162 replies to this topic

[Mister Blastman]

Troutmonkey, on 08 February 2016 - 09:34 PM, said:

Just because something is hard to do doesn't mean it is in any way a better solution.

Are you sure you're not a politician? You seem to fit all the requirements. Religious ideology that their way is best despite obviously superior alternatives, the tendency to ignore expert advice, catchy slogans that avoid confronting criticisms of said ideas, the "just trust me, this is totally going to work" attitude.

It's called confidence. I'm confident it will work because in 2012 I warned everything we have no would happen, and it did, and presented this solution back then.

I know it will work. I foresaw the future. And now that we're here, we might as well try one thing to fix them all.

[Troutmonkey]

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

It's called confidence. I'm confident it will work because in 2012 I warned everything we have no would happen, and it did, and presented this solution back then.

I know it will work. I foresaw the future. And now that we're here, we might as well try one thing to fix them all.

Homeless Bill foresaw this too, and he went to the effort of writing up a very good proposal. His proposal included a detailed report on how his solution would solve the problem without causing any other problems and without fundamentally changing game play. His proposal also includes references to other proposed ideas of the time (including no convergence, fixed convergence, ghost heat, heat penalties and more) and then individually pointed out what their flaws were and why his solution didn't have them. I strongly urge you to read the proposal in it's entirety.

If you don't agree with his proposal, I would like for you to write up a counter proposal explaining how your idea is a more effective solution. Keep in mind the problem being addressed is "pin point alpha strikes resulting in low TTK".

Homeless Bill’s Comprehensive Balance Solution to Alphas, Boats, Convergence, and Clans

Edited by Troutmonkey, 08 February 2016 - 09:51 PM.

[Karl Marlow]

Here's the thing. Either you allow damage to spreadin a cone like style or you make armor a static value and remove sections. The traditional armor sections are not compatable with pin point targeting.

What's that quote? For balance corerule ignore? Well stop halfassing it. We can't demand half the rules ignore the tabletop and then treat the other half of the rules as some kind of sacred ground.

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.

[Ratpoison]

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

Here's the thing. Either you allow damage to spreadin a cone like style or you make armor a static value and remove sections. The traditional armor sections are not compatable with pin point targeting.

What's that quote? For balance corerule ignore? Well stop halfassing it. We can't demand half the rules ignore the tabletop and then treat the other half of the rules as some kind of sacred ground.

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.

Or we ignore your idea for being bad, and keep using the enjoyable, skill based system we have now.

[Mystere]

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. His proposal included a detailed report on how his solution would solve the problem without causing any other problems and without fundamentally changing game play. His proposal also includes references to other proposed ideas of the time (including no convergence, fixed convergence, ghost heat, heat penalties and more) and then individually pointed out what their flaws were and why his solution didn't have them. I strongly urge you to read the proposal in it's entirety.

If you don't agree with his proposal, I would like for you to write up a counter proposal explaining how your idea is a more effective solution. Keep in mind the problem being addressed is "pin point alpha strikes resulting in low TTK".

Homeless Bill’s Comprehensive Balance Solution to Alphas, Boats, Convergence, and Clans

From this can I assume that you are not against cone of fire? (No, I am not reading your recent posts to figure that one out).

[MauttyKoray]

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

Greetings Mechwarriors. Today I ask all of you a simple question. Why do I see so many against perfect weapon convergence? Yes, lasers offer a high alpha but most can be countered with good twisting/armor rolling and if perfect convergence were removed that'd affect mixed loadouts aswell.

So, you might say "just make it so that weapons only converge when you have a lock!" to that I have but two simple words. GHOST RANGE. Never forget.

(For those of you at home unaware of the TERRIBLE GHOST RANGE! here's a brief description. In the last PTR for the Quirkening II GHOST RANGE was a mechanic that PGI had hoped would crush the laser meta.

If you didn't have a lock on your target the effective range of your lasers were halved so you'd deal less damage even if within the otherwise optimal range. It was going to be tied to the shelved Info War changes.)

While Ghost Range and a variable COF/Press R to Converge behave differently they very similar purposes and the latter would be met with equally if not greater negative reception if implemented.

