90 replies to this topic

[Triordinant]

davoodoo, on 21 May 2016 - 09:47 AM, said:

Its basically a wild guess what stats will it have.

Nope. It's an exact equation. An equation everyone else agrees is correct.

[EvilCow]

It would make the PPC even more useless than it is already.

I would love to see it but probably they are not very comfortable with modifying stuff considering their record.

[FLG 01]

Metus regem, on 21 May 2016 - 09:47 AM, said:

But you are missing one very important factor in the Blazer's favor as far as MWO goes, it would one take 1E hard point, rather than 2E for 2LL....

Right. The Binary Laser Cannon would not be interesting for a Black Knight, I guess. But I know some Mechs who could benefit from the Blazer, like the King Crab or the Victor. Firing 13.5 damage from a single hardpoint, even if it comes at the price of heavy weight, is quite tempting.

EvilCow, on 21 May 2016 - 10:44 AM, said:

It would make the PPC even more useless than it is already.

I am not sure about it. PPCs are useful on heavily quirked Mechs like the Warhammer. I for one would not replace the PPCs on my MAD-3R with Blazers (though I might think about combining them), and I rarely run PPCs on Mechs which are not quirked for it anyway.

I personally don't see the Blazer as competition for the PPC anyway. A (well quirked) PPC fullfils a different job than a laser, at least the way I play it.

davoodoo, on 21 May 2016 - 09:47 AM, said:

Yes i use tabletop values because we have no binary laser within game.

And each weapon is differently scaled. ppc in mwo got 100% of its tt dmg while having 95% of the heat while large laser got 112.5% dmg and 87.5% heat. Medium laser got 100% dmg and 133% heat.

Its basically a wild guess what stats will it have.

The Binary Laser Cannon in BT canon is directly tied to the stats of the Large Laser, because it basically is two LL combined. Therefore it would be sensible to tie an MWO Blazer to the stats of the MWO LL.

Of course PGI might chose another way for the Blazer, but would just give it TT stats? I don't think so. It is definitely strange to question the usefulness of the weapon by simply comparing its TT stats with the MWO stats of another laser.

[Johnny Z]

The model for this may be tough to fit on mechs and be a problem.

Edited by Johnny Z, 22 May 2016 - 10:30 AM.

[Mavairo]

I think the Binary Laser needs to be a thing. Mechs with limited energy hard points would see a great deal more potential mileage and build choices from it.
Some mechs could run 2X Binary Lasers.. QuadLaser!

Edited by Mavairo, 22 May 2016 - 12:13 PM.

[kapusta11]

It should do 16 damage for 12.5 heat and have 1 sec burn time. Same damage per heat as LL but a bit less total damage compared to 2 LL - a price for being able to put it in high mounted hardpoint or hardpoint starved mech in general.

[Deathlike]

Johnny Z, on 22 May 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

The model for this may be tough to fit on mechs and be a problem.

I'm not sure if you pay attention to lego-mechs, but ALL lasers use the same look, whether it is a small laser, or large pulse.

Really.

Edited by Deathlike, 22 May 2016 - 01:16 PM.

[FupDup]

kapusta11, on 22 May 2016 - 12:37 PM, said:

It should do 16 damage for 12.5 heat and have 1 sec burn time. Same damage per heat as LL but a bit less total damage compared to 2 LL - a price for being able to put it in high mounted hardpoint or hardpoint starved mech in general.

With those stats I think that the Blazer would be superior to 2 LL due to the lower heat. -2 damage isn't as much of a concern as shaving off -1.5 heat. It's sort of like how changing the Clan ERML to 6 damage and 5 heat would be superior to 7 damage and 6 heat in many cases.

I think a decent starting point might be around 15ish damage and 13ish heat, with a SHORTER beam duration than the regular LL. The reason for this is to pay homage to the "lore role" of the weapon, which was to deal its damage more pinpoint than a pair of LL.

