257 replies to this topic

[NocturnalBeast]

shad0w4life, on 26 October 2015 - 10:01 AM, said:

They need to allow engine swapping in clans when we start looking at penalties to make them similar to IS. Not just a simple "turn this on" and voila!

I am as much against this idea as I am against making IS XL engines function like Clan XL Engines, it is just not BATTLETECH!

[Pihoqahiak]

Tarl Cabot, on 25 October 2015 - 05:56 PM, said:

Never mind there are no actual ENGINE crits in MWO. A Clan XL engine could have its engine critted on the RT, Center and LT gone and it is still firing and moving. Do the same thing to an IS XL engine and it is dead after the complete loss of a side torso.

Really that is the core of the problem here, "there are no actual ENGINE crits in MWO". That is what makes Clan XL engines better in MWO than in Battletech. Yes, not destroying the mech by destroying a side torso is an advantage, but not as much of an advantage in Battletech because there were more odds of losing a mech for both the Inner Sphere and Clan from multiple engine crits across all three torsos without ever destoying any single torso, and three engine crits meant you were out of commission. Having that level of extra vulnerability really adds to the value of a Standard engine, making it a much more meaningful decision between the two, and would cause the Clan inability to use them felt more. Russ has stated previously about the implementation of engine criticals that it was too technologically difficult for them to do, but then they somehow managed to implement added heat for Clan mechs losing a side torso?!? Adding a more incremental, less harshly penalizing system across the board system for engine critical hits can address the issue very well. Just like their approach to making equipment slightly different between the two technology sources (MASC and DHS in particular) they could apply the same concept to engine crits.

For each engine critical location destroyed apply 10% acceleration/movement speed/torso twist reduction (maybe 12% or 15% for Clan), 0.2 heat per second added (maybe @0.25 for Clan).
Three engine critical locations destroyed should still destroy a mech.

They could even expand the system a bit by having each engine critical location have multiple stages of damage instead of fully destroyed, and/or adjust their health since they are already experimenting with that aspect of equipment. Change each critical engine location to have two or three blocks of health, the loss of each one applying appropriately reduced versions of the above penalties. That would allow for a more incremental application of the system.

Of course, the above examples are not exactly like the Battletech engine critical rules, but very much in the spirit of them while better fitting a shooter/sim. It would also promote differences between the technology levels while not equating to absolute superiority of one vs. the other.

One problem to this system is going to be the IIC mechs. That is the only thing I feel they never should have brought into MW:O. It is really what will cause problems with balancing because they are the only Clan technology mechs that we will see that will have Standard engines unless they hopefully change them to only be able to use Clan XL engines (adjusting the stock variants to have more armor/ammo with the saved tonnage as they did with removing things like Anti-Personnel Pods from some of the current Omnimechs). The only other option would be for them to not be able to change their engine at all, but that would be a much worse choice in my opinion.

Two other changes they could implement are to Endo-Steel and Ferro-Fibrous. Since the Inner Sphere versions of both are significantly more bulky than the Clan versions they could have them effectively add durability quirks in addition to their weight savings. I wouldn't suggest something large, but maybe around 5% added durability to internal structure/armor as appropriate. I feel all these changes would add flavor and feel to different mech builds and technology sources while adding meaningful choices to mech building. None of these changes should be particularly difficult to implement either since they already have mechanisms in the game engine to modify speed and heat during a match (MASC, leg destruction, Clan side torso destruction, destruction of heat sinks), and they have already extensively used durability quirks.

[BARBAR0SSA]

Ed Steele, on 26 October 2015 - 11:05 AM, said:

I am as much against this idea as I am against making IS XL engines function like Clan XL Engines, it is just not BATTLETECH!

There's a kickstarter for a board game type Battletech to at least preserve the original. However for the sake of balancing and keeping the masses happy they will need to deviate from lore unfortunately.

