1236 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Wintersdark, on 22 December 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

This isn't a problem. There should be competitiveness between the mechs. This leads into further Clan XL penalties to balance IS vs. Clan overall once the mechs are reasonably equal.

Competitiveness is great and you know me well enough that I'm the first one to argue for more of it. I'm the kind of guy who argues for underdogs like the Locust while some people say "but my TRO says it's supposed to be useless."

However, there comes a point when we're setting the bar too high. Everybody's favorite 75 ton chicken walker is the best example of this. Getting all of the other heavies on its level would require even more power creep than we've seen in mechs like the King Crab. This doesn't mean we should leave the other heavies in the dust either, because a number of them do still need some love (such as the mech that is the name of this thread), but there comes a point when it's clear that one mech is just an outlier way above the others for whatever reason(s).

Wintersdark, on 22 December 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

...
No. We're not comparing IS vs Clan to come to the conclusion that Endo (and/or FF) should be unlocked. The rationale to unlock them is entirely within the Clans: Mechs without either are simply junk comparitively, and will remain junk unless they are heavily quirked.

In short: There is no "slippery slope" here, no push to unlock Clan engines. ALL clan mechs have locked engines. And larger/smaller engines are not always advantageous.

...

If it's about inter-Clan only, release a light mech like the Arctic Cheetah for the Clans and see what happens. Long story short, it would effortlessly assrape all three current Clan lights without any effort, and it would stand toe to toe with Firestarters at the very worst. At best it might slightly surpass Firestarters.

Larger/smaller engines are advantageous relative to the weight of the mech carrying them. For lights, going 107 kph is a direct downgrade over higher speeds, period. If you want 107 kph or so that's what mediums are for. A slow light will never beat a medium at being a medium. For larger mechs, so far we have giant engine syndrome on the Gargoyle. 80 ton mechs don't need an XL400. Most practical Victor builds are somewhere around 350 or so. The Nova having the speed of a Clan heavy isn't the end of the world but it's not that great either (bigger engine would also help its agility).

Certain engines are simply superior to other engines (mostly depending on the tonnage of the mech they're mounted on).


The point is, the argument of "Endo unlocking is just to equalize the Clans" can easily be extended to be "unlocked something else to equalize the Clans." You think the Summoner and Nova are disadvantaged compared to the Stormcrow and Timberwolf? Release the Arctic Cheetah and we'll see an exact repeat of that for the light class, and your Endo unlocking won't have done anything to save the existing Clan lights.

Quirks on the other hand can save almost anything if they're used hard enough.

Wintersdark, on 22 December 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

Quirks, on IS mechs, actually limit customization. They make Battlemechs more focussed in a certain way, makes them more "stockesque". Adding ES (well, the option to add it, but that's functionally identical to just given them ES locked on) makes those poor clan Omnimechs more customizable in practice. It makes the Omnimechs more... Omnimech.

Omnimech customization was "originally" meant to come from the pods and equipment, not the "core" though. Why? FASA probably did it for the glory of the dark lord Lucifer or something. Not my call to make. All I do know is that you have mechs that can modify their "core" at will (Battlemechs) but not so many weapon options, and you get mechs with a locked "core" (Omnimechs) that get many more options for guns.

Wintersdark, on 22 December 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

But right here, you're doing exactly what the IS quirks do, but even more. You're increasing specialization on Omnimechs and as such reducing customization. If anything, Omnimechs should feel more customizable. Not in terms of which buttons you can click (adding/removing ES really doesn't impact customization, as people would just click it on and leave it on) while having no/general quirks allows players to equip whichever weapons they want.

If you made a Ballistic Arm, for example, have a UAC20 specific bonus, that arm would be a UAC20 arm, not a Ballistic Arm anymore. Less variety in builds.

I argue that less variety in builds works for IS battlemechs, but wouldn't work so well for omnimechs.

