159 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Sandpit, on 29 February 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

YOu don't have to make it a major reduction in RoF. They just need to be slowed down just a smidge. I'm not talking adding 2-3 seconds to their recycle time. Start with .25 secs and see how that goes. You can do thing in small increments.

Right now I feel that's about where the overall weapon balance is at personally. A few weapons need a few adjustments here and there and just small incremental changes. The AC2's just fire way too fast and when that AC2 cooldown module hits the game....

Well it's going to be like AC2 MGs just a steady stream of fire. With every shot doing 2 damage and firing every half second, that's going to be a nightmare. Plus toss in their velocity and it's one of the few (at least in my opinion) truly unbalanced weapons. Then if you toss in a mech that's quirked for ballistics it gets even faster.

0.25 seconds? The current cooldown is 0.72. That puts them at 0.97 cooldown, which is a nerf of about 34%. This slashes their DPS down to just 2.0...for a weapon that requires 6 tons, with more weight needed for ammo and maybe even heatsinks.

That's a pretty huge nerf for a weapon that hardly anybody uses.

I retain my stance that if the cooldown is nerfed, the weapon should fire a burst of shells that deals MORE THAN 2.0 DAMAGE TOTAL or else it becomes useless. It's almost useless even now.


What kind of criteria are you even using to determine if something is "too fast?" Is it just your personal preference/sensibilities, or do you actually believe that AC/2s are a dominant competitive weapon used to win tournaments? If it's the latter, then there isn't much I can do for you...

Edited by FupDup, 01 March 2016 - 10:23 AM.

[Pjwned]

Sandpit, on 29 February 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

YOu don't have to make it a major reduction in RoF. They just need to be slowed down just a smidge. I'm not talking adding 2-3 seconds to their recycle time. Start with .25 secs and see how that goes. You can do thing in small increments.

Right now I feel that's about where the overall weapon balance is at personally. A few weapons need a few adjustments here and there and just small incremental changes. The AC2's just fire way too fast and when that AC2 cooldown module hits the game....

Well it's going to be like AC2 MGs just a steady stream of fire. With every shot doing 2 damage and firing every half second, that's going to be a nightmare. Plus toss in their velocity and it's one of the few (at least in my opinion) truly unbalanced weapons. Then if you toss in a mech that's quirked for ballistics it gets even faster.

AC2 is already bad as is even after a small heat reduction, so if you just senselessly nerf the rate of fire because "huh hurr durr durr I don't like it" then that's beyond stupid.

As far as weapon modules, the problem is with modules as a whole being 100% power creep and not the weapons.

[Sandpit]

FupDup, on 01 March 2016 - 10:22 AM, said:

0.25 seconds? The current cooldown is 0.72. That puts them at 0.97 cooldown, which is a nerf of about 34%. This slashes their DPS down to just 2.0...for a weapon that requires 6 tons, with more weight needed for ammo and maybe even heatsinks.

That's a pretty huge nerf for a weapon that hardly anybody uses.

I retain my stance that if the cooldown is nerfed, the weapon should fire a burst of shells that deals MORE THAN 2.0 DAMAGE TOTAL or else it becomes useless. It's almost useless even now.


What kind of criteria are you even using to determine if something is "too fast?" Is it just your personal preference/sensibilities, or do you actually believe that AC/2s are a dominant competitive weapon used to win tournaments? If it's the latter, then there isn't much I can do for you...

ok then do .10

see?
it's called incremental math

I'm not going to debate how "good" the weapon is based on "meta", "tournies", etc. because every single weapon in this game (with the exception of MG and flamers and IS small lasers) are viable


Your opinion is they aren't.
Mine is they are

If you can't accept that everything you just said in regards to them being "viable" is based on your personal opinion and that is not factual I don't know what to tell you

And yes, everything I said is based on my personal opinion, just like what you said is based on yours. If I state something as fact, it's going to be a fact and specifically presented as a fact.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

FupDup, on 01 March 2016 - 10:22 AM, said:

What kind of criteria are you even using to determine if something is "too fast?" Is it just your personal preference/sensibilities, or do you actually believe that AC/2s are a dominant competitive weapon used to win tournaments? If it's the latter, then there isn't much I can do for you...

