71 replies to this topic

[1453 R]

Widowmaker1981, on 26 January 2016 - 10:30 AM, said:

True, they could certainly mess with stats to make it viable i suppose. But they cannot, imo, make its heat load significant, just like they can never and should never make the flamer good - CC weapons should not exist in an fps in my opinion. Especially not long range CC weapons.

Crowd control exists in every FPS game that has flashbangs, conc's, a suppression-fire mechanic, or anything else that temporarily impairs enemy players.

I mean yeah, they'd have to pick between fast-firing energy autocannon with minorish heat load, or slow-firing energy autocannon with significant heat load, but if they had a sensible heat system (like maybe this one, or something like it?), then heat-inducing weapons would have a definite place in the game. You'd have to be careful with them, but just because a thing is twitchy and potentially difficult to get right doesn't mean we shouldn't try it, eh?

Unless we've all decided to give up on collisions/knockdowns after all?

Edited by 1453 R, 26 January 2016 - 11:20 AM.

[wanderer]

Quote

CC weapons should not exist in an fps in my opinion. Especially not long range CC weapons.

The hilarious thing is there's a very simple rule in TT that prevents the exact kind of "stunlock" you fear.

It says: "The maximum heat gain from external sources is no higher than 15 heat points (that is, 1.5 heat/sec) in a given turn."

MWO already has coding for external heat- that is, environmental- and even has a 'Mech that reduces those effects,the Hero Battlemaster.

Add a line limiting 'external heat' to 1.5 heat per second. Or 6 per 4 seconds. Whatever you like. It'll prevent hard stunlocks with flamers or any other "heat weapon" put into the game.

[1Grimbane]

Mystere, on 25 January 2016 - 04:37 PM, said:

Mixed-tech matches. Clans organized into lances and companies. Separate queues in CW. And now ammo for energy weapons. What would people think of next?

well... let's see, i for one want 3 eyes on my atlas cockpit and i want a 60 ton raven.. .might not be lore but i want a 60 ton raven with lrg pulse boating ability and highlander type hoverboots just for fun and small lasers should be doing a solid 20 point damage now

[GrimRiver]

Or the idea I seen one guy had was the amount of energy weapons are limited to engine size due to power output limitations.

Like:

Mech has 6 energy hard points.

STD250 - [2x LL, 2x ML] - [6x ML] - [2x LPL] - [1x PPC, 3x ML].

STD300 - [2x LL, 4x ML] - [6x MPL] - [3x LPL 2x ML] - [2x PPC, 2x ML].

Mechs that exceed their engine output will have a negative cooldown 5% per weapon and a 10% higher heat.

Edited by GrimRiver, 26 January 2016 - 12:09 PM.

[Strum Wealh]

wanderer, on 26 January 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

Incidentally, TT actually has optional rules for coolant failure (loss of effectiveness on heat sinks, basically) caused by overheating a 'Mech too often.

Just put an indicator bar on top of the heat scale for current efficiency vs. maximum. It'd work for stuff that crits/destroys sinks as well.

That wouldn't/shouldn't even be very difficult to implement.

It would essentially reuse the "overheat-damage-to-CT-structure" mechanic/code, applied to each individual Heat Sink, then tie each individual Heat Sink's cooling ability to its individual health (e.g. if the HS is at 100% health it cools at 100 % of its ability, if the HS is at 57% health it cools at 57% of its ability, if the HS is at 24% health it cools at 24% of its ability, and so on).

So, each and every time a 'Mech overheats itself to the point of shutdown, the damage is applied directly to the Heat Sinks instead of (or, perhaps, in addition to) the CT structure.
Good heat management then becomes even more important, and high-heat alpha strikes become appropriately risky/costly.

Thoughts?

