231 replies to this topic

[Yokaiko]

Kristov Kerensky, on 27 May 2015 - 12:31 PM, said:

You don't Clan much do you? I owned all the Clan Mechs myself, sold all but my (I) models and a couple of Hellbringers, and I have ALL the OmniPods off every single non-(I) Clan Mech I sold. Little secret, you can REMOVE the Omnipods and use them on another Variant CT, as you can strip every Pod but the CT and SAVE the Mech.

The Clan lasers don't need a nerf, they need ALL the current nerfs, both generic and Omnipod specific removed. SCrow and Timby need agility hits, lower the twist range, lower the twist speed, lower the accel/decel and turn rates, that's ALL. Put the weapons, ALL of the Clan weapons, back where they started out when they were added almost a year ago now.

YOU aren't reading what's being posted, YOU are simply doing what you do, bashing PGI and complaining about nerfs. You might be a little more less annoying if you at LEAST made sense once in a while.

You can't remove omnipods without having another in its place, strip doesn't do it. So if you were shuffling things you thought were off of other mechs, you bought some stuff on accident.

...getting a bit pissy are we.

Quickdraw Crobat, on 27 May 2015 - 12:36 PM, said:

....some kinda echo in here.

So what in the REST of that post was factually incorrect.

Oh and damn right I bash PGI, they earned it.

[Mcgral18]

Yokaiko, on 27 May 2015 - 12:39 PM, said:

You can't remove omnipods without having another in its place, strip doesn't do it. So if you were shuffling things you thought were off of other mechs, you bought some stuff on accident.

No, you can remove everything but the CT.

You'll have an invalid mech, but you certainly don't need to buy any others.

[Yokaiko]

Mcgral18, on 27 May 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:

No, you can remove everything but the CT.

You'll have an invalid mech, but you certainly don't need to buy any others.

Oh how, I just logged in to try it.

Oh heh, look at that, ONE item on the entire mechlab that is drag and drop.

Nevermind, I stand corrected.

Edited by Yokaiko, 27 May 2015 - 12:42 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Yokaiko, on 27 May 2015 - 12:39 PM, said:

So what in the REST of that post was factually incorrect.

I don't know. It doesn't matter, either, because you're unwilling to support it. Functionally speaking, this renders your argument there invalid.

[Yokaiko]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 27 May 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

I don't know. It doesn't matter, either, because you're unwilling to support it. Functionally speaking, this renders your argument there invalid.

More work than you are worth my doubting friend.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Yokaiko, on 27 May 2015 - 12:41 PM, said:

Oh how, I just logged in to try it.

Oh heh, look at that, ONE item on the entire mechlab that is drag and drop.

Nevermind, I stand corrected.

You can drag and drop weapons, TCs, AMS, ammo, engines, heat sinks, BAP, ECM, you know, all that stuff you add to or remove from a Mech that isn't an upgrade.

Sorry, but you HAVE actually used the MechLab since CB haven't you?

[Yokaiko]

Kristov Kerensky, on 27 May 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

You can drag and drop weapons, TCs, AMS, ammo, engines, heat sinks, BAP, ECM, you know, all that stuff you add to or remove from a Mech that isn't an upgrade.

Sorry, but you HAVE actually used the MechLab since CB haven't you?

Nope

All my **** is stock.

Edited by Yokaiko, 27 May 2015 - 12:55 PM.

[Pjwned]

Mystere, on 27 May 2015 - 12:10 PM, said:

Via special code (i.e. exceptions to the rule). Yeah, I know. It's too much to ask of PGI. But, players should really not be severely penalized for going stock.

Considering that stock mechs are irrelevant in the vast majority of cases I don't see how an exception to the laser vomit reduction rule is warranted in the least just because one of very few stock builds is decent.

Edited by Pjwned, 27 May 2015 - 02:39 PM.

[ShinobiHunter]

lordtzar, on 27 May 2015 - 10:24 AM, said:

I'd like to introduce you to the stalker, firestarter, thunderbolt, dragon, etc

Players in other games tend to congregate into a faction with the best toys, and for some reason in this game there are way more IS players... IS have 36 mechs, clans have 13. Half of the good mechs on the clan side just got nerfed. I'm sure the IS whiners won't be happy with just half, they'll be coming for the hellbringers and whales next. Since they've got the population advantage, they have more whiners.

I'm pretty sure the OP is trying to get the laser nerfs undone while sacrificing something else, not just get the stormcrow another nerf.

