68 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

give is reflective armor.

make those clan laser vomit builds a bit more situational. you can also keep your superior lasers, but they wont always work as well as you want them to. clanners wont get it and is lasers will remain as more jack of all trades weapons.

Edited by LordNothing, 13 November 2017 - 01:33 PM.

[Jun Watarase]

N0ni, on 13 November 2017 - 12:17 PM, said:

What people don't seem to get when they call for nerfs, is that once those nerfs are in place... another meta will come to life and dominate the field and there will be another call for nerfs.

The cycle will continue now and forever, so try to enjoy what you have at the moment.

Theres a bit of misunderstanding involving "meta". When most players say "meta", what they mean is that something is so OP that you have to use it or you cannot compete (outside of niche situations).

Let's take a typical FPS game. Sniper rifles are usually long range weapons and have disadvantages up close. It's not "meta". It's effective for long range, but you wouldnt use it when clearing a house. Now, imagine if there was a really badly designed FPS game where sniper rifles were fully automatic, had 30 round magazines, killed you in one hit and were pinpoint accurate. That becomes "meta". You either use it or you lose. The game then revolves around everyone using sniper rifles. Of course a better player can still kill a sniper rifle user with regular weapons, especially if he gets the first shot off, but its an uphill battle. Or maybe shotguns might be slightly better if you fire at pointblank range, but hey, since sniper rifles are fully automatic death rays and easily outrange shotguns, thats not going to happen often. Tournaments revolve around everyone using sniper rifles.

Thats pretty much where laser vomit is now. Oh sure SRMs might be better if you are fighting at 50m or below, but getting there and not dying is obviously hard. And of course a top player can use non-laser vomit to beat an average laser vomit user. But you will notice that no top players are trying to beat top players in competitve settings with anything other than laser vomit unless they are building for a niche role or situation. The top players know its pointless to even try unless they can pick the map.

There's a myth that laser vomit is "bad" for hot maps or brawl maps. The fact that I consistently see groups run 3x laser vomit mechs on both hot and brawl maps pretty much proves this false. There is currently no substitute for massive hitscan alphas. Point, click, deal massive damage. if you are using IS pulses, congrats, your opponent probably cant even torso twist because your burn duration is shorter than his. IS pulses basically invalidate every alternative available.

I mean, look at this :

IS MPL : 6 damage, 220m range (or 270+m with quirks + skill nodes), 0.5s duration with nodes, hitscan, infinite ammo, 3.8 heat. 1 slot and 2 tons.

IS SRM-6 : 12.9 damage, 270m range, actual effective range is 100m or below, slow velocity which makes it difficult to hit fast moving targets, spreads damage everywhere, 4 heat. 2 slots and 3 tons.

Unless you are hugging a mech face to face, the MPL puts more damage in one location and has a longer effective range. It beats SRMs hands down, even in terms of fire rate. 2x MPL vs 1x SRM-6 with artemis is an even worse comparison.

Of course SRMs can beat MPLs,if, for example, you hide behind a corner in a SRM boat and fire them pointblank into someone's face. But thats a niche situation. The MPL wins in almost every other situation which makes it far more versatile, especially if you are trying to kill a light mech.

Thats the problem with laser vomit. Its so insanely versatile. If we go by common sense logic, laser vomit should be at a massive disadvantage on hot maps. But when I see units drop with 3x laser vomit mechs on hot maps...it basically means one of two things. Either they are deliberately handicapping themselves for some reason, or laser vomit on hot maps is no handicap at all. Guess which one is more likely.

And the IS LPL? 1x LPL vs 1x AC 10. 2x LPL vs 1x AC 20. Need I say more? Why do you think people run 5x LPL battlemasters...but not mechs with any AC 10s or 20s? Because LPLs are the better weapon, hands down. When you can do 50+ point hitscan alphas at 400m+, why bother with anything else? Ballistics and missiles simply cannot compete, unless you are in an assault with 4 or more UACs.

