418 replies to this topic

[IceSerpent]

Ultimatum X, on 06 October 2014 - 04:30 PM, said:

Russ laid out the challenge.

Full audit, due diligence or failure.

Where is your attempt at an audit to prove what you say? To meet Russ' challenge?

Full audit (post #42). Or are you looking for "proof" that limiting an IS energy hardpoint to 2 crits still allows to mount every single energy weapon, except for PPC?

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Kraken

I wanna see THAT in MWO

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

So whats next. limiting the amount of times you can play certain mechs during one day. All nerfing does is cause migration to the next best thing and eliminate quirky one off builds that some people can make work.
Smash one mech and they find another, then another, then another, then another.

Had enough of that with all the nerfs leading up to what we have today. Have lost over a dozen one off builds that I enjoyed due to weapon nerf affecting performance. Now We are gonna start nerfing whole chassis?

Scruffy Nerfhearders....

[Ultimax]

IceSerpent, on 06 October 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

Full audit (post #42). Or are you looking for "proof" that limiting an IS energy hardpoint to 2 crits still allows to mount every single energy weapon, except for PPC?

I think you have no concept of what a "full audit" means.

[Xtrekker]

WM Quicksilver, on 06 October 2014 - 03:02 PM, said:

You do realize that is 91 tons minimum, which is impossible even with the increased free tonnage of MW4 mechs right?

Sorry if I didnt catch the sarcasm, if it was intended that way.

Actually no, you're completely right. I must be having a brain fart. Wonder what I'm thinking of...

[Alistair Winter]

Pyrrho, on 06 October 2014 - 04:02 PM, said:

To be fair, he did say that his main method of discourse he was trying to purposefully bait you into a response through feigned ignorance, though he did apologize for that.
*edits: yeesh, thoughts are hard.

Oh, you meant Ultimatum X.

Yeah, he feigned ignorance to prove a point, but the point wasn't valid anyway, unless you assume that the system would be poorly implemented.

Ultimatum X, on 06 October 2014 - 04:01 PM, said:

So wait, do we want MW4's system or not. Was MW4 perfectly balanced with a special place for all mechs?

See above. Just because it was poorly implemented for MW4 doesn't mean it would need to be poorly implemented in this game.

Ultimatum X, on 06 October 2014 - 04:01 PM, said:

You sure that's what other players in this thread want, I think that's wihful thinking on your part?

Meh, it's just an intellectual exercise anyway. PGI will never touch the hardpoint system. The AC40 Catapult will live as long as this game lives.

Pyrrho, on 06 October 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

For me, The ambition is tranquility through suspension of judgement. The world and being a part of it is quite humbling to me.

That's a nice ambition.

[Spades Kincaid]

Ultimatum X, on 06 October 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

The onus is on you to prove there would be more builds possible rather than less - or you fail.

This is the part which is incorrect. Nowhere does it say to prove more builds will be possible.

It does request that attention be paid to what builds would no longer be possible. If you want to assert that you feel not enough attention is being paid to what builds would cease to be possible, that's a reasonable point to debate.

You may be confusing the assertions some have made - that such a system would bring more mechs and variants into play; with bringing more builds into play. Those are two different things. Argue the former if you like.

Not stating a position here, just making the proper distinction.

[Hoax415]

Here's how you were supposed to tackle this "assignment" this thread is so full of fail. Lets start with something fairly easy and light. The good old top quality Shadow Hawk.

The way the MW4 system works and why people can argue that it "adds builds" is that it often lets you boat tons and tons of small weapons. Think MG's, Small Lasers, etc. Basically many more mechs can make Nova style builds.

So lets look at our favorite 55 ton IS medium. I'll put the current hardpoint value and then translate the new system afterwards.

SHD-2H:

now:
LT 3B w/ 12 crit slots aka 1-3x AC5 or 1x Any B weapon sys. Also 3x MG or 2xMG + something.
H 1M w/ 1 crit slot
RT 2M w/ 12 crit slots aka any 2 M weapon systems, limited by tubes.
RA 1E w/ 8 crit slots aka any 1 E weapon system.

MW4 system using stock build to assign crit slots:
LT 4 crit slots of B.
H 1 crit slot of M.
RT 1 crit slot of M.
RA 1 crit slot of E.

Winner? current system without question. Did you know a 2H could technically mount 3xAC5? The canon build is a mess of 1 crit weapons. This isn't even close and basically wouldn't allow anything decent off the canon build.

You would have to modify the MW4 system version to something like:

LT 6 or 12 crit slots of B. Depends on if you want to give it gauss/ac20/lbx carrying capacity.
H 1 crit slot of M
RT 1-12 crit slots of M. How flexible do you want to be? We are just making stuff up at this point.
RA 2? crit slots of E. Unless your fine letting it mount PPC's. But if you are fine with PPC's then what is the point of this entire exercise?

