354 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

Gyrok, on 27 January 2016 - 09:50 PM, said:

Even then, IS can fire 3 at once meaning trading 26 damage for 27. The difference in burn time is not significant enough to make those trades worthwhile.

But without Quirks, Clams technically win that trade (more Dam/tick, less heat)

2.32 for 2 cLPLs (plus any ERMLs? 1/2 (?) damage at 600M)
2.16 for 3 isERLLs

Past 600M, the damage falloff puts them lower, but unquirked the cLPLs are a fearsome weapon.
10% Duration puts 3 isERLLs to nearly the same burn time as cLPLs, 1.125s (VS 1.12s)
2.4 Dam/tick in that 10% duration quirk.

[MischiefSC]

FupDup, on 27 January 2016 - 08:42 PM, said:

The first PTS session of the "Great Rebalance" already tested that. Every mech had the same quirks of agility/structure/sensors just with somewhat different values, meaning that the only significant differences between mechs were hitboxes and hardpoints once again.

I'm not saying that every weapon quirk we have at the moment is well designed (e.g. which weapons affected, what values, etc.), but outright killing one entire dimension of quirks makes the whole system bland and kinda pointless.

When possible, kill them with nuclear fire.

The Vindi? Sure. Weapon quirks. Bad weapon positions, bad everything.

The Blackjack? Small, high mounts, energyboat?

That needs weapon quirks like the Timber Wolf needs structure quirks.

I would say 30% of mechs don't need any quirks.

60% small to medium structure/mobility.

10% get weapon quirks, as general as possible to prevent 'only this one build is good' situations.

THAT would be the best option for doing quirks.

Best option? Actually balance the mother ******* mechs and tech.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MischiefSC, on 27 January 2016 - 10:26 PM, said:

When possible, kill them with nuclear fire.

The Vindi? Sure. Weapon quirks. Bad weapon positions, bad everything.

The Blackjack? Small, high mounts, energyboat?

That needs weapon quirks like the Timber Wolf needs structure quirks.

I would say 30% of mechs don't need any quirks.

60% small to medium structure/mobility.

10% get weapon quirks, as general as possible to prevent 'only this one build is good' situations.

THAT would be the best option for doing quirks.

Best option? Actually balance the mother ******* mechs and tech.

So bad mechs will only ever be more maneuverable/tanky than their masters? What happened to quirks for flavor? Sorry, but huge weapon quirks are just egregious as massive structure quirks.

Even with balanced tech, allowing some bad mechs to have a little more firepower through weapon quirks (Spiders for example) instead of just giving them all the structure is just fine in my book, and that includes the Blackjack (non-1X).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 28 January 2016 - 07:29 AM.

[FupDup]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 January 2016 - 07:27 AM, said:

So bad mechs will only ever be more maneuverable/tanky than their masters? What happened to quirks for flavor? Sorry, but huge weapon quirks are just egregious as massive structure quirks.

Even with balanced tech, allowing some bad mechs to have a little more firepower through weapon quirks (Spiders for example) instead of just giving them all the structure is just fine in my book, and that includes the Blackjack (non-1X).

Question: How much bonus structure would it take to make the Spider 5V viable if those were the only quirks allowed?

I suspect that the values would be in excess of 100%...it would put the new infamous 45-ton medium to shame...

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 28 January 2016 - 08:53 AM, said:

Question: How much bonus structure would it take to make the Spider 5V viable if those were the only quirks allowed?

I suspect that the values would be in excess of 100%...it would put the new infamous 45-ton medium to shame...

2X Armour would be a start.

[FupDup]

Mcgral18, on 28 January 2016 - 10:01 AM, said:

2X Armour would be a start.

A start, but nowhere near the finish...

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 28 January 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

A start, but nowhere near the finish...

I mean, it COULD be made into the best Spider with minimal effort...


LegoMechs™

[FupDup]

Mcgral18, on 28 January 2016 - 10:11 AM, said:

I mean, it COULD be made into the best Spider with minimal effort...


LegoMechs™

For Paul, even minimal effort is too much.

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 28 January 2016 - 10:12 AM, said:

For Paul, even minimal effort is too much.

Except for Ghost Damage...

The Nerfinator works in mysterious ways.

Attribute and Variable edits? Too hard.
Making up a dynamic damage system? Perfect thing to test! (realistically, dynamic range with a flag set to Targeting, not much work, but a hell of a lot more than attribute edits)

[Sandpit]

MischiefSC, on 27 January 2016 - 02:37 PM, said:

I will say that the people involved are excellent at MWO and have as a good a command of the game as anyone.

The concern is that when confronted with a situation where they could not win on long range trades they just didn't know what to do. So they tried to do long range trades anyway and made some uncertain pushes.

Armchair QB work is tiring I know. I'm not trying to imply I know better or play better than the CoS teams in question. However I've watched and played a lot of matches and that didn't jive.

Now I'm happy to concede that the long range trade game is so strong at that level it trumps all else and as such even a small imbalance there is huge to overall match performance. I don't know.

