128 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 22 September 2017 - 11:08 PM, said:

I did say it was a subset of changes. You should also consider that IS skill tree offers better laser duration and cool-down nodes.



I did the math awhile back for a 3x LPL + 5x ML on a Black Knight with 10% heat gen reduction and 19 DHS - I would locate the thread if the Search function wasn't broken - and found that the heat efficiency of that 57-point alpha was comparable to the 61-point alpha from a 2x cLPL + 5x cERML TBR with 25 DHS. The Clan 'Mech definitely had better dissipation, but the damage came out significantly slower (nominal beam DPS for the IS was 63.3, Clan was 53.0) and so I declared that a wash.

The conclusion, though, was that for isERML to be competitive they had to be at the same heat that MedLas were back then, or it wouldn't work. PGI kind of split the difference and dropped the heat on them to 4.5 and the isML to 3.4, likely anticipating the skill tree buffs, but that's not enough because skill tree buffs apply to Clans, too. The heat had to be 4.0. It's even worse now with LPL being gutted*.

At any rate, being able to run at a comparable speed, with the defensive quirks intact, LFEs being a thing, and improved heat management might actually make it worthwhile. The Clans are currently vomiting out 71 points from Heavy 'Mechs, it's true, but the big 68-point alphas didn't stop 57-point Black Knights from sh*tting all over Timberwolves January 2016.

* Contrary to popular opinion, the isLPL is pretty garbage right now. You pay two more tons and 0.25 extra heat for one single point of damage to combine it with lasers that already burn longer and run too hot, and that's a crappy trade. The Large Laser will give you superior range, less heat, and still a sub-1-second burn. This is especially true if you are running Assaults because you can't turn fast enough to make that LPL's shorter burn worth much anyway and a bigger engine, more sinks, and/or a TC would be way more valuable to you. than a piddly 2-3 points of damage.



Many of those weapon quirks can and should be bundled into the weapons themselves because the weapons they apply to are bad. Everybody knows an AC/2 is garbage unless it gets that hilarious cool-down quirk on the BJ-1. On the BJ-1, they are potent enough that I have no inclination to swap them out for UAC/2. It's nice. Would that make ballistics boats OP if they fired 20% faster than current? I dunno, is a UAC/2 boat OP? I don't think so. It trades burst DPS for more consistent, but serviceable, average DPS. The AC/5 quirk on the Rifleman before the Skill Tree was the same way.

The main exceptions are those obviously under-gunned 'Mechs like the SDR-5V, LCT-1V, LCT-3V, etc. Those either require inflation, or need to keep quirks. Some of them don't even really have notable quirks at the moment (LCT-3V...so under quirked ;_; ).



MAD-BH2 wouldn't have to ghost to fire 50 points using ERML/ML+Gauss/AC20
BNC-3S could fit more heatsinks in when running Gauss-vomit.
BJ-1X doesn't have to do weird things like pair 6x ERML with 2x LPPC to do what we all know it's gonna do
BL-7-KNT can run a 55 (57 under new paradigm) alpha with 2x LPL + 7x ERML on a large LFE instead of having to take three LPL and an XL

It's not necessarily just for the sake of increasing firepower, it's that it lets you bring current serviceable firepower with fewer of the compromises that make said firepower not worth it. It also opens the door to inflate hardpoints and create serviceable firepower where needed.



That's the general idea!



I wanted to avoid that can of worms for now. There are two camps, the "make the engines behave the same" camp and the "tie some sort of durability buff to the engine" camp. I'm in the latter, but the former is admittedly easier. We know for a fact that isXL exploding doesn't matter if you make them offensively and/or defensively potent enough, though. We saw that back in late 2015/early 2016 when they were steamrolling the Clans in every form of play for three months, so make of that what you will.

I trust your math and had come to the same conclusion on LPLs. Chris seems like a very reasonable guy - do you have it charted up? I'm on a much needed vacation for a week or I'd volunteer. Your math is well supported and the results seem like a much better place than we have currently to look at balancing IS/Clan tech.