Edited by FupDup, 22 May 2016 - 01:40 PM.

[Johnny Z]

I think it should have the same stats as 2 LL. The advantage is more fire power per hard point, the disadvantage being easier to have that fire power knocked out.

Not a very strong argument but why take a Blazer if it doesn't equal 2 LL?

Edited by Johnny Z, 22 May 2016 - 01:41 PM.

[kapusta11]

FupDup, on 22 May 2016 - 01:36 PM, said:

With those stats I think that the Blazer would be superior to 2 LL due to the much better damage per heat ratio. Gaining much better heat efficiency outweighs the loss of 2 damage points.

I think a decent starting point might be around 15ish damage and 13ish heat, with a SHORTER beam duration than the regular LL. The reason for this is to pay homage to the "lore role" of the weapon, which was to deal its damage more pinpoint than a pair of LL.

Erm, 18 damage / 14 heat = 1.286 ratio, 16 / 12.5 = 1.28. It's actually a bit lower.

[zeves]

It has been stated by Russ himself that they wont add anything until theyve squeezed all the mech money out of this timeline.
so why bother talking about it.

[Mavairo]

zeves, on 22 May 2016 - 03:34 PM, said:

It has been stated by Russ himself that they wont add anything until theyve squeezed all the mech money out of this timeline.
so why bother talking about it.

The same reason we have been harping on them about the ridiculously bad mech scaling in this game for the last four years.
Because eventually they're going to hear it enough to realize there's $ in changing it and things.
And now..4 years later, we're getting the Great Rescale of 2016™

[Y E O N N E]

Mavairo, on 22 May 2016 - 03:38 PM, said:

The same reason we have been harping on them about the ridiculously bad mech scaling in this game for the last four years.
Because eventually they're going to hear it enough to realize there's $ in changing it and things.
And now..4 years later, we're getting the Great Rescale of 2016™

I reserve the use of the word "Great" until I play with the results.

[Mavairo]

Yeonne Greene, on 22 May 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

I reserve the use of the word "Great" until I play with the results.

This looks promising to me. And this is supposedly one of the mechs without a "Big" rescaling number.
The nova is supposed to get like 18% smaller!

[Y E O N N E]

Mavairo, on 22 May 2016 - 04:11 PM, said:

This looks promising to me. And this is supposedly one of the mechs without a "Big" rescaling number.
The nova is supposed to get like 18% smaller!

It's not, and I'll tell you why it's not:

The STs on the Dragon are still wide. From the front, easy to hit. From the side, some of the ST extends up the "snout" of the CT, meaning they are easy to hit from the side, too.

Furthermore, as a 60 ton chassis that is heavy in ballistics hard-points and light on energy hard-points, it demands an XL to be equipped with great firepower. So, we have a chassis whose geometry screams "STD ONLY!" but whose weapons and total mass demand an XL. Now figure in the necessity of exposing your entire torso because most of the firepower is mounted considerably below cockpit-level, and the reality that the 'Mech is neither small enough nor fast enough to overcome these deficiencies through agility, and we have what we call a "bad 'Mech."

The Dragon is basically irredeemable unless they give it some noteworthy armor quirks or stupendous weapon quirks.

And in this same pass, the Blackjack is supposedly getting bigger. How big? I dunno. But any amount of bigger is bad for the Blackjack, which is already completely dependent upon quirks to be good.

And some people on this forum think that an impartial re-scaling based on a common ratio is equitable to being a fair re-scaling. It is not. A fair re-scale would involve scaling each 'Mech independently to give it what it needs to be good. That's basically the definition of fair. Sure, we can always go back and try to make it fair again with quirks but, eh. Why make stuff that's already fine worse?

[Mavairo]

Yeonne Greene, on 22 May 2016 - 04:22 PM, said:

It's not, and I'll tell you why it's not:

The STs on the Dragon are still wide. From the front, easy to hit. From the side, some of the ST extends up the "snout" of the CT, meaning they are easy to hit from the side, too.

