16 replies to this topic

[Shifty McSwift]

OK so for IS, LBX vs AC is a direct downgrade, sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for a slight heat reduction on an already heat efficient weapon system ain't great.

Meanwhile for clan, the spread is balanced against the stream nature of clan ACs, making LBX an actual viable choice vs ACs.

So the problem comes in when you realise this gun has to have a level of standardistion across the IS clan divide, while it is a decent choice for one of those groups and mostly a crap choice for IS mechs (niche cases aside).

If you buff its damage, the IS LBX may become comparable to IS AC, but clan LBXs with buffed damage suddenly make clan ACs completely obsolete. It's like the old catch 22 proverb, you use a snake to catch the rat that is eating your food, problem is now you have a snake in your house.

My specific solution isn't perfect, but it is just one idea, that tries to work across the clan/IS divide, (unlike my other idea of making all ACs a stream weapon, which made some people sad face, this is a buff), is to slice off weight and tonnage from the LBX, just like the Snub nose PPC, the barrel is shortened, which gives it spread, at lower range.

For LBX this would work out as such;

Base LBXs would weigh 1 ton less, and take up 1 less crit space than their AC counterpart, at the loss of about 25% of the range of their ac counterpart. This way, even for clans, who LBX is a comparable choice already, the weapon doesn't obsolete the ACs, works well in conjunction, meanwhile for IS, there are actual decent reasons to pick an LBX.

There, viola.

[ScreamingSkull]

If they got their **** together and figured out ammo switching LBXs would be great. They SHOULD be able to use cluster munitions and standard AC munitions.

[Luminis]

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 02:37 AM, said:

If you buff its damage, the IS LBX may become comparable to IS AC, but clan LBXs with buffed damage suddenly make clan ACs completely obsolete.

I don't see why it's a necessity to keep IS and Clan LBX at the same damage to be honest.

Might be weird to see something labelled "LB10X" deal 12 damage, but in the grand scheme of things, who cares?

[Gattsus]

Decrease the reload time and increase the dps. Maybe by 0.5s.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

We could just give LBX a 50% damage increase or even have it do extra damage up close like ATMs do currently then give IS versions shorter cooldowns than the clan ones.

As for obsoleting the Clan ACs, UACs already do that by ability to double tap, so their normal ACs are entirely redundant and shouldn't be used in the first place. Though if you're really trying to make them useful, just make them single slug weapons but have the IS ones have shorter cooldowns.

Basically Clan gets lighter and smaller gun but the IS gun puts out more DPS than the Clan one so they both are getting about the same DPS per ton.

[Shifty McSwift]

Luminis, on 22 July 2017 - 02:47 AM, said:

I don't see why it's a necessity to keep IS and Clan LBX at the same damage to be honest.

Might be weird to see something labelled "LB10X" deal 12 damage, but in the grand scheme of things, who cares?

I am really not confident it would work out like that, make IS lbxs stronger and it becomes an argument of damage for tonnage/ammo tonnage debate. Buffing the damage also increases splat alpha damage rates overall and localising it to IS, just creates a different disparity.

Gattsus, on 22 July 2017 - 02:53 AM, said:

Decrease the reload time and increase the dps. Maybe by 0.5s.

Well that could work too, but again it would just make clan ACs look even worse by comparison.

[Luminis]

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 02:58 AM, said:

I am really not confident it would work out like that, make IS lbxs stronger and it becomes an argument of damage for tonnage/ammo tonnage debate. Buffing the damage also increases splat alpha damage rates overall and localising it to IS, just creates a different disparity.

LBX's offering superior damage per ton might finally be a reason to take them, aside from crit slot issues. Also, the IS got their big caliber UAC's. A 10% or even 20% increase to IS LBX damage is probably not going to result in a decrease of TKK compared to what equivalent UACs do, even accounting for the difference in weight and slots.

[El Bandito]

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 02:37 AM, said:

Base LBXs would weigh 1 ton less, and take up 1 less crit space than their AC counterpart, at the loss of about 25% of the range of their ac counterpart. This way, even for clans, who LBX is a comparable choice already, the weapon doesn't obsolete the ACs, works well in conjunction, meanwhile for IS, there are actual decent reasons to pick an LBX.

Add +50% damage per pellet and done.

[Shifty McSwift]

I know everyone wants to do more damage, I wish all my favourite guns (including LBX) could get a 50% damage buff too

I am just never going to support that notion when discussing game balance, 1. because it is direct powercreep, 2. because it is just a different sort of disparity if IS only, and if put to clans too, it leaves the clan AC looking silly, and in need of a buff to compensate (then around and around we go, on the powercreep wheel).

50% is huge, I am against even a 20% flat increase, but 50% just turns an LBX20 into an LBX30...

[jss78]

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 03:34 AM, said:

I know everyone wants to do more damage, I wish all my favourite guns (including LBX) could get a 50% damage buff too

I am just never going to support that notion when discussing game balance, 1. because it is direct powercreep, 2. because it is just a different sort of disparity if IS only, and if put to clans too, it leaves the clan AC looking silly, and in need of a buff to compensate (then around and around we go, on the powercreep wheel).