Look at what people bring to maps like alpine or polar. Its almost 100% ER LL spam. What does this tell you? That most people do not believe they can compete without bringing ER LLs. Try putting two top teams vs each other on those maps, one team is allowed to bring ER LLs, the other isnt. See what happens.

If things were balaned, there would be more than one valid choice. MPLs/SRMs would be equally valid for close range. ER LLs and ER PPCs would be equally valid for long range. So on and so forth. When almost 100% of players bring one type of weapon while neglecting the other, something is obviously wrong.

When a game is decently balanced, you wont be seeing near 100% of players using just one weapon. Ever hopped into a FPS server and nearly 100% of the players are using sniper rifles? That almost never happens, and if it does, its usually because the server is setup so thats the only valid weapon or its some dumb custom map like an open field. Ever watched a competitive MWO match or just two units in a FP match and almost 100% of the mechs involved were laser vomit, even on hot/brawl maps? That happens a lot. Guess why.

Nerfing laser vomit doesnt mean you need to nerf it SO HARD that the pendulum swings all the way to the other side. Obviously if you go full ****** and cut ER LL damage in half or something dumb, then everyone will use ER PPCs/Gauss instead. But if you give both weapons pro and cons to the point where players pick one based on personal preference, then you have gotten it right. Right now, there is basically one no brainer choice for most situations.

And thats the problem with the "meta". It removes choice from the game. Run 3x laser vomit or lose (outside of niche situations). Most units are not dumb...if they genuinely believed that they stood a good or better chance at winning WITHOUT running 3x laser vomit, they would. But most dont unless they are deliberately running joke mechs like AC 20 cicadas or they want to do something niche.

Its like trying to play chess where you can pick the pieces you want. Yea, a chess grandmaster might be able to win with pawns, but why bother when you can just run 100% queens?

Edited by Jun Watarase, 13 November 2017 - 01:50 PM.

[Toothless]

I just want to throw out there that if you were in the future and had to fight in big giant robots, would you want the weapon system that requires no ammo, weighs very little, can cause a lot of damage, has great range, and can be improved by adding on coolant systems (also with little tonnage)?

Or would you want heavy, ammo dependent weapons that either explode or who's ammo can explode? Juuuust saying.

[DrSaphron]

If you don't like being on the reciving end of las-vom then play smart, be patient, and force the brawl when the time is right, and for the love of god STOP staring at the laser boats, learn to spread damage, and start carying a flamer or 2!

Get Gud Scumpug!!!

[N0ni]

LordNothing, on 13 November 2017 - 01:31 PM, said:

give is reflective armor.

The thing about IS reflective armor is that sure you'll make clan laser vomit more situational, but the more people that field it... you're also nerfing IS mechs either with majority or NOTHING BUT energy hardpoints.

How many IS mechs have either a majority of energy HPs or all energy HPs? Honestly, too many to count. One thing is certain, it'd make you regret choosing the HBK-4P(S) as your prize.

Kind of a double-edged sword, like doing a ditch turn.

[Jun Watarase]

ZacharyJ, on 13 November 2017 - 01:41 PM, said:

I just want to throw out there that if you were in the future and had to fight in big giant robots, would you want the weapon system that requires no ammo, weighs very little, can cause a lot of damage, has great range, and can be improved by adding on coolant systems (also with little tonnage)?

Or would you want heavy, ammo dependent weapons that either explode or who's ammo can explode? Juuuust saying.

Would you rather have a building sized robot that is a huge target or have two small and easily concealed tanks with similar firepower?

Battletech is built on the rule of cool.

[Mole]

Jun Watarase, on 13 November 2017 - 01:49 PM, said:

Would you rather have a building sized robot that is a huge target or have two small and easily concealed tanks with similar firepower?

Battletech is built on the rule of cool.

Rule of cool or not, his point remains relevant as the mentioned disavantages of non-energy weapons are very real and present in-game. Your point, while valid, is not relevant in any in-game situation. This has left me wondering why you bothered to make your point.

