129 replies to this topic

[NeoAres]

That's basically the analogy I have for what I'm trying to say regarding Clan vs. IS balance. With the impending entry of clan 2nd line mechs, IS pilots are already QQing about the combination of clan technology with the freedom of IS mechbuilding styles. And sadly enough, they are correct. The clan omnimechs' build limitations are a crutch upon which PGI has been leaning because of their imperfect job balancing clan tech to IS tech. With the advent of clan 2nd line mechs, that crutch will disappear. It's time to make the proverbial punishment fit the crime, which is to say, it's time to finish balancing clan and IS tech on a part-by-part level.

It begins with weapons. All clan weapons that have IS counterparts boast some combination of lighter weight, smaller size, greater range, and greater power. Many of them have already been balanced properly, usually by increasing firing duration and/or damage spread. However, a small number of clan weapons inexplicably still retain their advantages without any balacing feature, forcing PGI to compensate by nerfing the clans (or quirking the IS) in other ways--short-sighted idea to say the least. Here's a list of clan weapons, equipment, and mech features that require a balancing nerf in order to take this burden off of the clan mechs.
*C-Gauss: It is identical to the IS version but 3 tons lighter. Easy fix--lower its slug velocity by 25%.
*C-ERPPC: Though its power has been artifically reduced to match the IS version, it is still smaller and lighter. Unfortunately, I wouldn't dare lowering its velocity any more than it already has been so this one requires a more original solution. I propose a small spread-over-range effect to the clan PPC (effectively turning it into an energy LBX).
*C-SRM: Same stats as IS versions but half the weight. I would balance them by making them stream out of the launcher like clan LRMs do.
*C-SSRM: Same problem as SRM, same fix as well. Make the missiles stream.
*C-LBX: A slight boost to the IS LBX10's critical hit buff would do the trick.
*C-Narc: A reduction in effect time would do the trick.
*C-MG: Just like with the LBX, increase the IS version's critical hit buff
*C-Flamer: (as if it was useful, but just to be fair) Increased heat generation, just like every other clan energy weapon.

Next come electronics and accessories...
*C-ECM: lighter and smaller than IS version. Balance by removing counter mode.
*CAP: lighter and smaller than IS version. Balance by removing target info gathering buff.
*C-Double Heatsinks: smaller than IS version. Balance by reducing component health so they're easier to destroy with critical hits.

And finally the mechs themselves...
*C-XL Engines: Smaller and less vulnerable than IS versions. Balance by exacting a 20% reduction in internal structure to the torsoes of any mech using one.
*Endosteel: Half the slot size of IS version. Balance by exacting a 10% reduction in internal structure to any mech using it.
*Ferro Fibrous: Half the slot size of IS version. Balance by exacting a 10% debuff to critical defense to any mech using it.
*C-CASE: included free on clan mechs. Balance with a small decrease to component health for all clan ammo bins and c-gauss rifles.

Now can the clans have their lower arm actuators back when using PPCs/ballistics? That's just one example of a silly, arbitrary clan nerf in the current system (oversized clan chassis, silly omnipod hardpoints, and overzealous IS mech quirks are other notable ones). By keeping balancing features properly compartmentalized instead of ridiculously arbitrary, we can actually achieve some semblance of balance in the present without us or PGI having to worry about the effect of new content in the future (like, say, the the Blood Asp).

[bad arcade kitty]

you are funny

if a balance problem exists it exists with iic mechs, why do you propose something which would hurt omni mechs more than iic then?

your balance ideas themselves are ridiculous too

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 01 July 2015 - 03:47 PM.

[NeoAres]

bad arcade kitty, on 01 July 2015 - 03:45 PM, said:

you are funny

if a balance problem exists it exists with iic mechs, why do you propose something which would hurt omni mechs more than iic then?

your balance ideas themselves are ridiculous too

Maybe I didn't make it clear enough that these changes would replace the current battery of nerfs, not augment them.

[InspectorG]

Think about it...

You will have about 50 comp players min-maxing the hell outta the IIC's...

And scores and scores of under-hivers putting LRMs and LBX on everything because: moar tonnage.

I see more LRM Atlas than not...and not that many drop Stock on purpose...

[1453 R]

So...

The cGauss and cERPPC lose their reasons to exist altogether, the CAP becomes a 1-ton waste of space, all our ammo explodes as soon as our armor breaches, and any 'Mech which is hardlocked into the cXL/Endo/Ferro arrangement is basically one-shot bait, again, as soon as its armor breaches?

