47 replies to this topic

[DivineEvil]

Kaeb Odellas, on 26 November 2015 - 01:40 AM, said:

TruDubs would only give you a 30 point heat cap if you carry 15 DHS. Most IS lights and mediums would be hard pressed to fit that many in a build unless they can fit in a big XL engine. Removing the base 30 especially screws over the smaller lights that have to depend on energy weapons and can only squeeze in the minimum 10 heatsinks.

I've took some time and checked around, and haven't found any Light mechs, that are somehow impeded by 20 heat cap from 10 DHS. Other than that, heavier Lights can in fact spare some space for additional DHS, and it's all rounds up to a simple question - are you better with more weapons, or are you better with more heatsinks? As of now, you're always better with more weapons, as external heatsinks are rubbish, which is partly why Firestarters and Arctic Cheetahs are the top dogs in Light division.

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Laservomit builds aren't OP because of the heat cap. They're OP because of instant pinpoint convergence. Laservomit would still be potent in a low heatcap, high dissipation game, only instead of being massive peek-and-hide alpha monsters, they'd be powerful sustained-fire brawlers.

Unfortunaly yes, they are OP exactly because of heat cap. Pinpoint convergence for lasers is compensated subtantially by the fact they have duration value. Their accuracy is their essential feature, that makes them efficient despite heat limitation.

What makes laser-vomit OP is 1.) the sheer volume of damage that they are capable of unloading in one burst, and 2.) their capability to unload that volume several times in a row. Both issues are based upon oversized heat buffer. Basically the raw might of the laser-vomit counteracts torso-twisting and arm-shielding. Lighter half of mechs does not possess enough armor to make it matter, while heavier half of mechs cannot torso twist fast enough, thus the major part of one laser salvo goes into the intended component. If pin-point convergence would be delayed, it would not fix the issue one bit, but will make other weapons suffer the finishing blow to their viability.

Laser-vomit, that is only potent in sustained-fire brawling is no longer a laser-vomit. If energy-boats will be unable to barf 50-60 damage laser salvos, but otherwise will be able to brawl competetively or chain-fire PPCs mindfully, this will be the shimmering success for balance.

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Further, PGI messed with heat capacity because of the way it works in tabletop. Heat is dissipated in the same turn as weapons are fired, so a mech with 30 heatsinks (or 15 dubs) can fire 2 ERPPCs in one turn and end the turn with zero heat and suffer no heat penalties because each turn is 10 seconds. If we translated the heat penalty scale from tabletop and stuck to the 30 point heat scale, each time you fire an ERPPC you'd suffer movement and accuracy penalties

I'm not sure what all of this has to do with the topic. If 30 base heat cap will be removed, this will result in exactly the same result in MWO. 15 dubs will give you 30 HC and 3 HD, you fire 2 ER-PPC, and in 10 seconds you're cooled off. I'm not arguing against overheat penalties, but simply heed them unnecessary.

PGI messed with heat capacity because they've adapted MWO to the realities of FPS environment. They've doubled the mech's durability and increased weapon cooldowns variably starting from 2.5 multiplier (4 seconds cooldown). They've figured out the heat will be an issue with these dynamics, but they've picked the wrong approach trying to address it. Instead of increasing practical DPS by heat dissipation, they've increased the heat capacity, which is responsible for limiting the alpha-strike.

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And flamers aren't pathetic because of the heat cap. They're pathetic because the devs couldn't figure out a way to make them useful without making them open to abuse. 9 Flamer hunchbacks were a thing, and it was not fun to boil to death in your mech and have absolutely nothing you could do about it.

Nevertheless, removing base heat capacity would make Flamers viable, because there will be much less heat capacity to work against, and it's own heat tax would be possible to counter with respective amount of heatsinks. This way a Flamer will be a viable brawling crowd-control weapon, that might work just as well against ballistic and missile mechs. That would compensate for its ridiculously low range and damage potential.

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EDIT: I agree that the heat system is pretty messed up, but doing away with base heat altogether is not the answer. Giving different mechs different base heat capacities would be an interesting avenue for balancing mechs, however.

Everyone has the right for their own opinion, of course. I had these problems with heat ever since Closed Beta, and they still stand firmly. Until either base heat cap or heatsink heat cap are removed, rave parties will never cease to be the mainstream. Fiddling with laser weapon values has a tendency to create popular bias, which means it will not fix the problem, until laser are practically worthless.

