259 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 18 July 2018 - 10:26 PM, said:

This.

Good game balance doesn't mean every weapon has the same skill floor/ceiling. A game where every weapon had the same complex mechanics just to get it to shoot other robbits wouldn't be that fun but you need a few weapons that are complex to use but give a higher payout for people who can do so effectively and consistently.

Oh **** I just justified why PGI has LRMs the way they are. Pardon me while I find a good therapist.

[Cosantoir]

MischiefSC, on 19 July 2018 - 12:40 PM, said:

Good game balance doesn't mean every weapon has the same skill floor/ceiling. A game where every weapon had the same complex mechanics just to get it to shoot other robbits wouldn't be that fun but you need a few weapons that are complex to use but give a higher payout for people who can do so effectively and consistently.

Oh **** I just justified why PGI has LRMs the way they are. Pardon me while I find a good therapist.

I knew you'd come around

[Nightbird]

Nightbird, on 19 July 2018 - 12:19 PM, said:

Thus far, I've avoided missiles because I haven't thought of an idea that satisfied both lore and science and balance and got rid of ghost heat (or simplified it).

The sarna page on the Crusader dropped a lore hint (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Crusader) missile path can interfere with each other. This makes scientific sense, missiles need a minimum space to avoid collisions, avoid flying in the exhaust of another missiles, avoid damage when the missile next to it is destroyed by AMS. If the spread of a rack of missiles is to give missile minimum space, then shooting more racks shouldn't reduce that space or else mutual interference would happen.

The two game mechanics that would mimic this are:
1. Give every missile a radius (a ball if you will) that no other missiles can be in. If more missiles are alphaed, the missile swarm will expand to respect each missile's space. As missiles are shot down by AMS, guided missiles will reorganize themselves to occupy the vacated space. This would get rid of ghost heat for missiles, but probably not implementable by PGI.

2. A simpler approach is to give a minimum firing delay after all missile weapons for other missile weapons. For example, 0.05s for SRMs and 0.1s for LRMs. When alphaing missiles, launchers will fire one at a time quickly and no longer in a big missile clump. Clan missiles with duration can have that duration reduced but overall IS missiles can still alpha fast having no duration (except for MRMs). No ghost heat, not ideal but implementable.

Thoughts?

Hoping for more comments. Are people really OK for forced micro delays between any missile launchers firing?

[MischiefSC]

I would be happy to try it but it's going to increase face time and decrease viability of missiles vs ballistics/lasers.

[Bigbacon]

I bet most players dont care about lore or tt. They just want a fun pew pew mech game.

[Nightbird]

Bigbacon, on 22 July 2018 - 09:11 AM, said:

I bet most players dont care about lore or tt. They just want a fun pew pew mech game.

Do you care about differences between IS and Clan? Would MWO be more fun pew pew game if they played the same or different? PGI doesn't care about keeping them distinct, next balance pass will make IS and Clan lasers very similar. This thread is about balance around lore values, which forces very different play styles for IS and Clan, which would make the game fun.

MischiefSC, on 22 July 2018 - 06:10 AM, said:

I would be happy to try it but it's going to increase face time and decrease viability of missiles vs ballistics/lasers.

Less spread for SRMs and MRMs at least, LRMs won't change much.

[Nightbird]

I'm gonna put my PTS comment here as a bump:

Eroding faction diferrences may be good for balance in the short run, but terrible for keeping people interested in the game!

[The6thMessenger]

Um, bump?

Anyways, I'm still not thrilled with the RNG nature of RACs and UACs. Can we just make RACs have shorter dissipation and 100% chance to jam on redline? Seems like easier to be responsible with the jam-bar than to rely on RNGesus to give you an undescript long burn.

Also the UACs, they are the staple of dakka and can be quite broken when they do not jam. Can we just balance it around the doubletap? Like the UAC20 doing 17 damage and 34 double-tap damage at 6.5s CD, and the rest of the ACs follow. Seems to me that Lorewise, if they can't make it not-jam, they could just justify use it "in short burst".

Edited by The6thMessenger, 06 October 2020 - 02:22 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

FRIENDLY REMINDER:

Tabletop/Lore values for damage and heat are actually DPS/HPS x 10.

A single turn in TT is 10 seconds, if a weapon deals 10 damage per turn its DPS = 1.

One of the reasons time to kill is so low in MWO is because, even though they doubled armour values, they increased DPS by x5-x10 that of TT!

[Nightbird]

VonBruinwald, on 06 October 2020 - 02:42 PM, said:

A single turn in TT is 10 seconds, if a weapon deals 10 damage per turn its DPS = 1.

The title wasn't give lore DPS a chance lol.

I don't see TT values as anything special, I see them as different. Clan and IS really play the same today, because we homogenized everything. This thread is based on, how different would weapons be if we tried to keep TT damage and heat, but changed everything else to keep the weapons still balanced, and the result I got at least was a much larger variation in stats than what we have today.