Part of the reason for more IS players is the higher cost of being a Clammer

[ShinobiHunter]

Yokaiko, on 27 May 2015 - 11:03 AM, said:

Cost really? The Single most expensive mech in my 141 mech stable is a Banshee, IS lights are (average) about 4 mil more than clan lights once built, mediums average around 13mil for me, the heavies are a bit cheaper....in the case of the Phracts.

Hell the Resistance package cost me over 40 mil to get into semi working condition.

If you swap equipment around it's actually much cheaper to go IS.

[ShinobiHunter]

Khobai, on 27 May 2015 - 12:21 PM, said:

I agree. Its clan lasers themselves that shouldve been nerfed. Not the mechs that use them the best.

I disagree with you on this. Clan lasers are already at the edge of too hot and have too long beam duration. Clans need other weapons to run with the lasers and then we shouldn't see so much laservomit.

[FupDup]

ShinobiHunter, on 27 May 2015 - 03:07 PM, said:

I disagree with you on this. Clan lasers are already at the edge of too hot and have too long beam duration. Clans need other weapons to run with the lasers and then we shouldn't see so much laservomit.

In terms of heat, it mostly depends on the build being used. Some builds do indeed run real hot, but those builds also often have a larger alpha strike than their IS counterparts (and often more range). If somebody builds a Clan mech with a similar laser alpha as an IS mech, they can have pretty similar heat efficiency (maybe even slightly better) while still getting the range bonus.

For duration, the only one that really suffers is the Clan ER Large. In its case, this has pushed it into a niche sniper role, which it can actually perform well...it's just a one-trick-pony at that job. I think slightly shortening its duration might be fair if some other nerf was applied at the same time (see below).


In general, the kind of Clan laser nerf I would focus on would be a damage reduction. The medium and larges can have 1 point of damage shaved off, but I dunno what to do with the smalls. I don't want to inadvertently make them as crappy as their IS counterparts.

The Clan smalls might just lose 0.5 damage instead, along with reducing their ranges to original values (i.e. 180m for CERSL instead of 200m). That, or still reduce their damage by 1, but also reduce their heat at the same time (i.e. maybe 4 damage and 2.5ish heat on CERSL?).

Speaking of smalls, IS smalls still needs loving of their own.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

I still think this is the wrong time to be tweaking Clan weapons systems.

The first and largest problem facing Clan balance right now is that the chassis are not close enough to equivalent in value. That should be the first focus of Clan balance adjustment, and the goal of quirk changes for Clan 'mechs right now. Bring the narrow range of 'mechs at the top down and the less narrow range of 'mechs at the bottom up until they're all around the same level of usability, do the same to the Inner Sphere array of 'mechs, and then look at the overall value of the tech bases against one another and make changes to equipment to even things out.

Right now, the outliers are still outlying too far.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 27 May 2015 - 03:16 PM, said:

In terms of heat, it mostly depends on the build being used. Some builds do indeed run real hot, but those builds also often have a larger alpha strike than their IS counterparts (and often more range). If somebody builds a Clan mech with a similar laser alpha as an IS mech, they can have pretty similar heat efficiency (maybe even slightly better) while still getting the range bonus.

For duration, the only one that really suffers is the Clan ER Large. In its case, this has pushed it into a niche sniper role, which it can actually perform well...it's just a one-trick-pony at that job. I think slightly shortening its duration might be fair if some other nerf was applied at the same time (see below).


In general, the kind of Clan laser nerf I would focus on would be a damage reduction. The medium and larges can have 1 point of damage shaved off, but I dunno what to do with the smalls. I don't want to inadvertently make them as crappy as their IS counterparts.

The Clan smalls might just lose 0.5 damage instead, along with reducing their ranges to original values (i.e. 180m for CERSL instead of 200m). That, or still reduce their damage by 1, but also reduce their heat at the same time (i.e. maybe 4 damage and 2.5ish heat on CERSL?).

Speaking of smalls, IS smalls still needs loving of their own.

The issue wasn't and isn't straight damage, though, it's damage over the duration of the burn because the current game is all about alphas. If you change the up-front damage, that'll fix it, sure, but why do that instead of just increase the duration? With a duration change, you retain the potential while solving the problem of too much DPS for a given exposure time.

That's why PGI hit the duration. They shouldn't have it it on the omnipods, though, because that hurts the weapons that are not really problems like the C-ERLL and C-ERSL.