For any mech-specific handicaps, there's quirks in place - they are already used to modify weapon heat tax and also can be used for specifically addressing heat capacity and heat dissipation on a per-variant basis, which would promote mech diversity.

Regardless, my point still stands - the base heat management system is malfunctioning. And you don't fix general issues with particular changes.

[BearFlag]

DivineEvil, on 27 November 2015 - 02:23 AM, said:

What makes laser-vomit OP is 1.) the sheer volume of damage that they are capable of unloading in one burst, and 2.) their capability to unload that volume several times in a row.

...and 3) ...

3) ?

Sigh.
3) RANGE across which full damage can be sent. Unless range is included you'll never have a completely satisfactory solution. Four C-LPL's will still do their full 52 damage at 600 meters. The counter to long range and instant hit is linear drop off. Right now "duration" is the only penalty and that is clearly insufficient. In the recent PTS's, PGI's approach has been to reduce the range on some of the long weapons. This is also a partial solution.

You can certainly use (and we should to some extent) heat to reduce effective ROF. But PGI will probably balk at a strong, heat-only solution. They've got a FPS and players like to shoot. "Taking" the ability to shoot from players may not be well received and PGI will, I think, hesitate at the idea and look for something else.

Cone of Fire and various other damage spread plans have been advanced. But, players apparently don't like anything that messes with their "aim." The vehement reaction to the target lock mechanism being a case in point.

I think a comprehensive solution has to use several approaches.

1) Linear damage fall off for lasers (This is roughly how lasers actually work through a medium.)
2) lower the heat frontier to the extent we can "get away with"
3) reduce the range on long-reach lasers
4) other ideas

The "other ideas" could consider things like CoF, heat-caused inaccuracy, beam divergence, restricted output (half duration, half damage, half heat above 90% heat), hot weapons offline, whatever. There's a hundred ideas. Some workable, some with problems of their own.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

It's neither damage nor range that are the problem. Quite the opposite, actually.

The higher values that Clantech has across most weapons and the higher damage they have in lasers are part of what gives Clans their proper flavor.

That flavor being "range and accuracy" are paramount to the Clan warrior.

It's ultimately the heat system that is messed up. That and the weapon stat relationships are not normalized and causal. That is, there is no real ratio for heat:damage or range:damage. If they were, the heat for Clan laser would be higher.

The reason I really like taking away base heat for MWO is that it forces Clantech to spend that extra tonnage they get (from lighter weapons) on heat sinks and chain fire; especially if they go all energy!

Additionally, if these two aspects are used in tandem, it would allow IS to fire more weapons more often (alpha striking) even though at shorter range, due to their lower heat weapons.

Thus, IS have the alpha advantage in the brawl and Clans have the damage advantage at range.

@BearFlag:
The pinpoint accuracy and pinpoint alpha conundrum has already been reconciled in the form of a multi-point reticle. This retains perfect weapon accuracy and absolutely prevents pinpoint alpha.

[DivineEvil]

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3) RANGE across which full damage can be sent. Unless range is included you'll never have a completely satisfactory solution. Four C-LPL's will still do their full 52 damage at 600 meters. The counter to long range and instant hit is linear drop off. Right now "duration" is the only penalty and that is clearly insufficient. In the recent PTS's, PGI's approach has been to reduce the range on some of the long weapons. This is also a partial solution.

The reason why I did not adressed that point, is that it relates more to the realm of IS/Clan balance. It is indeed a discomforting reality, that Clan Pulse Lasers can reach much further, than standard IS Lasers. Clan Large pulse lasers are outstanders there just because they get enormous advantages for a single ton of weight difference. While Clan ER-Large Lasers get only 10% extra range for 20% prolonged duration being 1 ton lighter compared to IS ER-Large Laser, Clan Large Pulse Lasers suffer mere 10% prolonged duration and 1 ton heavier, but deal 45% more damage 33% further, compared to regular IS Large Laser. Situation with other Clan pulse lasers is, well, more manageable. Adjusting the range for Clan Large Pulse Lasers would make them worse as standalone weapons, but will not solve their go-to synergy with ER-Medium Lasers for laser-vomit behavior.

