88 replies to this topic

[Lugh]

Yellonet, on 06 October 2015 - 05:38 AM, said:

I made a topic with exactly that idea, but unsurprisingly it met with a lot of flak from the vocal clanners.
http://mwomercs.com/...-other-weapons/

You started that topic with a blanket statement to double the already more than 1.5 times longer burn time clan lasers....

That didn't help your case at all. And anyone with a brain would object, in fact some of the IS dedicated pilots told you you were crazy on that point as well.

[Mystere]

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.

Do you know what CEP is?

[Troutmonkey]

Widowmaker1981, on 08 October 2015 - 10:53 AM, said:

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.

Possibly, but you could play with the CPU processed per second to deal with that if it did become an issue. Right now while UAC5 boating Crabs and Dires do deal a lot of damage, they require a lot of face time and spread damage naturally.

I haven't seen many UAC5 dires in a while now, with most opting for Guass and lasers / CERPPCs.

[Funkin Disher]

yeah I remember the TCL idea a few years back, why wasn't that a thing instead of ghost heat? It was an elegant solution.

[SplashDown]

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

Want to solve the TTK issue?
Want to stop laser vomit?
Want to encourage mixed load outs?

Solution: Firing ~20 or more points of damage withing ~.5 seconds causes temporary reticule bloom and loss of pinpoint convergence. The more you fire over the limit, the worse the spread becomes.

Want to fire all your weapons at once? Sure! Just don't expect to everything to hit the same location.

Want all your shots to hit where you aim? Great, just exercise fire control and either chain fire or group weapons into smaller Alphas.

Now the more complex part is decoupling the spread from damage, and replacing it with another limit which can be called CPU.

• Each mech will have a CPU limit.
  
  • The limit can universal or be changed per mech to allow for higher / lower alphas before loss of accuracy.
    
  • Equipment such as the Command Console and Targeting computer could increase the CPU limit
• Each mech with dissipate (process) X CPU/Second.
  
  • The limit can universal or be changed per mech to allow for longer / shorter periods of sustained fire.
• Each weapon will use X CPU each time it fires.
  
  • Initially weapons will balance around 1 DMG = 1 CPU requirement, but weapons like MGs, SRMs and LB10X will use much less because they already spread damage.

Reticule bloom is a completely intuitive system that players would instantly understand if they've played any other shooter, and would help to reduce the massive alpha strikes that are present in the game. TTK would be reduced as damage would be spread, meaning that poking out from behind cover for 1 second wouldn't result in 60+ points of damage instantly coring you out - instead your opponents would have to either fire less weapons or risk spreading it all over your mech.


Given that reticule bloom is readily understandable and that CPU is "processed" quickly, it wouldn't require a an in game UI element outside of the reticule size increasing. If a system like this was put in place, ghost heat could be removed completely. Unlike Ghost Heat, this system can't be circumvented by mixing and matching weapon groups.

I know ideas like this have been suggested before in various forms, as my suggestion is nearly a complete knock off of Homeless Bill's comprehensive balance post from 2013 (before Ghost Heat was a thing). However I think now it's more relevant now than ever before, and really needs to be considered again. With the test server actually being used, it's now possible to test such a drastic idea before it ever goes live.

This system will promote skill in consistent aiming and weapons discipline. A duel between two players will no longer be decided by who has the highest alpha, but by the player who can exercise the most fire control and accuracy. I know people are bound to jump up and down about RNG and dice rolls or something, but I honestly believe a system like this is something that MWO desperately needs.

So what do you guys think?

bad idea...sorry

[Troutmonkey]

SplashDown, on 08 October 2015 - 04:30 PM, said:

bad idea...sorry

Could you please elaborate on what part you disagree with or what solution you propose instead?
Post like these don't particularly contribute much to the discussion.

