103 replies to this topic

[Duke Nedo]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 04:24 AM, said:

I hate this balance thing, because the system here is borken by the lore.
I woudl entirely prefer if the IS XL's would stay alove as well when one S breaks, but in counter the IS should get more restricted. max engine sizes to compensate for the fact that clanners can not use other engines than the stock one, and do not have any STD's to use.

maybe allow every IS emch when using its Stock engine size to lose a ST. That woudl be interesting how many IS palyers truly would keep a "superior" Xl on a "inferior" Engine size. because thats what gimps many clanmechs: wrong engine sizes. As much as it makes some clanners too strong: when their clan Xl's are in the nearly perfect size.

if we would intorduce more penalties for clan XL's we would break interchassis balance, because those clanners having the wrong engine sizes get penalised even more than those havign the crrect ones.
Min/maxing is a big issue in MWO, because clanmechs without ES/FS and/or wrong engine sizes will just always be penalised more than those who are the reason why those XL balancings would have happened.

you can not 1:1 balance clan XL vs. IS XL/IS STD because the Omnimech construction rules are what heavily bias and interfere some mechs' balance.
And tbh, I wonder hwo those IIc mechs should work. because the you grant full min/max potential wiht the exchangeable clan XL's THAT is then another imbalancing factor in the system.

Here I have to disagree a bit. In my mind, Omnimech vs Battlemech balance is all about locked engine vs locked hardpoints. Both are unfair to some chassi/variants. A big difference is that of clan omnimechs, entire chassi gets the shaft, while for IS battlemechs there is usually (not always) one variant that is OK.

Imo this should not be taken into account when discussing Clan vs IS balance. There will always be Omnimechs with the perfect engine, and variants with the perfect hardpoints. We will have to balance faction according to the best mechs. That's why we're lucky to have quirks. Quirks should imo, after tech balance is achieved, help the weak omnimech chassi and battlemech variants. Clans also soon get Battlemechs so it's really important to get tech balance right without involving locked engines....

[Lily from animove]

Duke Nedo, on 14 September 2015 - 04:34 AM, said:

Here I have to disagree a bit. In my mind, Omnimech vs Battlemech balance is all about locked engine vs locked hardpoints. Both are unfair to some chassi/variants. A big difference is that of clan omnimechs, entire chassi gets the shaft, while for IS battlemechs there is usually (not always) one variant that is OK.

Imo this should not be taken into account when discussing Clan vs IS balance. There will always be Omnimechs with the perfect engine, and variants with the perfect hardpoints. We will have to balance faction according to the best mechs. That's why we're lucky to have quirks. Quirks should imo, after tech balance is achieved, help the weak omnimech chassi and battlemech variants. Clans also soon get Battlemechs so it's really important to get tech balance right without involving locked engines....

can't agree with this entirely, we should not start faction balance before chassis balance wasn't created. Lets not forget we are not only on the CW map, there is still the public queue, and there faction does not matter.
When Chassis balance is achieved (or somethign extremely close to it) factions will automatically be balanced as well, because factions consist of their mech chassis. Any change, like wepaons, and engines always have different effects on each chassis. That is why faction balance won't work, you can basicaly not balance clantech due to omnimech restrictions. And this will also count for IS once they get omnimechs. Weapons need balance as in weapon vs weapon. But not Clan Weapon vs IS weapon.

Edited by Lily from animove, 14 September 2015 - 04:42 AM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Though I agree with several about LFE being introduced and negative effects of side torso loss, the negative effects being suggested are what's also missing from the BT/Solaris Heat Scale.

Doing any more with the engines, except to introduce the LFE, would be similar to PGI's version of Ghost Heat to curtail massive weapon boating, all due to massive elements currently left out of the Heat Scale.

[Koshirou]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 04:24 AM, said:

That is entirely population related, clanners hardly fought against each other, unlike IS.

IS factions did not fight each other to any relevant degree during this phase. The number of IS planets that changed hands in intra-IS fighting is less than ten.

Quote

How does it come, that right after CW and clans came, the IS was owning near all the CW map?

Because the map started out that way?

[Duke Nedo]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 04:42 AM, said:

can't agree with this entirely, we should not start faction balance before chassis balance wasn't created. Lets not forget we are not only on the CW map, there is still the public queue, and there faction does not matter.
When Chassis balance is achieved (or somethign extremely close to it) factions will automatically be balanced as well, because factions consist of their mech chassis. Any change, like wepaons, and engines always have different effects on each chassis. That is why faction balance won't work, you can basicaly not balance clantech due to omnimech restrictions. And this will also count for IS once they get omnimechs. Weapons need balance as in weapon vs weapon. But not Clan Weapon vs IS weapon.

