162 replies to this topic

[Widowmaker1981]

'Ghost range' was an absolutely awful mechanic, especially applied ONLY to lasers, but convergence on lock isn't the same thing. Say all weapons are set to converge at the max (not optimum) range unless a target is locked - at that point you can still alpha snapshoot all your lasers, and at optimal range youd get 50% convergence, which is enough to get full dmg on 1-3 hitboxes depending on the size of the target and how close to the centerline your weapons are. It would slow laser pinpoint but not totally kill lasers like ghost range did/would have. Also, convergence on lock would apply to all weapons, but would be a decent BUFF to projectile weapons since with a lock they would converge at the actual distance to target, instead of the distance to whatever you have to aim at while leading them.

[Pjwned]

MauttyKoray, on 08 February 2016 - 10:21 PM, said:

Why MWO has issues:

1. No true heatscale.

Okay.

Quote

2. SHS/DHS need to be reworked and fixed.

Agreed; at the very least SHS needs to not be garbage.

Quote

3. Weapons in MWO deal INSANE amounts of damage compared to their TT counterparts (Don't cry wolf, keep reading, I'm serious.)

Uh oh...

Quote

By this I mean, 'A turn in Battletech is measured as a 10 second period of time.' That sounds like nothing right? Well, now think about it. Our IS AC20 do the entire 20 damage in a single shot, not over 10 seconds. Our lasers do full damage in one shot, not over 10 seconds, the missiles can do all their damage in one shot, less than 10 seconds, etc.

Yep, it went there.

This premise is crap because the time scale in TT (a board game) and MWO (a video game played in real time) are not comparable. The reason for this is that the length of a turn (in this case, being defined as 10 seconds) is there only for fluff so that you can use your imagination; it's the exact same thing as a round lasting 6 seconds in Dungeons & Dragons which has no bearing whatsoever on how the game actually plays because it's also just there for fluff.

The "length" of a turn in tabletop is not a valid basis for TTK in MWO, so when you do try to compare the 2 it just doesn't make sense.

You can still argue that TTK needs to be adjusted, but using "turn length" in TT as a basis is foolish.

[Aresye]

ThomasMarik, on 08 February 2016 - 10:10 PM, said:

Either ignore the corerules and have pin point aim with a static armor value or embrace the tabletop rules and have divergent fire across a dynamic armor system.

Having a static armor value with pinpoint aim would actually make the issue worse due to the larger target size, thus necessitating a CoF or non-pinpoint system.

Let's face it, cockpit shots are not really an issue in this game, despite having pinpoint convergence, because the cockpit hitbox is very small. If you enlarged the cockpit hitbox, you would need to to adopt a non-pinpoint system, otherwise players would be getting head shots all the time. The larger the hitbox, the wider your weapons should spread.

Right now, you have 11 separate hitboxes on your mech. As the pilot, YOU get to dictate where you take damage (to a certain extent) by turning and torso twisting. I say it's to a certain extent because having IS LPLs doing 11 damage in 0.67 seconds is next to impossible to spread based off normal human reaction time, and the majority of laser vomit builds on the field are packing anywhere from 2-4 of these on each mech. For example, the meta build for the Black Knight spits out 58 damage in 0.77 seconds.

ACs, PPCs, and Gauss are all pinpoint weapons as well, but they have significant disadvantages in their behavior (travel time, cooldown, etc). Lasers have burn time. The problem is when you decrease burn time to the point where it's so short it may as well be front-loaded, but without the drawbacks of other front-loaded weapons.

If PGI could actually balance the weapons between both sides, they could then increase the burn time on lasers across the board, which would give pilots an increased time to react, which would lessen the issue of perfect convergence, and would ultimately increase TTK.

That's a more realistic solution that PGI could actually implement, assuming they can actually balance the two sides good enough to make that option available.

[Ratpoison]

Aresye, on 09 February 2016 - 02:50 AM, said:

Having a static armor value with pinpoint aim would actually make the issue worse due to the larger target size, thus necessitating a CoF or non-pinpoint system.

Let's face it, cockpit shots are not really an issue in this game, despite having pinpoint convergence, because the cockpit hitbox is very small. If you enlarged the cockpit hitbox, you would need to to adopt a non-pinpoint system, otherwise players would be getting head shots all the time. The larger the hitbox, the wider your weapons should spread.

Right now, you have 11 separate hitboxes on your mech. As the pilot, YOU get to dictate where you take damage (to a certain extent) by turning and torso twisting. I say it's to a certain extent because having IS LPLs doing 11 damage in 0.67 seconds is next to impossible to spread based off normal human reaction time, and the majority of laser vomit builds on the field are packing anywhere from 2-4 of these on each mech. For example, the meta build for the Black Knight spits out 58 damage in 0.77 seconds.

