572 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

Túatha Dé Danann, on 14 October 2015 - 01:51 AM, said:

The most disturbing thing in this whole wall of text is the heat efficiency reduction of Clan DHS. Clan weapons create more heat per second than their IS counterpart - a reduction will kill most of the Clan mechs. Right now, there are Clan Builds out there that run on the edge of 30% (Smurfy) heat efficiency and you cannot make it better - which will kill some of the more "hotter" weapons right off the bat. This includes most laser-builds (RIP Nova - again! Because it was so OP, right?) and will kill certain weapons entirely from the game (Clan ER-PPC).

Killing off content is BS. Create a new system! You had 3 years time for that!

Clan DHS got a heat dissipation BUFF. They dissipate MORE heat than they used to.

They have a lower heat cap, but that'll probably end up making IS and Clan mechs have comparable overall heat capacity given the Clan mech's ability to carry more DHS than IS mechs (particularly given lighter, smaller weapons as well as smaller DHS)

[Odanan]

That's a bold move, PGI! (in sort of a good way)

Quirks:

• OK, resetting the quirk balance is important, because it escalated out of control.
  
• I agree with the removal of the brutal quirks (specially those for rate of fire) but some mechs (and omnipods) need some help to stay competitive, so there is still the necessity of small quirks.
  
• Trying to balance mechs with just some sort of "Battle Value" system will just remove a lot of chassis from the public games (because most of us don't like to fight handicapped).

ECM:

• Those are the very changes I've been asking since the introduction of ECM into the game, so... bravo!
  
• ECM weights 1.5 tons (the same as BAP or AMS with 1 ton ammo), so it must have the same value of a 1.5 tons equipment. No more Jesus-on-the-box! Those changes will help.
  
• Putting information warfare exclusively in the shoulders of the ECM was a mistake in first place. ECM will only be balanced when any mech can equip it and most of the players will choose to NOT equip it.

Increase of health for weapons and equipment:

• Very good. It is nice to have my stuff killed slowly and not all by the sudden.

Adjustments in HS:

• Since the introduction of DHS was the sole greatest mistake of Battletech, I welcome some changes on this scenario. Will we find some use for the SHS? That would be great! Anything you do that narrows the gap between stock and meta mechs you are doing right.
  
• I like the small increase of heat dissipation for IS DHS. Considering Clan DHS are smaller, it makes sense they dissipate less BUT Clan weapons generate more heat, so 1.2 might be a too great nerf.
  
• I would propose an even more revolutionary tackle on the HS issue: SHS dissipates 1 and DHS (Clan or IS) dissipates 1.5 (even the initial 10 DHS inside the engine). The game would be slower passed and tactical (not to mention there would be SHS valid builds except gauss boats), but I think 20+ years of (absurd) DHS spoiled the Battletech and Mechwarrior players and the QQ would be gigantic.

-40% Clan lasers range:

• The nerf is brutal and sound like heresy (from the lore point of view), BUT it makes sense since Clan weapons already are smaller, lighter and do more damage.
  
• If you are trying to balance IS mechs with Clans 1:1, this is a necessity. And it will bring more Zellbrigen to the game than all the BT books together. In the lore, Clans fight the opposite way as they do in MWO.
  
• Since you are working on balance, there is something more you could do: make the Clan engines possible to upgrade/downgrade (even if much more limited than the IS ones). That won't make the already powerful omnimechs much stronger, but will equalize the Clan chassis between themselves. The subpar omnimechs like Gargoyle (overengined), Kitfox and Puma (underengined) will have a place in the game.
  
• You could even unlock the jumpjets from the omnichassis, but that's another discussion.

Reticle Mechanics:

• Whatever?

Sensor Range:

• It is good that you will depend more of the light mechs for scouting. Anything that values the role warfare is nice.

Target Acquisition Rate:

• That's what ECM should be for: to make locks slower, not to deny them. Carry on.

Target Information Sharing:

• Keep working on that and we might find some use for C3 Computers in the game someday.

In the overall, I'm quite optimist. Except for the quirk-stuff (that will need to be carefully studied), I hope all other changes make into the game.


PS: can I ask for something?

Since Clan weapons will be greatly nerfed in range, can Clans have IS-style ACs? (solid rounds, at least for the Clan regular "Autocannons").

