183 replies to this topic

[Andi Nagasia]

Wintersdark, on 05 July 2015 - 06:01 AM, said:

FOR BALANCE, CORE RULE IGNORE.

People like to say that if PGI would just follow TT rules, the game would be more balanced. . That's stupid. TT wasn't even close to balanced in terms of IS vs. Clan. Not even close. It wasn't even intended to be.

The ClamXL difference is a MASSIVE buff to Clan mechs, and requires a vast firepower increase via quirks IS side to attempt to compensate for. Not dying on ST loss is not a trivial advantage.

Still, the ClamXL doesn't make Clam mechs feel a lot different in combat, at least not compared to IS STD engine mechs. It's not a "flavour" change, like omnipods or Clam weapons.

So, DURING THE BALANCE PASS, make Clam and IS XL engines have the same, severe penalties on side torso loss(see McGrals post). Yes, this nerfs the cute fox and all crappie Clam mechs. STFU about that; this is the middle of the balance pass.

Allow all Clam mechs to switch between ClamXL and ClamSTD engines but not change rating. Allow all ClamXL mechs to add/remove FF/ES(but with fixed crit locatiins). This brings ClamXL mech construction to a balanced state where mechs aren't arbitrarily nerfing certain Clam mechs (see:Summoner, Nova)

Now, you have IS vs Clam, where the Mechs differences are still:

Clan weapons are lighter, but fire longer / bursts and are hotter

IS weapons are still heavier, but IS mechs can run XL's with the same threat level if they wish, and downgrade engines to pack simply more firepower if the feel so inclined. Is mechs will still need quirks, but nothing near the current state.

ya, i kept getting hit with, "NEVER BREAK MWO RULES as they are Based on TT RULES"
then i made this Topic(As Per Lore And The Tt Rules Should Any Omnimech Be Able To Mount Jumpjets?)
Suddenly all those People saying Balance is less important that TT Rules disappeared, Strange

[FupDup]

I think that the Clam XL with a blown out side torso should get something like a ~10% speed penalty, and throw in some modest agility reductions on the side. I don't want to pack all of the penalty into just speed alone, because seeing Clan lights go at Inner Sphere heavy mech speed would be sad. I also shudder to think of what would happen to the Mad Dog, which is actually the SideTorso Dog...


Timeline advancement would help here...The IS Luffies might be power creep, but at least it's a productive creep!

The main issue is STD engine obsolescence, but then again almost any IS mech with the hitboxes to handle an XL just tend to XL anyways...STDs are mostly a crutch for mechs that have big side torsos and/or low agility.

Edited by FupDup, 05 July 2015 - 07:08 AM.

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:07 AM, said:

The main issue is STD engine obsolescence, but then again almost any IS mech with the hitboxes to handle an XL just tend to XL anyways...STDs are mostly a crutch for mechs that have big side torsos and/or low agility.

Sword and Boarded builds would prefer STDs in some cases, I imagine. Going with a dozen SHS will give you a good picture of what half TrueDubs do. As PoorDubs are barely better than SHS, it's a very noticeable impact.


Full combat potential to half of what you were before.



As for the LFE, I think I'd give it the current 80% heatsink loss, and 80% speed as well. It's only 75% weight savings, so it could be better than the cXL. Then again, that's barely a downside, so that would probably eliminate the STD engine, while the proposed half limitations are pretty significant.

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:07 AM, said:

I think that the Clam XL with a blown out side torso should get something like a ~10% speed penalty, and throw in some modest agility reductions on the side. I don't want to pack all of the penalty into just speed alone, because seeing Clan lights go at Inner Sphere heavy mech speed would be sad. I also shudder to think of what would happen to the Mad Dog, which is actually the SideTorso Dog...

It's not all clan lights, just the slower ones... And it's exactly the same situation the IS lights will have, they've got slower lights too (Urbanmech, Panther) which would suffer in exactly the same way to side torso loss.

Both faction have fast(Clan ACH, Jenner IIC) lights, and slow lights. With both suffering equally to ST loss, it's balanced.

[Andi Nagasia]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:07 AM, said:

I think that the Clam XL with a blown out side torso should get something like a ~10% speed penalty, and throw in some modest agility reductions on the side. I don't want to pack all of the penalty into just speed alone, because seeing Clan lights go at Inner Sphere heavy mech speed would be sad. I also shudder to think of what would happen to the Mad Dog, which is actually the SideTorso Dog...