10 v 12, rewards and match making becomes an issue (Unless it's restricted to CW) no one seems to take that in to account, Cbill rewards are already paltry, remove 2 mechs and less targets to shoot you're going to have people quitting from the grind.

Or they start designing maps with corridors, buildings etc that provide a lot of cover so the clan range advantage goes away and allows some hit and run.

Or a persistent world with a set total tonnage so that the IS side can drop more to balance it out.

however much of that is a lot of work.

Edited by shad0w4life, 26 October 2015 - 11:30 AM.

[Pihoqahiak]

Willard Phule, on 26 October 2015 - 04:34 AM, said:

As your engine takes damage, you're supposed to lose speed and gain heat.

Engine critical hits only add heat in Battletech.

[Zonenpenner]

LastKhan, on 26 October 2015 - 09:13 AM, said:

for people that want 10 vs 12 in reg que;

It would be very hard for people to find matches when its said to be 60% IS and 40% Clans (these figures i saw not sure if its 100% correct). So i have doubts it will work, unless you cut back by removing the ability to select specific game modes. redo group drops and force people to play a certain way in order to make 10 v 12 work. Which doesnt do well with some people who want to play whatever they want. Ill be kool with PGI to attempt this on PTS and see if my hypothesis is correct.

In fact that is absolute incorrect, sry.^^ 60% to 40% would be the case, if there would be only IS vs Clan matches.
But there would be 12 IS v 12 IS or 10 Clan vs 10 Clan matches too, depends on who is searching for a match.

So there could be 90% Clanners and 10% IS players searching for matches without problems. Most Clanners would play against other 10 Clan Mech Binarystars while some have to fight against 12 Mech IS Lances. Easy solution.

Edited by Zonenpenner, 26 October 2015 - 02:08 PM.

[Mad Porthos]

Pihoqahiak, on 26 October 2015 - 01:20 PM, said:

Engine critical hits only add heat in Battletech.

Yes, heat. Heat which now that you are generating 5 or 10 more a round, means you are stuck on the heat penalty charts getting reduced speed because you are running so HOT, unless you just refuse to fire any weapons at all.

Having heat disappation and movement penalties is an attempt to compensate for there being no actual HEAT PENALTIES from the heat level being experienced. If one had even one crit in an XL engine, there would be 5 extra heat in the round, plus it is quite likely other damage might take out heatsinks as well, so losing a whole torso really should be removing any heat sinks mounted in the torso, as well as in the part of the engine that is protruding INTO that torso, some amount of the base 10 plus additional added for having larger size, eg. 275, 300, 325 etc.

I think that 5 extra heat per crit is truly in ADDITION, to whatever disappation lost from heat sinks in that torso.

Edited by Mad Porthos, 26 October 2015 - 02:23 PM.

[Pogomogo]

I say PGI needs to ignore all of you. Finish out whatever goals they have that are getting worked on the PTS and make it snappy. The game is playable and the greatest factor is and always will be player skill and map awareness.

They need to ignore you all and focus on the greater issue that is causing people I talk to, to leave... boredom with no game depth. You can tweak this, timeline fix that to balance a MOBA game if that's what you want to play. The real issue is not cannon this or lore that to fit each person's perspective of FPS balance.

At the end of the day I own both Clan and IS... but playing the same PubQ drops (includes CW because that is all it is, another PubQ) is what is boring. Doesn't matter how many more mechs you bring or take away from any timeline or tech fix. If that is all the game is, then so be it. Put the CW 12v12 with 4 mech dropdeck in the normal que, so i don't look at 14 empty planet ques and occasionally see a droppable one. Just put IS/Clan mix against each other and be done with it.

OR, implement a game economy where higher tech costs more and battle loss means something in the Clan/IS unit purse. Then you'll see people worrying about what they bring to the table when it hits their C-Bills, start scaling down to minimum costs for better reward.

[NocturnalBeast]

shad0w4life, on 26 October 2015 - 11:28 AM, said:

There's a kickstarter for a board game type Battletech to at least preserve the original. However for the sake of balancing and keeping the masses happy they will need to deviate from lore unfortunately.