The huge advantage your changes have is that for the brown sea population the changes will largely feel like a buff to ballistics and a sidegrade to lasers, so nothing to complain about. At a higher skill curve it closes gaps both for FW IS vs Clan builds (currently an EBJ or MAD/MCII just obliterates WHRs, GHRs, THDs, BLRs et al so nobody really solid wants to play IS) and makes playing IS a lot more viable. At comp level it makes everyone have to re run the math and get people who don't want to change to adjust to change. They will probably hate you.

Just need to couch it well. Chris seems like he is very IS/Clan balance oriented and the recent balance changes were small moves of the needle, he may be willing to at least take the math on board.

[InvictusLee]

Col Jaime Wolf, on 23 September 2017 - 01:31 AM, said:

do you one better

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...b67c836047f1783

cooler, longer ranged with a 94 damage alpha (vs your 81 at 240m) and easy to min/max with the skill tree.

and yours could be made better by dropping 2 double heatsinks, adding endo and trying to fit a clan xl 375 in, you would lose 1 heat sink but gain speed and maximize the utility of your crit space.

but death strike does that build better with 1 more heavy laser and 1 more gauss for a 106 alpha

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...aba77f236cc986f

both of those mechs vs this

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...177d7a1fad713f7

which is what would have been the next poptart, that even with a full JJ tree still barely can climb cover as tall as the mech itself. so more likely you would have seen this

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...ba472b6fdb0b1e9

ya you give up alot for those 3 jj, alot of speed, heat effeciency and sustainable dps, for what hooverjets? and you cant even fire all your guns at once without exploding.

someone please tell me again that dual gauss and peeps are OP

to be fair, im working from a standpoint of not changing out the clan XL cause they are wicked expensive. With that in mind; in practical terms of being able to alpha without overheating/exploding this build will out alpha the deathstrike assuming the engine is kept the same. My deathstrike only runs 2 gauss, 2HLL, and 2 HML.
I also really like having the guass in the side torso. Its really neat eatching it fire above the cockpit. I wish there was a variant that had a ballistic in each side torso.

Edited by November11th, 23 September 2017 - 02:47 PM.

[JC Daxion]

I've said so many times that they just need to make gauss on it's own timer.. meaning it can only be used by itself, perhaps with another gauss.. give the weapon a slight cooldown where you can't fire another weapon. And no not a long one, but i am not sure about the time, maybe 1 second? Enough that it basically could not be part of an alpha, aka group fire.

and yea, i'd bet people would not like that change, but ohh well.. I guess they could also just add all weapons to the gauss ghost heat

[Y E O N N E]

MischiefSC, on 23 September 2017 - 01:11 PM, said:

I trust your math and had come to the same conclusion on LPLs. Chris seems like a very reasonable guy - do you have it charted up? I'm on a much needed vacation for a week or I'd volunteer. Your math is well supported and the results seem like a much better place than we have currently to look at balancing IS/Clan tech.

The huge advantage your changes have is that for the brown sea population the changes will largely feel like a buff to ballistics and a sidegrade to lasers, so nothing to complain about. At a higher skill curve it closes gaps both for FW IS vs Clan builds (currently an EBJ or MAD/MCII just obliterates WHRs, GHRs, THDs, BLRs et al so nobody really solid wants to play IS) and makes playing IS a lot more viable. At comp level it makes everyone have to re run the math and get people who don't want to change to adjust to change. They will probably hate you.

Just need to couch it well. Chris seems like he is very IS/Clan balance oriented and the recent balance changes were small moves of the needle, he may be willing to at least take the math on board.

