58 replies to this topic

[The Zohan]

Me personally? I dont want to move the timeline. To make it clear: no new weapons. No IS omnis. [Redacted] The things you list would bring a boatload of balance issues. Has been discussed ad nauseam.

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 01 September 2016 - 09:15 PM.
unconstructive

[Spleenslitta]

The Zohan, on 01 September 2016 - 01:23 PM, said:

Rude stuff

Um....you do not need to move the timeline for Rifles or Mortars. They are old and being used in the periphery.
Binary Laser Cannon was put on the Zeus 6Y variant. It came out in 2922 so no need to move the timeline on that either.

[The Zohan]

Lostech. It should stay that way.

[Spleenslitta]

The Zohan, on 01 September 2016 - 01:31 PM, said:

Lostech. It should stay that way.

Rifles and Mortars ain't lostech. They are being used in the Periphery and by those who cannot afford better weapons.
Blazer is experimental and rare but not lostech either. Now. Do you have anything constructive to add?
Adjustment to numbers or new abilities perhaps?

[Davison]

Spleenslitta, on 01 September 2016 - 12:42 PM, said:

I will remove the spoilerbuttons to make the thread easier to read but if any of you are intimidated by the textwall that suddenly appears in the original post.....Blame Davison.
I asked him if i should remove them in a PM.

Oh yeah...i just looked at the RAC2 and i realised that it weighs 8 tonns + ammo. That makes me even more determined to make PGI put Rifles and Mortars into MWO.
I mean...look at the Locust 1V. It could actually carry a Light Rifle with 2.5 tonns of ammo + a single ML with an XL190 engine.

That could actually make quite a difference in the later parts of a match when internals are exposed and those devastating critical abilities i suggested comes into play.
In short it gives Light mechs more options in the ballistic category.

*laughs*

Hey! You asked!

That said, I'm with Gentleman Reaper on his little list of possible additions.

[The Zohan]

Spleenslitta, on 01 September 2016 - 01:36 PM, said:

. Do you have anything constructive to add?

I have as much to add as you do. As I sad: its a stupid idea that has been discussed ad naseam. Look around the forums instead of creating a "new" thread. Wont happen. Now stop it.

Edited by The Zohan, 01 September 2016 - 01:47 PM.

[Spleenslitta]

Davison, on 01 September 2016 - 01:44 PM, said:

*laughs*

Hey! You asked!

That said, I'm with Gentleman Reaper on his little list of possible additions.

Regardless. If you wanted to choose an ability for the rifle which one would it be and how if any adjustments would you make to that ability?
This is the kind of specific feedback that is reaaaallly necessary.

The Zohan, on 01 September 2016 - 01:46 PM, said:

I have as much to add as you do. As I sad: its a stupid idea that has been discussed ad naseam. Look around the forums instead of creating a "new" thread. Wont happen. Now stop it.

No. I won't stop and you do not have the authority to stop me. It's that simple.
Oh yeah...i do not know what ad naseam means. I could send a bunch of curse words in norwegian your way that you wouldn't be able to make sense of to return the favor.

Trust me that Google translate will not help at all if i did decided to toss vulgar profanity your way.
Italians may have a near endless stream of profanity when they get all ticked off but norwegians are much more ....obscene and perverted.

But you're not worth it. So say whatever you want but i won't stop.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 01 September 2016 - 02:42 PM.

[Davison]

Spleenslitta, on 01 September 2016 - 01:48 PM, said:

Regardless. If you wanted to choose an ability for the rifle which one would it be and how if any adjustments would you make to that ability?
This is the kind of specific feedback that is reaaaallly necessary

Hmm... The problem with the BT rifle is that it really does the exact same thing as an autocannon, but the autocannon does it better. Were I to implement it, it would be with a damage buff, for one, and splash damage to the target struck (think Clan ER PPC). So, a Light Rifle would be an RI6 (6/2 damage), a Medium would be an RI9 (9/3 damage) and a Heavy would be an RI12 (12/4 damage). Shorter range, higher velocity, and longer reloads than a standard autocannon, perhaps, with ranges working in reverse from that paradigm (heavier rifles have longer ranges, but reload slowly).

The idea is pretty much the same as I might have worked LBX autocannon, being stuck with PGI's "unworkable" (eyeroll) ammo code.

[Spleenslitta]

Davison, on 01 September 2016 - 02:40 PM, said:

Shorter range, higher velocity, and longer reloads than a standard autocannon, perhaps, with ranges working in reverse from that paradigm (heavier rifles have longer ranges, but reload slowly).

The idea is pretty much the same as I might have worked LBX autocannon, being stuck with PGI's "unworkable" (eyeroll) ammo code.