Your mech has more than 1 Omnipod. You can mix and match your mech like a giant Mister Potato Head to get the mix you want. So a Thor's Prime right arm might have reduced ERPPC heat or whatever, and its Alternate D left arm might have reduced ERLL beam durations or whatever.

And no, specific quirks don't mean "this is the only gun you can use there." All it does it encourage a certain weapon to go there, most commonly a sub-par stock weapon. The point would be to have those sub-par stock weapons be as worthwhile to put there as a metarape weapon. The benefit of the meta weapon is that it's already better even without any quirks on it. If the meta weapon got the quirk too, then everybody would just keep on metaraping with the best weapon that they already put in that spot.

It's the same reason why IS mechs got quirks based on their "tier" level rather than giving all of them the same power and level of quirks. It's supposed to make the crappier options...not as crappy. You want to go full meta? No quirks for you.



Anyways, the "only weapon specific" thing was mostly just a spitballing idea to attempt to differentiate their quirks from Battlemechs. It can be maybe done other ways maybe.

---------------------------------

On a side note, part of why this debate is even happening at all is because of the imbalances regarding Endo vs Standard Structure and Clan FF versus Standard Armor (IS is the other way around with FF being actually inferior to STD armor). If STD internals weren't outright inferior on 99% of mechs, this wouldn't be as much of an issue in the first place.

So, STD internals could probably stand to see an internal HP increase of some amount so that it's not inferior to Endo in almost all situations.

FF is harder to tackle because Clan FF is actually good on the majority of mechs but IS FF is nearly useless outside of the light class. IS FF should see either a damage resistance bonus of some amount or an increase in the total armor limit you could carry. Carrying that over to the Clans though not work out since, as mentioned, Clan FF is a lot more viable than IS FF (but still outclassed by Endo).

Edited by FupDup, 22 December 2014 - 10:38 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

F4T 4L, on 22 December 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

No I wasn't trolling, just a little joke. But see my clarification.

Naw, you was trolling...just not seriously. Admit it bro.

[Fishbulb333]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 December 2014 - 09:35 AM, said:

Every clan emch is already laser vomit, srm vomit. Can we actually have a mech that breaks the monotony?

Exactly this.. Build diversity. Clan mechs excel at laser vomit and (s)srm builds, but apart from that? cLRMs are straight up worse than IS LRMS even before you consider the quirks, the majority of clan ballistics are inferior to IS ballistics (except gauss + maaaybe uac/5). Clan PPC vs quirked IS PPC? Not even close.

Sure, you can put together a very powerful clan drop-deck, but unless you focus almost entirely on laser vomit you're going to run into some pretty major problems against a properly built IS deck.

Bring clan PPC - By no means a bad weapon, but good luck engaging at range against a quirked IS PPC boat.

Clan LRMS - Either negated almost entirely by a couple of AMS, or massively outperformed by quirked IS LRMs - Better spread, better against AMS, better heat generation, range and cooldown.

Clan erLL - Range advantage is great, usually, but recently I've been running into certain heavily quirked IS mechs who seem to be able to at least match my maximum range, if not exceed it.

I do not want clan mechs to be buffed so that they're once again massively outperforming IS mechs, but quirks to specific weapons on specific chassis are (imho) pretty much required at this point. Yes, clan mechs/weapons are generally pretty damn good across the board, but with the IS quirks there's pretty much always something available to match or even exceed anything the clans can field, with a few exceptions - the clan's "big 3", streaks, IS lights, etc.

Sure, the clans have their advantages and 3-4 outstanding mechs, but they also have their fair share of disadvantages and lack the huge range of options open to IS pilots.

[F4T 4L]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 December 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

Naw, you was trolling...just not seriously. Admit it bro.

You're too hard on me..

I even winked. If I were trolling the suggestion would have been wrapped in far more grandiose packaging.. probably with a suggestion that only paying folk can modify, or something along those lines

[Bishop Steiner]

FupDup, on 22 December 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

Competitiveness is great and you know me well enough that I'm the first one to argue for more of it. I'm the kind of guy who argues for underdogs like the Locust while some people say "but my TRO says it's supposed to be useless."

