88 replies to this topic

[Light-Speed]

Troutmonkey, on 06 October 2015 - 05:23 PM, said:

Well considering that enemy trying to alpha strike a light in motion will have very little chance of coring it in a single shot, I think lights would be very well off under such a system. It helps that lights have a very low alpha compared to heavier mechs, so they'd be the least affected. With a CPU cap of 20 and MLAS at 5 CPU, you could fire 4x MLs with no affect to convergence whatsoever. The CPU limit for certain lights could also be adjusted to be higher if need be.

I don't believe you know what it is like to try to kill a heavy within 100 m before he finally shakes you off your back or his teammates come back, sir.

3 dudes with 60+ alphas under 300 m don't need to aim well to kill a light.

Edited by Nightingale27, 06 October 2015 - 07:50 PM.

[l33tworks]

Nightingale27, on 06 October 2015 - 05:09 PM, said:

I wonder if anyone discussing how alphas should be nerfed have considered how screwed the lights would be under said system.

Lights can't stand around chain firing everything like an Atlas. I already have enough trouble aiming my Jenner's lasers while trying to not get one-shotted. I don't need cone of fire adding to my movement and the stupid torso-affected-by-leg-movement design, nor do I want my dps any lower.

Completely wrong. Actually Assaults get screwed the most, the more and more weapon restrictions are put in. Their only advantage, lots of firepower, becomes usless when they cannot be fired at the same time. If you have to wait before firing more weapons, essentially taking more weapons than the limits allows becomes useless because you are better off just waiting for the same weapon to cooldown than investing in tonnage and space for extra weapons you cannot fire effectively. Especially now that weapon quirks exist.

We had 6 medium laser, 2 large laser, 6 small laser 2ppc, 1 ac20, etc ghost heat caps put in place. Then medium and small lasers and medium pulse and small pulse were linked. Now imagine if If medium and large lasers are ghost heat linked. Now imagineif any weapon combined that exceeds 40 damage or so is linked if fired at the same time. Essentially the direwolf now has the same firepower as a locust with a ton of other drawbacks.

So you are very wrong to say lights get screwed by any kind of alpha nerfring. Realistically, light mechs are always in the best position to be handle such damage limiting factors because they have the lowest alpha potential anyway just by design. For example Lights are largely unaffected by ghost heat as it stands now. Any extra fabricated restrictions hinder the bigger more higher firepower mechs. more than any other.

Edited by l33tworks, 06 October 2015 - 07:47 PM.

[Alek Ituin]

l33tworks, on 06 October 2015 - 07:06 PM, said:

Bull. Er lasers could just have a reduced beam diameter maybe just a fraction higher than now. Problem solved.

I dont think you understand what this will do. You will still be able to focus down a mech at range, you just wont be able to pinpoint focus components with a a bunch of lasers. Isn't that the main problem these days?

The problem is bandaids upon bandaids upon bandaids upon bad game design fundamentals.

Convergence is all we need. Laser decollimation makes sense scientifically, as does ER lasers having a longer focal length and stronger laser pump, but it'd just be another non-BT mechanic bandaid.


(it should be noted that directly after I posted that last comment, I thought "yeah ER lasers could just remain normal, or have an inverted cone where they lose focus the closer you get")

Edited by Alek Ituin, 06 October 2015 - 07:55 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

Nightingale27, on 06 October 2015 - 07:40 PM, said:

I don't believe you know what it is like to try to kill a heavy within 100 m before he finally shakes you off your back or his teammates come back, sir. 3 dudes with 60+ alphas under 300 m don't need to aim well to kill a light.

Thats because hitting anywhere on a light mech with a 60point alpha with destroy it. Hit a FS9 in the Side Torso? Boom, Centre Torso? Boom. Leg? Wait 3 seconds. Boom.
If that alpha was spread across multiple components / thin air because of spread then that light would be pretty well off.

[InspectorG]

Troutmonkey, on 05 October 2015 - 09:49 PM, said:

So what do you guys think?

Not to poo poo your idea but it wouldnt fly.
High level players are proud of their aim and dont want it punished.
They would use a Macro to get around the cooldown anyhow.

Many players have presented many good ideas but PGI gives no indication of acknowledging them.

Several solutions:

Hard 30 heat cap.
Limit size of weapon groups+cooldown between groups.
Heavier mechs get agility/mobility nerfs.
More hardpoints = less structure.
'Sized' hardpoints.

