28 replies to this topic

[Davegt27]

I would add a new weapon

Air Burst immobilizer

Two types one would be thick smoke, the other electronic

The weapons don't hurt the Mech physically
The smoke one with a radius say 50 to 100 meters (you cant see crap) you still have IFF and can stillfire your weapons

Electronic 25 meter radius--you lose all targeting, no HUD (maybe shutdown)


Davegt27

[Troutmonkey]

I'd set flamer damage to 50dps, commit the changes without telling anyone, and then see how long it takes someone to notice.

[FupDup]

Troutmonkey, on 24 November 2014 - 09:43 PM, said:

I'd set flamer damage to 50dps, commit the changes without telling anyone, and then see how long it takes someone to notice.

That would be so epic.

Godspeed, make it so!

[Adamasartus]

Whoa. I didn't expect so many replies.

I had another idea. What if ultra autocannons didn't jam but fired from a magazine. This would allow a set number of shots in quick succession but still limit the U/AC

[SerratedBlaze]

buckX, on 24 November 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

I'd reconfigure pulse lasers to not be based around the same burn time + CD mechanic of regular lasers. Make them fire as long as you're holding the trigger, and stop once you release the trigger. Give them an internal reservoir or charge that depletes as they fire.

As example, the IS MPL does 6 damage and 4 heat, with a .6s burn, and a 3s CD. That means that as long as the beam is firing, the weapon is doing 10 dps, and generating 6.7hps. Maintain those dps and hps numbers for the beam, but give it a 5 damage reservoir that replenishes continuously at 1.67 damage/second. So if you try to use it like the current implentation, it would burn for .5 seconds, doing 5 damage, but would have regenerated .83 damage in that time, and the end result is that it would have the same .6 second burn for 6 damage, and would then take a slightly longer 3.6s to fully cooldown. The upside would be that you could let off the trigger the instant your target leaves your sights, making sure you're putting your damage on target, rather than into a rock they dodged behind.

If you really wanted to make them the high efficiency version with heightened accuracy as described in lore, you could even do one step further and have them only fire when the reticule is red. Since you don't lead with lasers, there's no problem with that that I can see. If you hold down the trigger and wipe back and forth across the target, the beam would cut out except when it's actually on target, helping you get those pesky light mechs swarming around you. With that in place, you'd have kind of a SRM:SSRM::L:PL syllogism. Obviously you'd need to nerf the numbers on paper, since the percentage of your damage on target is going to be a lot higher.

This so much. Damage per tick would have to be reduced, and/or I wouldn't mind if the ticks were more spread out to keep the expected damage taken from being too high. This would make it worth the two tons over an LLas and fit the role of precision laser much more.

Brody319, on 24 November 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

1. Make LRMs a level approperately. 4 LRM 5s is better than 1 LRM 20, and that is stupid.
2. Make IS auto cannons fire in bursts, because thats how they fire in lore and just give them more ammo per ton than the clans as a trade off.

Diminishing returns on heavier weapons make enough sense to me, and rewards players for spending four hardpoints on four LRM5s vs one on an LRM20. Bigger launchers benefit from Artemis by not having to pay the arty tax multiple times.

I would change LRM role to be more about indirect fire, to many peoples dismay. I don't think they could ever compete with energy or ballistics for direct fire and should fill a different role entirely. I would make Artemis allow the pilot to choose a flight path (suggested by another pilot long ago). For example there would be a rise rapidly- travel- drop path, a stay low and fast path, and a moderate elevation path. The less direct the path the closer the enemy must be.

[Brody319]

SerratedBlaze, on 24 November 2014 - 11:00 PM, said:

Diminishing returns on heavier weapons make enough sense to me, and rewards players for spending four hardpoints on four LRM5s vs one on an LRM20. Bigger launchers benefit from Artemis by not having to pay the arty tax multiple times.

I would change LRM role to be more about indirect fire, to many peoples dismay. I don't think they could ever compete with energy or ballistics for direct fire and should fill a different role entirely. I would make Artemis allow the pilot to choose a flight path (suggested by another pilot long ago). For example there would be a rise rapidly- travel- drop path, a stay low and fast path, and a moderate elevation path. The less direct the path the closer the enemy must be.

If they completely changed the system of missiles I could agree, but since all of them act the same I think they should be linear progression, I made a post on an LRM topic a while ago. 2 LRM 5s is pretty much the same as 1 LRM 10, and 3 LRM 5s are only slightly lighter than an LRM 15, an LRM 5 and 10 are the same as an LRM 15. However this pattern falls apart at LRM 20s.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 24 November 2014 - 09:10 PM, said:

Technically one can lower the heat at the same time as increasing the damage rate, to keep the existing heat rate or even lower it.

We can also technically lower the weight of the gun.

The problem is that PGI have constrained themselves to using the TT numbers in some way, which kind of ties our hands. They want it to generate 1 heat for every 2 damage, just like in TT. As such, you can't change the damage rate without also proportionally changing the heat generation rate.

