240 replies to this topic

[Johnny Z]

Khobai, on 19 September 2015 - 04:29 PM, said:

Which completely proves my whole point.

The Orion has more free tonnage than the Timberwolf before any weapons are added.

Its not until after weapons are added that the Timberwolf comes out ahead.

The overpowered clan weapons are where clan mechs are getting their extra tonnage from. It isnt coming from the CXL. If anything the CXL is forcing clan mechs to spend more tonnage than they want to on an inefficiently rated engine thats much faster than they need.

Its the clan weapons that need balancing the most. Not the engines.



Um the Arctic Cheetah has ECM too. It can also support larger mechs. And its better than the Kitfox in pretty much every regard.

Im sorry but the Kitfox is just bad. Its a bad light thats poorly scaled and slow. Its side torsos are absurdly easy to pinpoint and it only takes one alphastrike to blow out its side torso. Its a 30 ton mech it should be the same size as a spider not the size of a 55 ton mech. And it doesnt necessarily have to be that fast, but it certainly shouldnt lose the speed it does have from a side torso blowout. Mechs like the kitfox shouldnt have to suffer because other mechs like the arctic cheetah are too good.

Translation: Dont nerf Omni mechs because Omni mechs are to fast with weapons that are to good.

Im kidding.

Edited by Johnny Z, 19 September 2015 - 05:02 PM.

[Fleeb the Mad]

Khobai, on 19 September 2015 - 04:29 PM, said:

Which completely proves my whole point.

The Orion has more free tonnage than the Timberwolf before any weapons are added.

Its not until after weapons are added that the Timberwolf comes out ahead.

The overpowered clan weapons are where clan mechs are getting their extra tonnage from. It isnt coming from the CXL. If anything the CXL is forcing clan mechs to spend more tonnage than they want to on an inefficiently rated engine thats much faster than they need.

Unfortunately this position is very narrow in its considerations. Clan XL engines are the single most powerful technology advantage and it has no balancing factor at all in MWO.

In this Timber Wolf vs Orion analogy, you must consider that many Clan mechs have oversized engines that are inefficient. If it had the same engine as the Orion, that would be carrying 11 tons more payload, where all of its armaments are more compact and also lighter. The only reason it hasn't come to a head yet is because many of the Clan mechs that make best use of XL engines, like the Nova Cat, aren't here.

You will see how obvious an advantage it is on the IIC mechs, though.

The Timber Wolf's XL375 weighs 1.5 tons more than the Orion's 300 STD. The difference is completely offset by the Clan ability to carry endo steel as well as ferro fibrous for the same crit sacrifice. So on its face the Timber Wolf goes substantially faster with essentially zero sacrifices, because an Orion without both of its ST's is useless.

A better comparison would be between mechs that have similar speeds and roles, like say the Mad Dog to the Quickdraw. It's also more unfair, because the Mad Dog doesn't have an inefficiently large engine. The difference there is a 25 ton engine vs a 15.5 ton engine. That's a huge difference in payload on a 60-ton chassis, not considering that Clan weapons are also lighter. IS mechs in that tonnage range have must use XL engines in order to survive against larger mechs that can outgun them, and suffer for it.

TL; DR

Clan XL engines are the best thing Clan tech has and presently the worst balanced. I'm a bit insulted by the idea that speed reductions are a meaningful counter. An IS mech is dead. Going 20% slower is only an inconvenience. I'd also mention that they'd still be going faster than if they had a standard engine.

Losing a side torso in a Clan mech with an XL has to be worse than losing a side torso with a standard or there's no meaningful tradeoff. I honestly believe the only answer is actually including the extra heat generation and, in MWO terms, greatly reducing the heat cap so it is more difficult to continue fighting. A clan mech with a side torso gone should have its fighting effectiveness crippled. There is no other way to balance it.

[Havyek]

Leave IS XL engines alone but give them more health IMO.

[Khobai]

Quote

Unfortunately this position is very narrow in its considerations. Clan XL engines are the single most powerful technology advantage and it has no balancing factor at all in MWO.

Have you not read anything I posted? The balancing factor would be giving ISXL the ability to survive a side torso destruction. Rather than nerfing CXL to the point where it makes clan mechs useless.

And most of the other balance problems would be solved by nerfing clan weapons so overpowered IS quirks are no longer needed.

[FupDup]

Havyek, on 19 September 2015 - 05:33 PM, said:

Leave IS XL engines alone but give them more health IMO.

Currently engine health doesn't really do anything. It's a placeholder.

