Gyrok, on 02 April 2015 - 09:32 PM, said:
What even makes any of you think the clan XL is an issue? What hard evidence do you have that it is required to do anything to Clan XLs to achieve balance?
The evidence I have seen convinces me that IS and Clans are mostly balanced at this point, and that is with the Clans running as much cheese as they can, with huge, skilled, merc units fighting for them (228 and MS) for the whole event.
Please explain to me where a 20% nerf of any kind is warranted with a 53% win ratio (and no elo data to back what should have been the win %)?
Giant wall of text incoming.
A nerf is warranted because a 20% heat penalty does jack **** and that's complete nonsense considering the condition is that you lose 20% of your XL engine, especially when the penalty for blowing out a side torso on mech with an IS XL engine means mech destruction. All you
really need to do is compare the 2 pieces of equipment, that is clan XLs and IS XLs, and look at the
huge disparity between the 2 when you blow off a chunk of the engine and think "wow, that is pretty unbalanced," though there's a bigger picture to analyze if you need to and that's what I'll be at least
attempting to do.
Here is where somebody is going to say "you can't compare the 2 in a vacuum," but really what I'm doing is declaring that the various pros & cons of clan technology over IS technology are for the most part balanced (or at least in principle if not in practice e.g clan ACs literally lacking features and
possibly some lasers that are too hot, maybe other things)
except in the case of clan XL engines.
The pros I'm looking at are:
-Vastly superior mech upgrades i.e FF, ES, and DHS all being objectively better, which also gives clans more crit space despite having such upgrades on top of numerous weapons taking up less space as well
-Lower weight missiles and in the case of (S)SRMs with no drawback as well as no minimum range on LRMs
-Lasers that all have gratuitous range and more damage that are only comparable to lasers on IS mechs with insane quirks as well as large lasers weighing less and taking less space
-Lower weight & crit slots for gauss rifles and ER PPCs with no drawback
-Switchable hardpoints due to omnimechs
-Free super CASE installed on every component
-Lower tonnage & crit slots and higher range on ACs
-Misc. items like better NARCs, options for targeting computers that aren't ****, lower weight ECM and BAP, etc.
-Might be forgetting some things but probably nothing really noteworthy
Of course, there are numerous cons for all these advantages such as:
-Locked upgrades, including locked slots for said upgrades
-Stream fired LRMs
-Higher heat and burn time on lasers
-Burst fired ACs
-Locked equipment which means locked engines and possibly undesired jumpjets and other equipment as well which is obviously a pretty big deal
-Perhaps other cons I'm forgetting but those are all the major ones I can think of; I realize some of these
sound simplified but I'm not pretending that disadvantages like these are small, because they're not.
Before going on about XL engines I will say that I've noted peoples' complaints about geometry and hitboxes on some clan mechs, but I argue that's not really a clans vs. IS issue, the phenomenon is definitely not exclusive to clans, and that PGI should actually work on proper mech scaling for
both sides as a result. I'm also not just leaving out IS pros & cons because simply stated they are pretty much the opposite of clans so I don't need to go into huge detail for both sides. Additionally, hardpoint layout is not a clans VS IS issue because that's an issue for each individual mech specifically due to their design, and even though some people might argue that there's more of a "trend" for clan mechs to have it worse, they don't because there's plenty of IS mechs with crap hardpoint layouts too and furthermore IS mechs can't change theirs either like clan mechs can.
I didn't go into clan XL engines yet, so let's examine that a bit. Its advantages are full XL engine weight savings with only 2 slots in each side torso, which means more room for equipment but far more importantly the mech isn't destroyed with a side torso lost. Well, considering some of the cons I covered above, such as locked equipment and locked upgrades, it's pretty reasonable that it gets such favorable weight savings and even that the mech isn't destroyed, so that part of clan XL engines is reasonably balanced.
The problem is that there should still clearly be a penalty for losing 20% of the engine, because after all the penalty in the
exact same circumstance (and no others, meaning clans
are not unfairly affected by engine crits) for IS XL mechs is mech destruction, so if the penalty for losing 20% of a clan XL isn't mech destruction then surely it must be fairly noticeable (while still being in better shape relatively) for losing only a slightly smaller chunk of the engine...well, it's not.
The penalty is barely anything, 20% less heatsinks when you're already very likely going to be generating less heat from losing weapons (which is due to losing a torso component and is
separate from losing a chunk of the engine, meaning the lost torso is not considered as part of the engine penalty) is such a pathetic penalty that it's almost more insulting than no penalty at all. Do you notice such a penalty unless you combine it with a build where you deliberately lose as much as you possibly can if that side is lost? You barely notice such a penalty at all because it's so small, especially compared to what happens to IS mechs, and even then the mech being in bad shape due to a faulty build has much more to do with losing the wrong side of the mech than it does with losing some heatsinks in the engine.
So the penalty for losing 20% of your engine is barely anything...how is that justified? Are you going to say that the disadvantages listed above, such as locked equipment & upgrades, should account for more than I've shown, despite the advantages that I've also shown? If that's the case, what about other advantages that
are not otherwise accounted for with any obvious drawback e.g lower weight SRMs & SSRMs and even
having bigger SSRM launchers, free CASE in every component, lower weight & space pinpoint weapons, lower weight ECM and BAP and NARC and the NARC has more speed & range, targeting computers that aren't as absolutely terrible as the command console, and possibly more.
I realize these advantages aren't really related to clan XLs much, but neither can they just be ignored in a sound argument, so I think the safe answer is that
for the most part all of these advantages
as well are balanced by disadvantages like locked equipment and locked upgrades. However, at this point are you going to say that restrictions such as locked equipment & upgrades
still do not account for
all of these advantages I've listed recently, including the clan XL's advantages other than its low penalty, and say that the paltry penalty of only 20% heatsinks--nothing more--is that good enough because of the disadvantages that clans face? To this, I say no, and as a result I say it's unfair.
If the penalty is not fair because it's not enough then simply increase the penalty so that it
is fair, and a 20% speed loss for losing 20% of your engine is a reasonable, sensible way of doing that so that clan mechs (or
any other mech that may come along with 10 slot engines) will feel an actual penalty for losing a chunk of their engine
as they should.
A clan XL nerf is also, if you ask me, the harbinger for other changes such as toning down IS quirks that have gotten out of hand (beyond just the TDR-9S) and have been out of hand for a while, as well as other things like better quirks (or even other changes) for clan mechs that are still lacking.
Is that the
hard evidence you were asking for? Not really, and because it's not I honestly don't expect very good results from this effort. I would like to say though that I
am not trying to misrepresent the opposition's arguments here, so if you read over my giant post and you
do find an argument that
actually does not make sense, then all I ask is you don't throw a fit about it. Despite what
I think is an accurate wall of text, which I have tried to put together using in part what I think the opposition would argue, that
may end up not being entirely accurate and I just don't want to see people discarding the whole thing because "hurr durr this part is wrong so everything is wrong."
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