31 replies to this topic

[Morpheousz]

Honestly to me one of the biggest barriers to balance regardless of weapons, mechs, teams in queues and player skill, is how 90% of the time when someone shoots their weapons, they shoot with every single weapon at the same time (Alpha), and all those weapons converge on the same pinpoint spot on a mech (cough cough laservomit in all forms). This is how you can come around a corner, and immediately lose a side torso in one shot from that Banshee with x # LPLs, etc..

I really don't think the spirit of mechwarrior is for all mechs to be running around Alpha-ing every single time they fire. Alpha was meant as a last resort or if you felt like you could finish off a mech, at the cost of not being able to fire for a long time because of heat (or being shut down, taking damage because of the excess heat).

One way to address this has already been tried, Ghost Heat. I think most people agree this is probably not the best way and confusing to people who are not aware of it (new players).

So what are some other methods to combat Alpha?

• Reduce everyone's heat cap + increase heat dissipation (fire less at the same time but heat goes down more quickly)? This i've seen suggested before.
  
• Increase weapon cool down the more you fire at the same time (not ghost heat, just the cool down cycle)? Possible this would be as confusing as ghost heat to new players
  
• Change weapon convergence, i've seen a topic recently about reviving convergence mechanics in some way, such as only allowing pinpoint convergence if you actually have a lock on a target, otherwise convergence is some sort of default, like your weapon max range, etc..

What are some other ideas on how to tackle this?

[DivineEvil]

Reducing heat-cap, making all DHS working at 2.0 efficiency and making SHS working at 1.4 efficiency really should be enough. 50-60 heat capacity is just way too much, and a heatsink by itself doesn't feel that impactful. These are the only issues regarding alpha-strike meta by itself. As long as laser-vomit will cease to be a viable build, forcing people to use mixed weapon combinations, everything will be just fine. If TTK will still be to low, then Inner Sphere mechs might need another round of internal structure doubling, equating it to the mech' maximum armor.

I have a more descriptive thoughts on that in my topic nearby, if you're interested.

Edited by DivineEvil, 15 September 2015 - 08:44 AM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Those three are what I feel should be tried first. Adjusting Dissipation, Capacity and tying Infotech Targeting to convergence show the most promise in reducing alphas in a sensible manner.

And the devs do having existing code that can limit alphas, if applied to more combos (being the code that limits Gauss to two at a time), so it is plausible to instead of increasing cooldowns that there simply is a limit to mechs being able to power all of the weapons at once to even be able to alpha all of them without some further trade-offs.

Then there is still the possibility to address weapon values directly too.

That way players can still build whatever they want, but high alpha weapon combos would see practical limits out on the battlefield.

[SpiralFace]

I've talked about this before,

And I fully agree with the sentiment.

The biggest part of the clan / IS balance is the clan's ability to boat ridiculous alpha's that the IS simply cannot compete with.

Dires can throw around 60-70 point alpha's fairly easily, and consistently do it time and time again. I would love to at the very least see this looked at so SOMETHING can be done about the high alpha chasing.

[DivineEvil]

SpiralFace, on 15 September 2015 - 09:58 AM, said:

I've talked about this before,

And I fully agree with the sentiment.

The biggest part of the clan / IS balance is the clan's ability to boat ridiculous alpha's that the IS simply cannot compete with.

Dires can throw around 60-70 point alpha's fairly easily, and consistently do it time and time again. I would love to at the very least see this looked at so SOMETHING can be done about the high alpha chasing.

I don't really see Dire Wolves as big offenders, and I dont think heat changes will affect them much. The main problem is lazzzzors, which are heavily abused by the lack of any skill involved.

Edited by DivineEvil, 15 September 2015 - 10:07 AM.

[SpiralFace]

Lasers alone aren't the issue.

Its them paired with Forward pin point damage of things like Gauss shots that make them so deadly on the clan side.

Its why you see Gauss ERML be the beast that it is.

[Morpheousz]

SpiralFace, on 15 September 2015 - 09:58 AM, said:

I've talked about this before,

And I fully agree with the sentiment.

