102 replies to this topic

[Johnny Z]

smokefield, on 01 February 2016 - 06:33 AM, said:

tl;dr

op proposals has a weak point - it will reduce the number of usefull mechs and loads. people will gravitate towards the mechs that allows them to use the weapons they want...meaning we will see more of heavy/assaults and less of the others. also it will prevent us to see funny builds like boomcada or ac20 raven or whatever. this game needs more diversity not less....in all aspects.

This is the big argument against sized hard points and its a good one. Its the part that from a player perspective, at least for me is hard to see all the angles. Would it limit load outs to much and relegate some chassis to being not fun any more etc.

[Pendaelose]

I'm a big fan of the current hard point system. It's a nice compromise between the old MW3 and MW4 systems.

Without hard points there is no reason to include variants. In fact, in MW2 and MW3 there was almost no reason to include more than 1 100 ton mech. Without a hard point system they are all the same. Slap your JJ on any Daishi or Atlas, load up the guns you want (No restrictions on C or IS) on the spot you want and call it done.

Excessive Hard point restrictions mean that we'll only have a select few mechs of any value. I *like* seeing a nice variety of mechs on the field. Sure, some mechs are over represented, but we actually have reasons to mix up the mechs we are playing.


Hard points are not the root of our balance problems.


I agree with both the heat and convergence camps. Notably, both camps seem most concerned with lasers. Pinpoint accuracy on a hit scan weapon that can be fired indefinitely with little to no penalty.

Even without adjusting laser damage or weapon convergence just increasing the burn time on lasers could do a lot to balance them. Instead of 1 second burn 3 second reload, Lets look at 2 second burn 2 second reload. Same DPS, same Heat generated, but it will require twice the effort to keep the damage on a single location.

For non-pulse lasers, If we consider how lasers really work then 4 seconds of burn time with 0 reload would make even more sense. Spread the heat generation out across the whole burn time and it's a lot more realistic. Hold Left Mouse to slowly melt armor. Release left mouse when it's dead. Same DPS, same heat generated. More realistic and more balanced distribution of damage. If you want to get really crazy you could even get rid of the pre-set burn times. Have the laser turn on when fire is pressed and turn off when the fire is released. The total DPS and HPS would be unchanged from current. No new super powered lasers would come from this, they would be nerfed in one way, but they would be more functionally distinct from pulse lasers and they would have some additional utility in being able to stream heat instead of burst heat.

Lasers would no longer be an "Front load Alpha strike" weapon.



Even if lasers are less pin-point-damage, convergence for all weapons really should still be looked at. Accuracy penalties for movement and heat are not unreasonable. I also think actual pin-point convergence should be a "feature" restricted to firing on targeted mechs. If you don't have a target lock the weapons should simply fire in a straight line from their hard-point in the direction you are facing.

[Funky Bacon]

It might be worth mentioning that MW4 also have vastly different damage numbers and cycle times on their weapons that makes small weapons fast but low damage, and large weapons hit hard but are slow.

While in MWO most laser have a cycle time of around 2-4 seconds. in MW4 it ranges from 1 second to 6 or even 8 seconds depending on size and damage which also increases time to kill with less overall DPS than in MWO.

PPC for example: "Damage - Heat - Cycle"
MWO: 10 - 10 - 4 (2.50 dps)
MW4: 10 - 10 - 6 (1.64 dps)

C-ERPPC.
MWO: 15 - 15 - 4 (3.75 dps)
MW4: 14 - 15 - 8 (2.33 dps)

Large Laser and LPL.
MWO: 9 - 7 - 3.25 ---- 11 - 7 - 3.25 (2.12dps --- 2.81dps)
MW4: 7.5 - 5 - 5 ---- 2.62 - 1.75 - 1.25 (1.50dps --- 2.10dps)

AC/5 and AC/10
MWO: 5 - 1 - 1.66 --- 10 - 3 - 2.50 (3.01dps --- 4dps)
MW4: 2 - 0.2 - 1.5 --- 9 - 0.6 - 4 (1.33dps --- 2.25dps)

You go into a game with all these heavy weapons, fire a pinpoint alpha into the enemy, wait 3-4 seconds then do it again, even less with quirks and modules.

