116 replies to this topic

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Hmm... if the devs can code this, I'd be fine testing it out on the PTS.

The thing I'd like to focus on is beam duration and damage per tic. To standardize the damage.

For example, testing:

ERs at
0.26 beam to do 1 damage,

Standards at
0.18 beam to do 1 damage, and

Pulse to do
0.10 beam to do 1 damage.

So take the Damage and multiply by the beam so for example, an ER dealing 10 Damage is a 2.60 Beam, a Standard dealing 10 Damage is a 1.8 Beam, and a Pulse at 10 Damage is a 1.0 Beam Duration.

[Mechteric]

Lasers don't have minimum range, and don't make sense to, so no to this thread and the unholiness against Blake's ghost it contains.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 22 October 2015 - 07:42 AM.

[Yellonet]

CapperDeluxe, on 22 October 2015 - 07:40 AM, said:

Lasers don't have minimum range, and don't make sense to, so no to this thread and the unholiness against Blake's ghost it contains.

LOL, BT is a joke, it's not even sci-fi, it's only fi. There's sooo much that doesn't make sense, so one more thing won't matter.

[Mechteric]

Yellonet, on 22 October 2015 - 07:44 AM, said:

LOL, BT is a joke, it's not even sci-fi, it's only fi. There's sooo much that doesn't make sense, so one more thing won't matter.

Heretic! Burn the Heretic!

[Skarlock]

There's a million ways PGI could make changes to nerf laser spam but I don't think this is a really good one. I'd be fine with them just adjusting the cooldown, optimal + max ranges, heat generation, damage, or duration because it's perfectly transparent to the players and easily implemented. I don't think some convoluted solution like this is really good due to the fact that it's extremely situational and would also be completely out of control of the players hands any time they are engaged by a faster target as the faster mech dictates at what range the fight happens.

I think having the damage drop off so extreme at close ranges invalidates a lot of mechs that want to have any kind of decent ranged laser load out because they'd be dead meat vs. any brawler, especially a light or fast medium, if they take say, large pulses and mediums. If they bracket build and go smalls + larges for close and long range offense, their long/mid range offense suffers so dramatically, they'd be crippled. Having a drop off for damage at close range makes it so that anything with less than 10 or 12 energy hard points, which is really only something a select few of the heavier clan omnimechs can achieve, cripples all your main stay IS energy boats which just don't have enough hard points OR the tonnage and space OR the cooling necessary to pull that off. A change like this would firmly put laser warfare in the hands of clan mechs only, and make the IS suffer even more as they can now only try to compete with clan mechs using strictly inferior weapons for the most part, as well as completely destroying the viability of many energy hard point only IS mechs such as the black knight, the banshee 3E, the hunchback 4P, the Wolverine 6K, Quickdraw 5K, Jester, Thunderbolt 5SS and Top Dog, etc. etc. etc.

The goal of the change should be to bring balance to the weapons, not to just shift the meta to greatly favor some mechs and builds while crushing others, some of which are meta, some of which are not even close to meta. I think the best way to go about this would be some combination of adjusting laser heat, cooldown, optimal range, base damage, and maybe even heat dissipation as everyone could easily wrap their heads around the changes and not worry about the weird new implications that a new mechanic would have. Lowering heat dissipation across the board while lowering PPC heat generation would go a really long way toward increasing time to kill and promote weapon variety as well as encourage lesser used weapons to be used again. You don't need to create crazy new mechanics to solve a simple balance problem, you just have to tune the values that already exist to be more sane, regardless of whether or not they lore or canon or the people who spend lots of money on the game complain.

Edited by Skarlock, 22 October 2015 - 09:29 AM.

[LordNothing]

this is one of the better ideas for laser balence floating around. this would have the side effect of making multiple laser types on a build desirable. i kind of already do that on some laser vomit builds, where i have 6 spl and one or two large lasers. i always prefer the spls at short range because of their low heat and fast recycle time. using the large lasers at that range is wasteful and only helps saturate your sinks.

i would however make medium lasers a bit more general purpose by making their optimal window a little wider, like +/- 200.

