41 replies to this topic

[Zordicron]

Scratx, on 08 October 2014 - 06:10 PM, said:

I'm going to assume mine is one of those you blatantly ignored.

Okay.

Here's the fun bit. You are suggesting sized hardpoints, just a different kind of them. They don't actually stop you from mounting big guns in "small" mounts, but it nerfs them if you do. In this way, it passes the sniff test of "Is this going to invalidate a lot of builds?". It won't invalidate them, but it may adversely affect non-problematic builds just the same.

Anyway, I am not going to argue about Catapult K2's "Machinegun" hardpoints.

I am simply going to point to the Nova Prime as one of the reasons why this approach is flawed. I quoted it in my ignored post, in fact. Also the Warhawk, Dire Wolf and a lot of builds whose stock or not-very-different-from-stock builds are considered problematic.

Does this proposal affect them? You can't size the hardpoints such that you're nerfing the stock build. That's ridiculous. How are you going to nerf 12 ERMLs? They're already about as small and light as weapons go. And the Warhawk's hardpoints? Quad ERLL, without ghost heat, would be downright nasty on a heatsink boat like that. Dire Wolf? Same, except with more guns.

Sigh. I'm starting to lose count on how many times I pointed this out, and nobody's yet given a solution that isn't ridiculous.

You can keep pretending this problem doesn't exist, or you can own up to the fact it does and actually, honestly, try to come up with some way of dealing with it that isn't ridiculous like arbitrarily telling the Nova alone that NOPE, you can't actually fire more than 6 lasers or something like that.

You are persistant, so i will say you should read more of this thread where I suggest ghost heat can be substituted with duration changes for ML and the like. ML boats etc could be easily throttled WITHOUT having to force them into overheat/shutdown to do so. PLease stop making presumptions that everything is blanket coverage and black and white. There is immense diversity in Battletech weapons, there is no one size fits all to this issue, but a system like this comes pretty close to accomodating this diversity without making crazy alphaboats the high king of the land.

[Scratx]

Eldagore, on 08 October 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

You are persistant, so i will say you should read more of this thread where I suggest ghost heat can be substituted with duration changes for ML and the like. ML boats etc could be easily throttled WITHOUT having to force them into overheat/shutdown to do so. PLease stop making presumptions that everything is blanket coverage and black and white. There is immense diversity in Battletech weapons, there is no one size fits all to this issue, but a system like this comes pretty close to accomodating this diversity without making crazy alphaboats the high king of the land.

There is one thing I agree with you here. This system could enhance diversity. Far far more than the other sized hardpoint proposals that have been recently discussed, and is also far more viable because it doesn't plaster big red "INVALID" letters over a ton of people's mechs. I have my doubts it's necessary, but then again, I'm mainly looking at the incoming quirk system to see if it will work for that purpose.

Where I mostly have my contention is the assertion that this kind of thing can make ghost heat unnecessary. It really won't, because ghost heat is there to fight pulling the trigger and firing all your weapons into the same component on your target. It's there to (try to) get you to draw out your firing over a longer period of time. While making some guns multi-bullet will help like in clan AC's case, it is hardly a complete fix.

And then there's the Annihilator and the King Crab. Umm, yeah, nerfing these guys... umm... yeah, they come stock with quad AC10 and dual AC20 respectively, IIRC.... yeeeah. (sure, Annihilator isn't even announced, but King Crab is coming)

Sorry. I know it's appealing, but ghost heat isn't going away for this.

I'll stop and let you theorycraft in peace, now. I just hope you understand what I'm trying to tell you (and everyone else, really).

[Zordicron]

I see what you are saying with the KC, however, IMO it should be fine for a slow as mollassas in January 100 ton assault to have 40 points of PPD. Most people, including me, arent as ok with it being on a high mount, 70+kph agile jagermech however. If i recall, quad 10 Annihilator tops out at 38KPH also. EVEN SO, if they became a big issue, changing the ANH to tube size 5 making the 10's fire double shots would reduce the PPD significantly without removing firepower or altering any other aspect of the mech.

I also never suggested 100% removal of ghost heat, but I would not take it off the table either- however once PPFLD is throttled significantly, looking at GH and reducing effects, removing effects, changing effects(duration for instance) would be poosible. WITH NO CHANGE WE CAN NOT CHANGE GH or we will be back where we were in beta. I want change, and many others do too ever since it was put in.