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As for the AC/5 comparison, I'm actually mostly comparing the AC/2 to the ERLL. Both are guns that reach out to extreme ranges, with very similar tonnages. I think that they should be roughly analogous (but not 100% clones of course), whereas right now the latter is a lot better at the extreme-range poking role (and other roles) than the former.

But consider two 'Mechs, one with AC/2 and one with ERLL. The two are going to poke at each other. The AC/2, first, out-ranges the ERLL by quite a bit, even more so with modules. Second, the round moves 2000 m/s, and most people can't react fast enough to dodge. Third, while they both have to stare down the target, the AC/2 use can see through the laser beam while the laser user cannot see through the tiny explosions going off in his face.

Who's really got the upper hand?

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Cockpit shaking tends to be more relegated to a "nuisance" type role than making a real difference, unless the shaking is super duper extreme. In which case, using more than one of the gun wouldn't be beneficial anyways.

I want the shake to be somewhat extreme. Not 50 LRMs on your head per second extreme, but enough to make it really hard to aim. A lot of heavy rounds hitting you at 2000 m/s is going to stack the shaking and rock you around.

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I see two "roles" that the AC/2 could be easily shuffled into:

A. Long-range suppression weapon, aka what it used to be before Paul went crazy on it (roughly 0.5 second cooldown, no heat). Fast firing rate, good damage, and some bonus cockpit shaking. The current version doesn't have enough of these traits to be decent. Doesn't necessarily need the full 0.5s cooldown restored, but it should certainly fire a bit faster and have its heat per shot reduced a bit simultaneously.

That puts it back into the "tolerable" range, but it's still an awful choice compared to an AC/5 in any situation outside of not having enough tons to use an AC/5. The only way the AC/2 becomes something to consider without making radical changes is if it does greater DPS than the AC/5. This is the exact same problem pulse lasers had until the laser revamp.

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B. Long-range "mini sniper" cannon. Would deal much more frontloaded damage (somewhere around 4 or so) but with reduced DPS to compensate (approximately 2.0 DPS, if it was given 4 damage per shot). It would be much better in long-range poking battles due to more upfront damage but less effective in close quarters due to DPS. Ammo per ton would probably have to get reduced to maintain approximately 150 damage per ton of ammo. This also solves the heat per second issue nicely. I think that this one would be cooler and offer more flavor, but...

The big issue with approach "B" is that it requires PGI to deviate from the mindset that an Autocannon "must" do the same damage per shot as is listed in its weapon name (i.e. AC/10 "must" do 10 upfront damage, no higher or lower allowed). Option A therefore seems more likely due to the status quo, although Paul would still probably reject it...

And that's a problem. Making an exception for one gun doesn't work, and that's where my suggestion comes from. I picked two seconds because that was nice and round and still fairly balanced though, if I think about it some more, 1.7 seconds is a bit better. The larger ACs get balanced by their heat, the smaller ones get balanced by their lower DPS. AC/5 is still right in the middle. Rate of fire can change though. Going back to a two second rating interval, you could make the AC/2 more potent by giving it a 5 round per second fire rate and prevent the AC/5 from being too potent by giving it a 1 round per second rate of fire.

I seem to recall calls for stream-based IS ACs. Here's the ticket to that without making it stupid with spaces between bursts.

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It's far enough to make a difference.

Really though, the gun doesn't really need much touching. It already has its uses without being too bad or too good.

Not really. The modules and specialty ammunition will compensate and, besides, isn't low TTK a large complaint with the game right now?

The only reason I'm touching the AC/5 is for consistency with the rest of the guns, anyway.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

We can also technically lower the weight of the gun.

The problem is that PGI have constrained themselves to using the TT numbers in some way, which kind of ties our hands. They want it to generate 1 heat for every 2 damage, just like in TT. As such, you can't change the damage rate without also proportionally changing the heat generation rate.

So far the only "truly" set in stone aspects appear to be tonnage and critical slots. Heat has been altered on the majority of energy weapons (basically all of them excluding [ER]PPCs and the IS SPL have been altered). They also reduced the heat on the AC/20 from 7 to 6. Why they haven't thought about adjusting heat on any other ballistics, I'll never know.

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

But consider two 'Mechs, one with AC/2 and one with ERLL. The two are going to poke at each other. The AC/2, first, out-ranges the ERLL by quite a bit, even more so with modules. Second, the round moves 2000 m/s, and most people can't react fast enough to dodge. Third, while they both have to stare down the target, the AC/2 use can see through the laser beam while the laser user cannot see through the tiny explosions going off in his face.

Who's really got the upper hand?

The AC/2's range is more of an "on paper" thing than actual practice. Simply hitting somebody from far away isn't good enough, you have to actually make a reasonably sized dent from that distance as well. Without range mods, I'll do some spreadsheetwarrior maths on how much damage the ERLL does at the AC/2's optimal range of 720m.


To start out, the ERLL does 9 damage (assuming you get all the beam to hit) at 675m range. Its max range is 1350, meaning that we lose approximately 0.0133333 damage for every meter past 675m that the ERLL travels. 720m is 45m past 675m, which brings our total damage lost to 0.6. The original 9 damage minus 0.6 gives us approximately 8.4 damage.

