Alistair Winter, on 20 October 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:
Either you didn't understand what I meant, or your idea is fundamentally flawed. Because the answer for each weapon depends on the mech. If you don't want to take the type of mech into consideration and make a separate list for each weight class, then the list needs to be for all types of mechs.
A list for each weight class is a pretty good idea, but like you said you're going to run into problems with hardpoints. The AC/20 is a Tier 5 weapon for Lights, for example, because it's nearly impossible to use one on a light mech. The "best" IS lights are the Ember, the JR7-F, and the RVN-3L - all of which make heavy use of laser weaponry that's also considered good on mechs in other weight classes. SRMs are usable, sure, but the light mechs just don't have the survivability to use them without making a suicide run, pushing energy weapons up further.
The ultimate goal isn't so much to rank weapons in terms of effectiveness, but rather to separate weapons into three distinct categories:
Extremely Great Weapons - So good that you'd be a fool not to use it (if you have a chance)
Good Weapons - Good in plenty of situations, but often leave you wishing you had a different weapon
Extremely Bad Weapons - Never good, or good only in very rare situations
When a weapon falls into the "good" category, it's always going to end up where someone will come up with a situation where it is great and often the best choice - Inner Sphere SRM2 and SSRM2 are good examples of this, being very effective on certain light mechs in specific situations. This is pretty much where weapons should be, because it gives you a meaningful choice: what role do I want my mech to play? Should I pick a generalist weapon with moderate DPS, or a close-range weapon with high DPS? Should I grab a long-range weapon with lower DPS instead? Do I want to focus on high alpha damage, or high sustained?
I'm more concerned about clearly identifying the weapons that fall into the "extremely great" and "extremely bad" categories.
Extremely Great weapons end up in that category because they are the best choice in nearly all situations - this basically says "if you want to win, pick this weapon".
Extremely Bad weapons end up in that category because they are never the best choice, or situations are so rare that you almost never see them - this basically says "if you want to lose, pick this weapon".
Weapons in both of these categories remove a lot of the choice that you would otherwise have in picking weapons - they lay out clear plans that simply say "use me all the time" or "never use me".
The purpose of the Tier ranking is to sort of rate the weapons against each other so we can see what needs to be done to push weapons into the state where they are all
Good. The ranking gives us an idea of
how far these weapons need to go to be considered 'balanced'.
More on the Light/Non-light stuff below.
MLs, ERLL, SRM2 and SRM4, for example, may be the best choices for Light mechs - but this is because Light mechs give up access to the most effective weapon/heat sink combinations in favor of having agility and speed. If you take that out of the picture, then it becomes obvious that some weapons far outclass others. The SRM2, for example, would never be chosen over the SRM6 unless you
couldn't use the SRM6 - which is definitely the case in some Light mechs. Likewise, the AC/5 is nearly unusable on Light mechs except for gimmick builds, so it ends up getting a T4 or T5 rating (for Light mechs only) despite being much better for non-Light mechs.
So you kind of have to blur your eyes a little bit and compare the weapons using a typical, highly-used mech. The Shadowhawks are perhaps the best possible mechs to use for Inner Sphere comparisons because it is considered competitive and can effectively use every weapon in the game; Jagermechs would also be a decent choice (choosing Spiders or Cicadas would be a examples of a bad choices). For Clans, we should use the Stormcrow or the Timberwolf, since they act in the same way (choosing Adders or Novas would be examples of bad choices).
Now, I'm perfectly willing to accept a different Tier list for different Mech classes (perhaps stick to Light and non-Light?) - and the SRM2 may be a Tier 2 weapon on Light mechs, but it is certainly not a Tier 2 weapon on Heavy mechs. Also consider that there may not even
be a Tier 1 weapon for Light mechs - sure, maybe MLs and SRM2s are the best, but they just aren't as good as Tier 1 weapons for Heavies, and we need to be able to compare them against each other. This is similar to the Mech Tier rankings - remember how there were no Tier 1 Inner Sphere medium mechs? This is because, as good as the Shadowhawk is, it is nowhere near the Tier 1 mechs from the other weight classes.
So what that leaves us is a "This weapon is meant for Light Mechs only" category - and that's perfectly fine. If we assume that the "light version" weapons in the game like the AC/2, Small Lasers, SRM2s, LRM5s, SSRM2s, and to a lesser extent Flamers, non-boated Medium Lasers, and non-boated SRM4s are meant to be used in Light mechs then you should be able to get as much mileage out of those weapons as a heavier mech gets out of equivalent weapons (for example, SRM6, boated Medium Lasers, boated SRM4s, etc). The fact is that those weapons are just not pulling their weight. A Jenner has no reason to boat Small Lasers
even if you fight at their optimal range simply because they don't give you enough in return for losing all that alpha damage - downgrading 6 medium lasers to 6 small lasers give you 3 more tons to work with and a little more heat efficiency, but nothing else positive; you don't have enough space to load anything else meaningful, meaning you should've just stuck with the medium lasers - especially since now you're stuck engaging at short, dangerous ranges.
The effectiveness of a weapon has two components:
(1) How strong that weapon is, and
(2) How well the mech is able to apply the weapon
What do I mean by that? Well, weapon strength is pretty obvious. The ability of a mech to apply weaponry is not as obvious: basically, what it means is the number of times that you get to shoot somebody before you die, and takes into account your potential accuracy. A Jenner with 6 MLs is quite deadly not so much because it has 6 MLs, but rather because it is highly mobile: it stays alive for a long time, it gets lots of shots off before it dies, and it can use its agility to place those shots in vulnerable spots (coring people from behind, etc).
Mechs generally follow an obvious trend: heavier mechs carry more weapons, but can't apply them as well. Lighter mechs carry fewer weapons, but they apply them better.
So if we want to buff up these lesser-used weapon systems, they need to work in such a way that it follows the same trend as the Medium Laser - "light version" weapons should be more effective when used on lighter mechs, and less effective when used on heavier mechs. The SRM4 fits this profile very well, but still needs a little bit to bring it up more for light mechs - reducing heat generation may help, reducing cooldown may help too. The SRM2 sorta kinda comes close to fitting the profile, but still needs help; you could make the DPS of the SRM2 exactly the same as the SRM4 (that is, it fires twice as quickly as the SRM4); this would help lights immensely and only help non-lights somewhat, reinforcing the "this weapon is meant for light mechs" theme. The same goes for Small Lasers; pretty much the only mechs that can use them effectively other than Light/Medium mechs would be mechs that have lots of extra energy hardpoints (a couple of Battlemasers and the Dire Wolf - the BLR needs help anyway, and the DWF wouldn't be able to use them very well because of its lack of agility). Would increasing the heat efficiency dramatically and dramatically reducing the cooldown on small lasers hurt the game? Not at all; in fact, someone might use them for melee-range brawls at some point, possibly to compliment their SRM2s.
Edited by Xarian, 20 October 2014 - 01:43 PM.
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