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

Why MWO has issues:

1. No true heatscale.
2. SHS/DHS need to be reworked and fixed.
3. Weapons in MWO deal INSANE amounts of damage compared to their TT counterparts (Don't cry wolf, keep reading, I'm serious.)

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.

Pretty crazy right? This is the reason why we need crazy buffed up armor values to compensate.
If you don't know how the AC ratings work, basically the AC's number is the amount of damage its supposed to do within a 10 second period of time. In lore there isn't just a single AC per class, but instead numerous manufacturers with different sorts of ACs, so they're categorized by this.

So let's play with the number, and compensate MWO's realtime style to align with the Battletech TT value and lore of ACs. If the AC20 does 40 damage in 20 seconds, and the AC20 of MWO fires 5 times in that allotted period, you end up with 6 damage, yes you read correctly. By basing the weapons off the Tabletop without DIRECTLY translating it you end up with the AC20 doing 6 damage per shot, not 20.

Gauss Rifle is next, now lets also assume this is prior to the 'charge' mechanic and the cooldown is only 5 seconds, that's 2 shots every 10 seconds, which means that the TT damage value for a Gauss rifle actually translates to a 7.5 damage shot in MWO.

Some other ballistic weapons:
AC2 - This one's got a weird cooldown, of 0.72 seconds, which means i have to go all the way to 90 seconds to get a number divisible by both. So an AC2 in TT = 18 damage at 90 seconds, this would result in the MWO AC2 to do 0.144 damage every shot.
AC10/LB 10-X AC - 2.5 damage per shot (4 shots per 10 seconds) which then translates to .25 damage per pellet (10 pellets per shot)
Lets


Its really not hard to figure out but I've seen so many people complain about TT values and 10 second cooldowns 'blah blah blah' that it makes me want to smack them with a basic math book repeatedly.

[MechWarrior4023212]

Sigh you do realise that WW2 fighter planes had converging weapons!

But it was fixed....but this is the future and that could easily be changed.

Quote

AC2 - This one's got a weird cooldown, of 0.72 seconds, which means i have to go all the way to 90 seconds to get a number divisible by both. So an AC2 in TT = 18 damage at 90 seconds, this would result in the MWO AC2 to do 0.144 damage every shot.

? AC 2 does 2 damage per shot but X damage per second!!!!![

Edited by Ember Stormfield, 08 February 2016 - 10:30 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

Mystere, on 08 February 2016 - 10:19 PM, said:

From this can I assume that you are not against cone of fire? (No, I am not reading your recent posts to figure that one out).

Yeah, I'm for CoF as a mechanic to deal with high alphas as per Bills idea. My concession is that I don't think convergence needs to be touched as part of that solution.

I'm against CoF being the normal method for shooting, oras a penalty for movement or high heat

[Mystere]

Troutmonkey, on 08 February 2016 - 10:28 PM, said:

Yeah, I'm for CoF as a mechanic to deal with high alphas as per Bills idea. My concession is that I don't think convergence needs to be touched as part of that solution.

I'm against CoF being the normal method for shooting, oras a penalty for movement or high heat

I'll be sure to remember that for the next CoF thread extravaganza!

[Ratpoison]

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

Its really not hard to figure out but I've seen so many people complain about TT values and 10 second cooldowns 'blah blah blah' that it makes me want to smack them with a basic math book repeatedly.

Uh, your post reads more like an argument against TT values with those conclusions...

[Troutmonkey]

Mystere, on 08 February 2016 - 10:29 PM, said:

I'll be sure to remember that for the next CoF thread extravaganza!

Yeah that'll come when I tweak my demo to represent how TCL will work

[Wolfways]

tortuousGoddess, on 08 February 2016 - 07:02 PM, said:

If the luck can make my gauss miss its mark while my enemy's lands, then yes you have seriously damaged the skill requirement. Attaching convoluted systems to it does not redeem this, and it will never be acceptable. Claiming that you can compensate for a random factor, even a variable one, is BS as in the end it is still randomizing the outcome of fights to a degree.

Luck will reduce the skill requirement for aiming, but it will also increase the importance of tactical skill.