While GH was a "fix" that removed a lot of really bad offenders from the field, it has always felt like a cudgel fix where something more refined is called for.

[Zordicron]

I feel like I should make an example of ML boat duration so people have an easier way to relate:

Lets look at that Nova-

Current, 6 ERML is ok, 7 triggers ghost heat. Heat penalties increase as more lasers fire essentially creating in many players minds a severe handicap on laser weapons compared to the other types. NOTE< I DO NOT WANT A DEBATE ON THE MERITS?FAULTS OF GH HERE. I am sure there are a trillion other places for that. So lets just stick to this:

Duration instead of heat. We will presume 12 ERML on the Nova.

6= no penalty
7= slight duration penalty, maybe .25 seconds
8= harsher, maybe .75 seconds
9=duaration doubled
10=tripled
11=quadrupled
12=5X DURATION.

So, to alpha strike the Nova, it will no longer blow the mech up with ghost heat. BUT it will still CAP OUT HEAT, and (duration 1.25 times 5) duration will be 6.25 SECONDS! So yes, you could alpha the thing without insta death, but you will have to hold your target for triple the time people said made ERLL useless and still be at heat cap to do it.

Values could be adjusted, as needed. There has been a long list of people complaining about severe heat on lasers making the other weapon types superior, especially AC's. Changing ghost heat to something else would help that. Also, combine it with somthing like the tube system for LL.

LL, tube system= duration increases, so boats naturally have less FLD unless on a mech that came with them stock. Because of this it could potentially be poosible to alter Ghost heat values, either number of lasers that trigger it, or amount.

Essentially, the effects of duration changes on lasers have already been tested! On clan Lasers, it was very effective with a fairly small change. Compared to heat, which afffects ALL weapons on your mech(can;t fire any weapon at the cap) duration of lasers pinpoints JUST lasers, and as such could allow for heat reductions on the weapons, which means that whole stigma/whatever you want to call it with lasers and heat that has been thrown around on the forums since forever could actually be addressed.

The only alternative I can see with this heat mess would be a complete rework of heat scale to lower cap+higher dissipation, and IMO Russ and Paul do NOT want to go that route as it essentially reboots all balance on every weapon. This tube thing I propose(multiple times over the last ug, year(s)) would leave missiles completely out of "new" balance, ballistics heat/etc would not change, only fire pattern, and lasers heat issues could be addressed.

[Scratx]

*eyes the ML example post* Without some time to digest, all I can really say is that I definitely don't rule out the viability of something like that.

GH is indeed a cudgel that doesn't quite work. Stormcrow with 2 cERLL and 5 cERML can deliver 57.5 laser damage without GH triggering, for example. One of many weapon combos that are possible and which GH does nothing about. (It's actually pretty hot too so it's IMO not a huge problem in actual play, but it's an useful example)

Most I can really say for now (especially as it's way too late in the night for me to be doing any sort of analysis, ugh, want sleep... when did it become 6am >_< ) is that unlike every other "sized hardpoint" suggestion, your idea doesn't break existing mechs and might actually be viable.

I'll likely keep paying attention to this thread.

[Gyrok]

Clans are trying to get their tickle fest ACs to be LESS PELLETS, and here you are advocating more for everyone?

Seriously?

No.

[Belorion]

This idea may actually be a viable idea which means no one in the community will support you in it.

I would sum this idea up as forced chain firing of weapons when too many are fired at the same time.

Edited by Belorion, 09 October 2014 - 12:56 PM.

[Celthora]

Look at DW arms:

Prime: 1B 4E
A: 3E
B: 1B

Atm it really makes nosense, There is no size of hardpoints, so simply Prime>A, B.

A and B variants can carry larger sizes, thats why they got fewer hardpoints. Prime shouldnt supposed to carry something heavier than large laser, variant A should be able to fire erppcs. Also prime ballistic should carry ac5, maybe 10 at most, variant B should be available for ac20.

Also i wonder how they are going to release railgun carrying mechs on center torso on current system.

Game balance, lore, logic, in every view of angle, the game needs sized hardpoints...

[Zordicron]

Belorion, on 09 October 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

This idea may actually be a viable idea which means no one in the community will support you in it.

I would sum this idea up as forced chain firing of weapons when too many are fired at the same time.

That is too narrow of a summation, and would possibly only apply to laser weapons due to duration changes, and even then the mechanics aren't really the same. The effect of spreading out the dmg some(chainfire does do this) is related though.