To balance techs you'd have to choose a baseline, and it's rather natural to choose the best mechs (on each side) and take it from there. In our case, to balance IS vs Clans weapons and equipment I'd start by comparing two pairs that I think should be on equal footing without applying any quirks at all:

Ebon Jaguar vs. Jagermech
Stormcrow vs. Shadowhawk

These pairs compare well to me in terms of geometry and hardpoints, at least as close as you get. These two should compete well vs each other without quirks if we have good tech balance imo.

I'd start there, then give quirks to whatever chassi/variant that needs it to reach slightly below that level.

[Lily from animove]

Koshirou, on 14 September 2015 - 05:19 AM, said:

IS factions did not fight each other to any relevant degree during this phase. The number of IS planets that changed hands in intra-IS fighting is less than ten.


Because the map started out that way?

facepalm, you probably never watched how the entire CW really started and how planets proceeded there.

Duke Nedo, on 14 September 2015 - 06:00 AM, said:

To balance techs you'd have to choose a baseline, and it's rather natural to choose the best mechs (on each side) and take it from there. In our case, to balance IS vs Clans weapons and equipment I'd start by comparing two pairs that I think should be on equal footing without applying any quirks at all:

Ebon Jaguar vs. Jagermech
Stormcrow vs. Shadowhawk

These pairs compare well to me in terms of geometry and hardpoints, at least as close as you get. These two should compete well vs each other without quirks if we have good tech balance imo.

I'd start there, then give quirks to whatever chassi/variant that needs it to reach slightly below that level.

wrong the base line is where the average is, because only this will make you allow medicore changes and keep things in line, otherwise you have to do massive stuff to bring the worst up to the best. While it's easier to tone some down and take some a bit up.

The only balance point where you have to bring another mech up to the better one is when geometry applies, because geometry is lore design based on Battletech. And this is what you can not realyl change unless you want negative structure quirks.

Edited by Lily from animove, 14 September 2015 - 07:03 AM.

[Volkodav]

ОК / after restart CW : SJ, GB and Wolf - got in hell) - where more mercs - win )

CW and balance ?

Edited by Volkodav, 14 September 2015 - 07:35 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 07:00 AM, said:

wrong the base line is where the average is, because only this will make you allow medicore changes and keep things in line, otherwise you have to do massive stuff to bring the worst up to the best. While it's easier to tone some down and take some a bit up.

You could do that when balancing mechs vs mechs, but what I'm talking about is balancing Clan tech vs IS tech. Then you need to look at (ok, maybe the "best" is the wrong word) the non-handicapped Omni-mechs vs corresponding non-handicapped IS variants, at the same tonnage.

On the clan side as it looks now there are only a few chassi that suffer only neglible drawbacks imo: SCR, EBJ and ACH. Even the TBR has slightly too big engine to be perfect, HBR has no endo/ff, DWF has a bit too small engine. For SCR and EBJ there are good comparative IS mechs in the SHD and the JM6, but for ACH the SDR is a poor comparison because hardpoint imbalance.

If you try to balance tech based on handicapped mechs you'll immediately run into difficulties to estimate how much of a drawback comes from the handicap and how much comes from tech imbalance.

Another way is to compare Clan battlemechs to IS battlemechs when they are available, that will be the ultimate test to see if we have tech balance or not. It's not looking good where I stand right now....

Edit:

That's a lot of words, my main point is that if SCRs and SHDs, as well as EBJs and JM6s, are on even footing without any quirks, then we have tech balance.

Edited by Duke Nedo, 14 September 2015 - 08:05 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Duke Nedo, on 14 September 2015 - 08:00 AM, said:

That's a lot of words, my main point is that if SCRs and SHDs, as well as EBJs and JM6s, are on even footing without any quirks, then we have tech balance.

No lol, because the IFR will not be in bakcne due to the tehcbalance totally scrapping it in comparison. all you then generated is a mech that si either dead forrever, or needing MASSIVE overquirks to ever come into a balance.

Grasshopper meetign the summoner is where I consider the better balance. And then TBR needs to take a step back, while those behind have to be brought a step forward.

Edited by Lily from animove, 14 September 2015 - 08:28 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

Then you're not talking about tech balance, but mech balance.

[Koniving]

Pjwned, on 11 September 2015 - 09:34 PM, said:

Concerned that an extra penalty will affect your favorite mediocre/bad clan mech that gets shafted in 1 way or another? Well, as it so happens, this re-balance can easily address that by compensating the mech with some extra quirks,

Power Creep.

