9 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

ok, so i posted an idea in another thread and have received some good feedback about it. you can check it out if you want to read it (it goes into more detail), but ive reduced it down to this:

every weapon type gets its own version of power draw to specifically reflect that technology. each has a bar tracking its use or overuse and result in different effects.

energy weapons get the power draw bar, it works much as it does now except it only counts energy weapons. other weapons have their own mechanics. it would obviously be tuned up from its current state, recharge slowed and discharge values tweaked.

missile based weapons are based around the computing power of a guidance computer. it basically is capable of guiding a certain number of missiles (for example 30 lrms or 14 srms), if you put more missiles in the air than it can account for, it begins to loose precision and will increase spread of the missiles.

ballistic weapons are based on recoil and will penalize you on high dps/alpha by causing all kinds of fun recoil effects. everything from reticle jitter and shot deflections, to severe screen shake and forcing your actuators off their mark (requiring repositioning), even ripping your structure to sheds if you are doing something insane like firing large numbers of high power weapons really fast (tripple uac20).

rather than flat out prevent boating, i want to give both boating and mixed build pros and cons and accept them both as viable strategies. obviously if you boat one weapon type, then you are going to be seeing a lot more penalties specific to that type, or you can spread them out with mixed builds so none are as severe.

but there are also some interplays that effect mixed builds. for example the guidance computer might draw power from the energy meter when it is overloaded. ballistic jitter effects the accuracy of all other direct fire weapons. lb spread might increase if the guidence computer is overloaded. gauss might take longer to cd if your power bar is empty. and so on.


e: heres the original post, since im really getting a lot of pms about pushing this thing. thought it would be better off as part of this thread.

Spoiler

id like to think that every weapon type has its own mechanic to help reduce boating, but in a different way that matches the weapon technology.

energy gets ghost heat (single gh group).
ballistics get recoil (effects accuracy).
missiles overload the guidance systems (effects precision, aka spread).

effects are based on damage and time. a lot of damage in a small amount of time results in higher penalties. spread damage out over time and get lower or no penalties. the energy draw system does this but globally across all weapons. thats kind of a mistake imho. pgi wants a silver bullet to solve all their problems. least amount of effort most effect. pgi spends a lot of time chasing silver bullets, but often it means more work in the long run and a lot of unhappy customers.

energy draw is on the right track, but id have a bar for every hardpoint type. energy would have the power draw system, in its current form. overrun your bar, and your reactor has to work harder, beyond its limits to keep up, and you get heat penalties. keep the bar at 30 but make it take 5 seconds to fully replenish from empty (plus additional time if you go negative). about 6 points per second recharge rate.

a second bar would be guidence computer load, it works the same way as energy draw, put a lot of missiles in the air and the computer will get overloaded and your missiles start to wander. you get a bigger spread. you can guide up to 30 lrms or 14 srms simultaneously without penalty. above that you get ghost spread (though you are shown that this will happen). this can also be used to make the big launchers useful again. you can tighten their spreads, but you wouldn't be able to fire 2 lrm20s simultaneously without overloading the guidance computer and making them as bad as they are now.

recoil probibly wouldn't be represented by a bar (though it would still technically have one, but it need not be displayed to the player), but by other effects, such as crosshair jitter (like what you get when using jump jets), projectile deflection, screen shake, and physical damage to your structure, in order of least severe to most. like energy draw it would be based on damage and time, such that both excessive dps and excessive alpha are penalized. every time you fire your weapon damage is added to the bar, and the bar decays by about 10 per second (you want to keep this bar empty). the bar would be segmented, 0-25 is the safe zone, no effects. above 25 the crosshair starts to shake. if you fire during this shake, your shots can deflect (bar value - 25 degrees). over 35 and you get severe screen shake that lasts until the bar returns to below 35. over 40 and you start to take structural damage to the locations where the weapons are installed (which can potentially kill you if you have something important in that section). also if you fire alphas over 25, your torso and arm actuators deflect (left, right or up depending on weapon layout) and will require re positioning before your next shot, this however does not cause deflection on the shot that caused it.

the 3 systems can be tweaked independently of each other. mixed builds would not make any of the bars go very far into the red and thus can circumvent most of the penalties. it will be neccisary to tweak the thresholds so that mixed builds dont become the new meta. they should have their own drawbacks, like interplay of the 3 systems. deflections would apply to all weapons for example, and an overloaded guidance computer might take some power off the energy bar, and of course all systems still have their heat.

Edited by LordNothing, 02 September 2016 - 02:29 AM.

