159 replies to this topic

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Am I the only one that thinks for the most part they have a good ballance of lore and practicality?

[Sandpit]

Hit the Deck, on 27 February 2016 - 11:01 PM, said:

It's actually based on Strum Wealh's "suggestion" in my other thread: http://mwomercs.com/...e-vs-table-top/

Basically, we use 180m for one hex and AC/10 projectile goes up to 15 hex, which means that it has optimal range of 2.7km.

I was just explaining that I was merely giving my opinion on the question asked in the thread title

The problem with MWO right now in regards to range is that when this game first really released to us, it was 8v8 and the maps were designed around that force size. The single biggest complaint regarding maps since they went to 12v12 has been the size. Now toss in that Russ stated many moons ago that PGI's "ideal" combat range was 600 meters. (Keep in mind this is also at the highpoint of the long range poptart craze)

If you look at a map like Polar, you can see how different this game plays if you're on a map where you aren't within range of enemy weapon 30 seconds after spawning as well as giving both teams time to move out from spawn points and go just about any direction they choose.
Other than the occasional unlucky match where you get dropped on it against a few lurm boats and good narc or spotters, it plays out in a myriad of ways. Sometimes it's a brawl, sometimes it's more sniping, sometimes it's dodging lurms at range. It also gives teams plenty of options to reposition and not get locked down into a single position.

Do those things still happen? Of course, but nowhere near as frequently as they do on other maps. Part of the issue with weapon balance in regards to range is how the maps are laid out honestly. They have harsh choke points, limited access to varying high ground locations, and funnel players straight at easy other for the most part. They play more like a MOBA and the builds, strategies, etc. have been geared by players over the years to adapt to that environment.

If we would get more maps similar in size to Polar you would see a shift in everything from mechs taken to loadouts. Imagine a map the size of Polar, but set inside a huge city (by city I mean like the cities of former MW games) with lots of buildings, avenues to duck, dodge, and hide, cover to ensure you're not clubbed by long range weapons while trying to close, etc.

I think the ranges listed in the example you quoted are just too extreme. There's no need to go through all of that. The weapon ranges, for the most part with a big caveat that I'll explain after this, are good where they're at. What needs to happen though are maps designed to accommodate and make viable all kinds of builds and mechs. A big KGC carrying dual AC20 is a lot scarier when you're a light mech scouting through a city trying to locate enemy mechs for your team.

Here's my caveat regarding weapon ranges.

The one thing that truly borked the balance of weapons was this mentality PGI took at giving ballistics 3x range exclusively. I'm all for min, max, and optimal ranges, but it needs to be applied evenly to all of the direct fire weapons (missiles are another matter entirely but we'll get to that). Then they need to decide what the absolute longest range weapon is going to be, start with its max range stats and go from there.

My opinion would be start with the AC2 and work your way down from there. If an AC2 is supposed to be the longest range, then that's what it should be. There shouldn't be multiple weapon systems that outrange it regularly. It throws the entire balance scheme out of whack. If you want to fire out at xx meters, then your choice shoudl be AC2, not AC2, AC5 quirked, ER large lasers, er ppcs, multiple clan weapons, etc.

That's not to say that some mechs with a quirk or two might not get up close to that range, but if you're going to set a "max range" then it needs to be balanced across all weapons evenly otherwise it throws off the viability of certain weapons and even mechs themselves in some cases.

Now as far as missiles go (lrm specifically)

The community is always going back and forth about lurms. Once again, you look at the maps and their designs. Most of the maps have some severe "cover" in that a mech can be wide out in the open, but your missiles can't get there because there was a tree in the way or there was a small hill in the way (not quite specific in regards to range but I feel it plays into it overall). Polar allows for mechs to advance on lurm boats without a lot of hard cover (although I do think Polar needs a few hard cover areas scattered across the map because lurms + narc = dead in most cases with no chance to counter) due to using soft valleys, gulleys, and depressions in the geography of the map as opposed to large chunks of the map that prevent any kind of firing solution. These weren't designed into the map to be "cover" but because of the way they were designed it inadvertently does just that.

As far as range for lurms go, I feel they should have the same range modifications as all the other weapon systems. Between their min range and optimal range (which for them is up to their "normal" range now) means "full damage" from them. (we're not talking spread here but we'll get to that) If they fire over that range then they start failing and less missiles make it to the target. It also increases their spread as their "electronics start failing and tracking deteriorates" (just for fluff) so now you have less missiles hitting and they're spread increases.

Just a sidenote on lurms. I've always felt that if PGI wanted to replicate the indirect fire rules of lurms they could easily do this by increasing lock times on targets no in your direct LoS as well as increasing the spread of the missile group, and even possibly look into adjusting flight times and angles.