The epic funny part about the AC/2 is that one would "think" that it's really good at long ranges, but weapons with much shorter range than itself will very often outdamage it at its own optimal range. Even the AC/10 and regular LL are better at 720m. You have to get pretty far out for the AC/2 to gain any upperhand, which is something that doesn't happen very often; and when it does happen, the window of opportunity isn't usually very long...

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

I want the shake to be somewhat extreme. Not 50 LRMs on your head per second extreme, but enough to make it really hard to aim. A lot of heavy rounds hitting you at 2000 m/s is going to stack the shaking and rock you around.

You'd need to make it basically earthquake levels for anyone in ultracomp™ land to ever consider it, given that they didn't touch it even with 0.5s cooldown and no heat scale.

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

That puts it back into the "tolerable" range, but it's still an awful choice compared to an AC/5 in any situation outside of not having enough tons to use an AC/5. The only way the AC/2 becomes something to consider without making radical changes is if it does greater DPS than the AC/5. This is the exact same problem pulse lasers had until the laser revamp.

It would be nice if the AC/2 was stronger at really long ranges than the AC/5, but the same maths used above would show that this isn't the case right now...

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

And that's a problem. Making an exception for one gun doesn't work, and that's where my suggestion comes from. I picked two seconds because that was nice and round and still fairly balanced though, if I think about it some more, 1.7 seconds is a bit better. The larger ACs get balanced by their heat, the smaller ones get balanced by their lower DPS. AC/5 is still right in the middle. Rate of fire can change though. Going back to a two second rating interval, you could make the AC/2 more potent by giving it a 5 round per second fire rate and prevent the AC/5 from being too potent by giving it a 1 round per second rate of fire.

And the problem with not making exceptions is that this game has a pretty bad history of trying to normalize all the things. Making everything line up on a spreadsheet does not create game balance. It creates checkbook balance maybe, but not game balance. We've seen this is everything from the original pulse laser normalization, to the AC family normalization. The only normalizing pass that didn't caused problems was the most recent pulse adjustments.

In the case of ACs, the way FASA implemented them in TT was kind of stupid, to be frank. Doubling damage for only +2 tons and a bit less range is a recipe for disaster that left the TT AC/2 unusable, the TT AC/5 and AC/10 both inferior to the PPC in every way, and the TT AC/20 actually viable (albeit niche). Your suggested approach is basically taking TT's formula of double damage per 10 seconds as you move up to double damage per 2 seconds as you move up. Same basic flaws either way.


Weapons shouldn't be balanced as "families" because doing so often overlooks variables such as tonnage, heat, range, etc. They should be balanced as individual pieces that fit together into the global puzzle.

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

I seem to recall calls for stream-based IS ACs. Here's the ticket to that without making it stupid with spaces between bursts.

I ignore those, mostly, because we've seen from Clan ACs just well burst-fire (doesn't) work*...

*Exception being a Dire Whale boating 51 tons of them, but that's an outlier.

Yeonne Greene, on 24 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

Not really. The modules and specialty ammunition will compensate and, besides, isn't low TTK a large complaint with the game right now?

The only reason I'm touching the AC/5 is for consistency with the rest of the guns, anyway.

TTK issues aren't being caused by the AC/5, or any one weapon. They're caused by large volumes of weapons instantly converging onto a single location to become a duct-tape superweapon that can bypass the armor system.

For example, the PPC wasn't nerfed because the PPC itself was too good, but because the Autocannon/50 was too good. (The way you build an Autocannon/50 is by combining together 2 ERPPCs and 2 Gauss). And there was the whole "Heat Scale" debacle added because of the "Super PPC" created by combining 4 PPCs on Stalkers. And the Gauss Rifle charge up. And the heat nerfs on small and medium class energy weapons. And other things...

Edited by FupDup, 25 November 2014 - 09:05 AM.

[Johnny Z]

Elizander, on 24 November 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

What I would change is Clan mech missile tube geometry. I'd slash it all by 50% because they all fire one at a time and are half the weight so there's no real need to have 20 tubes on an LRM 20.

I'd probably put an additional mechanic to PPCs. Hold to charge for 0.XX seconds to fire it so that it deals damage under 90m (meaning you are making the field turn off during this time for this particular shot).

I'd bring the Macross-Anime swirly missiles back just cause they are cool.

Flamers set mechs on fire for (x) seconds where their base heat goes up by (X) percent. The base heat increase depends on how long the mech was fried.

Some lasers that deal the bulk of the damage at the start or some lasers that do more damage but deal the bulk of the damage near the end of the beam.

Ya they got to figure a place in this game for the macross swirly missiles!!

Maybe because of longer flight time I assume they had they could be lighter versions? A third tech other than battlemechs and omni mech? OMG they could be lostech and awsome. They need to bring in Lostech as upgraded equipment to!

Edited by Johnny Z, 25 November 2014 - 07:46 AM.