That said, I wouldn't mind if other recycle times were slowed down rather than speeding up the AC2 to compensate, more like MW4 pace recycle times, but then again, something else would have to change to account for the DPS hit to most weapons so that brawling wouldn't be too strong.

Earthquake simulators are never fun, and ensuring that AC2s stun-locks aren't possible but still potent enough damage wise is important.

I would also love for AC2s to do more than 2 damage so that the different AC types were allowed more contrast in role, but that is a topic for another time.

[SplashDown]

funny i keep seeing ppl say cant use TT rules in a PC game and yet they did just fine with earlier MW pc games.
The only thing this game would need to bring it all into line is a proper MM for faction war rather than nerf the game to the point of being no fun.....

[nehebkau]

@ OP

The answer is: Yes, the game should be based on TT when those rules make sense and can be implement in the game structure. Those rules that don't make sense for this type of game should be discarded/replaced.

[Mcgral18]

Sandpit, on 29 February 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

Well it's going to be like AC2 MGs just a steady stream of fire. With every shot doing 2 damage and firing every half second, that's going to be a nightmare. Plus toss in their velocity and it's one of the few (at least in my opinion) truly unbalanced weapons. Then if you toss in a mech that's quirked for ballistics it gets even faster.

AC2s are unbalanced....they were unbalanced when they had 4 DPS (0.5s cooldown).

Unbalanced as in bad. The AC10 was also bad, but less bad.

They have less DPS, but also less heat presently. The 2H SHD has them roughly at their previous cooldown, and they feel alright.

Add in the module, it might even be a half decent troll build.

[Lugh]

Sandpit, on 01 March 2016 - 10:46 AM, said:

ok then do .10

see?
it's called incremental math

I'm not going to debate how "good" the weapon is based on "meta", "tournies", etc. because every single weapon in this game (with the exception of MG and flamers and IS small lasers) are viable


Your opinion is they aren't.
Mine is they are

If you can't accept that everything you just said in regards to them being "viable" is based on your personal opinion and that is not factual I don't know what to tell you

And yes, everything I said is based on my personal opinion, just like what you said is based on yours. If I state something as fact, it's going to be a fact and specifically presented as a fact.

He doesn't understand math.

He doesn't understand that the 10 second turn in TT is not irrelevant as it is a basis for setting speeds of unit movement weapon travel and the fundamental unit involved there TIME can be adjusted so the the 'TURN' Becomes 1 second.

From there weapon rates of fire can be adjusted easily around that 'unit of measurement' which is 'real time'

You can even *GASP* use Fractions of the unit like the .25 second adjustment to the fire rate on the Gauss Rifle.

He doesn't understand so he ridicules and calls the argument stupid. When sadly the argument is intelligent and sound, he's just not getting it.

Now that we have agreed that TIME is the base unit that needs agreement and that REAL TIME passes second by second. We can now set rates of fire. So once established that we want a gauss rifle to fire once ever 5 seconds and do 15points of damage a shot. We can then establish that the Gauss rifle HERE fires 2x as often as Table Top. Do you see where this is going? No probably not. It's stupid. I know now we set the rate of fire of every weapon in the game to intervals our game engine understands.

Now some of those weapons fire at 2x some at 4.5x as often as in the 10 second turn of TT. For the Real time application to 'feel right'. Total all the weapons one atlas fires at another in there damage and divide that by the number of seconds that damage is applied over and you get a figure called Damage Per Second. See where this is going yet? No probably not.

Anyway, each of the TT mechs have very specific armor and Internal structure values. based on the 10 second turn for viability in their scenarios. take the table top DPS and compare it to the MWO DPS. Figure out how many turns it takes two mouth breathers standing toe to toe at optimal range to kill each other, in the TT. That's TT's time to kill (only somewhat relevant do to RNG but still important) remove the RNG and apply damage to a single location.

How long does that take to core the atlas with base TT armor values in the CT? 2 turns? 3 Turns? So baseline assuming optimal aim is in TT is 20 seconds to core an atlas. One atlas v one atlas. Compare the DPS values of TT to the DPS values you have in MWO applied to your REAL TIME 1 second = 1turn unit of measure whereby some weapons fire every 2 turns and some every 5 turns Apply damage from atlas to atlas ct for weapon loadout. Is the DPS the same? No increase armor and IS until TTK matches table top.