I wanted to also bring up a comparison of laser ghost heat vs duration changes. With ghost heat, you hit cap, you shut down. There is nothing you can do about this outside of a few one time coolant flushes. Essentially, "Bang, shutdown". heat managment should be a key part of any battletech game, but ghost heat and the cap are pretty much black and white.

Now lets compare to duration extensions. Heat management is still there, because firing any laser generates it's own heat. With a duration increase, PPFLD is spread around, however, and this is important, skill in aiming etc can allow players, if they are a good enough shot, to land all the dmg on the enemy, even at extreme durations. I think this is a step forward compared to ghost heat, where player skill is basically not in the equation whatsoever, as once you shut down you just wait it out.

So while duration increases would be a stiff penalty, and in almost every case(shooting a shutdown mech would make it possible to aplhastrike one spot even in a situation like 6 second duration) PPFLD would get spread about, the more dmg you try to boat the more it would spread. BUT, unlike ghost heat, the high end player can accept the challenge of using their aiming skills to compensate for the duration alterations. By doing so, the duration changes are a flexible penalty that can be activly mitigated by the player, and can have it's own sort of reward to high skill. IMO, this makes it a vastly superior mechanic to ghost heat for these smaller laser weapons like the ML or ERML.

[Lykaon]

Scratx, on 07 October 2014 - 05:09 AM, said:

Sized hardpoints do jack **** to Ghost Heat and it's high time people stopped pretending it does.

Nova Prime, stock, with double basics has, IIRC, 79.56 heat cap. Full alpha without ghost heat is 72. Yep, let's allow it to pour down 84 damage in 1.25 seconds into anyone in one single burst of laser fire. I can't see how it could possible go wrong. /sarcasm

Are you standing absolutley still while this Nova Prime hoses you down?

84 damage spread over several locations AND into the void as some of this 84 damage is pumped off into the ground/buildings/hills around a moving target.

PPFLD for half that and you get much better results as you melt almost all the armor off of nearly any body part on mech under 75 tons in a single trigger pull of twin AC 20s.

Under "optimal" meta play this has reduced most battle mechs to 4 "hitpoints" for anyone who can aim 40 point FLD pintoint alpha strikes.

Some people fear that reducing pinpoint front loading damage will result in a "tickle fight" but right now if you know what you are doing and build to meta practicaly any mech has 4 "hitpoints" or less.

I think some middle ground may be needed between "boom headshot" typical FPS gameplay and running out of ammo before you get a target's armor into the red zone.

[Swift Hatchet]

I've read quite a few things over the last year and half lurking around this forum, and I have to say I think this is one of the better ideas I've seen. Not an end all, but a good idea.

Unfortunately, in trying to place how this would work out in reality (with some dev experience..), I fear that this or something like this would ultimately be too costly for PGI right now. That is really dependent on how well they've been able setup stuff on the dev side thus far. Thousands of config changes can be quite snappy if things are proper.

Still though, probably a significant undertaking for them right now I imagine, as it is anytime lots of questions need answering to form something functional enough for the masses. Would love to be wrong about that. And would be perfectly happy knowing something like this was on the table and being piecemealed into something functional at least.

I really like this concept though. I try to stay optimistic, and while I don't think there is a 'singular' fix that would make everyone happy, this seems to cover a lot of topics I've read others post/preach/scream/flame on. Although in staying honest here, I doubt very seriously that any 'number' of fixes will make everyone happy.

[Celthora]

[Pjwned]

Gyrok, on 09 October 2014 - 06:22 AM, said:

Clans are trying to get their tickle fest ACs to be LESS PELLETS, and here you are advocating more for everyone?

Seriously?

No.

It might not make a whole lot of sense but perhaps this could be applied inversely as well, e.g a direwolf's ballistics hardpoints (perhaps even depending on hardpoint location and mech variant, much like missile tubes) would be the highest rated, so if you cram in a bunch of smaller ballistics (LBX-5 or C-UAC5 for example) they could have less pellets firing than usual. That is a potential solution if it would truly hurt mechs/builds that didn't need to be nerfed further (though you seem to be acting like the limited hardpoints would simply introduce even more damage spreading for every single mech, which isn't true) but a concern is if it would create further problems with boating and such that way; additionally I can't think of many ways for IS mechs to benefit from something like what I suggested, at least as far as ballistics go.