[sycocys]

In order to "cripple" an IS energy only mech it would have to have fewer than 4 E hardpoints and not be a fast light. Panther might be the outlier in the light bracket, but its still fairly fast.

Otherwise most of the IS energy onlys have 6+ hardpoints, which is plenty for a couple of each range if they like a decently fast engine and way more than plenty of heat control tonnage. Most if not all of them would be able to very decidedly have a marketable speed advantage on their side against their clan counterparts, especially considering the extra weight you pick up with mixed lasers and less needed sinks.
The Stalker 4N might be another one people would complain about, but even that one is a much better brawler if you drop 2 LL for MPL with current settings.

The ones with mixed hardpoints would actually have a use for that single ballistic or couple of missile slots as well as weight to spare to use them (especially missiles after ecm gets fixed).

[Revis Volek]

Joseph Mallan, on 22 October 2015 - 02:44 AM, said:

Since when is having an opposing opinion and delivering it in a constructive manner "the problem"?As far as This universe is concerned a Laser...

Laser stands for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", or a device that focuses an amplified beam of light on a small surface area. Lasers are popular weapons due to their low cost compared to other energy weapons and because they do not rely on ammunition, which simplifies logistics. Laser rifles are one of the most effective weapons infantry units have when fighting vehicles or 'Mechs. Light does not hammer anything it may heat it but light even in pulses does not hammer.

My YAG laser machined begs to differ....

There are many forms of lasers...YAG's pulse and can literally hammer metal. Co2 wants to burn and pulses in Femtoseconds...not enough to create propulsion. You also seem to think im going after Andi...i can assure you i am not. We play together every night...if he wants to talk this out we can without you holding his hand.

Edited by DarthRevis, 22 October 2015 - 10:31 AM.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

Andi Nagasia, on 20 October 2015 - 08:07 PM, said:

many have said it, and many are on both sides,
but their usually isnt a Table or Graph, so i made one!


Vertical Numbers are Damage, Horizontal Numbers is Range,


Thoughts, Comments, Concerns?
Thanks,

OP remembered not to ruin small lasers with Proposal. +1 Support. PGI don't you dare try to implement it with your own twist (by giving minimum range to smalls).

[Jack Shayu Walker]

Skarlock, on 22 October 2015 - 09:28 AM, said:

There's a million ways PGI could make changes to nerf laser spam but I don't think this is a really good one. I'd be fine with them just adjusting the cooldown, optimal + max ranges, heat generation, damage, or duration because it's perfectly transparent to the players and easily implemented. I don't think some convoluted solution like this is really good due to the fact that it's extremely situational and would also be completely out of control of the players hands any time they are engaged by a faster target as the faster mech dictates at what range the fight happens.

I think having the damage drop off so extreme at close ranges invalidates a lot of mechs that want to have any kind of decent ranged laser load out because they'd be dead meat vs. any brawler, especially a light or fast medium, if they take say, large pulses and mediums. If they bracket build and go smalls + larges for close and long range offense, their long/mid range offense suffers so dramatically, they'd be crippled. Having a drop off for damage at close range makes it so that anything with less than 10 or 12 energy hard points, which is really only something a select few of the heavier clan omnimechs can achieve, cripples all your main stay IS energy boats which just don't have enough hard points OR the tonnage and space OR the cooling necessary to pull that off. A change like this would firmly put laser warfare in the hands of clan mechs only, and make the IS suffer even more as they can now only try to compete with clan mechs using strictly inferior weapons for the most part, as well as completely destroying the viability of many energy hard point only IS mechs such as the black knight, the banshee 3E, the hunchback 4P, the Wolverine 6K, Quickdraw 5K, Jester, Thunderbolt 5SS and Top Dog, etc. etc. etc.

