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First we need to address two elephants in the room. First is that FASA bungled the clans when they made them, end of story. Second is that PGI is already willing and on live has damage values well above tabletop values, so, complete lore purism is not our answer, but, it can guide a little.
With ED Heat and Damage are now even more closely tied together making these two elements a major component to balancing any weapon, but, there is one thing that must be addressed beyond that, Clan ER's simply were messed up with the range advantage that they gave when created by FASA which has been grandfathered into MWO. Damage for the most part is about spot on, a 1 point damage advantage is not huge, but, as things currently are we have cERML's matching the range of an IS LL making IS LL's kind of not worth it, at all, same with both weapons having near identical damage and burn time profiles. These elements make IS LL's undesirable and imbalanced. This also creates the need for IS energy range quirks which is something we should be trying to remove the need for.
While unpopular nerfs are good for the game when it is dealing with a system that is far too good for it's cost, and clan lasers for the most part are. Now, This isn't "lets just nerf all clan lasers into the dirt so IS can fight them". IS currently on live server can reasonably fight clan mechs, this is more of making it so quirks are less needed and Clan Lasers are brought in line.
So, after a few hours of crunching numbers in a spread sheet I have come up with a few changes that would help balance the game. First is over range damage and distance needs to be changed for both sides. Cut over range to be 50% beyond the effective range of a laser, this ties into the 1/d^2 law that governs a lot of things and models how lasers disperse. This also prevents 2km tickle fests with large lasers, effective range will become more of a hard cap for your range.
The next change is cER's get a flat range nerf, this is due to FASA bungled clans heavily when they made them. So here is a list of IS lasers vs Clan lasers as they are on live without quirks or modules for their range.
IS vs Clan Standard + ER lasers:
- IS Small Laser: 135m/270m
- cER Small Laser: 200m/360m
- IS Medium Laser: 270m/540m
- cER Medium Laser: 405m/688m
- IS Large Laser: 450m/900m
- IS ER Large Laser: 675m/1350m
- cER Large Laser: 740m/1480m
IS vs Clan Pulses:
- IS Small Pulse Laser: 110m/220m
- C Small Pulse Laser: 165m/297m
- IS Medium Pulse Laser: 220/440m
- C Medium Pulse Laser: 330m/561m
- IS Large Pulse Laser: 365m/730m
- C Large Pulse Laser: 600m/1200m
As we can see there is a large disparity between lasers of each class, now PGI has thankfully balanced the cER ML a bit from it's tabletop 450m effective range that it had shared with the IS LL, but, as we can see there is still a large disparity.
What I propose is dropping the damage values of Clan lasers by a bit as they have been for some of the larger lasers in PTS.
Current vs New Damage Values for lasers:
- IS Small Laser: 3 to 3
- cER Small Laser: 4 to 4
- IS Medium Laser: 5 to 5
- cER Medium Laser: 7 to 6
- IS Large Laser: 9 to 8
- IS ER Large Laser: 9 to 9
- cER Large Laser: 11 to 11
IS Pulse vs C Pulse
- IS Small Pulse Laser: 4 to 4
- C Small Pulse Laser: 6 to 4
- IS Medium Pulse Laser: 6 to 6
- C Medium Pulse Laser: 8 to 7
- IS Large Pulse Laser: 11 to 9
- C Large Pulse Laser: 13 to 11
The main changes as you can see would be clan pulses going down by a couple of points, their main advantage would be being more compact, lighter, and longer range, IS is shorter burn time for less damage and less range.
Now for the Range changes:
- IS Small Laser: 135m/270m to 120m/270m
- cER Small Laser: 120m/360m to 150m/300m
- IS Medium Laser: 270m/540m to 270m/405m
- cER Medium Laser: 405m/688m to 390m/585m
- IS Large Laser: 450m/900m to 450m/675m
- IS ER Large Laser: 675m/1350m to 675m/1015m
- cER Large Laser: 740m/1480m to 700m/1050m
IS vs Clan Pulses:
- IS Small Pulse Laser: 110m/220m to 100m/180m
- C Small Pulse Laser: 165m/297m to 130m/200m
- IS Medium Pulse Laser: 220/440m to 220m/300m
- C Medium Pulse Laser: 330m/561m to 250m/330m
- IS Large Pulse Laser: 365m/730m to 420m/525m
- C Large Pulse Laser: 600m/1200m to 450m/565m
This would tighten the range bands while giving clans a clear advantage as well as make lasers not have silly range. To go with this range nerf there would also have to be changes to duration, cooldown is roughly where it should be though in my book, maybe a hair higher for pulse lasers and er lasers as they do more damage and thus require more energy, maybe pulses just have the higher heat to off set that. So for duration changes.
IS vs Clan Standard+ER lasers:
- IS Small Laser: .75 to .55
- cER Small Laser: .9 to .65
- IS Medium Laser: .9 to .65
- cER Medium Laser: 1.15 to .7
- IS Large Laser: 1 to .8
- IS ER Large Laser: 1.25 to .85
- cER Large Laser: 1.5 to .95
IS vs Clan Pulses:
- IS Small Pulse Laser: .5 to .4
- C Small Pulse Laser: .6 to .4
- IS Medium Pulse Laser: .6 to .5
- C Medium Pulse Laser: .8 to .55
- IS Large Pulse Laser: .75 to .65
- C Large Pulse Laser: 1.12 to .7
Now as for heat? Heat I would keep the same all except for the IS ML which goes from 5 to 4, and the cSPL which goes down from 6 to 3 to go with it's damage going from 6 to 4. The IS ERLL would go to 9 heat while the clan ERLL would go to 9 heat as well, IS LPL would go to 8 heat from 7. All clan weapons going down in damage basically would decrease heat by 1 point with the exception of the CSPL and the Clan LPL, the cLPL would keep the same heat.
Now while smalls feel like they have a very short duration if you take into consideration most IS mechs that run SPL's have a duration quirk to make them around that time frame anyways. Yes clan SPL's get meaner with going down by .2 seconds, but, they also lose 2 damage, and 3 heat. This means any IS Light with 6 SPL will do 24 damage, as will a Clan Light with 6SPL will also do 24 damage, over the same duration, for only a 6 point difference in heat with range going to the clan mech by 20m. This will likely push lights to taking the ML's of their tech base for a longer range even if it is a slightly longer burn time for a bit more damage and heat. But, that is just my guess.
As for taking into consideration Energy Draw? Pulses are 1:1 due to short duration, lasers are .87 energy per point of damage, maybe .9 energy per point of damage. ER's would be .9 or .95 energy per point of damage. This is to help offset clan range superiority by just a hair but not to the point of destroying clan lasers. Now, duration can be increased, as can cooldowns, but, I feel damage and range are where they should be, if Duration is increased it should be done on a formula such as duration = damage*0.05+x which is how I set up this linear line, .40 for standard lasers, .20 for pulse lasers, maybe ER's should have .45, don't know that is also up for debate. Maybe our base formula should be exponential, who knows, that is the point of bringing this up.
One thing of note is that I was juggling range, duration, heat, and damage all at once, if you simply decreased duration and range then clan weapons would still stand superior as they do in many cases far more damage and thus with a shorter duration do even more DPS, even if it is at a shorter range they will likely still be on par or longer ranged than IS peers which is not ideal.