[LordNothing]

the high alpha problem is pretty much strictly a laser issue. you cant do that with missiles, too much spread, you cant run sane ballistics builds either with alphas over 40 (its usually a suicide alpha to fire four uac20s on a dire for example), and if you do you will be out of ammo very fast. ppcs are too hot to fire in large groups, and gauss rifles have usage mechanics that keep it from being a superweapon (2 at a time, charging, hard to group). its strictly a laser problem, every other weapon system has something in place to keep ttk sufficiently high. some ideas about how to fix this:

be more strict about optimal range. have a ramp up to maximum damage and then a ramp back down from there. the optimal damage window should be rather narrow.

increase laser durations on mechs with a lot of lasers. you can have a high alpha, but it will cost you face time. im thinking a quirk that multiplies against the number of lasers in your mech, and thats added to laser duration.

real lasers have a focal point where the beam has higher energy concentrations than other parts of the beam, and that means more damage. optics are usually used to adjust the distance of the focal point from the emitter, which take time to adjust. simulate beam focusing mechanism. firing before the target is ranged in would lead to reduced damage. when the cross hair is not on target the focal point returns to default optimal range. if you target something, then range to target overrides default (targeting would eliminate focusing time). either can be overridden by holding the cross hair on any hostile mech. you would need a focal indicator of sorts near the crosshair (sorta like gauss charge indicator).

[Troutmonkey]

LordNothing, on 08 October 2015 - 04:55 PM, said:

the high alpha problem is pretty much strictly a laser issue.

You're right in that regard for the moment. Reducing the falloff range for clan (or maybe all) lasers from 2x to 1.5x could help a lot. My biggest issue right now is clan lasers with crazy long ranges and damage hitting me from really far out. As an IS only player it really bugs me that a CERML can hit me from the same distance as an IS LL for nearly the same damage.

Nerfing lasers is a good move, but I believe that may only shift the meta again and won't really solve the issue in the long run.

[dwwolf]

We need cone fire...it works for all FPS and even the military thinks its good enough to simulate reality....but somehow it couldnt possibly work for MWO according to the meta warriors.

Size of cone should depend on :
your own speed ( walking / running ).
Heat scale
Targetting computer
Those are modifiers that are fixed for the wholemech

Then we have mods for:
Arms weapons with damaged actuators in the arm.
Damaged weapons.

Each weapon type per weapon location should get its own CoF roll. Maximum number of weapons sharing the same CoF roll should be around 2 or 3.
So if you have a 2 med laser and 1 large laser in the same location both the ML share a CoF roll and the LL would get a seperate roll.

What would make decent ballpark numbers for the size of the cone ?
Personally I think a baseline cone should be somewhere between a 1 to 2 meter diameter circle ( 2 std dev = 95% of shots should fall in this range)
And this should be at the end of a weapons medium range.

Arm / torso aiming points should be kept as we have now.

This may be good enough to get rid of most of the ghost heat and the extended heatscale.

Couple of issues:
Missiles should be seperate from cof.
LBX ACs should have minimal to no cof ...they have the shot gun effect already.
Pulse lasers should get a reduction of the cof size that is similar to the running penalty.

Edited by dwwolf, 09 October 2015 - 02:22 AM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Here's a crazy thought, where current active systems could possibly be interconnected, dependent on how things are coded.

So the triggers will be alpha damage beyond the appropriate value (20+ is fine by me) for applying the SSRM Bones system on all weapons as suggested to mimic the bloom effect.

So then, if a player manages their weapons fine, weapons' fire can still be concentrated on where they aim. But if players cannot, then its fire all the things where the SSRM Bones tracking takes place after a short period of holding the crosshair / reticle on target across multiple components and only when on hitboxes, then be instantly lost as usual when firing into never never-land when off of hitboxes.

The reason this idea comes to mind is that there was one brief period where Locks were instantly lost when off target, making LRMs and SSRMs very impractical to carry about (so it was a live bug for a period of time for any who didn't experience that).

[Lockon StratosII]

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.

What if I told you there is a way for a weapon spread to be implemented that simulates convergence, has 0% randomness, low server load and would tie in with this proposal very well?

But then again we all know that fixing the real problems will never work here, and we will just slap another band aid on this...