The goal of the change should be to bring balance to the weapons, not to just shift the meta to greatly favor some mechs and builds while crushing others, some of which are meta, some of which are not even close to meta. I think the best way to go about this would be some combination of adjusting laser heat, cooldown, optimal range, base damage, and maybe even heat dissipation as everyone could easily wrap their heads around the changes and not worry about the weird new implications that a new mechanic would have. Lowering heat dissipation across the board while lowering PPC heat generation would go a really long way toward increasing time to kill and promote weapon variety as well as encourage lesser used weapons to be used again. You don't need to create crazy new mechanics to solve a simple balance problem, you just have to tune the values that already exist to be more sane, regardless of whether or not they lore or canon or the people who spend lots of money on the game complain.

It's better than Ghost damage. IS smalls need a blanket buff anyways.

[BARBAR0SSA]

I REALLY hope they put in a DMG (#) on the HUD that shows you how damage your weapons would do at the current distance from what you're currently at and updates on the go....that would be quite handy for the initial learning curve.

[Y E O N N E]

BearFlag, on 21 October 2015 - 08:24 PM, said:

I keep hearing these "lens" arguments pulled out of Star Trek or something. Did the TT game have "lens" in front of gigawatt lasers? If so, they can safely be dropped. Lasers are already "focused." All you can do is narrow them to a point, turn them slightly and even "shape" them with a lens. And this is done in modern applications at low powers and very short ranges. Assuming you had some lens material that could survive a weapon's power, it would still be a liability. The slightest scratch, much less a MG bullet would self-destruct the laser on the next attempted shot. And you can expect any lens material modern or future to impose some attenuation which is converted to heat. Worse, both the back and front lens interfaces will reflect power back into the device. A brand new, perfectly clean future lens might keep this down to .1%. That still makes your lens a 1 megawatt heater.

Not quite accurate with your statements, there. A laser is already collimated from the source, yes, but it is not necessarily focused enough for the application. A weapons-grade laser capable of punching through thick, dense, high-heat-of-vaporization materials in split seconds requires that your beam have a large spot area at the source to lower the power density enough so as to avoid destroying the weapon on activation. Because the power density is low, it is ineffective as a weapon unless further focused. Ergo, you have to use some form of optics to narrow it to a point where your power density is high enough to deal the damage you want.

Yes, your focusing optics are a vulnerable point, but the next shot won't necessarily destroy the weapon on firing because, remember, we have low power density at the emitter. You'll lose some efficiency and you might shorten the life-span of the weapon, but your engineering should account for that in when running the operational requirements against the mission requirements. You can also shutter your lasers to reduce chance of damage from weapons or the environment. And if you really want to bring this point into the debate, then we can't ignore how the barrels on a ballistic weapon or missiles exposed in their racks are just as vulnerable.

Finally, the power density in your beam spot does not follow a linear pattern, it follows a quadratic one where max density occurs at the peak. Even though radius of the beam spot is directly proportional to distance travelled away from the focus point, density is dependent on area and area is a second-degree polynomial function. In a vacuum, the power curve will also be symmetrical as you leave the focused range in either direction.

So, basically, if we're going to exaggerate the realistic behavior of a laser as a weapon for MWO (and MWO already has exaggeratedly short ranges on everything), it does make sense for them to deal less damage up close than they do at their rated optimum, as well as deal less past that optimum.

[Troutmonkey]

sycocys, on 22 October 2015 - 05:59 AM, said:

Have you ever tried to think - "this might be more balanced if these LL's did less damage up close and ML/SL's did more in that range?"

Not really, because tonne for tonne and heat for heat, ML and SLs already do more damage up close. Shorter burn rates and cooldowns mean that they have higher DPS too. My Grashopper has 2xLPL which I use to poke with, and then a bunch of medium lasers for when they get closer. In reality I tend to just fire all of them because why not, the heat is really forgiving. Even if they did less damage I'd still fire them. Make heat a factor or increase the cooldown on larger lasers and I might consider not shooting both sets of lasers.

