4 replies to this topic

[Runs With Scissors]

Adding complicated mechanics instead of addressing the underlying problem of weapon balance is only going to make things harder. They never really balanced the IS weapons before the Clans came along, then they slapped quirks on IS mechs to try to balance everything. I have no objection to the quirks in general but has anyone in PGI heard of the KISS principle? Just looking at the clan quirks (with quirks on every friggen omnipod) is dizzying. and the sensor quirks make it worse

The main problem with weapon balance is that PGI didn't change the damage values (or the heat) from TT but made the weapons fire much faster (for the AC2 its almost 20x faster, and it still sux) This has led to a very short TTK. It makes MWO feel less like a mech simulator when an assault mech is afraid to cross 20 meters.

My suggestion is to go the MechCommander route. In the old MechCommander most of the weapons adhered to TT values, but weapons that fired faster had their damage adjusted accordingly. I would use this as a baseline to balancing the weapons. Weapons weren't perfectly balanced in TT so adjustments will need to be made

Gauss: the problems with balancing gauss are its long range, effectiveness at any range and low heat compared to autocannons. Have gauss do its full damage but have a 10 sec cooldown. this makes it a dangerous sniper weapon and great for long range poking but less useful in a brawl. (and get rid of the gauss charge)

Autocannons should be rapid fire weapons, burst fire like the clan ACs. In general High dps and low heat are balanced by the ACs weight, ammo and face time needed to do damage. AC2s should be low damage, high range weapons to make them useful for suppression fire. AC20s will be brawling monsters with higher dps and heat.

PPCs are the "main gun" of alot of mechs and should do decent damage. give it a 7sec cooldown so it has good front loaded damage, but doesn't sync perfectly with a gauss

Lasers: they're the jack of all trades weapon that almost every mech has. the current cooldowns seem fine, just adjust the damage to match.

SRMs currently suffer due to lack of pinpoint convergence, low effective range and ammo. as they are currently implemented (deadfire style) they should get a damage buff. a 5sec cooldown should make it more of a striker weapon for lights and meds.

LRMs and ECM really need to get reworked. the way they are both implemented right now ECM is way too powerful, but take away the cloaking effect and LRMs are OP. The easiest fix I see would be to take away the cloaking effect of ECM and make it counter NARC, BAP and ART (like its supposed to!) but take away the indirect fire from LRMs unless a target is TAGed or NARCed.

Making weapons like this gives them each a role. The advantages and disadvantages of each weapon also encourage mixing weapons, while not eliminating boating.

Also: ammo based weapons need more ammo! in TT a single ton of ammo was plenty, even overkill for aot of weapons but in MWO u need triple ammo loads just to get through a pug game, let alone CW. this is killing a lot of mechs and is one of the 3 biggest reasons stock mechs are deathtraps. (the other 2 being SHS and stock armor values)

This is basically ripped off from TT but should serve as a standard for ammo (for a pug game)

SRM2: quarter ton

SRM4, LRM5: half ton

AC2, AC5, LRM10, SRM6: 1 ton

AC10, LRM15 : 1.5 tons

AC20, LRM20, Gauss: 2 tons

The way weapons are currently in the game you would want to double the current ammo per ton of every weapon . Better players and CW players will obviously want to carry more ammo.

After the weapons are balanced (reasonably so anyway, it will never be perfect) you can add weapon and armor buffs to mechs that need it.

And remember theres a patch every 2 weeks! if a mech or weapon seems underperforming give it a buff (or a nerf as the case may be) and see how it goes. if in 2 weeks its seems good, keep it. if its bad or just too much you can reduce or eliminate it in the next patch. 2 weeks would give you good feedback and wth the turnaround time pyers wouldn't have to suffer very long if its a bad buff or nerf. What we have now is months and years go by with balance issues, then one really big balance pass and then were stuck with it for more months or years until its addressed (if then)

Whatever happens make balance an ongoing process

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Something that I've been looking at is what would MWO's values look like if Damage and Heat were restored to 1x (basically their damage over 10 seconds), while retaining current base cooldowns and durations that we are familiar with in MWO?

So here are two tables with IS and Clan Weapons where they deal their originally listed damage over 10 seconds with MWO cool downs and beam duration. Missiles can stay at 2 damage for SRMs, and 1 damage for LRMs, if the salvos are broken up in some manner.