I really hate to agree with BAK...and frankly, I don't. It looks like you're heading in the right direction and trying to think your way through the problem, and you've got the right idea in a lot of ways, but in others you're either defeating the purpose of the original system (slow Gauss...accomplishes what, exactly? it's a sniper weapon that can no longer snipe? cERPPC unable to actually hit what it aims at? A CAP that offers no sensor benefits?) or are leveraging some extremely brutal stacking penalties on OmniMechs that can't get away from them.

The Timber Wolf, for example, loses thirty frickin' percent of its internal structure and is ten percent more vulnerable to critical hits, which will much more easily explode its reduced-health internals. Integrated CASE doesn't help when the whole 'Mech goes off like a barrel of nitro pretty much the instant its armor breaches, and it has no options whatsoever to get away from that. I get that the TBR is overperforming, but damn, man...this is harsh.

And yet, still a better effort and a better idea than ninety percent of the drek thrown around here. At the very least I know you're not trying to Burn it Down™, so kudos for that. I just don't know if I can get behind turning every Clan 'mech in the game that's currently not butt into a straw tiger.

[Aresye]

Funny how these balance arguments always seem to have the same end result: IS ends up with more efficient technology that has more features.

It's already ass-backwards in-game. I mean hell, I'm a Clan player telling my "CLAN" teammates: "Stop trying to poke them at range. You're going to lose."

[Slepnir]

Well if PGI had actually delivered on a battletech game instead of making an arena shooter it would have been a better game, sad really since MWLL showed them how to do it with better maps and full combined arms immersion with a fraction of the budget.

When I was sold this game I expected electronics to work like they are supposed to, propper heat scaling, active and passive radar, clans and IS fighting each other at all times, not on the same team.


vastly outnumbered clan stars using their superior equipment to balance the fight against the IS.

Now since I am so invested I am trying to have fun with the game even though it isn't what I was promised, and it's only marginally battletech. balancing weapons ever more at this point is an exercise in futility.

[Mystere]

******* whiners, they're the bane of all online games since time immemorial. ******* whiners.
You don't like the game? Go ******* build your own.

******* anti-Clan Crusaders, they just can't ******* let go and move on with their lives. ******* anti-Clan Crusaders.
You don't like the lore? Go ******* create your own game universe and lore.

I'm ******* sick and tired of all of your ******* ****. It's the reason the rest of us cannot have nice things.

Edited by Mystere, 01 July 2015 - 04:24 PM.

[bad arcade kitty]

seriously though they have to balance iic mechs with something else except negative quirks which those are probably going to have, otherwise there will be a few outcries to nerf clan tech which mostly hurt omnimechs; i don't like this idea of blending battlemechs' flexibility (lol, yeah, it sounds funny but it's how we have it) with clan tech, some of which is still better than its is counterparts (yet)

imo they should put a relatively strict engine limit on those (working two ways i.e. not allowing them to get too small engines as well as too large ones) and give them fixed armor and structure (i.e. you can change the upgrades but the armor and structure will follow the preset positions like it does for omni mechs), it will put them into a (imo) fairly balanced and unique position between battlemechs and omnimechs

[Aim64C]

The problem is that the Clans work great as a "OMGWTF" 'dungeon master' tool to pit a team of players against. They are blatantly designed to be overwhelmingly superior and to be a huge challenge to the Inner Sphere. Salvage loot from Clan encounters can be highly rewarding, yet a challenge to field and maintain within the strategic picture. Even when playing in much later years when Clan mechs and equipment are available for market purchase, they are exceptionally expensive to field, more difficult to locate repair items for, etc. They are balanced within the strategic picture, not the tactical picture, since a team of Inner Sphere mechs can keep on chugging at a lower cost with more reliable supply lines.

They are not so great to include into an online multiplayer game while maintaining a semblance of lore accuracy, since everyone is competitive and Clan equipment/mechs are so blatantly superior that you have to be a purist to turn them down. Since there's little strategic element to maintaining my personal fleet of mechs that I can only pilot one at a time of, there's literally no penalty for fielding a Clan mech's advantages.

Other than what can be arbitrarily imposed through attempts to balance the clans within a tactical picture.

Since LRMs have been removed from the game, the insane advantage that Clans get from fielding LRMs goes away. They are more balanced in their direct fire aspects, though lasers still pack superior range (the decrease to duration is ... meh). The biggest advantage comes in the form of the Clan XL engine. This allows vastly more tonnage for weapons, higher speeds, or a combination of the two. Oh - and their Endo Steel only costs 7 critical spaces. Only way to get better than that is to go with Endo-Composite (and that reduces structure armor by half), which won't be available for a very long time.