[Troutmonkey]

Lockon StratosII, on 09 October 2015 - 04:56 AM, said:

What if I told you there is a way for a weapon spread to be implemented that simulates convergence, has 0% randomness, low server load and would tie in with this proposal very well?

But then again we all know that fixing the real problems will never work here, and we will just slap another band aid on this...

Speaking of bandaids, the PTS is now adding some sort of weird "lock or don't do full damage, but only for lasers" mechanic.

Edited by Troutmonkey, 14 October 2015 - 04:02 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

MWO weapons were not designed to work pin point accurate as they do now (this is fundamental truth) - so there are two ways to go - spread them, disallow convergence as it is now -or modify the weapons/armor system

simple based on the assumption if it would be possible for the FS9 to have 20 Small Lasers it would use 20 Small Lasers. 60 Alpha 0.5sec damage over time for 10tons. Why to bother with 2 large lasers and 18 dmg in 1sec?

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

Solution: Firing ~20 or more points of damage withing ~.5 seconds causes temporary reticule bloom and loss of pinpoint convergence. The more you fire over the limit, the worse the spread becomes.

I would not take the dmg output as a limiter. I would simple use the number of weapons: 2 weapons = spread
So chain fire - or spread

On the other hand.... maybe with a working heat system and a better conversion of damage to tonnage there is no need for a cone at all.


Say those 20 small pulse laser have a burn of 0.5sec as has the Large Laser - the Small Laser recharges every 1sec and deals only 0.5dmg. - so those 20 Small Lasers will still hit like a AC 10....every second.
Say the Large Laser recharge in 3sec....so while those Small Lasers deal 3 shots a 10dmg the Large Lasers deal 1shot for 18dmg with the same burn duration as the small laser
Got it?

Edited by Karl Streiger, 19 October 2015 - 06:16 AM.

[NextGame]

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

Want to solve the TTK issue?
Want to stop laser vomit?
Want to encourage mixed load outs?

Solution: Firing ~20 or more points of damage withing ~.5 seconds causes temporary reticule bloom and loss of pinpoint convergence. The more you fire over the limit, the worse the spread becomes.

Want to fire all your weapons at once? Sure! Just don't expect to everything to hit the same location.

Want all your shots to hit where you aim? Great, just exercise fire control and either chain fire or group weapons into smaller Alphas.

Now the more complex part is decoupling the spread from damage, and replacing it with another limit which can be called CPU.

• Each mech will have a CPU limit.
  
  • The limit can universal or be changed per mech to allow for higher / lower alphas before loss of accuracy.
    
  • Equipment such as the Command Console and Targeting computer could increase the CPU limit
• Each mech with dissipate (process) X CPU/Second.
  
  • The limit can universal or be changed per mech to allow for longer / shorter periods of sustained fire.
• Each weapon will use X CPU each time it fires.
  
  • Initially weapons will balance around 1 DMG = 1 CPU requirement, but weapons like MGs, SRMs and LB10X will use much less because they already spread damage.

Reticule bloom is a completely intuitive system that players would instantly understand if they've played any other shooter, and would help to reduce the massive alpha strikes that are present in the game. TTK would be reduced as damage would be spread, meaning that poking out from behind cover for 1 second wouldn't result in 60+ points of damage instantly coring you out - instead your opponents would have to either fire less weapons or risk spreading it all over your mech.









Given that reticule bloom is readily understandable and that CPU is "processed" quickly, it wouldn't require a an in game UI element outside of the reticule size increasing. If a system like this was put in place, ghost heat could be removed completely. Unlike Ghost Heat, this system can't be circumvented by mixing and matching weapon groups.

I know ideas like this have been suggested before in various forms, as my suggestion is nearly a complete knock off of Homeless Bill's comprehensive balance post from 2013 (before Ghost Heat was a thing). However I think now it's more relevant now than ever before, and really needs to be considered again. With the test server actually being used, it's now possible to test such a drastic idea before it ever goes live.