What I trying to emphasize here, is that currently that 52 damage alpha is limited by Ghost Heat, which would bring the mech to very high level of overheat. Removing the base heat capacity will essentially replicate this same approach, but unlike Ghost Heat it will not be counteracted by 0.5 delay between shots, neither it will give a free reign for synergetic builds - the nerfed heat capacity will treat any laser-barfing builds equally harshly. Internal/external DHS bias and Ghost Heat mechanics are both unapparent and convoluted ideas, that were implemented to solve the issue, that Heat Capacity were always used to manage in the first place.

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You can certainly use (and we should to some extent) heat to reduce effective ROF. But PGI will probably balk at a strong, heat-only solution. They've got a FPS and players like to shoot. Taking the ability to shoot from players may not be well received and PGI will, I think, hesitate at the idea and look for something else.

It's not about reducing ROF. RoF is managed by heat dissipation, and it is already reduced by external DHS nerf. The sole purpose for me to discussing core game mechanics in PTS sub-forum is to take at least faint attempt to point PGI out to the fact, that they keep adressing the issues by solutions of invalid scale and depth, which tend to bring three more issues in place of one being marginally solved.

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Cone of Fire and various other damage spread plans have been advanced. But, players apparently don't like anything that messes with their "aim." The vehement reaction to the target lock mechanism being a case in point.

I can relate to these opinions. It jus doesn't seem right to make a pretty complex game even more so. I'm of course not a proponent of this disgusting trend of casuality in modern game development, but there should be a reasonable level of accessibility and convenience, which has to be uphold to keep the game alive.

Lasers themselves are pretty mundane weapons, and it's more handy to reduce their relative efficiency, rather than to implement yet another convoluted mechanic, that would also affect other less rudimentary weapons as well. It will not affect the relative balance, but will make the game harder to grasp and get involved into. No matter what ideas are seriously considered, none of them make sense until they're evaluated in the background of a properly established base mechanics. Current heat management system is not properly established.

Edited by DivineEvil, 27 November 2015 - 11:43 PM.

[BearFlag]

@Gunnarson. You can't dismiss the range/damage component with the wave of a wand. The underlying numbers scream that this is the largest of the considered components. Not heat. Not CoF effects by whatever name.

I like to pick on the C-LPL because derived numbers show it to be the most OP weapon. Its mean damage over 1200 meters is 9.8. It does this with instantaneous hit and instant pilot correction. "Hit scan" is not fully a disadvantage because at ranges the pilot can track, correct and land full duration. So hit scan is a mixed bag. Disadvantage at close range, fast movement. Advantage at long range. At comparable range and damage, the ERPPC is out matched by ERLs. It has travel time and no correction. Ballistic AC2's are a joke in comparison to either.

The first, the biggest and the most glaring problem with lasers in this game is the damage curve. Magically, lasers do full damage at half range and then diminish linearly. This is the root problem. There is no natural or man-made system to produce such a curve. Further, for game purposes, we can assume that there is some universal attenuating medium on all maps since lasers behave the same on all maps. HPG may look like a vacuum, but if it were, all lasers would have an effective range of infinity.

So we have attenuation.

This would be fortuitous if it weren't for the game's damage curve. It does not reflect attenuation until half range. And some of these half ranges are looooong. The C-ERL is 740 meters. Eat six or ten of those in CW and smile. Not.

The first step in taming lasers is to eliminate the counter-intuitive "optimal" half range. Give them a linear decay in accord with the presumed attenuating medium and coincidentally reduce their long range effect.

As for pin-pointing, that remains a problem - but one which is much reduced by the suggestion above.

@DivineEvil. If heat solutions aren't aimed at regulating ROF and rate of alpha, then I'm missing something. It appears to me that that's exactly the purpose. It is the bottom line. And it's a viable partial solution to the laser problem. But only partial.

For reasons mentioned in the last post, I think it highly unlikely that PGI will opt for a strictly heat management solution.

[anonymous161]

Take all weapons out and make it it close combat only battle axe and bitchslapping begin!