The XL engine is just the biggest advantage, there. That allows a lot of extra tonnage and mobility without the main drawback of an IS XL engine. Run a standard IS engine to try and preserve your endurance - and you've lost massive amounts of firepower. Run an XL IS engine and just by raw statistics, you'll suffer more defeats at the loss of a single side torso that a Clan mech would have survived.

The only real way to balance around this would be to eliminate the penalty of side torso loss for Inner Sphere mechs - which means the only real reason to run a standard engine would be for the 6 critical spaces, and the yet-to-come light fusion engine would be pointless.

Alternatively, an exception to the lore timeline could be made (as it was with TAG-enhanced missiles - those technically haven't been developed yet, along with several other things) to enable the light fusion engine. That's a 25% decrease in engine mass with the same profile as a Clan XL engine.

My standpoint on balancing weapon systems remains relatively unchanged from what it was a few years ago.

The Inner Sphere should reflect the dynamics of a larger market lacking central planning. Weapon systems are developed by various manufacturers that fall into various categories that the tabletop game described and generalized by range, damage, etc. Inner Sphere weapons should have various manufacturers with different specifications and improvements across each other. One manufacturer might have a medium laser that reaches farther than its competitors. One might have one that produces more damage. Another might have a shorter duration, and yet another might have one that produces less heat.

Perhaps some of the ballistics could come with a critical point or two shaved off, or some tonnage spared.

The clans, being fanatical socialists, don't have the diversity in their centrally planned and authorized systems - though they have 200 years of not having suffered nearly as much lost technology.

Of course, even before the Clans were introduced, the game had serious balance issues that were never addressed. Many of these stem from a lack of diverse gameplay (the game play is overly focused on destroying players in other mechs, which means that it makes little sense to pilot anything designed for any other purpose), while others stem from weapon mechanics... and still others trace their roots back to a fundamentally flawed heat system.

Part of the problem is that PGI is still trying to build a decent mechwarrior game, let alone balance the factions within it.

[Urfin]

Terrible ideas, because they come from the premise that clan and IS tech should be balanced for equality. The whole design of BT, let alone its lore, contains nothing of the sort. The whole "metagame", if your will, of that universe consists of a desperate race to get an edge in the face of an sudden and violent roflstomp by warlike zealots who have better tech. The whole idea of BT is politicized, ideologized, asymmetric and disgustingly unfair war. Quite like reality, except with stompy robots.

Naturally, trying to cram this concept into symmetric pew-pew matches can only end in disgusting failure, as we can plainly see. Nevermind that solving design challenges of this scale and depth by value balancing individual elements has never ever actually worked, and the fact that this is even considered seriously just speaks to the complete lack of quality standards in today's game design.

But hey, let's just nerf something, it's easier than making things work right.

Edited by Urfin, 01 July 2015 - 04:43 PM.

[Xetelian]

Yes there is something to be balanced when the weapons are smaller, weigh less and reach further.

However the suggestions don't appeal to me.

[Andi Nagasia]

so your ganna make it so Clan is balanced on paper?
and what you'll see is Clan over Nerffed in game,

im sorry but ER-PPC becoming a Energy LBX10? so im ganna Snipe with an LBX10? right,...
i agree that some weapons are imbalanced, but not by enough to hit them with these Changes,

i see where you are comming from but you also have to look at it this way,
why not just buff IS cooldowns abit more than their Clan Counterparts?

because if you take a weapon not see often(C-ER-PPC/C-Flamer),
and you Nerf it more, then you wont be seeing it, you will only see Lasers,
and we already see too many lasers in MWO, so please no,

[Deathlike]

This is what... I don't even...

[Aim64C]

bad arcade kitty, on 01 July 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

seriously though they have to balance iic mechs with something else except negative quirks which those are probably going to have, otherwise there will be a few outcries to nerf clan tech which mostly hurt omnimechs; i don't like this idea of blending battlemechs' flexibility (lol, yeah, it sounds funny but it's how we have it) with clan tech, some of which is still better than its is counterparts (yet)

imo they should put a relatively strict engine limit on those (working two ways i.e. not allowing them to get too small engines as well as too large ones) and give them fixed armor and structure (i.e. you can change the upgrades but the armor and structure will follow the preset positions like it does for omni mechs), it will put them into a (imo) fairly balanced and unique position between battlemechs and omnimechs

The problem is that Clan mechs are fundamentally designed to be overwhelmingly superior.