DO NOT CONFLATE THE ISSUE WITH HUNDREDS OF VARIABLES. This is the foundation you are building your game on.

What DPS is need to core out this mech by this mech when it fights itself. When I apply that same weapon set in tt to mech v mech what dps is needed to core it out in the slower time interval.

The point people are trying to make to you TT doesn't matter types is this MATH WINS, always in life. Always in death. And always in gaming.

When the math is WRONG, things are made to be unfun.

[FupDup]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 01 March 2016 - 10:58 AM, said:

That said, I wouldn't mind if other recycle times were slowed down rather than speeding up the AC2 to compensate, more like MW4 pace recycle times, but then again, something else would have to change to account for the DPS hit to most weapons so that brawling wouldn't be too strong.

Earthquake simulators are never fun, and ensuring that AC2s stun-locks aren't possible but still potent enough damage wise is important.

I would also love for AC2s to do more than 2 damage so that the different AC types were allowed more contrast in role, but that is a topic for another time.

If we're really concerned about the cockpit shake, I think it would be easier to just reduce the impulse value instead of relying on cooldown nerfs to do that.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Lugh, on 01 March 2016 - 01:56 PM, said:

The point people are trying to make to you TT doesn't matter types is this I BELIEVE TT MATH WINS, always in life. Always in death. And always in gaming.

FTFY, there is math behind the current balance too, but much like TT math, they don't really work out that great.

FupDup, on 01 March 2016 - 01:57 PM, said:

If we're really concerned about the cockpit shake, I think it would be easier to just reduce the impulse value instead of relying on cooldown nerfs to do that.

I always though that was the worry with weapons that fire that fast. Really, when the impulse is big and fast enough that it doesn't give you adequate chances to fire back, it becomes one of those things that has bad counter-play.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 01 March 2016 - 02:02 PM.

[LORD ORION]

Btech and MWO are both wrong...

Now that we have MWO showing off Btech in realtime with live intelligent (hehe) people, it should be obvious that the core rules don't translate properly to what actually happens to a mech on the battlefield. (eg: Normal moves you see in MWO like poke and hide from return fire, Jump Jet / Torso twist defense and so forth....)

It's obvious normal MWO maneuvers need to be included in Btech, the game re-balanced, and then MWO redone based on those properly redone rules.

Edited by LORD ORION, 01 March 2016 - 02:26 PM.

[Mawai]

Pjwned, on 29 February 2016 - 09:20 AM, said:

A turn lasting 10 seconds in Tabletop is strictly fluff, it never affected how the game plays and it's not comparable in the least to MWO.

I guess logic is hard...for you.



That's exactly how it works now.



Wrong, the reason for doubling armor was the ability to aim shots where you want to, just like you say earlier in your post.



No actually it DOES NOT need to reflect that. You're comparing combat between a turn-based board game and a real-time video game and that makes no sense whatsoever.



How do you even accomplish that without screwing up balance horribly?

There's literally no reason to have "10 second turns" as a basis for damage output in MWO.

"Wrong, the reason for doubling armor was the ability to aim shots where you want to, just like you say earlier in your post."

LOL. You seem to have a one track mind and interpret comments according to the way you prefer to think about them.

A video game allows for pinpoint aiming ... true.
PGI increased the DPS of weapons from table top by a factor of 3 to 5 ... also true.

PGI doubled the armor on mechs.

Let's see ... by doubling the armor PGI then increases the time to kill by a factor of 2. Agree?

If they had left the damage numbers of weapons at the table top DPS values then EVERY WEAPON would do 3 to 5 times less damage/s. Agree?

They would have done less alpha damage.

Increasing the armor by a factor of two simply compensates for the weapon dps increase by reducing the factor to 1.5 to 2.5 increase in dps compared to the TT numbers. Increasing armor uniformly was done due to the faster time to kill resulting from more effective weapons.

If they had wanted to address the imbalance due to aiming then they would have increased the armor/structure on vulnerable areas like CT/legs and ST in some cases ... which is what they have been doing with quirks on IS mechs due to the high alpha clan builds.

