363 replies to this topic

[Peiper]

Jay Leon Hart, on 14 January 2017 - 02:17 PM, said:

So, in the lore, it explicitly states that Inner Sphere 'mechs using an XL engine from any manufacturer will cease to function upon the loss of a side torso and all components contained within? I'm genuinely asking.

In lore, there is no such statement. But remember, lore primarily based upon the novels.

In Battletech rules, however, IS mechs have XL engines that take 3 slots in each side torso. Clan mechs have 2 in each side torso.

EVERY engine has 3 points worth of 'shielding.'

Critical hits are those that damage the internal (under armor) components of a mech, which include weapons, ammo, gyro, sensors, and engine. If, when rolling for damage, a critical hit is counted on the engine, the engine loses 1 point of 'shielding.' Note, the skeleton of the mech (internal structure) has a number of hit points like the (external) armor, and when the internal structure takes enough damage, the entire limb, torso section, or head takes enough damage, that part is said to be blown off.

When a mech takes 1 critical hit to the engine, it gains 5 access heat per round. On a second critical engine hit, it gains 10 access heat per round. On the third engine critical hit, the engine shuts down and cannot be restarted.

Because the IS XL engines take up 3 slots in a side torso, eliminating the internal structure of that torso destroys that torso, also doing 3 automatic critical hits to the engine, shutting it down. Clans, having only two slots in each side torso can survive losing a torso (if they haven't taken critical hits to their engine outside that torso already), though the mech will have an additional 10 heat per round after the loss of the torso.

Additional heat affects the targetting and movement of a mech, and there's a whole heat scale chart you check at the end of every round. However, if you have enough heat sinks, even with the damage, you can continue to function as normal. For example: if a Warhawk has 20 double heat sinks, loses a side torso along with 5 heat sinks, let's say, it still has 15 double heat sinks soaking 30 heat per turn. So, losing a side torso would only affect the performance of a Warhawk if it fires more weapons than available heat sinks.

This is not the same in MWO. In MWO they take what they want from the rules and discard the rest. My only beef with that is they also use lore as an EXCUSE not to make good changes to the game as well.

[Dee Eight]

Ovion, on 14 January 2017 - 02:11 PM, said:

The problem is, what things are and do, aren't unimportant lore aspects.

Again - if you want to ignore what things are and do, for the sake of the easy and lazy path to 'balance', then why bother playing a game based explicitly on a lore, and what things are and do?

Exactly...and in the lore and TT rules... 3 engine crits killed the engine, regardless of where they happen. Since the game doesn't track engine crits at all except for side torso destruction of IS XL engines...they could have balanced it by actually tracking engine crits ALL the time. Thus clan mechs would die from 3 crits the same as IS mechs do. Is that what people would like instead ? Also engine crits came with heat penalties.... 5 heat extra for one crit, 10 extra for 2 crits. That's automatic all the time heat, even when not moving. 10 heat per TT turn is 1 heat per second in MWO time.

[Hawk819]

dario03, on 14 January 2017 - 11:01 AM, said:

New Tech?
FINALLY!

Really glad this is finally happening. Though I wish this could have been announced at MechCon.... I've been in bittervet mode for like 6 weeks because something like this wasn't announced then. Heck I would have bought some of that half-off premium time if I had known about this.
But oh well, I'm just happy that it is happening. I just hope by March for the details they mean all the details of lots of new stuff and on the 1st

Actually, even with the New Skill Tree coming February release, or so they say, we'll still get variants. Like the Nova Cat and it's maybe six other variant styles.

Least I hope so.

[Peiper]

MovinTarget, on 14 January 2017 - 02:47 PM, said:

BV is great among friends that can keep each other in check, it will suck when somewhen decides to sabotage their team for lulz and build a mech with a high BV that can't really function effectively in the game because they stripped all the armor or heat sinks to make room for all teh lazorz....