[Nightshade24]

DivineEvil, on 23 November 2015 - 01:27 AM, said:

It's a wrong approach. Lasers themselves and their stats are fine. The problem is non-optimised, or even a bit broken heat management values. There are three general methods of fixing the issue:

Well not really... PGI upped all the damage awhile ago simply to counter the server problems and hit registration.
That's fixed (well 1000% better than before) and now this means lasers are superior to PPC's. in lore- ignoring things like Heavy Large laser... the PPC did hte highest damage out of any energy weapon that is conventionally used. In game a large pulse laser for eg has hgiher damage with barely less range but is pinpoint and light speed and not a slow projectile.

Due to this, Lasers are superior to a lot of weapons.

if they slightly lower the damage on the mediums, a bit more on the large, than we will get a semi restored balance and it is better than increasing the PPC damage... which isn't a bad idea for the clan one, because clans lack ER PPC quirks.. (this could be a omnipod set bonus quirk for adder/ warhawk/ etc?)

so yea...

[DivineEvil]

Nightshade24, on 28 November 2015 - 08:01 AM, said:

Well not really... PGI upped all the damage awhile ago simply to counter the server problems and hit registration.
That's fixed (well 1000% better than before) and now this means lasers are superior to PPC's. in lore- ignoring things like Heavy Large laser... the PPC did hte highest damage out of any energy weapon that is conventionally used. In game a large pulse laser for eg has hgiher damage with barely less range but is pinpoint and light speed and not a slow projectile.

Due to this, Lasers are superior to a lot of weapons.

if they slightly lower the damage on the mediums, a bit more on the large, than we will get a semi restored balance and it is better than increasing the PPC damage... which isn't a bad idea for the clan one, because clans lack ER PPC quirks.. (this could be a omnipod set bonus quirk for adder/ warhawk/ etc?)

so yea...

Well yes, you're at least partially right. As far as I'm concerned, they've buffed the Pulse Lasers to better represent the difference in tonnage. Standard IS Lasers seem to be as good as always. Cannot remember any Clan Laser buffs, it feels like they were always like they're now. All I care about is rolling back Pulse laser ranges and giving them faster cooldown rate instead... and some serious kick to C-LPLasers. Those things are imbalance incarnate, making both C-ERPPCs and C-ERLLs effectively redundant.

[Nightshade24]

DivineEvil, on 30 November 2015 - 12:22 PM, said:

Well yes, you're at least partially right. As far as I'm concerned, they've buffed the Pulse Lasers to better represent the difference in tonnage. Standard IS Lasers seem to be as good as always. Cannot remember any Clan Laser buffs, it feels like they were always like they're now. All I care about is rolling back Pulse laser ranges and giving them faster cooldown rate instead... and some serious kick to C-LPLasers. Those things are imbalance incarnate, making both C-ERPPCs and C-ERLLs effectively redundant.

well yea, some data with current BT vs MW: O in damage for lasers.

Small laser: 3 / 3
Medium laser: 5 / 5
Large laser: 8 / 9

Small pulse laser: 3 / 4
Medium pulse laser: 6 / 6
Large pulse laser: 9 / 11

Small laser in MW: O: =
Medium laser in MW: O: =
Large laser in MW: O: +
Small pulse laser in MW: O: +
Medium pulse laser in MW: O: =
Large pulse laser in MW: O: +

Personally I didn't know that the damage increase was only for half of the lasers, I just kind of thought it went for all of them but it does go to both of the large lasers which have the highest firepower: this includes the large pulse laser that makes the PPC/ ER PPC redundant. The clans follow a similar trend BUT have overal increase firepower which causes it to have even more issues compared to the clan nerfed ER PPC- which still does the effective 10 damage but some useless lil splash.

My suggestion is similar to what PGI did with the other weapons. By using inspiration from TT/ previous MW games for the different 'versions' of how a weapon works. For eg how LRM's can fire in large salvos (or slavo of 5's)(MW4, TT, etc) or a stream (MW2), how an AC can fire in bursts (TT, MW4) or in singular bullet slugs (MW2, MW3, etc).
Pulse lasers in MW4 do much less damage than MW: O BUT this is becuase it follows TT alternate firing mode of doing high rate of fire low damage low heat strikes. In short let's pretend the large pulse laser does 10 damage and fires every 4 seconds for 8 heat. instead of that. it could do 2.5 damage per hit for every 1 second for 2 heat. Still doing 10 damage and 8 heat in the same time but not in the same shot Making it a DPS weapon more than an alpha strike weapon. Which is vital for the clan situation to break the large pulse laser and er medium laser combo as well as to reintroduce the ER PPC for clans as a viable weapon. I should also mention maybe alter the stats so it may have say less heat or more DPS'y over the non DPS large pulse laser, say "DPS-pulse" does 11 or 12 damage while the 'standard' does 10 damage in the same ammount of time.