Timeline advancement would help here...The IS Luffies might be power creep, but at least it's a productive creep!

The main issue is STD engine obsolescence, but then again almost any IS mech with the hitboxes to handle an XL just tend to XL anyways...STDs are mostly a crutch for mechs that have big side torsos and/or low agility.

i still think moving the Time Line up to 3060 would help allot here,
most of the New Weapons can just be Copy Pasted, as Clans already have them,
ER-SL/ML, SSRM4/6, UAC2/10/20, LBX2/5/20, X-PulseLasers(ER-Pulse),

the only weapons PGI would have to Add in are
(IS) Light/Heavy-Gauss, MRMs, PPC-Capacitor,
(Clan) Heavy-Lasers, ATMs

and just give IS, their LFE, but only 150LFE, 250LFE, 350LFE,
this way STDs are still viable as not all LFE would be available,

[Pjwned]

Mcgral18, on 05 July 2015 - 07:14 AM, said:

As for the LFE, I think I'd give it the current 80% heatsink loss, and 80% speed as well. It's only 75% weight savings, so it could be better than the cXL. Then again, that's barely a downside, so that would probably eliminate the STD engine, while the proposed half limitations are pretty significant.

With the LFE only being 75% of STD engine weight rather than 50%, I don't think it would be so cut and dry to always take a LFE over STD if you had a significant heat and speed loss on top of losing the upper half of your mech. Of course, the penalty would need to actually be high enough, unlike how it is now with cXL engines, but simply having enough of a penalty (read: not too much of a penalty either) would balance it out pretty well I think.

Andi Nagasia, on 05 July 2015 - 07:15 AM, said:

and just give IS, their LFE, but only 150LFE, 250LFE, 350LFE,
this way STDs are still viable as not all LFE would be available,

Oh my god, no, there's no good reason to leave a bunch of mechs out in the cold for LFE availability, so if it's not available in all sizes (or at the very least many more sizes than that) then it would be incredibly unfair.

Edited by Pjwned, 05 July 2015 - 07:24 AM.

[FupDup]

Wintersdark, on 05 July 2015 - 07:15 AM, said:

It's not all clan lights, just the slower ones... And it's exactly the same situation the IS lights will have, they've got slower lights too (Urbanmech, Panther) which would suffer in exactly the same way to side torso loss.

Both faction have fast(Clan ACH, Jenner IIC) lights, and slow lights. With both suffering equally to ST loss, it's balanced.

Urbanmech...is the Urbanmech. Even with the current XL disparity, it probably has a bit better damage distribution due to its round torso shape for spreading out fire.

Panther isn't really "slow" unless you build it that way, it can go up to 127.3 kph with the XL250. Its humanoid body shape (including shieldy arms) and higher speed actually make it tougher than the current Clan lights for the most part, the Clan lights only beat it in raw firepower thanks to Clam lasers and SRMs being so beastmode.


I still stand by my position that the increased Clam XL penalty shouldn't focus every digit of juice into just the speed reduction all by itself, but also include some other debuffs (i.e. agility) along with it.

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:21 AM, said:

Urbanmech...is the Urbanmech. Even with the current XL disparity, it probably has a bit better damage distribution due to its round torso shape for spreading out fire.

Panther isn't really "slow" unless you build it that way, it can go up to 127.3 kph with the XL250. Its humanoid body shape (including shieldy arms) and higher speed actually make it tougher than the current Clan lights for the most part, the Clan lights only beat it in raw firepower thanks to Clam lasers and SRMs being so beastmode.


I still stand by my position that the increased Clam XL penalty shouldn't focus every digit of juice into just the speed reduction all by itself, but also include some other debuffs (i.e. agility) along with it.

Just make them identical and call it a day. I don't care what the debuff is, but it should be the same IS vs. Clan, then we can move forward and people can just STFU.



127kph is a slow light by any metric, really. A bit faster than the CuteFox, but not a lot. The Jenner IIC on the other hand is faster than the Jenner, and heavily armed, so there's some balance that way. Anyways, if the engine ST destruction penalties are identical, both faction's lights have roughly the same situation.

Clan's aren't stuck with only slow lights anymore.