That is the the [redacted expletive] argument I've ever heard against introducing a great feature into the game. What about all-flamer Boars Head Atlases? People can already do stupid things. That won't change with battle value, and if people do do stuff like that, people will report them and they'll be kicked out of their unit if they're in one. We've survived griefers (goonswarm) before, and we'll survive them again.

I know of some really poor players who are just terrible at the game. They take mechs that CAN'T overheat because they have so few weapons and they just do that one thing with them. It's the limit of their ability as a player. I don't reject them, though when I know them, I try to help them by suggesting better builds. Nevertheless, those folks will continue to exist. Crappy players in crappy mechs. Battle Value will segregate them from the best players with the best mechs. It might even keep them away from great players in crappy mechs, and those players will have a chance to have some fun with equally bad and poorly equipped players.

Right now, despite all the nerfs, a Kodiak is a better mech than any inner sphere 100 tonner. I'm sick of not being able to take my Atlas knowing that matchmaker will set me up against an equal player, but in a far superior mech. I also do not believe in balancing mechs to be equal when they should not be. A Kodiak or Dire Wolf should eat ANY inner sphere mech like a cookie and look for more. Battle value accounts for that. Tonnage does not, which is the current system.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Peiper, on 14 January 2017 - 03:00 PM, said:

In lore, there is no such statement. But remember, lore primarily based upon the novels.

In Battletech rules, however, IS mechs have XL engines that take 3 slots in each side torso. Clan mechs have 2 in each side torso.
*snip*

Thanks, I figured it wouldn't actually be a lore thing. That's why I'm all for ignoring that aspect, because it's just an arbitrary balancing rule for an incompatible game system.

A further clarification - I don't want to ignore everything about Battletech (novels, table top, other) and have shootyrobotsonline, I just don't see the need to preserve things like dying due to losing enough engine crits, when engine crits don't exist in the same capacity those rules were written for and can be directly targetted at any time, as opposed to being a chance occurrence.

[Peiper]

Dee Eight, on 14 January 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

Exactly...and in the lore and TT rules... 3 engine crits killed the engine, regardless of where they happen. Since the game doesn't track engine crits at all except for side torso destruction of IS XL engines...they could have balanced it by actually tracking engine crits ALL the time. Thus clan mechs would die from 3 crits the same as IS mechs do. Is that what people would like instead ? Also engine crits came with heat penalties.... 5 heat extra for one crit, 10 extra for 2 crits. That's automatic all the time heat, even when not moving. 10 heat per TT turn is 1 heat per second in MWO time.

There are problems with tracking critical hits in MWO, some of which can be remedied, but some which will cause grief.

You could put an indicator in a mech to show numbers of crit hits to engines, gyros and sensors. I rather like the sensor hit idea causing some fuzzy readings, false positives and stuff like that. Gyro hits could give me motion sickness! I personally do not have a problem with tracking of engine hits, and taking the extra heat for it.

HOWEVER, critical hits can happen THROUGH armor, and so a mech with seemingly decent armor on all parts could be a mess inside. In tabletop, LBX autocannons hit like missiles, spreading the damage all round a mech. For ever pellet that hits from a cluster munition, you roll on a chart for hit location, which allows for a chance for a critical hit. So, example: Let's say you get a lucky shot with an LBX20, and all 20 submunitions hit. Let's say you continue to get lucky and roll several critical hits (you get 20 chances, after all), and three of those critical hits hit the engine. So, you lose 20 points of armor from all over your mech, but not enough to knock all the armor off of any given area. However, you're dead.

Now, imagine this in MWO. You walk forward in an atlas. You're fresh, brand new. A clan mech runs by, gives you a passing shot with his LBX20, and game over. Your mech stands there, with only 20 points of damage but NO ENGINE.

Food for thought... lol

[Jay Leon Hart]

Peiper, on 14 January 2017 - 03:18 PM, said:

Now, imagine this in MWO. You walk forward in an atlas. You're fresh, brand new. A clan mech runs by, gives you a passing shot with his LBX20, and game over. Your mech stands there, with only 20 points of damage but NO ENGINE.