[Revis Volek]

Bonger Bob, on 25 January 2016 - 04:29 PM, said:

so yeah, was in a round today seeing the usual lazor vomit spam at long ranges before any real engagement is taking place and thought "what if lazors and ppc's had ammo requirements ?"

instant end to the meta-jam-your-mech-full-of-lazors and go spam till you drop, people would be far more cautious and conservative, trying to go for well placed shots over spam due to ammo.

just imagine if ammo was scaled to weapon size ( like it is for AC ballistics currently ) how much ERLL or PPC spam would you see ??

added bonus of a lot less of the "opps i hit you because i was testing my alpha heat gen" as people are moving off at the start of rounds.

basically it comes down to : you don't see people with AC20's etc wasting shots that are unlikely to land damage, how great would it be if every weapon in the game was used like that.

it could extend to differing ammo types, like an ammo that is high heat generation but higher damage with a smaller ammo per ton stack or an ammo that has average heat with medium damage but more ammo per ton. Another could have lowered damage but better range with less heat. So many options to expand game play.

only problem would be the lore.......and....well........we know how PGI handles lore.....so problems ???? lol

just a thought to dream ( or have nightmares ) about, lol

These kinda of lasers already exist, they are called CHEMICAL LASERS.


And no, this is worse idea i have ever heard.

[1Grimbane]

so every mech out there energy oriented or anything will now have to start cramming even more ammo into our already very precious slots.... no way sir BOO THAT MAN

[M T]

Doesnt this take away the whole variety between Ballistics/missles and PPC/Lasers?

No. Stop crying about Lasers.

[Bonger Bob]

x MT x, on 26 January 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

Doesnt this take away the whole variety between Ballistics/missles and PPC/Lasers?

No. Stop crying about Lasers.

lasers and ballistics still have vast differences in things like projectile drop over range, delayed shot impact, accuracy etc, lol

lol, so many people take this post far too seriously, it was meant as a laugh and to make people think outside the box for once while taking the piss out of PGI for the abandonment of lore long ago.

chillax people, some of you have no sense of humor.

[Dirkdaring]

What if tier 5 noobs stopped making stupid posts? What would the forums look like?

[oldradagast]

Ammo is not the issue; instant, pixel perfect damage is the issue. Lasers require no real aiming (you have to hold the beam, but that's rather easy because there's a laser pointer telling you where you're aiming...), are easily boated, and deal all that damage instantly to a single pixel.

There are ways to fix this:
- Heavy-handed: nerf lasers into the ground. Note that I do NOT support this, but I list it for the sake of completeness
- Buff obviously underperforming weapons. AC's are still "ehh..." unless you can boat a billion of them, LBX's and machine guns are sad, and PPC's lose every single time to large pulse lasers unless you're a jump sniper
- Complex: Add a cone of fire to punish attempts to put a zillion point laser alpha (or any such alpha) all on a single pixel instantly at stupidly high ranges.

Until changes are made, lasers will rule because they are light-weight, stupidly easy to use, and are the best boatable weapons in the game.

[Bonger Bob]

Dirkdaring, on 26 January 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

What if tier 5 noobs stopped making stupid posts? What would the forums look like?

what if elitist twats didn't make assumptions about other players who's views they disagreed with ??

that would make a bigger difference on the forums.

ps : sadly, im about to be tier 2, so that will group me with people like you more often.....

Edited by Bonger Bob, 26 January 2016 - 03:47 PM.

[Khobai]

nerfing lasers is the obvious solution. because it fixes the immediate problem and increases TTK.

buffing non-laser weapons at best doesnt fix the laser problem and at worst could lower TTK even more since non-laser weapons are generally low heat and naturally complement lasers (i.e. laser/gauss).

and the cone of fire thing is just unreasonably complex and will never happen


PGI has gotta smack all the clan lasers with a huge nerf and then reduce/remove all the IS laser quirks. Its the only way we can end up with something vaguely approaching a balanced game.

Edited by Khobai, 26 January 2016 - 03:51 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Widowmaker1981, on 26 January 2016 - 10:30 AM, said:

True, they could certainly mess with stats to make it viable i suppose. But they cannot, imo, make its heat load significant, just like they can never and should never make the flamer good - CC weapons should not exist in an fps in my opinion. Especially not long range CC weapons.

Every competitive FPS ever has had crowd-control. Counter-Strike has flash-bangs, frags, and the machine gun. Quake had rocket and grenade launchers. Unreal has both of those and two weapons with ricocheting projectiles, not to mention the Bio Rifle which temporarily mines an area with hazardous goo...sometimes explosive goo. Or how about shock combos? Halo has the rocket launcher, fuel rod cannon, brute shot, grenades. It also has hard- and soft- counters to certain items; overcharge for overshields, de-scope-on-damage for precision weapons, guidance packages for vehicles...

