385 replies to this topic

[Inflatable Fish]

Koniving, on 28 October 2015 - 04:35 AM, said:

I agree that high pinpoint alphas are a problem, but not the problem. The real problem is actually high Front Loaded Alphas.

These are alpha strikes that deliver all of its damage to not just one spot -- but at the same instant.

An example being twin AC/20 -- punished unnecessarily by ghost heat -- because it is a weapon combination that can instantly kill ANY and EVERY single mech in the game with a single blow. Why can it do this? Because it takes the one flaw from tabletop while ignoring the lore. Autocannons are not front-loaded, unlike what tabletop would have us believe. This is because keeping track of weapon variants and rolling for as many hits as actual numbers fired...is a pain in the rear.

This post I placed in a thread about former FASA guru James' Battletech computer game is a good reference.
This was written in response to ammo being in the left torso of the Hunchbacks, and though trunicated it took note of drum changes between 4J, 4P, and the location change of the drum for the 4SP.


Now consider what is stated. I didn't go as in depth as I could have, because the Ichiba Medium Lasers were replaced with Hellion V MLs to make up for the difference in exposure time. The Tomodzuru AC/20 was high damage, quick to fire, only needed to deliver 5 bullets and was slower than molasses to reload. On the negative side the Ichiba MLs were short-length beam weapons (beam as in Star Trek phasers, "Peeeeeeeeeeew"). The Kali-Yama Big Bore took 3 seconds to spend its full load to do 20 damage. On a positive note, Hellion V medium lasers are "Zap" type weapons, as in "Pzzt", or 0.2 second zaps. (Granted a Hellion V laser needed 4 zaps to do 5 damage, still it was a quick hit and done; great for twitchy gamers).

MWO will never do this. Which is sad. However it would fix the front loaded issue that we really have. Damage can then be equal to "rated" amounts per 5 or 10 seconds, heat can also be at rated amounts per 5 or 10 seconds, and the extreme thresholds (current high of 138 max threshold [for 100% heat] instead of the canonical 30 reactor threshold) can be removed as can the cooling nerfs on double heatsinks (1.4? Pfft, 2.0 per 10 seconds per DHS). Furthermore the double armor/structure can be removed, and mechs would still live incredibly longer with a significantly increased time to kill.

As you can imagine, the chain reaction of changes that would become necessary is... astronomical. In return, however, the balance of the game, the feel and value of weapon systems, and the overall experience would be significantly improved!

as much as I could get behind such changes from a lore and diversity perspective, I don't think they would be very healthy to MWO as a real-time shooter. just think about it. if we change ACs to be burst fire weapons, we're essentially making them lasers with travel time, or in other words, lasers but worse. there's a reason Clan ballistics right now are considered bad. would you really want an AC/20 that requires 3 seconds of face time to deliver its full damage?

e: the word you're looking for is "truncated".

Edited by Inflatable Fish, 28 October 2015 - 05:10 AM.

[Greyhart]

Just to be clear.

Yes the worst offenders in the pinpoint damage problems are those that front load the damage or place the damage in the shortest period of time.

But even with long burn times (I don't limit this to lasers but easiest in this context) a weapon that delivered its damage over 2 seconds to a single point would be preferable to LRMs that always spread their damage.

Yes gauss is likely the biggest problem because the damage is delivered to a single point and no heat. I think gauss should spread damage not a single point. After all the amour must be set up to spread impacts like a car spreads the impact of a collision through the chassis and around the driver

Lasers at least could be balanced with heat making it necessary to chain fire and manage negative effects from the heat.

so my view:

lasers pinpoint but serious heat penalties i.e. reduced movement, cone of fire, shutdown, ammo explosion.

ballistics the damage would be spread to adjoining parts in a predictable manner (as the armour and structure would be designed to do this.).

This would give each of the weapon types a distinctive flavour

[Hotthedd]

Inflatable Fish, on 28 October 2015 - 05:06 AM, said:

as much as I could get behind such changes from a lore and diversity perspective, I don't think they would be very healthy to MWO as a real-time shooter. just think about it. if we change ACs to be burst fire weapons, we're essentially making them lasers with travel time, or in other words, lasers but worse. there's a reason Clan ballistics right now are considered bad. would you really want an AC/20 that requires 3 seconds of face time to deliver its full damage?

e: the word you're looking for is "truncated".

There are other balancing factors that could be implemented to ACs if they were to be burst fire. Increase ammo/ton, more HPs than lasers, reduce heat, etc.

Greyhart, on 28 October 2015 - 05:22 AM, said:

Just to be clear.

Yes the worst offenders in the pinpoint damage problems are those that front load the damage or place the damage in the shortest period of time.

But even with long burn times (I don't limit this to lasers but easiest in this context) a weapon that delivered its damage over 2 seconds to a single point would be preferable to LRMs that always spread their damage.

Yes gauss is likely the biggest problem because the damage is delivered to a single point and no heat. I think gauss should spread damage not a single point. After all the amour must be set up to spread impacts like a car spreads the impact of a collision through the chassis and around the driver

Lasers at least could be balanced with heat making it necessary to chain fire and manage negative effects from the heat.

so my view:

lasers pinpoint but serious heat penalties i.e. reduced movement, cone of fire, shutdown, ammo explosion.

ballistics the damage would be spread to adjoining parts in a predictable manner (as the armour and structure would be designed to do this.).

This would give each of the weapon types a distinctive flavour

I would allow the GR to retain its front-loaded damage, and fix the multiple gauss problem by making it only possible to fire one at a time. You could even give the Gauss Rifle a global cooldown where you cannot fire ANY weapon for 2 or 3 seconds after. This makes it a long-range sniper weapon.
Similarly, let LB-X ACs have either slug or shot ammo, the slug giving front-loaded damage, but shorter range and accuracy.

[Koniving]

Inflatable Fish, on 28 October 2015 - 05:06 AM, said:

as much as I could get behind such changes from a lore and diversity perspective, I don't think they would be very healthy to MWO as a real-time shooter. just think about it. if we change ACs to be burst fire weapons, we're essentially making them lasers with travel time, or in other words, lasers but worse. there's a reason Clan ballistics right now are considered bad. would you really want an AC/20 that requires 3 seconds of face time to deliver its full damage?

e: the word you're looking for is "truncated".