Current:
A damaged mech is behind a building. You just need to hit his ct and he's gone so you jump out, bang, he's dead.

Tactical skill:
A damaged mech is behind a building. You just need to hit his ct and he's gone, but if you miss the ct he could return fire and hit a part of your mech that is badly damaged. Do you risk jumping out and trying to get the kill and hope that luck is on your side, or do you wait to see where he goes and try to flank him instead?

Maybe it's just me but I prefer tactics and will always try to avoid going head-to-head if possible...and tactics encourages teamwork.

[Pjwned]

Lightfoot, on 08 February 2016 - 07:35 PM, said:

Players complain about convergence, which is trivial in it's effect since if multi-weapon groups did not converge players would just switch to large single high damage weapons and there would in effect be no change.

Are you serious? Do you realize how much less of an alpha strike is involved if you use a couple of big guns compared to boating a shitton of lasers?

It absolutely would make a difference.

Quote

But I wonder what players would say if those large high damage weapons started knocking mechs down? The effect is called weapons-spin and all previous MechWarrior games had mech knockdowns. MW3 even required you to press a "Get Up" button. Would MWO players be writing volumes of why knockdowns should be removed?

I imagine most players would use words like "stupid" and "nonsense" and "unfair," and if you wanted to remotely consider realism then the mech firing the big gun would also be knocked on their *** unless they were able to brace themselves somehow.

[Rushin Roulette]

FupDup, on 08 February 2016 - 04:47 PM, said:

Don't interpret this post as saying that I want MWO to be that way (read: I don't), the point I'm making is that TT mechs do actually get hurt and die just as quickly as MWO or even quicker in a number of cases.

Id also like to add to this point... the TT mechs only take half an hour to die because rolling out the incoming damage from 12 mechs and where to hit with what weapon and pilot rolls to see if he fell over or not, how drunk the pilot was after last nights party and if he now needs a bucket or not , what internal component was critted etc... (add whatever else im missing here) takes so long. That half hour of calculating and filling out the damage sheet/calculating heat penalties is actually only 10 seconds actual game time.
Anyone saying that TT mechs are more durable is talking nosense. Most TT mechs go down in 1 or 2 turns (10 or 20 seconds) when facing 1 or 2 larger enemy mechs. In MWO facing one or more larger mechs you can also survive for more than 20 seconds if you manage to get into cover instead of standing around for 10 seconds thinking.. damn I just moved here but my next turn is in 10 seconds... Ill just have to eat all this incoming damage and hope the RNG god is on my side.

[wanderer]

1453 R, on 08 February 2016 - 05:36 PM, said:

______________________________________________________________________________________

How do you like that Jenner's odds of getting tagged, Wanderer? They look awfully bad to me - and that Jenner is standing stock still doing absolutely nothing in the middle of an open field. And this is supposedly the least intrusive CoF/KILL CONVERGENCE DEAD 4EVER!!1! idea out there in recent days.

Considering it's actually outside effective range for anything short of an ERPPC/AC2? Everyone's favorite metagun, the CERLL with a 10% range module still starts to peter out at 781m. It's just at the edge of long range for the top-notch 10% range quirk + module ISERLL with it's 810m reach, although AC/2's and ERPPCs would just plain be "long range" shots. Everything else is firing at extreme range.

Looks about right. That's 800 meters. I know, it's incredibly hard for you to think that firing a gun on iron sights at long-to-extreme range might -miss the target-, especially if, y'know, you're massively overheating and zipping along AND NOT EVEN USING YOUR ZOOM SCOPE OR SENSORS.

Terrible to think that. Maybe you might get target lock first next time and actually scope in on the target. It's still a rough shot, but should the longest-distance shots outside of effective range be easy with anyone who isn't sitting there with sensor assistance, standing still, and zooming in while patiently chipping away at the target vs. blazing madly with all guns as the entire arsenal hits a point smaller than you can distinguish with a current crosshair at that distance?

Y'know. Sniping? Silly thought, I know.

[Ratpoison]

Wolfways, on 08 February 2016 - 11:11 PM, said:

Luck will reduce the skill requirement for aiming, but it will also increase the importance of tactical skill.