ACs, PPCs, and Gauss are all pinpoint weapons as well, but they have significant disadvantages in their behavior (travel time, cooldown, etc). Lasers have burn time. The problem is when you decrease burn time to the point where it's so short it may as well be front-loaded, but without the drawbacks of other front-loaded weapons.

If PGI could actually balance the weapons between both sides, they could then increase the burn time on lasers across the board, which would give pilots an increased time to react, which would lessen the issue of perfect convergence, and would ultimately increase TTK.

That's a more realistic solution that PGI could actually implement, assuming they can actually balance the two sides good enough to make that option available.

I've been thinking a bit of burn time increase might help bring the lasers back in line, as well. Right now the problem is that it's just too low risk and high reward to blow tons of heat on a big laser alpha. It's applying too much damage too quickly for the tradeoffs that it has in terms of heat and build costs. If it wasn't so easy to blow 70% heat on one component without the target having time to roll it effectively, we might see laser use drop to a more reasonable level. This kind of a change would have to be made with a lot of consideration for its effects on each laser and each weight class though, as it would definitely shift the balance in several places.

[no one]

Mister Blastman, on 08 February 2016 - 09:42 PM, said:

I foresaw the future.

Yeah no trick there, lots of people saw this coming. The problem is that what you're suggesting isn't an anti-convergence mechanic. What you're describing is closer to an fix for scaling disparity in 'Mechs*. And that's assuming you've already addressed convergence separately, because any pinpoint weapon burst that would have cored you in the current system would core you in that system. Also people have given some very good reason as to why it would be hard to do, especially given the sheer number of 'Mechs you'd have to apply that to.

*If you broke down hit boxes into equal chunks across all 'Mechs that is, if you just gave every 'mech more, equivalently armored, hit boxes for each torso section you'd only turn spiders into mecha jesus the last laser-walker.

Troutmonkey, on 08 February 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

Homeless Bill foresaw this too, and he went to the effort of writing up a very good proposal.

I've read Homeless Bill's suggestion. Just replace 'cone of fire' with 'move the point of convergence x meters further behind the target' and it could work. Sorry, but random cone of fire is dumb and offers nothing over long range convergence. If a 'Mech has weapon hard points that are close together it's STILL going to hit in a tighter cluster with CoF, you've just made the 'Mech with spaced weapon ports that much worse. If necessary make a per-chassis TCL buff for 'Mechs with unfavorable weapon spacing. If you wanted to expand on what he has you could also prevent convergence of weapons inside their minimum range.

Homeless Bill's rebuttal to 'lower heat-cap, increase dissipation' also misses some of the better forms and finer points of that particular path to balance. Which is a shame, because done properly it would synchronize quite well with what he's proposed.
Is he still around or ?

Edited by no one, 09 February 2016 - 03:15 AM.

[Wolfways]

tortuousGoddess, on 08 February 2016 - 11:59 PM, said:

Fallacious, you have to make the same considerations with convergence. All you did was up the random factor and dampen the skill factor.

How is it even remotely the same when with convergence you know, or at least will be a hell of a lot surer that you will kill the enemy mech?

[TexAce]

Mcgral18, on 08 February 2016 - 04:14 PM, said:

Because aligning 30+ tons of guns instantly strikes some people as odd. Those guns which are located on opposite ends of a mech moving 50+ Kph across rocky, uneven terrain...until you hit a Pebble of Steel. Upon which...nothing happens. You just stop dead in your tracks, with the guns not moving a millimetre. Dat conservation of momentum...

The Perfectly Pinpoint Magical Convergence MWO has is the source of the majority of the past balance issues, which were "solved" with Ghost Heat, Ghost Damage, Giganerfs, The Nerfinator, and of course, Machine Gun Nerfs.

Of course, none of those had a very large impact.


The reality is: MWO isn't going to change core features at this point. PGI just isn't going to do it. We're going to keep Perfectly Pinpoint Magical Convergence, that's the reality.


Perhaps I'm just a bittervet, but my opinion on these things can be summed up with this:

Meh

While I do fear you are right, I still think there is a chance of introducing at least a minimal CoF and test it on the Test Server. PGI could implement it only as a punisher for alphas and high heat riding (in other words: CoF only as a heat and alpha side effect). Take it slow from there, try it out on the test server. Many have vouched for heat effects and we are still waiting for them, this would be a good start.