This system will promote skill in consistent aiming and weapons discipline. A duel between two players will no longer be decided by who has the highest alpha, but by the player who can exercise the most fire control and accuracy. I know people are bound to jump up and down about RNG and dice rolls or something, but I honestly believe a system like this is something that MWO desperately needs.

So what do you guys think?

What I think they should do is let you "tune" your mech in the mechlab, whereby you would set a convergence distance for each of the weapons (or weapon groups) that you have equipped on a mech. That way you have fixed convergence points when you go into battle and therefore fighting too close, or too far, will cause the shots to be off target based on their angle towards the point of convergence.

No stupid random visual effects, or unnecessary heat manipulation, also caters to any play style,and adds a little much needed tactical depth to team play.

The annoying thing is that the game already performs this calculation whenever you click the fire button, with stuff like trajectory built in for ballistics for example, where the projectile is aiming for the distance posted by the reticule, so I don't really understand why PGI cant manage it on a wider level by detatching the distance from the reticle and using values stored elsewhere to calculate the shot.

Edited by NextGame, 19 October 2015 - 06:44 AM.

[Almond Brown]

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

Want to solve the TTK issue?
stuff

So what do you guys think?

I think you should send PGI the CryEngine compatible Code for said changes immediately and hope for a quick incorporation of said CryEngine compatible Code into MWO.

[MischiefSC]

There are big changes coming. A compete rebalance. A clan/IS 1 for 1 balance, xl normalization, a lot of changes.

We need to take a step back and consider some things like this. Convergence/heat scale and various other big core issues. We have the system we have now (ghost heat et al) for a reason; just removing them creates new issues. Trying to balance them with flat performance nerfs/buffs isn't going to cut it. We're going to need some significant new mechanics like this. It's likely they will be tied to sensors for the IW aspect.

I get that people don't like change. We want new, we want balanced, but we want it to be like it already is.

That's not going to happen. CoF, convergence, heat scale, damage falloff, Dorito delay, these are all things that may be involved. If you want to be engaged in that decision making process as more than just doing the forum rage clown thing then we need to be active on the pts and giving useful feedback.

[Troutmonkey]

Almond Brown, on 19 October 2015 - 10:33 AM, said:

I think you should send PGI the CryEngine compatible Code for said changes immediately and hope for a quick incorporation of said CryEngine compatible Code into MWO.

Sure. As soon as PGI send me the source I'll fix this issue and about 20 others that they've neglected to fix. I usually work in C# but C++ isn't that different.

[Troutmonkey]

Karl Streiger, on 19 October 2015 - 05:45 AM, said:

I would simple use the number of weapons: 2 weapons = spread So chain fire - or spread

Number of weapons is a very bad way to do this.
3 Large Lasers should trigger spread.
3 small lasers shouldn't.

And it's not damage that I want to trigger spread on, that's simply a baseline to give weapons their CPU values. The LB10X and Large Laser both have similar damage, but the Large Laser should have a higher CPU usage because of it's pinpoint nature.

[Johnny Z]

Deminishing returns is a thing.

The strip all armor and pack high alphas strategy should be looked at in some way, and for a lot of good reasons.

The pts changes are a good start, but those only address lasers and ecm mostly.

Edited by Johnny Z, 19 October 2015 - 03:45 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

Troutmonkey, on 19 October 2015 - 03:35 PM, said:

Number of weapons is a very bad way to do this.
3 Large Lasers should trigger spread.
3 small lasers shouldn't.

And it's not damage that I want to trigger spread on, that's simply a baseline to give weapons their CPU values. The LB10X and Large Laser both have similar damage, but the Large Laser should have a higher CPU usage because of it's pinpoint nature.

So you simple want to add another system?
Firing 6 small lasers for 3 tons without spread but 3 large Lasers for 15ton is not intuitive.
Firing 4 Ac5s without spread or even 10 AC2s - without spread is rightous wrong.
You can't choose Alpha DMG - other reason should 2 Uac20 use spread or not.

But if you say Ok guys you can fire one weapon where you aim at, but the targeting computer got some problems when you want to place 6 shots in the same penny