Scarfoot, on 18 September 2016 - 04:13 PM, said:
THX 4 the event, was good to play some FW again.
As a turncoat merc I played both sides. Got the IS side done now, took some time longer than on the clan side (KMDD on clan assault took longest)
The waiting time still is no fun, there are simply too many games at the same time.
On the Clan side I could attack, on the IS side only defense was possible, so the comparison is somewhat hard.All were PUG drops, so I usually got mixed teams on both sides. It was more likely to meet a bigger group when defending. I got my wins when finishing the clan side. All mecs were fully mastered and equipped follow the currend meta with some spins fitting to my playstyle.
I know these are not 1000 games but here are some numbers comparing IS/Clan.
IS: 22 Games (Invasion, all defense)
av. Match Score : 228,9
av. KMDD : 4,3
av. Dmg : 1312,7
av. Assist : 18,6
Clan: 16 Games (Invasion, all attack)
av. Match Score : 328,8 (+42%)
av. KMDD : 4,0 (-6%)
av. Dmg : 1351,7 (+3%)
av. Assist : 24,1 (+29%)
The av. XP/CB cant be compared as I had more IS hero mecs and my Premium time ran out in the middle of the event. (I earned more on the clan side)
Have not counted the wins, but I got more on the clan side. And I got all my 4 mecs shot away more often on the IS side by some timber wolf.
Basicly I think the balance is quite OK. If the IS team is able to get the fight at a shorter range they have a slight advantage mainly due to shorter Laser burntime and pinpoint ballistic.
At longer distances the clans are far better.
But the most importand factor is teamwork anyway, and I really got a lot of nice runs on both sides.
Thanks for finally reducing the long tom damage. (one reason for me to play FW again)
Also I did not like the spawnkilling... It happend a few times that a clan group just pushed trough to the spawnpoint, (they are all fast enough) and just killed all that were dropping.
One may argue that it might be an tactic to camp at the spawpoints but I personally dont like it.
Maybe it is possible to prevent this by by giving the dropships way more punch.
There is one points that is annoying:
The waiting time. I don´t have any magic solution, but reducing the games that are played at the same time might work. Just one or two attack lanes for Clan/IS. Or just add a Quickplay button for FW. It is nice for the loyalists to choose an planet to attack but there are simply too many factions. I am sure everybody wants to play and not stare at a timer.
Finally: Was fun to play FW again.
Was surprised to see my stats were actually strangely similar but showed an interesting dynamic as I started with 4 clan mediums (3 hunchback IIC's - dual UAC10/2ML, 2LPL/3ML and SSRM24/ML), Nova – dual ERPPC) then swapped out the streak boat to a new Kodiak 3 with quad LB10X’s. The reason I say that will be obvious from the stats below! In terms of IS I decided to level some mechs so at least the time was more worthwhile – I went a triple UAC5 JM6 (mostly elited), dual UAC20 JM6 (elited but not mastered), TDR-9SE© with triple pulse and STD engine (mastered) and Sparky with triple LPL (no xp at all). In terms of bonuses the dual UAC10 HBKIIC was a origin, the TDR was a champion and obviously the sparky is a Hero! Premium running throughout.
IS (10): Match Score 267.5, KMDD 6.2, Damage 1517.4, Assist 14.9, C-Bills 853,578.2, XP 6,780.9
Clan (17): Match Score 327.6, KMDD 5.5, Damage 1591.4, Assist 18.4, C-Bills 742193.4, XP 6010.5
Kodiak (9): Match Score 322.4, KMDD 7.3, Damage 1792.2, Assist 19.0, C-Bills 790507.9, XP 6763.6
HBK (8): Match Score 333.5, KMDD 3.5, Damage 1365.5, Assist 17.8, C-Bills 687839.6, XP 5163.4
Who would have guessed a KDK was vastly more effective than a streak HBK though amusingly my match score slipped weirdly.
In fairness the Sparky and Streak were only ever used as fourth mechs and by that point it was almost always game over anyway. The sniper Nova turned out to be a great third or last mech as it could snipe very effectively from on high.
The IS KMDD is lower than it should be btw (6.6 vs 6.2) as one particular match it recorded 4 on the end screen but 0 on the tournament screen. Made sense as I ambushed and killed 4 mechs as they passed below my dual AC20 JM6 and never even noticed me. They hadn’t got any damage at all before I killed them one by one… of course then a stormcrow gutted me in one volley from behind in return.
My game modes basically mirrored yours – clan attack only but with just two attack avenues as it was CJF so we met 12 man IS companies a lot. IS was 8 counterattacks and just two defence. Half way through on IS I switched to the one world out of four where neither side had a scouting advantage and mysteriously I did a lot better. In hindsight I’d do that entirely in the future as I’d not noticed how effective the advantages were as CJF just had to scout two worlds and dominated that area overall. The rage turning point was the IS match when I was long tommed three times (22% and 27%, the third finished off a badly damaged but fully armed JM6).
Unlike you I found the ballistic IS mechs much more effective at their relevant range (medium range/brawl) but I’d agree at the long range advantage on the clan side. The joy of slamming AC20 rounds into clan mediums and heavy chests almost made the pain of being overrun worthwhile as you could literally see them go from cocky to panicked and praying someone else would intervene as you non stop pounded them.
No temptation to play FW again unless I can pick the side with shorter queues as 17 matches for CJF all solo took me 1 day and 4 evenings compared to 10 Marik in 5 hours roughly (the first 5-6 were ultra fast getting in but the last 4-5 slower as just queueing on the world with no scout disadvantage).