159 replies to this topic

[Metus regem]

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.

I think I said just this a few pages back....

[Quicksilver Aberration]

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

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.

Ummmm, you screwed up your math, you don't multiply DPS by how many times it can fire in 10 seconds, DPS numbers account for that. So it is only 2.56 times the TT damage, and another thing to keep in mind is MWO made heat management an actual mechanic since heat neutrality is rare, so raw DPS is only a portion of the picture.

[wanderer]

MWO doesn't have to be based entirely on TT rules.

What makes TT players sad is the fact that MWO often doesn't even try for the spirit of it or even understand why a rule in TT existed to begin with. Thus, we get things like hoverjets and ghost heat.

[RAM]

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.

Still freaky to see you without your Combine tag Tarl

Indeed the Solaris recycle delays are the proper reference for weapon cooldowns. Unfortunately the vast majority miss this blatantly obvious fact.

2.5 seconds is a remarkably accurate assessment of the time it takes to accomplish individual MechWarrior tasks. It is a shame more players do not reference these statistics when making weapon balance arguments

Mawai, on 02 March 2016 - 06:43 AM, said:

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.

To be fair, 'early' in a franchise that has spanned in excess of thirty years does leave a lot of leeway. Although it has been over a decade since the last serious update, all the 3050 equipment currently used in game is covered. Therefore it behoves us to reference the proper weapon cyclic rates.


RAM
ELH

Edited by RAM, 02 March 2016 - 04:26 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Just doing a week tour through both factions (except for the fedrats) before heading back to the Draconis Combine. There certainly is slight learning curve when switching between team Clan mechs vs team IS mechs

Mawai, on 02 March 2016 - 06:43 AM, said:

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.

Solaris was primarily meant to be a 1vs1 matches instead of lances, with the board game focused on Solaris gaming world. Things that was taken for granted was part of the ruleset, such as changing up TICS and firing weapons. If your TICS were already set, you could fire ONE TIC or fire one weapon but you could not do both in the same round.

For players like yourself who may not have been aware of the Solaris game that is fine, we all learn something every day, but there are others who are aware, even when reminded but they keep trying to compare MWO to BT, to put their own spin on how much damage should be done over a time period. The other PC games had delays, with MPBT versions being even closer to that rule set in terms of delays/cooldowns.

The other PC MW games used similar but shorter delays but they were primarily meant for a PVE campaign with some multiplayer aspects added on. The MPBT games though kept the delays/cooldowns closer to the Solaris setup.

As others have mentioned, in the current setup/environment, use what does work then for the other items PGI should make its own house rules. The negative aspect though is not putting in both sides of the equation concerning the balancing factor of one of the critical pieces, the Heat Scale. Atm the only negative piece is hitting 100% then shutting down or override it. Until then a player does not really need to THINK during battle until several barrages have been fired.

With 2-3 additional negative thresholds (moving slower, agility decreasing, nearing the first shutdown-not the final shutdown) imagine a light/med pilot having to reconsider firing another full alpha into that assaults rear, chain fire a few weapons or not firing at all but moving along due to the concern of becoming so slow that the assault can get a bead on it. Or a heavy/assault firing a full alpha but the consequences will be slowing to a crawl, taking longer to back up or longer to reach the next cover. That is not represented in the game except for when a Clan mech loses one side torso w/C-XL engine. With a more functioning Heatscale, that lost should only result in the heat penalty while the Heatscale covers the movement/agility aspect but not just for that setting but for every mech that hits specific heat thresholds.

And you may not be aware of it, but when PGI/IGP doubled the armor for the brawling piece, the higher ups were not aware that the internal structure had also been doubled, and left it like that. The other is that equipment, when hit with a crit, was not disabled/destroyed like it would be in the boardgames but had health points, default 10 HP. That could be considered not keeping with the "rules" but it works well in this environment. The lone exceptions atm though is the Gauss Rifle (low HP/ exceeding ammo crit chances changed some time ago, when it was the go-to weapon) and the IS-XL engine (before the arrival of Clan mechs and C-XL engines). There are threads concerning both but pointing out how not keeping to a rule set benefits the game in one way, for the most part

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 02 March 2016 - 06:41 PM.

[Pjwned]

Sandpit, on 01 March 2016 - 07:45 PM, said:

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

That is copping out, keep being in denial because you apparently take things personally when they shouldn't be though.

