64 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

Pjwned, on 25 January 2017 - 09:09 PM, said:

That is an example of how sized hardpoints could be applied, by disincentivizing hardpoints to make other mechs more relevant instead of this constant problem of "it doesn't have metapuke hardpoints so it's ****."

Hardpoint dependent quirks could also come into play if needed.

They will be needed, because I'd sooner just run 1x PPC in each arm of the BJ-3 and deal with convergence than take a Vindicator for pop-tarting. I do, in fact, already run one PPC in each arm because I've had my gun arm blown off often enough to make splitting worth it.

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1. Well we don't have any precision indirect fire weapons either, which I think would be cool and quite a bit different from LRMs which are currently the only indirect fire weapon, and I don't really think mortars are the way to introduce mech mounted AoE weapons because that sounds better suited for Arrow IV or the Long Tom Cannon...whenever those might show up.

They won't show up, because PGI won't do crit-splitting.

Making mortars good for precision fire is a good way to obsolete SRMs, too, possibly even MRMs.

[Pjwned]

Yeonne Greene, on 25 January 2017 - 09:29 PM, said:

They will be needed, because I'd sooner just run 1x PPC in each arm of the BJ-3 and deal with convergence than take a Vindicator for pop-tarting. I do, in fact, already run one PPC in each arm because I've had my gun arm blown off often enough to make splitting worth it.

I can (grudgingly) accept the possibility that hardpoint quirks could still be needed in the end, as long as that's determined after actually doing something to address the problem(s) directly rather than "just give it a bunch of quirks and ignore everything else."

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They won't show up, because PGI won't do crit-splitting.

I realize how unlikely that is due to PGI's stance on crit splitting, but it's not impossible for them to change their mind on that.

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Making mortars good for precision fire is a good way to obsolete SRMs, too, possibly even MRMs.

You mean the SRMs and MRMs that have considerably more damage per ton? Mech mortars pay for that range & indirect fire capability and it's reflected clearly in their equipment stats.

[Pjwned]

After thinking about it for a bit, I also wanted to clarify that it actually doesn't entirely make sense to say I don't think arm hardpoints should be incentivized any further, even though I like the idea of allowing mechs to raise their arms in front of them (and I mentioned it earlier as well) with some sort of tradeoff for doing so like reduced agility, top speed, and/or arm actuator use or whatever else would make (at least some) sense, and that would be fine since the incentive would (ideally) be balanced by tradeoffs.

I still stand by sized hardpoints though for largely the same reasons, so if mechs could raise their arms then that would be in addition to hardpoint sizes.

Edited by Pjwned, 26 January 2017 - 07:08 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Pjwned, on 26 January 2017 - 05:03 AM, said:

I realize how unlikely that is due to PGI's stance on crit splitting, but it's not impossible for them to change their mind on that.

Similar statements can be made about PGI's ability to manage hit-reg, high speeds, general balance, etc. Basically, that is a very empty statement. Anything can change, that is a given.

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You mean the SRMs and MRMs that have considerably more damage per ton? Mech mortars pay for that range & indirect fire capability and it's reflected clearly in their equipment stats.

If you want mortars to be usegul as precision weapons, those stats cannot stay as they are. Which way do you want it?

[Pjwned]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 January 2017 - 09:17 AM, said:

Similar statements can be made about PGI's ability to manage hit-reg, high speeds, general balance, etc. Basically, that is a very empty statement. Anything can change, that is a given.

Adding new tech does indicate a possible willingness to go further and change their mind about crit splitting though, particularly if/when PGI ever decides to upgrade the game engine for MWO which is also possible.

But you're right, it is a pretty empty statement, it wasn't intended to be a strong statement, and I'm not really counting on it happening, or if it does then not any time soon.

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If you want mortars to be usegul as precision weapons, those stats cannot stay as they are. Which way do you want it?

Now I'm getting annoyed.

So "making mortars good for precision fire" also apparently means jacking up the stats in some unspecified, arbitrary manner despite making no mention of that at all? That doesn't even make sense either when your concern is about the stats being too good compared to SRMs & MRMs, but apparently that's only an issue if you improve the stats somehow in the first place.

What the **** else do you expect me to base the stats on besides what its actual stats are? The only real counterpoint I've seen is "make it an AoE weapon somehow instead but I don't know how it would actually work without splash damage being a potentially serious problem."

It's pretty ridiculous that I have to say "I can't read your god damn mind" twice in the same thread, so if you want to knock that **** off for good that'd be great, thanks.

[Y E O N N E]

Pjwned, on 26 January 2017 - 10:09 AM, said:

Now I'm getting annoyed.