Even the non-omnimech varieties.

There is just no getting away from this no matter how many positive and negative quirks you put into the game.

This is why I was a critic of the hardpoint system a long time ago, and it's a reason why I'm still a critic of it, now (especially with the way omnimechs work). The distinction between standard and onmimech just doesn't translate to a first person shooter-'simulator'.

Standard mechs could be customized in tabletop, but you had to be able to do depot level refits and they took a considerable amount of time and money within the strategic/campaign picture. This simply doesn't exist within online MechWarrior. It could exist for single-player or group campaigns, but those are absent at present.

The advantage of omnimechs was that they could undergo refit with what was often available in the field. Clans might drop with ballistic-heavy designs while their ammunition supplies were fresh and to take advantage of the high damage/low heat aspect of ballistics before swapping out to energy based loadouts after ammunition supplies became more constrained or the Clans were able to control the momentum of battle.

The Inner Sphere eventually came out with their own omnimechs after the obvious advantages this offered were observed. For example, there is a version of the BlackJack that is an omnimech. There was, also, a big to-do over the Avatar for being an Inner Sphere Omnimech. Within the current context of MWO - this would seem to be of minimal importance. Omnimechs seem to be more of a handicap for the Clans than a benefit, so the reason why the IS would pursue them just doesn't translate within the mechanics of the game.

It would seem better to just get rid of the omnimech distinction and go with a different concept of hardpoints all together (such as what MechWarrior 4 did).

Of course, that also gets rid of the 3-chassis-per-mech rule that we need in order to master our mechs and what-not.

[Nik Reaper]

Hm, while I never take PGI balancing statements at face value , but I do like that there will be a number of public tests , or so they say, and as I heard this will happen before the IIc come out.

But even if every single stat out there is available for tweeking , what would feel fair to do to the IIc's so that they aren't worthless but not the dominant force some of them and many other later clan 2 line mechs will be?

A lesser amount of internal points is something that could be done if not too drastic, reduced twisting angle and speed, worse climbing angle? Just by reducing these things mechs can feel like they are a class bigger.

There also was words about changing sensor range and sensor info gathering per mech basis , but in the end those who are any good shoot at things even with out a red box or sensor info ( still better if you have it ) so would that even change things much?

A mech is for the most part it's hardpoints ( number,type and position ) geometry ( hight, scale, shape ), engine limit and weapon quirks, even if you turn on a dime and twist like a wind god while instantly geting sensor info at 1Km I still don't see it being good if you are tall and fire everything from the hips with out serious weapon quirks , again meaning effective firepower means much more than anything else, more so in a game where killing everything is the most profitable option.

[Telmasa]

I think we need to wait to see what's coming in August with the balance changes before we can jump to any kind of conclusions.

Mystere, on 01 July 2015 - 04:19 PM, said:

******* whiners, they're the bane of all online games since time immemorial. ******* whiners.
You don't like the game? Go ******* build your own.

******* anti-Clan Crusaders, they just can't ******* let go and move on with their lives. ******* anti-Clan Crusaders.
You don't like the lore? Go ******* create your own game universe and lore.

I'm ******* sick and tired of all of your ******* ****. It's the reason the rest of us cannot have nice things.

Holy crap, is that really you Mystere? You sound like me after grinding for a week day, go watch some cartoons or something.

Edited by Telmasa, 01 July 2015 - 05:13 PM.

[Mycrus]

Don't worry

Complete Rebalance™ soon™

[Nik Reaper]

Aim64C, on 01 July 2015 - 05:05 PM, said:

It would seem better to just get rid of the omnimech distinction and go with a different concept of hardpoints all together (such as what MechWarrior 4 did).

But you do remember the lbx 40 builds and so forth where the only mechs to be used are those that were decided could carry overwhelming firepower, meaning that the current op mechs would still be op just that some of them would be excluded because they couldn't fit while some of the rest could , if you look and try to simulate what would happen then you see just as many different problems, and to be real you should know that at this point they are having a hard time redoing the mech skill system, is there any reason to expect them to change the hardpoint system?

While it's far from ideal let's talk and see what can be done with what we have.

[FatYak]

I had to laugh when the pack got announced. people here have been saying for months that the introduciton of clan weaponry as salvage for IS mechs and mixtech would be OP

Now we have official OP Mixtech

Its just starting to get funny now..... but i really want that orion for some reason =/