59 replies to this topic

[Tlords]

I believe a mechwarrior should feel his mech being destroyed around him part-by-part. With the current game, even with torso twisting, it is amazing how fast sections of mechs are destroyed.

There are huge masses of metal inside mechs - weapons, heatsinks, and electronics - that mean nothing for mitigating damage. So let me start with this idea. It is an idea that

- Keeps the power of the clan’s weapons.
- Benefits every mech.
- Makes Inner Sphere mechs more durable than their Clan cousins.
- Shows the Clans making their weapons lighter and smaller by sacrificing durability to gain firepower.
- Makes Clan mechs more like Ferrari sports cars and the IS more like Ford F150 4WD pickup trucks.
- Makes the decision between Endo-Steel and Ferro-Fibrous harder.

The idea is that each weapon, heatsink, and piece of electronics has a durability rating based on its mass. This mass must be destroyed before targeting the interior structure.

Today, every weapon in MWO has 10 hit points, except for Gauss which has 5. These hitpoints do not count towards defending the mech. This idea treats equipment like engines. It is easier for a single pistol shot to disable a lawn mower engine than a large diesel truck engine. This means an AC/20 should take more damage than a small laser before it stops working based on its mass. Why? Because weapon designers build weapons to take a beating. The more massive the weapon the more they hardened it for the rigors of warfare. The more they over-engineered it to take a beating. It is harder to destroy a main deck gun on a battleship than a musket.

As an example, the AC/20 weighs the same as the new hero Locust with its armament and electronics striped. Yep 14 tons. A Hunchback with an AC20 in its right torso is essentially carrying a compacted Locust. It requires a minimum of 84 pts of damage to destroy a locust shooting from its side: 56 for armor on an arm, side torso, and center torso plus 28 points of internal structure. The AC20 weighing as much as a locust needs similar characteristics. The question is how to assign this with a formula the works for every weapon.

I used the medium laser as the base for durability and assigned 5 pts of damage needed to destroy the inner sphere version and 4 pts of damage to destroy the clan version With Ferro-Fibrous armor these values change to 5.6 for IS and 4.8 for Clan. Based on this, some example Inner Sphere and Clan weapon durabilities follow. Two values are shown. One with regular armor and one with Ferro-Fibrous Armor. The weapons on mechs with Ferro-Fibrous provide more durability.

Inner sphere weapon durability (regular armor / with Ferro-Fibrous)
Small laser - 3 / 3 pts
Medium laser - 5 / 6 pts
Medium Pulse laser - 10 / 11 pts (Medium pulse laser are more durable than normal lasers)
Large Laser - 25 / 28 pts
PPC - 35 / 39 pts
AC5 - 40 / 45 pts.
AC20 - 70 / 78 pts
LRM5 - 10 / 11 pts
LRM20 with Artemis IV - 55 / 62 pts
Gauss - 5 pts / 5.6 (only exception to the rule)

Clan weapon durability (regular armor / with Ferro-Fibrous)
C-ER small laser - 3 / 4 pts
C- ER medium laser - 4 / 5 pts
C-Medium pulse - 8 / 10 pts
C-ER Large Laser - 16 / 19 pts
C-ER-PPC - 24 / 29 pts
C-UAC5 - 28 / 34 pts
C-UAC20 - 48 / 58 pts
C-LRM5 - 4 / 5 pts
C-LRM20 with Artemis IV - 24 / 29 pts
C-Gauss - 4 / 5 pts (only exception to the rule)

I am sure these values need play testing and adjustment. Also the Gauss Rifle needs adjustment; I chose to make it fragile under a belief that to achieve its firepower, extreme range, velocity, and minimal heat protection was sacrificed in building it.

I am looking for ideas on how to make this idea better...

[TexAce]

+1

[Torgun]

Seems like the bigger the mech that can carry the biggest guns get to keep them a lot longer and thus keep dishing out the bigger damage, while smaller mechs with lighter weapons are much easier disarmed? In the end it'll heavily benefit the big mechs. Yeah I'd have to say no to that.

[Burktross]

Torn on the issue, due to mentioned above.

[bluepiglet]

The level of military technology of Clan is meant to be centuries ahead of the IS when the Clan invasion occurs. Making their meches more fragile than the IS counter parts does not make any sense.

Just make Clan as OP are they are supposed to and set the game mode to 10 Clan vs 12 IS already.

[TheMadTypist]

Hmm. I like the idea of weapons that crit better having a greater use once the armor goes, but I'm not sure I want to skew defense to the heavier end of the spectrum. imagine the tanking ability of Direwhales.

Can we make armor angling a thing? shots at an angle to a facing do less damage or whatnot? That'd help out everybody, especially lights fast enough that you can never get a flat-on shot.