Clan ballistics are considered bad because with burst times + reload times, you're looking at over 5 seconds to reload and fire a Clan AC/20 while most IS mechs are quirked to fire AC/20s in as little as 3 seconds with a single impact.

This means that a Clan AC/20 would fire 3x in 10 seconds (60 damage, spread). The AC/20 on non-quirked mechs fires 3x in 8 seconds (0, 4, 8), and quirked it can fire 3x in 6 seconds (0, 3, 6), meaning 4X 20 damage in less than 10 seconds (80 damage, front loaded!)
See an issue?

Now consider that in terms of lore, Clan UACs may have similar calibers, but the definition of "Ultra mode" is to shoot twice as fast at the risk of jamming. If you dig through the lore, the IS can do this with regular autocannons by firing twice as often with "Automatic" AC types over the "Burst" types. The issue is that regular ACs are more likely to jam when stressing them than UACs, and since jamming is permanent it's clearly a big 'no no'.

Either way, the regular ACs are going to be better for the IS; all it takes is better firing counts or shorter reload times.

Far as all other weapons, did you read the part about lasers?
Specifically Hellion V's. Sure, 0.2 seconds. But 4 uses across 5 or 10 seconds to get 5 damage out of a single laser. That's shooting 4 times with pauses in between for recharging. Where the Ichiba laser is a short beam of about a second with maybe 2 uses. Sure, the Hellion V is better at pinpoint front loaded damage exactly where you want it (assuming you can hit the target in a quick fire fight) with 1.25 damage in a near instant burst. But imagine a 2 second recharge giving you about 4 shots in 8.8 seconds for 5 damage total. And sure the Ichiba will put more damage down the line with a longer exposure time (2.5 damage in 1 second), it also would have a longer recharge time (say 3 seconds), delivering 5 damage in 8 seconds. (We can change it to closer to the 5 second standard but this is going for the 10 second standard).

The sole known "single shot" medium laser out of over 60+ variants is the Rassal Blue Beam, which is a blue beamed medium laser that has a firing delay (charge time), a 0.1 second burn time, has the following Design Quirks: Poor Cooling Jacket (generates 4 heat instead of 3), Difficult to Maintain (bad repair and rearm quality), and EM Interference (This Quirk indicates that one of the energy weapons on the unit in question suffers from poor electromagnetic shielding, resulting in firing that weapon causing interference in other equipment on the unit. In game terms, this interference means that affected electronic systems cannot function in the round after a weapon affected by the EM Interference Quirk fires. The range of equipment affected by this electromagnetic interference all features delicate electronics, and includes: any Active Probe, Artemis IV or Artemis V Fire Control Systems, any form of C³ system, NARC, MASC, the Cockpit Command Console, the Chameleon Light Polarization System, the Blue Shield system, any Electronic Warfare equipment, Streak Launchers, the MRM Fire Control System, Null Signature Systems, Superchargers, the Void Siganture System and any form of Stealth Armor. It should be noted that this may have occurred to the Archer in the "Phantom Mech" event.) (quoted from Sarna's EM Interference.)

Now consider that most weapons will be of a similar nature. This is short of missiles, which will have longer and more realistic reloading times of one use per 5 or 10 seconds, PPCs which the variants are more into charge time differences than shot counts, and finally Gauss Rifles which are (short of the Behemoth's 30 ton Gauss Rifle with two sets of crits for a single 2 shot barrel), 1 shot = 15 damage...also having painfully slow reload times... Your heavy duty weapons are devastating, but need support. This means less boating in order to protect themselves, and more roles in role warfare as these lumbering cannons will be crucial to turning the tide of warfare but also easy targets without escorts!

We're looking at a game where a medium laser would deliver about 5 damage in roughly 7 to 10 seconds, with a 100 ton mech that has a maximum of 307 Armor and 152 structure.

This would require critical components to have health of 5 or less, preferably around 2 health or less for an ideal level of fragility which even then they'll tank fairly well with reduced crit chances.

Weapons would then, in a 5 or 10 second time slice delivery:

• Your average LRM missile does 1 damage per missile, with a single firing per time slice.
  
• Average SRM does 2 damage per missile, in a single firing per time slice.
  
• (Note both IS and Clan LRMs and SRMs have launcher variants that can affect many attributes from tracking strength, reload time, lock on time, etc. but we'll never see that level of good depth in a PGI-made game).
  
• Average IS ML does 5 damage in 1 time slice, with an average of 3 shots. (1.67 damage per shot, identical to the lower end of potential damage delivered by the 120mm Kali-Yama Big Bore AC/20 mentioned in my post. At 3 heat that's 1 heat per shot.)
  
• Clan ER ML does about 7 damage in 4 shots (1.75, slightly more front loaded, but in 4 shots its 5 heat is 1.25 per shot)
  
• Canonically, pulse lasers are "laser machine guns" which is why they have their increased accuracy potential. This also means their higher than normal heat is more spread over time as these would be DPS weapons. It has once been admitted that pulse lasers if they were to perfectly hit the same place with every shot, would do nearly twice their stated damage; however first Battletech novelist William H Keith admits that the pulse lasers he described would never be that accurate considering their high shot counts and "how small and fast Battlemechs are."
  
  • (Note Battlemechs are meant to range at less than 15 meters tall, the MWO Centurion is taller than Battletech 3050's tallest mech, the Executioner, at 14.7 meters tall; the Atlas is 17 meters tall in MWO, and barely more than 13 meters tall in Battletech with canonical issues of space limiting most variants to a 'side pack fast-fire' variant of LRM-20 that lobs "4 volleys of 5 missiles at a time over 10 seconds.").
• PPCs would literally be just one shot per time slice. Canonical differences seem to be in the firing delay. For example a Lord's Light is about 2 second charge, burning about 6 heat in the charge, leaving 4 heat for the actual firing. Noteworthy for its almost blinding glare during the charging sequence. (Switch off field inhibitor to fire instantly, at risk of weapon feedback and unit damage).
  