10 v 12, rewards and match making becomes an issue (Unless it's restricted to CW) no one seems to take that in to account, Cbill rewards are already paltry, remove 2 mechs and less targets to shoot you're going to have people quitting from the grind.

Or they start designing maps with corridors, buildings etc that provide a lot of cover so the clan range advantage goes away and allows some hit and run.

Or a persistent world with a set total tonnage so that the IS side can drop more to balance it out.

however much of that is a lot of work.

Yeah, God forbid that a programmer has to program something!

[DivineEvil]

I'll keep saying the same thing over and over again, until there's some sort of Dev's attention. I don't care where or how many times:

We need to buff IS mechs, so that they have something in return, and nerf Clans in some regard where they are currently equal to IS. I don't care about your "devs don't read this or that", so don't bother.

- Double Internal Structure for all IS mechs.
- 10 base heat capacity for IS, 0 base heat capacity for Clans.
- True DHS and 1.4 rated SHS for everyone.
- Ghost Heat removal.
- Optional 2.0-3.0 base heat dessipation.

Approximate Results:
- Relative IS/Clan balance. Durable newbie-friendly IS mechs with easier heat management. Mobile and deadly, but fragile Clan mechs.
- Heat mechanics better adapted for brawling and skirmishing, while punishing against laser-vomit alpha-strike endeavours.
- Higher emphasis on mixed weapon loadouts.
- Significantly reduced TTK and more engaging combat.
- Reasonable uses for crit-damage weapons like MGs and LB-Xs.
- Reduced dependancy on concealed mechanics and values for benefit of new players.

[NocturnalBeast]

DivineEvil, on 26 October 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

I'll keep saying the same thing over and over again, until there's some sort of Dev's attention. I don't care where or how many times:

We need to buff IS mechs, so that they have something in return, and nerf Clans in some regard where they are currently equal to IS. I don't care about your "devs don't read this or that", so don't bother.

- Double Internal Structure for all IS mechs.
- 10 base heat capacity for IS, 0 base heat capacity for Clans.
- True DHS and 1.4 rated SHS for everyone.
- Ghost Heat removal.
- Optional 2.0-3.0 base heat dessipation.

Approximate Results:
- Relative IS/Clan balance. Durable newbie-friendly IS mechs with easier heat management. Mobile and deadly, but fragile Clan mechs.
- Heat mechanics better adapted for brawling and skirmishing, while punishing against laser-vomit alpha-strike endeavours.
- Higher emphasis on mixed weapon loadouts.
- Significantly reduced TTK and more engaging combat.
- Reasonable uses for crit-damage weapons like MGs and LB-Xs.
- Reduced dependancy on concealed mechanics and values for benefit of new players.

Garbage! Again, is MWO "A BATTLETECH GAME", or "A BATTLETECH GAME IN APPEARANCE ONLY"?

[Oldbob10025]

CoffiNail, on 25 October 2015 - 02:24 PM, said:

Some people were looking forward to the challenge of being Clan. 10 vs 12. Power creep would be subsided by the average player due to always being at a numbers disadvantage. Extra range, lower heat and lower tonnage only go so far if you have a lance or two of mechs all shooting at you. They could have made it where the Clans were awarded extra 'bonus/honour' points for focusing on duels between single mechs, bringing lighter mechs, targetting heavier mechs, etc. Instead they threw the whole meaning and aspect and challenge that could have been for the Clans out the window to simplify it all, because it is a risk to make a niche game... It is better for the business to make a game that can cater to as many people as possible.

I was hoping they would do teams of 10vs12 to even it out like in lore and EVERYTHING clans did but guess not to even it out

[CoffiNail]

Oldbob10025, on 26 October 2015 - 04:13 PM, said:

I was hoping they would do teams of 10vs12 to even it out like in lore and EVERYTHING clans did but guess not to even it out

Again it was to make it accessible vs making it Lore. Sadly if Battletech's Lore was as well known as Star Trek or Star Wars the fan base would have been large enough to hold back drastic changes, we were only a chunk of the population. Russ even admitted at one point we were not the game focused customer.

