772 replies to this topic

[IraqiWalker]

Reno Blade, on 25 September 2015 - 02:55 AM, said:

With all the changed I listed, I'd say that boating would be a lot less usefull and way closer to the performance of mixed builds.
Between extra heat and more facetime, the differences between boats and mixed builds would shrink.

If you don't mind the higher heat penalties, you can still boat, ofc.
But with our current GH limits, people build around them (e.g. 3LL + x ML for IS or 2LP+xML for Clan) already.

You're not accounting for the fact that your mixed loadout is still brutally disadvantage at the range I choose in a boated loadout, and that though the heat may rise. I'm still going to get a decent kill shot, before overheating.

My memory might be failing me, but I don't remember if you added scaling heat penalties (if your mech holds 80% heat for 3 seconds, ammo has a high chance of blowing up. Heatsinks have a high chance of giving out ... etc.)

That would be a much better way (in my own personal opinion) of bridging mixed builds, and boated builds.


However, this is all ignoring a very fundamental problem: Dictation of engagement range. Even though most stock mechs had varied loadouts for all ranges, that's not a smart way to build mechs.

From a manufacturer's perspective, it means the mech will always have a role to play, regardless of the theater it's on. However, tactically speaking, there is only one way to run an effective mixed mech: Being the fastest.

You need speed in order to dictate the engagement range at your own terms. If they have long range weapons, you want to be faster than them, so you can close into short range, and beat them there. They have short range weapons, you want to be faster, so you can keep distance between you and them, and kill them at range.

That versatility is a handicap if you are slower, and a boon, if you are faster. Since we can customize, and optimize our mechs, you'll rarely see mixed builds work well, unless they are the faster ones.

Even in BT tourneys, we rarely ran the mixed builds you see on stock mechs. Unless we had a mech that was really fast, that way we dictate the engagement range. I had 2 locusts, with SPLs, and MASC that I only used when I knew my opponent had LRM only mechs. Turn one, they cross the table straight into the LRM mech's minimum range, and with their speed, those LRMs are almost never hitting them, while they melt the mech to dust/keep it busy long enough for my other units to get into range, and win the main engagement.

Torezu, on 25 September 2015 - 11:13 AM, said:

CD doubling on LRMs would make them useless MORE useless as a weapon, double damage or not, unless you're boating 4-6 launchers and can chain fire them. Ghost heat already kicks in at > 2 launchers, so that's not a change.

Let's be honest, LRMs were never above the "useless" category in upper play, and even lower tiers still could nullify them without using ECM.

[Nightbird]

I think IS versus Clan balance should be decided first before looking at IS variants. The difference of survivability of clan XL plus lighter weapons plus omnipod flexibility is not a gap that a little infotech and internal HP will balance. Pick two equal tonnage mechs from each side from IS and Clans for each weight class, balance them, and then balance variants of that class and close tonnage mechs.

[hercules1981]

InspectorG, on 24 September 2015 - 10:34 PM, said:

That would probably only be feasible for Group Tournaments or CW.

MM for Solo would be a nightmare. What happens if the que has more players using Clan mechs than IS?


I remember it did work for Stock Mech Mondays 3 vs 5, 8 vs 12 i think were the numbers. But that was Stock Loadout and in Private matches with people who willingly discarded meta for Lore.

Basically there would just be more 12 on 12 clan vs clan if that is what people r playing ATM so the number of people playing either side shouldn't matter whenever there is an overflow of one side they will just square of in the traditional 12 vs 12 manner because it will be all IS mechs or all clan mechs. Don't ask me how u could program the match maker to do such a thing but I bet it could be done

[Mordric]

hat if they rebalanced and tweak they Armor and structure on the clan mechs, then over haul the weapons systems to where the clan only gets a boost to Weapon tech, weight, slots, by only 1 or two points, then heat and cool down by a percentage, I don't think clans should have massive advantage. then certain chassis could get a perk to Weapons types, such as the whale would get would be able to carry four uac-10's where most mech's could not. maybe some thing along those lines any way..

[Corka]

I actually kind of really like weapon quirks? It does reduce the customisation a bit, but it does make some mechs really unique at the things that they can do. Like the Grid Iron or Huiginn. To be honest the information warfare stuff sounds kind of bad and not useful. Removing the quirks just seems like one massive nerf to all of IS

[Reza Malin]

I feel that in order to truly make information warfare a valuable role, there needs to be larger map areas. While the CW maps are reasonably big, if you had a truly large scale map area with multiple locations, then information warfare would be sought after.

As it currently is, its nice to have for about 20 seconds while you first find the enemy main body, but once that is done it is largely made obsolete.

My worry is that in balancing the 4 main stats you mention for each mech, infotech may end up taking away from the other 3 which are more directly combat related. This could be vastly negative for ceratin chassis types unless you first improve the conditions that would actually have any real need for infotech.

Going hand in hand with this, you also really need to offer a good incentive why people would focus on infotech over combat stats.


TLDR: If you don't first make infotech a worthwhile play style, which it currently isn't largely due to map limitations, then balancing mechs with this infotech in mind could make some DOA.

[Veev]

Dont forget to reward infotech better so it is on par with everything else. Same goes for AMS and the rest.

[William Slayer]

Fade Akira, on 05 October 2015 - 12:08 AM, said:

I feel that in order to truly make information warfare a valuable role, there needs to be larger map areas. While the CW maps are reasonably big, if you had a truly large scale map area with multiple locations, then information warfare would be sought after.

As it currently is, its nice to have for about 20 seconds while you first find the enemy main body, but once that is done it is largely made obsolete.

My worry is that in balancing the 4 main stats you mention for each mech, infotech may end up taking away from the other 3 which are more directly combat related. This could be vastly negative for ceratin chassis types unless you first improve the conditions that would actually have any real need for infotech.