Since you asked, I just spent the last eight hours tabulating the common pure laser builds and their performance so you can see, side-by-side, what Clans vs. IS looks like. Even did a second version of it that shows what it looks like when you give the IS a global 10% heat gen reduction. Later, I'll probably make a version incorporating proposed changes rather than the brute-force heat gen quirk that creates its own problems. Still, I think the table neatly highlights four things:


1. Clans have some real monsters in every range bracket
2. Lighter Clan energy 'Mechs get super shafted because of those monsters, which gives the illusion that IS are better up close when really it's just that the Clans have fewer options when you get down in the weight range
3. IS need a 15-20 ton advantage to match the Clans, when they can match them at all
4. IS only ever consistently wins on Alpha DPS; that Wubshee is probably the most impressive thing the IS has on this list

Feel free to spot check the numbers. Sustained DPS may be fudged, I didn't validate it by doing the math the hard way; I just took the ratio of dissipation over generation and then applied it as a scalar to the cyclic DPS number.

[MustrumRidcully]

Ah... I still remember when I was doing spreadsheets for MW:O. I learned a lot about Excel, and it was fun for theorycrafting.

Practical effect however? I don't remember any. I could has just well written haikus about mechs in natural environment.

Maybe with the "new guy", stuff like this has more weight than with Paul?

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 September 2017 - 04:43 AM, said:

Since you asked, I just spent the last eight hours tabulating the common pure laser builds and their performance so you can see, side-by-side, what Clans vs. IS looks like. Even did a second version of it that shows what it looks like when you give the IS a global 10% heat gen reduction. Later, I'll probably make a version incorporating proposed changes rather than the brute-force heat gen quirk that creates its own problems. Still, I think the table neatly highlights four things:


1. Clans have some real monsters in every range bracket
2. Lighter Clan energy 'Mechs get super shafted because of those monsters, which gives the illusion that IS are better up close when really it's just that the Clans have fewer options when you get down in the weight range
3. IS need a 15-20 ton advantage to match the Clans, when they can match them at all
4. IS only ever consistently wins on Alpha DPS; that Wubshee is probably the most impressive thing the IS has on this list

Feel free to spot check the numbers. Sustained DPS may be fudged, I didn't validate it by doing the math the hard way; I just took the ratio of dissipation over generation and then applied it as a scalar to the cyclic DPS number.

I'm looking it over now. Makes my heart hurt and it doesn't even touch on how most those builds require IS to run XLs, or be stupid slow. The math spot checks correctly - though a lot of those builds in practice work better with 3 LL instead of 3 LPL so they can run an LFE. It's almost an exact wash. Roughneck, 300lfe, 3 ll, 5 ermls. Range and burn time synergy. In group queue when I'm with a team I can trust I switch to 5 MLs and play closer to save heat. Head poke with 3ll/2erml, use the 2 arm ermls when you're pushing/receiving.

With the gauss/laser alpha on the Clan side running XL on all but a couple of mechs is super risky. Even arm shields are of minimal use because you'll lose on damage/tic and they're chewing just a ST while you need to drill CT.

[Y E O N N E]

MischiefSC, on 24 September 2017 - 08:07 AM, said:

I'm looking it over now. Makes my heart hurt and it doesn't even touch on how most those builds require IS to run XLs, or be stupid slow. The math spot checks correctly - though a lot of those builds in practice work better with 3 LL instead of 3 LPL so they can run an LFE. It's almost an exact wash. Roughneck, 300lfe, 3 ll, 5 ermls. Range and burn time synergy. In group queue when I'm with a team I can trust I switch to 5 MLs and play closer to save heat. Head poke with 3ll/2erml, use the 2 arm ermls when you're pushing/receiving.

With the gauss/laser alpha on the Clan side running XL on all but a couple of mechs is super risky. Even arm shields are of minimal use because you'll lose on damage/tic and they're chewing just a ST while you need to drill CT.

Interestingly, apart from the obvious Lights (though one FS9 was LFE and you can tell which one it is) and a couple of the BJ builds, it's only the 3x LPL + 5x ERML or greater builds that strictly require XL, and only on the Heavies (yeah, I did go into Smurfy and make almost every single one of these listed builds to make sure I wasn't on crack). The rest you can get away with using an LFE, though sometimes it means running at 70 instead of 80 which, IMHO, is not as big of a loss as it used to be.

