I'm going to post here why I find this topic (and some of the responses) to be rather
annoying to me personally.
I've been trying--for some time now--to get people to come around to various suggestions for better weapon balance, which almost exclusively focuses on making IS weapons better by directly addressing major weaknesses that people have complained about over a long period of time (and for good reason), but also without overdoing it and treading on new tech or majorly exacerbating power creep in the process, e.g ER PPCs being too slow without velocity quirks so I suggest increasing the base velocity significantly which would be a way of making the weapon better
without overdoing it.
What's the response I get largely? HARBLGARBL NO WE NEED A GAZILLION GIGAQUIRKS ON EVERYTHING AND IS XL NEEDS TO SURVIVE SIDE TORSO DESTRUCTION!!!!!!!!!! It's true that some points are brought up occasionally about LRMs needing buffs (which they do) or--as in the OP--small lasers being crap and needing buffs (which they do), but that pretty much covers all the weapon systems that most people think need fixing (because quirks just solve everything else apparently) even though there are definitely more fixes needed for other weapons too.
There's not very many solutions offered even when those weapons are brought up either, and the solutions that
are offered are some roundabout nonsense that create more problems than they fix (e.g
this thread linked here) or it's just an excuse to cry for stupid, inappropriate buffs elsewhere like IS XL durability, meanwhile the issue with IS small lasers is that they should be 1 heat instead of 2 heat (and, more subjectively, I think they should have a shorter beam duration as well because of their short optimal range) but that's hardly ever brought up (or else it's overshadowed by loud whining about the range being too short) and the C-ER SL is so much better blah blah blah; I almost never see solutions being offered that actually get anywhere or attempt to really fix anything other than crying for absurd power creep which is dumb.
The other problem is that people want existing IS weapons to just be better at everything, so for example people often whine about IS medium lasers not having enough range compared to clan ER medium lasers, except people frequently ignore that IS medium lasers are supposed to be only 3 heat instead of 4 heat (and indeed they
should only be 3 heat instead of 4 heat) which is probably because leaving the weapon as an overheated piece of crap is a better position to be in to cry about overdone quirks on every mech.
This is of course where new tech
would come in to fill in the gaps with, for example, x-pulse lasers with increased range (without the increased burn time associated with ER lasers) balanced by particularly high heat, except that apparently people don't give a **** about that solution.
How about we try to improve current weapons for the roles they
should be used in, introduce new tech with
balanced stats to fill in some gaps, and then we can have a nice, diverse set of equipment (for
both tech trees) without a power creep arms race destroying the game? I know that the topic I'm berating is "balance first, tech later"
which is fundamentally what I want too, but the problem is that the means I'm always seeing to accomplish this is all about power creeping everything through the stratosphere
and that's a terrible way of solving anything.
Let's look at a good & relatively recent example of how to buff weapons appropriately: the AC2. For the longest time it generated 1 heat per shot, which made it run atrociously hot due to its low cooldown, and its damage per heat ratio was one of the worst in the game. This was obviously extremely lame for a high tonnage, low damage weapon that was largely wasted when not fired at long range (which is
ideally fine because every weapon has its role), but then when you considered the high heat on top of that for a ballistic weapon it was just not really worth it.
Now that it only generates 0.6 heat per shot though (which was only after the heat was reduced to 0.8 heat, which I said was not good enough) I've been reading threads & comments
like this one here about how the AC2 is actually decent now, and what do you know
that's exactly what I was saying to do for a long time. Normally I
would be asking somebody to prove me wrong here and demonstrate to me that the AC2 is actually still bad and all that, but unfortunately the premise of this huge rant is that I don't think many people have solid judgment when it comes to this sort of thing, so if you think I'm wrong then you can try to convince me otherwise but I kind of have a feeling it won't be successful (and not because I'm unreasonably stubborn).
How about we further continue the trend of
sensibly improving these weapons that are
STILL bad years and years later:
-LB-X cannons, which don't really require many tweaks to the weapon itself but it
does require reworking the critical hit system to not be complete dogshit
-ER PPCs, which are too slow
-Medium & medium pulse lasers, which are too hot
-Small & small pulse lasers, which are also too hot
-And least but not least
all of the missile weapons, which means SRMs (not enough damage for the drawbacks), SSRMs (not enough damage
and atrocious damage spreading making them a garbage weapon except for killing lights), and LRMs (ECM being a ridiculous jesus box hard counter and too much spread on bigger launchers)
all need improvement
And then add in
balanced new tech where needed, instead of just going off the deep end changing (or adding) things that shouldn't be changed.