The problem weapons are the C-ERML and C-LPL. Combined with 4 and 2, respectively, they dump 54 damage at 450 meters faster than the 54 from a 6x LL Stalker, the only IS competition and the bar for comparison as the lowest denominator. It takes a Stalker at least 1.5 seconds to fire 54 points without ghosting and it takes the pre-nerf Timber 1.15. The Timber is also faster and has comparable armor as well as better heat cap and dissipation. So they did something to level the playing field. With a 30% nerf to duration alone on the C-ERML and C-LPL, that brings the total burn-time on the Timber up to 1.495 seconds...right in line with the Stalker. It's parity. I am not sure the C-ERML and C-LPL need a general 30% duration nerf and I sure as sh*t don't think they needed a cool-down nerf, but from an absolute performance perspective the change was fair, it just had a lot of unnecessary collateral.

I suppose if you lower the damage, it means the IS can bring a tiny bit less and lighter lasers, but I don't think that's the right way to go. I think the better way to go is grant IS their ER lasers (and 3060+ tech in general) and give them slightly more reach than their Clan counterparts to offset the reduced damage. You would technically have to go out to 520 meters on the IS ER MedLas to reach damage-over-range parity, but I think the IS ER MedLas should retain the burn-time of the standard lasers and thus should be limited closer to 450 meters for only a narrow advantage in absolute reach. You can give the regular lasers reduced heat and shorter cool-downs than they have now to differentiate them as high overall DPS weapons for short-range combat, and you can remove the general range and cool-down quirks across the board.

The only real alternative to the IS ER lasers is just buffing the standard lasers to ER status until they finally decide to do the 3060+ stuff or whacking the Clan equipment down to ersatz IS levels. Personally, I prefer the former.

[FupDup]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 27 May 2015 - 03:57 PM, said:

I still think this is the wrong time to be tweaking Clan weapons systems.

The first and largest problem facing Clan balance right now is that the chassis are not close enough to equivalent in value.
...

It's some of both, really. Some mechs are too good, and some equipment is too good. Combine the two together and that's when stuff gets really crazy.

I'm going to admit that even though I bash the (B)Adder all the time on the forums, that the 2 LPL loadout for that mech is surprisingly strong. That's how amazeballs the Clan LPL is. It also enables monstrosities like the Legendary Wubhawk.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 May 2015 - 03:59 PM, said:

The issue wasn't and isn't straight damage, though, it's damage over the duration of the burn because the current game is all about alphas. If you change the up-front damage, that'll fix it, sure, but why do that instead of just increase the duration? With a duration change, you retain the potential while solving the problem of too much DPS for a given exposure time.

That's why PGI hit the duration. They shouldn't have it it on the omnipods, though, because that hurts the weapons that are not really problems like the C-ERLL and C-ERSL.

The problem weapons are the C-ERML and C-LPL. Combined with 4 and 2, respectively, they dump 54 damage at 450 meters faster than the 54 from a 6x LL Stalker, the only IS competition and the bar for comparison as the lowest denominator. It takes a Stalker at least 1.5 seconds to fire 54 points without ghosting and it takes the pre-nerf Timber 1.15. The Timber is also faster and has comparable armor as well as better heat cap and dissipation. So they did something to level the playing field. With a 30% nerf to duration alone on the C-ERML and C-LPL, that brings the total burn-time on the Timber up to 1.495 seconds...right in line with the Stalker. It's parity. I am not sure the C-ERML and C-LPL need a general 30% duration nerf and I sure as sh*t don't think they needed a cool-down nerf, but from an absolute performance perspective the change was fair, it just had a lot of unnecessary collateral.

I suppose if you lower the damage, it means the IS can bring a tiny bit less and lighter lasers, but I don't think that's the right way to go. I think the better way to go is grant IS their ER lasers (and 3060+ tech in general) and give them slightly more reach than their Clan counterparts to offset the reduced damage. You would technically have to go out to 520 meters on the IS ER MedLas to reach damage-over-range parity, but I think the IS ER MedLas should retain the burn-time of the standard lasers and thus should be limited closer to 450 meters for only a narrow advantage in absolute reach. You can give the regular lasers reduced heat and shorter cool-downs than they have now to differentiate them as high overall DPS weapons for short-range combat, and you can remove the general range and cool-down quirks across the board.

The only real alternative to the IS ER lasers is just buffing the standard lasers to ER status until they finally decide to do the 3060+ stuff or whacking the Clan equipment down to ersatz IS levels. Personally, I prefer the former.

I don't want to just jack up the durations on everything because I remember when the Clan ERLL had a 2.0 second beam... It was pretty sad. Even at 1.65s it was pretty silly. 1.5s seems to be the borderline for "maximum viable duration" for lasers, and even then the CERLL gets away with it because of having such crazy extreme range.