Food for thought... lol

This is why a lot of games with critical hits have ways to reduce the damage from them or even negate them completely. They are another thing I would be happy without, but that's another thread

[Peiper]

Jay Leon Hart, on 14 January 2017 - 03:14 PM, said:

Thanks, I figured it wouldn't actually be a lore thing. That's why I'm all for ignoring that aspect, because it's just an arbitrary balancing rule for an incompatible game system.

A further clarification - I don't want to ignore everything about Battletech (novels, table top, other) and have shootyrobotsonline, I just don't see the need to preserve things like dying due to losing enough engine crits, when engine crits don't exist in the same capacity those rules were written for and can be directly targetted at any time, as opposed to being a chance occurrence.

I agree. MWO IS not tabletop. I have a beef with PGI's way of picking and choosing what to use and what not to use, and sometimes using lore as an excuse, rather than a reason for a change.

Here's a great example: PGI totally flubbed up ECM, but stuck with it, despite it being nothing like what we know from Battletech, but they've gone crazy trying to correlate damage and range from battletech into the game for weapons systems. In TT, the abstract value of having a small laser weight .5 tons, a medium 1 ton, and LLaser weighing 5 tons. But that doesn't make ANY sense at all to those of us playing MWO, and a big part of the reason is that MWO is NOT tabletop. You can easily pin-point 12 small lasers on ONE location on a battlemech. You can't do that in tabletop. Called shots are HARD to make, requiring crazy dice rolls, and if you miss those rolls, you miss the enemy mech all-together.

So, while it might be too late for PGI to rewrite the rules on weapons (especially tonnage and crit space), battle value is easy. It's just a value you give to already existing components/mechs, and you can adjust those values without adjusting a thing with the mechs, their weapons, builds, etc... They wouldn't even have to balance the mechs and weapons anymore. They would simply change the values those mechs/weapons have as they are shown to be more or less effective in the game.

[MovinTarget]

Peiper, on 14 January 2017 - 03:09 PM, said:

That is the the [redacted expletive] argument I've ever heard against introducing a great feature into the game. What about all-flamer Boars Head Atlases? People can already do stupid things. That won't change with battle value, and if people do do stuff like that, people will report them and they'll be kicked out of their unit if they're in one. We've survived griefers (goonswarm) before, and we'll survive them again.

I know of some really poor players who are just terrible at the game. They take mechs that CAN'T overheat because they have so few weapons and they just do that one thing with them. It's the limit of their ability as a player. I don't reject them, though when I know them, I try to help them by suggesting better builds. Nevertheless, those folks will continue to exist. Crappy players in crappy mechs. Battle Value will segregate them from the best players with the best mechs. It might even keep them away from great players in crappy mechs, and those players will have a chance to have some fun with equally bad and poorly equipped players.

Right now, despite all the nerfs, a Kodiak is a better mech than any inner sphere 100 tonner. I'm sick of not being able to take my Atlas knowing that matchmaker will set me up against an equal player, but in a far superior mech. I also do not believe in balancing mechs to be equal when they should not be. A Kodiak or Dire Wolf should eat ANY inner sphere mech like a cookie and look for more. Battle value accounts for that. Tonnage does not, which is the current system.

I never said what we had is better. Never did I say that. I just tire of people pointing at <insert our MWO salvation here!> saying it will solve problems.

I am not a game dev, not for PGI, not for any other game. But I am a dev that has had to explain to people, repeatedly, why their great idea either will wreck their experience in other regards or is flat out stupid.

I am *not* saying BV is either. I am saying the assertion that simply plugging in BV values *is*.

You like to make fun of devs and insult their intelligence?

