25 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

kapusta11, on 21 May 2017 - 11:49 PM, said:

is dead set on "changing" it either to "DPS" weapon with high heat or just 7 ton, 365m range garbage.

To be fair, I do want it changed to a DPS weapon as well, but I want the LL to be buffed to sort of take its place (same with ERSL vs SPL) because that has been part of the problem, one is always better than the other for that role (LPL > LL, cSPL > cERSL, etc).

[Ghogiel]

Tarogato, on 21 May 2017 - 08:30 PM, said:

Because when you predict a shot being fired and begin the pre-empting torso twist, you are still twisting while the damage is being applied - even if the burn duration is short, the damage still has a chance to spread. Otherwise it all goes to the same component and there's nothing you can do about it but hope that your twisting made them miss outright. Duration-less lasers just become better PPCs.

Want to say HSR and HUD updating delays comes into play here.

You have to preempt twist off the laser burns before the firer actually fires on your screen, or by the time you react to visual input, he's already done the burn and the packet has probably already reached the server and the server is validating that dmg. After half sec, then your paperdoll gets updated. ggclose.

It's the same thing that's happening when you get hit with PPCs and your mech shakes, but you dont take dmg, on the firers screen he missed, but because of the visual discrepency between clients it looked like he clocked you from your perspective.

Edited by Ghogiel, 22 May 2017 - 12:24 PM.

[R Valentine]

I don't have any problem with extreme range going down on all ER weapons, PPCs included. MWO is too range centric right now, and map design is a huge part of that. Polar is way too big and way too open. On assault you can walk right by the other team and never know they were there. The fact that you have to walk forever to get to enemies isn't the fault of weapon range not being sufficient. It's fault of the map being stupid.

[Tarogato]

Kiran Yagami, on 22 May 2017 - 12:36 PM, said:

I don't have any problem with extreme range going down on all ER weapons, PPCs included. MWO is too range centric right now, and map design is a huge part of that. Polar is way too big and way too open. On assault you can walk right by the other team and never know they were there. The fact that you have to walk forever to get to enemies isn't the fault of weapon range not being sufficient. It's fault of the map being stupid.

loool, I couldn't disagree me.

MWO's maps are all postage stamps. There's almost no sightlines long enough to really make use of AC2s and cERLLs, and scouting almost doesn't matter at all because the maps are so small that you'll always know where the enemy is, even if you can't see them.

Bigger maps = more options for movement = more uses for scouts, also = more opportunities for long sight lines = more use for long range weapons

And mind, you I don't mean bigger maps = only long sightlines, only good for long range weapons.

I mean large DIVERSE maps, that HAVE long sightlines, but aren't ENTIRELY COMPRISED of long sightlines. Think of Canyon Network, how there's long sightlines across the the entire map, but plenty of canyons that allow for close quarters combat. The same could be true of Polar Highlands, if the canyons/trenches on that map were just made deeper. Or look at Hellebore Springs - plenty of long sightline opportunities, and plenty of close quarters opportunities. Or look at how you can trade across the entirety of River City with ERLL, but the fighting in the city itself is amazing for brawlers. We need maps that are larger versions of this - with opportunities for very long sightlines, but aren't just wide open snipefests like Frozen City is (urggh.)

[cazidin]

Kanajashi is for nerfing IS LPL, and not by any small amount.

I am against Kanajashi's proposal for energy weapon changes.

[ToXikyogHurt]

I was going to post this in the youtube comments but actually this is probably a better place.

I don't feel that Kanajashi's calculations go far enough to substantiate the claim that his numbers are any better balanced than PGI's. He doesn't actually factor in the number of heatsinks required to operate a laser, nor the range or duration of the laser, to produce a number which describes a lasers 'quality'.

What we want to do is to find a reasonable metric to describe how effective a weapon system is. And, yes, this is massively affected by your positioning and tactics and aim etc, but without a single raw figure describing each weapon, we're just throwing darts - and that's not a good system.

So, how about we _find_ a metric we can agree on? I'll start.

https://docs.google....vloCeo/pubhtml#

Note that Kanajashi's original DPS columns are not correct. MWO does not include the beam duration in the listed weapon cooldown times, so you have to add the duration to the cooldown to get the complete cycle time to find the correct DPS of a weapon (HPS too).

