61 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

Mcgral18, on 24 June 2015 - 08:05 PM, said:

Fixing the PoorDub/TrueDub divide of the sub 250 engine robots.


Incidentally, easy fix is using quirks, simply a +0.6x (where x is the number of missing TrueDubs) heat dissipation quirk. Half assed, but effective.

It would require copy pasting code in a few dozen places (each mech variant .XML affected).


Alternatively, just fix the issue, but that might take more time than the half hour of copy pasting.

I dunno, are engines XML files like the weapons and is there some hard-coded ridiculousness in the game that makes any engine with a rating lower than 250 have less internal heatsinks?

If yes and no, respectively, then they can take the XML code for a 250-size engine and adapt it to all sub-250 engines by tweaking the values for weight, size, name, and speed multiplier, and then replacing the current gimpy versions.

But I could just be crazy. I honestly have no idea how engines are implemented as items in the game.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 June 2015 - 08:28 PM, said:

I dunno, are engines XML files like the weapons and is there some hard-coded ridiculousness in the game that makes any engine with a rating lower than 250 have less internal heatsinks?

If yes and no, respectively, then they can take the XML code for a 250-size engine and adapt it to all sub-250 engines by tweaking the values for weight, size, name, and speed multiplier, and then replacing the current gimpy versions.

But I could just be crazy. I honestly have no idea how engines are implemented as items in the game.

All engines have their own individual entries. For example:

<Module id="3348" name="Engine_XL_250" CType="CEngineStats" faction="InnerSphere">
	<Loc nameTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_250" descTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_250_desc" iconTag="StoreIcons\XLEngine.dds" />
	<EngineStats slots="6" sideSlots="3" sidesToDie="1" rating="250" weight="12.5" heatsinks="10" health="15" />
  </Module>

A smaller engine for comparison:

<Module id="3338" name="Engine_XL_200" CType="CEngineStats" faction="InnerSphere">
	<Loc nameTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_200" descTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_200_desc" iconTag="StoreIcons\XLEngine.dds" />
	<EngineStats slots="6" sideSlots="3" sidesToDie="1" rating="200" weight="7.5" heatsinks="8" health="15" />
  </Module>

Engines above 270 are interesting:

<Module id="3378" name="Engine_XL_400" CType="CEngineStats" faction="InnerSphere">
	<Loc nameTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_400" descTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_400_desc" iconTag="StoreIcons\XLEngine.dds" />
	<EngineStats slots="6" sideSlots="3" sidesToDie="1" rating="400" weight="33.5" heatsinks="16" health="15" />
  </Module>

The game seems to know to only add up to the first 10 heatsinks for your engine, and then anything beyond the first 10 will be bonus heatsink slots.

Here is my modified XL200 to have all 10 DHS, with its tonnage increased to reflect this:

<Module id="3338" name="Engine_XL_200" CType="CEngineStats" faction="InnerSphere">
	<Loc nameTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_200" descTag="@Engine_XL_Fusion_200_desc" iconTag="StoreIcons\XLEngine.dds" />
	<EngineStats slots="6" sideSlots="3" sidesToDie="1" rating="200" weight="9.5" heatsinks="10" health="15" />
  </Module>

Edited by FupDup, 24 June 2015 - 08:35 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

I would say fix the fact that LRMs are not a decent long-range direct-fire weapon. They exist to give a middle ground alternative between hot long-range energy weapons and super-weight-consuming long-range ballistics, originally. In MWO, they mostly serve as indirect fire weapons and occasionally mid-short range support weapons.

[Y E O N N E]

Edit:

@Fup: Then it looks like they can easily change the engines such that from 250 on down they all have 10 internal sinks and add the difference in tonnage to the weight value.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 24 June 2015 - 08:38 PM.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 June 2015 - 08:37 PM, said:

Then it looks like they can easily change the engines such that from 250 on down they all have 10 internal sinks and add the difference in tonnage to the weight value.

Yup, it is. I literally even did it myself and have a modified version of Engines.XML saved to my computer, just to make a point. I even added in all of the sub-100 engines, because they wouldn't have negative weights anymore. Hopefully the item ID's I used on the sub-100's aren't already in use, because that might interfere...

Well, the only "difficulty" would be to modify all stock loadouts and Clan light Omnimechs to remove any extraneous heatsinks caused by this change.