Edited by Mole, 13 November 2017 - 01:55 PM.

[Toothless]

Jun Watarase, on 13 November 2017 - 01:49 PM, said:

Battletech is built on the rule of cool.

Yea and lasers are awesome. Autocannons with hilariously short ranges and low velocities are flacid, as are missiles that for some reason have I guess an M80 firecracker for a payload because they do jack all for damage.

[lazorbeamz]

No just reduce laser vomit damage by at least 40% plain. The lasers which constitute the poke meta in particular. it ll still be fine. You have 80 alpha and you will have 50 alpha. Sounds reasonable for a hitscan at 500m.

You can fix ballistic, srm, mrm damage received by standing a bit farther away and moving back and forth. The projectiles are impossible to hit with if the opponent cant predict your movement. Missiles are countered by cover and ecm. Laser has no counter you point and click which gives you full damage at 500m away from your opponent. It is complete ****** when you are allowed to have laser alphas of 70-80 dmg at 500m.

Reflective armor im not even sure what it is but im pretty sure it will gimp every build. So you ll need to gimp all your mechs because game has laser vomit.

[Mole]

lazorbeamz, on 13 November 2017 - 01:54 PM, said:

No just reduce laser vomit damage by at least 40% plain. The lasers which constitute the poke meta in particular. it ll still be fine. You have 80 alpha and you will have 50 alpha. Sounds reasonable for a hitscan at 500m.

You can fix ballistic, srm, mrm damage received by standing a bit farther away and moving back and forth. The projectiles are impossible to hit with if the opponent cant predict your movement. Missiles are countered by cover and ecm. Laser has no counter you point and click which gives you full damage at 500m away from your opponent. It is complete ****** when you are allowed to have laser alphas of 70-80 dmg at 500m.

Reflective armor im not even sure what it is but im pretty sure it will gimp every build. So you ll need to gimp all your mechs because game has laser vomit.

So you're suggesting that the rest of the useful lasers in the game recieve the Clan Small Pulse Laser treatment? Are you insane?

[Cy Mitchell]

The Clan Heavy lasers are the problem. Their introduction followed the laser adjustments and badly inflated the amount of damage that Clan laser vomit is capable of. Their long cooldown times and massive damage just contributes to the Alpha Warrior hide and peek strat.

[Trissila]

lazorbeamz, on 13 November 2017 - 12:40 PM, said:

They didnt really nerf lasers im not feeling it. if they nerf their damage by 25% across the board then it would be a start to nerfing lasers.

Now we have 18 damage heavy lasers which are worse.

Oh, they nerfed the hell out of mediums.

It just didn't matter, because laser boats always have been and always will be heat limited, rather than cooldown limited. That's a natural consequence of a Mechwarrior/Battletech game that has usable cover features. You pop out, dump as much of your heat bar as you can into a single attack, and then duck back behind cover and wait to cool down. Heat, as a mechanic, exists to limit how much firepower you can put down range in a given unit time. And in any game where there is a set limit on how much attacking you can do per unit time, the optimal strategy will always be to unload your attacks, and then go defensive while you wait to be able to attack again.

Think about, say, a Street Fighter game where you were only allowed to perform X amount of attacks within Y frames. Whether these were single attacks or a string of attacks within a combo, there's a limit to how much attacking you can do. The optimal strategy would be to make small, non-committed pokes until you hit-confirm, then unload the most damaging combo that you can that is within the attack limit, and then evade/block until your attack limit resets.

Nerf lasers further if you like, but you won't change the fundamental nature of the game. People will just build out the next-most-effective poke-and-hide loadout and use that instead. If you'll notice, at no time has the meta been dominated by out-in-the-open brawling. It's been laser poking, or GaussPeeps poking, or poptarting, or some variation thereof: all variations on the same core strategy of dump-and-hide.

That's just what happens when you put hard limits on attacking such that it is never viable to just go out in the open and attack for all you're worth.

[lazorbeamz]

Trissila, on 13 November 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

Oh, they nerfed the hell out of mediums.