  • Another example is the Ceres Arms Smasher is known for a fairly quick charge (though not as quick as the Kinslaughter), the actual heat generated for the charge is in the range of 30% of its total heat (meaning 3 units of heat) leaving the remaining 7 heat for firing.
    
  • Canonically the longer the firing delay, the more favorable it was for single heatsink fire support mechs that use it (i.e. the Panther, Vindicator, others). This is because it gave the heatsinks more time to sink the heat into their threshold (rated at 1 unit per 10 seconds per single heatsink -- this is meant to express that a single heatsink can handle 1 unit of heat's absorption and dissipation in 10 seconds, going beyond this on that one heatsink risks it melting as per the heatsink taxation rule), instead of the Mech/Reactor's threshold (30 units guarantees shutdown). It is expressly stated that these are separate thresholds, not combined as per MWO's current standard. That means 30 heat at once and you're powered off at 100% heat. This would clearly make longer charging delays more favorable for single heatsink and multi-PPC builds. Nothing states that the charge cannot be held, so long as there's some miniscule heat penalty for doing it [0.5 heat per second of holding it seems fair to me).
    
  • It is worth noting that some PPCs, such as the Starcutter, are known for having a weaker 'kinetic' impact and relying more on the stream of heated particles to cause damage. This opens up a lot of 'play' room for PPC variations beyond charge times and explosion risks.
• ER PPCs have the merit of virtually no firing delay. The downfall is that a single ER PPC is going to generate 50% of your mech's threshold in one firing, meaning you would never fire more than one at a time. Even so with proper double heatsinks, you can mathematically chain fire 4 ER PPCs with only some risk of ammunition explosion; and that risk depends on how much of a delay you put between shots. Meaning a Stock Masakari is perfectly viable.
  
• Your typical autocannon would deliver damage per bullet based on its caliber and NOT its type. (Example a 120mm AC fires 3 to 4 shots per second, with a firing time of as long as it takes to get damage at 1.67 [rounded] damage per bullet.. A 120mm AC of ANY type would clearly outclass lasers by a significant margin.) Do not forget, however, that how much damage it delivers per time slice is determined by its type. So an AC/5 might deliver a single second's volley of 3 rounds at 1.67 damage per shot, that's 5 damage in 1 second (versus the Ichiba medium laser doing 2.5 damage in one second with a few seconds delay before the next shot).

So I digress... Autocannons would be quite superior to laser weapons. Still, if it says 5 damage for its rating, they will botb be equal in a time slice. One would just deliver it faster and better than the other. Far as variants between weapons, Battletech has every one of our preferences covered. Prefer quick hits with pop-and-squat tactics? Go for the quicker, more front loaded variants with longer reload/recharge times. Aim kinda sucks or prefer to shoot at longer ranges against smaller targets? Go for the DPS-oriented builds to be able to keep the fire going. Or more into the duke 'em out brawling? Take whatever suits the way you want to play best! You can even mix it up!



Now... "What about quirks? They kinda do this already! My Hunchback can fire in 3 seconds while Joe Smoe's AC/20 has to wait 4 seconds!" Well one quirks have made the game quite stale. Paul has stated (paraphrased) that they have brought significant power creep into the game and are getting out of hand. And I've been saying that from before we got them.

That said, we come to point two. What if instead of "quirks", the mech variant you chose also decided what selection of variants you had access to?

I've been thinking this one out for years.

Edited by Koniving, 28 October 2015 - 07:11 AM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

@Hotthedd and Greyhart:

I really like the idea of making each weapon perform uniquely. Its fun, adds variety and improves meaningful player choice.

But I think it needs to be carefully considered.

One particular point I agree with is the heat adjustment for lasers (especially Clan lasers). For reasons that are relatively obvious to anyone who is mildly objective.

One particular point I disagree with is the global on Gauss. And I disagree on principle that you should be able to fire all the weapon you can bring.

Even with unique weapon characteristics, it doesn't absolutely solve the alpha problem.

The more I think about it, the more I like the Multi-Point Reticle. (And I'm not actually the great of a shot, so it would give me plenty of hassle, no doubt!)

It does a lot of what CoF would do, but retains the pinpoint that so many people are afraid to lose. It also indirectly mimics convergence, you just have to "manually" converge. Finally, unique weapon characteristics used in combination accentuate these aspects.

[Karl Streiger]

Koniving, on 28 October 2015 - 06:55 AM, said:

***
can i have this game?
***

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 28 October 2015 - 06:57 AM, said:

I really like the idea of making each weapon perform uniquely. Its fun, adds variety and improves meaningful player choice.

But I think it needs to be carefully considered.

Of course but its possible - weapons have enough parameters to tweak. and because you have one constant - damage over time segment it could not ran out of hand (for example the LPL WVR-6K, or the current IS ER Laser or the PPC of 2013)

Edited by Karl Streiger, 28 October 2015 - 07:07 AM.

[Inflatable Fish]

Koniving, on 28 October 2015 - 06:55 AM, said:

Clan ballistics are considered bad because with burst times + reload times, you're looking at over 5 seconds to reload and fire a Clan AC/20 while most IS mechs are quirked to fire AC/20s in as little as 3 seconds with a single impact.

This means that a Clan AC/20 would fire 3x in 10 seconds (60 damage, spread). The AC/20 on non-quirked mechs fires 3x in 8 seconds (0, 4, 8), and quirked it can fire 3x in 6 seconds (0, 3, 6), meaning 4X 20 damage in less than 10 seconds (80 damage, front loaded!)
See an issue?

Now consider that in terms of lore, Clan UACs may have similar calibers, but the definition of "Ultra mode" is to shoot twice as fast at the risk of jamming. If you dig through the lore, the IS can do this with regular autocannons by firing twice as often with "Automatic" AC types over the "Burst" types. The issue is that regular ACs are more likely to jam when stressing them than UACs, and since jamming is permanent it's clearly a big 'no no'.

Either way, the regular ACs are going to be better for the IS; all it takes is better firing counts or shorter reload times.