[Spleenslitta]

I'd like to summarise and maybe add a few ideas of my own to what happens when you overload a bar.
I'll put numbers on them so it's easier to tell which ideas we like and dislike. Oh yeah...i do not suggest ALL these things happen when you overload a bar.
Instead you get to pick your poison i guess


Power draw bar overload might cause -
1E Mech gets sluggish. Slower top speed, acceleration/deceleration. Slower torso and arm movement.
2E Cannot fire energy weapons at all.
3E Sensors either get completly shutdown or the range gets cut down a lot.
4E Slower missile lock on and slower gauss charge.
5E Slower to acquire data on targeted enemy mech.
6E ECM/BAP get less effective or just plain don't work at all.
7E Minimap shuts down till you get power back. Maybe the compass too.

Missile bar overload might cause -
1M Guidance computer takes energy from the power draw bar.
2M More spread on all missile weapons as guidance computer goes nuts.
3M LBX gets more spread too.
4M Missile lock on time increases by a lot.
5M Possibility of missfiring some of the missiles in your volleys. Missfired missiles are duds.
6M LRM and streaks cannot get target locks and thus just fire straight ahead while missile bar is overloaded.
7M The volley of LRM/streaks that overloaded the missile bar lose their guidance at half their normal range.


Ballistic bar should we call it recoil bar overload might cause -
1B Reticle jitter / severe screenshake.
2B Shot deflections. Do none or little damage to whatever it hits or am i missunderstanding things?
3B Structure damage. Only happens if you do something like firing 3x UAC20 repeatedly.
4B Twist the torso to the side by a lot because of the massive recoil. We're talking 5 to 20 degree's here.
5B Recoil shakes the ammo feeds so all ammo jams for a while. You cannot reload missile or ballistic weapons while the jam is in effect.
The more you overloaded the Recoil bar the longer the jam lasts.
6B When recoil has overloaded the recoil bar by a lot the mech will stagger backwards when stationary and slow down while going forward.
7B Mech gets knocked down by the massive recoil.
8B The gun (or guns) that caused the recoil gets damaged. Not necessarily destroyed unless you keep overloading the recoil bar repeatedly till the weapon has no more health.
9B Other internal components such as heatsinks, other weapons, JJ's, ECM, etc get damaged just like in 8B.
10B You can get a temporary or damage to the gyro throughout the match(don't know which).
Lowers either recoil bar limit or regen. If not matchlenght damage it stays limited for a full minute.
11B Damage to gyro lowers top speed and acceleration/deceleration throughout the match or for a full minute.



I will add stuff to this list as we come up with new ideas.

I'll add something of what could happen at high heat levels since i think it should be a part of this.
Important fact - This is just an example so shuffle things about as much as you like so no need to froth at the mouth guys. XD
- Speed, acceleration/deceleration, turning, arm, and twist speed are reduced linearly starting at 30% heat, as follows:

30% heat: 100% speed
40% heat: 95% speed

50% heat: 90% speed - Lower sensor range - Longer time to get data on targeted enemy mech - Longer lock on time for missiles.
This gets worse the higher the heat goes.

60% heat: 85% speed - Gyro starts to perform less effectivly. It's less capable of countering recoil and the higher the heat goes the worse it gets.

70% heat: 80% speed - BAP's ability to boost sensors is gone and ECM only affects the mech it is mounted on.
- Starts to affect HUD making minimap and compass flicker or they both go totally offline till mech cools down.

80% heat: 75% speed - Maybe concider slight chance of ammo cook off. Chance increases as heat goes up.
Guidance computer goes haywire and some of the less serious things in the missile bar happens.

90% heat: 70% speed - At 90% heat, you behave as if you were inside an enemy ECM bubble.

100% heat: 65% speed - at 100% and higher heat, in additional to CT internal structure damage.
- Very high chance of an ammunition explosion for non-Gauss ammo.

Should the mech be even more sluggish at high heat levels and are these ideas sound? I got no idea.
If you want me to add something to the heat list just say the word.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 21 August 2016 - 07:13 AM.

[Wibble in a Clan can]

Problem with this is that Mechs with 1 type of hardpoint only become piles of %$#@ compared to those with 2. And those that can boat 3 different types of hardpoints will rule them all.

The entire point of the power draw system as it stands is to balance by evening out the output of weapons (in damage terms) somewhat (for better or worse, I think better- at least compared to ghost heat). PGI probably doesn't want to create another 3 tiers of mechs to balance.
I do like the idea of different weapon systems having different side effects to overuse though. Frankly, I think additional heat effects complicate the game to little actual benefit.

[Spleenslitta]

WibbsScrapMerc, on 21 August 2016 - 05:04 AM, said:

Problem with this is that Mechs with 1 type of hardpoint only become piles of %$#@ compared to those with 2. And those that can boat 3 different types of hardpoints will rule them all.