For our made up simplified stat large pulse laser that is.

It will also help clans greatley as the ghost heat between pulse and non pulse lasers are broken meaning you can alpha (if you want) with a mixture of both instead of being scared of having more than 6 lasers on your mech- this "broken" ghost heat for clans is the reason the current meta for clans is the way it is as it side steps it.

[DivineEvil]

Nightshade24, on 30 November 2015 - 04:28 PM, said:

Personally I didn't know that the damage increase was only for half of the lasers, I just kind of thought it went for all of them but it does go to both of the large lasers which have the highest firepower: this includes the large pulse laser that makes the PPC/ ER PPC redundant. The clans follow a similar trend BUT have overal increase firepower which causes it to have even more issues compared to the clan nerfed ER PPC- which still does the effective 10 damage but some useless lil splash.

The majority of changes were more or less reasonable, and the changes as they are are ok. It's just the question of whether these changes are justified and if they're applied where they should be.

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My suggestion is similar to what PGI did with the other weapons. By using inspiration from TT/ previous MW games for the different 'versions' of how a weapon works. For eg how LRM's can fire in large salvos (or slavo of 5's)(MW4, TT, etc) or a stream (MW2), how an AC can fire in bursts (TT, MW4) or in singular bullet slugs (MW2, MW3, etc).
Pulse lasers in MW4 do much less damage than MW: O BUT this is becuase it follows TT alternate firing mode of doing high rate of fire low damage low heat strikes. In short let's pretend the large pulse laser does 10 damage and fires every 4 seconds for 8 heat. instead of that. it could do 2.5 damage per hit for every 1 second for 2 heat. Still doing 10 damage and 8 heat in the same time but not in the same shot Making it a DPS weapon more than an alpha strike weapon. Which is vital for the clan situation to break the large pulse laser and er medium laser combo as well as to reintroduce the ER PPC for clans as a viable weapon. I should also mention maybe alter the stats so it may have say less heat or more DPS'y over the non DPS large pulse laser, say "DPS-pulse" does 11 or 12 damage while the 'standard' does 10 damage in the same ammount of time.

I've mentioned something around the same lines in another topic, but I wouldn't go that far. Even halving the stats (5 damage, 2s Cooldown and 4 heat) around the same DPS might be too much a difference between Standard and Pulse types, but I catch you drift certainly.

I would personally place much more attention into Laser ranges, because no matter how you look at it and where you place the pivot to derive other values from, range ratios between different types and sizes of Lasers do not make any sense. You either end up with C-LPL as the ultimate superweapon, which had to be at 450m range or at very best 550m range, or the C-ERLL being the piece of junk, that had to have 825m range, or whatever. There's no clear, universal definitions of what ER/Pulse modifiers are, and what advantages Clan lasers has over IS. It's all mish-mashed into a random sack of potatoes with holes in it.

Edited by DivineEvil, 01 December 2015 - 04:41 AM.

[Nightshade24]

DivineEvil, on 01 December 2015 - 04:41 AM, said:

The majority of changes were more or less reasonable, and the changes as they are are ok. It's just the question of whether these changes are justified and if they're applied where they should be.

I've mentioned something around the same lines in another topic, but I wouldn't go that far. Even halving the stats (5 damage, 2s Cooldown and 4 heat) around the same DPS might be too much a difference between Standard and Pulse types, but I catch you drift certainly.

I would personally place much more attention into Laser ranges, because no matter how you look at it and where you place the pivot to derive other values from, range ratios between different types and sizes of Lasers do not make any sense. You either end up with C-LPL as the ultimate superweapon, which had to be at 450m range or at very best 550m range, or the C-ERLL being the piece of junk, that had to have 825m range, or whatever. There's no clear, universal definitions of what ER/Pulse modifiers are, and what advantages Clan lasers has over IS. It's all mish-mashed into a random sack of potatoes with holes in it.