Far as all other weapons, did you read the part about lasers?
Specifically Hellion V's. Sure, 0.2 seconds. But 4 uses across 5 or 10 seconds to get 5 damage out of a single laser. That's shooting 4 times with pauses in between for recharging. Where the Ichiba laser is a short beam of about a second with maybe 2 uses. Sure, the Hellion V is better at pinpoint front loaded damage exactly where you want it (assuming you can hit the target in a quick fire fight) with 1.25 damage in a near instant burst. But imagine a 2 second recharge giving you about 4 shots in 8.8 seconds for 5 damage total. And sure the Ichiba will put more damage down the line with a longer exposure time (2.5 damage in 1 second), it also would have a longer recharge time (say 3 seconds), delivering 5 damage in 8 seconds. (We can change it to closer to the 5 second standard but this is going for the 10 second standard).

The sole known "single shot" medium laser out of over 60+ variants is the Rassal Blue Beam, which is a blue beamed medium laser that has a firing delay (charge time), a 0.1 second burn time, has the following Design Quirks: Poor Cooling Jacket (generates 4 heat instead of 3), Difficult to Maintain (bad repair and rearm quality), and EM Interference (This Quirk indicates that one of the energy weapons on the unit in question suffers from poor electromagnetic shielding, resulting in firing that weapon causing interference in other equipment on the unit. In game terms, this interference means that affected electronic systems cannot function in the round after a weapon affected by the EM Interference Quirk fires. The range of equipment affected by this electromagnetic interference all features delicate electronics, and includes: any Active Probe, Artemis IV or Artemis V Fire Control Systems, any form of C³ system, NARC, MASC, the Cockpit Command Console, the Chameleon Light Polarization System, the Blue Shield system, any Electronic Warfare equipment, Streak Launchers, the MRM Fire Control System, Null Signature Systems, Superchargers, the Void Siganture System and any form of Stealth Armor. It should be noted that this may have occurred to the Archer in the "Phantom Mech" event.) (quoted from Sarna's EM Interference.)

Now short of missiles, which will have longer and more realistic reloading times of one use per 5 or 10 seconds, PPCs which the variants are more into charge time differences than shot counts, and finally Gauss Rifles which are (short of the Behemoth's 30 ton Gauss Rifle with two sets of crits for a single 2 shot barrel), 1 shot = 15 damage...which would also have painfully slow reload times...

We're looking at a game where a medium laser would deliver about 5 damage in roughly 7 to 10 seconds, with a 100 ton mech that has a maximum of 307 Armor and 152 structure.

This would require critical components to have health of 5 or less, preferably around 2 health or less for an ideal level of fragility which even then they'll tank fairly well with reduced crit chances.

Weapons would then, in a 5 or 10 second time slice delivery:

• Your average LRM missile does 1 damage per missile, with a single firing per time slice.
  
• Average SRM does 2 damage per missile, in a single firing per time slice.
  
• (Note both IS and Clan LRMs and SRMs have launcher variants that can affect many attributes from tracking strength, reload time, lock on time, etc. but we'll never see that level of good depth in a PGI-made game).
  
• Average IS ML does 5 damage in 1 time slice, with an average of 3 shots. (1.67 damage per shot, identical to the lower end of potential damage delivered by the 120mm Kali-Yama Big Bore AC/20 mentioned in my post. At 3 heat that's 1 heat per shot.)
  
• Clan ER ML does about 7 damage in 4 shots (1.75, slightly more front loaded, but in 4 shots its 5 heat is 1.25 per shot)
  
• Canonically, pulse lasers are "laser machine guns" which is why they have their increased accuracy potential. This also means their higher than normal heat is more spread over time as these would be DPS weapons. It is admitted that pulse lasers if they were to perfectly hit the same place with every shot, would do nearly twice their stated damage; however first Battletech novelist William H Keith admits that pulse lasers will never be that accurate considering their high shot counts,
  
• PPCs would literally be just one shot per time slice. Canonical differences seem to be in the firing delay. For example a Lord's Light is about 2 second charge, burning about 6 heat in the charge, leaving 4 heat for the actual firing. Noteworthy for its almost blinding glare during the charging sequence. (Switch off field inhibitor to fire instantly, at risk of weapon feedback and unit damage). The Ceres Arms Smasher is known for a fairly quick charge (though not as quick as the Kinslaughter), the actual heat generated for it is actually in the range of 30% of its total heat (meaning 3) leaving the remaining 7 heat for the actual firing.
  
  • Canonically the longer the firing delay, the more favorable it was for single heatsink fire support mechs that use it (i.e. the Panther, Vindicator, others). This is because it gave the heatsinks more time to sink the heat into their threshold (rated at 1 unit per 10 seconds per single heatsink -- this is meant to express that a single heatsink can handle 1 unit of heat's absorption and dissipation in 10 seconds, going beyond this on that one heatsink risks it melting as per the heatsink taxation rule), instead of the Mech/Reactor's threshold (30 units guarantees shutdown). It is expressly stated that these are separate thresholds, not combined as per MWO's current standard. That means 30 heat at once and you're powered off at 100% heat. This would clearly make longer charging delays more favorable for single heatsink and multi-PPC builds. Nothing states that the charge cannot be held, so long as there's some miniscule heat penalty for doing it [0.5 heat per second of holding it seems fair to me).
    
  • It is worth noting that some PPCs, such as the Starcutter, are known for having a weaker 'kinetic' impact and relying more on the stream of heated particles to cause damage. This opens up a lot of 'play' room for PPC variations beyond charge times and explosion risks.
• Your typical autocannon would deliver damage per bullet based on its caliber and NOT its type. (Example a 120mm AC fires 3 to 4 shots per second, with a firing time of as long as it takes to get damage at 1.67 [rounded] damage per bullet.. A 120mm AC of ANY type would clearly outclass lasers by a significant margin.) Do not forget, however, that how much damage it delivers per time slice is determined by its type. So an AC/5 might deliver a single second's volley of 3 rounds at 1.67 damage per shot, that's 5 damage in 1 second (versus the Ichiba medium laser doing 2.5 damage in one second with a few seconds delay before the next shot).

