66 replies to this topic

[Queen of England]

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

Well, yes, ofc we're keeping cooldown. Did I say anywhere to use the TT round values or to do away with MWO's cooldown values?

So medium laser heat x1.3 = TOO FAR NOT BATTLETECH, AC2 DPS x17 = legit?

That's insane.

[Tyler Valentine]

FupDup, on 05 February 2016 - 11:03 AM, said:

It's kinda sad that even when ignoring the 10 free engine sinks, the PPC + heatsinks are almost as weight-efficient as 2 AC/5 in the end.

*AC/5 x 2 = 16 tons
*ammo = 1 ton, or you can grab 2 if you like
*Total = 17-18 tons, 2 points of net heat (ignoring 10 base sinks)

*PPC = 7 tons
*10 heatsinks = 10 tons
*Total = 17 tons, 0 points of net heat...and you could technically do this even with just the base 10 sinks for 10 tons less lol
*Also does that damage to one location instead of splitting it up...
*And no explosions to worry about...

true, but uses up all your criticals...

[FupDup]

Tyler Valentine, on 05 February 2016 - 11:08 AM, said:

true, but uses up all your criticals...

Since 3025 doesn't have all the fancy stuff like Endo or XL, critslots only become an issue on very high-tonnage mechs with T1 tech.

I could also argue that crit-padding with all those SHS could be a survivability advantage...

Edited by FupDup, 05 February 2016 - 11:11 AM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

Are you a liberal?

HEY! Don't lump us all in the same boat Man....

[Deathlike]

For weapon balance.. we can't really normalize "all the things". It doesn't really work (it needs massive tweaking in the first place).

[CDLord HHGD]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 05 February 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

HEY! Don't lump us all in the same boat Man....

I might have gotten a bit out of hand but that kinda **** really pisses me off.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 11:29 AM, said:

I might have gotten a bit out of hand but that kinda **** really pisses me off.

I get where you're coming from, but just because some of us are liberal, doesn't mean we're not open for debate.

To go back to your OP Cd. I'd very much like to see alot of what you propose, I'm all for a return to TT values as a starting point.

Tabletop gave us the baseline, and the closed beta, we were only dealing with TT values for a very, very short time. Things like armor doubling, makes sense for a real time game, and of course you have to adjust ammo to compensate a little, which again, makes sense. But at the same time, there's a tricky balance for working TT values into a real time system.

I've personally always championed the "Ten Second Rule" IE that a battletech "Turn" is broken down to 10 seconds, that means within 10 seconds, a mech's full movement profile can be met, as well as the "total damage of a weapons system equaling to the total damage/heat numbers listed"

As an example, if a medium laser does 5 damage for 3 heat via TT rules. now that Mlas does 5 damage and 3 heat within 10 seconds... so if a medium laser translates to MWO, and can fire 1 time every second for 10 seconds, that's .5 damage/second/10 seconds for 5 damage total. [just an example].

In doing this, you vastly slow the TTK, but retain the damage and heat values proper to the tabletop concept of the 10 second turn. Now this also makes it so that there's lost damage in a real time game, since everything is constantly in movement, and pure hitscan weaponry for a modern game doesn't quite make sense.

So the baseline considerations to be taken into account for baseline tabletop to real time translation is:
10 second turn
Damage/Second
Heat/Second

These things must be considered for the system to work, from there, you can balance up or down as needed really.

[Mystere]

MrJeffers, on 05 February 2016 - 09:03 AM, said:

All Mechwarrior games are BattleTech, but not all Battletech is mechwarrior.

But the question was: Is Mechwarrior a BattleTech game?

Try to pick up the pace please.

[CDLord HHGD]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 05 February 2016 - 12:04 PM, said:

I get where you're coming from, but just because some of us are liberal, doesn't mean we're not open for debate.

To go back to your OP Cd. I'd very much like to see alot of what you propose, I'm all for a return to TT values as a starting point.