Peiper, on 14 January 2017 - 02:35 PM, said:

"Dev 1: Well, we're giving the IS medium laser a BV of 5 and a clan ER medium a 7.
Dev 2: Stop it, you're hurting my brain.
Dev 3: Sorry man. Here, eat some pudding."

Let me help you with this. There are these things, called dependencies... it's like series scales stacked on top of each other each trying to balance and be balanced simultaneously. Someone comes along and and says "I want to change just this *one* bit of code" and ignores that there are things balanced on top of it and it is part of balance of something else. Do it wrong and something will come crashing down.

Why this delicate balancing act? Well, they could make the code brute force procedural with no reuse or recursion, that would make it much easier to pug in a new facet (hypothetically) but the code bloat would be ludicrous and make the game run like sludge for all but the best hardware.

My point is that they already have enough challenges as it is and they are actively trying to make adjustments within the scope of the options they have. I've no doubt that with the amount of changes that have happened since beta there are certain parts of code that no one wants to much with because its difficult to anticipate the full impact of modification.

Also, don't insult the devs as often they are not the ones calling the shots, perhaps they have a full comprehension of BV and even ideas of how to deal with it and their boss, listens to them and says, "nope."
So they have a choice, they can defy their boss, implement it, get fired, their changes rolled back and prolly get blamed for a host of bugs on their way out, or get in line and do as their told.


Maybe you understand this explanation, maybe it hurts your brain...


...I guess you could eat some pudding.

Edited by MovinTarget, 14 January 2017 - 03:35 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Dee Eight, on 14 January 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

Exactly...and in the lore and TT rules... 3 engine crits killed the engine, regardless of where they happen. Since the game doesn't track engine crits at all except for side torso destruction of IS XL engines...they could have balanced it by actually tracking engine crits ALL the time. Thus clan mechs would die from 3 crits the same as IS mechs do. Is that what people would like instead ? Also engine crits came with heat penalties.... 5 heat extra for one crit, 10 extra for 2 crits. That's automatic all the time heat, even when not moving. 10 heat per TT turn is 1 heat per second in MWO time.

And if they actually had engine crit hits, rarely anyone would be front loading armor.... Other than having a light in your rear..imagine an arty or air strike, bad for those 2-4 pts of rear armor then his on internal structural, chance at crit hits../shudders...

For the newbies and such, look at most mechs in the store, anywhere from 15-40 pts of armor on the rear torso sections... Why PGI insists on staying with a specific rule while leaving out other aspects of it in THIS environment is beyond me, especially once PGI added the second penalty of the 20% movement to cXL, showing they still considered the base mech building block to be off. Now they have moved the heat penalty from 20% to 40% AND will still be reviewing it for further action, all the while, the general population tends to roll with STD engines on their IS mechs, making them slower and for the non-meta mechs, not allowing them to bring more appropriate weapons.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

40% less cooling is still much better than death. Stop pursuing heat penalties as a way to balance XL engine disparity. Just make IS XL able to survive and be done with it.

[Peiper]

MovinTarget, on 14 January 2017 - 03:29 PM, said:

Maybe you understand this explanation..

I do. How does Battle Value screw up anything, though. The only coding required would be to put in some code that adds up numbers based upon chassis, weapons, speed, etc... It poops out that value, and that value is added to a PSR value to make total battle value. Instead of using a combination of PSR and tonnage for matches, you will use one battle value, which will combine PSR and the value of the mech itself. So, I don't see how it's difficult. It would even free up the devs from balancing out things by tweeking mechs/weapons to equalize them by tonnage. Mechs would be free of such artificial restraints and it SHOULD make the world easier for the devs and make a lot of sense to the players.

Right now we have people driving IS and Clan mechs. IS mechs are Model T cars, and clan mechs are 65 Pontiac GTO's. PGI is trying to make the GTO - though it goes faster, is heavier, has more gears, has more horsepower, has more sex appeal and making it equal to a model T because: game balance. Battle value will allow a Model T to be a model T and a GTO to be a GTO, and make sure that the Mode T and GTO don't race each other unless the Model T DRIVER is tier 1 and the GTO driver is tier 5.