[Jetfire]

I think at a minimum torso weapons and arm weapons without lower actuators should have fixed convergence at max usable range. The weapons are not all mounted on gimbals after all. This would mean weapon spread would occur the closer you get to an opponent. The only exception would be actuated lower arms which could converge.

It you wanted to get real fancy add in a cone of fire that changes based on speed, targeting computer and current heat level. This would all contribute to meaningful decisions in how you engage.

It is also a given that a real heat scale with increasing penalties for higher heat levels makes a lot of sense.

[Doman Hugin]

The 'Ghost Damage' mechanic did get one thing right.

Pressing 'R', i.e. telling your targeting computer what you wanted to shoot, allowed said targeting computer to be more effective.

This mechanic if nothing else really aught to get used in some manner.

[Jerry Beard]

I agree convergence as it is is rather sucky. I would suggest a settable convergence set by the individual as like guns on a plane. They are set at a fixed distance. I.E. 500 meters or whatever is chosen by the pilot. That way you decide where the weapons cross. Anything outside of that range there is less damage done because of not being within optimal convergence. You can still use one reticle and just have to decide where best it should be set. I know in Aces High 2 this is how it's done and it works fine there and it will lesson the amounts of damage no mater what since the convergence is set in place and if you are out of the range you will automatically spread it. Will cause folks to become better shots or at least pick and choose their shots with more thought.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

cazidin, on 08 February 2016 - 04:01 PM, said:

Personally, I'd prefer a better heat scale with real penalties and true DHS.

Personally, I'd prefer Ghost Range / Ghost Damage.

But I'm smart enough to find the R button on my keyboard, so maybe that's just me.

Edited by The Atlas Overlord, 09 February 2016 - 05:55 AM.

[Lugh]

[color=#959595]Closed beta had convergence mechanics attempted (the pinpoint skill is a hold over from that). It failed horribly. The crying on the forums from the twitch CoDkid crowd was so fierce they removed the mechanic(despite the fact that you only had to wait .5 seconds to get back to best convergence) this was because light pilots were ******** when it came to slowing their roll to aim, and simultaneously crying about knockdowns. . [/color]

[color=#959595]Both mechanics are now gone, which is a shame because they were awesome and those that could use them appropriately had true 'skill'. [/color]

Pjwned, on 09 February 2016 - 01:31 AM, said:

Okay.



Agreed; at the very least SHS needs to not be garbage.



Uh oh...



Yep, it went there.

This premise is crap because the time scale in TT (a board game) and MWO (a video game played in real time) are not comparable. The reason for this is that the length of a turn (in this case, being defined as 10 seconds) is there only for fluff so that you can use your imagination; it's the exact same thing as a round lasting 6 seconds in Dungeons & Dragons which has no bearing whatsoever on how the game actually plays because it's also just there for fluff.

The "length" of a turn in tabletop is not a valid basis for TTK in MWO, so when you do try to compare the 2 it just doesn't make sense.

You can still argue that TTK needs to be adjusted, but using "turn length" in TT as a basis is foolish.

It's hardly foolish. But PGI's mathematical translation of that turn length in to real time is TERRIBLE.

Not surprising since UAC jam rate 2.9% = 15%-25% depending on quirks.

[Troutmonkey]

no one, on 09 February 2016 - 03:14 AM, said:

I've read Homeless Bill's suggestion. Just replace 'cone of fire' with 'move the point of convergence x meters further behind the target' and it could work. Sorry, but random cone of fire is dumb and offers nothing over long range convergence. If a 'Mech has weapon hard points that are close together it's STILL going to hit in a tighter cluster with CoF, you've just made the 'Mech with spaced weapon ports that much worse. If necessary make a per-chassis TCL buff for 'Mechs with unfavorable weapon spacing. If you wanted to expand on what he has you could also prevent convergence of weapons inside their minimum range.

It depends on how it's done and where the randomness is incurred. If it's done in the screen space (the start of the raycast) then clustered weapons might be more effective, but if it's done after the ray and then offset a distance from the ray hit point, then it becomes much fairer. The system that I've written based on Bills suggestion (but without the removal of convergence) looks very promising. Look for my thread which I'm about to create

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

By this I mean, 'A turn in Battletech is measured as a 10 second period of time.' That sounds like nothing right? Well, now think about it. Our IS AC20 do the entire 20 damage in a single shot, not over 10 seconds. Our lasers do full damage in one shot, not over 10 seconds, the missiles can do all their damage in one shot, less than 10 seconds, etc.