A personal insult would be saying that you are stupid, not that your opinion is.

[Pjwned]

Mawai, on 01 March 2016 - 07:08 PM, said:

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.

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.

The numbers were adjusted to something that makes sense so that weapons like AC2 aren't complete trash. If you just completely ignore the far superior DPS, required face time, and killing power of AC20 then yeah it might look like "LOL WOW AC2 FIRES SO MUCH FASTER SO UNFAIR GG PGI" but that means ignoring literally everything else about the weapon.

I suppose those values are relevant if you want to vehemently adhere to TT values and not care about weapons being absolute trash, so if that's your goal then good to know.

Quote

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.

You don't seem to understand that weapons doing half damage would have a far more drastic effect than doubling armor did.

Quote

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.

Not true when people can still twist and move to spread damage. Clearly aiming does have more of an effect than the opponent's ability to twist and move, but people still can and do use arms to shield and spread damage, and while arm components are not usually an actual target they still very much can be.

I also find it funny that you act like being able to aim at and reliably hit 8 out of 11 (8 out of 10 if excluding head) components (including rear torsos) while admitting that everything except the arms would still need doubled armor due to aimed shots somehow doesn't mean that armor was doubled because you can aim. Your concession of still needing to have double armor on torsos and legs (read: way over half the volume of any given mech) just proves my point.

[Pjwned]

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 doesn't go by seconds, it goes by turns because it's a board game.

Quote

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.

I'm done telling you this over and over.

It's NOT a constant between the 2 mediums. You don't understand this because you think that comparing a turn based board game to a video game makes sense when it doesn't.

Not arguing it any further. Go back and read my points or just go ahead and keep ignoring them.

Edited by Pjwned, 02 March 2016 - 10:14 PM.

[Vanguard319]

The TT rules are a good place to start when developing new content. For example: TT had rules that affected your accuracy based on your movement, heat scale and damage. Ppl keep whining about laser vomit, which is partially due to pin-point convergence. To use a scenario as an example, the rules in TT ensured that a Nova Prime was unlikely to core you with a single alpha strike, and would be even less likely to do so if the player kept spamming alphas, or ran their heat high, and it did this without the complete BS that is ghost heat.

As many modern FPS games have a system that affects your accuracy, there is no reason why you cannot convert those rules into a modified cone-of-fire system for this game, aside from the vocal minority whining about how such systems detract from skill. (they don't btw)

[Mead]

Pjwned, on 02 March 2016 - 10:02 PM, said:

Time doesn't go by seconds, it goes by turns because it's a board game.



I'm done telling you this over and over.

It's NOT a constant between the 2 mediums. You don't understand this because you think that comparing a turn based board game to a video game makes sense when it doesn't.

Not arguing it any further. Go back and read my points or just go ahead and keep ignoring them.

The conversion worked just fine in the MUX/MUSE sims and campaigns of the 1990s. The graphics were ASCII but we had Variable Recycle Time, which I guess was lifted from the Solaris rules, and it worked just fine for real-time combat. So yeah, you can easily compare a turn-based board game to a real-time video game.

[Kmieciu]

AC2 are weak, even when mounted on the super-quirked BJ-1:

AC/2 Cooldown35%
AC/2 Heat Generation-25%
Ballistic Weapon Range15%
Ballistic Weapon Velocity30%

And still there are better Blackjack builds that use a combination of MLs/MPLs/LPLs/AC20/AC10/Gauss.

Edited by Kmieciu, 03 March 2016 - 04:46 AM.

[Johnny Z]

Hit the Deck, on 27 February 2016 - 04:44 PM, said:

...because it's a BattleTech game? They are not equal as far as I know. Not following the TT rules but adopting the spirit of the source material (fluff) can open a lot of interpretation - for better or worse. Do you think that it would be a good move?

Some TT players like Koniving in various threads have told me that TT rules and fluff influence each other, meaning that the TT have to be a game so it needs to translate the fluff within certain limits and sometimes the fluff incorporates the small details which happen or exist in the game like explaining why the weapons have such short ranges.

I can only ask you guys to imagine what could have been possible since PGI have chosen to adopt the TT values and rules. Next MW game perhaps where your AC rounds can fly past 3km?