So "making mortars good for precision fire" also apparently means jacking up the stats in some unspecified, arbitrary manner despite making no mention of that at all? That doesn't even make sense either when your concern is about the stats being too good compared to SRMs & MRMs, but apparently that's only an issue if you improve the stats somehow in the first place.

What the **** else do you expect me to base the stats on besides what its actual stats are? The only real counterpoint I've seen is "make it an AoE weapon somehow instead but I don't know how it would actually work without splash damage being a potentially serious problem."

It's pretty ridiculous that I have to say "I can't read your god damn mind" twice in the same thread, so if you want to knock that **** off for good that'd be great, thanks.

You don't have to bring it up for it to be salient to the conversation. However , it does feed back into your expressed desire for it to be a precision munition.

Why does it have to be buffed? Because 2 damage/shell is incredibly mediocre for any weight launcher. You will have to buff the damage or give it stupendous rate of fire to compensate, both of which can and will be abused as "light" ACs up close and possibly out to mid-range pending velocity.

It doesn't take a mind-reader to suss that out.

And honestly, I don't see splash as an issue. We already have it in the game with strikes, mortar rounds would just be dealing 2 splash over an area. The point of the weapon, and the one weapon role we do not have in this game, is to flush out hidden targets and split up groups; 10 shells from an MM/10 doing 2 splash with a 5 meter radius and dropping to zero by 10 meters would be sufficient. Not enough to kill a target quickly, but enough that staying grouped will put that whole set of targets at risk of being legged, especially as the match wears on.

As for your statements on Page 1:

1. I am accounting for aim angle, I dont see a problem with it. How it works in TT is entirely irrelevant; MechWarriors don't even technically aim their weapons, they just prioritize targets and set the firing order.
2. You exaggerate this game's uniqueness; what is called 1000 meters in MWO terms is called 150 meters in Battlefield 1 terms and 500 meters in Battlezone terms, visually. It's all relative. Alpine Peaks is functionally smaller than Monte Grappa. There is no aim assist for lobbing tank rounds, including the howitzer, over hills and such. MWO is not a special snowflake.
3. Pretty sure splash was removed to improve hit reg, not because it was too potent. Actually, missiles back then were gutter tier.

[MiniFish]

the way i see it, mech mortar is somewhat like a LBX or C-UAC that arcs and travels at a significantly lower velocity, and explodes on contact.

as for aiming it, what about, you get an additional marker in the minimap that will show you where your shots would roughly land (akin to battlefield 3 mortars), and you have to manually aim upwards? also offset the mortar to shoot in an angle upwards (ala skyrim's default archery settings) to help mechs with crappy torso pitch limits

then add tracers to the shells or make them visible from launch, and give them a slow reload to hopefully dissuade people from spamming these

since the launchers can be as heavy as a lrm20, i think that the weight > efficiency should convince people to not boat the mortars, after all the lrms are superior than mortars in many ways except completely reliant on locks, and i dont think there's people that would want to boat mortars, seeing as they could be better off boating autocannons or just use missiles.

either way, hopefully this can be added into the game. it would be funny to equip lights with mortars and be supremely annoying

[Vonbach]

Idea's on mech mortars? Ok the idea is stupid.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 January 2017 - 10:52 AM, said:

3. Pretty sure splash was removed to improve hit reg, not because it was too potent. Actually, missiles back then were gutter tier.

No, he is right it was removed because they were too potent. I don't remember the exact problem (something to do with sections that were close were having tons of damage done against them) but they doing insane amounts of damage when they actually registered. Though something to keep in mind was that this was before HSR and this was also when SRMs were set at 2.5 damage (which is high especially given their status now and keeping in mind they did splash damage).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 26 January 2017 - 11:06 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 January 2017 - 11:05 AM, said:

No, he is right it was removed because they were too potent. I don't remember the exact problem (something to do with sections that were close were having tons of damage done against them) but they doing insane amounts of damage when they actually registered. Though something to keep in mind was that this was before HSR and this was also when SRMs were set at 2.5 damage (which is high especially given their status now and keeping in mind they did splash damage).

That isn't what I remember. What I remember is that the splash mechanic was screwing with the ability to actually hit certain 'Mechs because it would detonate prematurely because of latency issues. Piling damage on one component is an earlier problem than the one that changed from splash to impact, and it was due more to the fact that they had buffed missile damage to compensate for hit-reg problems and the resulting inconsistent performance.

At any rate , this predates the superior hit-reg we have now, and MMs can't be boated like LRMs and SRMs anyway. So...I don't see a problem with splash.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 January 2017 - 11:15 AM, said:

Piling damage on one component is an earlier problem than the one that changed from splash to impact, and it was due more to the fact that they had buffed missile damage to compensate for hit-reg problems and the resulting inconsistent performance.

This is the only time that I remember splash ever being a problem, but it's been a long time.