Going hand in hand with this, you also really need to offer a good incentive why people would focus on infotech over combat stats.


TLDR: If you don't first make infotech a worthwhile play style, which it currently isn't largely due to map limitations, then balancing mechs with this infotech in mind could make some DOA.

Just sit at a bit more to this point. Info tech becomes less relevant still when the maps are always the exact same. Once you have played a map 100 times information gathering becomes much less relevant. If we were able to randomly generate maps information gathering would become hugely essential.

Edited by William Slayer, 15 October 2015 - 10:09 PM.

[Top Leliel]

Still no Flamer buff in sight?

[IraqiWalker]

Top Leliel, on 21 October 2015 - 03:55 PM, said:

Still no Flamer buff in sight?

Sadly no. I really want them to make it useful. Give it some damage over time effect, or make it heat a mech better, and for longer, or both, or something!

[Wintersdark]

IraqiWalker, on 22 October 2015 - 05:16 AM, said:

Sadly no. I really want them to make it useful. Give it some damage over time effect, or make it heat a mech better, and for longer, or both, or something!

or, you know, make it at least not so terrible that using it leaves you worse off than if you just didn't include it at all.

[Thorqemada]

IraqiWalker, on 22 October 2015 - 05:16 AM, said:

Sadly no. I really want them to make it useful. Give it some damage over time effect, or make it heat a mech better, and for longer, or both, or something!

Flamers would be the perfect Troll-Weapon keeping Players in a Shutdown State and that is no gameplay you want for your Players.

Flamers should be a Weapon against "Soft Targets" and on Mechs they should apply a non stackable HOT effect for some aomunt of time like 20 seconds or so...Heat may rise up to 90% leaving the Target unable to use more than 1 Energy Weapon per time if so.

Risk for the Flamer-Mech is that upon Critical Damage the Mech becomes a Walking Torch that loses 1 Point of Structure per Second until Destruction.

Edited by Thorqemada, 25 October 2015 - 04:05 PM.

[Fire for Effect]

InspectorG, on 24 September 2015 - 10:34 PM, said:

That would probably only be feasible for Group Tournaments or CW.

MM for Solo would be a nightmare. What happens if the que has more players using Clan mechs than IS?


I remember it did work for Stock Mech Mondays 3 vs 5, 8 vs 12 i think were the numbers. But that was Stock Loadout and in Private matches with people who willingly discarded meta for Lore.

easy solution: battle value based MM

[Fire for Effect]

Mordric, on 28 September 2015 - 12:08 PM, said:

hat if they rebalanced and tweak they Armor and structure on the clan mechs, then over haul the weapons systems to where the clan only gets a boost to Weapon tech, weight, slots, by only 1 or two points, then heat and cool down by a percentage, I don't think clans should have massive advantage. then certain chassis could get a perk to Weapons types, such as the whale would get would be able to carry four uac-10's where most mech's could not. maybe some thing along those lines any way..

arguing on the wrong layer.

dont balance mechs, balance teams

[InspectorG]

Fire for Effect, on 01 November 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

easy solution: battle value based MM

Pretty sure it has been said that is not possible. We will see with PGI's 'internal balancing' and PSR.

Not to be mean to PGI but they cant even balance the weapons, how they gonna balance the chassis carrying those weapons?

[Fire for Effect]

InspectorG, on 01 November 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

Pretty sure it has been said that is not possible. We will see with PGI's 'internal balancing' and PSR.

Not to be mean to PGI but they cant even balance the weapons, how they gonna balance the chassis carrying those weapons?

It is possible and actually very easy because mathematics are easy for that. and again you are arguing on the wrong layer:
DONT BALANCE MECHS
BALANCE TEAMS!!!!

[InspectorG]

Fire for Effect, on 02 November 2015 - 02:36 AM, said:

It is possible and actually very easy because mathematics are easy for that. and again you are arguing on the wrong layer:
DONT BALANCE MECHS
BALANCE TEAMS!!!!

PGi said something to the effect that the player base is too small to balance via teams.

And it would be a nightmare for MM.

[Fire for Effect]

InspectorG, on 02 November 2015 - 06:37 AM, said:

PGi said something to the effect that the player base is too small to balance via teams.

And it would be a nightmare for MM.

teams as in "both sides" not as in "people who are in groups".

[InspectorG]

Fire for Effect, on 02 November 2015 - 06:51 AM, said:

teams as in "both sides" not as in "people who are in groups".

Yeah. Not enough players.

This idea has been discussed before. PGI has no interest in juking MM to have a 'BV' balance system that puts few Clan Players vs more IS players.

And also, this game heavily favors numbers, hence the snowball effect of stomps.

For it to work, IS mehs would have to take SHS and No Endo, no XL engines.

Players wont to that except the very few who want Stock Mode...which can be done in a private lobby anyhow.

Bottom line: PGI said they wont have un-even numbers of players per team.

[Fire for Effect]

InspectorG, on 02 November 2015 - 07:02 AM, said:

Yeah. Not enough players.

This idea has been discussed before. PGI has no interest in juking MM to have a 'BV' balance system that puts few Clan Players vs more IS players.

And also, this game heavily favors numbers, hence the snowball effect of stomps.

For it to work, IS mehs would have to take SHS and No Endo, no XL engines.

Players wont to that except the very few who want Stock Mode...which can be done in a private lobby anyhow.

Bottom line: PGI said they wont have un-even numbers of players per team.

you misunderstand. you can ALWAYS even out the combat potential of both sides.

If PGI does not want to use the ONLY way for balanced matches thats their problem since weight is clearly a useful metric for combat potential. If uneven matches are also not wanted thats again a fail decision, to rule out something that can clearly balance both sides of a match.