However builds and pushes there didn't look like the builds and pushes I see in play normally, even on other competitive matches.

Run into it all the time when helping new drop commanders in our units. They're comfortable when it comes to using one of the "premade' strategies we use commonly, but when stuff starts falling apart they'll get lost, or angry, or blaming everything BUT our strategies and such.

It's one of those things that just comes through repetition and practice and experience. How do you call for an organized retreat back into a rally point? How do you keep from falling apart when you're in the middle of a 12 v 12 firefight and you're only 3 assault mech just went down?

Stuff like that. The best thing a drop lead can do is simply not panic or freeze. A lot of times I see drop leads completely stop giving direction and calling targets after they get discouraged on a bad wave in CW or a bad quickplay drop.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 January 2016 - 07:27 AM, said:

So bad mechs will only ever be more maneuverable/tanky than their masters? What happened to quirks for flavor? Sorry, but huge weapon quirks are just egregious as massive structure quirks.

Even with balanced tech, allowing some bad mechs to have a little more firepower through weapon quirks (Spiders for example) instead of just giving them all the structure is just fine in my book, and that includes the Blackjack (non-1X).

No, I said really bad mechs need weapon quirks. None of the BJs fit in that category. Which Vindi would you take, unquirked, over a blackjack? In a quirkless world the BJ is the best 45 tonner. If IS and Clan tech was 100% balanced and there were no quirks any BJ is better than any other 45 tonner.

Same reason the QD needs resized or it'd need weapon quirks. Same with the poor dragon.

The BJ needs weapon quirks like the Hunchie and Cent do. Which is to say they don't.

Are they all a match for the TBR? No but that's not the criteria. Balance the tech, bring sub-standard mechs up with structure and mobility quirks and the the worst designed (hitbox/hardpoint) and give them weapon quirks.

[Sandpit]

MischiefSC, on 28 January 2016 - 10:43 AM, said:

No, I said really bad mechs need weapon quirks. None of the BJs fit in that category. Which Vindi would you take, unquirked, over a blackjack? In a quirkless world the BJ is the best 45 tonner. If IS and Clan tech was 100% balanced and there were no quirks any BJ is better than any other 45 tonner.

Same reason the QD needs resized or it'd need weapon quirks. Same with the poor dragon.

The BJ needs weapon quirks like the Hunchie and Cent do. Which is to say they don't.

Are they all a match for the TBR? No but that's not the criteria. Balance the tech, bring sub-standard mechs up with structure and mobility quirks and the the worst designed (hitbox/hardpoint) and give them weapon quirks.

The hitbox issue I see going away eventually. The new mech designs seem to be very good at this. The old mechs that are getting a "redo" seem to come out better than before as well.

I think PGI has done well in this department. They just need to get to it in resizing the original mechs released to fit into the new scale of size they're using.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MischiefSC, on 28 January 2016 - 10:43 AM, said:

No, I said really bad mechs need weapon quirks. None of the BJs fit in that category.

Actually, all non-1X BJs were not useful before the latest rebalance, and actually I preferred the Vindi over the BJ-3 for PPC poptart (though 20% extra PPC velocity had something to do with that). Now would the BJ be good if tech was balanced properly? Maybe, I don't know that the non-1X BJs would be worth the tonnage still because they all suffered from being squishy AND slow. The SCat/Fridge was actually preferable to the BJ-3/A/1/1DC before the rebalance.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 28 January 2016 - 11:13 AM.

[Gyrok]

Mcgral18, on 27 January 2016 - 10:21 PM, said:

But without Quirks, Clams technically win that trade (more Dam/tick, less heat)

2.32 for 2 cLPLs (plus any ERMLs? 1/2 (?) damage at 600M)
2.16 for 3 isERLLs

Past 600M, the damage falloff puts them lower, but unquirked the cLPLs are a fearsome weapon.
10% Duration puts 3 isERLLs to nearly the same burn time as cLPLs, 1.125s (VS 1.12s)
2.4 Dam/tick in that 10% duration quirk.

True, but nearly every IS mech has quirks...and no clan mech has positive weapon quirks of any kind (with few exceptions, like the nova prime arms with -energy heat).

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 January 2016 - 11:12 AM, said:

Actually, all non-1X BJs were not useful before the latest rebalance, and actually I preferred the Vindi over the BJ-3 for PPC poptart (though 20% extra PPC velocity had something to do with that). Now would the BJ be good if tech was balanced properly? Maybe, I don't know that the non-1X BJs would be worth the tonnage still because they all suffered from being squishy AND slow. The SCat/Fridge was actually preferable to the BJ-3/A/1/1DC before the rebalance.

If tech was balanced.

Are you saying hardpoints/hitboxes on BJ are inferior?

Let me put it this way -

If you could put CXL and Clan weapons on a BJ would you still take the others instead?

Thing is the size of a credit card and all its firepower is cockpit height. While a bit slow for a 45 tonner it's a solid design. What it suffers from is the things that make tech imbalanced; IS xl vs CXL, boated smaller lasers on IS are generally inferior to the same on Clans.