Edited by Pjwned, 10 October 2014 - 12:30 PM.

[Zordicron]

SwiftHatchet, on 10 October 2014 - 02:16 AM, said:

I've read quite a few things over the last year and half lurking around this forum, and I have to say I think this is one of the better ideas I've seen. Not an end all, but a good idea.

Unfortunately, in trying to place how this would work out in reality (with some dev experience..), I fear that this or something like this would ultimately be too costly for PGI right now. That is really dependent on how well they've been able setup stuff on the dev side thus far. Thousands of config changes can be quite snappy if things are proper.

Still though, probably a significant undertaking for them right now I imagine, as it is anytime lots of questions need answering to form something functional enough for the masses. Would love to be wrong about that. And would be perfectly happy knowing something like this was on the table and being piecemealed into something functional at least.

I really like this concept though. I try to stay optimistic, and while I don't think there is a 'singular' fix that would make everyone happy, this seems to cover a lot of topics I've read others post/preach/scream/flame on. Although in staying honest here, I doubt very seriously that any 'number' of fixes will make everyone happy.

You are correct, it is too much right now. Russ said as much, CW is priority right now. BUT, he was the one that actually brought up the sized hardpoint thing, and after reading lots of bad ideas and some that would maybe work halfway, I decided it was time to drag this out into the light again, especially as last time we did not have any burst fire AC in the game(before clans) OR any fiddlin' with laser duration done. We have had both now, the dev team has seen first hand what each can do for TTK and general gameplay as balance tools.

[mezonblaster]

Up.
I didnt find any official answers about sized hardpoint system.
also http://mwomercs.com/...point-revision/
and http://mwomercs.com/...nt-size-system/

With upcoming 'energy draw', maybe it's time to bring this limited size hardpoint idea back to light?
It seems much more reasonable to eleminate 'wild configs' and crazy alpha strikes, than ghost heat or energy draw.

ps: and sorry for my english

Edited by mezonblaster, 27 August 2016 - 05:11 AM.

[Pjwned]

Wow, this is a really old necro.

Anyways, I've liked this idea for a while now and I would like to see it as well as other fixes instead of this stupid energy draw BS, but PGI clearly isn't interested in doing anything other than more lame band-aid fixes.

[Bohxim]

Interesting concept. But imo in a game play balance point of view, the ppfld characteristic of IS ballistics were primarily a balance to clans due to the generally smaller and lighter weapons the clans had. Not to mention the fragility of most IS mechs as they need to mount xl to run similar firepower to clans. If you convert some of the IS mechs to have a longer face time and higher spread values you'll have all the disadvantages of clan ballistics while not having much of the advantages in that IS are still restricted to ultra fives. So imo unless IS weaponry gets boosted to nearly clan tech, it is too much a bane

[Zordicron]

Heh, I didn't think anyone would actually post in here and necro it. I linked to this in some other topic like a week ago as it was relevant to the conversation, I don;t even recall what it was. I also didn;t realize I made this so long ago- but it does go to show how far behind PGI is on fundamental game mechanics, that people have been suggesting things for so long. This wasn't even the first time I posted this, just the first time I kept it bookmarked so I didn;t have to rewrite it. So pinpoint alpha issues go back to beta, long story short.

[Kmieciu]

Dual AC20 on a Catapult is such a weak build nowadays that I'm opposed to any and all changes that would further weaken it .

What's even the point of a 2xAC20 Catapult when it can't outrun a 2xUAC20 Kodiak-3 ?

Oh.

You mean Kodiak-3 deserves those super-high mounts with the biggest weapons in the game, and the Catapult doesn't ?

[Pjwned]

Kmieciu, on 29 August 2016 - 04:45 AM, said:

Dual AC20 on a Catapult is such a weak build nowadays that I'm opposed to any and all changes that would further weaken it .

What's even the point of a 2xAC20 Catapult when it can't outrun a 2xUAC20 Kodiak-3 ?

Oh.

You mean Kodiak-3 deserves those super-high mounts with the biggest weapons in the game, and the Catapult doesn't ?

You're talking about a heavy mech that has ballistic hardpoints meant for machine guns and you're whining about how weak it is when you try to have it boat 2x AC20, which is nearly the heaviest weapon in the game and also the most bulky, on a 65 ton mech.

So the answer to your question is yes.