However, there comes a point when we're setting the bar too high. Everybody's favorite 75 ton chicken walker is the best example of this. Getting all of the other heavies on its level would require even more power creep than we've seen in mechs like the King Crab. This doesn't mean we should leave the other heavies in the dust either, because a number of them do still need some love (such as the mech that is the name of this thread), but there comes a point when it's clear that one mech is just an outlier way above the others for whatever reason(s).

Not the point.

The point is, until we see the Summoner, Mad Dog and Hellbringer on an "even" playing field, mechanically, one can't truly see what needs to be adjusted.

Out of the 3, only the Hellbringer would remotely come close to matching the TW at that point, and solely because it has ECM. Still has worse hitboxes, and less harmonious hardpoint options. The big thing with the TW is the synergy of it's hardpoint mounts. The Hellbringer, while effective, still results in "utterly mad configurations".

The Summoner and Mad Dog? Still would be about 2 tiers below the TW. And it's not about seeing necessarily what brings them to it's level, but what, be it positive quirks on them, or some Nerfs on the TW, is needed to narrow that gap to a reasonable expectancy.

The TW is the Apex Hunter, and should stay that way. But it should not be such a gap, (outside of comp play, where millimeters matter) that you are handicapping your team with anything else.

[FupDup]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 December 2014 - 10:43 AM, said:

Not the point.

The point is, until we see the Summoner, Mad Dog and Hellbringer on an "even" playing field, mechanically, one can't truly see what needs to be adjusted.

Out of the 3, only the Hellbringer would remotely come close to matching the TW at that point, and solely because it has ECM. Still has worse hitboxes, and less harmonious hardpoint options. The big thing with the TW is the synergy of it's hardpoint mounts. The Hellbringer, while effective, still results in "utterly mad configurations".

The Summoner and Mad Dog? Still would be about 2 tiers below the TW. And it's not about seeing necessarily what brings them to it's level, but what, be it positive quirks on them, or some Nerfs on the TW, is needed to narrow that gap to a reasonable expectancy.

The TW is the Apex Hunter, and should stay that way. But it should not be such a gap, (outside of comp play, where millimeters matter) that you are handicapping your team with anything else.

Weren't you one of the people who believed the Timber to be overpowered? Change of heart?


Also, for the Hellbringer in particular, I'd argue that its high energy mounts and asymmetric setup are almost on level with the TBR. The Timber just has better hitboxes, JJs, and some more tonnage to play with.

Edited by FupDup, 22 December 2014 - 10:48 AM.

[1453 R]

FupDup, on 22 December 2014 - 10:46 AM, said:

Weren't you one of the people who believed the Timber to be overpowered? Change of heart?

Even if he was, I agree with the sentiment. The Timber Wolf is, and should be, at the apex of the heavy weight class, for a multitude of reasons. I believe the argument is that the apex shouldn't be as far away from the rest of the pack as it is.

[F4T 4L]

1453 R, on 22 December 2014 - 10:33 AM, said:

I don't even want Clan autocannons to fire PPFLD shots. I just want a C-UAC/20 burst to not take a week and a half to fire.

Things I've done while waiting for the C-UAC/20 to finish spitting AC/4 shots:

-finish tracking down where all my g'damned IS 300XLs went to this time
-posted repeatedly on the forums
-made a sandwich
-eaten a sandwich
-made a sandwich AND eaten it as well
-used the bathroom
-renovated the bathroom
-finally traveled to Japan to see my other homeland. #unrepentantotaku.
-run for office (like a boss!)
-composed a rock cover for Wagner's Ring Cycle.
-engineered a working fusion reactor for my real-life Stormcrow
-met a girl, got married, had kids, sent them to college, and retired.

QFT.