Tabletop gave us the baseline, and the closed beta, we were only dealing with TT values for a very, very short time. Things like armor doubling, makes sense for a real time game, and of course you have to adjust ammo to compensate a little, which again, makes sense. But at the same time, there's a tricky balance for working TT values into a real time system.

I've personally always championed the "Ten Second Rule" IE that a battletech "Turn" is broken down to 10 seconds, that means within 10 seconds, a mech's full movement profile can be met, as well as the "total damage of a weapons system equaling to the total damage/heat numbers listed"

As an example, if a medium laser does 5 damage for 3 heat via TT rules. now that Mlas does 5 damage and 3 heat within 10 seconds... so if a medium laser translates to MWO, and can fire 1 time every second for 10 seconds, that's .5 damage/second/10 seconds for 5 damage total. [just an example].

In doing this, you vastly slow the TTK, but retain the damage and heat values proper to the tabletop concept of the 10 second turn. Now this also makes it so that there's lost damage in a real time game, since everything is constantly in movement, and pure hitscan weaponry for a modern game doesn't quite make sense.

So the baseline considerations to be taken into account for baseline tabletop to real time translation is:
10 second turn
Damage/Second
Heat/Second

These things must be considered for the system to work, from there, you can balance up or down as needed really.

I see bandaids on top of bandaids and it's no surprise to me that we're so broke. The foundation, whether people realize or not, is based on TT. Sometimes you just gotta tear down the house, fix the foundation, and start rebuilding from there. I'm fully aware that my proposals are not the end-all be-all to balance. I'm just trying to fix the foundation.

[MrJeffers]

Quote

Nah, I don't like this 12 step program. The point of the OP is to make assymetrical teams of better Mechs vs lesser mechs, and follow the senseless TT weapon values.

I don't want a BattleTech game. I want a Mechwarrior game. That is why I am here. If you want a BattleTech game, then go play one.

Quote

I AM playing a battletech game.



Maybe YOU should go play Hawken.

Mystere, on 05 February 2016 - 12:18 PM, said:

But the question was: Is Mechwarrior a BattleTech game?

Try to pick up the pace please.

qué?

Edited by MrJeffers, 05 February 2016 - 12:25 PM.

[Mystere]

MrJeffers, on 05 February 2016 - 12:25 PM, said:

qué?

Again, my question was: Is Mechwarrior a BattleTech game?

Context is everything. And so again, try to pick up the pace please.

[MrJeffers]

Context is important and is in the previous response

Mystere, on 05 February 2016 - 12:33 PM, said:

Again, my question was: Is Mechwarrior a BattleTech game?

Context is everything. And so again, try to pick up the pace please.

again - What? It was directly in my response to you

MrJeffers, on 05 February 2016 - 09:03 AM, said:

All Mechwarrior games are BattleTech, but not all Battletech is mechwarrior.

Edited by MrJeffers, 05 February 2016 - 12:38 PM.

[wanderer]

#4 and #5 die horribly as #4 does nothing to fix anything, it simply reduces things to whatever chassis canonically can pull off the metaboat of choice. #5 dies even worse because it literally takes construction options off the table based on how many spacebucks you have in your pocket.

I can easily remember the last wave of R&R where people were using laserboats simply because ammo costs were a prohibitive grind penalty.

PGI won't do #9 because 1:1 parity is required in Paul-land in all modes, even if scaling on 10v12 would have been less stress on making Clantech "balanced".

A lot of it's good ideas, though many require fundamental changes in the game and I honestly don't think PGI has the competency to pull them off.

[wanderer]

Quote

I've personally always championed the "Ten Second Rule" IE that a battletech "Turn" is broken down to 10 seconds

Actually, Battletech has multiple scales. The most common is indeed the 10-second one, but there's also 2.5 sec/turn rules (S7) and Battleforce-scale is 1 turn = 60 seconds. As scale increases, detail is sacrificed to produce a faster game, and likewise as time per turn is reduced, detail increases along with it.