So I digress... Autocannons would be quite superior to laser weapons. Still, if it says 5 damage for its rating, they will botb be equal in a time slice. One would just deliver it faster and better than the other. Far as variants between weapons, Battletech has every one of our preferences covered. Prefer quick hits with pop-and-squat tactics? Go for the quicker, more front loaded variants with longer reload/recharge times. Aim kinda sucks or prefer to shoot at longer ranges against smaller targets? Go for the DPS-oriented builds to be able to keep the fire going. Or more into the duke 'em out brawling? Take whatever suits the way you want to play best! You can even mix it up!





Now... "What about quirks? They kinda do this already! My Hunchback can fire in 3 seconds while Joe Smoe's AC/20 has to wait 4 seconds!" Well one quirks have made the game quite stale. Paul has stated (paraphrased) that they have brought significant power creep into the game and are getting out of hand. And I've been saying that from before we got them.

That said, we come to point two. What if instead of "quirks", the mech variant you chose also decided what selection of variants you had access to?

I've been thinking this one out for years.

it's all well and good if we're talking about a turn based game, where during your turn time essentially stops and stuff like the method of delivering damage are no more than lore junkie fodder because the result, i.e. the damage you deal, is exactly the same.

but this is a real time game. even if we were to introduce weapon variants and different ways of applying damage (I don't even want to think how many game systems would have to be rewritten and added!), only the few variants with the shortest damage delivery times would be used in the "meta", making all those dozens of others obsolete and mechs limited to the suboptimal weapon variants would be overlooked in high level play. so in effect, in all the words you wrote above, you just reinvented the frontload damage meta. congratulations?

e: to illustrate my point, let's assume the Medium Laser is the most efficient weapon in game.

as it is now, most mechs can equip a reasonable number of MLs. so the few that can't would be considered subpar.

with what you propose, among X Medium Laser variants, the one manufactured by Y has the shortest burn time. all mechs that can't equip the Manufacturer Y Medium Laser are suddenly subpar.

with your approach, you're adding complexity to the game, and at the same time aggravating the problem that is elitism and the existence of only a handful of "metamechs".

Edited by Inflatable Fish, 28 October 2015 - 08:14 AM.

[Koniving]

Karl Streiger, on 28 October 2015 - 07:04 AM, said:

Can I have this game?

Some day, some day. On a side note once the custom weapons handler that was being worked on for Megamek (the unofficial online tabletop) goes through, I'm going to take the variants list I have already and start implementing it into megamek, as well as 'fluffing' out the unknown variants (the ones where the specifics are either broken, partially available, or never described) so that I can experience this in Megamek. I'll be very eager to find players to play it with as it will be a lot of work to kit out the mechs with them.

Side note: You'll find that Victors will be very interesting, since the Pontiac 100 is expressly stated to be a "100 shot" autocannon 20. Meaning in a ton of ammunition instead of 5 'shots', you will have '500'. With 100 spent per use. Of course this means that each shot deals 0.2 damage. Though here is where Battletech's description of weapons will come in handy. Autocannons are sorted into "generic" categories with approximate damage, heat, etc. This means something with an exceptionally high DPS-style shot count may have other features going for it, including any of the following: a little higher than rated damage, a little less overall heat, possibly no 'reload' time for changing between cassettes (after all and I quote: "Some mechs are known to spit out cassettes as almost as quickly as they spit out shells.").

Of course if I was designing a first person Battletech simulator, recoil would also be a factor in variants. Lower recoil makes for tighter shot groupings. Higher recoil would make you thankful for more time between shots to help counter the effects. Then again, if you go canonically about the differences between an AC/5 and an AC/10 of the same caliber, the AC/10 just shoots faster and as such has more recoil, resulting in decreased accurate range.

(I would also put more emphasis in the difference of 'burst' and 'automatic' autocannons. Burst meaning it fires either the full or chunk of the load in a single pull where automatic allows you to fire at any time. In my current design burst fire mechs can churn firepower out much quicker, but has to wait for cassette swapping; which if your burst lasted 1 second, that means the rest of the time slice you will be waiting for it to reload and hear the beautiful sounds of the loading process...while being helpless. And if you're using an automatic it may take (3 or 4)/5ths of a time slice to deliver the full payload of rated damage, but given the DPS-oriented weapon you have both the ability to fire at any time -- no stalling delays of being helpless -- and you could 'over-fire' at the risk of jamming, meaning you could stack up damage higher than your weapon's rating.

Inflatable Fish, on 28 October 2015 - 07:07 AM, said:

but this is a real time game. even if we were to introduce weapon variants and different ways of applying damage (I don't even want to think how many game systems would have to be rewritten and added!), only the few variants with the shortest damage delivery times would be used in the "meta", making all those dozens of others obsolete and mechs limited to the suboptimal weapon variants would be overlooked in high level play. so in effect, in all the words you wrote above, you just reinvented the frontload damage meta. congratulations?

e: to illustrate my point, let's assume the Medium Laser is the most efficient weapon in game.

as it is now, most mechs can equip a reasonable number of MLs. so the few that can't would be considered subpar.

with what you propose, among X Medium Laser variants, the one manufactured by Y has the shortest burn time. all mechs that can't equip the Manufacturer Y Medium Laser are suddenly subpar.

with your approach, you're feding elitism and minmaxing instead of fixing it.

This is actually designed with real time in mind, and is actually impossible to properly implement all the niches in a take turn game. In fact in order to test it with Megamek, I would need simultaneous movement/attack phases enabled along with double blind, and even then it won't account for everything.

This is however using the design mechanics of games such as Battlefield 3, BF Bad Company 2, and similar non-Call-of-Duty games. That is to say it is using the mechanics of real time games, to build a real time game using the real time lore of a turn-based game based on "Summaries of events that occurred within 10 seconds."

In your example, the shortest burn time would have the most unforgiving heat build up in that shortest amount of time, in addition to the slowest recharge time. Lets assume it is a Hellion V at 0.2 second beam time with 4 shots to deliver full damage, and you stacked on 10 of them (it's a nice even number). Since 4 shots = 5 damage, you now have 10 weapons that in 0.2 seconds and a single firing can produce 4 shots / 5 damage = 1.25 damage per shot * 10 Hellion V medium lasers = 12.5 per volley. That's at the heat of 4 shots / 3 heat = 0.75 heat per laser * 10 lasers = 7.5 heat. Kinda manageable, though if we put the system in fully in 2 seconds you'll deliver another volley of 7.5 heat, then 2 more seconds another volley of 7.5 heat... by now even with lots of cooling you're hitting the earliest levels of weapon lockdown risk (because according to the cockpit section of the tech manual weapons will LOCK out at specific levels of heat, requiring override. A shutdown however is NOT overrideable and must be sat through until at 14 units of heat, which is 46.67% heat.)