The biggest part of the clan / IS balance is the clan's ability to boat ridiculous alpha's that the IS simply cannot compete with.

Dires can throw around 60-70 point alpha's fairly easily, and consistently do it time and time again. I would love to at the very least see this looked at so SOMETHING can be done about the high alpha chasing.

As i said, it's not a matter of mech, Clan or IS, ether side can alpha any number of weapons with little drawback. Indeed some IS mechs have (in the production server) quirks specifically designed so they CAN alpha a boat load of lasers, as a way to "balance" them with clan mechs. I feel this is the wrong approach. All other balance decisions can be made after we find a way to eliminate the current meta of "Alpha", regardless of weapon or mech.

[DivineEvil]

SpiralFace, on 15 September 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

Lasers alone aren't the issue.

Its them paired with Forward pin point damage of things like Gauss shots that make them so deadly on the clan side.

Its why you see Gauss ERML be the beast that it is.

Why you see them being beast, is because lasers, not because Gauss. It's because they can have those Gauss and being able to protect themselves in close combat with lasers continuously. Gauss alone is easy to crit or just outdamage the wielder. Heat change wouldn't affect them whatsoever.

The core of the problem is lasers, lasers and lasers alone.

Edited by DivineEvil, 15 September 2015 - 10:55 AM.

[Lily from animove]

SpiralFace, on 15 September 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

Lasers alone aren't the issue.

Its them paired with Forward pin point damage of things like Gauss shots that make them so deadly on the clan side.

Its why you see Gauss ERML be the beast that it is.

too much heat allowing dual gauss + too many cerml's being shot rather simulataneaus.
MW3 was way better deigned in heat and what and how many you were allowed to fire. and if you exceeded it, you cold go boom rather quick.

DivineEvil, on 15 September 2015 - 10:54 AM, said:

Why you see them being beast, is because lasers, not because Gauss. It's because they can have those Gauss and being able to protect themselves in close combat with lasers continuously. Gauss alone is easy to crit or just outdamage the wielder. Heat change wouldn't affect them whatsoever.

The core of the problem is lasers, lasers and lasers alone.

The issue is not the laz0rs, its the artificially oversized heattreshold allowing tho shoot all these lasers too often in a row. If the heattreshold would eb reduces mechs like a dwf could wield different sozed lasers and shoot the right ones neede d for the right range. But now they just fire all the weap0nz vuz they can. Try half the mainstream meta lodouts we have now in MW3 and see how far that woudl work.

[FupDup]

Lily from animove, on 15 September 2015 - 01:04 PM, said:

Try half the mainstream meta lodouts we have now in MW3 and see how far that woudl work.

Mechwarrior 3 has an extremely permissive heat system for the most part. At least 90% of our MWO builds would have massively higher heat efficiency in MW3 than they have in MWO.

For example, I can alpha strike 4 ERPPCs in MW3 (30-31 DHS equipped) and only shut down for less than half a second, and by the time I've powered back up my heat bar has already reached zero again. I can keep firing that quad-ERPPC alpha over and over and over again. In MWO, even without Ghost Heat, 4 ERPPCs is impossible to sustain. Even 2 ERPPCs can't be sustained by huge volumes of heatsinks here.

One of my other favorite builds was a 2 LPL + 4 ERLL Annihilator, which also had pretty good sustainability there. In MWO, it would suck bawls.

Now, I will grant you that some really crazy builds like the stock Supernova would literally instagib themselves with an alpha, but with volley fire they could keep shooting for longer than MWO would ever let them.

[Wibbledtodeath]

I don't mind a certain level of "Alpha all my weapons" play, and although PGI seem likely to remove it- I never did mind high quirks on mechs that are otherwise underpowered (gave them flavour- rarely did it make them OP compared to those with just good hardpoints).