[Khobai]

Quote

Currently engine health doesn't really do anything. It's a placeholder.

I think he meant more internal structure for the side torsos if you have an XL engine

[AEgg]

Khobai, on 19 September 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

Have you not read anything I posted? The balancing factor would be giving ISXL the ability to survive a side torso destruction. Rather than nerfing CXL to the point where it makes clan mechs useless.

And most of the other balance problems would be solved by nerfing clan weapons so overpowered IS quirks are no longer needed.

The problem with making the IS XL survive side torso loss is that it makes the STD engine useless except for a select few assaults that need the crit space. It's also an idea no one likes for the simple reason that it's the easy way out, "we don't know how to balance this so we'll just make it the same". We can do better than that.

How about instead of making the IS XL just like the clan XL, we try this:

IS XL engines provide (.25xMechTonnage)% extra heat dissipation

Seems to solve a lot of problems in my eyes. Next to no buff to IS lights (they don't need it), but it's a 25% heat dissipation buff to run an XL in an atlas. 12.5% in a hunhback or a cent, nothing to sneeze at but it's also not gamebreaking. This makes the XL engine a lot more attractive to IS mechs that usually wouldn't run it, because it not only saves tonnage for weapons but makes it easier to effectively use those weapons. It also reinforces that clan mechs run hot and IS mechs run cool. And, it doesn't break already weak clan mechs or make the IS XL obsolete.

Edit:
Heat dissipation isn't the only value that we could use here. It could alternatively be twist speed, or acceleration, or arm movement, or even weapon recharge rates. The core idea is that an IS XL engine provides some sort of buff that scales up as your mech gets heavier (and thus, scales up as the risk of running an XL increases).

Edited by AEgg, 19 September 2015 - 07:42 PM.

[Golden Vulf]

Okamiyama, on 19 September 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:

IS XL and IS STD are well balanced against each other already.

Therefore it makes a lot more sense to nerf Clan XL to IS levels than to buff the IS XL.

The Clan XL is currently too powerful to be an interesting gameplay element, since it has no real drawback.

Heatsinks can't be added or removed to any omnimech XL and in cases where a slightly faster XL might way the same, the omnimech is unable to change.

Clan mechs have more severe ghost heat penealties and their weapons are less heat efficeint to begin with.

These are all fake penalties because everyone knows how outstanding the Mist Lynx is. That clan XL really makes it invincible.

[Pjwned]

Khobai, on 19 September 2015 - 01:13 PM, said:

Thats where youre wrong. The tonnage isnt "saved" its sunk into the massively high rated CXL engines that are forced on most clan mechs.

375XL is far from the most efficient engine for a Timberwolf. Timberwolves would be far far deadlier if they could use smaller engines because they would have that much more tonnage for weapons.

That's a mech-specific issue and has little to do with cXL engines being unbalanced, and additionally you act like that high maneuverability is completely wasted when that's far from the truth; I'm also not going to shed any tears for the (arguably) slightly oversized engine in the already god tier Timber Wolf.

Quote

CXL isnt facilating clan mechs to have more tonnage. Because most clan mechs have LESS free tonnage than their IS counterparts due to being forced to use very heavy engines. Thats why most clan mechs have to spam lasers because theyre low tonnage weapons.

That is so misleading because many IS mechs are practically forced to take standard engines (while also dealing with 14-slot upgrades and 3-slot DHS) unless they want to be a glass cannon and die in less than half the time it would otherwise take.

Saying "most" clan mechs actually have less free tonnage than IS counterparts is a huge load because in most cases it's roughly equal with clans having much bigger engines for about the same survivability as IS counterparts with standard engines and that's dumb as ****.

Quote

Again the problem is not CXL but rather the fact that clan weapons weigh too little for how effective they are. Balance clan weapons better and allow ISXL survive a side torso destruction and youll see a lot of the Clan vs IS problems go away.

Clan XL is a problem because it's unbalanced and power creeping the hell out of IS XL engines to make them equally unbalanced is not the right way to do things, especially considering that IS XL is fine as it is and it's clan XL that's the problem.

Edited by Pjwned, 19 September 2015 - 09:09 PM.

[Tarogato]

I oppose this suggestion.

If Inner Sphere XL survived a side torso loss, then what's the point of having LFE?

