27 replies to this topic

[AEgg]

What if mech type, not faction, determined XL/STD engine behavior? Omni XL survives ST loss, battlemech XL does not, regardless if the mech is Clan or IS?

It seems to me like this would solve a whole boatload of problems.

1. We're about to get the IIC mechs, and without some drastic buff to clan STD, no one's going to be using it. If we're giving these mechs a choice, it should be a choice that matters.
2. The reason clan XL can't die on ST loss is that so many omnis are locked to it and would be near unusable with that downside and no new upsides.
3. Eventually, we'll have IS omnis locked to IS XL engines.
4, the big one, is that there's no way to balance STD vs XL if some mechs get to choose and others do not.

Locked engines HAVE to be more general-purpose than unlocked, simply because the locked choice would often be wrong otherwise. In an ideal world, locked engines would not have as serious a drawback as STD or XL, but not have as strong a benefit either. (I fully realize this would mean buffing XL somehow, STD is already better than locked at something, while XL isn't).

So it stands to reason that engine behavior should depend on whether your mech can choose it's engine or not, not whether it's a Clan mech or IS mech. There's no sense in having downsides and upsides to engine type for mechs that can't choose, and there's no sense in having a general purpose engine for mechs that can choose.


TLDR: What if we had three disticnt engine behaviors: STD, XL, and LOCKED. Omnis get LOCKED (current Clan XL), Battlemechs get STD or XL (current IS engines).

Then we give XL some sort of buff so it's better than LOCKED at something, and we've basically got engine balance.

STD is best for survival
XL is best at whatever buff we gave it
LOCKED is better than XL for survival and better than STD for weight, but not as good as STD for survival and not as good as XL for whatever we gave to XL.

[Lily from animove]

The issue is, some omis are like battlemechs. They may not have the same construction rules but they have exactly what the metaverison of their battlemech equivalent would look like. and thats why this would nt work.SMN vs TBR SCR vs NVA are the exampels of how unbalanced this is, this does ot only come from the emchs shapes as in NVA vs SCR example, or from th hardpoints and location sof the SMN and TBR. it is sometimes just what equip and enginesize is bound in them and their DHS being fixed.

I think IIC clanners should come at first as they are, then we should see if they are op in which way thy are. But any balancings on tis should be chassis related not tech related.

The Jenner IIC or Highlander IIC may surely not be op, however the HBK, probably will outclass the IS hunch by a good margin.

Edited by Lily from animove, 05 December 2015 - 02:07 PM.

[AEgg]

Lily from animove, on 05 December 2015 - 02:07 PM, said:

The issue is, some omis are like battlemechs. They may not have the same construction rules but they have exactly what the metaverison of their battlemech equivalent would look like. and thats why this would nt work.SMN vs TBR SCR vs NVA are the exampels of how unbalanced this is, this does ot only come from the emchs shapes as in NVA vs SCR example, or from th hardpoints and location sof the SMN and TBR. it is sometimes just what equip and enginesize is bound in them and their DHS being fixed.

I think IIC clanners should come at first as they are, then we should see if they are op in which way thy are. But any balancings on tis should be chassis related not tech related.

The Jenner IIC or Highlander IIC may surely not be op, however the HBK, probably will outclass the IS hunch by a good margin.

I don't really see how this is relevant.

Since all current omnis are clan and all current battlemechs are IS, having engine behavior depend on omni vs battlemech won't change anything for current mechs. All it does is allow us to balance Locked vs STD vs XL going forward, something which is impossible under the current ruleset.

[Metus regem]

I think the first thing they need to do is balance Clan vs Clan, IS vs IS then do Clan vs IS balance.

Not sure what I mean? How can an Orion or Marauder stack up against a Summoner or Timber Wolf, with out a close to a 20% advantage in some cases more?

By the same token, how or rather why, take a Summoner over a Timber Wolf? And trust me, when the IIc's hit the game, they are going to need to be heavily nerfed to not out class anything else in their weight class. And that is simply due to the fact that Battlemechs enjoy full Mech factory refit centers between battles.