Furthermore, as a 60 ton chassis that is heavy in ballistics hard-points and light on energy hard-points, it demands an XL to be equipped with great firepower. So, we have a chassis whose geometry screams "STD ONLY!" but whose weapons and total mass demand an XL. Now figure in the necessity of exposing your entire torso because most of the firepower is mounted considerably below cockpit-level, and the reality that the 'Mech is neither small enough nor fast enough to overcome these deficiencies through agility, and we have what we call a "bad 'Mech."

The Dragon is basically irredeemable unless they give it some noteworthy armor quirks or stupendous weapon quirks.

And in this same pass, the Blackjack is supposedly getting bigger. How big? I dunno. But any amount of bigger is bad for the Blackjack, which is already completely dependent upon quirks to be good.

And some people on this forum think that an impartial re-scaling based on a common ratio is equitable to being a fair re-scaling. It is not. A fair re-scale would involve scaling each 'Mech independently to give it what it needs to be good. That's basically the definition of fair. Sure, we can always go back and try to make it fair again with quirks but, eh. Why make stuff that's already fine worse?

As someone that takes a Drg out for a spin, a physically smaller dragon is only going to help the mech. I will agree that the hitboxes need to revert to how the mech was at launch with much smaller STs. As PGI's last hitbox revision of the DRG resulted in easier to pop STs.

All the same, the mech is going to be at least marginally more difficult to hit. This is going to be an improvement over the present situation in the DRG's case where it's definitely too physically large for it's tonnage.
I agree it needs more durability quirks, particularly armor quirks from where it sits right now. But with the mech being the size of alaska for a 60 tonner it doesn't help things much you know?

You can give it the quirks you want to, but at it's current physical size it doesn't help much.
That smaller moving target is going to be easier to move dmg around on than it's present state, by a good bit as less of the mech physically has to actually move, in order to spread dmg around to another hit box.

I also don't feel they need a same scale equation on all the mechs, either. But if this is what they want to attempt, and then fine tune with quirks, in concert...they should go for it. Anything is better than the IGP days of doom where mechs wouldn't get touched for months...years...

What they should have done and this is just my idle speculation mind, is take the current DRG arms and put them on the new model, and that would also help the situation of the STs a good bit more.

Edited by Mavairo, 22 May 2016 - 04:56 PM.

[GreenHell]

Yeonne Greene, on 22 May 2016 - 04:22 PM, said:

-snip-
And some people on this forum think that an impartial re-scaling based on a common ratio is equitable to being a fair re-scaling. It is not. A fair re-scale would involve scaling each 'Mech independently to give it what it needs to be good. That's basically the definition of fair. Sure, we can always go back and try to make it fair again with quirks but, eh. Why make stuff that's already fine worse?

There is a case to be made for mechs not being all the same "Volume ratio" or whatever PGI wants to call it. From a lore perspective, mechs like the Orion are noticeably larger than they need to be because they were designed with "ease of repair" in mind. A noted TableTop quirk of the Orion is a bonus to repair speed and cost, because "the interiors are built roomy, mechanics love them."

Now lore aside, since this isn't TableTop, there is also a case to be made that gameplay might suffer from such a mindset. If mechs are purposely built larger than they need to be, and there is no determinable reason to do so, then why do it? To appease the TT fans? Certainly not...

I (personally) think, that what PGI is doing sounds good 'on paper'. We might not even feel the difference, but at least PGI is showing that they do care about their game. Only time will tell if these changes are 'good' or not, and it's frankly pointless to say flat-out that what they're doing is 'bad'. We need to FEEL the changes first. Maybe Dragons will finally be in a good place? Maybe Spiders won't be such a pain? Maybe the Nova will finally achieve balance! All these things will take playtesting the changes for MONTHS to really FEEL the changes and get an idea of weather they are working or not.