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:21 AM, said:

I still stand by my position that the increased Clam XL penalty shouldn't focus every digit of juice into just the speed reduction all by itself, but also include some other debuffs (i.e. agility) along with it.

Well, they are directly related, are they not?

[Andi Nagasia]

Pjwned, on 05 July 2015 - 07:21 AM, said:

Oh my god, no, there's no good reason to leave a bunch of mechs out in the cold for LFE availability, so if it's not available in all sizes (or at the very least many more sizes than that) then it would be incredibly unfair.

Fine but then only 100LFE, 150LFE, 200LFE, 250LFE, 300LFE, 350LFE, 400LFE,
as then most mechs would have access to 2-4 types of LFE with out rendering STD useless,

[Wintersdark]

Mcgral18, on 05 July 2015 - 07:26 AM, said:

Well, they are directly related, are they not?

Indeed.

[FupDup]

Wintersdark, on 05 July 2015 - 07:25 AM, said:

Just make them identical and call it a day. I don't care what the debuff is, but it should be the same IS vs. Clan, then we can move forward and people can just STFU.

127kph is a slow light by any metric, really. A bit faster than the CuteFox, but not a lot. The Jenner IIC on the other hand is faster than the Jenner, and heavily armed, so there's some balance that way. Anyways, if the engine ST destruction penalties are identical, both faction's lights have roughly the same situation.

Clan's aren't stuck with only slow lights anymore.

The Panther's mobility is pretty noticeably higher than the 107 kph lights. Assuming you use the 250 engine, that's almost a 20% increase (127 kph). Not to mention the added agility.

Side note: The newly quirked Raven 2X goes at Panther-esque speeds if you use the 3LL flavor of the month build.

Mcgral18, on 05 July 2015 - 07:26 AM, said:

Well, they are directly related, are they not?

When initially designing the mech they are, but I do wonder if the game would automatically reduce agility if just a speed penalty was added. It would make for an interesting experiment.

[Ultimax]

Kyocera, on 05 July 2015 - 01:14 AM, said:

Personally I think a better choice would be the introduction of the LFE for IS. I can't really see any balancing issues against it (other than timeline violations).

LFE would help, but not actually solve much of the disparity.


LFE doesn't grant the same weight savings, and IS is already working at a technology weight deficit as everything is heavier & bulkier (more crit slots).



It doesn't even stop at raw weapon weights, i.e. 3 ton savings on Clan Gauss or Half weight SRMs.


The extra damage & range on clan lasers means you need less tonnage invested into weapons to achieve high alpha strike capability.


The higher damage means you can achieve "alpha equivalency" using less tonnage, and can achieve superiority with often equal tonnage (and sometimes superiority with less tonnage).

6x MLAS = 6 Tons for 30 damage

vs.

4x CERMLAS = 4 Tons for 28 damage

or

6x CERSLAS = 3 Tons for 30 damage





So LFE will help, but it won't help enough without other supporting changes like quirks, etc.


At which point, if you need to quirk ever mech across a faction to make up for what is really a technology disparity - it's a cleaner and more elegant solution to solve the tech disparity rather than "quirk all the things".








Things however have become more problematic.



At one point I would have said that CXL should retain a clear advantage even if there is some level of normalization vs. IS XL - due to the fact that CXL is locked.


However, IIC mechs are throwing a monkey wrench into that, effectively having the best of all worlds.




I think, that's what McGral is trying to address here at some level as well.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 05 July 2015 - 02:06 PM.

[Ultimax]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:21 AM, said:

I still stand by my position that the increased Clam XL penalty shouldn't focus every digit of juice into just the speed reduction all by itself, but also include some other debuffs (i.e. agility) along with it.

I'm not really fond of the idea of increasing clan mech penalties.


Reducing speed is almost a death sentence, and in many situations it is.


I'd personally rather see IS survivability with XL brought up a good chunk, and STD engine granting even larger benefits - rather than reduce clan mech survivability.

[FupDup]

Ultimatum X, on 05 July 2015 - 07:41 AM, said:

I'm not really fond of the idea of increasing clan mech penalties.

Reducing speed is almost a death sentence, and in many situations it is.

This is actually the exact reason why I've suggested a relatively low Clan XL penalty of around 10% speed (15% tops), rather than the 20-30% that is more popular. It's basically like removing Speed Tweak, really.