Now lets use the AC20 as an example, big gun of awesome destruction. The cooldown is 4 seconds so that's a bit 'odd'. We'll use a double turn from Tabletop to compensate and take that 4 seconds into account. 20 Seconds in Battletech = 2 AC20 rounds, or 40 damage. An AC20 in MWO can fire 5 times in 20 seconds (each shot and its cooldown period, a 6th would start a new count of 20 seconds). So for a 20 second period of time the AC20 in MWO is actually doing 100 (ONE HUNDRED damage! Or roughly 3x that of the Battletech tabletop equivalent

MWO is based on Battletech universe and a bastardized BT/Solaris gaming rules. A supplement to BT, Solaris introduced TICS (weapon groupings) and weapon delays (cooldowns) in a 2.5 sec gaming turn. So MWO is closer to Solaris boardgame than it is to the BT boardgame. In Solaris the AC20 had a delay of 2 (5 seconds). ERLL/ER-PPCs/LPL all had a delay of 3 or 7.5secs before they could be fired again.

And they had to be assigned to one out of three TICs (Target Interlock Circuit) before they could be fired.

[wanderer]

tortuousGoddess, on 09 February 2016 - 12:38 AM, said:

Trying to bring up game balance again to prove something about CoF? Yawn. It should be obvious that game balance is a separate issue that always needs attention, though it's pretty funny that you try to bring that up when a CoF would crush the weapon balance even as it stands now, with all the weakest weapons being affected the most.

Actually, bringing up weapon systems that by your definition fail to fit a "skill based" system. That is,a bit more than half of them.

I'll say it again- if we have a skill based system, why are so many weapons in MWO incompatible with it?

[Ratpoison]

wanderer, on 09 February 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

Actually, bringing up weapon systems that by your definition fail to fit a "skill based" system. That is,a bit more than half of them.

I'll say it again- if we have a skill based system, why are so many weapons in MWO incompatible with it?

I know you really want that strawman, but I'm not giving it to you. If you had bothered to read my post, you'd be able to tell that "skill based system" was referring to the aiming mechanics that lack CoF, and nothing else.

[Mister Blastman]

no one, on 09 February 2016 - 03:14 AM, said:

Yeah no trick there, lots of people saw this coming. The problem is that what you're suggesting isn't an anti-convergence mechanic. What you're describing is closer to an fix for scaling disparity in 'Mechs*. And that's assuming you've already addressed convergence separately, because any pinpoint weapon burst that would have cored you in the current system would core you in that system. Also people have given some very good reason as to why it would be hard to do, especially given the sheer number of 'Mechs you'd have to apply that to.

*If you broke down hit boxes into equal chunks across all 'Mechs that is, if you just gave every 'mech more, equivalently armored, hit boxes for each torso section you'd only turn spiders into mecha jesus the last laser-walker.

Nah because a single AC/20 rips apart light 'mechs. And SRMs + LRMs would have splash damage again (fixed of course).

[topgun505]

MWO does not have the feel of the TT. When an assault can peek one time around a corner and get instantly cored, that does not promote the feeling of large walking and durable machines of death.

Convergence is the main culprit behind this.

That issue would have to be addressed but I doubt that it will at this point.

Along with this the heat cap definitely needs to be addressed as well.

Breaking up body segments into small armor plates, each with their own armor values is certainly a possibility.

But, also, we need heat effects. Right now there is zero downside to ride your heat curve on the edge of shutdown all game. In TT you have movement impairments, aiming impairments, possible ammo explosions, and potential shutdowns (prior to getting to the absolute heat limit shutdown). Right now we have NONE of these.

[Mystere]

wanderer, on 09 February 2016 - 12:03 AM, said:

The lasers shown there deal the same amount of damage if they don't all hit the same point. The exact same amount of energy is expended on the target whether focused or not.

What they do is have all the lasers hit the same location, minimizing the amount of armor available to protect against the attack.

Sound familiar?

The problem is that an individual laser might not have the energy to penetrate the target or (more likely) do it fast enough. By concentrating an array of 35 lasers, you apply 35x the energy on a single point. In other words they are focusing fire.

So yes, it does sound familiar.

[Widowmaker1981]

Lugh, on 09 February 2016 - 06:05 AM, said:

It's hardly foolish. But PGI's mathematical translation of that turn length in to real time is TERRIBLE.

Not surprising since UAC jam rate 2.9% = 15%-25% depending on quirks.

Maybe, just maybe, the values are different on purpose? UACs in TT jam permanently, they don't unjam. Would you prefer the lower 2.9% chance, but with the RNG possibility of jamming for the entire match on the first double tap? Because that would be absolutely terrible.