Don't know what I mean? Look up the stock CN9-A and CN9-D, the difference between them are DHS, LB-10X, Artemis, Endo, XL Engine of a 300 series and CASE. The way MWO handles Mech customization, I can take a CN9-A and turn it into a CN9-D for a a rather minor amount of c-bills, and that is just silly.

[Mcgral18]

AEgg, on 05 December 2015 - 02:44 PM, said:

I don't really see how this is relevant.

Since all current omnis are clan and all current battlemechs are IS, having engine behavior depend on omni vs battlemech won't change anything for current mechs. All it does is allow us to balance Locked vs STD vs XL going forward, something which is impossible under the current ruleset.

Issues with the database.

Right now, there's 3 selections of 100-400 size engines (with the STD60 being an exception).

Sections being

• STD
  
• isXL
  
• cXL

That's with their individual slots and "sidesToDie" variables.

Your current idea would require some differences in the current structure, mainly slot size. You can't just give the 2Cs an isXL because slot size, and while they could probably override the "sidesToDie"=2 to =1, not sure they'd want to.

[Lily from animove]

AEgg, on 05 December 2015 - 02:44 PM, said:

I don't really see how this is relevant.

Since all current omnis are clan and all current battlemechs are IS, having engine behavior depend on omni vs battlemech won't change anything for current mechs. All it does is allow us to balance Locked vs STD vs XL going forward, something which is impossible under the current ruleset.

because the IIC mechs are already announced and soon come, thats why it is relevant. or do you want to make a balance change that is so short in lifetime? thats quite nonsense. If you want to create balance, then the system needs to work not just the current parts which we know do constantly get additions. screwing the current systm over again.

[AEgg]

Mcgral18, on 05 December 2015 - 03:45 PM, said:

Issues with the database.

Right now, there's 3 selections of 100-400 size engines (with the STD60 being an exception).

Sections being

• STD
  
• isXL
  
• cXL

That's with their individual slots and "sidesToDie" variables.


Your current idea would require some differences in the current structure, mainly slot size. You can't just give the 2Cs an isXL because slot size, and while they could probably override the "sidesToDie"=2 to =1, not sure they'd want to.

I don't think "PGI doesn't want to write code" is really a terribly good reason not to do something...

Lily from animove, on 05 December 2015 - 03:48 PM, said:

because the IIC mechs are already announced and soon come, thats why it is relevant. or do you want to make a balance change that is so short in lifetime? thats quite nonsense. If you want to create balance, then the system needs to work not just the current parts which we know do constantly get additions. screwing the current systm over again.

Uhh, that's the whole point. The system needs to work. And it CANT work if IIC mechs have a "choice" between clan STD and XL, or if IS omnis are stuck with locked IS XL.

May as well fix the core of the problem before or with the first time it shows up, rather than cobbling together another "ghost X" system after the fact to try and fix it later.

[Grey Ghost]

AEgg, on 05 December 2015 - 01:57 PM, said:

1. We're about to get the IIC mechs, and without some drastic buff to clan STD, no one's going to be using it. If we're giving these mechs a choice, it should be a choice that matters.

I find that amusing. Every time someone brings up the imbalance of Clan XL vs IS XL there is always some Clanner who drops in to mention how unfair it is they can't even use a Standard Engine.

[Kira Onime]

AEgg, on 05 December 2015 - 02:44 PM, said:

Since all current omnis are clan and all current battlemechs are IS,

Only holds true for the next 10 days.

[Tarl Cabot]

Grey Ghost, on 05 December 2015 - 04:44 PM, said:

I find that amusing. Every time someone brings up the imbalance of Clan XL vs IS XL there is always some Clanner who drops in to mention how unfair it is they can't even use a Standard Engine.

That is so true. If they were able to change their C-XL to a C-Std at a click of the mouse, they would have nothing left for weapon payload. I would change to a modified IS-XL or make payload changes on the 2 w/IS-XL on most of the mechs I use for CW/competitive play. It would increase mobility on my preferred, and allow me to play the ballistic-centric mechs more often, while being more useful.

