Brandarr Gunnarson, on 29 October 2015 - 03:05 AM, said:
@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.
I did notice it .
but the work for such a system is the planing - the implementation.... well is a matter of a working day - simple modify the weapon.xml - has all values from beam duration over kinetic impact, spread even the number of weapons that kick the heat scale.
Quote
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.
but there is no minimal invasive way to increase TTK and reducing the efficiency of FLD.
You need to spread damage - somehow - ways are:
cone; better heatsystem; forced chain fire; or splitting the damage of volleys into smaller ones; different convergence points (multi point reticle); fixed convergence based on effective range
each of them will change the game seriously - but on the other hand each of them or the combination of some - is a better solution over heat scale and ghost damage
What about cutting the dmg of all weapons to half and doubling ammo x ton?
Would almost double TTK with minimal effort.
keeping RoF and heat almost constant
Would indeed increase the TTK.
PPFLD would still be better - but the amount you can deliver is reduced: mistakes can be made without danger to get obliterated in 3seconds....can't decide.
Edited by Karl Streiger, 29 October 2015 - 06:03 AM.
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.
You seem to have missed something.
My example did include that the "meta" example I gave could work against a single target, but against against multiple targets it would be worthless. (This is true now, too). I do believe I even gave the stipulation that unless in the meta was in numbers it could work but this leaves the other problem... those high front loaded alpha attacks are still going to suffer long reload times, leaving openings.
The overall intention I have is also increasing time to kill, though the weapon variants idea implemented alone would actually cause MWO kills to take 5s to 10s of minutes for a single kill.
Spoiler
Currently, if you're using MWO's system a medium laser does 10 to 15 damage in the 'time slices' I'm speaking about (5 and 10 seconds respectively.
This means 10 medium lasers as used in my example would do 10 * 10 = 100 in 5 seconds counting both beam times, or 15 * 10 = 150 damage in 10 seconds (actually 9 counting both beam times). This is spread across 2 or 3 instances of 1 second each.
Thus it is 3 ratings per 1x times BT time slice, or 2 ratings per 1/2 BT time slice.
In the system I was describing, the Hellion V medium lasers with their short 0.2 second beam time, the beam time may be incredibly short as they are Burst variants, but do recall I mentioned it would be 1 rating of damage per time slice. That is if 10 seconds, you do 5 damage per laser and so at 10 lasers, you've done a total of 50 damage. That's it. Actually any laser variants would effectively do their rated damage or ever so slightly above or below it per time slice (either 10 or 5 seconds depending on what is actually done; the issue with a 5 second time slice is it makes DHS mandatory where 10 seconds does not).
1/3rd of the damage of MWO's current system in the same amount of time, and each time you fire the laser you're doing 1/4th of the alpha strike.
Players resort to alpha strikes because MWO allows this "Rare and dangerous tactic" to occur in the first place. Previous mechwarriors only allowed this through pre-creating a weapon group for it or hitting the alpha strike key. From experience in those games, alpha strikes were extremely unforgiving with only a few lasers. Even with double heatsinks firing as frequently as I do in MWO while playing MW3 was a quick way to explode...where in MWO in twice the amount of firing time I would see 49% heat with the same build. Don't forget, MW3 actually uses full double heatsinks with a cooling rate of 2 per DHS per 10 seconds. MWO only uses a cooling rate of 2 per engine-included DHS per 10 seconds and 1.4 per manually added DHS per 10 seconds. The build used 16 DHS, on a then-new Orion in MWO (as I have no skills unlocked) versus the Orion in MW3.
Considering that all damage is significantly lowered and the very few front-loaded weapons that would remain, even with 1x armor/structure the time to kill would be significantly lengthened.
For example where it might take 8 seconds for a player with twin AC/20s to kill a certain heavy. That's after delivering 120 damage.
In that same 8 seconds with what I proposed using a 10 second time slice, that 8 seconds would only have seen 40 damage delivered with varying amounts of spread (as few as 8 bullets of 4 damage each, or as many as 80 shots at 0.5 damage each [for a straight damage ratio, as also mentioned though the more DPS-oriented the more other features will improve it]).
Therefore, instead of 8 seconds for that kill you're now looking at around 16 seconds if the person is a perfect shot which we know that no one really is, so it'd be closer to 24 or 32 or even up to a minute to make that same kill... assuming no cover and just defensive antics. Now add use of urban cover in hit-and-run brawling to that TTK.