Tables in spoiler

Spoiler

If something along these lines could be done, (and it wouldn't require using these values) since this is just an example, it should help increase TTK and hopefully tackle overly high alpha builds in the process.

So from this kind of starting point, I'd consider making design choices to boost some weaker options, such as having the smallest point of damage be 1.00 on most projectiles and Missiles, so like with the AC/2s give them a longer cooldown with a more damaging projectile and be more of a long range sniper compared to the rest of the Autocannons for example.

Also, I figured that with such reduced values, being able to return to 1x armor is a possibility and with the reduced HPS, work fine with how Dissipation has been translated into MWO. And then we might still need to see some armor and structure quirks according to mech geometry though and Heat Capacity will need to be adjusted so that each level of heat is 0.4 each.

So with Fast Fire, and remaining Cooldown quirks, and Modules would then increase HPS on weapons and out pace Heat Dissipation, registering waste heat against the Heat Table. Details of what I mean about why 0.4 per unit of Capacity works is due to translating the Pen and Paper Values over to 10 seconds real-time at 100% or 1x values.

So what we have for Current Heat Capacity is actually boosted over 250% or 2.5x plus an extra 16 due to the gifted 30 we get in MWO that is added to what HS provide, compared to the first shutdown event at 14 excess heat in the original.

Spoiler

Staying with the 10 second framework and MWO's cooldowns, then a single PPC would be 4 Dam, 4 Heat on a 4 second cooldown as shown in the table above.

So 28 SHS would be plenty for three PPCs with those values:

Firing three PPCs generate 12 heat every four seconds.
The HPS of three PPCs would be 3.00

At 0.1 each, 28 SHS can provide 2.80 Dissipation.
Capacity would be 0.4 for each SHS, with 28 giving 11.2 and each level of Original Heat Points also being 0.4 so 16.8 to the first shutdown, as can be seen in the table below.

---

Then say keeping the idea of this sort of adjustment, here is one example of what I meant earlier about making design choices with weapons. Where having Class 2 Ballistics deal 2 damage per bullet with a longer cooldown (which could also see a raise in their DPS and HPS a tad too) so that they could be a viable sniper style weapons comparable to Gauss Rifles, (since Autocannons would still need to see a few boosts here and there due to their weight and crit requirements) we'd then be able to see values like this:

2.0 Dam
0.4 Heat,
5.00 cooldown,
0.40 DPS,
0.09 HPS

Having a weapon like this against 1x armor would really aid lighter mechs that previously would have been a liability bring an AC/2 or two on a build, since they've ended up as DPS weapons in MWO with stats boosted ~1390% from the original. And if boated would be 12 damage every ~5.00 seconds on a King Crab or even Jager, where a dual Gauss build would still be in the range of ~14 damage in comparison. And three PPCs would be 12 damage every 4 seconds or so.

So the next thing could be looking at how hardpoints are applied and distributed after readjusting weapons in such a manner for any under performing variants, aside from just boosting them with quirks.

Edited by Praetor Knight, 12 September 2015 - 08:43 PM.

[Runs With Scissors]

well the idea isn't to make 2 AC2 deal comparable damage to a gauss per se but make it so each weapon has a role that players will use in game. just matching damage effectiveness is what made the gauss the best ballistic in the game and got it nerfed

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Runs With Scissors, on 12 September 2015 - 09:26 PM, said:

well the idea isn't to make 2 AC2 deal comparable damage to a gauss per se but make it so each weapon has a role that players will use in game. just matching damage effectiveness is what made the gauss the best ballistic in the game and got it nerfed

I meant more in a comparable role to how Gauss is used as a Sniper style weapon.

So both would have a bit longer base cooldowns (in the 4 to 6 second range), that could then be quirked as needed to help mechs that would have mounted them. One example is the tonnage strapped Myst Lynx variant that even carries a single UAC/2, and there are a few more like that, that carry a single ballistic that is often best to be replaced with the current balance setup.

[Runs With Scissors]

the PPC has really been the lightweight sniper weapon for lights and meds, in the place of gauss. that could be more what ur looking for. but if ur thinking lightweight ballistics for light mechs, to make better use of the ballistic hardpoints, we would probably have to wait for the Light Autocannon series