[aniviron]

Mech durability problems have as much or more to do with the shift to 12v12 compared to 8v8. Great example, right now I am typing this while dead in a game; I peeked D4 early in my SCR prime, had taken 5 damage to CT and 5 to RT from a BJ's dual AC5s. After I peeked I shot once and was already reversing; there were 4 mechs ~400m out, and a few closer out of view to the left. I shot once, already reversing, and in the 1.1s it took my lasers to burn, I dropped from 98% integrity to 78. For those of you that can math, that means 136 damage in 1.1s. That's not something that one mech is doing, that's just what happens when a team of 12 people is playing the only viable strategy in MWO, blobbing up. The engagement left me with a cherry red CT, and it was effectively a one-hit kill, despite frontloading my armor 64/8.

Drop the game size back to 8v8, at least on the smaller maps, but preferably on all of them, and you will see a huge increase in TTK. Lights and mediums have never been great in this game (lagshield excepted) and they never will be unless the player count is dropped. The advantage of lights and mediums is maneuverability, the disadvantage is low health. 12v12 reduces the advantage of mobility simply by putting more people on the map, which means less room to position without taking fire; while at the same time increases the disadvantage of low health by concentrating fire and bringing down TTK.

[Alek Ituin]

aniviron, on 01 December 2014 - 04:51 PM, said:

Mech durability problems have as much or more to do with the shift to 12v12 compared to 8v8. Great example, right now I am typing this while dead in a game; I peeked D4 early in my SCR prime, had taken 5 damage to CT and 5 to RT from a BJ's dual AC5s. After I peeked I shot once and was already reversing; there were 4 mechs ~400m out, and a few closer out of view to the left. I shot once, already reversing, and in the 1.1s it took my lasers to burn, I dropped from 98% integrity to 78. For those of you that can math, that means 136 damage in 1.1s. That's not something that one mech is doing, that's just what happens when a team of 12 people is playing the only viable strategy in MWO, blobbing up. The engagement left me with a cherry red CT, and it was effectively a one-hit kill, despite frontloading my armor 64/8.

Drop the game size back to 8v8, at least on the smaller maps, but preferably on all of them, and you will see a huge increase in TTK. Lights and mediums have never been great in this game (lagshield excepted) and they never will be unless the player count is dropped. The advantage of lights and mediums is maneuverability, the disadvantage is low health. 12v12 reduces the advantage of mobility simply by putting more people on the map, which means less room to position without taking fire; while at the same time increases the disadvantage of low health by concentrating fire and bringing down TTK.

Agreed. I remember the old 8v8 days, when a single Mech actually had a chance of clutching the match. Pilot skill was a bigger factor than the "blob up and win" that we have now. It took more time to take down a Mech, more skill, just... It was better back then.

Not to say there weren't problems: Gaussapults, streakcats, splat cats, AC/20 cats, invincible Jenners, Atlas cockpits the size of a small moon, etc...

But it was better.

[H Seldon]

8v8 days were fun, had a match with 8 kills and 2 with 7. Haven't had that since. But on topic, I think just increasing the hitpoints of the internal structure a lot would help. You would see weapon crits happen for a change. Very rare that I get a weapon crit before the part is completely blown off.

[Joe Mallad]

I have to agree that most maps need the mech count dropped back down to 8 vs 8. However, In regard to Ferro-Fibrous Armor, beside freeing up "some weight", wasnt it supposed to also give our mechs something like a 33% "or some % like this" toward damage resistance? I may be totally wrong on that... but a swear I remember PGI saying in the past that Ferro not only would free up weight but also give us a % damage resistance. Anyone else remember this or am I just mistaken?


EDIT: I looked it up and (IN LORE) Ferro not only frees us SOME weight per ton over standard armor it... provides more protection per ton than standard armor (12% for Inner Sphere FF, 20% for Clan FF)

So IS this how Ferro is operating now?

Edited by Yoseful Mallad, 01 December 2014 - 05:26 PM.

[Gauvan]

TTK does feel a little low right now, but I'm not sure it's a strict durability/HP issue. I'm not sure there is an elegant solution that would be acceptable to all players.

These are just some rough ideas I’ve been thinking about; caveat lector. I also only play solo queue, for what that’s worth.

I think skill-based pinpoint damage needs to be effective to reward player ability. But there are a lot of ways to strip armor that are less skill based. I think one of the reasons the Clans feel deadly right now is what I call flashlighting. If you have a lot of mechs with ER lasers, they can play those lasers over a target and, in total, do reasonable amounts of damage in the early stages of the match without a lot of aiming. It’s possible with IS mechs, of course, but the ER Clan lasers plus the average engagement range on the maps makes it easy for Clan laser vomit builds.

One way of addressing this without punishing good aim is to change the way lasers apply damage. Right now each ‘tic’ does the same amount of damage. What if the damage per tic started low but grew the longer the beam was on target? Losing the target would reset the counter. The total damage would be the same if the beam is aimed but if it’s just being flashed around the damage is minimal.

As far as durability goes, I think the outliers are lights and assaults. Lights, in my opinion, die too quickly to flashlighting and LRMs (without a 6M C-Bill module). IS assaults, other than the Stalker, don’t have quite enough durability since the Clans have been added, but I think that can be fixed with quirks.