In the mean time: The simplest yet lore-friendly fix is to activate engine damage.
Engine: 15 health.
Standard engine, only crit damaged if the CT is exposed.
XL engine (regardless) can be damaged through ST exposure.
3 crits = destruction. Assume: 1 crit TT = 5 HP.

Max damage potential:
STD engine:
|ST|CT|ST|
|0|15|0|
As we know, standard engines do not inhabit the side torsos. Only the CT can take damage.

IS XL engine:
|15|15|15|
You can be destroyed with an accumulated total of 15 damage regardless of which torso or torsos it's done to.

Clan XL engine:
|10|15|10|
As we know, there are only 2 slots in each side torso. This means the Clan XL can lose a side torso and keep functioning, but "5" damage to either CT or ST engine slots...and boom.

Currently, crit damage for IS weapons is massive and pinpoint. AC/20, blam 1 crit 20 damage. CAC/20 however would be "bam bam bam bam." Crit check? Fail. Crit check? Yes, 5 damage. Crit check, fail. Crit check, fail.

This already puts quite an advantage to IS weaponry over Clan weaponry in terms of engine destruction capabilities.

You could even take this a step further, say through armor criticals? Or engine health differentials?
Just a random thought.

[Lily from animove]

Duke Nedo, on 14 September 2015 - 08:17 AM, said:

Then you're not talking about tech balance, but mech balance.

there needs to be no tech balance, But I start to not mind it at all, try to get your so called "mech" balance to figure out it will not lead anywhere, the tech itself has totally extremely different effects on some mechs, balancing tech will debalance mechs further.
But I guess I don't have a chance to make the majority of IS plyers finally udnerstand why their ML are better in a lot cases than CERML. because they simply lakc the undertsanding of "heat efficiency"

[Duke Nedo]

Lily from animove, on 14 September 2015 - 08:31 AM, said:

there needs to be no tech balance, But I start to not mind it at all, try to get your so called "mech" balance to figure out it will not lead anywhere, the tech itself has totally extremely different effects on some mechs, balancing tech will debalance mechs further.
But I guess I don't have a chance to make the majority of IS plyers finally udnerstand why their ML are better in a lot cases than CERML. because they simply lakc the undertsanding of "heat efficiency"

Techs don't need to be equal, but they need to be reasonably at parity if we are to avoid super-quirked IS mechs.

For me the big elephant that breaks down faction balance is the clan XL ST survivability. It alone saves like 5-10+ tons (!) of podspace, it's a huge factor. Mitigate all that by quirks and they'll be big or insufficient...

As for weapons I also have some favorites on both sides. There is some asymmetric balance in play so it's not that bad... but IS are behind on lasers as in efficiency per ton. cERML is a weapon I personally don't perform well with though it is extremely powerful per ton, but all clan pulse lasers are more than awesome for the tonnage. 4 cMPLs at 8 tons perform very similarly to 3 LPLs at 21 tons... ...and even so I love IS LPLs and MPLs, so it's definitely workable as it is with a few minor tweaks, given that IS mechs can recover some of all these lost tons to cXL, cDHS, cGauss, etc.

[Andi Nagasia]

i think IS-ML vs C-ER-ML are pretty well Balanced,
(1Damage = 0.17Duration)(1Heat = 68m Range)
Table,........Weapon,...Damage,...Duration,...Heat,... Range,...
Current,... IS-ML.............5,.............0.90,........4,.........270m,...
Current,... C-ER-ML,.......7,.............1.15,........6,.........405m,...
Balanced, IS-ML,............5,.............0.85,........4,.........272m,...
Balanced, C-ER-ML,.......7,.............1.19,........6,.........408m,...
(IS= Duration -0.05 Range +2)(Clan= Duration +0.04 Range +3)
Assuming the Same Formula is used for IS-ER-ML then
New,......... IS-ER-ML,......5,.............0.85,........6,.........408m,...

[Pjwned]

Koniving, on 14 September 2015 - 08:27 AM, said:

Power Creep.

I don't think a solution like that is power creep, but let's just say it is for the sake of argument.

Is that more power creep than it is now to leave cXL engines with barely any penalty for losing 20% of it? My response is "absolutely not," but yours might be different.

Quote

In the mean time: The simplest yet lore-friendly fix is to activate engine damage.
Engine: 15 health.
Standard engine, only crit damaged if the CT is exposed.
XL engine (regardless) can be damaged through ST exposure.
3 crits = destruction. Assume: 1 crit TT = 5 HP.

Max damage potential:
STD engine:
|ST|CT|ST|
|0|15|0|
As we know, standard engines do not inhabit the side torsos. Only the CT can take damage.