In MW4 you had to wait after each alpha strike if using the heavier high-damage weapons which could leave you more open to counter attacks unless using some smaller weapons as well.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Khobai, on 01 February 2016 - 05:25 AM, said:

You realize theres an entire subset of weapons that generate virtually no heat right?

An overly punitive heatscale will just reign in ballistics as the new dominant meta.

A lax heatscale gives players options, options is what the game needs, it doesnt need to be ballisticwarrior online.

BUT lasers absolutely need to be nerfed. Their max range needs to be reeled in. And this whole 1000m laser BS meta needs to get squashed.

Until what you do is you let Lasers fire faster, like 3-4s recharge timers, offset by high heat penalties, while you give ballistics longer CD, but less heat penalties. AC2: 2s, AC5: 4s, AC10: 6s, AC20: 8s. Then, you decrease laser burn times to like 0.3, 0.6 and 0.85s for S/M/L lasers and 0.2/0.4/0.6 for Pulses. You also give Pulses like 2-3s burn timers, but can your heat scale afford the fire rate? Basically it would end up with people running mixed builds. Lasers for good quick endless damage, ballistics for slower, cooler damage, while the heatsinks cool everything off.

PPCs, you make hot, deadly and high velocity. Gauss you do the same, PPC you give a 4-6s CD, Gauss you give a 8-10s CD. Again, faster CD, unlimited ammo, good velocity, but high on the heat scale. Gauss, low heat, high damage, high velocity, but very long CD, limiting its output. No need for charge when you cant fire it more then every 8-10s.

So, you can rapidly fire off your ERLL every 4s, if your heat scale can afford it, or you can fire your cooler ballistic at a much reduced rate. Right now, AC 2s are stupid fast anyway. I meet Shadowhawk and Panther AI....its an endless and non stop stream of AC2 shells, that really does need to change, idc if the damage is only 2 per shot, when its absolutely non stop, yeah, it adds up quick...

Its possible to add a punitive heatscale and still balance ballistics vs lasers, the only issue is everyone is so caught up in the meta of the moment that they would be unwilling to adapt tactics to a more strategic approach, rather they would just seek out what is simplest and easy. Really, the issue would not be the system, but rather the players.. that is the issue now, its not that there is not a system that would help this game, its the players are all so caught in the KILL IT NOW, they dont want to even consider anything that stops their laser vomit meta.

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 01 February 2016 - 07:59 AM.

[Scyther]

Wintersdark said:

"None of which would have been stopped by sized hardpoints.

I love the concept, I'm all for a more limited mechlab, but you're fooling yourself if you think that would have magically fixed balance issues. It just would have made certain mechs DOA (those without the right hardpoint sizes), in almost exactly the same way many clan mechs are trash tier primarily because of poor fixed upgrade/engine choices.

Again, I'm pro-sized hardpoints.... But it would not have fixed any balance issues."

(In reply to my message about unlimited mechlab leading to ghost heat, weapon nerfs, JJ nerfs etc. Sorry about the wonky quotes, when I click Quote button it just opens a blank reply box)

Never said sized hardpoints (or my alternate suggestion, critspace-limits for weapon types) would 'magically fix' balance issues. However you are fooling yourself if you think that many of the balance 'fixes' we have now weren't put in specifically to address:

-Dual-gauss and dual-AC20 builds on certain mechs/mount locations
-Boating 6 ERLL, 6 PPC, multi-AC2s, quad-UAC5s (on certain mechs)
-Overloading certain weapon combos on small fast mechs
-Boating various missile combos
-Using JJs and specific weapons in high mounts to poptart
-Ditto for hill-humping

Many of those issues were apparent even before Clans were released; some of them we still deal with. Hence the "need" to nerf everything down, then quirk them back up to make varying chassis useful.

As for mech builds being DOA, no need to lock sized hardpoints into exactly the stock build. If the WVR-6R isn't competitive 'as-is', you give it some extra hardpoint space to allow for more design choice. If the STK-4N is too much of a laser-vomit LL or ERLL boat, you give it only 2, 3 or 4 2-space slots, or make the highest-mount 'peek and snipe' slots 1-slot so LL/ERLL/ERPPC doesn't fit there.