I personally think pulse lasers could work in MW: O if the clan one was between 1/2 to 1/4 of it's original reload speed with heat and/or damage to change it up a bit.
To a degree, the same as the Ac 2 (say "new" pulse laser) is to the AC 10 (say "old" pulse laser/ "IS" pulse) . in damage/ DPS/ heat respect that is. However I wouldn't mind if it was minor but if it's to minor it's barely noticeable and isn't enough to be an advantage nor a fix.

[DivineEvil]

Nightshade24, on 01 December 2015 - 05:15 AM, said:

I personally think pulse lasers could work in MW: O if the clan one was between 1/2 to 1/4 of it's original reload speed with heat and/or damage to change it up a bit.
To a degree, the same as the Ac 2 (say "new" pulse laser) is to the AC 10 (say "old" pulse laser/ "IS" pulse) . in damage/ DPS/ heat respect that is. However I wouldn't mind if it was minor but if it's to minor it's barely noticeable and isn't enough to be an advantage nor a fix.

I has not bias against Clans. I wished all Pulse lasers were differentiated that way.
IS SPL - 2p Damage, 1s Cooldown, 1p Heat, 0,25 Duration = 1.6 DPS by 0.8 HPS.
IS MPL - 5p Damage, 2s Cooldown, 3p Heat, 0,5 Duration = 2.0 DPS by 1.2 HPS.
IS LPL - 8p Damage, 2.5s Cooldown, 6p Heat, 0,75 Duration = 2.46 DPS by 1.85 HPS.
Same shenanigans could've been provided for Clans, but it seems like Clan Pulse lasers replace the Standard lasers they don't have for all purposes. Again, I would be satisfied with those values if PGI would look at reducing Pulse Laser ranges to where they've used to be. Othewise standard lasers might become redundant.

[Tarzilman]

keith, on 22 November 2015 - 03:01 PM, said:

u can't. it will just be a cycle of nerfing. no lasers ppl will just go to pinpoint weps. which ever is best, be it ppc, ac 5,10 or 20, or guass. then they will remain top dog for X amount of time. then cycle of nerfing will hit next best wep.

That's the main problem with MWO. It will go on and on like this with simple nerfing this and that weapon behaviour.
I don't know a solution for this, but we definitely need one.

[DivineEvil]

Tarzilman, on 01 December 2015 - 06:37 AM, said:

That's the main problem with MWO. It will go on and on like this with simple nerfing this and that weapon behaviour.
I don't know a solution for this, but we definitely need one.

The solution is to bring up a more general change of higher magnitude, such as doubling the IS mech internal structure. A single and simplistic modification like that will greatly sway the scales of balance, at which point it will be possible to rework Quirk values from the ground up, treating IS and Clans equally, and would create a more convenient baseline, where smaller changes to balance will provide reasonable impact. This will be ten time better, than trying to work the balance out by changes, that seem too severe from one point, but generally insufficient from another.

[CuriousCabbitBlue]

orrr

Laser Reflective Armor

Laser Reflective Armor dissipates energy weapon attacks 50% more efficiently than other armor types, reducing the amount of damage taken

Edited by CuriousCabbitBlue, 01 December 2015 - 07:56 AM.

[Nightshade24]

CuriousCabbitBlue, on 01 December 2015 - 07:55 AM, said:

orrr

Laser Reflective Armor

Laser Reflective Armor dissipates energy weapon attacks 50% more efficiently than other armor types, reducing the amount of damage taken

Not practical in MW: O for meta use as meta is made to go against everything. All it'll do is make people spam more gauss rifles into their favourite laser build.

On other news- That's to far out of reach. it's like 3060 or 3070's?

[CuriousCabbitBlue]

Nightshade24, on 01 December 2015 - 01:23 PM, said:

Not practical in MW: O for meta use as meta is made to go against everything. All it'll do is make people spam more gauss rifles into their favourite laser build.

On other news- That's to far out of reach. it's like 3060 or 3070's?

it was created 3058

harden armor was 3047

~but you don't just add that ~sighs~ people there is harden armor an modular armor as well an heck stealth armor too eventually

problem is, trying to balance before you add these things in even is pointless, they need to add these things in varity is the spice of life an there may be more things to edit to balance but there are more check an balances in place, like also the fusion light engine for IS and the new weapons that should be or are soon to come out via timeline....an for balance we shouldn't really even being using a timeline but the gear thart sets the best balance between both factions

and I still want the fluid gun =/

Edited by CuriousCabbitBlue, 01 December 2015 - 06:58 PM.