For example,at 10 sec/turn scale, all weapons have a ROF of 1 (with the exception of UACs and similar multishot mode weaponry), but at 2.5 sec/turn scale, this changes to weapons being able to be fired once, twice, or four times in the same ten seconds.

Quote

As an example, if a medium laser does 5 damage for 3 heat via TT rules. now that Mlas does 5 damage and 3 heat within 10 seconds

Case in point. A medium laser in TT actually fires once, recharges for 2.5 sec, and then can be fired again- meaning it's actually 10 damage and 6 heat within 10 seconds. In truth, it might actually be a bit less, but since the narrowest official scale is 2.5 sec, we at least know that the -maximum- recharge time for a ML is 2.5 seconds in canonical terms. Pew (weapon fire turn) (wait 2.5 sec), pew (weapon fire turn) (wait 2.5 seconds), pew...

Weapons don't have identical ROF, which alters the base assumption of DPS considerably if you actually look at the rules in the finest possible detail. MWO is even MORE tightly scaled since it's realtime and things time down to a tenth of this (we can measure recharge times in .25 increments), but at the least, the tightest TT scaling gives us the closest picture of a base to set MWO on.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 12:20 PM, said:

I see bandaids on top of bandaids and it's no surprise to me that we're so broke. The foundation, whether people realize or not, is based on TT. Sometimes you just gotta tear down the house, fix the foundation, and start rebuilding from there. I'm fully aware that my proposals are not the end-all be-all to balance. I'm just trying to fix the foundation.

Fixing the foundation means fixing TT for the purpose of real time, the problem has never been that this game needs to go back to TT values or do a complete reset back to the beginning of closed beta, because neither would fix the problem, the problem has always been with the game designers not knowing what kind of game they really wanted to make, nor how to go about making that game. The last PTS to shoehorn IW into the game is just another example of that.

[CDLord HHGD]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 05 February 2016 - 01:09 PM, said:

Fixing the foundation means fixing TT for the purpose of real time, the problem has never been that this game needs to go back to TT values or do a complete reset back to the beginning of closed beta, because neither would fix the problem, the problem has always been with the game designers not knowing what kind of game they really wanted to make, nor how to go about making that game. The last PTS to shoehorn IW into the game is just another example of that.

I would, am, and will argue that using TT as a foundation and compass is what they should be doing. We've strayed too far from TT which is what many people want and we're still broke.

[Alan Davion]

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 01:37 PM, said:

I would, am, and will argue that using TT as a foundation and compass is what they should be doing. We've strayed too far from TT which is what many people want and we're still broke.

Even I'm forced to agree here. The TT rule are THE baseline from which MWO was made. Yes the turn-based time-scale needs to be adjusted to fit the real-time time-scale we have now.

As cdlord said here...

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 12:20 PM, said:

The foundation, whether people realize or not, is based on TT. Sometimes you just gotta tear down the house, fix the foundation, and start rebuilding from there. I'm fully aware that my proposals are not the end-all be-all to balance. I'm just trying to fix the foundation.

All of the CORE game mechanics for MWO are broken at the moment. That means resetting everything back to TT value, maybe with the exception of the current doubled armor values, and then iterating balance from there. Maybe a news post on the front page saying something like "Hey everyone, we'd love for people to try out the LRMs this week", or something along those lines to encourage people to try a weapon outside their comfort zone, or pick up a weapon they haven't used in a long time.

I personally don't agree with #4, but then I hated that mechanic even in MW4, as I felt hamstrung into certain mechs. For instance, I was playing with the MekTek mech packs during most of my MW4 time, and I couldn't recreate the base Shadow Hawk loadout, and thus I was disappointed that I couldn't use my personal favorite mech, where as in MWO I can.

#7 I absolutely agree with, and #8 would actually replace what PGI is currently doing with their "No more than 10%" quirk pass.

