20 AM.

[Keeshu]

Yeah, there's a reason why most mechs in battletech use medium lasers, they are just really awesome backup weapons. Personally I love slapping medium lasers onto mechs.

As for medium lasers for lights. At a glance, I assume the hard points will be the same except for the Firestarter. And really, 4 Mediums 4 smalls isn't that much of a drawback.
They can always make the hardpoints smaller/bigger anyways.

[ShadowbaneX]

I think it's been long enough and the game has changed enough that MLs need their heat dropped back down to 3.

[IceSerpent]

ShadowbaneX, on 08 October 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

I think it's been long enough and the game has changed enough that MLs need their heat dropped back down to 3.

This has something to do with the discussion about sized hardpoints?

[Almond Brown]

Tastian, on 07 October 2014 - 11:55 AM, said:

Exactly. Hardpoint size limitations is not JUST a fix for Ghost Heat; it's encouragement to use different mechs. The Vindicator and Panther were special because they were small mechs with a PPC. But we can now put 2 of them on Ravens and Cicadas - why would we ever want to run a Vindicator now? The Awesome was truly awesome because it was an 80 ton mech specializing in 3 PPCs. But we can do that with much smaller and faster mechs. The fact of the matter is that MWO has TONS of mechs and TONS more coming. But 85% of them are garbage. Why bring an AC20 Huncback when a Shadowhawk can do it better with jump jets? The answer is because the Shadowhawk is NOT suppose to have an AC20. Same with Gauss Rifle on the Timberwolf. It wasn't suppose to have one. It would not kill diversity; it would encourage diversity of chassis on the field. Otherwise, let's all just bring Timberwolves; cause they can pretty much do everything.

MW4 showed that min-max is still the winner no matter the diversity available. It had locked Hard points and still in the end the cream floated to the top, as expected.

And if Lance or 12 man weight limits were allowed, versus the current 3x4 (which is flexible btw), that is exactly what your would see. As many TW's as possible that fit within that weight limit with 1 or maybe 2 Lights as fillers for giggles.

[Almond Brown]

Tastian, on 07 October 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

Do we really want an even playing field? We don't have one now. The Dragons are terrible but Orions and (non ECM) Ravens can still be saved. In fact by restricting hardpoints on mechs, people may even turn to mechs like the Dragon, Orion, Trebuchet, and Vindicator to get unique builds they like.

LOL! That "assumes" there will be a Hard point restricted build available that they do like in the Trebs...

So do we TELL PGI what these hard point restricted load-outs have to be (send in 3 sets per chassis, after getting a consensus of course) or do they just do it for us and we hope that we really like what we get? Because if this "was" to happen, which it never will btw, there will not be a Re-Do.

Can you spell Death Knell...

[Almond Brown]

Tastian, on 07 October 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

Help me brainstorm this train of thought then. If you place hardpoint size restrictions on all mechs, can you think of where the meta build shift of power will go from/to?

Using the current stable of Mechs? No where. The supposed "Leet/Elo" driven players will spreadsheet out the new set and pick the fastest, toughest, best damage/dps profile for 1 or 2 Mechs in each weight Class and drive those until new one arrive.

Same as is done now. So again. No where good anyways.

Edited by Almond Brown, 08 October 2014 - 11:03 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Maxx Blue, on 08 October 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

Ok, I've been thinking about this, and I'm starting to think the Medium Laser needs to be a Class-1 item. Why? Well the medium laser (and the clan ERML) is one of the most important weapons in the game. It has just about the best balance of range, heat, damage and tonnage, and tons and tons of builds carry at least a couple medium lasers. Furthermore, lights in general rely heavily on 'upgrading' to medium lasers, and restricting them to smalls-only for some percentage of their laser hardpoints is going to hurt quite a bit since they already rely heavily on energy weapons for weight reasons.