This, in turn, both warrants and encourages if not forces players to work together to take down enemies in more tactics-oriented combat. Especially true for heavy hitters like Gauss Rifles, PPCs, and Missiles. This is because some players are inclined to boat no matter how bad of an idea that is, requiring other players to take the role of defending them between shots.
Even so, heat restricts more than 1 ER PPC at a time (with a proper heat system; of the constant-rate [past MWs] and degrading rate cooling systems [more simulator-like, based on thermal laws] both would be pretty strict. The latter would allow you to fire two at once without immediately shutting down but after that you risk detonating ammo, stiffening the mech's actuators, even pilot troubles like heat-induced hallucinations [with my BT Simulator design; to simulate reduced accuracy by way of distractions, I am working on removing the dice rolls entirely] and finally, depending on how many heatsinks you have you also risk overtaxing them which would have them melt). Since even movement generates heat, strikes of 30 heat could lead to 'sitting duck' syndrome.
Standard PPCs are a little more forgiving but they are Inner Sphere only and in my design (admittedly for a Battletech simulator rather than MWO -- hence my original statement on the changes to MWO being astronomical) PPCs would require a charging time (removable by disabling the Field Inhibitor). Even so, three at the same time carries the risk of 2 ER PPCs. The Awesome 8Q in tabletop fires 2, 1, 2, 1 with 10 seconds in between for a reason for optimum coolness and accuracy. Any faster and the poor thing risks other issues.
Further on the high pinpoint alpha, the Gauss Rifles would also require a charge time, but only be permitted to charge one at a time. The charge can be held indefinitely -- however this is where the risk comes in. Since components have 2 or less HP, virtually any "crit" damage incurred on the rifle would cause it to detonate. I would restrict the charge to only one Gauss Rifle can be primed at any given time.
After all, if even the the largest UAC/20 available 203mm is restricted to 10 damage per bullet, a weapon delivering 15 damage is more than devastating enough. ER PPCs come with hefty penalties, Gauss Rifles just can't do it. I simply plan to restrict PPCs of all sorts, large lasers of all sorts and Gauss Rifles from working together and worst comes to worst I already have a design for a power draw system.
I might also add that between recoil and intent to use weapon "Accuracy" ranges to determine how well the weapon can converge as well as mech movement to influence weapon behavior and finally mech momentum to influence projectiles, pinpoint wouldn't be as much of an issue for the BT Simulator unless stationary and even then...kinda slim.
I do admit it would still have an issue in MWO even if PGI was competent enough to implement any of this. However with most of the front loaded nature removed, pinpoint would be a good thing rather than a bad thing.
My example against meta may have focused more on a one versus one, however this is because meta works best that way and thus the best demonstration of how it is debunked would be in one versus one. You start adding endurance to meta, and it debunks itself. Add superior numbers to meta and that's hardly an example as the ones singled out die quick and the ones not chosen may or may not win. It also opens up other factors like improper cornering, lack of sufficient 'back away' space, poor formations, etc which while they determine effectiveness it doesn't determine whether the "quickest burst of alpha" is the only playable option.
Karl Streiger, on 29 October 2015 - 02:31 AM, said:
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
If the difference is that drastic (8-10 times) (hundred times versus one or two) you are bound for a horrible experience.
Assuming the IS ER Large did 8 damage to its rating pure tabletop (instead of whatever it does), 4 damage per shot should be the highest, versus the highest potential (with no negative quirks) of a medium laser being 2.5 and lower potential being 1. I've been debating high ends on small lasers and I do see the stacking issue with doing full damage to which either an energy draw mechanic might be needed or limitations on hardpoints. For now 1.5 being the highest and 0.5 being the lowest with extremely short beam times. This would make the most extreme difference of the ER Large Laser to the small laser at exactly 8 times, with the small laser having quick 'zaps' and the ER Large Laser having more of a beam.
Definitely would never have something go "a hundred times," (except maybe the Pontiac 100, but channel that hundred shots into two single second spurts of 50 before reloading or knick them into bursts of '10' [as either hit detection or a single projectile that looks like 10 small ones), as it puts far too much strain on both the network code and the player.
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.
Thank you, and I agree it would be a very different game. Admittedly it's just some parts of the weapons portion (with subtle mention of other aspects) of a paper-design of a real time Battletech Simulator (instead of just another mechwarrior; the intention of this is to incorporate vehicles, infantry, conventional aircraft, aerotech fighters, dropships, bases with mechbays, and objectives).