Oh, and could you make all the ammo count per ton exactly 2x the TT values instead of ~1.5? Because mechs are much more durable in MWO than in TT and there is a game mode called CW, you know...

And MASC could be better. Please give it more speed boost, decrease the reticle shake and/or make it reload much faster.

And one more thing! Ferro Fibrous. Why not make it increase the maximum armor a mech can carry? That would really make it interesting and balance with the no-brainer Endo Steel.

Edited by Odanan, 28 October 2015 - 04:08 AM.
typo

[Kmieciu]

Wintersdark, on 14 October 2015 - 01:53 AM, said:

Clan DHS got a heat dissipation BUFF. They dissipate MORE heat than they used to.

They have a lower heat cap, but that'll probably end up making IS and Clan mechs have comparable overall heat capacity given the Clan mech's ability to carry more DHS than IS mechs (particularly given lighter, smaller weapons as well as smaller DHS)

The difference in capacity is minimal:

On production: with 20 DHS both Clan/IS have 76.8 heat points .

On PTS:
IS = 78
Clan =74,4

Clan with 30 DHS: 88,8
IS with 30 DHS = impossible

Edited by Kmieciu, 14 October 2015 - 01:59 AM.

[Vellron2005]

drunkblackstar, on 14 October 2015 - 01:53 AM, said:

Personally I don't care at all. All those changes are meaningless.

Ok, there will be a new meta: maybe not a laser vomit, but gauss ppc again, maybe not a stormcrow but some trebuchet or whatever. So whats the point? To change A for B? To make more "fog of war"? Does it really bothers someone?

All those changes are flat, its only a surface.

And this game still HAS NO STORY, NO BACKGROUND FOR FIGHTING, NO GOALS, CW IS DESERT etc. And the worst of all - it won't change ever.

Don't even get me started on that..

But that is a discussion for other threads.. this one focuses on balance, not other stuff that the game needs.

I believe that if the Meta changes so drastically that lasers are bad and gauss is king, many people will simply stop playing, cose' weapons like gauss and ppc's are player specific, and simply don't fit with most players.

Everybody uses lasers. Only snipers use Gauss and PPC's.

That would be like giving a soldier a sniper and taking away his riffle and handgun. Would not be very popular.

[Archie4Strings]

one question:

To me it seems as if the clans are the faction with the biggest disadvantage of these changes (little reduce of dhs and reduce of the larger laser range). Is there any information if they make these changes, to compensate the missing quirks for the IS?

I mean, does that mean, that the IS-quirks will be changed/banned soon, too?

Besides that, i like the changes regarding the sensor range and the ecm. It makes light makes much more usefull and hopefully light pilots in Pug matches will understand that they should go for scouting!
And i think that the new ECM-effect is a nice balancing compromise between disrupting enemy sensors but still allowing the enemy the use of missiles. At least it seems like. Dont know how its gonna be in a match. I guess lrms could get a much larger fan base now

[Widowmaker1981]

Wintersdark, on 14 October 2015 - 01:24 AM, said:

I'd certainly be happy with the weapon nerfing, given their lighter/smaller nature, if they also unlocked the omnimech customization.

After all, locked customization is a very poor means of balance: it doesn't create better balance or serve as a "disadvantage to counter other clan advantages" because it's a fixed, but not equally applied factor. It only serves to ruin mechs that don't have an optimal set of "locked" features, while it totally leaves those optimal mechs aside.

What people ultimately have to realize is that given an equal numbers game, Clan weapons are going to have to be - HAVE to be - actually worse than IS weapons. They are smaller, they are lighter, they are used alongside safer XL engines. That doesn't mean worse in all ways, but it does mean that the sum of them must be worse than the sum of IS weapons.

You can't have a faction mounting more, better weapons, and achieve balance.

Previously, they've attempted to balance the factions by adding quirks, but this has turned out to require massive quirks. Massive weapon quirks are basically identical in end result to simply having IS weapons be better weapons.

This method - nerfing the clan weapons - is exactly the same thing as buffing IS weapons (or extremely quirking IS mechs) except it reduces TTK instead of increasing it.

I agree, but my worry is that PGI dont play their own game (well, no better than complete scrubs anyway) and, like many others in the community who get their mech builds from smurfy or metamechs, might not actually understand how much of a drawback the locked customisation actually is - and decide its too much work to unlock it. Instantly invalidating every single omnimech apart from the Dire.