[VonBruinwald]

Nightbird, on 06 October 2020 - 02:45 PM, said:

This thread is based on, how different would weapons be if we tried to keep TT damage and heat, but changed everything else to keep the weapons still balanced, and the result I got at least was a much larger variation in stats than what we have today.

Déjà vu

VonBruinwald, on 07 July 2018 - 10:28 AM, said:

You do if you're balancing to TT/Lore. If you're arguing for lore balance you have to acknowledge this.

Quote

Different manufacturers and models of autocannons have different calibers (25mm-203mm) and rates of fire. Due to this, autocannons are grouped into generic "classes" of autocannons with common damage ratings, with Autocannon/10s causing more damage than lower-caliber autocannons while retaining a moderate range.

All AC10's deal the same amount of damage in one turn, one turn is 10 seconds. A cERLL has the same DPS as an AC10. You can play with the damage and cool-down all you like but if their DPS diverge you're immediately breaking lore.

[Nightbird]

VonBruinwald, on 06 October 2020 - 02:56 PM, said:

Déjà vu

Yep, including the fact that there are versions of TT rules that allow you to fire more than once per turn to guess what... balance the weapons

[VonBruinwald]

Nightbird, on 06 October 2020 - 03:07 PM, said:

Yep, including the fact that there are versions of TT rules that allow you to fire more than once per turn to guess what... balance the weapons

In that case you pick one rule set (which ever is considered most balanced) and stick with it. Don't mix and match. Even if you went with S7 which gave some weapons rapid fire you're still dealing with 2.5 second steps to derive DPS/HPS and cooldown delays. So an AC20 still deals 2DPS only now an AC10 is doing 1.3.

[Nightbird]

VonBruinwald, on 07 October 2020 - 10:34 AM, said:

In that case you pick one rule set (which ever is considered most balanced) and stick with it. Don't mix and match. Even if you went with S7 which gave some weapons rapid fire you're still dealing with 2.5 second steps to derive DPS/HPS and cooldown delays. So an AC20 still deals 2DPS only now an AC10 is doing 1.3.

And you're still annoyingly insistent on tabletop DPS when I wrote into the first post I don't care about it. Start your own thread.

[General Solo]

Lore damage values dont mean squat when the armour is not the lore
Its double...
or triple lore values.


Ever have a Lore game in MWO, with mechs with lore armour, weapon and locations?

They are every short, mechs have a very short TTL, as even a single medium laser or AC5 is a menace not to be laughed at, unlike with the current armour valves.

[Nightbird]

OZHomerOZ, on 07 October 2020 - 09:40 PM, said:

Lore damage values dont mean squat when the armour is not the lore
Its double...
or triple lore values.


Ever have a Lore game in MWO, with mechs with lore armour, weapon and locations?

They are every short, mechs have a very short TTL, as even a single medium laser or AC5 is a menace not to be laughed at, unlike with the current armour valves.

Well, good thing MWO weapons have double triple the DPS of lore values as well. It's like it balances out...

[VonBruinwald]

OZHomerOZ, on 07 October 2020 - 09:40 PM, said:

Lore damage values dont mean squat when the armour is not the lore
Its double...
or triple lore values.

Ever have a Lore game in MWO, with mechs with lore armour, weapon and locations?

They are every short, mechs have a very short TTL, as even a single medium laser or AC5 is a menace not to be laughed at, unlike with the current armour valves.

There's nothing wrong with applying a global multiplier.

Armour was doubled to increase ttk and this was applied equally to all types, .

With weapons their alpha was their damage per turn (dps) and their actual dps pulled out of thin air which significantly breaks lore.

This results in the awkward situation where they had to double armour to increase ttk because they increased weapon dps by x5-x10.

If you increase firepower by x5 and double armour to balance it, your armour is still only 40% of what it should be.

[Nightbird]

VonBruinwald, on 08 October 2020 - 07:49 AM, said:

This results in the awkward situation where they had to double armour to increase ttk because they increased weapon dps by x5-x10.

Let's not exaggerate

[VonBruinwald]

Nightbird, on 08 October 2020 - 08:45 AM, said:

Let's not exaggerate

Well, maybe not x10, but it's still pretty bad.

On table top an AC10 deals 10 damage per turn (10 seconds), so it will chew through 16pts of armour (1 ton) in 16 seconds.
In MWO an AC10 has a DPS of 4.44 meaning it chews through 16pts of armour in 3.6 seconds, even with MWO's doubled armour it's still chewing through 32pts in 7.2 seconds. Far faster than what it should be doing.

[Nightbird]

VonBruinwald, on 08 October 2020 - 11:01 AM, said:

Well, maybe not x10, but it's still pretty bad.

On table top an AC10 deals 10 damage per turn (10 seconds), so it will chew through 16pts of armour (1 ton) in 16 seconds.
In MWO an AC10 has a DPS of 4.44 meaning it chews through 16pts of armour in 3.6 seconds, even with MWO's doubled armour it's still chewing through 32pts in 7.2 seconds. Far faster than what it should be doing.

Disagree on what it "should" be doing.