If only a few mechs have enough slot-space for dual-gauss, and those mechs don't have those slots in high-mount sniper positions, then perhaps the need to nerf gauss mechanics goes away. Dakka-mechs go away if they don't have 4 slots large enough to hold whatever is considered 'too much dakka'. A less-competitive chassis gets their slots/mount locations adjusted to allow for more favorable weapon choices.

It may not be the best solution, and it wouldn't fix all balance issues (no game I know of has, although some come much closer). To say that sized hardpoints wouldn't fix any balance issues is, however, sheer folly.

Regardless, any such major changes at this point are moot, as they would have to re-design nearly half the game to accommodate it.

Any suggestions that we want seriously considered need to be essentially a 'tweak' of the current game mechanics. Limited crit-spaces could be put in, though it would cause plenty screaming.

A modified 'quirk' system could still help although it seems it's going to forever be a nightmare of balancing, complaining, and re-balancing.

Edited by MadBadger, 01 February 2016 - 09:15 AM.

[Davegt27]

wanderer, on 31 January 2016 - 09:48 PM, said:

No. People magically think that not wanting perfect convergence = not wanting -any- convergence. Yes, I bloody well want weapons to converge. What I don't want them to do is converge so perfectly that you can, without sensors (heck, beyond the range your sensors will even pick up a target) aim and put your entire arsenal a thousand meters downrange and every single one of them will hit the exact same armor section in the exact same spot.

Having converging weapons doesn't have to mean they converge on the point you had your guns on for a fraction of a second while swinging around so fast you're still seeing motion blur, yet somehow your four AC/5's mounted on two different opposite sides of your 'Mech magically punch a perfect 20-point hole in a shot grouping that would make a Marine gunnery sarge drop to his knees and thank RNGesus for the miracle you performed that day.

Heck, I don't even want cone-of-fire or random hits. I want no-sensor-lock (that's iron sights, kids) shots to have a predictable but wider shot grouping. Locked on? Put that salvo right in the ol' bullseye. Not locked? A predictable convergence towards a long-distance point that means you hit the target, you just don't end up hitting everything right on the crosshair center. Left arm hits to the left, left torso a bit less. Same with the right. Head's a bit high, CT a bit low.

You could simply require sensors to get a paperdoll. Or you could literally give every weapon in the game the lock-on mechanic (and you'd still be able to fire, just not with perfect convergence either way).

Or we can endlessly run weapons through the buff/nerf cycle, ignoring the fact that it often isn't the weapon, it's the fact that we can easily and effortlessly pump all of them into the same spot- and that regardless of how you shuffle weapons, it'll still settle out to "what gives me the best converging combo-blast"?

It's like poptarting, people. The end result was breaking jump jets to "fix" poptarting, rather than fixing what made poptarting possible- accurate mid-air fire on the drop.

Being fire control tech I am the complete opposite lol
I want to project myself into the 31 century

I want multiple target lock, both gimbaled and maglev weapons adjustment (so I can have convergence), at minimum lead computing optical sight, 360 deg multi sensor scan and lock with target prioritization

I want a 31 century offensive weapon not a bunch people running around with sticks

I joined about 3 weeks before pop-tarting ended but loved pop tarts you jump up so I and my buddies can get a clear shot at you what a great idea

[Livewyr]

Read the title and thought the OP would be R--s or P--l...

I am disappoint.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Funky Bacon, on 01 February 2016 - 07:48 AM, said:

It might be worth mentioning that MW4 also have vastly different damage numbers and cycle times on their weapons that makes small weapons fast but low damage, and large weapons hit hard but are slow.

While in MWO most laser have a cycle time of around 2-4 seconds. in MW4 it ranges from 1 second to 6 or even 8 seconds depending on size and damage which also increases time to kill with less overall DPS than in MWO.