Higher velocity would not be possible. It's one of the reasons the Rifles were replaced by the AC's in the lore.
The only path they could go down by adjusting the TT stats would be longer reloads but much higher damage per shell.
But since they had -3 damage against mech armor that's not really possible either.

Because PGI wants to stay close to the TT stats and the lore whenever they can i have been handed a bunch of cards and i have to stick to them.
Higher damage with splash damage is one way to go although i highly doubt PGI would bite because it is an alteration to the TT stats.
I'll add that to the list though.

Chances for these weapons is low enough as it is....

Davison, on 01 September 2016 - 02:40 PM, said:

Hmm... The problem with the BT rifle is that it really does the exact same thing as an autocannon, but the autocannon does it better.

Yes but think about it. Rather than competing with the AC the rifles could go down a completly different path that no other weapon has done except LBX and MG's.
Crit seeking or extra structural damage would be the obvious paths.
MG and LBX is said by many to have done the crit seeker job poorly but with the proper numbers the rifle could do it where they failed.

Rifles would be pinpoint high chances to crit something and take out components in a single shell.
MG's cannot do that and LBX cannot do it at longer ranges.
But Rifles would be low firerate and low ammo count so they balance out.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 01 September 2016 - 03:12 PM.

[Davison]

As an aside, I've been a TT guy since 1991. I love my lore, but I understand that it can't be the almighty source here. By lore standards, Rifles would be completely pointless to implement, hence my suggestion. I doubt people would go for a nine ton cannon that does roughly the damage of a medium laser, at mediocre ranges, for very limited ammo. Playability is a big factor, for better or worse.

[FLG 01]

Spleenslitta, on 01 September 2016 - 02:52 PM, said:

Because PGI wants to stay close to the TT stats and the lore whenever they can i have been handed a bunch of cards and i have to stick to them.

PGI has not exactly stayed close to the TT stats in case of the lasers, so I don't see any reason why the same metric would not be applied to the Blazer. You may want to read my full argument here:

The Case for the Binary Laser Cannon

Davison, on 01 September 2016 - 03:41 PM, said:

As an aside, I've been a TT guy since 1991. I love my lore, but I understand that it can't be the almighty source here. By lore standards, Rifles would be completely pointless to implement, hence my suggestion. I doubt people would go for a nine ton cannon that does roughly the damage of a medium laser, at mediocre ranges, for very limited ammo. Playability is a big factor, for better or worse.

I understand the desire for new weapons, but I have to agree: Rifles would not do any good. There is a lot of outdated equipment in the BTU which could make an appearance (think of the primitive engine e.g.), but why?
Even the Blazer is a niche weapon, although I'd defend that niche role.

The Zohan, on 01 September 2016 - 01:31 PM, said:

Lostech. It should stay that way.

It seems you are bit confused: LosTech means the advanced Star League technology that was lost during the fires of the 1st and 2nd Succession Wars. The Binary Laser Cannon was developed during the Succession Wars in order to overcome this loss of technology. In fact, it is a markedly low-tech solution. Thus calling it LosTech is evidently wrong.
And it was available, in small numbers but it was there (availability rating E).

[TheArisen]

The Binary laser cannon would be a great addition & easily balanced but the other two... would need a bit of work to make them worthwhile.

However I'm all for new weapons (and defensive tech).

[draiocht]

Remember, everybody: Keep the dialogue polite & constructive.

If one cannot think of how a topic could potentially proceed in a new direction,
that is no reason to stifle the potential ideas of others.

[iLLcapitan]

Mortars shooting unguided indirect-fire ballistics should be big fun!

[Spleenslitta]

iLLcapitan, on 01 September 2016 - 09:46 PM, said:

Mortars shooting unguided indirect-fire ballistics should be big fun!

Indeed. I ask you politely to please help me by reading the entire original post and figuring out a way to balance all 3 weapons.
I would be gratefull if you did that.

TheArisen, on 01 September 2016 - 04:38 PM, said:

The Binary laser cannon would be a great addition & easily balanced but the other two... would need a bit of work to make them worthwhile.

However I'm all for new weapons (and defensive tech).

All you need to do to make Rifles and Mortars more powerfull to the point that they become usefull is to read the entire original post.
Once you're done with that you select an ability and maybe give some adjustments to the ability values.

Yes i know that's a big textwall but it's not possible to balance all 3 of these weapons with a single sentence each without just adjusting the TT stats.

Davison, on 01 September 2016 - 03:41 PM, said:

I doubt people would go for a nine ton cannon that does roughly the damage of a medium laser, at mediocre ranges, for very limited ammo.