[Wintersdark]

Kin3ticX, on 14 October 2015 - 01:53 AM, said:

Clan DHS have the same cooling (0.15), smaller heatcap, major difference

Edited your cooling amount, you had the decimal in the wrong place.

And that's the same as IS; keep in mind DHS used to cool 0.14, now (both) cool 0.15 heat per second.

For reference:

A 24DHS mech without pilot skills dissipates 3.96 heat per second: 10x0.2 + 14x0.14 = 3.96 HPS with a capacity of 69.6
A 18DHS mech without pilot skills dissipates 3.12 heat per second: 10x0.2 + 8x0.14 = 3.12 HPS with a capacity of 61.2

After the change:
24DHS - 4.2 HPS dissipation, 66.8 capacity
18DHS - 3.2 HPS dissipation, 59.6 capacity

[Wintersdark]

Kmieciu, on 14 October 2015 - 01:58 AM, said:

The difference in capacity is minimal:

On production: with 20 DHS both Clan/IS have 76.8 heat points .

On PTS:
IS = 78
Clan =74,4

Clan with 30 DHS: 88,8
IS with 30 DHS = impossible

Yup; that was part of my point, though perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Clans lose a bit of capacity, but not a whole lot. They're not suffering enormously here, the only mechs that lose a LOT of capacity are those mounting a hell of a lot of DHS outside the 10 base 2.0 DHS - it's only really relevant once you've got way more DHS than an IS mech could have anyways.

Meanwhile, everyone dissipates a bit more heat than they used to. It's a small number, but dissipation is what really curtails overall damage output.

I, for one, am VERY happy they are taking (albiet very baby) steps to increase dissipation and reduce capacity... even if only Clans lost cap here.

[Nephoros Sradac]

Well done PGI on another royal screw-up!

[Nightnovaa]

I've already Emailed you all, but in case you all also read forums and maybe others might get behind this idea. Why not let IS mechs have clan weapons in them like all the other games before MWO?! Then you won't have to nerf clan lasers and everyone can run them. Or we could ignore lore and other games wth right?

[Nephoros Sradac]

Nightnova, on 14 October 2015 - 02:15 AM, said:

I've already Emailed you all, but in case you all also read forums and maybe others might get behind this idea. Why not let IS mechs have clan weapons in them like all the other games before MWO?! Then you won't have to nerf clan lasers and everyone can run them. Or we could ignore lore and other games wth right?

Won't matter as PGI will still have a bias view against clan mechs!

[SaltBeef]

Only a Moron would think up standard Large lasers that outrange Clan ER LL. Serious ass backwards!

[Mazzyplz]

POWR, on 14 October 2015 - 01:13 AM, said:

Reading threads like these the amount of "I can't understand what i'm reading and will now continue to post a very long post based off of my lack of understanding, using this lack of understanding to make up the most doomsday-worthy scenario possible" is just saddening... I thought Battletech audiences were supposed to be mature and intelligent.

the battletech fanboys are the most ignorant in the community by far.


"balance not needed clans better waaahhhhh"
"please use TT values that didn't work in close beta - i am sure they will work now DERP"
"a heat scale that punishes erppc/srm and all energy mechs like aws/treb/quickdraw is needed cause those mechs 2 good"
"we should randomize every shot to make up for PPFLD (this is the solution to end all solutions) cause i am past my prime and i want to be as randomly accurate as better and/or younger players"
"make it 12 vs 10 i don't care if it requires more matches to be created, putting strain on the server and making wait times even longer - business sense be damned, i am not the one paying for this ok? so it don't matter, what? what proof do i have this will work? none. just trust me"

some of it is even quite ironic like light and medium mech players talking about 'desirable' TT values, when they fail to realize in the tabletop game, assaults are flat out better.
making lighter mechs even be able to compete was something that they came up with for the computer game to make it balanced.



that being said this system of making lasers work like LRMS by targetting mechs is pretty lame - at least have it make sense

Edited by Mazzyplz, 14 October 2015 - 06:08 AM.

