Joseph Mallan, on 31 May 2015 - 04:28 AM, said:
Is it just me, or is nobody familiar with the TROs?
There are lasers on around 80% of teh builds maybe more! And when there are mixed loads most carry 1-3 non lasers and a plethora of lasers 3+
When I'm on the field I see a lot of lasers, some ballistics, and some Missiles... Sound just like what the field should be.
That's not going to change; lasers are still generally the safest option to bring to any fight and the most efficient in terms of damage per ton/slot. All that might change is firing the weapons in smaller groups, or bringing lighter weapons to alpha with.
FupDup, on 31 May 2015 - 08:52 AM, said:
I just noticed that most heinous error of all in the original post...no Binary Laser Cannon!
9 tons, doesn't have a Clan counter-part that it can properly balance. I also left out Snub-Nose PPCs, Mech Mortars, C-ER Pulse, Thunderbolt Missiles, Rotary Auto-cannons...anything disruptive!
Mystere, on 31 May 2015 - 08:15 AM, said:
Not to denigrate your attempt at balance but, my point is that the sheer amount of variables involved should have been the necessary impetus in considering other balancing methods instead, like Clan vs. IS numbers or faction-dependent victory conditions. But PGI, and many people playing this game, just refuse to do so.
Attempting to solve a 100-dimension problem is not an easy task. It is what I call a fool's errand. It's the kind of problem that needs a different kind of solution, one that thinks outside of the box.
As for my "spreadsheets just ain't gonna cut it" comment, there is a reason why some people create simulations instead, and preferably by running them in massively-parallel supercomputers.
I'm familiar with simulations; I've written some myself (systems engineer, representing!). But the thing about simulations is that they are always merely "good enough" because stochastic simulation is messy. You will never, ever capture all of the variables, and even the subset you do won't be captured completely correctly. I strongly believe the equipment values belong in that subset of variables we manipulate.
Furthermore, every game has hundreds of variables, and they don't all use those other methods of balance like player numbers or faction-dependent victory conditions. Look at DotA 2; no two characters are the same, the map is asymmetrical, the teams are equal in size, and yet that game is pretty well-balanced when not playing all-pick because they've engineered it such that everything has a counter.
So, with all due respect, I don't think it's as impossible to balance MWO using the equipment as you make it out to be. At the very least, I believe it's a solid place to start.
Eyepop, on 31 May 2015 - 10:36 AM, said:
Hmmm, very interesting ideas here. I like a bunch of it, but there are some things that puzzle me:
X-Pulse lasers are supposed to be long range at the expense of extreme heat. You should bump up their range and their heat until they're hotter than CPLs
I like LBX as shotguns a lot more than as re-purposed IS ACs. You went the wrong way with them; instead of making them longer ranged, make them short-ranged skirmishing weapons, good for jumping in someone's face and unleashing death. Don't make them bigger/heavier/lower DPS/hotter than ACs, that's just wrong.
There's no reason to take machine guns if they're lower DPS, higher facetime versions of the AP Gauss. The heat isn't that important, since any mech boating them would have to take > 20 of them (DHS) to not keep up with the HPS.
Changing heat caps to be based on engine rating is nasty for mechs with locked engines or low engine caps. If heat is going to be redone, that needs to be looked into.
X-pulse in here are releasing more heat than an ER laser in most cases, so that's the loose translation. We don't want to bump their range because then the Clans get their C-Pulse without an IS answer and we have to bring in ER-Pulse to compete with the X-Pulse. Sure, there are ways we could balance it out and stop one side from gaining an absolute advantage, but it's unnecessary to look into them when we already have something that seems fair. What the lore says and what we do with a piece of gear are not and should not always on the same page. They run significantly hotter than standard pulse, and that's enough.
LB-X, I am still holding out for ammo switching, but if we make them dedicated shotguns then nobody uses them. To see a lot of use, a weapon has to be able to justify its resource requirements with usefulness. SRMs don't weigh a whole lot individually, and so it's easy to justify bringing them even if they are specialist short-ranged weapons because you've usually got a good amount of room left over for a decent group of Medium Lasers. Auto-cannons, though? They take up a massive amount of tons and slots, and so that gun better be useful across a wide set of engagement conditions or nobody will use it. That's why shotgun LB-X are a problem; the spread makes them mediocre to useless from 250 meters on up. For a weapon weighing 11 tons, that's a non-starter. You can make them fire like mad, but we've seen that already and it doesn't seem to have been a game changer with the CN9-D.