That's assuming 10 seconds as a rough 'time slice'. If we use 5 seconds, you'd overheat very quickly with 1 second in between. Yes it'd be a devastating joke build. But meta? Maybe in larger numbers but on its own you're looking at 50 damage in a time slice if every hit is perfect and that 0.1 second miss will devastate your damage output.

In MWO in 8 seconds, with 10 ML you'd produce 150 damage.
With my idea, in 8.8 seconds those same 10 Zap fire Hellion V lasers produce 50 damage, even with incredibly short beam times, against mechs with half the structure/armor we have now.

1x structure armor against 50 damage in 8.8 seconds

Or 2x structure armor against 150 damage in 8 seconds.

Take your pick.

Lets stick with the 10 second time slice for now. That gives you the most 'min/max' for your buck. Now factor in that you have a 2 second delay, and your 10 Hellion V MLs is confronted by a single douchebag sporting twin AC/20s. You've delivered 12.5 and must wait 2 seconds. That set of Kali-Yama Big Bore AC/20s needs 4 seconds to deliver 40 damage and be ready to strike again. You need 8.8 seconds to deliver 50 damage and be ready to strike again. He'll dish out 80 damage with his 4 second auto-fire guns, in less time than your 50 total, even if your weapons only need 0.2 seconds per volley.

But don't worry, it's meta to have the shortest beam time! And foolish to not supplement it with backup weaponry.

The difference between a Zap Laser (actually called a Burst Laser; akin to Star Wars blasters) and a Beam Laser (akin to Star Trek phasers) is reducing the load of heat as well as allowing for compensation of errors. Is your target not where you fired? Adjust your aim. You can't really do this with a burst laser, but a beam laser can with ease. It is actually the real reason lasers are so effective in MWO. It is also why twisting is super effective against MWO's IS Autocannons, but not so good against IS Lasers. If you twist and throw a useless limb in the way of a single impact, bam it's done, get back to shooting. Do it against lasers, and that damage is still gonna hit your soft spots. Then again sometimes that's a good thing... and sometimes it isn't.

Now if you meant the shortest time to deliver full damage, then lets take a look at missiles, PPCs, or the Gauss Rifle.

Okay, PPC. Lets go with the Ceres Arms Smasher for the shortest charge time. Oh look at that, the short charge time means more front loaded heat, and one PPC's total heat is 1/3rd of your mech's tolerance. You brought two. Even if heat wasn't an issue, the fact that you're looking at a short charge time means a LONG cooldown time. Lets say it's one second to charge the weapon AND that you can hold the charge indefinitely. Fire, and you're looking at 9 seconds of helplessness. Chain firing is an option, helps space things out so you're not as helpless. Also good when missing is a possibility. But is risking 2/3rds of your heat worth it? A 5 second time slice will allow you to shoot faster, but we know PGI would keep the heat scale at 1x, and so you'd still have to wait about 10 seconds to cool enough to fire again without shutting down in many cases.

SRMs, LRMs -- same issue. Fire, and it'll be about 9 seconds of helplessness. Sure you can stack on multiple, and either fire all at once for something devastating... or chain fire it to keep yourself in the fight. Don't forget that ideally "1 or 2" HP per critical component means that weapons and ammo are easy to destroy. And with a Hunchback's internals at 83 instead of MWO's 175 before quirks and 191 structure after quirks... that's pretty devastating to have an ammo explosion equal to your remaining ammunition's worth. After all 1 ton of SRM ammo is 100 missiles, 200 damage. A single ton of LRMs is 120 missiles, 120 damage.

And that Gauss Rifle? C'mon now.. Charge up, plus volatile, plus roughly 9 to 10 seconds between shots.

Meta in your mind is a fragile glass cannon that is once and done. And in real time, it doesn't matter how much power a single shot has if it can't hit the target. And when there's more than one target, your meta is worthless.

Beyond that, as mentioned in my response to Karl in this same post, weapon categories are a little "loose," and so more DPS-oriented weapons would have other benefits such as higher than rated damage potential (compensating for misses and spread), more availability to fire (if I can fire more often than you, then I have an advantage even if your shots are stronger).
This example demonstrates that alpha ability means nothing versus the ability to keep firing. No amount of torso twisting can defend against a constant barrage. As we all know, the Tortoise won because he could keep going where the Hare took a nap. In this case, "faster to deliver" weapons will have longer wait times, as all weapons of X category are intended to have similar results in a time slice.

Between lower health, lower overall damage potential, etc., you'll also see a lot more standard engines in the field, which will be in direct opposition to meta-fielded burst fire autocannons (for the rapid damage potential they have in burst models between reloads). The occasional Gauss / PPC / missile boat that exclusively mounts one type of weapon will be akin to closed beta's 6 PPC Awesome -- a joke build and glass cannon.

Take note of how different the gameplay style is with such a style implemented; I'm able to keep up a constant attack while dishing out commands to the entire company via battlegrid, relentlessly striking at high alpha builds with DPS.

Edit:
Last addition

Ancient, before I learned that the Chemjet Gun is 4 shots instead of 3 (got the 3 from the image shown suggesting variants from Schrottfrosch). As per my suggestions in the description, we'd drop the single shot ACs altogether (at least above AC/2). Or alternatively, decrease the DPS of the single shot.

Edited by Koniving, 28 October 2015 - 08:44 AM.

[Hotthedd]

Koniving, a "Like" button just isn't enough sometimes....

[Koniving]

Hotthedd, on 28 October 2015 - 08:22 AM, said:

Koniving, a "Like" button just isn't enough sometimes....

Thank you. Sadly in all seriousness, we know that PGI will never do this as it would have needed to be a key design from the very beginning as it will quite frankly flip the entire game upside down, restoring the closed beta feel of my favorite description of an MWO closed beta match. "It was just breath taking, watching two Atlases with glowing eyes exchanging blows like battleships. Just seeing the beating these things take made me a little terrified to even join the fray. I still can't believe their brawl lasted almost 2 minutes, the rest of us having all stopped to watch."