Basically you could allow more flexibility using assigned crit space but you'd be doing it just because. Its not following the canon/stock/lore build you are just making things up as you see fit.

The SHD-2H is an outlier in that it has a crazy limited and bad stock build mixing all 3 weapon types and using small weapons but its not a huge outlier there are lots of lights and mediums that would look like this.

In order to make a MW4 system work you basically have to make balance decisions for every mech all over again. Its just not feasible at this point. That's why upthread I suggested just adding special rules for PPC, Gauss and AC20. In the lore those are the big deal weapon systems in terms of mechs being designed around them. Everything else is a fairly easy swap out like for like as we do now.

Edited by Hoax415, 06 October 2014 - 05:21 PM.

[IceSerpent]

Ultimatum X, on 06 October 2014 - 04:47 PM, said:

I think you have no concept of what a "full audit" means.

1/10 on troll scale. If you are unable to understand that "full audit of how other builds are affected" gets simplified to "no other builds are affected in any way" in this case, I feel truly sorry for you.

[Kirkland Langue]

Hunchback 4P was designed to carry 8 ML.
That this community believes 8ML to be OP is pretty telling, when it comes to whether we should follow TT rules.

The OP's idea is fine - his classifications are perfectly fine. The problem is that TT mech build don't translate well to online, and people would rather play a patchwork mess than accept changes to the Sarna builds.

Hunchback 4P was designed to carry 8 ML. Want to lose Ghost heat, lose the 8 ML swayback, and feel that the mech isn't running around melting everything?
1. Either make all those Hard points only able to carry small lasers,
2. or change the number of hard points.
3. Or put a Heat Cap on the Hunchback much lower than currently exists.

[IceSerpent]

Hoax415, on 06 October 2014 - 05:16 PM, said:

Here's how you were supposed to tackle this "assignment" this thread is so full of fail. Lets start with something fairly easy and light. The good old top quality Shadow Hawk.

The way the MW4 system works and why people can argue that it "adds builds" is that it often lets you boat tons and tons of small weapons. Think MG's, Small Lasers, etc. Basically many more mechs can make Nova style builds.

So lets look at our favorite 55 ton IS medium. I'll put the current hardpoint value and then translate the new system afterwards.

SHD-2H:

now:
LT 3B w/ 12 crit slots aka 1-3x AC5 or 1x Any B weapon sys. Also 3x MG or 2xMG + something.
H 1M w/ 1 crit slot
RT 2M w/ 12 crit slots aka any 2 M weapon systems, limited by tubes.
RA 1E w/ 8 crit slots aka any 1 E weapon system.

MW4 system using stock build to assign crit slots:
LT 4 crit slots of B.
H 1 crit slot of M.
RT 1 crit slot of M.
RA 1 crit slot of E.

Winner? current system without question. Did you know a 2H could technically mount 3xAC5? The canon build is a mess of 1 crit weapons. This isn't even close and basically wouldn't allow anything decent off the canon build.

Hoax, why would you want to limit hardpoints to stock weapons only? The point is to only limit hardpoints that cause problems (i.e. too many PPCs, AC20s, etc.) and only limit them sufficiently to get rid of the problem. I would leave SHD-2H as-is, I can't come up with any "OP" build for it.

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

There should probably be a solid heat cap on every mech. and heat sinks increase dissipation. Then the game would lean toward running constant fire heat neutral mechs over fire everything and wait a bit.

And as one guy suggested in another thread give single only the ability to raise heat cap.

[Tristan Winter]

Bartholomew bartholomew, on 06 October 2014 - 04:47 PM, said:

So whats next. limiting the amount of times you can play certain mechs during one day. All nerfing does is cause migration to the next best thing and eliminate quirky one off builds that some people can make work.
Smash one mech and they find another, then another, then another, then another.[

That's true. But it's also irrelevant. If there are only 3 builds in the game (A, B and C), and A is 100% effective, B is 110% as good as A and C is 200% as good as A, then getting rid of build C will just mean that everyone switches to build B. Because it's 10% better than A. But 10% is much less than the previous 100% advantage.

So while everyone moves on to the next alternative, a game is more fun when you have 100% vs 110% instead of 100% vs 200%.

Bartholomew bartholomew, on 06 October 2014 - 04:47 PM, said:

Had enough of that with all the nerfs leading up to what we have today. Have lost over a dozen one off builds that I enjoyed due to weapon nerf affecting performance. Now We are gonna start nerfing whole chassis?