With PGI putting two sets of penalties on the C-XL, now is a good time to change IS-XL to a similar but higher penalties, or after the Clan battletechs have been released. The change would not have a drastic benefit for the current "meta" mechs due to engine caps but it would benefit the majority of the IS mechs that are more ballistic/missile low set hard points. A majority of them do not approach the "meta" tier.

The other item to add would be to review the hardpoints per mech line, both IS and Clan, as many, especially the bottom tiers, have too few hardpoints or are too specialized.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 05 December 2015 - 06:37 PM.

[AEgg]

Grey Ghost, on 05 December 2015 - 04:44 PM, said:

I find that amusing. Every time someone brings up the imbalance of Clan XL vs IS XL there is always some Clanner who drops in to mention how unfair it is they can't even use a Standard Engine.

I never said it was unfair that clans can't use a STD. I'm saying it would be unfair to give clan XL the same downsides as IS XL, because clans can't choose STD. Stop thinking of clan XL as an XL engine, and think of it instead as the ONLY engine.

It's much easier to realize how we need to balance it that way. Clan XL is worse than STD at survivability but better than STD at tonnage. But it's just plain better than IS XL. Seeing as all three need to be balanced, obviously IS XL needs a buff to make it worthwhile.

That buff shouldn't be survivability since STD already has that base covered and the choice between STD and XL should matter, or else we may as well just not have it.

Tarl Cabot, on 05 December 2015 - 06:34 PM, said:

-snip-
With PGI putting two sets of penalties on the C-XL, now is a good time to change IS-XL to a similar but higher penalties, or after the Clan battletechs have been released.

Why?

If IS XL survived ST loss, that would mean that clan XL is now worse than STD at survival and effectively equivalent to IS XL. This we have the same problem we do now: One side has a straight advantage in engines (though it would go to IS, as they would have two choices, one of which is eqivalent to clan, who only gets one choice). IS XL should be BETTER than clan XL at something, with a downside, not the same.

Let's put it simply:
Clan's cant choose.
IS can choose.

Therefore, we can do these things:

Either choice for unlocked is effectively the same as locked: Battlemechs have an advantage (since they have two choices and one is equivalent)
Both choices for unlocked are worse than locked: Obvious omni advantage
Either choice for unlocked is better than locked: Obvious battlemech advantage

So it follows that both choices for IS must have some upside and some downside compared to clan, aaaaand there's our problem. They don't.

STD has the minor upside of less crit slots and better survivability, at the downside of more tonnage. XL has absolutely no upside at the cost of worse survivability.

Isn't it obvious that to fix this we need to give IS XL a buff of some sort that doesn't involve more durability?

Edit:

Kira Onime, on 05 December 2015 - 05:00 PM, said:

Only holds true for the next 10 days.

Well obviously. That's the whole point of this suggestion. It's impossible to balance Clan and IS engines if we have some mechs with locked engines and some with unlocked engines on the same side and engine behavior is determined by faction instead of by whether it's locked or not.

Edited by AEgg, 05 December 2015 - 07:33 PM.

[FupDup]

Some of the Clan Battlemechs like the Jenner IIC come stock with Clan XL engines. That's not going to change.

The issue is a combination of Clan XL being very good and the STD engine being poop unless you have a crapload of weight to burn. The former issue got addressed somewhat in the recent patch, so maybe something with the latter should happen next...

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

Why?

If IS XL survived ST loss, that would mean that clan XL is now worse than STD at survival and effectively equivalent to IS XL. This we have the same problem we do now: One side has a straight advantage in engines (though it would go to IS, as they would have two choices, one of which is eqivalent to clan, who only gets one choice). IS XL should be BETTER than clan XL at something, with a downside, not the same.

Nope, an IS-XL should not be better than a C-XL.Currently a mech w/IS-XL is disabled when losing a side torso simply because the BT game rules base is set that way, 3 engine crits. Part of the missing foundation is that MWO has no actual engine crits, and neither did the the previous MW games except for the original MW. So at this point we are playing by PGI "House" rules now.