I understand business, I do. They could have expanded on what they had. The game in 2012 had such freaking proimise! Daily tweets of what was going on in the Inner Sphere written by Randall Bills himself. Role Warfare that sounded amazing, and a community Warfare the seemed like it would be a full fledge league like the days of previous MechWarrior titles...

What do we have? MECHwarrior Online. They sure have the Mech part down... again not like Lore... Clan Omnimechs are Pod Swapping Battlemechs, Inner Sphere has highly customizable real omnimechs... Completely backward. Inner Sphere should have the swap-able pods as swapping an arm for another took less time then ripping in to the armour to gerryrig the swapping of weapons. BattleMechs were standard variants that took weeks if not months to customize. Clan Omnimechs should have been set more like the MW4 mechlab, Hardpoints where you swapped the weapon pods around.

Backwards, completly backwards...

Edited by CoffiNail, 26 October 2015 - 04:28 PM.

[DivineEvil]

Ed Steele, on 26 October 2015 - 03:48 PM, said:

Garbage! Again, is MWO "A BATTLETECH GAME", or "A BATTLETECH GAME IN APPEARANCE ONLY"?

Second. And it were so for a very long time, I case you didn't noticed. Well, it's "Battletech-based MMOFPS", to be precise.

Balance in MMO is prime to any lore shenanigans.

[SkippyT72]

DivineEvil, on 26 October 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

I'll keep saying the same thing over and over again, until there's some sort of Dev's attention. I don't care where or how many times:

We need to buff IS mechs, so that they have something in return, and nerf Clans in some regard where they are currently equal to IS. I don't care about your "devs don't read this or that", so don't bother.

- Double Internal Structure for all IS mechs.
- 10 base heat capacity for IS, 0 base heat capacity for Clans.
- True DHS and 1.4 rated SHS for everyone.
- Ghost Heat removal.
- Optional 2.0-3.0 base heat dessipation.

Approximate Results:
- Relative IS/Clan balance. Durable newbie-friendly IS mechs with easier heat management. Mobile and deadly, but fragile Clan mechs.
- Heat mechanics better adapted for brawling and skirmishing, while punishing against laser-vomit alpha-strike endeavours.
- Higher emphasis on mixed weapon loadouts.
- Significantly reduced TTK and more engaging combat.
- Reasonable uses for crit-damage weapons like MGs and LB-Xs.
- Reduced dependancy on concealed mechanics and values for benefit of new players.

So in other words just flip the batttech world since the Clan mechs are supposed to be faster, hit harder at longer distance and take more of a pounding due to Endo and FF. Yeah great idea. Once again, you want something like that then remove the IS mech lab and force them to run stock builds with the structure quirks and go 8/10 vs 12.

[Fulgar]

I can say that having played both the IS and the Clan mechs I have been rolled in both. Guys, why do people want to always play the meta game? I don't....I played the table top Battletech, I have read the books and lore and to me...my opinion, this is the closest we are going to get to the timeline.

Why can't we just have fun with what PGI is making for us and bask in that....I am enjoying the clan mechs, not because they are OP, I do not do meta builds, but because is what I am enjoying....I bought the Maurader pack plus hero....why? Because I watched the whole Robotech Fasa saga unfold and lose the maurader. I am still thinking of purchasing the Warhammer as well. Even though I am going to keep playing my clan mechs.

Let's just enjoy the game that they have provided for us so far.

Thanks,
Fulgar

[DivineEvil]

CoffiNail, on 26 October 2015 - 04:27 PM, said:

Completely backward. Inner Sphere should have the swap-able pods as swapping an arm for another took less time then ripping in to the armour to gerryrig the swapping of weapons. BattleMechs were standard variants that took weeks if not months to customize. Clan Omnimechs should have been set more like the MW4 mechlab, Hardpoints where you swapped the weapon pods around.