Another interesting point: I am not much of a light jock, but when I was looking at my weapon stats in my profile, the two weapons I had dealt the most damage with, by far, were the IS and Clan Medium Lasers. For both Clan and IS weapons, I have done about 50% more damage with Medium Lasers than the next highest weapon, and this is just since the stat reset. It doesn't even include any of the time I spent mastering my HBK-4P! What I'm saying is that the Medium Laser, on both sides, is a crucial go-to weapon and I think we should consider allowing it in ANY energy slot. I feel it is the most important weapon in the game, and taking it away from some hardpoints is going to have a much bigger effect, especially on lights, than you might expect.

So now we can have "Fixed-Flexible-Hard Points" too? lol

[Prezimonto]

EgoSlayer, on 06 October 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

Remove ghost heat and apply the hardpoint sizing to these builds and explain how it fixes anything:
in no particular order

Hunchback 4P
Firestarter 9A
Warhawk Prime
Nova Prime
Dire Wolf Prime
Mad Dog A

And I am sure there are several others. Cherry picking a few chassis and showing how they are "fixed" doesn't mean anything when you avoid the really problematic ones. Sized hard points doen't fix anything except removing a few builds that some people don't like, the still working builds without ghost heat are much, much worse.

You mean some of the already hottest builds in the game, that rely on short range to deal damage? Limiting them to short(er) range weapons actually puts real a limit on the builds.

I like hard point size limits, but I also would suggest 2 or 3 "classes" not 4. Even still they don't address pure boating issues on several highly useful combinations like dual or trip AC5 builds, though most mechs can't then also pack a PPC or two to double down on the FLD punch.

Really, it's mostly a way to desynch the large FLD weapons from each other. I'd suggest that PPC's could directly get a speed increase again. It's really taking and splitting PPC's from AC10 or multiple ac5's... It might actually lead to the summoner being a decent looking mech, if it's ability to take a mixed loadout of AC/energy of the largest varieties puts it into a unique position. Likewise the AWS, potentially quite mean, but still with serious disadvantages in it's barn door shape.

[Tastian]

Almond Brown, on 08 October 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

LOL! That "assumes" there will be a Hard point restricted build available that they do like in the Trebs...

So do we TELL PGI what these hard point restricted load-outs have to be (send in 3 sets per chassis, after getting a consensus of course) or do they just do it for us and we hope that we really like what we get? Because if this "was" to happen, which it never will btw, there will not be a Re-Do.

Can you spell Death Knell...

For the most part, Hard Point Restrictions are fairly easy to assign for each mech. Does the Stock loadout have a MG there? Class I ballistic. Is it a LRM15? Class 3 missile. There are some that have Hardpoint liberties already like 3 missiles on each ear of the Catapult A1 or some of the Dragon hardpoints. Some tier 4 and 5 mechs could have a bit of flexibility but other tier 1 mechs would use strict limitations based on the stock loadout.

Besides, PGI isn't getting our permission for any of the IS Quirk pass; why would this be any different?

[IceSerpent]

Almond Brown, on 08 October 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

LOL! That "assumes" there will be a Hard point restricted build available that they do like in the Trebs...

Why do you assume that Trebs will be restricted at all?

Quote

So do we TELL PGI what these hard point restricted load-outs have to be (send in 3 sets per chassis, after getting a consensus of course) or do they just do it for us and we hope that we really like what we get? Because if this "was" to happen, which it never will btw, there will not be a Re-Do.

We tell PGI what builds are problematic and need to be restricted (via poll for example), we leave all other builds as-is.

Almond Brown, on 08 October 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

Using the current stable of Mechs? No where. The supposed "Leet/Elo" driven players will spreadsheet out the new set and pick the fastest, toughest, best damage/dps profile for 1 or 2 Mechs in each weight Class and drive those until new one arrive.

This is a separate issue, a product of bad weapon balance. Sized hardpoints are supposed to replace ghost heat, they are not supposed to completely fix the problem with some builds being meta (just like GH doesn't do it), although they would indirectly help balancing by getting rid of certain "outflier" builds (along the lines of too many PPCs, too many gauss rifles, etc.)

[Tastian]

Prezimonto, on 08 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

You mean some of the already hottest builds in the game, that rely on short range to deal damage? Limiting them to short(er) range weapons actually puts real a limit on the builds.