PPC for example: "Damage - Heat - Cycle"
MWO: 10 - 10 - 4 (2.50 dps)
MW4: 10 - 10 - 6 (1.64 dps)

C-ERPPC.
MWO: 15 - 15 - 4 (3.75 dps)
MW4: 14 - 15 - 8 (2.33 dps)

Large Laser and LPL.
MWO: 9 - 7 - 3.25 ---- 11 - 7 - 3.25 (2.12dps --- 2.81dps)
MW4: 7.5 - 5 - 5 ---- 2.62 - 1.75 - 1.25 (1.50dps --- 2.10dps)

AC/5 and AC/10
MWO: 5 - 1 - 1.66 --- 10 - 3 - 2.50 (3.01dps --- 4dps)
MW4: 2 - 0.2 - 1.5 --- 9 - 0.6 - 4 (1.33dps --- 2.25dps)

You go into a game with all these heavy weapons, fire a pinpoint alpha into the enemy, wait 3-4 seconds then do it again, even less with quirks and modules.

In MW4 you had to wait after each alpha strike if using the heavier high-damage weapons which could leave you more open to counter attacks unless using some smaller weapons as well.

This has been one of the main problems with this game imo, it sped up rate of fire for weapons to the point that rapid fire weapons either have to be worthless or become earthquake simulators. Slowing down how fast big weapons can fire allows the sustained fire weapons to actually find a nice balance. Though, the recycle times you list are actually not their true recycle times, lasers and a few other I believe actually wait for the firing animation to finish before beginning cooldown which adds to the recycle (not more than half a second though).

[Nightmare1]

brroleg, on 31 January 2016 - 10:59 AM, said:

Look at mechlab in Mechwarrior 4



You can see, there is small ballistic and small energy hardpoint in right torso, so you can put there only some small energy and some small ballistic weapon. On left torso there is big missile hardpoint. So in Mechwarrior 4 this mech could not mount PPC or Gauss or even ER Laser. And this is how this mech is balanced. Its speed, its armor, its small size, all of this is balanced with being not able to mount big guns like PPC or Gauss or ER Laser

Now, what will happen when PGI will bring this mech into MWO. It will be able to mount gauss rifle in right torso and ER lasers in each arm. All of this while being small fast and with medium armor. This thing will be OP as hell. So PGI will throw some ridiculous negative quirks on it making it complete garbage, or even nerf gauss and ppc cause this mech will make those weapons OP being able to mount them.

So what im saying. This game will never ever will be balanced until hardpoints will have size, so you could not mount huge weapons in hardpoint where there should be small weapon instead.

MW4 was a thing of beauty.

[JC Daxion]

Sized hard points, and alpha ghost heat changes to me are the best idea's to fix balance. It also would give people a reason to play different mechs, and make mechs more unqiue

[Funky Bacon]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 01 February 2016 - 10:33 AM, said:

This has been one of the main problems with this game imo, it sped up rate of fire for weapons to the point that rapid fire weapons either have to be worthless or become earthquake simulators. Slowing down how fast big weapons can fire allows the sustained fire weapons to actually find a nice balance. Though, the recycle times you list are actually not their true recycle times, lasers and a few other I believe actually wait for the firing animation to finish before beginning cooldown which adds to the recycle (not more than half a second though).

I basically took the numbers I could find from Google searches and the MWO Smurfy-mechlab. I know the cycle times are affected by beam duration and things like that.
MW4: Mercenaries got some slightly different numbers from Vengeance (which was my reference) as well.

Also, MW:4 Merc's LBX-cannons... just Unf! If you could avoid the long range weapons and bring those things into range of the enemy mechs then things started dying pretty fast!
--
Name: LBX AC 20
Technology: Inner Sphere
Range: 350 meters
Damage: 28
Heat: 2
Recycle rate: 6
Size: 3
Weight: 15 tons
Ammo per ton: 20
--
Source: http://www.ign.com/f...roughfaq-380364

[Sandpit]

Wintersdark, on 31 January 2016 - 11:14 AM, said:

But it would not fix balance problems. After all, the most "abused" weapons right now are smaller weapons - small pulse lasers, er medium lasers, etc. The problem certainly isn't lots of large weapons.

Pretty well sums it up

Another thing about this suggestion? Never going to happen. You have any idea how much coding and work and resources it would take to do something like this at this point?