I make fun of the devs because the solution seems so obvious to me and many of my MWO playing friends that it stuns me to know that over the years they either do not consider, or continue to reject it.

Like health care: the reason drugs cost so much is because insurance companies pay the price. The reason insurance companies pay the price is because it's against the law for an American NOT to have health insurance. Congress endlessly debates about how to fix the problem. The obvious truth is, insurance companies are fleecing Americans, but because they are part of the 'system' and there's a big lobby group for that 'system' - who are happily making money off of said 'system' they refuse to consider the solution. Get rid of insurance companies. Either go single payer, or free market - both will drop the cost of medicine to the level where Americans can afford it without 'insurance.'

Same with something like PGI and battle value.

Now, explain to me, in your wisdom, how Battle Value messes up ANYTHING with PGI, other than using BV in place of tonnage in the matchmaker? I'm sure there's a brain trust of players, including myself, who would be happy to create the system for them for free if they don't want to pay Paul and company to do the job.

Rouken Vordermark, on 14 January 2017 - 03:57 PM, said:

40% less cooling is still much better than death. Stop pursuing heat penalties as a way to balance XL engine disparity. Just make IS XL able to survive and be done with it.

I would agree to allowing an IS mech to survive the loss of a torso if it meant not nerfing clan mechs more. I'd like to see a poll on this one.

[Dee Eight]

Bv in TT was based on the chassis, equipment fits for the TT game environment. Nobody would run a a 12 SPL Nova in TT because it'd be blown away before it ever closed to the distance it could be used effectively. In MWO however...they'll be lots of builds with low Bv's and ridiculously OP meta builds.

[Peiper]

Dee Eight, on 14 January 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

Bv in TT was based on the chassis, equipment fits for the TT game environment. Nobody would run a a 12 SPL Nova in TT because it'd be blown away before it ever closed to the distance it could be used effectively. In MWO however...they'll be lots of builds with low Bv's and ridiculously OP meta builds.

Yes, you can't use TT BV in MWO. You'd have to create a method for MWO. It would be a fun challenge for a think tank, I believe. There would be some interesting factors too: would you value multiple weapons differently than simply adding them together?

(Would a medium laser, give it a base value of 5 be the same as a bank of 6 medium lasers? = 30 points? How would ghost heat or power draw change that equation too? Would the value of 6 medium lasers be 30+10 for pinpoint alpha potential - 10 for ghost heat issues = 30 points anyway?) So, some tough questions might have to be figured out, but it could be done and I think everyone both devs and players would be better off for it.

[MovinTarget]

Peiper, on 14 January 2017 - 04:06 PM, said:

Now, explain to me, in your wisdom, how Battle Value messes up ANYTHING with PGI, other than using BV in place of tonnage in the matchmaker? I'm sure there's a brain trust of players, including myself, who would be happy to create the system for them for free if they don't want to pay Paul and company to do the job.

Maybe its just the programmer in me that stares at this and tries to imagine my boss letting our customers, some of whom are smart, some of whom are raging glue-sniffing idiots, tell me how to implement something...

I would be rather insulted and tell them that if they can design it better they should have probably written their own dang code.

(psssst, spoiler alert, I've actually had customers try to do this and come crawling back after wasting $$$ and man-hours)

For the record, I am not calling you a glue-sniffing idiot... I don't know you, I am, again, just stating that people often think they know better than everyone else what the solution is. Often these are the Rush Limbaughs of the world that bear no financial/political/spiritual risk for acting like they have the solution to <insert problem here>.

Again, I am not saying BV can't be implemented and I don't know why it wouldn't be. All I can say is that right now, the worst a single player can wreck the experience is to have a poorly built mech and troll matches until he's (hopefully) kicked.