The doubling of armor was solely related to the fact that they increased the dps of all weapons by normalizing the weapons based on their damage done rather than their dps values. Further weapon balance issues resulted from the fact that they made up a bunch of numbers for the cooldown/duration/rate of fire that had no relation to anything at all from what I can tell.

If they had left weapon dps at TT values they would not have needed to double armor. Pinpoint aiming issues would have been addressed through quirks since pinpoint aiming means folks aim for vulnerable targets and that is not addressed by a blanket increase in armor.

P.S. Battletech was balanced using a certain amount of damage and heat from each weapon on each mech in a certain time (in this case one game turn). The actual length of that game turn is irrelevant. However, MWO starts off using TT values for weapon damage and mech armor but it is played in a real time environment. What this means is that to get a balance uses table top as a starting point then each of the weapons needs to be scaled to do damage proportional to their table top values in the common time scale of MWO. Whether one chooses 1 second, 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 30 seconds depends on how you want the game to feel.

If you have to blow up 50 armor and your weapons output is 50 damage/s then you will take 1 second of continuous fire to get through the armor. If you do 5dps it takes 10 seconds. You want a game that feels like the stompy robots can take a hit but that you can get through the weaker armored areas quite quickly ... which is probably where the 10s value comes from.

Anyway, the whole point is really moot since MWO balance is probably the best it has ever been (though it has taken 3 years and there is still work to do) so discussing what they could have done instead that might have been better is pretty much a waste of time

Edited by Mawai, 01 March 2016 - 02:48 PM.

[Pjwned]

Sandpit, on 01 March 2016 - 11:10 AM, said:

double post, somethign screwy going on with me and forums at moment


You're the only one trying to imply someone else's opinion is "stupid"

Nice non-argument cop out. I would say more but I already did before it was removed.

[Pjwned]

Mawai, on 01 March 2016 - 02:40 PM, said:

LOL. You seem to have a one track mind and interpret comments according to the way you prefer to think about them.

A video game allows for pinpoint aiming ... true.
PGI increased the DPS of weapons from table top by a factor of 3 to 5 ... also true.

PGI doubled the armor on mechs.

Let's see ... by doubling the armor PGI then increases the time to kill by a factor of 2. Agree?

You didn't say anything that disputed armor being doubled due to the ability to aim.

Quote

If they had left the damage numbers of weapons at the table top DPS values then EVERY WEAPON would do 3 to 5 times less damage/s. Agree?

DPS in TT doesn't exist because it's only DPT, that's the point.

Quote

The doubling of armor was solely related to the fact that they increased the dps of all weapons by normalizing the weapons based on their damage done rather than their dps values. Further weapon balance issues resulted from the fact that they made up a bunch of numbers for the cooldown/duration/rate of fire that had no relation to anything at all from what I can tell.

They did that because balance would've been far worse otherwise, leaving weapons like AC2 to stay in the trash like they were in TT.

If it wasn't for the ability to aim at certain components it wouldn't have been necessary to have double armor even with increased DPS values over TT's "10 second turns."

Quote

P.S. Battletech was balanced using a certain amount of damage and heat from each weapon on each mech in a certain time (in this case one game turn). The actual length of that game turn is irrelevant. However, MWO starts off using TT values for weapon damage and mech armor but it is played in a real time environment. What this means is that to get a balance uses table top as a starting point then each of the weapons needs to be scaled to do damage proportional to their table top values in the common time scale of MWO. Whether one chooses 1 second, 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 30 seconds depends on how you want the game to feel.

Prove to me why damage output needs to be proportional in this way other than "because TT said so."

My point can be proven by imagining if TT turns lasted 100 seconds instead of 10 seconds according to fluff, and then realizing it would change absolutely nothing. It's not something that needs to be considered because it's irrelevant.

[Mawai]

Pjwned, on 01 March 2016 - 06:15 PM, said:

You didn't say anything that disputed armor being doubled due to the ability to aim.



DPS in TT doesn't exist because it's only DPT, that's the point.



They did that because balance would've been far worse otherwise, leaving weapons like AC2 to stay in the trash like they were in TT.