Backwards, completly backwards...

Not exactly. Battlemechs were the standardized, mass-produced models, including market models (4G, 4H, 4J etc.), state-requested models (#D for Davion, #K for Kurita, #S for Steiner, etc.), experimental (#X) and personal refits (Yen-Lo-Wang). Each Battlemech usually were built around a given pre-manufactured chassis (Corean Model K7 for Centurion, Corean Model 9C for Trebuchet, etc.) with plenty of potential free room available depending on a external armor armature used. Integrated into the chassis were the power couples and ammo transfer railings, which were requiring a complete dissasembly in order to swap or remove, especially for the most nimble and delicate mechs. This is why majority of so called "field refit" variants were featuring simple same-type weapon swaps and addition or replacement of more modular equipment like heatsinks.

In process of Succession Wars, mechs were a common object for salvage, and repairs and modifications were performed in a "stick it somewhere there and weld it over the duct tape" style. Engines were likely required to be readily accessible for regular maintainance, which seems to have been the reason why changing engines around were never much of an issue.

On the other hand, Clan mechs were refined, bolt-to-bolt, inch-to-inch, modular systems. Every Omni-pod had been produced to be changed on-the-go, constructed for specific weapon mounts and included all the necessary infrastructure in itself. Repairs were performed on a damaged omni-pod far away from the mech, that was carrying it in combat. The price for that were that the chassis itself were completely integral and indivisible. Besides, Clan warriors would never tolerate something as crude as patchwork on their mechs. Aside from Omni-pods, Clan mech chassis were inseparable whole, where each part is made specifically to fit and work in that particular chassis.

Thus, aside from modification bills for IS mechs, current system actually seems as viable as it can be.

[AC]

I said this since closed beta and I will say this again. Ghost Heat, mech imbalances, Gauss delay, quirks... all this BS would have been eliminated with weapon slot size limiters. It is not the fact that a mech has lots of weapons slots, its the fact that you can pull off a machine gun and drop in a gauss rifle. It makes no sense from a logic standpoint and definitely makes no sense from a gaming standpoint. The unlimited weapon size in a weapon slot, fundamentally, is what is broken with this game.

[MischiefSC]

Zonenpenner, on 26 October 2015 - 02:07 PM, said:

In fact that is absolute incorrect, sry.^^ 60% to 40% would be the case, if there would be only IS vs Clan matches.
But there would be 12 IS v 12 IS or 10 Clan vs 10 Clan matches too, depends on who is searching for a match.

So there could be 90% Clanners and 10% IS players searching for matches without problems. Most Clanners would play against other 10 Clan Mech Binarystars while some have to fight against 12 Mech IS Lances. Easy solution.

Except that what you've effectively done is create a progression ladder - you start in IS mechs and progress to super-hero grade Clan mechs. Nobody but n00bs and a handful of hardcores play the IS. So when new players come, they can only afford IS mechs, then get thrown in against elite players in Clan mechs?

There is so much wrong with this idea that it would be pages of explanations. Fortunately I don't have to waste the internets to get into it as PGI has flat out nixed this one out of the gate.

To reiterate a key point that people keep missing -

Clan vs IS balance in Battletech in TT was terrible. It was utter crap, it was designed more as a PvE experience than PvP and even the games developers apologized at gaming cons for how bad it was. It was pretty much the worst mistake in the game outside of bird people in one piece of fiction.

It was so bad that they created the Word of Blake plotline to re-nuke EVERYTHING and three-finger reset the game for Dark Ages, where IS and Clans had balanced tech. They even had Devlin Stone pull an Alexander Kerensky. It was pretty bluntly them trying to wipe out the horrible error they made with the original Clan introduction and start fresh with a game environment better suited for PvP, even in tabletop.