My mentality is (if you haven't guessed, and it makes me <sarcasm>sooooo popular</sarcasm> with my less responsible coworkers is when presented with a problem I ask myself "How could this go horribly, horribly wrong?"

So lets look at this:

Two implementations of BV would be
(1) MM builds 2 teams of similar BV with a deviation of +- some value since its unrealistic that you'd build 2 teams of EXACTLY the same total BV. Pilot X brings a Direstar (BV = ...I dunno how much you wanna value 12 ER PPCs?) such that MM must either match him with 11 or so light/mediums to balance out against some more reasonably balanced team. Unless the match is conquest, I'm not sure this team will have much of a shot.

(2) There is a max BV per side. I am trying to think of issues other than manipulating sync drops in group play to either ensure another group is *always* dropping against you or with you for this approach, but think about leaderboards and crap where if you could ensure the other team always had at least some of your buddies, you could use them to farm dmg/kills/kmdd for the periodic leaderboards that happen (though lets be honest, the rewards recently have been not worth this kind of trouble).


The thing is, they can't always come back to us and say "We don't want to do this because it could lead to certain exploits." Why? because they don't want to give some people, the wrong people ideas of what they can do...

Maybe my points are not valid, but I see these as reasons where, for all it's problems, leaving things be in some respects may be better than opening up a new can of worms.

For the record, I try not to act like I'm the smartest person in the room, I try to act like a guy that's smart enough to know I'm not the smartest and tries diligently to not be the dumbest

Edited by MovinTarget, 14 January 2017 - 04:34 PM.

[Peiper]

MovinTarget, on 14 January 2017 - 04:32 PM, said:

*snip*

No worries, not taking it personally, and you are right to defend the devs if you think my satire is unfair.

There may be exploits. Hopefully that will be caught in the public test server.

Something like the Direstar would have a crap BV by the way, I figure, because ghost heat would render it rather useless. If ghost heat (or future energy draw, which is something I suggested a long while back as an alternative to sized hardpoints) limits the value of certain weapon systems, then that should be taken into account when creating BV.

As far as troll builds/troll players, do you really see them wrecking game now? Often they are as amusing as they are useless, and when it comes to quick play, I can live with a match or two of foolishness. It IS just a game, after all. TheB33f hiding in a tree in a dire wolf with 12 PPC's is kinda funny!

Edited by Peiper, 14 January 2017 - 04:57 PM.

[Kael Posavatz]

Ovion, on 14 January 2017 - 11:07 AM, said:

Yes, but changing the number of shells fired, fire rates, heat generation, heat dissipation, are all 'floating' stats - they are not hard concepts, or basis for the universe being used.

How XL engines work, is.
It's explicitly described in the fiction - it is not a floating abstract, it is not an adjustable thing.

This is a battletech game, if we start ignoring the lore then it's just a generic game with battletech skins.

Yes, nerfs may have a negative effect, but they are needed for balance, you can't JUST keep buffing everything to compensate, as that leads to absurdity.

But changing core concepts is FAR worse and will piss of FAR more people.

Well, the last thing we should want to do is ignore Lore.

Therefore, let's have Vlad Ward's Executioner (the one he used in Phelan's Trial of Position) for the Executioner-hero.

[MovinTarget]

I got dropped with a guy with a 6MG 4flamer KGC once... it was funny for about 10 seconds...

[MovinTarget]

Peiper, on 14 January 2017 - 04:56 PM, said:

As far as troll builds/troll players, do you really see them wrecking game now? Often they are as amusing as they are useless, and when it comes to quick play, I can live with a match or two of foolishness. It IS just a game, after all. TheB33f hiding in a tree in a dire wolf with 12 PPC's is kinda funny!

I guess my point is that right now, the impact is consuming one of 12 slots, having very little impact on the composition of the rest of the team. If someone devises a way to troll BV it would affect the composition.

[Chados]

Excellent news, dev team. This will be a large stride toward Clan/IS balance.