How many Stars wars games actually represent the movies at all. Anyone saying MechWarrior Online doesn't do a good job of representing its origins should GET REAL. Compare this to any other video game compared to its origins! Its extremely well done and even ground breaking so again GET REAL.

Look at Lord of the Rings games or Star Trek games and ALL the rest, they are not even remotely close to their original yet MechWarrior Online gets greif about this? Seriously?

The Clan babies crying about lack of easy mode(I have other more appropriate names for this) should just shut up clans are not even original Battletech. So again stop annoying everyone.

Edited by Johnny Z, 03 March 2016 - 05:11 AM.

[Lugh]

Metus regem, on 02 March 2016 - 08:38 AM, said:

I think I said just this a few pages back....

Yup. It's been said over and over since page 2?

[Lugh]

Pjwned, on 02 March 2016 - 10:02 PM, said:

Time doesn't go by seconds, it goes by turns because it's a board game.



I'm done telling you this over and over.

It's NOT a constant between the 2 mediums. You don't understand this because you think that comparing a turn based board game to a video game makes sense when it doesn't.

Not arguing it any further. Go back and read my points or just go ahead and keep ignoring them.

You're right Dear. A ten second turn isn't based on time! What a logical and wonderful thought that is. Time is fluid, your brain is a vacuum and nothing relates to anything! TIME is the Constant that Humanity cannot escape in it's relation to ANYTHING. Everything you do takes time.

And I have read your points. I feel bad every time I do. It saddens me that you don't understand such simple things.

[Sandpit]

Johnny Z, on 03 March 2016 - 05:08 AM, said:

How many Stars wars games actually represent the movies at all.

That's a completely different example.

Star Wars wasn't a game, it was a movie with no specific rules on how combat worked.

Here's a better example for you.

Fallout 3 & 4 compared to Fallout 1 & 2

Are 3&4 based on the turn-based stats, rules, IP, etc. of 1&2?
That they are.

[Mystere]

Johnny Z, on 03 March 2016 - 05:08 AM, said:

The Clan babies crying about lack of easy mode(I have other more appropriate names for this) should just shut up clans are not even original Battletech.

Just because you repeat something often does not make it true. This variation of the Big Lie idea used during the late 1930's and early 1940's is not as effective today as The Donald thinks.

[Pjwned]

Lugh, on 03 March 2016 - 05:15 AM, said:

You're right Dear. A ten second turn isn't based on time! What a logical and wonderful thought that is. Time is fluid, your brain is a vacuum and nothing relates to anything! TIME is the Constant that Humanity cannot escape in it's relation to ANYTHING. Everything you do takes time.

And I have read your points. I feel bad every time I do. It saddens me that you don't understand such simple things.

It's not a 10 second turn.

It's a turn that takes 10 seconds according to fluff which has no bearing on anything.

You don't understand the difference and it apparently causes issues.

[wanderer]

Quote

Time doesn't go by seconds, it goes by turns because it's a board game.

If the game had a single scale, I might be more inclined to agree. Battletech however does not. It has multiple sets of rules that generate increasingly large amounts of detail based on time- TT "standard" is 10-second scale, the more detailed Solaris rules are 2.5-second scale, and the less detailed Battleforce rules were 30-second scale. And higher levels of detail hew more closely to MWO's issues, since it's realtime.

Quote

Just because you repeat something often does not make it true. This variation of the Big Lie idea used during the late 1930's and early 1940's is not as effective today as The Donald thinks.

Johnny's correct, actually. The Clans aren't original Battletech- they don't show up in the rules until 1990, six years after the game released. They were an expansion of the game, much like later tech waves added Jihad-era and Dark Ages units/tech and even retroactively put in bits like low-tech Mech Rifles and other "primitive" tech that didn't originally exist in game stats.

[Mystere]

wanderer, on 03 March 2016 - 11:42 AM, said:

Johnny's correct, actually. The Clans aren't original Battletech- they don't show up in the rules until 1990, six years after the game released. They were an expansion of the game, much like later tech waves added Jihad-era and Dark Ages units/tech and even retroactively put in bits like low-tech Mech Rifles and other "primitive" tech that didn't originally exist in game stats.

I was referring to his "easy mode" jibe.

[Corrado]

yes it's a battletech game, but not a table top. tabletop rules would severely limit MWO potential.