It just didn't matter, because laser boats always have been and always will be heat limited, rather than cooldown limited. That's a natural consequence of a Mechwarrior/Battletech game that has usable cover features. You pop out, dump as much of your heat bar as you can into a single attack, and then duck back behind cover and wait to cool down. Heat, as a mechanic, exists to limit how much firepower you can put down range in a given unit time. And in any game where there is a set limit on how much attacking you can do per unit time, the optimal strategy will always be to unload your attacks, and then go defensive while you wait to be able to attack again.

Think about, say, a Street Fighter game where you were only allowed to perform X amount of attacks within Y frames. Whether these were single attacks or a string of attacks within a combo, there's a limit to how much attacking you can do. The optimal strategy would be to make small, non-committed pokes until you hit-confirm, then unload the most damaging combo that you can that is within the attack limit, and then evade/block until your attack limit resets.

Nerf lasers further if you like, but you won't change the fundamental nature of the game. People will just build out the next-most-effective poke-and-hide loadout and use that instead. If you'll notice, at no time has the meta been dominated by out-in-the-open brawling. It's been laser poking, or GaussPeeps poking, or poptarting, or some variation thereof: all variations on the same core strategy of dump-and-hide.

That's just what happens when you put hard limits on attacking such that it is never viable to just go out in the open and attack for all you're worth.

That is only because they havent nerfed poking enough at any point they probably like the hide and seek sneaky peaky. Fail to balance their game

They were like LOL look at that we give then autocannons with 4 dps thats huge. They couldnt figure that you can only use this dps if you are face hugging the opponent and he doesnt move. And that for 3 or 4 years of game development?

Edited by lazorbeamz, 13 November 2017 - 02:15 PM.

[Mole]

Trissila, on 13 November 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

Oh, they nerfed the hell out of mediums.

It just didn't matter, because laser boats always have been and always will be heat limited, rather than cooldown limited. That's a natural consequence of a Mechwarrior/Battletech game that has usable cover features. You pop out, dump as much of your heat bar as you can into a single attack, and then duck back behind cover and wait to cool down. Heat, as a mechanic, exists to limit how much firepower you can put down range in a given unit time. And in any game where there is a set limit on how much attacking you can do per unit time, the optimal strategy will always be to unload your attacks, and then go defensive while you wait to be able to attack again.

Think about, say, a Street Fighter game where you were only allowed to perform X amount of attacks within Y frames. Whether these were single attacks or a string of attacks within a combo, there's a limit to how much attacking you can do. The optimal strategy would be to make small, non-committed pokes until you hit-confirm, then unload the most damaging combo that you can that is within the attack limit, and then evade/block until your attack limit resets.

Nerf lasers further if you like, but you won't change the fundamental nature of the game. People will just build out the next-most-effective poke-and-hide loadout and use that instead. If you'll notice, at no time has the meta been dominated by out-in-the-open brawling. It's been laser poking, or GaussPeeps poking, or poptarting, or some variation thereof: all variations on the same core strategy of dump-and-hide.

That's just what happens when you put hard limits on attacking such that it is never viable to just go out in the open and attack for all you're worth.

Pretty much this. As I said in my first reply, you are never going to make this a game where you can ignore cover and just go brawl it up. Brawls happen frequently but even if you just straight up removed lasers from the game, then people would just switch to peekaboo builds using other weapon systems and you, as a brawler, will still get picked apart at range. The only thing you can do if you must insist upon brawling is be smart about choosing your targets.

[Kalimaster]

Lets buff things back a little. Return ballistic to 3x range. Ultra Auto Cannons actually work, etc. Hasn't this game been nerfed enough. This coming from a guy who has been here since beta.

[Steve Pryde]

Sorry but if I get close to a laservomit mech with my brawler mech it's basically dead.

But it would be interesting if PGI remove the extended range from weapons and how it will work out.