If it wasn't for the ability to aim at certain components it wouldn't have been necessary to have double armor even with increased DPS values over TT's "10 second turns."



Prove to me why damage output needs to be proportional in this way other than "because TT said so."

My point can be proven by imagining if TT turns lasted 100 seconds instead of 10 seconds according to fluff, and then realizing it would change absolutely nothing. It's not something that needs to be considered because it's irrelevant.

Last try.

You are absolutely right ... the length of a turn in Battle tech is irrelevant. What is relevant is the amount of damage done by each weapon type in a turn. That is the basis of game balance in Battletech. An AC2 does 2 damage in a turn. An AC20 does 20 damage.

In MWO, the equivalent is the amount of damage done by a weapon in a fixed period of time. The actual time is not relevant either except in proportion to the amount of armor on the target which controls the time to kill and the "feel" of the combat. Let's look a 1second since it is easy ... an AC20 is 5 damage/second and an AC2 is 2.78 damage/second. In MWO an AC2 does almost 1/2 the damage of an AC20 in the same period of time while in Battletech it does 1/10. In Battletech, an AC2 is pretty useless while in MWO they can be ok when boated.

MWO could have started with the Battletech proportional damage/turn values ... i.e. an AC20 would do 10x the damage of an AC2 ... and then tweak the balance from there if they want the AC2 to be a useful weapon. Instead, they let the AC2 do 2 damage every 0.72 seconds and an AC20 does 20 damage every 4 seconds. Numbers that appear to have come from thin air and can explain why the weapons in MWO weren't well balanced when first introduced.

Finally, you suggest that armor values were doubled because of the ability to aim. However, if I halved the damage of all weapons in the game and put the armor back to table top values then I would be back to non-doubled armor values whether I aim or not. So aiming had NOTHING to do with doubled armor values. Also, aiming lets me choose the target locaton. Since I can choose I do not need to double ALL armor values ..just the ones on the components where people tend to aim ... torso and legs. If the doubled armor was due to aiming it would NOT be applied uniformly because folks don't aim everywhere evenly. Structure and armor quirks are primarily applied to IS torso and legs because that is where the clan mechs AIM. Those quirks are deisgned to compensate for the generally greater effectiveness of clan mechs at dealing AIMED damage.

[Sandpit]

Pjwned, on 01 March 2016 - 05:18 PM, said:

Nice non-argument cop out. I would say more but I already did before it was removed.

I'm not "copping out" on anything, I'm just done entertaining personal insults in the various threads

I can discuss and entertain, dispute, and debate opinions all day long and never have to resort to personal attacks on the intelligence of someone just because their opinion differs from mine, especially when it comes to something a trivial as a video game

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

Last try.

You are absolutely right ... the length of a turn in Battle tech is irrelevant. What is relevant is the amount of damage done by each weapon type in a turn. That is the basis of game balance in Battletech. An AC2 does 2 damage in a turn. An AC20 does 20 damage.

This is what happens when someone reference only the base boardgame instead of the one that is more relevant to MWO. Basic BT was a 10sec turn whereas Solaris was a 2.5sec turn with weapon DELAYS (cooldown).

So an AC 20 was able fire after a 2 delay. So fire rnd 1, wait 2, wait 3, fire rnd 4.
AC 2 had a zero delay so it could fire every rnd. Guess what, that equate to 8 possible dmg pts over the same time frame.

So 8pts vs 40pts in 10 secs.

AC20 4pts/s
AC2 0.8/s

The above was for IS weapons. Both Clan AC2, Ultra/LBX had a delay of 1 while C-AC20s still had a delay of 2.

Hmm, whatever...

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 01 March 2016 - 08:04 PM.

[Mawai]

Tarl Cabot, on 01 March 2016 - 07:47 PM, said:

This is what happens when someone reference only the base boardgame instead of the one that is more relevant to MWO. Basic BT was a 10sec turn whereas Solaris was a 2.5sec turn with weapon DELAYS (cooldown).

So an AC 20 was able fire after a 2 delay. So fire rnd 1, wait 2, wait 3, fire rnd 4.
AC 2 had a zero delay so it could fire every rnd. Guess what, that equate to 8 possible dmg pts over the same time frame.