Which fun builds have we really lost because of nerfs? I can't think of a single one that I miss, except being able to carry LPL's on my CN9-AL without exploding. But the pulse laser nerfs were never requested by the players anyway, it was just some silly idea Paul & Co came up with, so it doesn't really count.

All the dinosaurs of the past, like the Splatcat, PPC Stalker, PPC+Gauss highlander are gone, sure. But the game is more fun now.

People's fear of nerfing and desire to see everything buffed ad infinity is extremely irrational.

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

Well I miss a lot of my old ac2 builds. had a wolverine that was just a whole lot of fun for plinking at distance and getting people to duck or turn. Now it is worthless. And that is just one build.

The jester got reamed right off the go with JJ nerfs if you want something more popular.

[Serpieri]

My buds and I await the day that ghost heat is removed - can't wait to see more on this.

[Victor Morson]

Johnny Z, on 06 October 2014 - 02:28 PM, said:

For the guy who mentioned players leaving the game over this. Then good riddance. I can assure you more leave the game because of crazy alphas coring their nooby mech or a player falling in love with a chassis for what ever reason and finding it gets the crap beat out of it no matter the load out he is using.

Here's the thing: I'm massively in favor of hardpoints to give each variant, each 'mech, it's own flavor - and add many many possibilities to that mix.

But I'm not actually anti-boating. I think you should be able to boat on some variants and chassis, which can then be given their own set of disadvantages to balance them. In an ideal environment, 2 Gauss, Gauss+PPC, 5 Large Lasers, 4 PPCs, and a guy running an AC/20 and SRMs or a mix of pulse lasers or LBX/10s and still be a good match up, on their own terms. That's key. Obviously the complete Phranken builds will never be competitive, but there should be a blend of hybrids and specialized 'mechs and not the "one size fits all" setup we have now.

That's why I also have said MW4 (after BK/Mercs) was balanced better than MW:O despite having probably more overall broken weapons and a lot of real lackluster guns like terrible medium lasers: It did have a role for each type of fighting. That's important.

So yeah. I'm not anti-boat and I think anyone shouldn't take wanting a hardpoint system like this as anti-boat, but rather, restrict boating to mechs that SHOULD be boats, and then deal with them accordingly to make sure they are on par.

The thing with hardpoint systems that are tiered is that they give you a legitimate reason to run small backup weapons and find new weapon combinations that you would absolutely overlook without it. Throwing a few medium lasers or SRMs on when you can't max out every single mech with a solid loadout becomes a lot more appealing, and leaves room for experimentation.

BTW anyone wondering how long I've been championing it, this was not my first post on the subject, but is from Jun 2012.

[Tastian]

I made changes to reflect Class weapons instead of Crit Slot weapons. This separates Small Energy (Class 1 - Flamer, Small Lasers) versus Medium Energy (Class 2 - Med, Med Pulse Lasers) weapons. This helps reduce some of the Med Laser boats a bit more.

I'm still thinking about Clan mechs. As it is, Clan mechs such as stock Nova Prime, Warhawk Prime, and Direwolf Prime are big issues.

[Scratx]

Serpieri, on 06 October 2014 - 06:08 PM, said:

My buds and I await the day that ghost heat is removed - can't wait to see more on this.

This sized hardpoint thing isn't going to kill ghost heat. Sorry to break it to you.

Not like people are listening, though... Plenty of mechs with stock builds that can be tuned to produce ridiculous alphas that ghost heat fights. Hell, some are STOCK mechs, no modifications needed.

This thread is a waste of time because it's impossible to achieve the effect Ghost Heat is trying to do by limiting hardpoints by size. Just look at Nova, Warhawk, Dire Wolf as three examples of why it just won't work. There's quite a few IS mechs with similar issues, as well.

Furthermore, from the angle of "increasing variety of builds", we have the goddamn quirks coming on the 21st. What do you think THOSE will do?

Jeeze. Wake up.

[Tastian]

Victor Morson, on 06 October 2014 - 06:12 PM, said:

BTW anyone wondering how long I've been championing it, this was not my first post on the subject, but is from Jun 2012.

I read your first post on the subject. You show concern about Stalkers boating PPCs better then the Awesome. I think my method fixes that issue.

I too want to return flavor to each mech. I would love to hear your ideas about the Clan mechs I mentioned.

[Victor Morson]

Another option to overlay on my earlier concept would be to allow smaller weapons to partially fill larger hardpoints, or to declare a hardpoint "filled" once any weapon is put into it. I think there'd be definite room for trial on both sides, but ultimately, I think I fall down more onto the "one weapon per slot" side of things just to avoid 20 MGs or other ridiculous things the game isn't really capable of supporting properly. This would still allow some mechs to have things like 4 Level 1 Ballistics to say, quad AC/2, without making it into something else entirely.