However, to answer the OP's question (I have mentioned these elsewhere)

1) Simple/using the Rebalance quirk pass: Quirk heat/&or duration penalties for mechs with lots of laser hardpoints and tonnage for additional heatsinks (not as progressive as Ghost heat- but much more transparent/new player friendly) & apply fewer durability/mobility/sensor quirks (or add neg quirks) to achieve "balance" and role warfare. Has the primary advantage of being the current PTS method

2)More robust/more programming required (potentially): Have energy hard points broken into small, large, and undifferentiated. Placing large weapons (PPC, LLas) in small hard point generates a substantial heat penalty. Placing smaller weapons (Mlas, Slas etc) into large Energy hardpoints reduces ROF &/or has heat penalty. Undifferentiated E hardpoints can take any energy weapon with no modification to their performance. Now adjust the energy hardpoints in a Chassis accordingly.
Ghost heat really need not apply to Missile and Ballistics really anyway (with possible exceptions of the AC20- which could just be balanced with some higher heat gen).

I like this approach since it is transparent/intuitive, actually allows choice in mech design, is likely to be fun to build around, and still allows adjustment of individual mech's potential maximum fire-power. Generally most (not all) small and medium mechs would have undifferentiated energy hardpoints- more restrictive energy hardpoints would be used to rein in potentially problematic boating.

Edited by Wibbledtodeath, 15 September 2015 - 06:58 PM.

[DivineEvil]

Lily from animove, on 15 September 2015 - 01:04 PM, said:

The issue is not the laz0rs, its the artificially oversized heattreshold allowing tho shoot all these lasers too often in a row. If the heattreshold would eb reduces mechs like a dwf could wield different sozed lasers and shoot the right ones neede d for the right range. But now they just fire all the weap0nz vuz they can. Try half the mainstream meta lodouts we have now in MW3 and see how far that woudl work.

To avoid further confusion, that's exactly what I meant by "lasers are the problem". No other type of weapons can be abused with present heat capacity as heavily as lasers. They have the lowest mass and size, average range and damage output, and require nothing aside from clicking and holding to do their job. Heat scale is the only thing that is supposed to keep them on-par with all other weapon systems, and it's off by a large margin. If you'd check my previous posts, you'd see that the reduction of HeatCap is the thing, that I've originally argued for.

[Goombah]

The lasers aren't the problem. If lasers were a problem then the ice ferret would be overpowered.

The problem is hardpoints disparity . Timbers have the hardpoints to take good builds, cicadas, commandos, adders, do not not have had points for good builds.

If you nerf all the lasers, timbers and crows still have better hardpoints. Nothing changes except they rely on the gauss more frequently. It still only takes 1 -3 alphas.

If you nerf heat cap, mechs with better hardpoints are still better. The only thing that happens is balistics are more desirable. Gauss is completely unchanged. And brawler builds become even worse than they are currently. brawlers are already marginal enough as it is.

Twin gauss builds completely unaffected .

If you want it to stop, you have to physically prevent people from doing it entirely.
Currently you can only fire two gauss at a time. If they imposed the same restriction across all weapon types , only being able to fire 2 of any weapon at a time, and 1 gauss at a time would have the desired affect of reducing alphas and raising ttk.

Unfortunately even that would simply give rise to 4 llas builds fired in groups of 2
And lights with 6 energy would be impossible to play. It would just shift the meta without addressing the issues. Hardpoints and locations.

They could also restrict you to only being able to fire the weapons on one arm at a time, or the torso guns, reducing ttk and lowering alphas. But that obviously only even affects some mechs. Wolverine completely ignores that rule.


All mechs need hardpoints normalization. Every mech needs to be on the level of the firestarter, blackjack, timber, banshee, dire, storm crow or balance isn't going to happen.
Once every mech has a similar alpha potential, all they have to do is universally buff armor until everything feels good.

I'm NOT a fan of the current 1 - 2 alpha killing virtual anything on the battlefield meta.

Either that or they could let us bring x tonnage of mechs to every battle, not just in cw. That way even when you get taken out you could just respawn as opposed to spending 15 minutes in the queue.