This change would both invalidate LFE and depart too far from lore. Engines die when they lose three slots, and IS XL have three slots in each side torso - there is absolutely no way around it, and we shouldn't be making stuff up.
Personally I think XL, STD, and Clan XL are perfectly balanced. Where Clan vs IS imbalanced exists currently is in the weapon systems. The clan pulse lasers that do two more damage than they're supposed to, the cERLL that does more damage than it's supposed to, the IS medium lasers that is hotter than it's supposed to be. Change these things first, further iterate on weapons, and THEN consider playing with engine base values (but for gods sake don't change the bloody definition of IS XL engines)

Edited by Tarogato, 19 September 2015 - 09:11 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

I would like to see these changes made and tested on PTS and live.

20% speed penalty for clan mechs that lose a side torso.

20% heat dissipation penalty.

An additional idea I thought of is modifying IS CASE.

IS CASE systems will protect a side torso from damage if ammunition explodes in limb on the same side as the case.

IS CASE would prevent a full side torso loss when ammunition explodes and the XL engine. However any other items are lost.

[Pjwned]

Dirus Nigh, on 19 September 2015 - 09:14 PM, said:

I would like to see these changes made and tested on PTS and live.

20% speed penalty for clan mechs that lose a side torso.

20% heat dissipation penalty.

An additional idea I thought of is modifying IS CASE.

IS CASE systems will protect a side torso from damage if ammunition explodes in limb on the same side as the case.

IS CASE would prevent a full side torso loss when ammunition explodes and the XL engine. However any other items are lost.

That would be rather powerful for a 0.5 ton 1 slot item

CASE isn't as useful as it should be because ammo explosions are implemented terribly, there's no need to give it extra functionality like protecting the component it's stored in despite that not being how CASE functions at all.

Edited by Pjwned, 19 September 2015 - 10:42 PM.

[CaptainScumBa11s]

So when the IIC mechs come out are clanners gonna use STD engines?



We all keep talking about "the STD going away" but lets be honest here.

Edited by TheKillerWolf, 19 September 2015 - 10:46 PM.

[Duke Nedo]

50 % quirks do not break Lore, but IS XL st survivability does?

Seriously guys, tech needs to be better balanced to avoid these quirks for all is heavy/assaults and half the mediums. Save quirks for helping weak omni chassi and battlemech alike.

Engines is the place to start, then also look at omni locked endo/ferro cause that is also a pure handicap. Avoid handicapping mechs!

[IronLichRich]

Nathan Foxbane, on 18 September 2015 - 04:27 PM, said:

We just need better crits. Engine criticals should have health. You lose 3 engine criticals you die. Period.

This guy gets it.

[LordKnightFandragon]

IS get no kill XLs and Clans get 15 Dmg CERPPCs and unlocked Endo/Ferro.

Good trade?! I think so.

[Whatzituyah]

Each Engine Critical should have health rather then whats proposed in the poll. So what happens is each critical has x ammount of health thats determined by the torso structure health divided by 3 for IS but divided by 2 for Clans but same goes for Light Fusion Engines when IS gets them. So X=Y/3 X being how much health each of the engine crits have and Y being the overall Structure health thats an example for IS XL Engines. Replace that 3 with 2 is an example of Clan XLs/IS Ls Engines.

[Pjwned]

Duke Nedo, on 19 September 2015 - 10:57 PM, said:

50 % quirks do not break Lore, but IS XL st survivability does?

Seriously guys, tech needs to be better balanced to avoid these quirks for all is heavy/assaults and half the mediums. Save quirks for helping weak omni chassi and battlemech alike.

Engines is the place to start, then also look at omni locked endo/ferro cause that is also a pure handicap. Avoid handicapping mechs!

This isn't a great argument at this point because those sorts of quirks are gone with the upcoming mech re-balance.

[Duke Nedo]

Pjwned, on 19 September 2015 - 11:26 PM, said:

This isn't a great argument at this point because those sorts of quirks are gone with the upcoming mech re-balance.

No, it's very relevant because their equivalent needs to come back unless tech is balanced.

[Jonathan Paine]

Khobai: the kitfox, properly used, will still beat any IS light in a one on one. This had been thoroughly tested. I'd be happy to see IS and Clan balanced by numbers or tonnage, but since PGI had shown no inclination to do so we are left with a completely unbalanced game were Clan mechs that won the engine/endo lottery dominate every class of mech.

At a minimum we need to see either IS surviving loss of a side torso, or heavy penalties to Clan that loses a side. If clanners want to change engines, endo, ferro, crits, force them to use IS tech. Enjoy your clunky IS engine with fat dhs and endo that eats all your crits. In return I want clan weapons on my IS mechs. Hand over that silly extra light gauss rifle right now!