[Bishop Steiner]

FupDup, on 22 December 2014 - 10:46 AM, said:

Weren't you one of the people who believed the Timber to be overpowered? Change of heart?


Also, for the Hellbringer in particular, I'd argue that its high energy mounts and asymmetric setup are almost on level with the TBR. The Timber just has better hitboxes, JJs, and some more tonnage to play with.

I do feel it's OP. You can still be top drawer choice (55 and 75 ton ranges naturally gravitate to that due to mechanics of weight in BT and MW), without being broken.

The issue is, until you level the base playing field, one cannot determine HOW broken something is, and thus fix it. I have no issue with the TW being a Tier 1 and the rest of the Clan HEavies, a Tier 2. Right now, it's closer to the TW being a Tier "0", and the rest tier "3" (with the Summoner nearer to 4 and the Hellbringer a 2.5 due to ECM. It's still an inefficient machine).


Not sure what is so hard to grasp about that, or if you are intentionally trolling.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 22 December 2014 - 10:53 AM.

[0bsidion]

Wintersdark, on 22 December 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

Ewww.

See, this is why I don't like quirks for Clan mechs overall - some, yes, but not major IS style quirking.

This suggestion you make? Sure, it'd make the Summoner much better.

It would also make it a laser vomit machine as well. Hurray. More laser vomit. And if you DON'T run laser vomit, it would remain crappy. Blah.

That's another kettle of fish though. The reason why you see so much laser vomit and missile vomit on clan mechs is because cACs are fairly underwhelming unless boated, and the only mech that can boat them effectively is the DW. Has anyone seen anyone from PGI even entertain the idea of giving the clan mechs cACs a balance pass? Unless that happens, laser and missile vomit are the only practical options to consider. Believe me, I'm not thrilled about it either. I like to have at least 1 AC, 1 or 2 missile weapons, and 2 to 4 energy, but it just isn't optimal on a Summoner.

[FupDup]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 December 2014 - 10:51 AM, said:

I do feel it's OP. You can still be top drawer choice (55 and 75 ton ranges naturally gravitate to that due to mechanics of weight in BT and MW), without being broken.

The issue is, until you level the base playing field, one cannot determine HOW broken something is, and thus fix it. I have no issue with eh TW being a Tier 1 and the rest of the Clan HEavies, a Tier 2. Right now, it's closer to the TW being a Tier "0", and the rest tier "3" (with the summoner nearer to 4).


Not sure what is so hard to grasp about that, or if you are intentionally trolling.

Because I very clearly remember you posting in the past for the Timber to be nerfed, and indirectly accusing people of trying to preserve their "easy mode." I'm experiencing a de-sync in what I'd expect you to post, basically.


I also don't really agree with the "let the TBR still be better than everything" position. No, reducing the gap wouldn't solve our issues, not unless the gap was incredibly tiny (no more than "5%" of something of that sort). I find it kind of ironic that people are on one hand asking for equalization, and on the other hand asking for a certain mech to remain superior. It can't be both ways. It's either better or it isn't. Mutual opposites.

Edited by FupDup, 22 December 2014 - 10:58 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

0bsidion, on 22 December 2014 - 10:52 AM, said:

That's another kettle of fish though. The reason why you see so much laser vomit and missile vomit on clan mechs is because cACs are fairly underwhelming unless boated, and the only mech that can boat them effectively is the DW. Has anyone seen anyone from PGI even entertain the idea of giving the clan mechs cACs a balance pass? Unless that happens, laser and missile vomit are the only practical options to consider. Believe me, I'm not thrilled about it either. I like to have at least 1 AC, 1 or 2 missile weapons, and 2 to 4 energy, but it just isn't optimal on a Summoner.

and again, the point is to find a way to fix that reliance on laser vomit, not reinforce a bad meta even more.

[F4T 4L]

Wintersdark, on 22 December 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

Ewww.

See, this is why I don't like quirks for Clan mechs overall - some, yes, but not major IS style quirking.