I like hard point size limits, but I also would suggest 2 or 3 "classes" not 4. Even still they don't address pure boating issues on several highly useful combinations like dual or trip AC5 builds, though most mechs can't then also pack a PPC or two to double down on the FLD punch.

Really, it's mostly a way to desynch the large FLD weapons from each other. I'd suggest that PPC's could directly get a speed increase again. It's really taking and splitting PPC's from AC10 or multiple ac5's... It might actually lead to the summoner being a decent looking mech, if it's ability to take a mixed loadout of AC/energy of the largest varieties puts it into a unique position. Likewise the AWS, potentially quite mean, but still with serious disadvantages in it's barn door shape.

I originally had 3 Classes of weapons (for example, lumping Small lasers with Med lasers and the ERPPC with the ERLarge). But I noticed 4 classes helped out on several boats:

1 - Firestarter 9A - instead of having possibly 8 medium lasers, it can be brought down to 4x [class 2] energy (medium lasers) and 4x [class 1] energy (small laser, tag, small pulse, flamers)

2 - Hunchback 4P - instead of having possibly 9 medium lasers, it has 8x [class 2] energy (medium lasers) and 1x [class 1] energy (small laser)

3 - Direwolf Prime - instead of having 4x [Class 4] energy (ERPPC), it has 4x [Class 3] energy (ERLarge Laser)

This is also better for dividing up ballistics into a natural [Class 1] MG/AC2, [Class 2] UAC5/AC5, [Class 3] LB10X/AC10, [Class 4]AC20/Gauss.

Edited by Tastian, 08 October 2014 - 12:44 PM.

[IceSerpent]

Tastian, on 08 October 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

I originally had 3 Classes of weapons (for example, lumping Small lasers with Med lasers and the ERPPC with the ERLarge). But I noticed 4 classes helped out on several boats:

1 - Firestarter 9A - instead of having possibly 8 medium lasers, it can be brought down to 4x [class 2] energy (medium lasers) and 4x [class 1] energy (small laser, tag, small pulse, flamers)

2 - Hunchback 4P - instead of having possibly 9 medium lasers, it has 8x [class 2] energy (medium lasers) and 1x [class 1] energy (small laser)

3 - Direwolf Prime - instead of having 4x [Class 4] energy (ERPPC), it has 4x [Class 3] energy (ERLarge Laser)

This is also better for dividing up ballistics into a natural [Class 1] MG/AC2, [Class 2] UAC5/AC5, [Class 3] LB10X/AC10, [Class 4]AC20/Gauss.

If you want to introduce brand new sizes (classes) instead of going by existing crit. slot sizes, I'd suggest simply giving each weapon of a given type a separate size - it would give you much better precision. Something like this:

Energy:

TAG = size 1
Flamer = size 2
Small Laser = size 3
Small Pulse Laser = size 4
Med Laser = size 5
Med Pulse Laser = size 6
Large Laser= size 7
ER Large Laser = size 8
Large Pulse Laser = size 9
PPC = size 10
ERPPC = size 11

Ballistic:

MG = size 1
AC2 = size 2
AC5 = size 3
UAC5 = size 4
LB10X = size 5
AC10 = size 6
Gauss = size 7
AC20 = size 8

This way you can allow gauss while not allowing AC20, or allow large laser while not allowing large pulse laser, etc.

[Tastian]

IceSerpent, on 08 October 2014 - 12:53 PM, said:

If you want to introduce brand new sizes (classes) instead of going by existing crit. slot sizes, I'd suggest simply giving each weapon of a given type a separate size - it would give you much better precision. Something like this:

Energy:

TAG = size 1
Flamer = size 2
Small Laser = size 3
Small Pulse Laser = size 4
Med Laser = size 5
Med Pulse Laser = size 6
Large Laser= size 7
ER Large Laser = size 8
Large Pulse Laser = size 9
PPC = size 10
ERPPC = size 11

Ballistic:

MG = size 1
AC2 = size 2
AC5 = size 3
UAC5 = size 4
LB10X = size 5
AC10 = size 6
Gauss = size 7
AC20 = size 8

This way you can allow gauss while not allowing AC20, or allow large laser while not allowing large pulse laser, etc.