Either way, as you brought up, artillery does in fact have splash so there is precedence.

[FupDup]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 January 2017 - 11:05 AM, said:

No, he is right it was removed because they were too potent. I don't remember the exact problem (something to do with sections that were close were having tons of damage done against them) but they doing insane amounts of damage when they actually registered. Though something to keep in mind was that this was before HSR and this was also when SRMs were set at 2.5 damage (which is high especially given their status now and keeping in mind they did splash damage).

There have been some examples where a single little SRM missile could inflict 12 or more damage even if you ignored every other missile in the volley. There was a time when I think that 2 SRM4 could literally oneshot a Commando from the front. Splash damage had massive issues with amplifying damage against mechs with small hitboxes, because every hitbox got hit simultaneously.

Only "artillery" weapons should have splash or else we're gonna have a really bad time.

Edited by FupDup, 26 January 2017 - 11:50 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

FupDup, on 26 January 2017 - 11:49 AM, said:

Only "artillery" weapons should have splash or else we're gonna have a really bad time.

Really makes me wish the MW4 engine could just be updated to support better graphics, splash worked just fine in that game.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 26 January 2017 - 11:49 AM, said:

There have been some examples where a single little SRM missile could inflict 12 or more damage even if you ignored every other missile in the volley. There was a time when I think that 2 SRM4 could literally oneshot a Commando from the front. Splash damage had massive issues with amplifying damage against mechs with small hitboxes, because every hitbox got hit simultaneously.

Only "artillery" weapons should have splash or else we're gonna have a really bad time.

I remember that, but that is really an issue with how they implemented the splash rather than a problem with the concept of splash.

I also remember that not being when splash was fully removed from missiles. Didn't LRMs retain splash for longer?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 January 2017 - 11:53 AM, said:

I also remember that not being when splash was fully removed from missiles. Didn't LRMs retain splash for longer?

If they did, it wasn't for very long.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 January 2017 - 11:53 AM, said:

I remember that, but that is really an issue with how they implemented the splash rather than a problem with the concept of splash.

I also remember that not being when splash was fully removed from missiles. Didn't LRMs retain splash for longer?

For non-arty weapons, how exactly would you "implement" splash differently such that weapons don't deal massively higher damage against light mechs than larger mechs? Just make the splash radius really small so that it can only hit two hitboxes at a time or something?

Because I really don't want an SRM6 to deal up to 72 damage against a light mech. That's trash.

[nehebkau]

The6thMessenger, on 24 January 2017 - 09:03 PM, said:

In the light of recent information that PGI is going to add new weapons, perhaps one of them is Mech Mortar.

PGI can't even get IS XL engines and clan XL engines balanced and you want them to add new weapons? WTH?!? I say NO NEW ANYTHING until we get the crap that is plaguing this game fixed.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

FupDup, on 26 January 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

For non-arty weapons, how exactly would you "implement" splash differently such that weapons don't deal massively higher damage against light mechs than larger mechs? Just make the splash radius really small so that it can only hit two hitboxes at a time or something?

Because I really don't want an SRM6 to deal up to 72 damage against a light mech. That's trash.

Either it needs to be small, or have exponential falloff which I think MW4 had covered, granted with lights rescaled like they are they wouldn't suffer like they did before.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 26 January 2017 - 12:10 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 26 January 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

For non-arty weapons, how exactly would you "implement" splash differently such that weapons don't deal massively higher damage against light mechs than larger mechs? Just make the splash radius really small so that it can only hit two hitboxes at a time or something?

Because I really don't want an SRM6 to deal up to 72 damage against a light mech. That's trash.

It won't do massive damage. Something f*cky in PGI's code was causing it to compound incorrectly if only one missile could deal 12 damage to one spot (I find that claim dubious tbqh). It should just be a spherical zone within which each component receives a rated amount of damage, damage whivh should scale based on distance from the center. Bubble should be nullufied by objects in the way, including the front of your 'Mech shielding the rear if the explodes ahead of you. For SRMs and LRMs, the falloff should've been extremely sharp. For mortars, it would not be so sharp.

At any rate, I am picturing them firing in a burst like cAC and with some spread. A relatively small radius of 2-5 meters grants full damage and it drops off rapidly from there out to between 7.5 and 10 meters. That's my starting point.

[Pjwned]

nehebkau, on 26 January 2017 - 11:58 AM, said:

PGI can't even get IS XL engines and clan XL engines balanced and you want them to add new weapons? WTH?!? I say NO NEW ANYTHING until we get the crap that is plaguing this game fixed.

Of course, nothing new can be added until PGI capitulates to your baby raging about XL engines, since you're unquestionably right and all, even though adding new equipment is a very practical way of addressing imbalances.

Get bent and **** off out of the thread.