For a little bit of fun and bit of an idea of the cohesion of weapon variants, check out this breakdown of stock Atlases. There is only a hint of pulled-from-my-backside fluff in the mix to fill in a blank or two. Still it's worth a look. (Also Boar's Head is based on Danielle's loadout, and another hero's paintjob and not just Danielle's Atlas). The Atlas MLs are the base line I use for medium lasers.

[Caballo]

Greyhart, on 22 October 2015 - 05:15 AM, said:

The problem as I understand it (and I believe this is the consensus) is the ability to place a large amount of damage (over 30 points give or take) on to a single part of the opponents mech. This is known as pin point damage.

This problem is mostly evident in lasers as they have no travel time and no other draw backs. However gauss and ballistics also can do high alpha damage.

PGI have tested an idea on lasers being the requirement to lock on to do full damage and adjusting range without lock on. This doesn't address other weapons, but I assume the test was focused on lasers only not balancing weapons overall.

A lot has been written on these forums about solutions to this problem. The main one that appears to have good support is convergence.

Convergence may or may not be workable in the game. It does however appear unlikely to be considered by PGI as it was in the beta and discarded. Therefore I am not including it as an option in the poll because it would likely win and that would not give room for other ideas.

I have therefore tried to put the main ideas that get brought up in the poll (other than convergence)

So please complete the poll and make further suggestions.

You know what? I've been reading this very discussion since there wasn't even an alpha for the game. Back in 2011, one of the hot topics was speculating with how the damage detection would be, and, of course, a lot of people came with this idea of the "Pinpoint damage". It always has its detractors, and its supporters.

With the years and the different stages the game passed, there was always something for the losing guys to moan about:

-First it was the falling mechanics (It was taken out of the game due to the complaints).

-Then it was the headshots to several mechs, like the atlas (modified hitboxes, now try to get a headshot in any mech, so it counts as taken out to me, due to the complaints).

-Then it came out the "Poptarting" wars, (which brought us the broken gauss mechanics, the ghost heat, and the camera shake due to the complaints).

-Then people begun to point fingers to the ghost heat they brought in due to the complaints, because it was a game killer...

-Then people blamed the camerashake of the mess they were in. It was adjusted to a useless "Blimp!" due to complaints.

-Even now, with this last patch, we've had our maximum weights modified when we are playing as a group (In a team game, which is ridiculous to me, and 12 men groups already had a limit of 3-3-3-3) due to complaints.

-etcétera, etcétera, etcétera, pinpoint damage... back to square one.

After all this time, i've found out that players LOSING because of their inhability to learn how to play the game correctly push it up the devs' butts in the forums, and then look for something else to complain about. This is not "Creative criticism", this is plain and simple MOANING.

Enjoy your nerfed game.

Edited by Caballo, 28 October 2015 - 10:18 AM.

[Hotthedd]

Caballo, on 28 October 2015 - 09:59 AM, said:

You know what? I've been reading this very discussion since there wasn't even an alpha for the game. Back in 2011, one of the hot topics was speculating with how the damage detection would be, and, of course, a lot of people came with this idea of the "Pinpoint damage". It always has its detractors, and its supporters.

With the years and the different stages the game passed, there was always something for the losing guys to moan about:

-First it was the falling mechanics (It was taken out of the game due to the complaints).

-Then it was the headshots to several mechs, like the atlas (modified hitboxes, now try to get a headshot in any mech, so it counts as taken out to me, due to the complaints).

-Then it came out the "Poptarting" wars, (which brought us the broken gauss mechanics, the ghost heat, and the camera shake due to the complaints).

-Then people begun to point fingers to the ghost heat they brought in due to the complaints, because it was a game killer...

-Then people blamed the camerashake of the mess they were in. It was adjusted to a useless "Blimp!" due to complaints.

-Even now, with this last patch, we've had our maximum weights modified when we are playing as a group (In a team game, which is ridiculous to me, and 12 men groups already had a limit of 3-3-3-3) due to complaints.

-etcétera, etcétera, etcétera, pinpoint damage...

After all this time, i've found out that players LOSING because of their inhability to learn how to play the game correctly push it up the devs' butts in the forums, and then look for something else to complain about. This is not "Creative criticism", this is plain and simple MOANING.

Enjoy your nerfed game.

Believe it or not, but some people just want the game to be more "sim" and less arcade, not because they cannot do well in arcade mode, but because they would like to see a better, more challenging game.

[Caballo]

Hotthedd, on 28 October 2015 - 10:13 AM, said:

Believe it or not, but some people just want the game to be more "sim" and less arcade, not because they cannot do well in arcade mode, but because they would like to see a better, more challenging game.

Yeah, maybe. Some of us, on the other side, don't like to use the demagogy...

[Karl Streiger]

Caballo had made a good point. Complains were always a part of the game - sometimes the complains were right - die for 32k - and sometimes simple because people didn't adapt.
Gauss Cat - as the first offener.
And i have also a history to moan.
It's a pitty that mechs can't stumble any more - and i freaking hate ECM. I don't think that the heat scale is a good system because simple math could do the same - i love rnr and logistics. And hell i love complex Mechs - today i did ride my Dire Wolf for the first time - and it was somehow funny to see my oponents as clueless as I was how to handle that beast (LRMs TAG AP Erppcs Uac20 MPLAS)

Koniving's ideas are precisious the stuff i want to play with - don't bother just about AC5 or Ac2 but also about its type Armstrong, Whirlwind, Imperator??
Mwtactics had made this one thing right - several different manufactures - and the options are available - but hell Pgi is not even willing to normalize the spread of their missiles or the beam duration

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

@Koniving:

Great ideas! But, absolutely true that it won't happen. Just too complex and it would basically be a different game.

In the mean time, I want the devs to fix this one.

[Karl Streiger]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 28 October 2015 - 10:56 PM, said:

@Koniving:

Great ideas! But, absolutely true that it won't happen. Just too complex and it would basically be a different game.