I've added some columns at the end of the sheet, they are:

• Damage Per Second / Tonne - adjusted for heatsinks required, assuming a really low number of sinks (i.e. a hot 'mech)
  
• DPS * Log₂Range * Log₂Damage Per Duration / Tonne - adjusted for heatsinks, assuming a really low number of sinks

And then I've copied them a couple of times with different values to represent how many heatsinks you might expect to require to operate a weapon system. dps/t vs heatsinks per system would be an interesting set of graphs if somebody feels like it.

I chose 1.5, 2 and 3 tonnes of heatsinks per heat-per-second because these seem reasonable values to actually field. Perhaps too high, but for approximating shorter fights they should be ok. It actually takes 1/0.14 = ~7.1 tonnes of heatsinks (assuming doubles) to completely sink 1 heat per second, which is only one medium laser - but all 'mechs have a baseline 2hps sink rate and so a normal-ish 6 medium laser loadout producing 6hps only needs about 2/3 of the heat produced by a laser to be sinked by additional heatsinks beyond the minimum.

This is obviously a fairly rough approximation of actual heatsink requirement because

• the proportion of additional heatsinks you need depends how much total heat you need to sink - since the engine mitigates a flat 2hps, not 1/3 at all times
  
• maps are different temperatures
  
• jumpjets make heat - quite a lot of it
  
• being completely heat neutral is insane or impossible anyway. But somewhere between 2 and 3 tonnes per laser is probably fine, certainly as a guide. It affects the absolute numbers, but not trends.

The other columns contain my metric for 'goodness' of a laser.

Clearly more range is better.
Clearly 600m isn't _twice_ as good as 300m. probably.
Ditto for damage per beam-second-duration.
So; logarithms!

Log₂Range and Log₂DPS use base 2 for their logarithm kinda arbitrary. Finding the actual correct bases to use would take some experimentation, but base 2 will do as an example. Feel free to try alternate bases, or add a cubic term to represent any advantage that extreme long range might provide.

After adjusting each laser to account for the heatsinks required to operate it, and the range and duration of the laser we have a single number for each laser's 'quality'. How well does this actually work?

Well... Take a look at the numbers. I ran them for both current and proposed values.

Would you say that (presuming you can get into range) the cSPL is a good weapon? Well that has the highest numbers using this formula. Do you often use IS small lasers? ER-larges? Well they have the lowest numbers. That's by no means an absolute proof this is perfectly accurate, but the approximations seem to hold true.

Given the relative values of the IS medium and MPL (MPLs score about 20% better) you can see I'm probably under-valuing range slightly. Maybe. Bear in mind that what we want is even numbers for everything - it's ok for a SPL and ER-large to have the same number but for the SPL to always win in a straight 1v1 fight provided the ER-large gives an advantage of equal value in some other way - the ability to peek or kite or whatever.

What would be useful here is a poll for people to rank how effective they think each laser is. Then we could compare that with what I've got to see how closely it matches.

Anyway what's clear is that there are distinct outliers in the current weapons, and Kanajashi's alterations aren't fixing all of them. Nerfing all the clan pulse lasers a bit is fine. But why nerf the ER-larges? Why not buff the IS small laser? Do LPLs really need a 15% nerf?

I've included a set of my own values for comparison - they're only baselines and they are only as accurate as the model I'm using, but it's not too hard to push things into what looks like a reasonable shape. I've even thrown some values in for the upcoming weapons - not predictions, I just wanted to see what sort of values would be needed to fit the trends. Unsuprisingly the required fixes seem to be increasing the range of IS lasers and reducing their heat - exactly what quirks have been doing for years now.

I've flattened the curve off for small/medium/large lasers and tried to drag them all towards a central value; they're within 30% or so instead of >200% of each other. That might be too flat if we want to actively encourage a more brawly playstyle where short range lasers are supposed to be _really_ notably better, but the IS/Clan balance should be more reasonable. Or it would be if IS 'mechs weren't mostly covered head-to-toe in armour quirks. Some of that is because hardpoints but some of it is probably because their lasers are just worse.


Anyway, thoughts, comments, flames?