The CERLL is maxed out, any longer than 1.5s just won't work. The rest could maybe see a small bump up (like, no more than +0.1s, depending on which specific one), but I don't want to make them into facetank derp guns. :\ I don't want heat increases because certain chassis will have a hard time fitting enough sinks to make up for it. I don't want to use just range reductions (maybe small ones, but nothing drastic) because those would make their overall "feel" similar to IS lasers...perhaps too similar. So, that leaves the raw upfront damage.

The ERML and CLPL are the biggest outliers to be sure, but they're not the only ones that mostly beat their IS counterparts. Also, hitting just those two alone could have some others rise up to take their place.


On a side note, keep in mind that the IS regular LL has always been a somewhat mediocre weapon, even before the Clans got added. The Clan invasion just highlighted it more drastically with weapons that point and laugh at it. I don't think the current, unquirked IS LL is a suitable baseline for lasers in general.



PS: And yes, some future tech would help. I personally want Light ACs, Magshots, AP Gauss, and Protomech ACs so that mechs under 65 tons with ballistic hardpoints don't have to feel so shafted...

Edited by FupDup, 27 May 2015 - 04:25 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

FupDup, on 27 May 2015 - 04:19 PM, said:

On a side note, keep in mind that the IS regular LL has always been a somewhat mediocre weapon, even before the Clans got added. The Clan invasion just highlighted it more drastically with weapons that point and laugh at it. I don't think the current, unquirked IS LL is a suitable baseline for lasers in general.

Generally speaking as the balance/imbalance currently stands, if you're putting a bog-standard Large Laser on a 'mech, you need to very carefully ask yourself why it isn't an ERLL.

Which really bothers me because back in tabletop the ERLL was 50% hotter than a standard LL to compensate for the improved range profile. Not to say I necessarily think it should still be so, but I've never seen anyone provide a demonstration of why the ERLL is only very slightly hotter than a standard LL, nor have I seen anything from a PGI person saying 'yeah we tried that and it was way out of line so we adjusted it little by little until it was okay'.

As much as I want to believe that PGI is not completely unreasonable, the difference in heat really makes me feel like it was cut back from 12 heat to 8 heat one day and then never considered for further modification, which is the sort of thing PGI has done (and sometimes undone) in the past.

But that's a whole other kettle of balance adjustment, really.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 27 May 2015 - 04:30 PM.

[1453 R]

Completely agree with Fup. Laser burns over 1.5s just feel bad. Nobody liked the cERLL when it had a 2s burn time because it was just impossible to properly deal with. I was going to post myself and posit that 1.5s was about the highest burn duration you can get on a laser and have the players tolerate it (frankly, I don't tolerate 1.5s either - I can't really remember the last time I used a cERLL), but once you get beyond that it just gets stupid. Whether or not it's balanced is, in fact, secondary to whether it's fun to use.

Balanced and fun to use is the ideal to strive for, of course, but I will honestly take fun to use over balanced. Fun to use means someone somewhere is having fun, and fun is why we're all here, right?

[Mystere]

Pjwned, on 27 May 2015 - 02:30 PM, said:

Considering that stock mechs are irrelevant in the vast majority of cases I don't see how an exception to the laser vomit reduction rule is warranted in the least just because one of very few stock builds is decent.

Actually, whether a stock build is decent or not is what should be irrelevant. Stock builds should be providing benefits precisely because they need no modification. But, this basic principle has been turned over its head by the existence of a Mech Lab (or rather by people spoiled by its existence).

[FupDup]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 27 May 2015 - 04:30 PM, said:

Generally speaking as the balance/imbalance currently stands, if you're putting a bog-standard Large Laser on a 'mech, you need to very carefully ask yourself why it isn't an ERLL.

Which really bothers me because back in tabletop the ERLL was 50% hotter than a standard LL to compensate for the improved range profile. Not to say I necessarily think it should still be so, but I've never seen anyone provide a demonstration of why the ERLL is only very slightly hotter than a standard LL, nor have I seen anything from a PGI person saying 'yeah we tried that and it was way out of line so we adjusted it little by little until it was okay'.

As much as I want to believe that PGI is not completely unreasonable, the difference in heat really makes me feel like it was cut back from 12 heat to 8 heat one day and then never considered for further modification, which is the sort of thing PGI has done (and sometimes undone) in the past.

But that's a whole other kettle of balance adjustment, really.

There was a point when the IS ERLL was significantly hotter than the IS LL, but then it wasn't really used by anyone. This might have had something to do with PPCs being much stronger at long-range in the past, perhaps. Then the heat got reduced to the point that the paradigm reversed, and then the ER became the preferred one.

I don't think it was ever at the full 12 heat, however. I think the highest was either 9 or 10. It's been a long time since then...