That's my rant about scale over. Back to the Binary Laser!

I would love to see the BLazer in game. It would provide a heavier option for mechs with tonnage available, but low hardpoint numbers (HGN and MAL come to mind). I'm always down for more options. The more weapons in the game the better IMO. Especially if those weapons are exclusive to each faction. PGI needs to think a bit more about making the two factions play different, and the huge number of exclusive weapons and equipment on both sides would help to do that!

[Y E O N N E]

Mavairo, on 22 May 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

As someone that takes a Drg out for a spin, a physically smaller dragon is only going to help the mech. I will agree that the hitboxes need to revert to how the mech was at launch with much smaller STs. As PGI's last hitbox revision of the DRG resulted in easier to pop STs.

All the same, the mech is going to be at least marginally more difficult to hit. This is going to be an improvement over the present situation in the DRG's case where it's definitely too physically large for it's tonnage.
I agree it needs more durability quirks, particularly armor quirks from where it sits right now. But with the mech being the size of alaska for a 60 tonner it doesn't help things much you know?

You can give it the quirks you want to, but at it's current physical size it doesn't help much.
That smaller moving target is going to be easier to move dmg around on than it's present state, by a good bit as less of the mech physically has to actually move, in order to spread dmg around to another hit box.

I have Dragon's, too. I want to love them, really, because they look awesome. I do alright in them after I warm up, but the Rifleman and Quickdraw are just far-and-away superior machines...and the QKD is even bigger than the DRG. Marginally better is, honestly, not good enough. I'm not complaining about the Dragon getting smaller, truly, but rather that the same logic they used to make this one marginally better is going to make other 'Mechs marginally worse. Some 'Mechs might end up a lot worse, and some might end up a lot better. It is, honestly, silly. We're going to be right where we started with some 'Mechs being too big for their own good or too small for the good of everybody else simply because PGI did not take shape into account and because they also have a thing for assigning arbitrary twist rates and ranges to 'Mechs that don't typically account for shape, either.

GreenHell, on 22 May 2016 - 04:57 PM, said:

We need to FEEL the changes first. Maybe Dragons will finally be in a good place? Maybe Spiders won't be such a pain? Maybe the Nova will finally achieve balance! All these things will take playtesting the changes for MONTHS to really FEEL the changes and get an idea of weather they are working or not.

Agreed, hence my original statement about reserving judgement until release.

Also, I'm not honestly sure what role the BLaser would fill in this game. A crappy IS counterpart to the Clan LPL? My initial thought is that we sacrifice some range, give it 420 m with a burn of 1.15 seconds for 16 damage and 12 heat.

[Mavairo]

Yeonne Greene, on 22 May 2016 - 05:04 PM, said:

I have Dragon's, too. I want to love them, really, because they look awesome. I do alright in them after I warm up, but the Rifleman and Quickdraw are just far-and-away superior machines...and the QKD is even bigger than the DRG. Marginally better is, honestly, not good enough. I'm not complaining about the Dragon getting smaller, truly, but rather that the same logic they used to make this one marginally better is going to make other 'Mechs marginally worse. Some 'Mechs might end up a lot worse, and some might end up a lot better. It is, honestly, silly. We're going to be right where we started with some 'Mechs being too big for their own good or too small for the good of everybody else simply because PGI did not take shape into account and because they also have a thing for assigning arbitrary twist rates and ranges to 'Mechs that don't typically account for shape, either.



Agreed, hence my original statement about reserving judgement until release.

Also, I'm not honestly sure what role the BLaser would fill in this game. A crappy IS counterpart to the Clan LPL? My initial thought is that we sacrifice some range, give it 420 m with a burn of 1.15 seconds for 16 damage and 12 heat.

Oh I'm still semi skeptical hence the ™
The Dragon was the first chassis I mastered back in the day. It was the first mech that taught me about positioning.
I placed second in the hero tournament in the Fang board, because I knew I could get results out of the mech, especially in solo que.