I don't expect -- and would never have the confidence in -- PGI being able to do this. They are too far into development and as I said the changes would be astronomical and it would flip the game upside down. It would also flip my frown upside down too, into a smile.
Brandarr Gunnarson, on 29 October 2015 - 03:05 AM, said:
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.
All of which I thoroughly endorse. Though I had a different option to offer that can be and already is in MWO instead of the multi-point reticle system.
Consider this.. Take any mech, move at full speed and attack the ground with beam weaponry.
Take note of the "Damage" pattern. Usually a somewhat straight line, right?
Now switch to third person and repeat this process.
Take note of the damage pattern. That line bobs, weaves, even overlaps itself doesn't it?
In MWO first person, the weapons focus on a point that the "head" faces... The head is outside of physical space and unaffected by it. Climbing an incline? Inertia? Mech bob? Landing? Walking? Running? None of this affects the head or camera of first person because it is not attached to the body, it simply doesn't exist within physical space. Therefore your aim is always perfect.
In MWO third person, the crosshair is attached to the Cockpit. If the cockpit tilts, the aim is thrown off. If it bobs and weaves, the aim is thrown off. If you take a hit, the aim used to be thrown off (they undid this sadly).
What if the crosshair was attached to the placement of the third person Cockpit, with full mech animations in first person? Then attached the first person cockpit to the same place so that whatever happens to the mech's orientation affects the aim?
Instantly how you are moving will affect your accuracy. Does your mech bob a lot while running? Great idea, Stop Shooting While Running! Or, more importantly, "Time" your shots.
I use this Dual Gauss Jagermech as an example.
Watch the TAG beams in first and third person, take note of the huge difference in how first person they are "Still" and third person they "Bob."
The result wouldn't be dissimilar from this. And could make attacks firing up and down hill much more dynamic. (Second example.)
Ultimately it'd still have the token of "100%" skill, would not have the issue of multiple "reticles" or a cone of fire...but it would allow for "perfect pinpoint" without "perfect accuracy," if you get what I mean.
(If we could physically attach the camera to the mech in addition to attaching the first person cockpit to the third person mech, it would also allow us to remain in first person during knockdowns as well; akin to this; the emphasis being that the camera is attached to the character's face, so anything and everything I do has the camera follow it; laying down, getting knocked on the ground, etc. Also pardon the horrible role playing, just screwing around and making sure nothing suddenly explodes with a reinstalling of mods).
The problem are the weapons. The range should be more drastically implemented. Minimum range and maximum range. So a mixed build for close up to far is better then the boating only long range weapons guy.
So lets say some one has only long rang e weapons and he uses them on appropriate ranges he gets his high alpha. But should the only long range guy get in medium range he is only 50% effective and if he is very close its 25% or even less effective. The same way the other way around. ballistic weapons and LRM´s have the down side of ammo and secondary explosions so they can stay like they are or get a little tweaked.
We don't need more rules and gadgets. lets just use whats already in game. And effective range could be tweaked modified. Pilots need more skill and locking on and looking what the other guy has equipped gets more important then just press left mouse button and melt everything.
It's not a problem. I believe it so whole heartedly, that I didn't read anything from the prior 8 pages. This boat has already sailed and passed over the horizon. Used to be Gauss rifles had no delay, there was no ghost heat, UACs didn't jam, and missiles did twice the damage. It all got nerfed, and they kept the buffs to armor, which was doubled if I recall correctly. What we have today compared to what was is somewhat... tame. When the nerfs come for clan weapons, and they will... and when the rebalance to IS kills the quirk system, this discussion will be moot.
Remember, in the tabletop there was no heat buffer. None. You had a 30 point overheat scale that you could run into, yes but heat was generated and dealt with in the same 10 second turn. You wouldn't ever build up heat on a heat neutral 'Mech. The real time equivalent would be firing a PPC in a real time game, and having your 'Mech slowly absorb the heat at a rate of 1 heat per second over 10 seconds. So if you had 10 DHS you'd go from -2 h/s to -1 h/s and there would be no actual overheat.
The heat buffer exists ONLY to handle the concept of instant heat generation.
If the game took this into account you could limit alpha-striking by constricting the heat buffer and changing how much of a weapon's heat is front-loaded when a weapons fires and how much is built in over the recharge cycle.