IS XL engine:
|15|15|15|
You can be destroyed with an accumulated total of 15 damage regardless of which torso or torsos it's done to.

Clan XL engine:
|10|15|10|
As we know, there are only 2 slots in each side torso. This means the Clan XL can lose a side torso and keep functioning, but "5" damage to either CT or ST engine slots...and boom.

I fail to see how that's more simple, and additionally that adds engine criticals as a cause of death on top of torso component destruction, rather than solely torso component destruction (excluding the legs and head) and to be honest that might do more harm than good at this point.

Quote

Currently, crit damage for IS weapons is massive and pinpoint. AC/20, blam 1 crit 20 damage. CAC/20 however would be "bam bam bam bam." Crit check? Fail. Crit check? Yes, 5 damage. Crit check, fail. Crit check, fail.

This already puts quite an advantage to IS weaponry over Clan weaponry in terms of engine destruction capabilities.

You could even take this a step further, say through armor criticals? Or engine health differentials?
Just a random thought.

The crit system in this game is HORRIFYINGLY bad, to the point that weapons such as machine guns and LB-X cannons designed to crit out components do a much worse job at it than everything else, so I'm not really going to consider that "advantage" being worth much of anything, and aside from that the single AC20 shot could just as well not crit at all.

Edited by Pjwned, 14 September 2015 - 04:06 PM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

BananaBlaster, on 13 September 2015 - 05:06 AM, said:

Sounds good to me, but how would you differentiate clan and IS then? I mean, they're NOT supposed to be exactly the same, right? Why would all weapons and equipment behave differently between clan and IS but not engines?
(My personal opinion on the matter is that I never really had a problem with cXL engine not exploding your face off when a ST is destroyed. Maybe the new quirk design thingy would change that, but for now, I don't feel like it needs change)

It strike me that the main reason that Clan and IS XL engine are different to begin with is the arbitrary idea that Clan 'Mechs are supposed to be VASTLY superior to IS 'Mechs.That works in a TT game where factors such as the expense/availability of parts for fielding a 'Mech can come into play.In MWO, there are no such logistical restrictions. And, just to be clear, I AM NOT suggesting in any way, shape or form that there should be!!!Thus, such arbitrary distinction have no value or place in MWO.Also, the fact that Clan engines take up less critical slots is a notable difference.@Duke Nedo and Andi NagasiaDuke, I like your crit-by-crit solution (as posted by Andi). It's basically what I was suggesting!

[jay35]

Clan XL engines are fine. What we need is a buff to IS engines. We do not need any more nerfs, since nerfs to things like engines and maneuverability just further reduce TTK, meaning mechs die faster) which is counterproductive. See this discussion for more information: https://www.reddit.c...is_xls_already/

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Wow, this topic has taken a definite tangent.
I'll add my voice to this, as well.
"Equal" does not need to be "same".  I mean that tech lines can behave differently.
But, balance starts by creating rules of logic by which the game will operate that cannot be altered across chassis or tech.
Take any weapon and consider the factors that make what it is: weight, damage over time, heat, speed (projectile speed), cool-down/recycle, ammo per ton.
Perhaps there are other factors, as well.  My example is just a logical exercise, not an actual example.
To balance these aspects we might say 1:1:1:1:1:1 and imagine these as percentage values.  Then consider that a weapon may cause more damage: damage rating moves from 1 -> 1.1.  To maintain balance within the weapon something else also must change, proportionately.  Perhaps heat 1 -> .95 and recycle 1 -> .95.  Thus, you still have perfect balance WITHIN the weapon.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

jay35, on 16 September 2015 - 11:03 PM, said:

Clan XL engines are fine. What we need is a buff to IS engines. We do not need any more nerfs, since nerfs to things like engines and maneuverability just further reduce TTK, meaning mechs die faster) which is counterproductive. See this discussion for more information: https://www.reddit.c...is_xls_already/

I didn't rightly suggest a nerf to Clans. I did suggest a logical behavior across techlines resulting in a net buff to IS. If you want things not to die so quickly (which is a good idea, I think) simply make things tougher. But a global change like that will have little effect on balance.

[DivineEvil]

If you're concerned with tech difference, then do not limit your perspective to XL engines. Clan mechs has better tech overall, which means, that Clan mechs need a general penalty (such as smaller base heat capacity), or IS mechs need a general improvements (such as double-again internal structure).
1.) See the problem.
2.) Evaluate a scale of the problem.
3.) Determine the most sensible source of the problem.
4.) Research methods to fix the problem with equivalent scale solution.
5.) Choose the one solution, which is the closest fix for least effort.

Edited by DivineEvil, 17 September 2015 - 12:33 AM.