50% is huge, I am against even a 20% flat increase, but 50% just turns an LBX20 into an LBX30...

It's not a power creep if the weapon is so bad people simply don't use it. Power creep is when already popular options get buffed.

I think pellet damage increase is the simplest way to balance the weapon while maintaining its identity. Devastating in brawls, but at long range you're better off with regular AC's.

Ideally I'd have ammo switching, and a slightly smaller buff in cluster-shot pellet damage.

Edited by jss78, 22 July 2017 - 04:00 AM.

[Dnyarri]

If we aren't going to get ammo switching I liked the idea of having them take 1 less ton and crit space. I am not really in favor of a dps upgrade. They were definitely a niche pick, but the space/weight savings were great on certain builds. What I really don't understand is why the LBX family isn't consistent.

AC2 1 slot, 6 tons
LBX2 4 slots, 6 tons
So same weight and 4 times the crit space for a weapon with few actual upsides. Not sure why this is a thing.

AC5 4 slots, 8 tons
LBX5 5 slots, 8 tons
Same deal as the LBX2, at least it is only 1 additional crit slot instead of 3x like the 2

AC10 7 slots, 12 tons
LBX10 6 slots, 11 tons
Even though the LBX10 is the original but it is currently the oddball.

AC20 10 slots, 14 tons
LBX20 11 slots, 14 tons
Same deal as the 5

I get that the LBX versions technically have longer range, faster projectile, and the crit bonus, but in practice that range and speed is irrelevant due to pellet spread. The crit bonus is nice but that is part of the trade off for losing pin point damage. They certainly shouldn't take up more space than the AC version.

[Dago Red]

I've always been for upping both the rate of fire and the ammo per ton. If it's gonna be a sandblaster then by all means let it be good at that role.

[jss78]

Dnyarri, on 22 July 2017 - 04:50 AM, said:

If we aren't going to get ammo switching I liked the idea of having them take 1 less ton and crit space.

AFAIK PGI are loath to adjust the tonnage and slot space of weapons. I believe with the exception of half-ton ammo for all weapons our builds are still backwards compatible with TT.

I think the pellet damage increase would be the best way to represent the identity of the LB-X's, assuming we need to do within current game mechanics (i.e. no ammo switching). In TT, if we abstract things a little, they effectively do more damage to the mechs because the crits from pellet hits are relatively devastating in TT.

In MWO terms, I think the simplest solution to achieve the same effect is to bump the damage itself. It'll then have a distinct role, outperforming the equivalent regular AC at the short end of the range but being suboptimal at long range.

[Luminis]

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 03:34 AM, said:

1. because it is direct powercreep,

It isn't as long as it isn't superior post-buff to the weapon systems currently invalidating LBX's.

By your definition, quirking the worst 'Mech in the game to not be utter garbage is power creep, too.

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 03:34 AM, said:

2. because it is just a different sort of disparity if IS only

Because disparities between weapon systems are unprecedented or something? I guess we gotta change a bunch of lasers real quick, in that case

Edited by Luminis, 22 July 2017 - 05:12 AM.

[Shifty McSwift]

Luminis, on 22 July 2017 - 05:12 AM, said:

Because disparities between weapon systems are unprecedented or something? I guess we gotta change a bunch of lasers real quick, in that case

Sure, but asking for more disparity just further pushes us in that direction, I would prefer to go in the other direction wherever possible.

[Luminis]

Shifty McSwift, on 22 July 2017 - 05:24 AM, said:

Sure, but asking for more disparity just further pushes us in that direction, I would prefer to go in the other direction wherever possible.

So... You want IS and Clans to be identical? Mixtech could solve that, I guess, but what's the point of having two factions in that case?

[Shifty McSwift]

Luminis, on 22 July 2017 - 05:30 AM, said:

So... You want IS and Clans to be identical? Mixtech could solve that, I guess, but what's the point of having two factions in that case?

I didn't say that, there are plenty of distinctions that already exist and many that are good/interesting for balance, but as a personal preference and for the sake of some kind of standardisation of weapons that are of the same class values like IS LBs vs clan LBs, I don't want to take the path of furthering that divide with things like clan/is specific weapon buffs like that.

I would much rather the base weapons have internal balancing logic across clan/is and if there has to be a distinction, to have that global across is/clan too, not faction specific buffs to specific weapons of the same class like that, which lack that inherent level of balance.

To me the choice between stream or spread for AC vs LBX is kind of perfect at that inherent balance of the guns, but also the idea that the LBX works as a shorter range but lighter AC version is nice too, having the LBX at base deal more damage or have a damage buff to compensate its spread, would work across the board if applied like that to the base ideal of the weapon (perhaps something like clan getting 1.15 bonus damage to LBX pellets and IS getting 1.3 for example), and would boost the weapons usage wherever applied but its the last option I personally would vote for, a cooldown distinction (LBX reloading faster) is preferable to that.