Arbitrarily, say you start with a heat buffer of 10 for the 10 built in heat-sinks. Maybe add a little buffer for additional heatsinks. 0.3 buffer per or whatever. Say you just have the 10 built ins. You want to limit people to 2 PPCs alphas? make PPCs front-load 5 heat and generate 1 heat/s for a 5 second recycle. Small lasers generate 2 heat frontloaded? You can fire 5.
The numbers aren't important. The point is make the heat buffer your alpha-limiting 'Mechanic in place of ghost heat, and raise the dissipation levels to such that heat neutral canon builds are heat neutral on the '5 second turn' cycle MWO weapons operate in.
It's not a problem. I believe it so whole heartedly, that I didn't read anything from the prior 8 pages. This boat has already sailed and passed over the horizon. Used to be Gauss rifles had no delay, there was no ghost heat, UACs didn't jam, and missiles did twice the damage. It all got nerfed, and they kept the buffs to armor, which was doubled if I recall correctly. What we have today compared to what was is somewhat... tame. When the nerfs come for clan weapons, and they will... and when the rebalance to IS kills the quirk system, this discussion will be moot.
no it will never be moot - simple because the double armor system is a joke - i know MW2 and MW3 did use the same armor
MWLL and MW4 did not.
MW2 and MW3 mainly PvE games did use 1:1 weapon values - MWLL and MW4 with PvP in mind did not.
And even while MW4 or MWLL had much better weapon balance - the front loading alpha damage at max range was still the way to go.
It would never change - long range alpha = surplus.
Even with most of those changes the long range max damage weapon will be surplus.
Maybe when we add spread for firing weapons of x damage; or x weapons - the Gauss Rifle in chain will be king.
even with a decent heat system (2 dissipation fixed threshold or 1.5 dissipation and reduced threshhold) and heat penalties that hit your movement and targeting
(even when we got a non forgiving heat system (there is a constant drain in coolant - overheating will increase the drain - so while overheating in the first salvos of a battle may be a good idea - it won't be possible in the end)
Edited by Karl Streiger, 29 October 2015 - 11:15 PM.
Karl Streiger, on 29 October 2015 - 11:12 PM, said:
(even when we got a non forgiving heat system (there is a constant drain in coolant - overheating will increase the drain - so while overheating in the first salvos of a battle may be a good idea - it won't be possible in the end)
Yeah, that's another bit that could do the heat system good; Coolant as something that can be replenished slowly but burns off faster the hotter you run, or simply making it so that running into overheat slows your dissipation rate more and more. They're basically expressing the same thing - Make alpha striking cost something. Make it so you can put out more raw damage if you stagger your shots. Letting a focused, high damage alpha strike do your hole punch aiming for you is just. . . lazy.
Karl Streiger, on 29 October 2015 - 03:13 AM, said:
I did notice it .
but the work for such a system is the planing - the implementation.... well is a matter of a working day - simple modify the weapon.xml - has all values from beam duration over kinetic impact, spread even the number of weapons that kick the heat scale.
but there is no minimal invasive way to increase TTK and reducing the efficiency of FLD.
You need to spread damage - somehow - ways are:
cone; better heatsystem; forced chain fire; or splitting the damage of volleys into smaller ones; different convergence points (multi point reticle); fixed convergence based on effective range
each of them will change the game seriously - but on the other hand each of them or the combination of some - is a better solution over heat scale and ghost damage
both your "solutions" are not working
Cone is nonsense, I predict a very large exodus if this ever comes. Cone is universally hated.
Convergence you can forget, not attainable with that server authorative "target hit" decision. Also many mechs have their weapons so close to each other that your fixed convergence would attain nothing but gimp many chassis while others are completely untouched.
reducing the efficiency of PPFLD is hideously easy:
1) half damage, double firing rate and ammo per ton, result is same damage per time frame but increased chance of spread
2) dont fiddle with heat that will result in nothing since the enemy is dead while you are only hot: hard lock of the amount of pinpoint weapons (PPC, Gauss, ballistics) that you can fire withhin one or two seconds. PPC and Gauss cannot be combined, you cannot fire more than 2 PPC at once (maybe even that is to generous). Fear of Jump snipers? you cannot fire PPC or gauss while jumping. End of discussion: you cannot, no weird increase in Heat AND stopping to lower heat while jumping, making an already bad system that is supposed to increase mobility, even worse.
Anything else will have no result for your "problem". If you do not want to do either, then live with it.