This suggestion you make? Sure, it'd make the Summoner much better.

It would also make it a laser vomit machine as well. Hurray. More laser vomit. And if you DON'T run laser vomit, it would remain crappy. Blah.

What's the answer then? Not being a ****.. just wonder how you think the low-order clan mechs should be boosted.

Edit: assuming that you agree that they should be boosted.. but even the hardest of hard core IS supporters has to agree that the lion's share of clan mechs are UP. When was the last time you dropped with 2 adders? Or 2 mist lynx?

Edited by F4T 4L, 22 December 2014 - 11:10 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

FupDup, on 22 December 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

Because I very clearly remember you posting in the past for the Timber to be nerfed, and indirectly accusing people of trying to preserve their "easy mode." I'm experiencing a de-sync in what I'd expect you to post, basically.


I also don't really agree with the "let the TBR still be better than everything" position. No, reducing the gap wouldn't solve our issues, not unless the gap was incredibly tiny (no more than "5%" of something of that sort). I find it kind of ironic that people are on one hand asking for equalization, and on the other hand asking for a certain mech to remain superior.

and you keep missing the point. All things being equally, no quirks, hitboxes, hardpoints being in the equation, a 75 ton mech will always be better than a 65 ton mech. Because of how the core rules for battletech tonnage work. And in most cases, the 75 tonner will be better than the 80 tonner.

That is not going to change.

But there is no reason for the disparities to be so extreme, is EXACTLY the point you seem unable to grasp. For some reason you seem to think the difference in effectiveness between a tier 1 and tier 2 should be night and day. It shouldn't be. The difference between a tier 1 and 2 should be something scarcely noticeable unless you are playing in a pure comp environment, just as the average swimmer gets no real world advantage from high tech swimsuits.

The difference between a tier 1 and 3, might be noticeable, but at that point should be about Hitboxes, Hardpoints and their locations, and things that cannot really be "fixed", not the basic differences between a 70 tonners paper effectiveness and a 75 tonners, with all other considerations removed.

A Nova will never be as effective, pre quirks/nerfs as a Stormcrow. It's hitboxes guarantee that. So at that point, quirks can help with the imbalance. A Summoner, with all things "equal" to a TimberWolf (endo, ferro, max armor, same speed, no jjs, 10 base DHS) will always have .5 tons less to play with. (The omni pod tonnage should be an identical 32.5 at this point...but that's with the TW having .5 tons more armor)

So the TW is still BETTER , though millimetricly, so.

And that's before the other MWO immutables, such as hitboxes (since you can only change the shapes so much before it's not battletech/MW).

For some reason you seem to equate "better" as some gap like the difference between the Underhive and the GGClose crowd.

F4T 4L, on 22 December 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

What's the answer then? Not being a ****.. just wonder how you think the low-order clan mechs should be boosted.

there's a whole thread here on just that idea, including the OP, dude.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 22 December 2014 - 11:10 AM.

[Cabusha]

Rather than just focus on weapon quirks, I'd be interested in seeing more mobility bonuses. It pays a 5 ton penalty for mandatory jump jets. Fine, give them a 25% bonus to thrust and capacity.

This thing is a heavy skirmisher, fine, drop its mobility archetype to medium and give it a tighter turning radius.

Maybe they want to see it as more of a duration brawler, then give it a 10pt bonus to each torso location for armor.

In short rather than try to make it a lighter, crappier Timberwolf, quirk into something that brings something different to the gameplay. Its own flavor if you will.

[F4T 4L]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 December 2014 - 11:08 AM, said:

there's a whole thread here on just that idea, including the OP, dude.

Sure, and I read it.

Many folk here seem to dislike opening up engine changes/endo/ferro. This guy doesn't want quirks (and honestly, quirks are the only way forward, given the utter impossibility that the TBR sees a nerf).

So I asked him what he'd do. You really need to relax, bro.