I also think, alot of people take this game waaay too serious. This is a beer and pretzels game. It will never, ever be Starcraft Broodwar, SC2, or DOTA in the esports arena.

As such balance is kind of meh. I took a long long break from this game, and while I was gone tiers apparently got introduced. Came back for a lil bit, then left again.
Now it seems that I'm back. In the time I've been gone I've been playing world of warships..which pretty much totally changed my playstyle preferences...when I left I was a Heavy and Medium guy...now it's Assaults primarily lol. (As they play closest to battleships)

As long as a given mech is capable of putting up good numbers, my "give a damn level" doesn't really get nudged in this game. It's a casual game, set in a universe based off a casual table top strategy game. Devved by a company who..honestly this is probably the best game they have ever made and probably will make lol.

It's hard for me to be utterly disappointed in mwo at this point.
I had my Pro Gaming Super comp days in starcraft broodwar, and later star trek online of all things, before F2P aborted PVP with a coat hangar in a back alley. Now.. meh, I'm just here for the explosions, and pretty light shows, working my way up the tiers. Which if I played more than I do, I'd probably be T2 already. As it is I play a couple days a week, for a few hours, spending half that in mech lab, fiddling lol

So the Binary Laser in it's rule of Cool... very much applies. As for it's niche, it's niche is actually a pretty good one. It basically gives PGI a way to effectively increase the energy hardpoints of a given mech without having to do so.
T
Take the DRG for example... suddenly the 5N could have a pair of Binary Lasers in it's one arm.

Or the Fang,maybe 3 Binary Lasers. One in the ST, two in the arm.
Given that DRG gameplay is more about blowing out components and finishing mechs off, or bullying mediums, or hitting assaults in their back armor, a triple binary laser would be pretty lulzy.

Basically the Binary Laser, gives new life into mechs who are somewhat energy starved. Without having to use insane levels of Quirkening to make those limited hard points more effective, potentially.

Edited by Mavairo, 22 May 2016 - 05:23 PM.

[Johnny Z]

Mavairo, on 22 May 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

As someone that takes a Drg out for a spin, a physically smaller dragon is only going to help the mech. I will agree that the hitboxes need to revert to how the mech was at launch with much smaller STs. As PGI's last hitbox revision of the DRG resulted in easier to pop STs.

All the same, the mech is going to be at least marginally more difficult to hit. This is going to be an improvement over the present situation in the DRG's case where it's definitely too physically large for it's tonnage.
I agree it needs more durability quirks, particularly armor quirks from where it sits right now. But with the mech being the size of alaska for a 60 tonner it doesn't help things much you know?

You can give it the quirks you want to, but at it's current physical size it doesn't help much.
That smaller moving target is going to be easier to move dmg around on than it's present state, by a good bit as less of the mech physically has to actually move, in order to spread dmg around to another hit box.

I also don't feel they need a same scale equation on all the mechs, either. But if this is what they want to attempt, and then fine tune with quirks, in concert...they should go for it. Anything is better than the IGP days of doom where mechs wouldn't get touched for months...years...

What they should have done and this is just my idle speculation mind, is take the current DRG arms and put them on the new model, and that would also help the situation of the STs a good bit more.

Scaling for balance is why so many mechs are odd sized. That scale will be simulation based is the smart thing to do. Then use quirks for balance as good as possible. Giving all mechs a good chance is what balance is about. Quirks can do that. I always said quirks were genius even if it wasn't my idea and I never seen it coming.

Anyway scaling for balance created a mess that is finally being cleaned up. Then they can easily adjust quirks for balance without altering entire models etc.

Some mechs have serious hard point problems that quirks have a hard time adjusting for. The Blazer may just be the thing thats needed, to keep this on topic a little bit.

Totally an accident the reply above this said the same thing at the end I now realize.

Edited by Johnny Z, 22 May 2016 - 05:39 PM.