Current:
A damaged mech is behind a building. You just need to hit his ct and he's gone so you jump out, bang, he's dead.

Tactical skill:
A damaged mech is behind a building. You just need to hit his ct and he's gone, but if you miss the ct he could return fire and hit a part of your mech that is badly damaged. Do you risk jumping out and trying to get the kill and hope that luck is on your side, or do you wait to see where he goes and try to flank him instead?

Maybe it's just me but I prefer tactics and will always try to avoid going head-to-head if possible...and tactics encourages teamwork.

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

[wanderer]

Mystere, on 08 February 2016 - 07:27 PM, said:

Actually, it ain't stupid:

unless you call the people at DARPA stupid.

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?

[wanderer]

tortuousGoddess, on 08 February 2016 - 10:15 PM, said:

Or we ignore your idea for being bad, and keep using the enjoyable, skill based system we have now.

And stop using half the weapons in the game, as they don't fall into your category of "skill" and are hence automatically inferior. A game where the majority of the weapons fail to qualify as effective compared to the others is a failure in design.

Pray, tell me how skill can alter the fact that no matter how good your aim is, an LB-X will scatter damage and a normal AC will not. Perhaps you can enlighten me on how I can skill up with machine guns, too. Or my personal favorite, LRMs. Maybe Streak launchers.

Since they're all spread weapons, they exist outside your "skill based system" and become useless in "real play" by the meta's standards. They are "garbage tier". Yet, they're in the game. They must have meaning, but in TG's world, they are meaningless. Possibly if you can mass enough of them to compensate for their spread damage by simply throwing so much at the target that enough will do? No, wait, that doesn't work or we'd see comp-teams a plenty packing LB-X Dire Wolves or something.

[wanderer]

Rushin Roulette, on 08 February 2016 - 11:58 PM, said:

Anyone saying that TT mechs are more durable is talking nosense. Most TT mechs go down in 1 or 2 turns (10 or 20 seconds) when facing 1 or 2 larger enemy mechs. In MWO facing one or more larger mechs you can also survive for more than 20 seconds if you manage to get into cover instead of standing around for 10 seconds thinking.. damn I just moved here but my next turn is in 10 seconds... Ill just have to eat all this incoming damage and hope the RNG god is on my side.

Of course, our level of accuracy is immense compared to TT. At medium range, even assuming modest (+2) movement modifiers on your target, you're hitting 42% (rounding) of the time with your weapons given an average pilot. Let's be charitable and say half your guns hit.

Now, they have to hit repeatedly in the same spot. Again, luck of the dice- and you only have half your guns to do it with and they better be big enough to burn through in your "1 to 2 turns". Two guys shooting him up? We'll say they've got decent guns- say a pair of Gauss each. Statistically, two hit.

If the target's 50 tons, if both hit the same arm, it's gone. Side torso will hang on by threads. Three hits to the CT would do it in. So you've gotta 1) Hit and 2) Hit the right location for that 2-turn kill AND 3) Hope your target doesn't bug out, especially if it's smaller than you are and likely more mobile. One of the things in TT you learn is to try to rotate your exposed units to allow fresh armor to take fire making the healthier units risk the better hit odds while giving the damaged ones safer positions behind the new "tank"/best available cover.

[Ratpoison]

wanderer, on 09 February 2016 - 12:18 AM, said:

And stop using half the weapons in the game, as they don't fall into your category of "skill" and are hence automatically inferior. A game where the majority of the weapons fail to qualify as effective compared to the others is a failure in design.

Pray, tell me how skill can alter the fact that no matter how good your aim is, an LB-X will scatter damage and a normal AC will not. Perhaps you can enlighten me on how I can skill up with machine guns, too. Or my personal favorite, LRMs. Maybe Streak launchers.

Since they're all spread weapons, they exist outside your "skill based system" and become useless in "real play" by the meta's standards. They are "garbage tier". Yet, they're in the game. They must have meaning, but in TG's world, they are meaningless. Possibly if you can mass enough of them to compensate for their spread damage by simply throwing so much at the target that enough will do? No, wait, that doesn't work or we'd see comp-teams a plenty packing LB-X Dire Wolves or something.

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.