[KraftySOT]

And something will always be "the best"

It should, probably, be the TW. The most iconic, easily recognized, flagship of the franchise. That it happens to fit statistically at the best ratios between armor, weapons, weight, speed, etc AND has the advantage of the hitboxes from being an egg in MWO, is why other mechs, are quirked to narrow the gap between it, and everything else.

If its not the TW, itll just be something else. Why not the TW? At least we can accept that as a measuring stick and move on.

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 22 December 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

Competitiveness is great and you know me well enough that I'm the first one to argue for more of it. I'm the kind of guy who argues for underdogs like the Locust while some people say "but my TRO says it's supposed to be useless."

However, there comes a point when we're setting the bar too high. Everybody's favorite 75 ton chicken walker is the best example of this. Getting all of the other heavies on its level would require even more power creep than we've seen in mechs like the King Crab. This doesn't mean we should leave the other heavies in the dust either, because a number of them do still need some love (such as the mech that is the name of this thread), but there comes a point when it's clear that one mech is just an outlier way above the others for whatever reason(s).

ES and/or FF won't make Nova's as good as Stormcrows, or Summoners as good as Timberwolves. It'll bring them closer, though.

And you want to bring those poorer mechs up, to allow for a faction-wide change like a severe speed penalty with XL destruction: You bring up the weakest, then bring ALL the clan mechs down. This brings the Timberwolf and Stormcrow more in line with IS mechs, while more or less maintaining the position of the others and improving the particularly bad ones.

Quote

If it's about inter-Clan only, release a light mech like the Arctic Cheetah for the Clans and see what happens. Long story short, it would effortlessly assrape all three current Clan lights without any effort, and it would stand toe to toe with Firestarters at the very worst. At best it might slightly surpass Firestarters.

Not sure where you're going with this?

Quote

Larger/smaller engines are advantageous relative to the weight of the mech carrying them. For lights, going 107 kph is a direct downgrade over higher speeds, period. If you want 107 kph or so that's what mediums are for. A slow light will never beat a medium at being a medium. For larger mechs, so far we have giant engine syndrome on the Gargoyle. 80 ton mechs don't need an XL400. Most practical Victor builds are somewhere around 350 or so. The Nova having the speed of a Clan heavy isn't the end of the world but it's not that great either (bigger engine would also help its agility).

Certain engines are simply superior to other engines (mostly depending on the tonnage of the mech they're mounted on).

Fair enough. I am, after all, perfectly aware of how a Timberwolf with a smaller engine would be even more dangerous, and the Gargy would be way, way better with a FAR smaller engine.

My point, however, was that engines are a much more grey area than ES. ES is basically always an advantage that comes at no cost. I respect that more speed is better for a light, but at least a light with a smaller engine is getting more firepower in return. This isn't a fair trade, but it's at least a noticable one. The 7 slot cost (even a 14 slot cost in the case of IS ES) is irrelevant at best. Excepting the largest of assaults, every single IS mech runs ES and it's virtually never an issue.

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The point is, the argument of "Endo unlocking is just to equalize the Clans" can easily be extended to be "unlocked something else to equalize the Clans."

The "slippery slope" argument is terrible. Really terrible. Unlocking ES/FF has no bearing on Engines - it's neither more nor less likely that engines would end up being unlocked either way. Just because ES is unlocked doesn't mean engines need to be. Note that not a single person in this thread is advocating unlocking engines.

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You think the Summoner and Nova are disadvantaged compared to the Stormcrow and Timberwolf? Release the Arctic Cheetah and we'll see an exact repeat of that for the light class, and your Endo unlocking won't have done anything to save the existing Clan lights.

Quirks on the other hand can save almost anything if they're used hard enough.

I fully understand the issue with lights. The slow lights will need quirks. Hell, even the Summoner and Nova will need quirks, because ES/FF isn't all the difference there, as we all well know. But ES/FF gets them closer before quirks, and reduces the need of gigantic quirks.

