22 replies to this topic

[Karl Streiger]

davoodoo, on 11 July 2017 - 01:53 AM, said:

Heres where you make mistake.

Cougar got 19 tons of pod space.
So it can take cgauss+ammo and erll.

Each cougar weights 35 tons.
So 3 of them will carry 3 gausses and 3 erll and combined they have over 600 armor while moving at 81kph and being small targets.

Sure 100 tonner kodiak will be able to carry 3 erll and 3 gauss but even without gh it would run into heat problems firing them and while it also got over 600 armor it is much bigger target which is way slower.

You dont balance mechs 1 for 1, but tonnage for tonnage.

For 35 tons cougar carries staggering amount of firepower, if im not mistaken it can actually mount uac20 in arm...

You are correct - if we had "real" tonnage balancing and you could take 3 Cougars for a single Kodiak then you are true.
But not even in CW you can take 3 Cougars for a Kodiak. You might rather take 3 Shadow Cats.

However I think tonnage balancing is a thing and should become more important for balancing - 3 years ago - do the rest with game logic aka matchmaking

[Johnny Z]

Greyhart, on 07 July 2017 - 04:50 AM, said:

Absolutely nothing!

Sorry silly title.

But what is balance and what do we mean by it?

Is it that all the weapons/mechs are equally viable i.e. over an average match they produce the same damage.

Or is it that each weapon/ mech has a purpose? that purpose may not come up in the match and may not produce results.

I think we have to look at it as the second option. But then we have to ask what are the roles/ purposes of the weapons (I am limiting to weapons as an easier concept).

What are the roles in this shooter?

Well the first thing that comes to mind is info warfare. But lets be frank if it doesn't do damage it doesn't really get a real look in. So lets ignore that, because until info warfare provides damage bonuses then most aren't going to worry about it.

Well classically in shooters we have:

Sniper (I'd say over 500m in MWO); long range, slow rate of fire and accurate but difficult to aim at moving target. Classically you have a scope view that removes peripheral vision and can also contain automatic drift (the crosshairs move with no input). Large laser, gauss.

Mid range (500m to 250m); faster rate of fire, usually spreads a lot of shots, moderate amount of damage. this is suppressing fire (for want of a better phrase), the purpose is to make the opponent think about moving more carefully. A hit hurts but a lot of shots will miss. From your sniper rifle to you maxim machine gun. AC2?

short range (less than 250m): rapid accurate fire, each shot is low damage but they all count and hit where you aim. Small lasers, machine guns


At the moment in MWO there is nothing that really fits the mid range and all the weapons have the same amount of accuracy. (roughly speaking thinking mainly of lasers here).

In the Fantasy RPG games we have:

Tank: constant damage output and ability to take damage. This is the close up stuff again

Healer/ control/ utility: Healer is not helpful here so I am, like guildwars 2, ditching it and going on control/utility. This role doesn't deal great amounts of damage but makes everyone else more effective and can control the battlefield.

The glass cannon: deals lots of damage but is easy to kill.

We can again do tank and glass cannon (but you can also do both at the same time) but no real role for utility. Narc & Tag but they only effect one weapon system.

We also have different ways to apply damage.

There is those that require constant face time; Machine guns, AC2, SML. These I refer to as high DPS weapons. in other genres this might be daggers, machine guns.

those that can be fired and you can move i.e. LL, gauss. These are burst damage weapons. Again in other genre this would be two handed hammer, sniper rifle.

But on all of them the accuracy doesn't change. SM have the same accuracy as LL.

As we can see the problem with balance stems from a lack of defined roles that the game is designed around.

There is no major disadvantage in being a sniper in MWO and no major benefit to being specced for close or mid-range (brawling) as the sniper weapons are also useful in those areas.

There is no info warfare because it doesn't modify damage.

to achieve balance we therefore need a design document that defines the roles and looks to make weapons and mechs fit those roles whilst being bad at the other roles.

[Greyhart]

Johnny Z, on 11 July 2017 - 02:11 AM, said:

I like this because I think you're agreeing with me.

They (the devs) need to decide the roles and then ruthlessly implement them.

they sort of did this in the skill tree, with making maxing things in the same area cheaper than just doing one or 2 things.

They need to do it in the weapons area.

What is a weapon for? What role does it fill?

what role does a Pulse laser fill that a normal laser does not? is the pulse laser the dagger to the normal lasers sword? are they sniper rifles or shotguns?