So 8pts vs 40pts in 10 secs.

AC20 4pts/s
AC2 0.8/s

The above was for IS weapons. Both Clan AC2, Ultra/LBX had a delay of 1 while C-AC20s still had a delay of 2.

Hmm, whatever...

Interesting. I didn't know that since I never played Solaris just Battletech.Adding that feature though must have totally unbalanced almost every mech in Battletech and invalidated any BV information since the weapon balance would have changed substantially.

I also ran across a comment that support for the Solaris VII rules ended at some point fairly early in the BT development cycle (before late 3050's weapons introductions) ... so I am not sure how well the rules worked from a game play perspective. The few comments I found seemed to think the AC2 and MGs were OP with the high firing rates.

[Lugh]

Pjwned, on 01 March 2016 - 06:15 PM, said:

You didn't say anything that disputed armor being doubled due to the ability to aim.



DPS in TT doesn't exist because it's only DPT, that's the point.



They did that because balance would've been far worse otherwise, leaving weapons like AC2 to stay in the trash like they were in TT.

If it wasn't for the ability to aim at certain components it wouldn't have been necessary to have double armor even with increased DPS values over TT's "10 second turns."



Prove to me why damage output needs to be proportional in this way other than "because TT said so."

My point can be proven by imagining if TT turns lasted 100 seconds instead of 10 seconds according to fluff, and then realizing it would change absolutely nothing. It's not something that needs to be considered because it's irrelevant.

DPS is DAMAGE PER SECOND. In table top you can take the Damage per turn and divide by 10 to get the TT Damage per second.

TIME is a constant between the two mediums. That you still don't understand this is infuriating. In MWO it's slightly more complicated as you have cooldown(the first measure of seconds btw) and then for lasers burn time. And for ACs and PPCs and LRMMissles velocity further complicates the equation depending on distance to target. As the Meters per second traveled also contributes to your DPS calculation.

Let's keep this at the kindergarten level so everyone can understand. When you fire a medium laser with a burn time of .9 seconds and damage of 5 with a cooldown of 3 seconds, what pray tell is the DPS? 1.28 damage per second.

In table top that same laser would be allowed to fire once for 5 damage in a 10 second turn. For a dps of .5 per second.

That's 2.56 times the TT damage for that ML in a 10 second turn. and in MWO that ML before quirks is allowed to fire twice in 10 seconds. So that's 5.12 times the TT damage in 10 seconds. Armor has only been increased to 2x TT values ONCE overall and then intermittently through quirks since that time.

So even with that simple example armor values could stand to be doubled again and still not be equivalent to TT values.

[CDLord HHGD]

Lugh, on 02 March 2016 - 08:34 AM, said:

DPS is DAMAGE PER SECOND. In table top you can take the Damage per turn and divide by 10 to get the TT Damage per second.

TIME is a constant between the two mediums. That you still don't understand this is infuriating. In MWO it's slightly more complicated as you have cooldown(the first measure of seconds btw) and then for lasers burn time. And for ACs and PPCs and LRMMissles velocity further complicates the equation depending on distance to target. As the Meters per second traveled also contributes to your DPS calculation.

Let's keep this at the kindergarten level so everyone can understand. When you fire a medium laser with a burn time of .9 seconds and damage of 5 with a cooldown of 3 seconds, what pray tell is the DPS? 1.28 damage per second.

In table top that same laser would be allowed to fire once for 5 damage in a 10 second turn. For a dps of .5 per second.

That's 2.56 times the TT damage for that ML in a 10 second turn. and in MWO that ML before quirks is allowed to fire twice in 10 seconds. So that's 5.12 times the TT damage in 10 seconds. Armor has only been increased to 2x TT values ONCE overall and then intermittently through quirks since that time.

So even with that simple example armor values could stand to be doubled again and still not be equivalent to TT values.

Could it be as simple as another multiplier of armor? I mean, if we are 5.12x the DPS vs TT, then 4x or 5x the armor value would compensate for the raw damage output.

Buff armor, or nerf DPS, its all the same in the end. Do we want to deal with armor in the 1000's or damages in the 0.x's? It's all about perception.