Ultimatum X, on 05 July 2015 - 07:41 AM, said:

I'd personally rather see IS survivability with XL brought up a good chunk, and STD engine granting even larger benefits - rather than reduce clan mech survivability.

The trick here is to do it in a way that doesn't much up the inter-IS balance between engines...

For STDs, I don't really know what they could give those without seeming too "weird" or "quirky." The only idea I have for those would be to allow engines to be critted, and give STDs a really really high health value so they're almost immune to engine crits. IS XL could have significantly higher HP than the Clan XL for obvious reasons...


It's really a can of worms no matter how we do it. Whether we nerf Clans, buff IS, or a bit of both, there's guaranteed to be a lot of chain-reactions and unintended consequences. It's a real clusterfudge if there ever was one in an MW game.

Edited by FupDup, 05 July 2015 - 07:48 AM.

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:47 AM, said:

For STDs, I don't really know what they could give those without seeming too "weird" or "quirky." The only idea I have for those would be to allow engines to be critted, and give STDs a really really high health value so they're almost immune to engine crits. IS XL could have significantly higher HP than the Clan XL for obvious reasons...

The issue with that, is that it exclusively reduces TTK. An easy implementation of engine crits is to make each engine segment separate (as opposed to the bulk 15HP the 6-12 slots encompass).

Still doesn't stop the fact a single Gauss and 1 shot an isXL engine with 14 armour (with the miniscule 3-4% chance) because of how the crit system works, if they stayed at 15HP each.



It would still die at 3 crits lost. Unless you want to change that to 4 crits, which would allow for a ST to be lost, with progressive negative effects for each crit.

Although, CT is still open to being engine killed with lots of HP left. You could make the 6 CT slots immune to critting...but that seems like a cop out.



Then there's the whole RNGeesus death, which most people seem fine with, in retrospect.

[FupDup]

Mcgral18, on 05 July 2015 - 08:05 AM, said:

The issue with that, is that it exclusively reduces TTK. An easy implementation of engine crits is to make each engine segment separate (as opposed to the bulk 15HP the 6-12 slots encompass).

Still doesn't stop the fact a single Gauss and 1 shot an isXL engine with 14 armour (with the miniscule 3-4% chance) because of how the crit system works, if they stayed at 15HP each.



It would still die at 3 crits lost. Unless you want to change that to 4 crits, which would allow for a ST to be lost, with progressive negative effects for each crit.

Although, CT is still open to being engine killed with lots of HP left. You could make the 6 CT slots immune to critting...but that seems like a cop out.



Then there's the whole RNGeesus death, which most people seem fine with, in retrospect.

Speaking of RNGesus, I have a heretical inkling about how a different crit system might look...

In a nutshell, every weapon would have a 100% crit chance, but the majority of weapons would do very tiny crit damage. The designated "crit seekers" like LBX, MGs, Flamers, maybe SRMs, etc. would however have relatively high crit damage.

Thus, we would no longer see the single-shot hard-hitting weapons like PPCs, AC/10, and Gauss be amazing crit-seekers, or having stuff like MGs and LBX be poop at it.

Edited by FupDup, 05 July 2015 - 08:14 AM.

[Zordicron]

Couple things that get me during these discussions.

First, clans can't change engines. Every time this topic comes up, people under value that aspect. I mean, Can you imagine if we could put an engine roughly 6-7 tons lighter into a TBR? How about upping a DWF to an XL350? Sure the DWF would lose some weapon space. It would also gain 4 crits(two more engine DHS spots) and significant speed and agility.

Even that isn;t as cut and dried, as some clammer mechs gain good value from the big engines. Some are severely hindered by them though. I mean, raise your hand if you would like 7-8 more tons of pod space on an EXE with masc...... or on a Gargamel.


Another thing regarding this topic, don;t some clammer mechs have a STD engine? I think they might be oddball and rare, but I thought I read that some place. Anyway, when setting up rules for some kind of clan/IS engine thing, people need to look at the future here also. We have "twocee" mechs coming also in the near future.


Third, XL engines DO take crit space. Once upon a time that was a meaningful drawback, no XL+AC20, XL+ Gauss explosions, etc. That always gets swept under the rug in these threads.