Also people keep forgetting that mostly it is not the weapons that result in a low TTK but Mechs. If 12 Mechs shoot at a single one its completely independent of the actual weapons used. That mech will die in a few seconds.
During closed Beta we were bored and took an all hunchback group (8 men groups at that time) armed with flamers and 3 MG. At that time flamers had a single small redeeming quality you could heat your enemy into shutdown and with enough flamers could keep him in shutdown. For some weird reason they removed that ability and made a bad weapon completely useless. Well The first game we lost we had not enough MG Ammo. The following dozen or something games were all won against superior tonnage. You just killed one or two mechs with an overwhelming amount of "fire"power (pun intended). Even if the individual "fire"power was laughable numbering up made it locally superior.
No matter what you fiddle with the weapons that will ALWAYS be the result:
many mechs shooting at a single one will make his live short and miserable.
Cataclysm315, on 22 October 2015 - 11:51 PM, said:
I'm sorry but, if you stand still long enough for me to place a high amount of damage on one spot using lasers then it is YOUR fault. You should torso twist to force me (and others) to spread damage across your mech. Honestly if they start playing with the core mechanics of the game like this its going to kill off a lot of their fans as its unnecessary.
And yes this is coming from a person who has only just started using this technique and it does work! Seriously try it
Maybe I'm a little late jumping in to this, but are you sure torso twisting is all that effective when there are lag differences? If you're a NA player on Oceanic or vice-versa, you'll note that by the time we the laggier player is aware that we're being shot at by lasers, its too late to spread the dmg anymore.
Oddly enough, it also seems to work to the benefit of the lagged player. You might have already twisted away but on my screen I still shot you in your CT so that's where the dmg is going to go.
Fire for Effect, on 30 October 2015 - 11:15 AM, said:
well then maybe read what I wrote and you will see there is no other alternative. Since you are in a skill based shooter a cone is a nono
I read the whole thing, but this statement above all needed a response. There are plenty of other alternatives, including yours.
However, there is very little skill based about pointing and clicking. Twitch reflexes are not skill, and multiple weapons hitting the same spot with one trigger pull is not BattleTech.
I read the whole thing, but this statement above all needed a response. There are plenty of other alternatives, including yours.
However, there is very little skill based about pointing and clicking. Twitch reflexes are not skill, and multiple weapons hitting the same spot with one trigger pull is not BattleTech.
MWO aint a twitch shooter. With only reflexes you get nothing here.
And no there are no other alternatives simply because the server authorative hit detection precludes ANY convergence ideas. The cone would most likely also not work since extra data would have to go between you and the server and back AND to each and every client in the game, and that for every weapon. Not only where you point and if you have shot, not the server has to throw dice were you might have hit and you have to include HSR. You would also be very unhappy because cone and DOTs dont work so you get the entire Laser dmg instantly to a single location...
Maybe try the new Battletech Kickstarter, I already did that by the way...
Edit: I forgot to add you can very well hit the same hit location in Battletech on purpose.
"Aimed Shots" see Total Warfare for that I am sure you have it in your Bookcollection...
Edited by Fire for Effect, 30 October 2015 - 03:53 PM.
The desire to have pinpoint-perfect accuracy and (seemingly) conflicting desire to prevent perfect alpha is why I suggested the multi-point reticle and targeting. It absolutely reconciles this problem.
Consider again. You don't have to give up your accuracy UNLESS you want to alpha. If you don't, you can still hit the same spot by adjusting your aim.
I can imagine "sweep shot" maneuvers where the players fires weapon groups starting on one side and chaining to the other while dragging the reticle across the target. If you're really skilled it would be almost the same as pinpoint alpha.
1. Removing the bonus to the heat cap given for each heat sink. This will mean a fixed, heat cap for all mechs regardless of how many heat sinks they mount.
2. Removing ghost heat. It isn't working as intended anymore, people have found ways to work around it and maintain continuous alpha strikes.
Fixed heat cap means you still can alpha, but a lot less than current practice.
I agree with the heat thing (as I've said it myself many times). Clan lasers really need to be fixed into reason so we can strip out the god-quirks and return to balance with fun quirks.
But it doesn't fix boating low heat weapons like gauss or AC/UAC.
(Just as an aside, I only own Clan 'Mechs and I'm still calling for a nerf to Clan lasers because I know they aren't balance. I don't play them by boating, I always chain fire and bring a variety of weapons.)
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Brandarr Gunnarson, on 29 October 2015 - 03:05 AM, said:
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