Fiddling with spreadsheets isn't going to fix anything. Fundamental changes have to occur, including but not limited to: gauss generating heat, and not exploding on critical because no one cares anyway, mechs rescaled down , more better hardpoints, lrms that work and are fun to use, srms that work, close range weapons worth using, better cover on maps, more armor on virtualy everything, targets to shoot at other than mechs/players, higher velocities on many weapons, so they can actualy be useful (ppc, ac10, ac20, srms)

Last but not least, smaller targets, these robots are ******* enormous. And armor, armor on pretty much eveything. Either every gun in the game needs a damage nerf, or everything needs an armor buff. It's one or the other.

[SirSlaughter]

Laservomit? MW4 reflective armor? (as well as other armor types)

If there is the possibilty that your damage would be reduced by 30-50% (let's say) by a specific weapon system then weapon carried should become more varied across the board

Edited by SirSlaughter, 18 September 2015 - 11:36 PM.

[WildeKarde]

If you limited an alpha by engine size then it reduces all weapons, divide engine rating by 10 and that is the most you can alpha in a single volley. Dire wolf has 30 max alpha then, atlas has 30 max alpha, timber wolf 37.5 (or 38) - means highest alpha would be 40 for any mech. You remove option for a 4 gauss dire wolf or 6 LLaser stalker being able to use them all in a single shot.

You can give some mechs quirks for their stock builds - king crab could have quirk to allow it to fire both AC20's or masakari can alpha 4 PPC's, if they can take the heat.

[FupDup]

Jake Hendricks, on 20 September 2015 - 11:20 AM, said:

If you limited an alpha by engine size then it reduces all weapons, divide engine rating by 10 and that is the most you can alpha in a single volley. Dire wolf has 30 max alpha then, atlas has 30 max alpha, timber wolf 37.5 (or 38) - means highest alpha would be 40 for any mech. You remove option for a 4 gauss dire wolf or 6 LLaser stalker being able to use them all in a single shot.

You can give some mechs quirks for their stock builds - king crab could have quirk to allow it to fire both AC20's or masakari can alpha 4 PPC's, if they can take the heat.

Bad idea because it further promotes the sub-meta of cramming in huge XL engines (particularly huge Clan XL). Bigger engines already provide more than enough benefit.

[WildeKarde]

FupDup, on 20 September 2015 - 06:42 PM, said:

Bad idea because it further promotes the sub-meta of cramming in huge XL engines (particularly huge Clan XL). Bigger engines already provide more than enough benefit.

So a mech using more tonnage on a bigger engine to get a higher alpha will then have less tonnage for the weapons.
Clan mechs currently don't have any option to get a bigger engine so that leave (currently) only IS mechs having that option. An XL 400 weighs 33.5 tons - it's a fair chunk of your tonnage to use up.

This limits other mechs with less tonnage to play about with - doesn't stop carry 100 points of damage from weapons but merely stops them all being a single trigger pull

[Nightmare1]

Personally, I think that Alphas are okay. They are hot, which limits their effective use, forcing pilots that like to Alpha to fight guerrilla style instead of just standing out in the open and striking down foes. Alpha Strikers are tough opponents, but they don't like to be crowded because they run too hot. The issue isn't that they can Alpha Strike so much that pilots simply don't make any effort to counter such pilots.

Personally, the only time Alpha Strikes pose a problem for me is when I'm stupid and charge around a corner. If you play smart, then you won't ever have to fear Alphas.

[Jet Black Dog]

The alpha to one perfectly-converged target point - ( "covergence point" )
( with, ironically, the exception of some arms - the one weapon mount that COULD converge as such )
is the heart of the TTK and meta problems...

It's not only bad for game play and game balance, it's physically impossible:
https://en.wikipedia...n_harmonisation

[Bigbacon]

the key really is balancing the heat so that you either laser vomit yourself to death or realize you need to balance your weapon loadout so you can keep fighting while removing heat.

I mean we see A LOT of high laser alpha builds where you can alpha smash a few times before having to retreat to cool down.

Idea should be risk vs reward and there are many ways the could over come this.

people have been asking for a heat re-balance for ages same thing with convergence.