Likely fix is tripling armor with an ammo buff...its happened before.

[Troutmonkey]

xXBagheeraXx, on 06 October 2015 - 06:06 PM, said:

What is 30 damage in the current game?
Back when the most powerful mech was the Gauss K2, that was painful....30 damage is nothing now.

Power creep is one the reasons why TTK is so low. The race to match up to Clan tech has made alphas higher than ever.

[Troutmonkey]

InspectorG, on 06 October 2015 - 08:08 PM, said:

Not to poo poo your idea but it wouldnt fly.
High level players are proud of their aim and dont want it punished.
They would use a Macro to get around the cooldown anyhow.

Many players have presented many good ideas but PGI gives no indication of acknowledging them.

Several solutions:

Hard 30 heat cap.
Limit size of weapon groups+cooldown between groups.
Heavier mechs get agility/mobility nerfs.
More hardpoints = less structure.
'Sized' hardpoints.

Likely fix is tripling armor with an ammo buff...its happened before.

Weapons discipline is part of the skill. Aiming will be completely unaffected for players who can moderate their fire instead of just mapping everything to 1 and firing every 3 seconds.
Macro to stagger weapons fire won't be able to work around the system, because it will achieve what the system wants - the reduction of alpha strikes and an increase in TTK.

Reducing the heat threshold is definitely a valid idea and one I would also like testing, but as I mentioned before low heat ballistics would then become powerful in their own right as they can practically bypass most heat limitations.

The other solutions are far more complicated, don't solve the issue, create their own problems, and are not easy to communicate to the player.

For instance if you limit weapons groups, I'd simply make a macro for my mouse to fire multiple weapons groups.
Size hardpoints would require a lot of work on PGI's part, and would create it's own meta of mechs with good sized hardpoints.
Reducing structure on mechs with lots of hardpoints might randomly punish crap chassis, or might just turn the meta into glass cannons.

Edited by Troutmonkey, 06 October 2015 - 08:18 PM.

[Light-Speed]

<p>I don't have time for this **** and the system ate my nicer sounding message.</p>
<p> </p>
<div>So: here's this.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The idea is stupid. You and I33t are ignorant. You didn't consider all scenarios of balance and you completely shut down the comment of one is honestly raising a point because he saw something you haven't. This is a shooter. No one is going to add cones of fire bigger than lights. No developer is dumb enough to think they'll survive adding something like that just because someone doesn't understand the concept of cover.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>So someone has to come up with more sane sounding details and limits.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Break over, back to my week of late-nighters.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>p.s. Huh, I am curious what kind of troll I can do with my favored spider under this system.</div>

[Goombah]

All of those fixes are going to hit certain builds harder than other builds, which will simply cause meta shift and create new problems and make the game even more difficult to change in the future and balance.
Laser vomit isn't a problem if everyone has equal amounts of laser vomit. And everyone has armor / speed / hitpoints capable of dealing with it

Twin gauss laughs in the face of most of these proposed changes.

TTK and alpha striking in general would be better fixed by addressing the longstanding issues already present in the game, as opposed to adding a clunky system that creates new problems.

The outstanding, already present issues are:
-Each mech doesn't have the same or similar potential alpha.
-Each mech doesn't have enough hit points.
These have very simple solutions:
Give each mech a fair respectable number of hardpoints in good locations.
-If they are in bad locations, give them MORE hardpoints
Universally increase all mech hitpoints in the game.
-If ttk is too low, universally increase all hitpoints
-if ttk is too high, universally decrease all hitpoints.

If getting one to three shotted is a problem for the game, the best solution does not lay with spooky ghost heat systems, voodoo magic target reticule expansion, horrible cone of fire accuracy penalties, maximum alphas tied to heat, or any other incredible pie in the sky pixie dust mechanics.

The simplest answer is always the best answer.
- Consistant, fair alpha strikes for all mechs
- Reasonable, fair armor / hitpoints / structure on all mechs

I don't know how they haven't figured this out yet.
In every other video game the developers increase hitpoints or lower damage.
This doesn't need to be complicated at all.

[Troutmonkey]

Goombah, on 06 October 2015 - 09:31 PM, said:

All of those fixes are going to hit certain builds harder than other builds, which will simply cause meta shift and create new problems and make the game even more difficult to change in the future and balance.
Laser vomit isn't a problem if everyone has equal amounts of laser vomit. And everyone has armor / speed / hitpoints capable of dealing with it

Twin gauss laughs in the face of most of these proposed changes.