More to the point give the Fridge or Scat IS XL and IS weapons.

That's what I'm talking about and your view (while absolutely correct in view of the games current balance) is indicative of the problem.

Without quirks just about any mech is crap compared to either mechs with Clan tech (cxl, weapons, endo/ff half size, etc) or mechs with quirks.

A timberwolf chassis without omnipods and all IS tech (weapons, engine, ff/endo, etc) is a 75 ton Catapult with low arms. Probably overall inferior to the Cataphract.

Not saying tech needs to be identical but we are so far from tech being actually balanced that we don't even know what balanced would look like.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MischiefSC, on 28 January 2016 - 05:26 PM, said:

If tech was balanced.

Are you saying hardpoints/hitboxes on BJ are inferior?

Speed would be a little sad, they wouldn't be bad (1X would still be a beast), but I think some people underestimate how big having double the structure is everywhere, I would almost prefer that over a Clan XL on some mechs.

MischiefSC, on 28 January 2016 - 05:26 PM, said:

More to the point give the Fridge or Scat IS XL and IS weapons.

Depends on whether they could customize or not.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 28 January 2016 - 06:02 PM.

[Mcgral18]

Gyrok, on 28 January 2016 - 05:07 PM, said:

True, but nearly every IS mech has quirks...and no clan mech has positive weapon quirks of any kind (with few exceptions, like the nova prime arms with -energy heat).

I might make a database of Quirks by the end of the year...project requires it, might as well do it on Shooty Stompy Robots if available.
Clam quirks are just so annoying to read though...might restrict it to Battlemechs (static quirks per variant).


Would make a resource to easily search which mechs have X quirk of Y severity.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 January 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

Speed would be a little sad, they wouldn't be bad (1X would still be a beast), but I think some people underestimate how big having double the structure is everywhere, I would almost prefer that over a Clan XL on some mechs.


Depends on whether they could customize or not.

So 100% flip of chassis and no mech in the game has any quirks at all.

So a Scat, pick which variant, no omnipods or the like with 100% IS mechlab. No clan tech at all. So the 3 hardpoints you probably get, IS endo/ff, if you want an XL it's an IS one. IS DHS, etc.

Then take whichever BJ you think is worse and give it CXL, cermls, clpls, cspls, clans endo/dhs. Like it was a IIC mech.

Again. No mech has any quirks.

Then tell me how you're making a better Scat or Fridge.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MischiefSC, on 28 January 2016 - 06:27 PM, said:

So a Scat, pick which variant, no omnipods or the like with 100% IS mechlab. No clan tech at all. So the 3 hardpoints you probably get, IS endo/ff, if you want an XL it's an IS one. IS DHS, etc.

Then take whichever BJ you think is worse and give it CXL, cermls, clpls, cspls, clans endo/dhs. Like it was a IIC mech.

Or you could compare the BJ and SCat like they were both IICs. Without quirks though, it is hard to say considering how squishy even the better design like the HBK-IICs are right now. The SCat would be able to run 3 ERML + Gauss and actually have decent speed compared to the BJ-1 which only gains 1 more ERML but capped at 80 something kph. It would maybe slightly be better than the SCat but I don't think it would be near as one-sided as you seem to think.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 January 2016 - 07:30 PM, said:

Or you could compare the BJ and SCat like they were both IICs. Without quirks though, it is hard to say considering how squishy even the better design like the HBK-IICs are right now. The SCat would be able to run 3 ERML + Gauss and actually have decent speed compared to the BJ-1 which only gains 1 more ERML but capped at 80 something kph. It would maybe slightly be better than the SCat but I don't think it would be near as one-sided as you seem to think.

We're missing each other here.

I'm saying turn the BJ into a IIC and the Scat into a pure IS mech to show how broken actual balance without quirks is. How do you think a BJ with IIC tech vs a Scat with IS tech would turn out, no quirks of any sort?

I'm not saying it would be one-sided if they were both IIC mechs; I'm saying that the BJ is generally better. I'm saying that if IS and Clan tech was so balanced that flipping either to the other tech wouldn't change the 'value' of the mech significantly without quirks should be the goal.

AFTER tech is that balanced then you look at quirks. Scat? Probably needs some structure quirks if it can't have hardpoint inflation. BJ? Probably just fine -

If, and again if....

all tech is balanced.

Also you keep losing the 'nobody has any quirks' bit of the balance concept. If you take all quirks out completely the IIC mechs really are not that 'squishy'. All mechs that are not the holy trinity of Omnimechs are pretty squishy by comparison. That's why we have quirks.

So if you balance tech to the point that a Timber Wolf chassis that's 100% IS tech isn't different in value (though certainly performance. Remember, we're not talking identical stats just equal value) then you look at who's the top performers in their catagories. You take people under that and you try to get them to a similar, as in reasonably close, range with structure and mobility quirks. If it's a bad design (not enough hardpoints, bad hitboxes, bad weapon locations, etc) you give it weapon quirks to get it up to the ballpark.

The ideal goal however should be that the best mechs on both IS and Clan have no quirks at all