There's nothing wrong with the concept. It has its place. Inducing heat into the target to stop his high-alpha laser volley potentially incentivizes the use of colder weapons like ballistics or SRMs. The user of the Plasma Rifle is, himself, heating up pretty good, too, so along with ammo there is a limit to how long the team has to make use of his benefits. Like AMS providing LRM cover, it's a temporary effect that requires communication to capitalize on, only in this case not everybody has to have one equipped for it to be truly worth it (ignoring LRMs being mediocre to begin with). One or two 'Mechs harassing the enemy with 10-damage, heat-spiking rounds can cause mayhem because it will disrupt the DPS exchange in a small way that can snowball into a decisive advantage. Indirect fire AoE weapons like 'Mech Mortars or Long Toms similarly disrupt DPS in an exchange, through forced movement instead of overheating.

The complete lack of any sort of crowd control outside lolstrikes (which are bollocks, especially the primo versions) is one of the driving factors behind MWO's long-lived, stale solutions to its meta-game. There is no reason to break up the death-ball, and there is no other way to improve your trading abilities outside of having weapons that simply deal more damage, faster. Even if Clan and IS equipment were balanced within themselves and without, the game wouldn't really change, you'd just have people trading at range with ACs in addition to lasers and PPCs, but it's not any more interesting.

[wanderer]

Khobai, on 26 January 2016 - 03:46 PM, said:

nerfing lasers is the obvious solution. because it fixes the immediate problem and increases TTK.

Nerfing anything just keeps the endless cycle going.

The problem isn't the weapons per se, it's the fact that you can instantly put all of them on a single pixel, regardless of range, sensor data, or anything else other than point-click-burn. If it's not lasers that are best, it'll be PPC/AC/Gauss in an endless circle of "NERF IT" and "BUFF IT", Paul randomly randoming numbers while doing absolutely nothing about the actual reason people end up annoyed.

Make convergence-to-range-of-target require sensor lock + paperdoll. No paperdoll lock? Default convergence to a long-distance point of fire. Got the lock? Convergence to range of target.

Mech has lots of weaponry? Make it slower to get it's own paperdoll to represent that it's tougher getting it on-target. Heck, lore has plenty of examples of good and bad targeting systems in that regard. Gunboats have more firepower, but it's tougher getting it all lined up. You've actually got another way to vary chassis that way- sensor strength and agility - that'll matter to the meta.

But ammo for lasers? As noted, we got those kinda lasers coming and nopenopenope to doing it to the current ones.

[Bonger Bob]

wanderer, on 26 January 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

.....................

Make convergence-to-range-of-target require sensor lock + paperdoll. No paperdoll lock? Default convergence to a long-distance point of fire. Got the lock? Convergence to range of target.

I think this almost exactly ( or something very similar ) was tried recently on the test server, and OMFG the crymoar shitstorm it created even made Russ sit up and pay attention, and so it was canned....

wanderer, on 26 January 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

Mech has lots of weaponry? Make it slower to get it's own paperdoll to represent that it's tougher getting it on-target. Heck, lore has plenty of examples of good and bad targeting systems in that regard. Gunboats have more firepower, but it's tougher getting it all lined up. You've actually got another way to vary chassis that way- sensor strength and agility - that'll matter to the meta.

But ammo for lasers? As noted, we got those kinda lasers coming and nopenopenope to doing it to the current ones.

a lot of things needed to change to adapt what was a turn based table top game to a FPS, but lasers seem to have been left to the side as too hard to convert ( show me where in T-T you could regularly get 100% of your lasers hit the target ).

When the IP went from table top to FPS twitch shooter, at least ballistics ended up with projectile drop and delayed impact, missiles got air travel time to target and a lock requirement, what did lasers get to differentiate them when changing from a turn based to a FPS styled game ???.

Its very apparent that heat sinks and the closed mindset of Russ / Paul with ghost heat, have done little to balance what was traded for the table top game to become a FPS.