In the mean time, I want the devs to fix this one.

To complex?
We live in the 21st century - computers can calculate those changes in no time.
It does not only add new stuff, it also shows the way to "fight" the FLD - win

The path: split the damage delivery of smaller weapons in to smaller packages. Force the guy with his 4 Small Lasers to hit the other guy more often to deal even the same damage of the bigger weapon.

Add heat modification: the heat goes exponential up for range and damage per shot.
you can also tweak the ranges - it don't have to be 270/540m for MLAS only.
But range should always be inverse to damage - for example consider a Martel MOD 5 Laser (Shadow Hawk) it would be good to have more range for this weapon. To achieve that the effective range is reduced towards 200 and the max range goes up to 610m - it deals exactly the same damage as the current MWO Laser - so you don't even have to increase heat or modify burn duration or damage or other values - but you have another MediumLaser that behave different.

I had a similar idea in 2013 a complete weapon tweak - creating at least 3 weapons per type (standard; FLD; DPS) - and i dropped the idea of linear damage ramps.



here the steps i did take in may 2013:
The MWO Large Laser is the big ramp
I did compare TT possible damage values using the systems TW and S7
after that i tried to make the S7 values more like a curve
resulting in this nice blue curve - thats how damage should be applied
Anyhow based on those values i create a "better" MWO Large Laser Ramp

Edited by Karl Streiger, 29 October 2015 - 12:36 AM.

[Valfodur]

What has always frustrated me about the Mechwarrior games is this:

Why would hard mounted weapon systems located on different torsos every converge their fire? (World of Warships is a good example of this - the shots from those turrets never converge).

I could completely see the arm mounted weapons converging - but there is an inherent risk in mounting all your weapons in your arms for that benefit.

So that's my solution - end weapon convergence for hard mounted torso weaponry.

[ArchSight]

Koniving, on 28 October 2015 - 04:35 AM, said:

I agree that high pinpoint alphas are a problem, but not the problem. The real problem is actually high Front Loaded Alphas.

These are alpha strikes that deliver all of its damage to not just one spot -- but at the same instant.

An example being twin AC/20 -- punished unnecessarily by ghost heat -- because it is a weapon combination that can instantly kill ANY and EVERY single mech in the game with a single blow. Why can it do this? Because it takes the one flaw from tabletop while ignoring the lore. Autocannons are not front-loaded, unlike what tabletop would have us believe. This is because keeping track of weapon variants and rolling for as many hits as actual numbers fired...is a pain in the rear.

Your argument is missing a key point.

• Player tactical behavior

Player tactical behavior

Player's resort to alpha strikes to do their damage. Doing a alpha strike requires looking/aiming at the opposing mech. The length of time to aim at a mech when doing an alpha strike is dependent on the time the weapons take to fire. If their weapons take a second of time to fire they are staring a second at their target while firing when the other player is also staring if they take a second to fire causing them to both take pin point damage. If the player chooses to look away to spread that damage instead of firing they can have their chance to fire back taken away from them by cover and the fact that the other player can also resort to looking away.

Player's do not always fight alone because there is 11 other players to team up with. Just 4 players shooting one player's mech can core out an assault mech quickly.

Now apply this to your idea. You've taken out instant front loaded damage weapons so now all weapons have a longer firing time but do the same damage. The game already simulates this with lazer vomit boats fighting each other. Player's will take the shortest duration weapons they can to deliver high alpha strikes. You did not solve high alpha strike damage causing a lower time to kill.


Don't give me any lore or table top excuses. They are not fact in MechWarrior Online because PGI isn't 100% following them. Focus on what we want. A increased time to kill and what it would take to make that TTK balanced in MWO.

[Karl Streiger]

ArchSight, on 29 October 2015 - 02:21 AM, said:

Now apply this to your idea. You've taken out instant front loaded damage weapons so now all weapons have a longer firing time but do the same damage. The game already simulates this with lazer vomit boats fighting each other. Player's will take the shortest duration weapons they can to deliver high alpha strikes. You did not solve high alpha strike damage causing a lower time to kill.

Its ok they can do. But short duration most alpha strike have to be paid: with range; heat and reload

With a less forbidding heat system - maybe even the possibility that items can break/jam when heat is extensive (heat sinks at the beginning - weapons in the end) - you can deliver serious damage with...those Blue Beam PP Lasers in non existent period of time.
But if you do this firing say 10 lasers heat will kill your movement - kill recharge rate maybe even reduce your ability to dissipate this extra heat.

and the second part of this idea:
split the damage per shot - more splitting for smaller weapons. A large laser may deal 8-10times the damage in the same moment of any Medium Laser.

That will kill Lights?
No not automatically - because Lights should be hard to hit. And currently the only real armor for lights were their lag shield. Its not very hard to turn and shoot a crossing light mech with even a Assault.
With a short beam heavy hitting Large Laser outgunning a 8 Small Laser Light - it doesn't look promessing for the Light Harassers.

BUT if you reduce the mobility of heavier units - it may become harder to follow a light - so a classical bear vs cat - the light with 8 Small Laser may fire a hundred times to deal significant damage - while the heavy may need one or two hits - but with a good system the heavy may need help anyhow.
Simple because his heat goes up with each shot of the large laser - while our circling light did use the lowest damage weapons with great rof - that don't stresses its heatsinks so much in a single volley

Edited by Karl Streiger, 29 October 2015 - 02:37 AM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

@Karl Streiger:

Preface: You did notice that I said it was a good idea, right?

Main Post:

The reason I say it is too complex is the breadth of it and the number of man-hours it would need to implement.

PGI is a business, they want a simple and effective solution to solve their current and future problems. Costs are a big part of this and man-hours are the most expensive part of any business.

Those solutions that require new programming or extensive modification of current programming or those that require a lot of manual input time are likely out of the question.

Those solutions that are within the mechanics of the current game are the best option and the quickest, too. They also have the added bonus of not disrupting gameplay familiarity.

Thus I refer you to my above suggestions of normalized 1:1 ratios for weapon stats, reworking heat caps and cooling efficiency, and reconciling pinpoint accuracy with preventing high-value alpha's via the Multi-point reticle.

All these suggestions sit within the game structure as it is now.