TTK and alpha striking in general would be better fixed by addressing the longstanding issues already present in the game, as opposed to adding a clunky system that creates new problems.

The outstanding, already present issues are:
-Each mech doesn't have the same or similar potential alpha.
-Each mech doesn't have enough hit points.
These have very simple solutions:
Give each mech a fair respectable number of hardpoints in good locations.
-If they are in bad locations, give them MORE hardpoints
Universally increase all mech hitpoints in the game.
-If ttk is too low, universally increase all hitpoints
-if ttk is too high, universally decrease all hitpoints.

If getting one to three shotted is a problem for the game, the best solution does not lay with spooky ghost heat systems, voodoo magic target reticule expansion, horrible cone of fire accuracy penalties, maximum alphas tied to heat, or any other incredible pie in the sky pixie dust mechanics.

The simplest answer is always the best answer.
- Consistant, fair alpha strikes for all mechs
- Reasonable, fair armor / hitpoints / structure on all mechs

I don't know how they haven't figured this out yet.
In every other video game the developers increase hitpoints or lower damage.
This doesn't need to be complicated at all.

Voodoo magic? Weapons spread is a balancing feature present in pretty much every FPS ever.

Take the 50 Cal in CoD4. If you aim and space your shots, you hit where you shoot. If you spam the trigger your shots go wild and you'll probably miss.

Under your solution some mechs will still be far better than others. The Jenner-F could have 50 energy hardpoints but it doesn't matter because it's limited by tonnage and average hit boxes. There's no way to give every mech in the game a similar alpha potential. Adding extra hit points to everything is a silly idea.

And why would twin gauss laugh at this solution? It's a 30 points alpha, and would therefore probably have some spread, causing each shot to hit a different component. 2xGauss 2xERPPC would be even more spread out and would probably miss with most of it's shots at longer ranges.

[Haakon Magnusson]

Khobai, on 05 October 2015 - 10:02 PM, said:

imo a better solution would just be to add something like outward damage transfer to the game.

whenever a location gets hit, part of the damage (say 25%) could get transferred outwards to an undestroyed adjacent location.

so like if your center torso gets hit, then your side torso(s) takes part of the damage, provided it hasnt been destroyed. and if your side torso gets hit part of the damage would transfer to an undestroyed arm or leg.

that would help arms and legs soak up a greater portion of damage like they do in tabletop.


it would be somewhat similar to how damage distribution worked in mechwarrior 2 with the overlapping hit spheres. the hitspheres would overlap multiple locations, and whenever a hitsphere got hit, it would assign damage randomly to one of the locations it overlapped. In that way mechwarrior 2 was able to distribute damage across multiple locations.

As much as I hate your system... I think I really like it, it is logical and spreads damage in a way that it works with BT hit locations. (And doesn't punish too much the "I want damage exactly where I aim" crowd)

But it'll never happen anyway

Edited by Haakon Magnusson, 06 October 2015 - 10:02 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

Nightingale27, on 06 October 2015 - 08:23 PM, said:

I don't have time for this **** and the system ate my nicer sounding message.

So: here's this.

The idea is stupid. You and I33t are ignorant. You didn't consider all scenarios of balance and you completely shut down the comment of one is honestly raising a point because he saw something you haven't. This is a shooter. No one is going to add cones of fire bigger than lights. No developer is dumb enough to think they'll survive adding something like that just because someone doesn't understand the concept of cover.

So someone has to come up with more sane sounding details and limits.
Break over, back to my week of late-nighters.

p.s. Huh, I am curious what kind of troll I can do with my favored spider under this system.

Settle down mate. I've not shut down any debate.
I've made a statement, and then have been challenge on said statement.
I've then used arguments to back up my statement, and to possibly discount another.

You can still bring your argument to the table as long as you have some good arguments to back it up. If you can't back it up then it's probably not a good idea.

As for "spread as big as lights" that term is arbitrary based on distance. Depending on how far away your target is, even a small amount of spread could make you miss your target.

EDIT: God damn forum posting BBCODE in my plaintext

Edited by Troutmonkey, 06 October 2015 - 10:04 PM.