Atm I really do not see any Clan omni that would use a standard engine of the same speed for whatever reason, primarily as it would be losing the weight savings. What many Clanners do want is the ability to change the engine size to either make it larger for faster for the med/light mechs or lower to be a tad slower but to equip heavier/more weapons.

For the endo/FF locks, I would still keep default locked but allow a Clan mech the ability to add if not equipped on a chassis, but even doing that would cause issues due to the ability to move omnipods. Unless it would mark the mech as customized and allowed it to only be done on the actual variant, locking its own omnipods to it, then the cost to remove said Endo/FF if a player wants to use an omnipod from another variant.

And with PGI stance of no mixture of tech, there will be no Clan nor IS salvage. If there were CL-XL/C-ERML (lite IS-LL) and C-DHS would be the top picks. Weight/slot savings and no need to use STD and Endo for weight savings. Clan Ballistics/IS-XL for the majority of the ballistic-centric IS mechs, filling in the few energy points with C-ERML and C-DHS all the way around (/shudders)

Dont forget, imagine what the game would be like if PGI had kept armor points locked as originally intended. /shudders...

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 05 December 2015 - 08:00 PM.

[AEgg]

FupDup, on 05 December 2015 - 07:35 PM, said:

Some of the Clan Battlemechs like the Jenner IIC come stock with Clan XL engines. That's not going to change.

The issue is a combination of Clan XL being very good and the STD engine being poop unless you have a crapload of weight to burn. The former issue got addressed somewhat in the recent patch, so maybe something with the latter should happen next...

I'm not suggesting that we give the Jenner IIC an IS XL engine. I'm suggesting that "Clan XL" means a different thing in an omnimech than in a battlemech. Clan mechs with unlocked engines would still mount clan engines for the purposes of crit slot locations, but they would behave like IS engines (i.e. death on losing a ST).


My main point is in fact that it CAN'T balance two unique choices if some of the mechs are locked to one or the other.

If faction determines engine behavior, we have eight engines to balance:
IS XL
IS STD
Clan XL
Clan STD
Locked IS XL
Locked Clan XL
Locked IS/Clan STD (Does anything even do this?)

Right now, PGI is trying to balance this by making "Locked Clan XL" equivalent to "Clan XL", and that's simply not going to work. If Omni vs Battlemech determined engine behavior, that would make them much, much easier to balance, since all we need to worry about is three types:
XL
STD
Locked

Tarl Cabot, on 05 December 2015 - 07:53 PM, said:

Nope, an IS-XL should not be better than a C-XL.

Did you even read the reasoning it takes to get there?

If IS XL is equivalent to Clan XL, IS has an advantage (since they have the option of STD on top of an equivalent XL).

So IS XL has to be different than clan XL somehow. It obviously can't be a straight upgrade, so naturally it needs to have a different downside and some kind of upside.

Right now, it only has a downside, and obviously that isn't balanced.

Edited by AEgg, 05 December 2015 - 07:56 PM.

[FupDup]

AEgg, on 05 December 2015 - 07:54 PM, said:

I'm not suggesting that we give the Jenner IIC an IS XL engine. I'm suggesting that "Clan XL" means a different thing in an omnimech than in a battlemech. Clan mechs with unlocked engines would still mount clan engines for the purposes of crit slot locations, but they would behave like IS engines (i.e. death on losing a ST).

That's functionally the same thing as giving it an IS XL, because side torso death is the current feature that distinguishes that item.

AEgg, on 05 December 2015 - 07:54 PM, said:

My main point is in fact that it CAN'T balance two unique choices if some of the mechs are locked to one or the other.

If faction determines engine behavior, we have eight engines to balance:
IS XL
IS STD
Clan XL
Clan STD
Locked IS XL
Locked Clan XL
Locked IS/Clan STD (Does anything even do this?)

Right now, PGI is trying to balance this by making "Locked Clan XL" equivalent to "Clan XL", and that's simply not going to work. If Omni vs Battlemech determined engine behavior, that would make them much, much easier to balance, since all we need to worry about is three types:
XL
STD
Locked

The actual issue with locking equipment is more along the lines that some mechs have excellent hardwired tech while others have terrible hardwired tech. The hardwired CXL325 on the Hellbringer is great. The hardwired CXL180 on a Kit Fox is terrible. The Stormcrow's locked Endo-Steel is perfect. The Summoner's locked Standard Structure is crap. It goes on and on.