Edited by Troutmonkey, 22 October 2015 - 03:41 PM.

[Pjwned]

Lasers are not scary because of their brawling potential.

It's hard to imagine how much more I could disagree with this idea.

Tarogato, on 20 October 2015 - 08:30 PM, said:

If you're going to go this far, why not just make each one a perfectly smooth arc? It's simpler. The optimum range is the "peak", and the maximum range is where the damage crosses zero.

Yeah, might as well bury lasers 6 feet deep instead of with an arm poking out of the ground.

Edited by Pjwned, 22 October 2015 - 03:41 PM.

[sycocys]

We were trying to take the rocket appliances out of the equation and make it simple lol.

[Andi Nagasia]

@DarthRevis & @Joseph Mallan,
im happy that your both so passionate about your Views,

but please remember the Fluff is just that Fluff and can & will change,
(my Fluff was based on Sun + MagnifyingGlass from peoples childhood),
Ya dont Judge, ill look into the Finer Mechanics on Lasers and do a rewrite,

this idea is far from perfect, and may need alot of tweaking,
Keep up posting your thoughts, both those for and against it,
if your not punching holes in my Idea, how can i patch it?

[terrycloth]

This is a really stupid idea. Small-laser-spamming light mechs are already ridiculous (to the point where the people complaining about the group queue changes were complaining about people using too *many* lights) and this would make them completely unkillable.

Fast mechs in general are already too dominant. They're sort of balanced by having to use lighter, shorter-ranged weapons but being short ranged is supposed to be a disadvantage for a weapon that lets it be more heat and tonnage efficient.

Also, weapons with a minimum range are unpleasant to use from a quality of life perspective. Even if this somehow made things more balanced instead of less, it would make the game less fun.

[Burktross]

The Atlas Overlord, on 22 October 2015 - 05:20 AM, said:

1) The OP said here's my idea.... criticize it so that it can be improved, or explain why it's bad. He didn't say "blow it off and and suggest something else".

2) I'd hardly call the following response constructive.



What he's suggesting is LITERALLY how they're "balanced" now.

So he's in essence saying "I don't like your idea, I'm not going to mention why, I'm not going to suggest anything that could make it better, I'm just going to suggest we use the system we already have."

Which isn't what the OP was looking for when he started the thread.

Therefore, it's just a pointless derail (much like me having to spell things out in crayon for you now.)

Otherwise known as "being part of the problem". (again just like now... see how I'm wasting time correcting ignorance and bias rather than helping make the system better)

You can't just make an "agree with me or get out" thread. That's what we call a circlejerk.

[Strum Wealh]

Yeonne Greene, on 22 October 2015 - 03:29 PM, said:

Yes, your focusing optics are a vulnerable point, but the next shot won't necessarily destroy the weapon on firing because, remember, we have low power density at the emitter. You'll lose some efficiency and you might shorten the life-span of the weapon, but your engineering should account for that in when running the operational requirements against the mission requirements. You can also shutter your lasers to reduce chance of damage from weapons or the environment. And if you really want to bring this point into the debate, then we can't ignore how the barrels on a ballistic weapon or missiles exposed in their racks are just as vulnerable.

Personally, I'd always imagined that the laser aperatures and the missile tubes in BattleTech would have had some sort of protective assembly similar to a diaphragm shutter on a camera (or the iris system from Stargate) over each opening, with each leaf/blade being made of the same materials as the 'Mech's armor & the assembly remaining closed at all times other than when the weapon was actively firing...

[Y E O N N E]

It wouldn't even necessarily have to be something resembling a door. Because an efficient laser beam is pulsed (rapidly, can't see it), you could theoretically have a rotating assembly that constantly provides protection from damage and the beam just fires through the momentary gaps in the coverage like an interrupter-equipped machine gun through a propeller.