There is no reason, logic or purpose to us intentionally trying to recreate the worst mistakes of the franchise by taking balance that was bad in tabletop and then trying to hammer it into a FPS MOBA environment where it is even worse. All we're doing is skipping the terrible decisions that got made in Battletech development history and going to the same solution they did. Only I don't see PGI scrapping the sum total of content they've developed and rebuilding it all with 3145 tech.

So we're trying to create 3145 balance (IS/Clan tech balanced) with the given content we have. Trying to recreate the worst decisions in the games history serves no logical purpose. Fortunately PGI is pretty clear that they don't intend to fall into that mistake. From the day they were introduced they specifically said the intent was to balance Clan and IS tech and in the most recent Town Hall they said, specifically, they want to rebalance it so a Orion is equal to a Timber Wolf.

So given all the actual reality involved, in context of how to do it, I'm in favor of XLs (Clan and IS) not killing on a st loss but costing heat and speed. Also having an option for Clan mechs to swap STD for XL while still maintaining the locks on tonnage that balance their lighter, smaller equipment.

[DivineEvil]

Quote

So in other words just flip the batttech world since the Clan mechs are supposed to be faster, hit harder at longer distance and take more of a pounding due to Endo and FF. Yeah great idea. Once again, you want something like that then remove the IS mech lab and force them to run stock builds with the structure quirks and go 8/10 vs 12.

First of all, I can't care less for lore fanboys. We're not in a single-player Mechwarrior here. All players must be equal. Period.

8/10vs12 wont do ****, because in Public queue there's no IS/Clan separation, thus player ratio is inapplicable. Besides, this pathetic "solution" is nothing but an open surrender to the imbalance, rather than an attempt to reach it. Completely witless.

Doubling the internals for IS is not flipping the battletech world. It's but a step to give larger and less mobile IS mechs better standing power, and for both sides to use crit-modified weapons.

Reducing base heat capacity is not flipping the battle techworld either. TT has base 30 heat capacity, while heatsinks provide dissipation. MWO has doubled heat capacity for majority of mechs (250 rate engine, DHS and double basics = 60 heat capacity), while dissipation rates remained the same, except for external DHS that, funny enough, were nerfed. That alone makes brawling and skirmishing meaningless, while alpha-strike cover-wars is the only way to fight effectively.

Ghost Heat is a concealed mechanic, and it's values are not displayed anywhere in the game. In effect, it is a heat capacity nerf with redundant particularity. It has to be cut out like a smeary tumor.

Finally, I don't give a damn about what Clan mechs "supposed to do". A mech is a single unit operated by a single player. Different mechs might play different roles and intended for different playstyles. The sole purpose of having a wide choice of mechs, is that they has to be different. But a particular fraction of mechs are not to be plainly better in most regards, this is pure and obvious imbalance. Clan mechs might have a larger choice of better weapons and have better equipment and be mobile and nimble, but they has to pay for each of those in one way or another.

With these changes in effect, we might consider making Clan mech quirked in similar magnitude as IS mechs. Other than that, a clan player has to consider paying some scary bills for a fully outfitted and upgraded mech, has to consider tricky heat management and harder-to-master mechanics for better and lighter weapons, and has to consider more brittle mech if it has to go fast and to have more advanced components.

Edited by DivineEvil, 26 October 2015 - 08:44 PM.

[NocturnalBeast]

DivineEvil, on 26 October 2015 - 08:34 PM, said:

First of all, I can't care less for lore fanboys. We're not in a single-player Mechwarrior here. All players must be equal. Period.

First off, congratulations on being one of the rare few people who actually use "I could NOT care less" correctly! Secondly, all players will never be "equal" even if all mechs are completely the same (which would be boring as hell), since no one / computer / internet connection is equal, this is just silliness (the same silliness that infects many leftwing nut jobs, but this is a different discussion). This game is supposed to simulate a battle, in battle evenly matched forces are a very rare luxury.

Edited by Ed Steele, 26 October 2015 - 09:00 PM.