So to do a quick recap in regards to weapon ranges and give some example numbers
Let's say PGI decides AC2 is longest range weapon in game.
so, AC2 = 1200 meters.
AC 5 = 900
AC 10 = 600
AC20 = 400
ER LL = 1000
LL = 800
ML = 500
SL = 300
(yes, these are only IS examples I'm too tired to go into that much depth but it still gives an idea of a way to do this, you simply do the same for clan weapons and fit them into the range schemes set up based on the IS stats)
So a Clan AC2 might have a max range of 1300 and just go from there fitting each weapon into accordance with the IS weapons.

This prevents gaping discrepancies across the techs as well such as er medium lasers outperforming IS large lasers in terms of range, weight, DPS, and overall battle efficiency.

Anyhow that's my .002 on the idea

TL;DR
Read the post you lazy bastige lol

[Soulstrom]

The simple answer is yes. Yes it does.

[I really have no idea. It is 2:10am EST and I am kinda bored, so...]

[Sandpit]

Boogie138, on 28 February 2016 - 10:22 PM, said:

Am I the only one that thinks for the most part they have a good ballance of lore and practicality?

no, I'm right there with you, I just think they need to do away with some of the band-aids (such as ghost heat which they're trying to do) and revamp their weapon balance across the board. Part of the issue is that the game, maps, builds, weapons, etc. were all built and based on the IS tech they created when the game went live. Then they (general consensus among many based on history) were heavily pressured to implement clans long before they were ready.

So instead of being able to take the time to do it properly they had to rush this new tech in and start implementing a lot of band-aid type fixes to get it to work.

I think they do their best to try and stay true to the spirit of Btech, but I also think they have very little direction when it comes to long-term planning for the game.

[Sandpit]

Thunder Chassis, on 28 February 2016 - 08:34 PM, said:

Not sure if you are aware but battletech and mechwarrior while in the exact same canon universe ARE different. battle tech is larger unit based play centered around the political house struggles mainly while mechwarrior games are about the mechwarrior or mercenary. so they are different.

uhm
ok?
of course they're different. One is a turn-based strategy game who's outcome is determined by random dice rolls, the other is a first-person shooter.

Read my first post in this thread. Being based on and sticking strictly to are two very separate things and I've never ever seen anyone in this community ask, want, or expect TT rules to convert and be applied directly to the game. Hence the "spirit of the rules"

[Thunder Chassis]

that was directed at the guy who said crescent hawk was first mechwarrior game. i was merely pointing out the distinction between the two. that is all

[PocketYoda]

It follows the rules when it suits it... and it breaks the rules when it suits it...

Look at the state of the game to see that.

[Pjwned]

Metus regem, on 27 February 2016 - 05:14 PM, said:

Image how different the Battle Mechs would be, if they had to fallow proper engine size rules, meaning tonnage x walking speed (walk*1.5=run, rounding up) = engine size, rather than the fine tuning we get right now with being able to adjust in incrementally by 5.... Or if we had a minor cone of fire, not random % to fit, but a logical deviation between weapon mounts. I think MWO would be better for it, but that's me.

Literally the only reason for the engine restriction was that non-incremental engine sizes had no benefit to movement due to it being a board game.

Obviously in MWO you don't move by hexes so there's no point in not allowing any and all engine sizes in between.

[Savage Wolf]

Of course not. The differences between a BattleTech game and a MWO game are quite a few and huge. So it makes little sense to follow the logic of BattleTech when MWO needs it's own. Not to mention, it could also fix a lot of failures of BattleTech or maybe even bring it into 2016 and modernize it.

Of course it still needs to have the spirit of BattleTech and where that line goes is always subjective. It's a shame they couldn't just push the timeline to a place where they had more freedom to change things.

[Wolfways]

Sandpit, on 28 February 2016 - 11:09 PM, said:

TL;DR
Read the post you lazy bastige lol

Liked it so much I read it twice

[MeiSooHaityu]

I'd say MWO has to be BASED on TT rules, but should not be a slave to them.

Make it follow TT whenever it can, but also not be afraid to do it's own thing when balance or fun is at stake.

[MechWarrior5152251]

You cannot model a real time video game on a turn based board/miniature game...

[Lugh]

Trauglodyte, on 27 February 2016 - 05:19 PM, said:

If they followed every rule, this game would be crappy. I think that some of the rules need to be amended or forgotten. Ferrofibrous Armor is a great example of how following the game to the "t" is a bad thing. It was always worse than Endosteel and continues to be to this day. PGI should change that for the betterment of the game but there are balancing issues that come with that like Light mechs and what they have, already, vs. what more they'd gain.

Not if they did the math right. Which they haven't and won't, because learning that double 1's on 2d6 is only a 2.9% chance over a ten second turn is hard. Speaking of ridiculous jam chance mechanics.