[davoodoo]

lazorbeamz, on 13 November 2017 - 02:13 PM, said:

That is only because they havent nerfed poking enough at any point they probably like the hide and seek sneaky peaky. Fail to balance their game

They were like LOL look at that we give then autocannons with 4 dps thats huge. They couldnt figure that you can only use this dps if you are face hugging the opponent and he doesnt move. And that for 3 or 4 years of game development?

They made maps for poking with plenty of cover.
They made lasers with duration to allow you time to shoot back at poking mechs
They given you nerfed dhs to ensure you cant pump alpha after alpha
They given you arty to flush out ppl with cover.

Idk, to me it looks like they understand that youll poke and balance around that...

[Mole]

Steve Pryde, on 13 November 2017 - 02:40 PM, said:

Sorry but if I get close to a laservomit mech with my brawler mech it's basically dead.

But it would be interesting if PGI remove the extended range from weapons and how it will work out.

Pretty much this. Unless I'm already heavily damaged any laser vomit 'mech I get close enough to bring a pile of SRMs or a UAC/20 or some other heavy-hitting brawler weapon to bear on is pretty much toast unless he's being backed up by his team mates, and if you're engaging more than one or two targets at a time in a brawl by yourself then I'm sorry to say that laser vomit being powerful is less of an issue than your lack of tactical prowess.

Edited by Mole, 13 November 2017 - 03:50 PM.

[panzer1b]

While i do agree that lazor vomit is stupidly dominant right now (alongside gauss if its clan side), there really is no way to make it nolonger the case without unnerfing both ballistics and the gauss+ppc combo.

The game (and any other games with no/limited HP regen/respawn) has ALWAYS been about trading effectively, and like it or not, the best way to do this is to have as much alfa strike as possible delived as precisely and quickly as possible, preferably with just 1 exposure. Unless PGI actually makes the heat cap much lower (to the point where you cant even fire 50 alfa strike without melting), we will always see some form of this concept, where the player will combine whatever weapons provide the maximum damage all able to be fired during minimal exposure time.

Another big thing is range, and unless ERLL/ERPPC/GRs get massively nerfed to uselessness, we will always see people using them. The thing is, there are 3 ways to trade favorably, outrange them, outalfa them, or outDPS them. You can prolly guess which of the 3 is the hardest to do since it more or less requires super short range (not always possible to close the gap), or a relatively slow target that can be hit multiple times in the same general area (outside of a direwhale or other "turret" build, nothing can be reliably focused at range with projectiles that dont go 2km/s). The other 2 are much easier, raneg being the most obvious one, but obviously limited by map choice. Alfa strike is the current best meta in random games, since it works on all maps but like 2, and can be built so that you do almost full dmg at 500m.

Anyways, as to why lasers have ALWAYS been a thing (i dont think they were EVER bad, just sometimes inferior to whatever meta was at that time) is the fact that they are hitscan AND very lightweight for what they do. Hitscan means they are very easy to use, but also that they remain very powerful in skilled hands since you can always (discounting hitreg bugs and lag) dump the vast majority of your damage exactly where you want to, and that it cannot be completely evaded by the enemy like ballistics or missiles, if you have LOS and are within range, laser is 100% guaranteed damage. That and well they are stupidly lightweight. All of my clam brawl mechs have swapped from UAC/LBX20 to 6+MPLs, since its better alfa strike, better rate of fire, and all pinpoint hitscan at longer effective range with the ONLY issue being the inability to fire indefenetely because of eventual overheat, albeit i still have more then enough firepower to kill/neuter at least 1 target if i start firing at optimal range and make all my shots count.

[Mcgral18]

DrSaphron, on 13 November 2017 - 01:42 PM, said:

If you don't like being on the reciving end of las-vom then play smart, be patient, and force the brawl when the time is right, and for the love of god STOP staring at the laser boats, learn to spread damage, and start carying a flamer or 2!

Get Gud Scumpug!!!

Nah, I'll just grab a Clam laservomit mech instead
That's the easier, and more effective, option


Why work harder?