...Actually scratch that, the real difficulty is convincing PGI to do it in the first place.

Edited by FupDup, 24 June 2015 - 08:40 PM.

[IraqiWalker]

Zfailboat, on 24 June 2015 - 06:53 PM, said:

OP

There is only one thing that truly needs to be fixed more than anything else:

The players.

Edited by IraqiWalker, 24 June 2015 - 08:40 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 24 June 2015 - 08:38 PM, said:

Yup, it is. I literally even did it myself and have a modified version of Engines.XML saved to my computer, just to make a point.

Well, the only "difficulty" would be to modify all stock loadouts and Clan light Omnimechs to remove any extraneous heatsinks caused by this change.

...Actually scratch that, the real difficulty is convincing PGI to do it in the first place.

Dat OP Locust, tho'...

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 June 2015 - 08:41 PM, said:

Dat OP Locust, tho'...

If you're seriously worried about that (lol) then we could always just bump down some of its quirks (namely heat-related ones, because the heat efficiency would be boosted by this change due to Trudubs).

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 24 June 2015 - 08:42 PM, said:

If you're seriously worried about that (lol) then we could always just bump down some of its quirks (namely heat-related ones, because the heat efficiency would be boosted by this change due to Trudubs).

I'm not, but that was essentially PGI's stance: that certain lighter 'Mechs would become overpowered. We all know that to be crap. The Locust wouldn't even benefit that much; to fit in another DHS on for 6x ML, it has to drop to an XL180 (the horror!) and then drop armor (actually is bad 4 realsies) to get it in. The only hindrance right now is that it is literally out of slots because the required external DHS used them all.

Edit: fixing the TrueDubs situation would, however, make the Flea a much more tenable proposition.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 24 June 2015 - 08:46 PM.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 June 2015 - 08:45 PM, said:

I'm not, but that was essentially PGI's stance: that certain lighter 'Mechs would become overpowered. We all know that to be crap. The Locust wouldn't even benefit that much; to fit in another DHS on for 6x ML, it has to drop to an XL180 (the horror!) and then drop armor (actually is bad 4 realsies) to get it in. The only hindrance right now is that it is literally out of slots because the required external DHS used them all.

Edit: fixing the TrueDubs situation would, however, make the Flea a much more tenable proposition.

I don't recall PGI saying that about the engine rules (which are inherited from BT)...or are you referring to the 2.0 DHS thing and the 3-Second Jenner?

[MoonUnitBeta]

A specific and complete rework of Community Warfare to equal a similar fight over territory like Planetside 2.
Planets are servers to host 32, 48, maybe up to 64 players, kilometers big, with many purposes and objectives. Killing mechs is something that happens if you have no other choice or do because they are in your way. Achieving capture points and taking over bases for territorial control should be priority.

Mechs are these huge expensive and prized possessions, aren't they? Yet we have 5 game modes dedicated to just killing them. All of them are in timed and meaningless matches.

Planets are not re-spawn matches played with heavily flawed and uninteresting game modes. Community Warfare really should be something more than 10 minute wait times to be match made. There shouldn't be any "GHOST WINS".
Those are design flaws, but we think it's just the way things are.

There shouldn't be a separation between Community Warfare and Solo queue. Community Warfare should be THE game. If Community Warfare was done correctly, one that embraces groups of any size to drop on any open planet and fight instantly, and contribute instantly to the battle, it would effectively make Solo queue obsolete.

But I guess I'm talking about a completely different game. MWO is all about wait times and dropping into timed game modes that are shallow.

Edited by MoonUnitBeta, 25 June 2015 - 07:15 AM.

[Escef]

An interesting thing, though, is that few people agree on what is and what is not a problem in the first place. Some people considered lack of VOIP a problem, others liked it that way. Well, now we have it, like it or not. Some people feel Streaks, LRMs, ballistics, lasers, Firestarters, Clan mechs, Inner Sphere Quirks, and/or eggbeaters to be over or under powered.

For example:

Kiiyor, on 24 June 2015 - 07:27 PM, said:

TTK.

IMHO, too low.

There are plenty of times I agree with Kiiyor. And plenty that I don't. This is not one of the things we agree upon. I think TTK is about where it should be. I'm not going to say he's a horrible person or a bad player for having the opinion he does on this matter. But if we were both on the dev team (I'm fairly positive I'm not, and suspect Kiiyor isn't), our lack of agreement on it even being an issue would likely end up causing a lot of waste.