It would require a COMPLETE rework of the ENTIRE game balance.

Not going to happen.

[wanderer]

Quote

Being fire control tech I am the complete opposite lol
I want to project myself into the 31 century

This is 1980s sci-fi, not Modern Warfare.

Otherwise we'd be at line-of-sight, one-shot cockpit kills all day every day.

---

Also, sized hardpoints people?

Find the chassis that already has the ideal ones. Eliminate all others. That's your new game and PGI stops being able to sell robots, because you've just narrowed the field massively.

Fix convergence. Get a real heat scale down and balance ROF and weapon types around it. We're already up to the point where 55-tonners are two shot kills, never mind lights. Diffuse and reduce alphas, increase TTK.

Edited by wanderer, 01 February 2016 - 12:09 PM.

[Sandpit]

wanderer, on 01 February 2016 - 12:08 PM, said:

Fix convergence. Get a real heat scale down and balance ROF and weapon types around it. We're already up to the point where 55-tonners are two shot kills, never mind lights. Diffuse and reduce alphas, increase TTK.

Not going to happen but still good suggestions.

Heat scale would do more than anything else, but that requires coding so might as well forget that

[Quicksilver Aberration]

wanderer, on 01 February 2016 - 12:08 PM, said:

Find the chassis that already has the ideal ones. Eliminate all others. That's your new game and PGI stops being able to sell robots, because you've just narrowed the field massively.

That's already the case . Sized hardpoints are intended to make it so their is less overlap/more restrictive so finding the are less mechs that can run the "ideal" loadout.

[Sandpit]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 01 February 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

That's already the case . Sized hardpoints are intended to make it so their is less overlap/more restrictive so finding the are less mechs that can run the "ideal" loadout.

the only thing is actually does is selectively limit mech choices even more than they are now.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sandpit, on 01 February 2016 - 12:18 PM, said:

the only thing is actually does is selectively limit mech choices even more than they are now.

It limits the capabilities of mechs to expand the mech choices. Suddenly mechs that simply have the hardpoint numbers can't just do everything (awesome vs Stalker is always the classic example). It isn't perfect, but it is a step in the right direction to prevent the consistent increase in numbers of hardpoints with new mechs.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 01 February 2016 - 12:21 PM.

[wanderer]

Honestly, the heat scale would be easy enough. There's already "If heat = X, trigger Y" in the code. It'd just take adding more examples of same, and setting some lasting flag effects like "reduce 'Mech agility/speed by X% at Y% heat load".

Convergence? The derp simple version would be switching to a fixed distant point and seeing the results. Adding sensor lock for binary convergence might take relatively minor effort but that's "it"- and yes, I know "minor" is "major" for PGI.

Quote

less mechs that can run the "ideal" loadout.

Which narrows the field even further, choking new 'Mech sales and making the battlefield ever closer to fewer selections than you can count on two hands. If that. That's lousy both for gameplay AND PGI's cashflow.

[Wintersdark]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 01 February 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

That's already the case . Sized hardpoints are intended to make it so their is less overlap/more restrictive so finding the are less mechs that can run the "ideal" loadout.

Yeah, do this and you don't see more mechs running other loadouts, you just see fewer different mechs all still running the ideal loadout.

[Sandpit]

wanderer, on 01 February 2016 - 12:22 PM, said:

Honestly, the heat scale would be easy enough. There's already "If heat = X, trigger Y" in the code. It'd just take adding more examples of same, and setting some lasting flag effects like "reduce 'Mech agility/speed by X% at Y% heat load".

Convergence? The derp simple version would be switching to a fixed distant point and seeing the results. Adding sensor lock for binary convergence might take relatively minor effort but that's "it"- and yes, I know "minor" is "major" for PGI.



Which narrows the field even further, choking new 'Mech sales and making the battlefield ever closer to fewer selections than you can count on two hands. If that. That's lousy both for gameplay AND PGI's cashflow.

I agree on both of those sentiments. It wouldn't be hard to do, it's just more work than PGI is GOING to do.

Convergence could easily be handled the same way they already handle arm mounted weapons. Just add same mechanic to ST mounted weapons, give them each a reticle and bam, done.