I would also like to note that a number of weapon improvements made in the past were suggested by me beforehand (certainly not
all of them, but definitely some of them like the AC2 heat reduction as I already mentioned) and so the more I see those improvements being implemented more or less as I suggested, the more I feel
completely justified in suggesting further improvements to other lackluster weapons in a similar manner.
I'm also going to address this point in the OP about engines directly, because I'm tired of seeing this nonsense.
Mcgral18, on 14 January 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:
We haven't gotten engine balance (cXL>>>isXL>STD), and the (presumably) incoming LFE doesn't fix that either
cXL>>LFE>isXL>STD
--snip--
Bringing in the LFE doesn't magically fix the STD being bad, nor the isXL being incomparable to the cXL. The LFE also doesn't allow for the same payload as Clam mechs can take, but does allow for a LFE ST AC20 (something the isXL cannot do)
Standard engines themselves
are not actually bad, because the problems that make STD engines less desirable lie elsewhere in the game and
not with the engine itself.
The main problem is that too much of this game's combat focuses on blasting the enemy apart as fast as possible, which is aided by:
-Absurd quirks everywhere, both weapon quirks
and structure quirks as well as agility quirks too to a (slightly) lesser extent
-Unbalanced convergence making mechs die much faster than they should and requires complete garbage mechanics like ghost heat and (the now failed) energy draw to compensate for it
-Agility being tied to engine rating, which of course means a STD engine makes your mech far less agile
on top of taking up more tonnage, giving less speed, and having less capacity for internal heatsinks, which is
dumb; engine rating should not have
that much of an impact.
Fix these issues and combat won't be overly focused on trying to kill enemy mechs as fast as possible at the expense of literally everything else--because that would no longer be nearly as effective as a strategy--and then STD engines will see much more use & value, particularly in the huge assault mechs that people put XL engines in anyways and then are deemed bad because people see the effects of making a glass cannon mech.
Guess what all the side torso structure quirks in so many mechs accomplishes? Everybody just crams in an XL engine into every mech to fit in more firepower, which doesn't really solve anything because now there's
more firepower on
every mech so all this talk about further IS XL durability just makes this issue
worse and not better,
AND ADDITIONALLY MAKING THE STANDARD ENGINE ACTUALLY, LITERALLY COMPLETELY WORTHLESS WITHOUT SOME SORT OF BAND-AID FIX FOR THE STANDARD ENGINE TOO, WHICH I FIND TERRIBLY IRONIC!!!
Additionally, for probably at least the 20th time now including various other threads, the LFE
is not so much more lightweight than the STD engine that the STD engine would be worthless, and similarly the LFE
is not so much more durable than the XL that the XL engine would be worthless; it's the definition of a
balanced engine because it's a compromise between the XL and STD engine and that's completely fine.
Quote
Notice you'll still never take a STD on a Clam mech? 40% less efficient TrueDubs would only affect Sword and Board (which...admittedly is most of my Clams), but it sure as heck won't make me take a STD on my H2C. Omnis have no choice
Clan standard engines are just an unfortunate side effect of Clan battlemechs existing when they shouldn't have, so there's not much to say about it when you can just take the far superior Clan XL engine; maybe someday this can be addressed better somehow but that day isn't now or anytime soon and it's an irrelevant point to bring up when talking about balance currently. *shrug*
Note that I've already gone on at length on all these points (here and elsewhere) so I'm probably not going to respond much further at length, so more brief replies are more likely to get a response than otherwise, assuming you read most or all of this huge rant.
P.S I might feel the need to re-post this as a new topic, so don't be too surprised if I do.
4
So why didn't PGI use the TT as a guide line for the isXL? They likely had intentions to implementing an actual engine crit system, but once they decided to NOT go that route, and once they finally added cXL movement penalty in Dec 2015 as a second penalty, while not bring engines more in line with each other with different penalty flavors that did not include death w/loss of one side torso? /shrugs (rhetorical question 
)