Aside from those few nitpicks, what cdlord says would go a huge, HUGE way to fixing this broken mess we call MWO.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

cdlord, on 05 February 2016 - 01:37 PM, said:

I would, am, and will argue that using TT as a foundation and compass is what they should be doing. We've strayed too far from TT which is what many people want and we're still broke.

TT isn't a strong foundation though as far as I'm concerned, many aspects are with campaigns in mind. We don't have that here nor would it be an easy task to setup (R&R is but a single portion of campaigns). TT is also designed with the idea that all damage is similar, I can mix LL, LRMs, and AC2s and not have a problem because all that matters in the game is really range brackets not how they deal damage, alright I lied a little bit, but there are less intricacies with how you do damage in TT than in this game. Lasers are a really good example of that.

Heat is also different in TT, because you can make perfectly neutral builds with regards to heat (not that you always want to). Real time is a bit different if you want heat to actually be a worthwhile mechanic, and that means heat neutral builds need to be ineffective. Which means heat has to become a serious thing, the only main problem I see with the current system is that it uses heat sinks to determine capacity which allows for insane capacities and in turn repeatable high energy alphas which are the main reason we have ghost heat in the first place.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 05 February 2016 - 02:28 PM.

[Alan Davion]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 05 February 2016 - 02:27 PM, said:

TT isn't a strong foundation though as far as I'm concerned, many aspects are with campaigns in mind. We don't have that here nor would it be an easy task to setup (R&R is but a single portion of campaigns). TT is also designed with the idea that all damage is similar, I can mix LL, LRMs, and AC2s and not have a problem because all that matters in the game is really range brackets not how they deal damage, alright I lied a little bit, but there are less intricacies with how you do damage in TT than in this game. Lasers are a really good example of that.

Heat is also different in TT, because you can make perfectly neutral builds with regards to heat (not that you always want to). Real time is a bit different if you want heat to actually be a worthwhile mechanic, and that means heat neutral builds need to be ineffective. Which means heat has to become a serious thing, the only main problem I see with the current system is that it uses heat sinks to determine capacity which allows for insane capacities and in turn repeatable high energy alphas which are the main reason we have ghost heat in the first place.

The other problem with heat Quicksilver, is that currently there are absolutely no penalties to do with heat build up in MWOs system. The "Override" system is not supposed to be a 'constant state mechanic', which it currently is. That's the big one, where as in TT you have, what, 4 or 5 times on the heat scale where you have to choose to 'override' the shutdown?

If PGI instigated that system alone it would probably cut down on Alpha Strikes by about 50%. Instead of firing your weapons willy-nilly until your heat indicator gets close to 100%, if your mech shut down a half-dozen times while you try to alpha your opponents face off will leave people stupidly open to attack because they made a stupid decision... I don't see that Alpha-Warrior mentality lasting much longer when people have to worry about that kind of event.

Then, add to that the fact that you also have about 4 or 5 times where you have to worry about your pilots actual health on the TT heat scale. Not to mention the penalties to your actual target acquisition and damage modifiers. There's a lot that PGI could do to balance the game using the heat scale and nothing else. They just have to have the gumption to do it.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Alan Davion, on 05 February 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

The other problem with heat Quicksilver, is that currently there are absolutely no penalties to do with heat build up in MWOs system.

No, heat penalties are not a balancing mechanism, they punish all mechs since most good builds are going to get hot, high energy alpha boats don't stay hot for long because of how much dissipation they need, what does limit their capability is lower heat caps which force them to either accept being shutdown for a time or wait until at a safe heat level to fire.

Alan Davion, on 05 February 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

nstead of firing your weapons willy-nilly until your heat indicator gets close to 100%, if your mech shut down a half-dozen times while you try to alpha your opponents face off will leave people stupidly open to attack because they made a stupid decision

The only difference between this and simply lower heat caps is the chance of RNGesus to get you, and sorry, but I don't want that much RNG in the game. I'm ok for small variances but not full on roll the dice to decide if you shutdown.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 05 February 2016 - 03:09 PM.