[DisasterTheory]

keith, on 22 November 2015 - 03:01 PM, said:

u can't. it will just be a cycle of nerfing. no lasers ppl will just go to pinpoint weps. which ever is best, be it ppc, ac 5,10 or 20, or guass. then they will remain top dog for X amount of time. then cycle of nerfing will hit next best wep.

The PPC, AC20 and Guass should be at the top of the damage food chain. This is why the laser weapons need a damage nerf. To put every thing back into balance.

[Bleary]

Tarzilman, on 01 December 2015 - 06:37 AM, said:

That's the main problem with MWO. It will go on and on like this with simple nerfing this and that weapon behaviour.
I don't know a solution for this, but we definitely need one.

Weapon balance was once pretty good in this game. The jump jet meta was broken, but general weapon balance was in a decent place. SRMs were unholy brawl weapons, ACs were good to great, gauss rifles were competitive, PPCs ruled, laservomit builds were still popular.

This isn't "woe, nothing to be done; whiners always whine, nerfs only change which guns are best". PGI isn't done fixing what they broke when they introduced the Clans. This is a specific problem, not the Way Things Have Always Been.

[Nightshade24]

CuriousCabbitBlue, on 01 December 2015 - 06:56 PM, said:

it was created 3058

harden armor was 3047

~but you don't just add that ~sighs~ people there is harden armor an modular armor as well an heck stealth armor too eventually

problem is, trying to balance before you add these things in even is pointless, they need to add these things in varity is the spice of life an there may be more things to edit to balance but there are more check an balances in place, like also the fusion light engine for IS and the new weapons that should be or are soon to come out via timeline....an for balance we shouldn't really even being using a timeline but the gear thart sets the best balance between both factions

and I still want the fluid gun =/

We are not using the timeline to ballance the game. We are using time line as a restriction to a game set in 3051.
The last thing I want is a Fafnir with quad RAC 5's and twin ER large pulse lasers running with a few Small X-pulse small lasers around wiith an XXL Engine, reactive armour, with Laser AMS up against my Direwolf with standard armour, standard structure, XL 300, and a few ER lasers with an LRM 20 in 3051...

If you want a game set in 3080-3100's in the name of 'balance', I insist you should start a kick starter campaign to get some devs to work on that right now. Because right now I am in the mood for clan invasion 3050's era.

You are right about the hardened armour, But it is worse than standard armour to a degree. it's heavier (aka doesn't save weight) and only comes into effect when you have near max armour in areas. On top of that but it's also slows down the mech quite a bit as well. So assault mechs can be out manoeuvred by a normal heavy mech or a light mech will act like it's legged (minus the speed) In MW: O not many people will take hardened armour. It's a bit niche... No one uses ferro often either which does the opposite (minus worse protection) and not many people use that. Also even though the prototypes came out in 3047... the production came in 3090....
you are right about Glazed or "Reflective" armour coming out (kind of) in 3058, but not for the entire IS, which came around as well as a production version at 3080. PGI will only ever add this armour if it's because of that at the current moment enough mechs use it at X time, which you may expect around about early 3060's or in about IRL 10 years from now+ without time skips. Even then- PGI may just make up fake variants to let some acceptions in early that use Ferro instead.
Even worse- the main counter to this armour, is not in timeline either up until the late 3060's at best or early 3070's. This will make ballancing reflective armour very hard. if you got reflective you might as well add in reactive armour as well- simular jist but with ballistic and missile weapons. Which is also around the 3080's...

I would sooner have Long Tom Cannon, Arrow IV artillery, Mech Motar, Binary laser cannon [blazer] ("experimental", still better and not as broken as adding other armour types at this stage). for weapons... or the fact in timeline we'll see heavy lasers, er pulse lasers, IS ER medium and small, streak SRM 4 and 6 for IS, Streak LRM 5, 10, 15, 20 for clans, ATM 3, 6, 9, 12. etc....
I would be happier to see quad mechs in the game or ai tanks on CW than armour changes...

Sure- on paper 3050's is the worst for ballance, it would be best to have it at say 2800's or 3100's. maybe 3090's... but that will just inflate the problem of the meta to an extreme if it's 3100/3090's....