So I make them slugs. Slugs are always useful. If I make the slugs sufficiently slower and hotter than a standard AC or UAC burst, I give incentive to bring the larger, heavier, standard ACs and UACs if the player needs better heat-efficiency or cyclic damage rate. Slug LB-X is fantastic for skirmishing, providing the player the option to fire ~20 damage with lasers into a single component on the target before scooting. High cyclic DPS and low HPS on the other ACs is fantastic for striking and direct fire-support, where the extra weight investment on the AC and UAC further precludes heat-sinks and other weapons. And, you can always bring a pair of LAC/5 if you want something lighter than an LB-10X with high DPS, provided you have the slots and hard-points.
If you can make a game-play case for shotgun LB-X that somehow solves the problem of utility outside a very small range bracket, I'm all ears.
Machine guns do not generate heat at all, the AP Gauss do. The MG also takes up half the weight that an AP Gauss does and HMG take up the same weight with higher DPS. I do see your point, and I'm not against adding another point of heat on the AP Gauss to drive home their use-case. Boating a lot of these tiny Gauss weapons is supposed to be increasingly heat and slot inefficient the more you have. They are not a replacement for the suppression DPS that the MGs can provide. We could also increase cool-down, but I hesitate to do that because it would be a 3 damage weapon with a cool-down approaching that of a 15 damage one.
Heat cap change would be pretty hard on small engines, but it already is anyway and a constant heat cap no matter the engine size is hard on 'Mechs with large engines. It does mean the low-cap and small engines on heavier 'Mechs allow more tons for heat-sinks after weapons. A problem is not having 10 internal by default, which messes up slot allocation and unfairly caps the max dissipation you can install by occupying slots for mandatory externals. I think we can look into the possibility of giving all engines 10 internal and compensate by increasing the weight of every engine accordingly. PGI thinks that will allow for some over-powered builds, but I don't immediately see how. I know my LCT-1E is very handicapped by the required external sinks.
AEgg, on 31 May 2015 - 12:09 PM, said:
Your entire premise seems to be that clan and IS weapons should be balanced with one another, regardless of what mech they are on. This won't work.
Clan mechs, as a whole, are worse than IS mechs. That's part of the drawback of being able to use the superior clan weapons. Clan weapons are lighter, but their mechs have less free tonnage (and can't free up any more by changing engine ratings or using endo/ferro). Clan weapons do more damage each, but produce more heat and clan mechs (generally) have less hardpoints than IS mechs.
You can't make clan weapons balanced with IS weapons, because then IS mechs are flat-out better, since they have equivalent weapons, more customization, and more mechs to choose from.
I don't think so.
Clan 'Mechs have more useful free slots and tonnage for the agility they possess, and even have more useful free slots and tonnage compared to IS 'Mechs with smaller engines. The weight savings on their equipment
more than compensates for the locked engines and slots in the majority of cases. An Inner Sphere 'Mech has to bring Endo to get the similar amounts of free tons after equipping a STD, and that alone removes 14 slots out of usability. Then it has to throw on weapons that are under-gunned and out-ranged while being slower, weighing more, and taking up more slots. Sure, it can bring an XL, but that's another 6 slots removed from the equation and now its fatal point becomes a lower-armored side-torso. Now factor in external heat-sink requirements, 3-slot DHS, and you see where this train is going.
It's very hard to bring a competitive level of firepower with an unquirked Inner Sphere 'Mech.
If we have some form of feature parity with proper trade-offs, then we can look into providing under-performers on both sides with quirks (or hardpoints, or endo, or whatever fix) to bring them up to par. I'm not giving IS weapons exactly equal to Clans, either. The Clan weaponry still posses greater higher damage potential, better damage per meter of range, better damage and range per ton/slot, and better dissipation. I even reduced the heat on some of the Clan lasers. What Clans don't have are the absolute advantages in range and damage in all scenarios. Basically, you now have to work to capitalize on Clan advantages.
Edited by Yeonne Greene, 31 May 2015 - 12:47 PM.
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