Does that mean we also need to have Endo-Steel, Ferro, etc. behave differently when comparing locked vs unlocked? Or how about locked vs unlocked JJs? Etc.

The issue in this particular case is that the engine types are not balanced against each other. The STD engine is so heavy that its user will either be very slow, poorly armed, or both. The IS XL engine makes you 'splode if somebody looks at its user the wrong way. Then the Clan XL takes the best of both worlds. I'd want to take an approach similar to McGral's engine normalization where Clan and IS XL got balanced against each other and the STD engine got improved in its own way.


PS: Random question, but how do you plan on differentiating a locked STD engine from an unlocked STD engine? There are Omnimechs with locked STDs, like the Strider, Kingfisher, and Hauptmann.

Edited by FupDup, 05 December 2015 - 08:06 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

If faction determines engine behavior, we have eight engines to balance:
IS XL
IS STD
Clan XL
Clan STD
Locked IS XL
Locked Clan XL
Locked IS/Clan STD (Does anything even do this?)

Now that is a better viewpoint. Then PGI would need to determine which locked XL engine for each IS mech. I had something similar on an old post but it was with regards to salvaged Clan engines. There are not that many speeds available so each weight class would be restricted one or two specific C-XL engines. With the locked aspect, PGI could set it to a specific IS-XL and the player would need to make a purchase to lock it in.

Sadly, that is still more like using salvaged equipment. But it is still an idea.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 05 December 2015 - 08:15 PM.

[Khobai]

There are omnimechs with std engines

If pgi adds those mechs you could have a locked std engine

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 05 December 2015 - 08:21 PM, said:

There are omnimechs with std engines

If pgi adds those mechs you could have a locked std engine

And how exactly would that differ from the unlocked STD?

[Khobai]

Well it's the same problem with the IIC mechs

Why use an unlocked std when you can use an unlocked cxl

No one would ever use one of the omnimechs with a locked std engine unless std engines were somehow buffed.


I personally think all Xl engines should be the same and survive st destruction

Std engines should get a +X internal structure buff where X is some percentage of the engine weight

And the stupid 20% speed nerf that ruins half the clan mechs needs to be removed. There's better ways to nerf the op clan mechs that don't involve nerfing the subpar ones into obsolescence.

Edited by Khobai, 05 December 2015 - 09:02 PM.

[AEgg]

Khobai, on 05 December 2015 - 08:26 PM, said:

Well it's the same problem with the IIC mechs

Why use an unlocked std when you can use an unlocked cxl

No one would ever use one of the omnimechs with a locked std engine unless std engines were somehow buffed.

Well that's kind of the point.

We can't let IS XL survive ST loss without making STD obsolete and thus the choice meaningless.
We can't have clan XL die to ST loss without buffing clan mechs across the board to compensate.
We can't have clan XL survie ST loss without making clan STD obsolete for mechs that can choose it.

So we've got two conflicting statements, something has to change. I suggest only having three functional engine types, XL, STD, and Locked.

But yes, mechs with locked STD engines does throw a bit of a wrench into that, unless PGI never adds any of them or we just treat them the same as locked XL.

What else could we do, though? We need XL and STD to both be viable choices, yet we also need XL to be "good enough" all the time for mechs locked to it, both IS and Clan. Those points are contradictory if locked and unlocked engines behave the same way.

Edit: Given all that, there is I suppose one more option: Have IS XL die to ST loss, but give it some sort of other buff so that it's better than Clan XL at something, then give Clan STD some sort of buff so that it's a viable alternative to Clan XL. That is also an option, but it's arguably harder. What sort of buff would make taking a Clan STD viable compared to XL that survies ST loss, and what sort of buff would make IS XL worth it even with ST loss death?

Edited by AEgg, 05 December 2015 - 09:07 PM.