Or that weapons have been buffed to 3-5 times their table top values, but armor and structure are only 2x and sameish with IS getting some quirks.

But hey what do I know. math is hard.

[Mawai]

Mcgral18, on 27 February 2016 - 05:05 PM, said:

MWO doesn't really follow very many TT rules.
Some say that's part of the issue, one way or another. That they try to follow the wrong ones, or fail to put in features.

MWO follows far more TT than it ignores in my opinion.
- most of the mech construction rules ... tonnage, weapons etc are all from TT.
- most of the weapon damage and heat values started at TT numbers
- most of the speeds for mechs start from TT values

Most of what MWO does NOT use from TT is due to the fact that it is a real time aimed computer game and not a dice resolved TT board game.
- AIMING ... damage goes where it is aimed (this is a major change from TT and is the primary reason why all the TT numbers are at best a rule of thumb and at worst useless when mapped to MWO).
- MWO is real time ... very early in the design process they made (in my opinion) an incredibly stupid decision. They took the TT damage values but changed ALL of the weapon fire rates in unrelated ways. TT is supposed to be based on a 10s game turn. It would have likely been better to keep the TT DPS values as a starting point for balance rather than the damage number.
- Using damage numbers rather than DPS and increasing rate of fire necessitated doubling the armor values from TT in order to increase time to kill to a reasonable level.

Some folks complain about ballistics with multiple rounds adding up to 20 damage for example. This feature is actually part of the lore of Battletech. AC20s were basically a class of weapons that would do 20 damage in a 10s game turn .. some of these would fire a single round while others might fire several smaller caliber rounds. MWO is completely justified in using multiple projectiles, at least from a lore perspective.

So ... MWO uses quite a bit of the numbers from TT ... and as some folks have mentioned there are varying opinions as to whether they chose the right ones. Unfortunately, we are pretty far past the time when they can make sweeping changes.

Also, keep in mind to that part of the "balance" of weapons has been affected by improvements to netcode/addition of Host State Rewind/hit registration over the years. Whatever "balance" was determined in closed beta was obsolete by the time these improvements rolled out a year or two later.

[Metus regem]

Pjwned, on 29 February 2016 - 02:05 AM, said:

Literally the only reason for the engine restriction was that non-incremental engine sizes had no benefit to movement due to it being a board game.

Obviously in MWO you don't move by hexes so there's no point in not allowing any and all engine sizes in between.

We disagree on this point, as MW2/GBL/Mecrs/MW3/pirate's moon/MW4:V/Mercs all had proper engine rules, and those games worked just fine. I see the engine rules more of a balancing factor as you really have to think, "Do I really need that extra bit of speed? It's really going to eat into my weapons/armour/cooling if I take it..", you know put some of that "thinking mans shooter" line back into the game...

[Roadkill]

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.

MechWarrior is the role-playing game set in the BattleTech universe. For some reason, that was chosen as the name for the computer game series as well.

The computer game needs to retain as much as it can from TT or it won't be a BattleTech game. That said, it also needs to work as a real-time computer game, and as others have already said you can't simply replicate the TT rules and have that work very well. Just as the most obvious reason, would you play a game in which all of your weapons were on 10-second cooldown timers?

Personally, I think PGI has done a pretty good job. Weapon tonnage and crits are a big part of the flavor of BattleTech, so keeping those is important to me. Adjust damage, range, heat as needed for balance.

[Wolfways]

Roadkill, on 29 February 2016 - 08:39 AM, said:

The computer game needs to retain as much as it can from TT or it won't be a BattleTech game. That said, it also needs to work as a real-time computer game, and as others have already said you can't simply replicate the TT rules and have that work very well. Just as the most obvious reason, would you play a game in which all of your weapons were on 10-second cooldown timers?

That makes no sense as weapons in TT didn't fire every 10 seconds. The damage number is how much damage a weapon did within those 10 seconds no matter how many time the weapon actually fired.
All TT games use simple to represent combat.

[Sandpit]

Roadkill, on 29 February 2016 - 08:39 AM, said:

MechWarrior is the role-playing game set in the BattleTech universe. For some reason, that was chosen as the name for the computer game series as well.

The computer game needs to retain as much as it can from TT or it won't be a BattleTech game. That said, it also needs to work as a real-time computer game, and as others have already said you can't simply replicate the TT rules and have that work very well. Just as the most obvious reason, would you play a game in which all of your weapons were on 10-second cooldown timers?

Personally, I think PGI has done a pretty good job. Weapon tonnage and crits are a big part of the flavor of BattleTech, so keeping those is important to me. Adjust damage, range, heat as needed for balance.