Pardon me Davison but you didn't read about the abilities afterall as you claimed to have done.
You never read all that was inside the original post and instead stopped when you came this far.

Spleenslitta, on 01 September 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

Rifles have no changes to damage, heat, range, weight, crit slots.

You never read past that. It's impossible that you read past that.
If you had read past that you would know about the abilities i asked you to select for the weapons.
Instead of talking about pure damage stats you would be talking about which ability is feasible and how the critical hit values should be adjusted.

For example one of the 3 different ways a rifle could have much higher chances at critically hitting internal components armor has been removed.

1- **% stands for the chance to crit 1 component. 2- **% for 2 comps and 3- **% for 3 comps.
Rifle crit chance table. 1- 60%.... 2- 30%..... 3-15%
The light rifle gets to roll once on this table, but the Medium gets 2 chances and the heavy 3 chances.
How much more damage once it critically hits something? 400% perhaps.

If a heavy rifle critically hits components with 2 of it's 3 chances it goes like this -
- 9 damage x 400% = 36 x 2 chances = 72 damage

An Atlas center torso would gone with a single shell. A heavy rifle could do the job of an 4 AC20 shells in a single shot just because of an ability to have higher chances to critically hit something.
Too powerfull? Then help me adjust the values.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 01 September 2016 - 10:05 PM.

[iLLcapitan]

Mechrifles? Meh
More Lasers? Meh, only leads to death rays
Mortar? Hell yea!

[Spleenslitta]

iLLcapitan, on 01 September 2016 - 10:16 PM, said:

Mechrifles? Meh

How about a mechrifle that is nearly useless against armor but once armor is gone it becomes a savage beast?
A beast that cleans out a sidetorso stuffed to the brim with equipment and weapons. Or even removes the sidetorso in a single shell.

iLLcapitan, on 01 September 2016 - 10:16 PM, said:

More Lasers? Meh, only leads to death rays

The Binary Laser Cannon is reaaallly hot. If put into MWO it would be the hottest weapons in the game right away.
Even hotter than ER PPC's. And heavier. Shorter range too. To overcome those weaknesses an ability is needed...a perk of some kind.

iLLcapitan, on 01 September 2016 - 10:16 PM, said:

Mortar? Hell yea!

How would it be balanced? How high a velocity? Semi-guided or non guided? Ability to cause more internal structure damage or higher critical hit chances?

All i ask is that you read the entire original post and select an ability to make the weapons balanced.
Please provide something constructive. Please.

[Pjwned]

Spleenslitta, on 01 September 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

I might have ways to make Rifles, Mortars and Binary Laser Cannon usefull while keeping the TT stats that PGI wants to keep close to.
Please choose which ability each weapon should have to take them beyond their weak TT stats.
Chosing an ability and making suggestions on alterations on the cooldown, velocity, crit chances and such is very important since PGI would rather not touch the TT stats.

What are the TT stats? They are Damage, Heat, Weight, Crit Slots and Range.
They have been touched in MWO's current weapons but PGI are somewhat reluctant to do so.
So i use the cards i have been dealt and move on with only that.

It's inevitable for this to become a textwall because i'm handling 3 types of weapons with multiple solutions to each at the same time after all.
And 2 of these weapon types has multiple sizes. So i politely ask that you give me a break here. Please

Keep in mind that ALL the numbers below are examples and can be changed anytime.

Rifles

Rifles have no changes to damage, heat, range, weight, crit slots.
They have lower velocity and slower firerate than AC's just like in the lore.
-2.5 damage against armor. We can survive a 0.5 damage penalty change right?

They would naturally need to have their ammunition doubled just like AC's.
Since the lighter rifles have shorter range they have lower velocities.
Possible velocities and ammo per tonn on rifles below.


Rifle TT/my idea stats for your convinence...............................Ammo per.......Example
..........Damage...Heat...Range....Weight....Crit slots...Velocity.....Tonn.........Cooldowns
Light.......3.............1......360m......3tons......1 slot.........500?.........36..............2.25 secs?
Medium...6.............2......450m.....5tons......2 slots.......650?........18...............3.5 secs?
Heavy.....9............4......540m......8tons.......3 slots........800?..........12.............6 or 5 secs????

Rifles would need a certain ability to gain their niche role in comparison to AC's.
These abilities only work when a rifle shell hits an unarmored section of the target.
Please choose an ability from the ones explained below.

1) 2 or 3 times more structure damage. I think rifles need at least that much to keep them valuable in comparison to AC's with this ability.