I've updated it to include the performance with the proposed laser changes implemented. Clans still have some monsters (hey look, Micro Pulse are useful!), but there are some IS monsters in there, too, especially in the close-range bracket. By appearances, the ERLL boats and mid-range traders are still getting wrecked in the heat economy, and even the burst-DPS, so additional tuning is necessary.

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 September 2017 - 07:48 PM, said:

Interestingly, apart from the obvious Lights (though one FS9 was LFE and you can tell which one it is) and a couple of the BJ builds, it's only the 3x LPL + 5x ERML or greater builds that strictly require XL, and only on the Heavies (yeah, I did go into Smurfy and make almost every single one of these listed builds to make sure I wasn't on crack). The rest you can get away with using an LFE, though sometimes it means running at 70 instead of 80 which, IMHO, is not as big of a loss as it used to be.

I've updated it to include the performance with the proposed laser changes implemented. Clans still have some monsters (hey look, Micro Pulse are useful!), but there are some IS monsters in there, too, especially in the close-range bracket. By appearances, the ERLL boats and mid-range traders are still getting wrecked in the heat economy, and even the burst-DPS, so additional tuning is necessary.

Yeah, mechs like the BLR got pretty wrecked. You just can't XL in it anymore, so you're down-grading firepower. At that point you're only slightly beefier than a GHR, so why waste the 15 tons?

Just takes a LOT more range control and map positioning control to get good use out of the IS mechs for me. I've got to know where I can trade at <400 and where I'll get pinned down at 500+, because the difference is winning vs losing. If I'm really quick on the twist I can win trades at 402m or less with some builds but you get much beyond that and BONK. I'm taking more than I'm giving, even if I'm finishing my burn first and scooting.

Clans? 'Huh? Whuzzat? PPPEEEEWWWW!!!! Red flash! Just did damage to something.' You're an elbow drop off the top rung at 600m or less. You're dangerous (like still hitting for 40+) at 800m with gauss and lasers - and that's not even an ERLL build.

I can pick my positioning a lot more easily with that and project threat half again further down a lane without having to be an ERLL boat. It's powerful and it matters.

[Y E O N N E]

MischiefSC, on 24 September 2017 - 09:16 PM, said:

Yeah, mechs like the BLR got pretty wrecked. You just can't XL in it anymore, so you're down-grading firepower. At that point you're only slightly beefier than a GHR, so why waste the 15 tons?

The BLR doesn't really get any downgrade in firepower through being unable to XL.

Consider, before we were running 5x LPL on an XL350 with 18-19 DHS. That was 55 alpha, later 50 after the LPL nerf. Now we run 2x LPL with 6x ERML or 3x LPL with 4x ERML for that same 50 damage and we get 20-22 DHS. While yes it is technically hotter than what we had before, we can alpha-strike now without penalty. So While the sustain got wrecked, the burst went way up.

The Battlemaster's problem is:

1. It is undergunned for mid-range compared to something like an MCII or MAD-IIC; this would be true whether XL or not
2. It is not durable enough for the firepower it faces and the firepower it has at its disposal; it is really broad with easily isolated hit-boxes and the ones that have the best firepower have abysmal torso yaw

That's why its only real niche is for long range; the return fire is much more manageable. But its not really anything special in that role, either, just okay. Else, it's just a fat 'Hopper.

Quote

Just takes a LOT more range control and map positioning control to get good use out of the IS mechs for me. I've got to know where I can trade at <400 and where I'll get pinned down at 500+, because the difference is winning vs losing. If I'm really quick on the twist I can win trades at 402m or less with some builds but you get much beyond that and BONK. I'm taking more than I'm giving, even if I'm finishing my burn first and scooting.

Clans? 'Huh? Whuzzat? PPPEEEEWWWW!!!! Red flash! Just did damage to something.' You're an elbow drop off the top rung at 600m or less. You're dangerous (like still hitting for 40+) at 800m with gauss and lasers - and that's not even an ERLL build.

I can pick my positioning a lot more easily with that and project threat half again further down a lane without having to be an ERLL boat. It's powerful and it matters.

Yup. Hence, again, why IS are pretty much only ever taken as ERLL boats or Lights.