The Balance gap between TECHS is described in a rather factual way, but what the best way of achieving Balance is opinions. It was actually you who posted a long list of balancing factors that you claimed were facts, but were in some cases just wrong or subjective.
The powergap between Techs is undeniable, and can be roughly quantified, or rather translated, in tons. This TECH imbalance is then mitigated to various extent for different mech chassi and variants depending on hardpoints, geometry and hitboxes, making some unquirked IS mechs more viable than others, and the same for clan chassi. After this, there is another round of mitigation provided by quirks, which are also different for every variant. It is this last layer of mitigation that we can try to reduce the need for by addressing the underlying imbalance, the root of the Balance problem.
The biggest elephant in the room, is the XL engine. In order for IS mechs to have similar durability as clan XL mechs, they need to equip a STD engine, at a cost of:
250 ton engine -> 6 tons
265 ton engine -> 7 tons
280 ton engine -> 8 tons
300 ton engine -> 9.5 tons
325 ton engine -> 11.5 tons
350 ton engine -> 14.5 tons
That is the RAW durability penalty translated into tons for IS XL vs clan XL. The RAW value is the mitigated by geometry, hitboxes and speed + some will argue that it's beneficial to zombie, but imo that is neglible today.
If we compare this to the other elephant in the room, which is the weight of IS vs clan Equipment. There are some asymmetric factors here, but when all is said and done, Clan Equipment is lighter for the same or similar performance. Like above, the exact number could be argued til the end of time so let's not. Let's just conclude from the build examples earlier in the thread that for a medium-Heavy mech the weight penalty for a typical loadout is in the range of 5-10 tons. The simplest example is a dual gauss build that is undeniably 6 tons ligher for a clan mech than for an IS mech.
While we cannot scientifically quantify these numbers, we can guesstimate them based on reason, and we can try to predict and suggest ways to achieve Balance without making everything the same.
The suggested engine "normalization" is imo an excellent step in the direction of Balance without any serious drawbacks. Let me expand a little on this.
The suggestion I threw out in the OP just to give an example how it could be done in the simplest way. From the OP
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1. Allow individual crit slots to be destroyed in the engine
2. Make harsh penalties for losing an engine crit slot, like 10% cooling, 10% speed per slot
3. Increase death by engine destruction to 4 crit slots
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What does this mean? It would mean that both IS and clan XLs would survive losing one side torso. By doing so, the IS Version would lose 3 engine slots, then clan Version (and any future LFE I think) would lose 2 engine slots. With the numbers about, a lost ST for an IS mech would mean -30% cooling and -30% speed, and for a Clan mech it would mean: -20% cooling and -20% speed.
Isn't that fair? The IS XL engines would still be worse than clan XL in every conceivable way. They would be the same weight, 2 more slots, and larger penalty for lost ST and have no benefits.
The other good thing with XL normalization is that mechs that do not suffer too badly from XL ST Death ("XL safe") also do not gain so much be getting safe XL, which means that there is no risk of overpowering any mech by doing this. It's a completely safe change that can only improve Balance. If they would instead opt for achieving the same by ST armor buffs, these could easily become wrongly scaled and either do nothing or OP some mechs.
Some argue that STD engines would be obsoleted, which firstly is not entirely true since mechs with low engine cap don't really benefit from XLs, like Stalkers and the slow Awesomes. Secondly, it can easily be countered by giving for example STD engines a Component HP buff of appropriate size, whatever that is. Something in between could be done for LFEs, if they should be introduced at all.
All in all, I'd argue that XL normalization like this would be a really elegant step towards Balance. PGI still have the tonnage penalty difference between weapon/Equipment to deal with, but the XL fix would cut the amplitude of the problem approximately in half, reducing the need for extremely strong quirks.
As for Omni- vs Battlemech Balance, PGI have a job to do. They have a similar decision to do about these, either they do it all by quirks, or they go to the root of the problem and soften up some of the constuction rules for Omnis. Locked FF and absense of Endo is a pure handicap. Being stuck with a non-optimal engine or JJs or AP etc is not a pure handicap since this is functional Equipment, just not optimal... so I would suggest starting in the endo/ff end of Things and unlock these. This has been suggested and discussed a lot and this change would go well hand in hand with XL engine normalization. Full or partial unlock of JJs would too imo, but that's my opinion.
So, this is an attempt to summarize my opinions expressed in this thread in a bit more organized fashion. Hopefully it can Reach someone. There are 2 big Balance elephants, one can be rather easily addressed, the other must continue to be asymmetric because of Stock builds and IS stuff being heavier. There is no way around it, and PGI already took measures to Control the clan Version with longer durations and dot-character (ACs) and splash (ERPPCs). There is still some tuning to do, and I would prefer that they tune weapon Techs a bit better too before applying quirks, so that quirks doesn't have to compensate as much for this as is currently the case.
That would free up quirks to deal mostly with differences in hardpoints/geometry and hitboxes and similar Things directly related to mechs and not Tech.
Edited by Duke Nedo, 30 July 2015 - 02:43 AM.
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Widowmaker1981, on 29 July 2015 - 11:27 AM, said:
clan Equipment weight efficiency