[Goombah]

Troutmonkey, on 06 October 2015 - 09:56 PM, said:

Take the 50 Cal in CoD4. If you aim and space your shots, you hit where you shoot. If you spam the trigger your shots go wild and you'll probably miss.

Do you truly, really, and fully want randomized weapon spread in this game?
If so, you are a far more brave person than myself.

[Troutmonkey]

Goombah, on 06 October 2015 - 10:23 PM, said:

Do you truly, really, and fully want randomized weapon spread in this game?
If so, you are a far more brave person than myself.

It would only be for alpha strikes over a certain threshold, eg 20. Anything under that would be completely unaffected.
At the very least I would love to see something like this test and see how it works in a live game. In the unlikely case that it's terrible I'd be happy to drop the case and move on to other possible solutions like heat cap.

Edited by Troutmonkey, 06 October 2015 - 10:46 PM.

[Moldur]

Good idea, we'll keep it in our back pocket along with the other several hundred ideas when we go ahead and overhaul the game like we were planning on doing.

Edited by Moldur, 06 October 2015 - 10:55 PM.

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

Some people are acting like every shot would be completely randomized by your proposal, completely ignorant of the fact that your idea applies it only to alpha-striking.

That's a problem. PGI's demographic believes alpha-striking is the only way to shoot things. Tie everything to left-click. Can't be bothered managing multiple weapon groups. Chain-fire doesn't exist.

I support you, OP, but the braindead twitch shooters love them some headshotnoscopes. Less thinking, more left-clicking.

[kapusta11]

It's basically what PGI tried to achieve via Ghost Heat (example: 6xLL Stalker that needs to fire in groups of 3 LL), projectile speed desync for ACs, Gauss and PPCs, and cap on how many Gauss rifles can be charged simultaneously.

As the person above mentioned this approach does not randomizes anything, no cone of fire or convoluted convergence systems required. Unfortunately many people on this forums have baby duck syndrome and won't accept a change that might improve gameplay overall just because it will change the way game plays now.

Edited by kapusta11, 06 October 2015 - 11:54 PM.

[Samedi Wretch]

Idk if anyone's has mentioned this or not, but what if convergence of torso weapons was removed? It doesn't really make sense any way. If we wanted to we could even require lower arm actuators for it to work on arms. It could be a system where a single torso weapon was accurate but fired together they shoot out parallel to each other centered around the target reticule. This would greatly hinder boating small and medium lasers and be a relative buff to chassis like the summoner who have low numbers of hard points and much of that in the arms. The stormcrow and nova might end up being the real winners though.

[Livewyr]

The kind of gameplay we have now would be what I would expect in an infinite respawn game mode.

*Shadowcat rounds the corner, loses half of mech*

[Widowmaker1981]

Troutmonkey, on 06 October 2015 - 08:14 PM, said:

Weapons discipline is part of the skill. Aiming will be completely unaffected for players who can moderate their fire instead of just mapping everything to 1 and firing every 3 seconds.
Macro to stagger weapons fire won't be able to work around the system, because it will achieve what the system wants - the reduction of alpha strikes and an increase in TTK.

Reducing the heat threshold is definitely a valid idea and one I would also like testing, but as I mentioned before low heat ballistics would then become powerful in their own right as they can practically bypass most heat limitations.

The other solutions are far more complicated, don't solve the issue, create their own problems, and are not easy to communicate to the player.

For instance if you limit weapons groups, I'd simply make a macro for my mouse to fire multiple weapons groups.
Size hardpoints would require a lot of work on PGI's part, and would create it's own meta of mechs with good sized hardpoints.
Reducing structure on mechs with lots of hardpoints might randomly punish crap chassis, or might just turn the meta into glass cannons.

And your system introduces another problem. If you limit max alpha like you are suggesting, for example to 20 dmg. At that point, the best mechs by far are the ones that mount dakka. Dakka doesnt have big alphas, a quad UAC5 Mauler/Crab would be completely unaffected, and would go from mediocre to crap at peeking to being just as good as everyone else at peeking/snapshooting, while retaining the absurd heatless dps and screenshake they have now. I.e. they would become the new top togs. Equal pinpoint alpha to everything else, and several times more sustained DPS.

If there needs to be a solution, my favorite one is one posted earlier in this thread of outward damage transfer, where 75% or so of your alpha goes where you aim, and 25% is spread out from where it hits. Doesnt take aim skill away, increases TTK and is completely invisible to the user.