2) Higher critical chance against internal components such as heatsinks, weapons, ammo, etc.
Because it's just a single shell there is a need for higher than an MG bullets chances at criting something.
The bigger the shell the higher the chances it will crit something.
1- **% stands for the chance to crit 1 component. 2- **% for 2 comps and 3- **% for 3 comps.

Light shell.....1- 50%...2- 33%.....3- 12%
Medium shell....1- 60%....2- 40%.....3- 18%
Heavy shell.....1- 80%....2- 60%......3- 33%
How much extra damage from criting something? 400%?
400% would make it really nasty to get hit by a heavy shell.

3) Imagine that when a rifle shell explodes it tosses out a lot of shrapnel.
Each shrapnel piece behaves exactly like an MG bullet.

As you know 1 MG bullet does 0.08 damage but does 1.08 (1350%) damage to any component it critically hits.
MG bullets have these chances to crit 1,2 or 3 components unless things have changed drasticly.
1 - 39%....2- 22%....3- 6%

it takes 37.5 bullets to do 3 damage against armor.
So let's say that a light shell gives us 38 pieces of shrapnel.
Medium shell 76 shrapnel and heavy shell 114 shrapnel.
Can someone do the math on this one so we can understand if it is waaaay too powerfull or not?

If it's too powerfull a splash damage might have to be concidered so that it will hit more armored sections of the target and thus squander some of it's damage potential.
Or lower the amount of shrapnel pieces.

4) Let's say that with each increase in shell size it gets another chance at criting and that it has these chances at criting with each chance.
1- **% stands for the chance to crit 1 component. 2- **% for 2 comps and 3- **% for 3 comps.
Rifle crit chance table. 1- 60%.... 2- 30%..... 3-15%
The light rifle gets to roll once on this table, but the Medium gets 2 chances and the heavy 3 chances.
This way it's easier for the developers to balance all the rifles at once with ability 4).

5) Higher damage but with splashdamage in the same way the cERPPC does it.
Davison suggested these numbers.
Light Rifle - 6/2.
Medium Rifle - 9/3
Heavy Rifle - 12/4

Rifles with a damage penalty would just be bad, and they don't need weird, nonsensical extra effects like shrapnel damage or whatever. Just remove the damage penalty, give them a decent rate of fire & respectable ammo per ton, bam you're done.

Davison, on 01 September 2016 - 11:37 AM, said:

Uhm... I don't think I'd favor either rifles or mortars, to be honest. The former are basically just self-loading versions of today's tank guns, and are absolutely ARCHAIC compared to even 3025 era autocannon. It's a weaker version of an existing weapon. If you really want new ballistics, why not RAC's, the full range of LBX and Ultra autos, or just add in special autocannon munitions?

The biggest reason is that rifles are much more lightweight (and even less bulky for the most part) than ACs, and considering the huge lack of options for ballistics between machine guns and AC2 it would be pretty nice to have more options for something in between i.e rifles.

[Wolf Ender]

I don't like the idea of introducing outdated, inferior weapons that are imbalanced and outclassed by the current crop of weapons and then giving them magical abilities to make them on par with the current weapon list. It's a pandoras box that backfires every time and they will probably screw it up and make them OP or disrupt what fragile minuscule balance there currently is.

Also..when they DO get around to adding new weapons, they should add things that actually exist on mainstream mechs. I couldn't find any mech variants that actually exist in lore that include the Light, Medium or Heavy rifle except the arbiter a 35 ton light mech... really that's not enough. Too obscure. At least binary lasers and RAC's actually appeared on more than one actual canonical mechs.

It's already bad enough that the game is so imbalanced we have to give mechs a laundry list of quirks just to get people to use them...but then those quirks break game balance too. They still haven't figured out a way to balance clan vs IS and fix certain uber-god-mode and uber-bad-never-used mechs without waving the magic quirk wand around. That's not a good long term solution. We have enough balance issues already

I would like to see them focus on getting the game sorted out before worrying about introducing more old weapons or new stuff.

Like really PGI please FINISH the game.

We still have:
- tiny maps
- too few game modes
- broken mechanics like ghost heat or energy draw
- LRMs too good or too bad depending on who you ask
- totally dead faction warfare
- horrible UI ... we need UI 3.0
- other various balance issues and things people ***** about (yeah i know you will never make everyone happy)

I would put all those things well above the list of priorities.

Good job for thinking outside the box though. I just think this isn't the right time or direction IMHO.

Edited by Wolf Ender, 01 September 2016 - 11:05 PM.

[iLLcapitan]

The mortar should be fun, because calculating 'the arch' is fun in all the other games.
That's the only reasoning I'm capable of right now.

Edited by iLLcapitan, 02 September 2016 - 02:49 AM.