So basically on the durability issue I’d like to see a durability quirk pass on brawler mechs and fixed hitboxes on outliers and see how the balance feels then.

[Kiiyor]

I like this. I'd go further to the point where each crit slot for the component has durability, and losing slots adversely affects the weapon. Losing a couple of slots for an AC20 should dramatically increase reload time and heat generated. There should be a hard limit on how many can be lost before the weapon is cactus.

In addition to your increase in component health, I think an overall internal structure increase will be beneficial. I'd love to see crits become a larger part of the game, because as it stands, once you lose armour from a location, it's a safe bet that the next hit you take is going to finish the job.

[Telmasa]

Kind of an interesting way of effectively buffing mech's internal structure. I'd go for it, if a direct across-the-board increase to internal structure is out of the question.

[Lexx]

Have your mech constructed from gundanium for only 50,000 MC to increase durability!

[The Dreaded Baron B Killer]

It's interesting that when this issue comes up there are some interesting suggestions made.

but let's be honest, the biggest issue with TTK is due to map design and drop points.

In the original MW series, you had large maps, where you had to walk for distances to reach areas and targets. If lances were spread out more, there would be smaller engagements happening. Right now, because of the map and drop designs, you end up being close not to 1-2 mechs, but sometimes 1-2 lances.

add in ranges / player accuracy / weapon balance issues and you have situation roullette.. sometimes you're in a position to do good, and others you are simply cannon fodder...

This is what happens when a tactical military style game is turned into a FPS style shooter.

If the maps actually had more to them you could actually be more tactical and force more team style play in pugging. Things have gotten better lately, but they also got worse again with lots of LRM based builds flooding the solo queue again, showing just how lop sided the game play is. btw not complaining bout the lrmfest, just saying it has shown that the style of gameplay people like (run in and just shoot) doesn't work and you actually have to THINK before moving around like you are an invincible war machine.

and that is really a key issue: tactics/thinking/positioning give way to "i wanna blow **** up coz its cool coz mechs are cool ermagawd I'm dead in 10 seconds wtf how did that happen"!

just my two cents.

[Vassago Rain]

Double internal life.

[SgtMagor]

Clan mechs more powerful, better tech ok, give the IS mechs melee ability that should work.

[Kavoh]

Bigger maps with less cover. No not complete open fields, but large maps with just less cover overall in the way of larger gaps between bases of cover. Like river city taking the same amount of structures and just increasing the size like 2-3x between cities or even spreading the buildings out (which would look a bit weird from a mechs PoV so meh).

As of right now, long range TTK with cover usage is pretty long, and it makes for some long firefights as nothings really THAT pinpoint at 700+m. The problem is, is that almost every map allows you to get into 0-100m combat without showing yourself at all. You can literally ride cover the entire way into close range brawling, causing issues such as; 1. limiting the use of a lot of long range weaponry and morphing them into tweaked high damage but costly brawling weapons and 2. forcing everyone to just alpha the %&@$ out of one another with as highly stacked damage alphas as possible.

Sure some people see alpha spam as the lifeblood of this game, but considering the source they were trying to draw from, many (read most) mechs would suffer severely from even a single alpha in the form of negative modifiers or even potential damage/shutdown instead of "alpha alpha alpha coolshotx2 alpha alpha alpha oh look I just dropped this 100 ton mech in 10 seconds" combat.

Really with the forced map playstyle and risk system implemented they are shooting themselves in the foot in the way of TTK. While convergence IS an issue, there is much more they can do to solve or at least lessen the impact of entire matches revolving around 6 lances hiding around the corner of one hill alpha peaking around the corner for 15 minutes.

TLDR. Reduce TTK issues with large maps and less brawling focused gameplay.

Edited by Kavoh, 02 December 2014 - 04:21 AM.

[The Boz]

I still maintain that 50% damage spread is the way to go, far more elegant solution that creates the least balance problems.

[Joe Mallad]

the game will completly change again once knockdowns are back in the game and Death from above is made to be a viable means to doing some close combat damage with jump capable mechs. You wont see all this "everyone hugging each other" game play and it will force people to play a bit more spread out. BUt I still say Ferro-Fiberous Armor needs to be reworked. If we are upgrading our mechs with it and losing crit space for a few extra tonnage, It should also give us an added % damage reduction as its intended to do. Yes its a bit lighter than standard armor, but while lighter, it is made bulkier and made to absorbe extra damage. Why it does not do this in the game is beyound me.

Generally, If people want to free up some tonnage and dont really need the crit space for major weapons and ammo, they will upgrade to the endo-steel structure. its lighter and just as durable as standard structure. OK... it does what it was always meant to do. But Ferro-Fiberous Armor (in this game) does not do what it should do. And that is give us added protection in the manor of reducing a % of incoming damage... at the cost of giving up crit space.