Heat sinks are not ammo either for those that want to think it is, no "ammo" would ever be self replenishing. Just think, if AC's got "ammo" that never ran out, you'd get more people wasting shots from excessively long ranges because a limiting factor has been removed.

What if a limiting factor was placed on ERLL that made you think twice about pulling the trigger in vain and how it would alter peoples bad habits ?? ammo for lasers was just a passing thought more centered around " how can bad player behaviors be altered to improve game-play ?? " and that may mean, put another nail in the coffin for lore. How different would game play be if laser users had to make every shot count not just play snipe / poke games ??

We cling to lore centered around a turn based table top game in a FPS that seems to drift more away from the lore its based on every day.

[Aethon]

Bonger Bob, on 25 January 2016 - 04:29 PM, said:

so yeah, was in a round today seeing the usual lazor vomit spam at long ranges before any real engagement is taking place and thought "what if lazors and ppc's had ammo requirements ?"

instant end to the meta-jam-your-mech-full-of-lazors and go spam till you drop, people would be far more cautious and conservative, trying to go for well placed shots over spam due to ammo.

just imagine if ammo was scaled to weapon size ( like it is for AC ballistics currently ) how much ERLL or PPC spam would you see ??

added bonus of a lot less of the "opps i hit you because i was testing my alpha heat gen" as people are moving off at the start of rounds.

basically it comes down to : you don't see people with AC20's etc wasting shots that are unlikely to land damage, how great would it be if every weapon in the game was used like that.

it could extend to differing ammo types, like an ammo that is high heat generation but higher damage with a smaller ammo per ton stack or an ammo that has average heat with medium damage but more ammo per ton. Another could have lowered damage but better range with less heat. So many options to expand game play.

only problem would be the lore.......and....well........we know how PGI handles lore.....so problems ???? lol

just a thought to dream ( or have nightmares ) about, lol

Chemical Lasers, introduced in 3059 by Clan Hell's Horses, are the only lasers in Battletech that require ammo, aside from the various Plasma weapons.

[Bonger Bob]

Aethon, on 26 January 2016 - 07:43 PM, said:

Chemical Lasers, introduced in 3059 by Clan Hell's Horses, are the only lasers in Battletech that require ammo, aside from the various Plasma weapons.

see things like this, we all cling to lore when it suits us, but turn a blind eye to it being murdered other times.

forget the lore for a moment, and think what could be if we all accepted another flushing of lore to suit PGI and the FPS conversion.

I'd love lore to be a solid part of the game, but in 3 going on 4 years the only thing we've seen the lore used for is making more mech releases and a rough base for select weapons design. You could have called the game "giant stompy robots" for all the attention PGI has given to lore.....

[Aethon]

Bonger Bob, on 26 January 2016 - 07:51 PM, said:

see things like this, we all cling to lore when it suits us, but turn a blind eye to it being murdered other times.

forget the lore for a moment, and think what could be if we all accepted another flushing of lore to suit PGI and the FPS conversion.

I'd love lore to be a solid part of the game, but in 3 going on 4 years the only thing we've seen the lore used for is making more mech releases and a rough base for select weapons design. You could have called the game "giant stompy robots" for all the attention PGI has given to lore.....

1. I do not turn a blind eye to canon being ignored by PGI.
2. This game needs to be more of a sim, not more of an FPS.
3. No argument about the lore being ignored, but that is no reason to encourage them to do it even more.

[Bonger Bob]

Aethon, on 26 January 2016 - 08:23 PM, said:

1. I do not turn a blind eye to canon being ignored by PGI.
2. This game needs to be more of a sim, not more of an FPS.
3. No argument about the lore being ignored, but that is no reason to encourage them to do it even more.

agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment and points here.

we all make a concession, consciously or otherwise, with the lore being killed off when we play MWO, our acceptance of it is automatic when we play due to the fact its a table top turn based IP turned into a FPS or sim.

I'm a realist though, a FPS shooter that is consistently drifting away from the lore it was founded on is what we have, id rather it was more than what it is too, but its not so any thoughts towards improving it that are workable in line with Russ' fantasy and PGI's ability's are at least worth discussing.