Wolfways, on 29 February 2016 - 08:54 AM, said:

That makes no sense as weapons in TT didn't fire every 10 seconds. The damage number is how much damage a weapon did within those 10 seconds no matter how many time the weapon actually fired.
All TT games use simple to represent combat.

he's right on this one

It's not that those weapon only fired once per 10 seconds, it's just that they did that much damage within a 10 second period.

If you take an AC10 for example. As long as it does 10 damage in that 10 second turn, it's all good, it's up to the players to "fluff" how that happens.

MWO has to visually reflect that.

Now I don't think the weapons should act exactly according to that 10 second turn timer for weapons, but it is a place to start for balance. The only weapons that create a real issue on this are IS ACs due to single bullet, single shot, and RoF mechanics.

All in all I think overall weapon balance is in a decent spot at the moment needing a few tweaks here and there but it's common to see every weapon system used. I see ballistics, lasers, missiles, all being used with a lot more frequency than in the past

[Pjwned]

Lugh, on 29 February 2016 - 06:35 AM, said:

Not if they did the math right. Which they haven't and won't, because learning that double 1's on 2d6 is only a 2.9% chance over a ten second turn is hard. Speaking of ridiculous jam chance mechanics.

Pjwned, on 14 February 2016 - 09:04 PM, said:

How many times does it need to be repeated that the jam chance is higher because UACs don't jam permanently in MWO?

Quote

Or that weapons have been buffed to 3-5 times their table top values, but armor and structure are only 2x and sameish with IS getting some quirks.

But hey what do I know. math is hard.

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.

Metus regem, on 29 February 2016 - 08:19 AM, said:

I see the engine rules more of a balancing factor as you really have to think, "Do I really need that extra bit of speed? It's really going to eat into my weapons/armour/cooling if I take it..", you know put some of that "thinking mans shooter" line back into the game...

That's exactly how it works now.

Mawai, on 29 February 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

- Using damage numbers rather than DPS and increasing rate of fire necessitated doubling the armor values from TT in order to increase time to kill to a reasonable level.

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

Sandpit, on 29 February 2016 - 09:11 AM, said:

he's right on this one

It's not that those weapon only fired once per 10 seconds, it's just that they did that much damage within a 10 second period.

If you take an AC10 for example. As long as it does 10 damage in that 10 second turn, it's all good, it's up to the players to "fluff" how that happens.

MWO has to visually reflect that.

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.

Quote

Now I don't think the weapons should act exactly according to that 10 second turn timer for weapons, but it is a place to start for balance. The only weapons that create a real issue on this are IS ACs due to single bullet, single shot, and RoF mechanics.

All in all I think overall weapon balance is in a decent spot at the moment needing a few tweaks here and there but it's common to see every weapon system used. I see ballistics, lasers, missiles, all being used with a lot more frequency than in the past

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.

Edited by Pjwned, 29 February 2016 - 09:32 AM.

[JC Daxion]

pbiggz, on 27 February 2016 - 05:20 PM, said:

The more experienced I get the more i understand why MW4 abandoned TT build rules. They didn't necessarily do a perfect job, but I get why they did it.

The best mechwarrior game, the one that may still be years ahead of us (cause god knows, this ones good but its not the best) will have its own build system. I promise you that.

Mech warrior 4 balance? Your kidding right? Mech 4, was all about leveling up, and collecting better mechs.. This game would of totally flopped had they used the mech 4 model.

That does not mean the game wasn't fun, or had a great single player game.. or you couldn't have fun playing MP over the internet, But outside of a handful of mechs, you weren't going to do crap verse most of them. I never played the Mek-Tek stuff, but everything i read said, it only made the problem worse, with more one shot kills and such.

IMO, this game is by far the most balanced mech game i ever played for having lights have a chance verse assaults, and the mix, and match of mechs.



For those that want TT lore, battle tech.. guess what, that is coming and uses PGI models.. But it sure isn't a shooter. Mech commander verse mech warrior.. If it floats your boat great, but to me there is room for both


and not directed at you, But on a side note, with as much hate as i see on these forums over this game, i truly wonder why some people play it. If i had half the hatred that comes across from a bunch of folks for a game, i would of stopped playing after a few hours and never returned.. Trust me, i have lists of games that never kept me past a few hours, and honestly they weren't bad games.. Oblivion and fallout 3 i'm looking at you among many others. But honestly even the ones i don't end up playing isn't because they are bad for the most part.. they are just not for me.. (contrast is another, awesome art... I totally suck at jump puzzles)


Hostility does nothing for a game, and everything to drive away people that enjoy it.. To me, the game is more balanced than it's ever been, and i have far more options on play styles, even those outside of the so called Meta..

Edited by JC Daxion, 29 February 2016 - 09:25 AM.