[ElricVonRabenfels]

Kin3ticX, on 14 October 2015 - 01:40 AM, said:

Yeah, same here, this feature is out there. Save for nerfing clan range, this feature was bound to be controversial. On paper its strange and can only be playtested extensively to see how players try to use this. I imagine PGI is trying to create a reason to have an "info mech". Not saying I think it will work but some people have wanted something like a stock+ raven-3L (light with bap/tag/narc) to be a thing. Currently a combat centric light is how lights are seriously played.

Thing im sort of worried about is being in the solo queue and nobody brought an infomech

Thing is... I'm all for "infomechs" being more useful, but there is a gaping whole of the logic of this lasers-need-lock-on-for-full-potential thing:

Even when you DO have an infomech, you can't LOCK ON ONTO MORE THAN ONE MECH AT A TIME FFS!
When you're trading blows and pokes over a long distance engagement, you often need to switch targets since people pop out and into cover. During ANY larger engagement with multiple mechs, lasers would be at a severe disadvantage.

Sometimes you just need to shoot someone in the face BEFORE you have time to lock on.
I'd say this is dumbing down the gameplay, reminds me of other, regular MMO's where you have to lock onto someone to even hit anything with ANY attack or skill.

This new "feature" bothers me. Seriously.

[Kmieciu]

ElricVonRabenfels, on 14 October 2015 - 02:42 AM, said:

Sometimes you just need to shoot someone in the face BEFORE you have time to lock on.

You're Kurita. IS mechs won't need to lock onto the enemy because 60% of the max laser range is more than laser optimal range (50% of max range). You can shoot MLs up to 324 meters without any penalty.
Clans get penalty for not locking enemies. ERML gets a penalty if you shoot farther than 290 meters without a lock.

[TWIAFU]

Kael 17, on 13 October 2015 - 06:44 PM, said:

Question, if PGI wanted a 3025 game, why did they not make one?

IGP.

That's why.

[Alek Ituin]

Yeah, the Clan ER Laser nerf sounds horrible. The ONLY way it wont make IS lasers blatantly superior is if it works like this: Optimal + (Optimal x 0.60), but even then it's BS because the 430 year old IS ERLL now out ranges the modernized CERLL.

Fair and balanced gameplay...

[Kmieciu]

AEgg, on 13 October 2015 - 05:39 PM, said:

Assuming you're running through a group of mechs and don't have time to lock, that makes the cSPL effective range 60m.

According to my math it's 118,8 meters without lock (165 with lock). cSPL 6 damage 3 heat

How abut IS SPL? with or without a lock, that's 110 meters 4 damage 2 heat.

Clans still win.

Edited by Kmieciu, 14 October 2015 - 03:06 AM.

[ElricVonRabenfels]

Kmieciu, on 14 October 2015 - 02:58 AM, said:

You're Kurita. IS mechs won't need to lock onto the enemy because 60% of the max laser range is more than laser optimal range (50% of max range). You can shoot MLs up to 324 meters without any penalty.
Clans get penalty for not locking enemies. ERML gets a penalty if you shoot farther than 290 meters without a lock.

What does me currently showing as Kurita have to do with anything?

I'm a merc, part of The Crows, and the only reason I'm currently Kurita is our active contract.
If I had to choose a side, I'd be Steiner. I run Steiner mechs's and decoration mostly. Please don't judge people simply by their current contract. I -love- brawling, hate ranged trading, poking, and I want to get into peoples faces and rearrange them with a hammer.

However, it is true that I exclusively play IS, so maybe I did misunderstand that it only effects Clans.
It still think that feature is... silly. And illogical. And downright ******. Even if it DOES promote brawling, it's just too weird, and too hard to grasp.

Edited by ElricVonRabenfels, 14 October 2015 - 03:10 AM.

[Reptilizer]

Kmieciu, on 14 October 2015 - 02:58 AM, said:

You're Kurita. IS mechs won't need to lock onto the enemy because 60% of the max laser range is more than laser optimal range (50% of max range). You can shoot MLs up to 324 meters without any penalty.
Clans get penalty for not locking enemies. ERML gets a penalty if you shoot farther than 290 meters without a lock.

Wrong.
Shooting stuff outside the optimal range without a lock causes the damage drop.
Clan optimal is still way higher than IS optimal, they only nerfed max-range.

Therefore: IS gets actually penailzed because their optimal is still way lower than that of the clans.