It doesn't have to be one or the other exclusively.

Quirks are much better used to fine tune, rather than make big moves. Quirks making big moves results in things like the TDR-9S and such.

Quote

Omnimech customization was "originally" meant to come from the pods and equipment, not the "core" though. Why? FASA probably did it for the glory of the dark lord Lucifer or something. Not my call to make. All I do know is that you have mechs that can modify their "core" at will (Battlemechs) but not so many weapon options, and you get mechs with a locked "core" (Omnimechs) that get many more options for guns.

Your mech has more than 1 Omnipod. You can mix and match your mech like a giant Mister Potato Head to get the mix you want. So a Thor's Prime right arm might have reduced ERPPC heat or whatever, and its Alternate D left arm might have reduced ERLL beam durations or whatever.

Sadly, because of the HUGE difference between Clan chassis, Clan weapons have been mangled all to hell and can't be fixed. This means Clan mechs end up mounting largely as many energy omnipods as possible to vomit lasers and sometimes SRM's all over the place.

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And no, specific quirks don't mean "this is the only gun you can use there." All it does it encourage a certain weapon to go there, most commonly a sub-par stock weapon. The point would be to have those sub-par stock weapons be as worthwhile to put there as a metarape weapon. The benefit of the meta weapon is that it's already better even without any quirks on it. If the meta weapon got the quirk too, then everybody would just keep on metaraping with the best weapon that they already put in that spot.

But in practice, as we can clearly see, weapon specific quirks result in that weapon being used. Yeah, a HBK-4G can mount a Gauss Rifle, and it's Gauss Rifle will see bonuses from the generic quirks.

How many 4G's do you see with Gauss Rifles?

Quote

It's the same reason why IS mechs got quirks based on their "tier" level rather than giving all of them the same power and level of quirks. It's supposed to make the crappier options...not as crappy. You want to go full meta? No quirks for you.

Except you ARE going full meta. It's just that with weapon specific quirks, there isn't a "this loadout is meta" anymore, it's a meta build per chassis. I do like that - I think it's awesome for Inner Sphere. Instead of just AC5's and PPC's (yeah, it'd be different now, but you know what I mean) you see all sorts of things. A CN9-D with an LBX10 is a meta build. Just for that mech.

The same will happen for Clan mechs if you give them weapon specific quirks. You'll just create a new meta build for that specific chassis.




Don't get me wrong. Pure quirks will work, too. They'll just ultimately reduce customization, as people will only equip those weapons, just like they do with IS mechs. If PGI goes that way... whatever. *shrugs* It wouldn't be the end of the world, but it'll be less interesting than having Clan mechs remain more different than IS mechs.

[F4T 4L]

Cabusha, on 22 December 2014 - 11:15 AM, said:

Rather than just focus on weapon quirks, I'd be interested in seeing more mobility bonuses. It pays a 5 ton penalty for mandatory jump jets. Fine, give them a 25% bonus to thrust and capacity.

This thing is a heavy skirmisher, fine, drop its mobility archetype to medium and give it a tighter turning radius.

Maybe they want to see it as more of a duration brawler, then give it a 10pt bonus to each torso location for armor.

In short rather than try to make it a lighter, crappier Timberwolf, quirk into something that brings something different to the gameplay. Its own flavor if you will.

Summoner needs weapons capacity and heat dissipation. I know you're speaking generally, but in this case, I doubt that mobility and armor will be enough (not enough to get it within 5% of TBR qual, anyway).

[0bsidion]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 December 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

and again, the point is to find a way to fix that reliance on laser vomit, not reinforce a bad meta even more.

If we can get PGI to listen to it, great. I'd be right in line. I'd love to see cACs become a viable weapon choice for anything other than the DW. Of course it then becomes an issue of potentially giving the DW even more teeth, but I think it would be great if you could bring 1 cAC or maybe 2 and not feel like you're handicapping yourself.