The entire point of the power draw system as it stands is to balance by evening out the output of weapons (in damage terms) somewhat (for better or worse, I think better- at least compared to ghost heat). PGI probably doesn't want to create another 3 tiers of mechs to balance.
I do like the idea of different weapon systems having different side effects to overuse though. Frankly, I think additional heat effects complicate the game to little actual benefit.

That is the only problem i see at the moment. There are only two solutions i have seen so far.
First one is quirks obviously. An Archer 5W with only missile slots gets a higher missile bar limit and/or a better recharge on the missile bar.
Second is this idea another player came up with. It helps a bit for sure. Here is his idea.

L3mming2, on 21 August 2016 - 02:44 AM, said:

... but then the problem still stands, forcing mixed builds by punniching using same hard points screws over mechs that just dont have divers hardpoints.. and the archer build u suggest... thats just below vindicator lvl of viability... a better way to encourage franken builds in my opinion would be to give 1t of ammo free for every ammo tippe you equip. let me explain,
if i bring a AC20 a SRM6 and a MG i get 1t of ammo for free for AC20 srm's and mg's. if i bring 6 AC2's i get 1 t for ac2's and thats it.

this not only promotes bringing different weapon systems (more free ammo) but helps light and medium ammo dependant mechs wile giving very little benifit to heavy and assault ammo dependand boats.

this system promotes francken builds wile not screwing over mechs that cant realy help but boat like the archer 5W..

ps this system douse make AMS a bit OP do as a 0.5t ams would come with a free ton of ammo..

Edited by Spleenslitta, 21 August 2016 - 05:22 AM.

[L3mming2]

why do ppl boat (accept for the obvious sinergy of cd range and so on...)
- the modules, having a range and cd boost for 1 weapon makes it better then multiple weapons without it..
==> solution; give every mech 3 weapon module slots, and only allow 1 module for a weapon te be equiped (you have to chose cd ore range)
- quirks, if u have a good quirk for a weapon this weapon will outperform all other weapons
==> solution; weapon quirks need to be global, cd% quirk on all weapons, heatgen quirk for all weapons... (yes weapons need to be balanced then ofcorce but they should be anny way)
- sinergy, trying to jugle 5 different cd wile aiming and watching your heat is hard..
==> solution; make a chainfire that the player can adjust in the mech lab, ppl can do this anny way with macros but not every one uses/ nows how to make them..

if all above is done boating will still be good, but mixed builds will atleast have less downsides than they have now..

[Spleenslitta]

Hard to understand that dialect of yours Lemming but i get the gist of it.
BTW. I just added 6 new things to the recoil bar overload list. 6B to 11B and another thing to the missile overload barlist.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 21 August 2016 - 07:08 AM.

[LordNothing]

WibbsScrapMerc, on 21 August 2016 - 05:04 AM, said:

Problem with this is that Mechs with 1 type of hardpoint only become piles of %$#@ compared to those with 2. And those that can boat 3 different types of hardpoints will rule them all.

The entire point of the power draw system as it stands is to balance by evening out the output of weapons (in damage terms) somewhat (for better or worse, I think better- at least compared to ghost heat). PGI probably doesn't want to create another 3 tiers of mechs to balance.
I do like the idea of different weapon systems having different side effects to overuse though. Frankly, I think additional heat effects complicate the game to little actual benefit.

the bleed over effects need to be severe enough to give mixed builds its own set of pros and cons. if your mech forces you to boat, you dont have to deal with any of that. im also not against those mechs getting +10-20 to their relevant bar. that might be a rule, if a bar donent need to be there, then the other bars get +10. if you dont need two, then the remaining bar gets +20.

of course im worried about making boats too powerful. they already get the bigger stick. the 3 bar system mostly makes mixed builds a little bit easier to manage, you dont get as many penalties as your bars seldom redline. you can always lay off one weapon and use the others while you wait for its bar to recharge. but the cross effects can then step in and ruin your game. i dont want to make mixed builds the new meta, im trying to give each pros and cons.

Edited by LordNothing, 21 August 2016 - 02:20 PM.

[Spleenslitta]

LordNothing, on 21 August 2016 - 02:11 PM, said:

the bleed over effects need to be severe enough to give mixed builds its own set of pros and cons. if your mech forces you to boat, you dont have to deal with any of that. im also not against those mechs getting +10-20 to their relevant bar. that might be a rule, if a bar donent need to be there, then the other bars get +10. if you dont need two, then the remaining bar gets +20.

You better put that in the original post. So if the devs takes a peek over here they will spot it more easily.

[Appuagab]

[Spleenslitta]

Hope you can bring something new to this thread Pooty.
We need something better than the latest contribution...a pair of white sneakers.