Want IS XL to not kill you? My gut reaction is they need a penalty to loadouts more then "once it blows up". Make them take even more crit space. make ALL of them only have like 7 true dubs instead of ten. Make ALL the STD engines have 10 truedubs, maybe even add more to the 325 and bigger. Make the crit space differences between STD and XL much more notable. This puts the focus of the advantage an XL gives you 100% on tonnage saved, with a penalty in crit space big enough to remove the ST death penalty vs a STD engine.

in short, nerf the XL by removing part of DHS truedub, add more crit slots, and buff the STD with more DHS truedub, then void the ST death penalty. if it was done right, the same build rules could apply to clammer mechs with STD vs XL engines.

Otherwise you know, just leave it alone. I am not 100% sure yet where this game is headed with the powercreep, but it sure feels like between the "bone" style HSR we have coming and talks about a universal rebalance coming, we are headed down the interstate of CoD with robots and turning the old Battletech Sim. road into a nature trail for vacations. TTK just might step over that line pretty soon. IMO, making IS XL enignes act like clammer ones and not adding some kind of monumental build penalty for it would be a big shove to the CoD side.

[FupDup]

Eldagore, on 05 July 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

Couple things that get me during these discussions.

First, clans can't change engines. Every time this topic comes up, people under value that aspect. I mean, Can you imagine if we could put an engine roughly 6-7 tons lighter into a TBR? How about upping a DWF to an XL350? Sure the DWF would lose some weapon space. It would also gain 4 crits(two more engine DHS spots) and significant speed and agility.

Even that isn;t as cut and dried, as some clammer mechs gain good value from the big engines. Some are severely hindered by them though. I mean, raise your hand if you would like 7-8 more tons of pod space on an EXE with masc...... or on a Gargamel.


Another thing regarding this topic, don;t some clammer mechs have a STD engine? I think they might be oddball and rare, but I thought I read that some place. Anyway, when setting up rules for some kind of clan/IS engine thing, people need to look at the future here also. We have "twocee" mechs coming also in the near future.


Third, XL engines DO take crit space. Once upon a time that was a meaningful drawback, no XL+AC20, XL+ Gauss explosions, etc. That always gets swept under the rug in these threads.

Want IS XL to not kill you? My gut reaction is they need a penalty to loadouts more then "once it blows up". Make them take even more crit space. make ALL of them only have like 7 true dubs instead of ten. Make ALL the STD engines have 10 truedubs, maybe even add more to the 325 and bigger. Make the crit space differences between STD and XL much more notable. This puts the focus of the advantage an XL gives you 100% on tonnage saved, with a penalty in crit space big enough to remove the ST death penalty vs a STD engine.

in short, nerf the XL by removing part of DHS truedub, add more crit slots, and buff the STD with more DHS truedub, then void the ST death penalty. if it was done right, the same build rules could apply to clammer mechs with STD vs XL engines.

Otherwise you know, just leave it alone. I am not 100% sure yet where this game is headed with the powercreep, but it sure feels like between the "bone" style HSR we have coming and talks about a universal rebalance coming, we are headed down the interstate of CoD with robots and turning the old Battletech Sim. road into a nature trail for vacations. TTK just might step over that line pretty soon. IMO, making IS XL enignes act like clammer ones and not adding some kind of monumental build penalty for it would be a big shove to the CoD side.

The Clan Battlemechs that are coming in the Origins pack will get to change their engine ratings...

Some Clan mechs do have STD engines, including at least 2 Omnimechs that I know of (Kingfisher and Stooping Hawk).

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 05 July 2015 - 07:31 AM, said:

The Panther's mobility is pretty noticeably higher than the 107 kph lights. Assuming you use the 250 engine, that's almost a 20% increase (127 kph). Not to mention the added agility.

Side note: The newly quirked Raven 2X goes at Panther-esque speeds if you use the 3LL flavor of the month build.

Whatever, not relevant. We can concede that ST loss penalties hurt slow clan lights, but the ones hurt by it are still better off than the current IS lights (being slower is better than being dead - IS lights are just dead. Also, "The Urbanmech I'd the Urbanmech"? How is that statement any different from "The Badder is the Badder"?

But it doesn't matter. The specific penalties don't matter. Just make them the same.

Quote

When initially designing the mech they are, but I do wonder if the game would automatically reduce agility if just a speed penalty was added. It would make for an interesting experiment.

They'd need to ensure it happens that way. So long as it's pointed out at coding time, I don't see that as being a problem.