Until they start adding more weapons. Not sure there'd ever be a need to allow a AC5 but not a UAC5. And what about missiles? Are those assigned like Narc - 1, SRM2 - 2, LRM5 - 3, etc?

And sometimes the crit slots available limit them already - like you can't put a PPC in the CT but you could still assign it the highest Class weapon slot.

Edited by Tastian, 08 October 2014 - 01:00 PM.

[IceSerpent]

Tastian, on 08 October 2014 - 12:58 PM, said:

Until they start adding more weapons.

Good point - would be better to leave an interval, i.e. instead of 1,2,3... go 1, 3, 5...

Quote

Not sure there'd ever be a need to allow a AC5 but not a UAC5.

True, but I am more concerned about other combos like gauss/AC20, SRM6/LRM15, LL/LPL, etc.

Quote

And what about missiles? Are those assigned like Narc - 1, SRM2 - 2, LRM5 - 3, etc?

Same concept as for other types, Narc being the smallest and ALRM20 being the largest.

Quote

And sometimes the crit slots available limit them already - like you can't put a PPC in the CT but you could still assign it the highest Class weapon slot.

You can do that with any of the proposed sized hardpoints schemes.

[Prezimonto]

Tastian, on 08 October 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

I originally had 3 Classes of weapons (for example, lumping Small lasers with Med lasers and the ERPPC with the ERLarge). But I noticed 4 classes helped out on several boats:

1 - Firestarter 9A - instead of having possibly 8 medium lasers, it can be brought down to 4x [class 2] energy (medium lasers) and 4x [class 1] energy (small laser, tag, small pulse, flamers)

2 - Hunchback 4P - instead of having possibly 9 medium lasers, it has 8x [class 2] energy (medium lasers) and 1x [class 1] energy (small laser)

3 - Direwolf Prime - instead of having 4x [Class 4] energy (ERPPC), it has 4x [Class 3] energy (ERLarge Laser)

This is also better for dividing up ballistics into a natural [Class 1] MG/AC2, [Class 2] UAC5/AC5, [Class 3] LB10X/AC10, [Class 4]AC20/Gauss.

Sure you end up with some medium laser boats. Medium lasers are severely range limited for the IS and heat limited for the Clan.

I agree on the largest end the PPC, AC20, and Gauss need to be in a league of their own. Properly the LRM20 should also be in it's own class, except it's not actually all that much better than other launcher systems, and the Screwed up manner in which missile tubes has been handled has severely borked things as well.

On the low end, I don't have a problem rolling the MG and AC 2 together, the SL/ML/SPL all into one category, for the missiles category, SRM's are the largest issue in that we don't really have launchers that go up to "huge" though technically SRM6 is supposed to fill the role.

I do see, now, that you've placed the "support" items into class 1 areas (TAG/NARC) so I supposed to can't really complain, as that at least gives you an option other than a terrible small laser for a head slot.

As for limiting total missile tubes available, it's one of the most important steps in EVENTUALLY balancing missiles over all... at the moment HUGE missile waves are still the best way to deal damage with boats (LRM5 streamers can suck it, as AMS totally, or nearly totally shuts them down and an impulse retuning would also greatly nerf the build).

[Tastian]

Some have suggested that not only should small (Class 1) slots not allow large (Class 4) weapons, but vice versa - large (Class 4) slots should not allow small (Class 1) items. My proposal does not support that view. So, just to be clear, a Class 4 energy slot can still have a TAG.

[ShadowbaneX]

IceSerpent, on 08 October 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

This has something to do with the discussion about sized hardpoints?

No, just a random tangent because people were talking about Medium Lasers.

Back on topic, about the system you proposed, might be a bit too defined, or, perhaps I should take a step back, how do you propose to use that system? For instance if a mech starts with an AC/2, do you limit it to just AC/2s & MGs? Or do you allow larger weapons in there? If you allow larger, at what point do you cap it? AC/5? uAC/5? LB-10/X? AC/10?

Edited by ShadowbaneX, 08 October 2014 - 04:50 PM.