Just some general observations on the topic.

[dezgra]

My rear view mirror.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 24 June 2015 - 08:47 PM, said:

I don't recall PGI saying that about the engine rules (which are inherited from BT)...or are you referring to the 2.0 DHS thing and the 3-Second Jenner?

I thought BT engine rules have all 10 required heat-sinks in the engine and anything else is extra. Obviously, that's not what we have going on here.

And actually, it was for heavier 'Mechs. Mech's with great stores of tons for stuff. I recall there being a thing stated where the reason they pulled the sinks out of the smaller engines was because not doing that allows some 'Mechs to bring devastating payloads that could be considered game-braking at an extreme cost in speed. Moving sinks out of the engine meant that players would have to spend slots to make up the difference, and those spent slots are denied for use on the hypothetical game-breaking builds (not that I know what they would be, speed alone is a pretty potent weapon).

Again, I might be crazy, but I have pictures of black fourm pages and green reply boxes in my mind on this subject. It has been a long time since the topic was discussed at length, and and the occasions are few and far between where the developers come in to comment on our rumblings.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 June 2015 - 09:14 PM, said:

I thought BT engine rules have all 10 required heat-sinks in the engine and anything else is extra. Obviously, that's not what we have going on here.

The difference between our rules and BT engine rules is that the external sinks for sub-250 engines were weightless. However, you did still have to allocate them externally.

MWO can't distinguish between different types of external sinks, so PGI just subtracted the external sinks' weight from the engines to balance out the maths. This resulted in sub-100 engines displaying a negative tonnage value (but if you added their required sinks, they became positive again).

Yeonne Greene, on 24 June 2015 - 09:14 PM, said:

And actually, it was for heavier 'Mechs. Mech's with great stores of tons for stuff. I recall there being a thing stated where the reason they pulled the sinks out of the smaller engines was because not doing that allows some 'Mechs to bring devastating payloads that could be considered game-braking at an extreme cost in speed. Moving sinks out of the engine meant that players would have to spend slots to make up the difference, and those spent slots are denied for use on the hypothetical game-breaking builds (not that I know what they would be, speed alone is a pretty potent weapon).

Again, I might be crazy, but I have pictures of black fourm pages and green reply boxes in my mind on this subject. It has been a long time since the topic was discussed at length, and and the occasions are few and far between where the developers come in to comment on our rumblings.

People have fearmongered about sub-250 mechs with "super firepower," but I haven't actually seen any truly "gamebreaking" builds that would result from it. Some of the people that tried this argument on me posted funny things like 50 kph Trebuchets and tried to convince me that such builds were "excessive" (lulz).

The mechs that are big enough to get a lot of firepower from it tend to end up being super-duper slow (and thus having low agility as well).

Frankly, sub-250 mechs are going to either have the weaknesses of just being lightweight to begin with (lights and low-end mediums), and most of everything else will just get outclassed by a larger mech with a bigger engine yet even more firepower and armor.

Edited by FupDup, 24 June 2015 - 09:23 PM.

[TheCharlatan]

TTK.

Make it longer.

[Matthew Ace]

1 thing I would fix (if it was not restricted to item/mech):

Spoiler

having someone who is more experienced with balance dedicated to more prompt and active weapon balancing going on that would be put through PTS to see if the desired outcome is achieved.

There, it's only 1 thing, and specific enough, but overall that actually leads to many things (a bit like wishing for more wishes if you only have 1 )

Okay, for real now.
PPC velocity changes. 1200 for regular PPCs and 1350 for erPPC/cerPPC. If adjustment of all mechs with PPC velocity quirks falls under this one item, then all mechs except Panther and Vindi get their velocity quirk removed as well.

Edited by Matthew Ace, 24 June 2015 - 09:38 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

Higher TTK, for sure.

If that answer is not ok, then collisions.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Allow visual targeting of LRMs and Streaks against mechs under ECM bubble.

[Escef]

Narcissistic Martyr, on 24 June 2015 - 09:46 PM, said:

Allow visual targeting of LRMs and Streaks against mechs under ECM bubble.

You can already dead fire LRMs. It's often difficult to judge where the target will be when the missiles land, especially for fast movers. But I've dead fired at the ground in front of an Atlas D-DC and watched him advance right to the point I targeted and the missiles dropped on his head quite nicely.