105 replies to this topic

[Athom83]

Sigmar Sich, on 06 February 2018 - 11:20 AM, said:

I had an impression players are sick with clan nerfs, so i suggested an IS buff

But then if you buff IS, then clearly PGI is biased against clan and for IS because obviously IS is extremely OP and PGI does nothing but buff them... obviously .

[Brain Cancer]

FupDup, on 05 February 2018 - 06:47 PM, said:

To play devil's advocate, saying 12 Clan MGs = 6 IS MGs is not a completely equal comparison at all because the Clan MGs will need to spend more tonnage on ammo, more critslots on the MGs and ammo, and more hardpoints. Therefore, the 12 Clan MGs do in fact occupy more resources than the 6 IS MGs.

Except the Clanners have more hardpoints available. Straight up, Clanners can out-MG IS robots because they have more hardpoints to do so. That's why everyone's having a fit about little ol' dakkafish running around and BRRRRTING their robots into swiss cheese. There is no way to even make something compare to the -second- best MG boats in the Clan lineup, which are 8 each.

Nothing in the IS arsenal has more than 6B. We have multiple 7-8B options for Clanners, plus the 12B one. Then again, that's why I'm suggesting straight up doubling ROF for IS vs Clan and giving them the same range, COF, otherwise. You want to tweak it down a bit from there owing to needing twice the crit space, be my guest- but I figure the usual 7 vs. 14 spaces for Endo/Ferro makes up for that extra bulk in terms of balance.

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I'm not saying the current balance is fine, I'm saying that you need to make better comparisons.

What is at most a 6 (and for smaller groups of MGs, four or less) crit difference doesn't tweak me too much. Clantech is generally more compact in practice, so getting something back in this instance isn't making me feel all "life is unfair" here.

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Personally I would rather find an "asymmetrical" solution to MGs and other Clan vs. IS balance rather than "heavy thing is superior, light thing is inferior" because that's boring and uninspiring as hell (also, always making heavy guns clearly superior with no drawback other than tonnage will indirectly impact weight class balancing because obviously certain mechs can carry heavier guns than others).

Paul's stated goal is to make things as 1:1 as possible. MGs are probably the simplest example of that balance to achieve, as it's just XML files.

If you can't balance that, how do you expect PGI to balance Clantech, ever?

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For example, maybe one faction's MGs can have longer range while the other gets more DPS. Maybe one faction can have better crit damage but worse anti-armor. If we're really crazy, one faction could have burst-fire MGs that are better for hit-and-run alphas but worse in sustained combat. Etc. You know, creative things.

"Creative" fixing gets you things like broken jump jets and useless SPLs. I want as close to parity as we can reasonably get in a straightforward manner. THEN, you can talk about creative variance.

[Brain Cancer]

Khobai, on 06 February 2018 - 11:01 AM, said:

giving machine guns ghost heat limit of 8 is the easiest fix

give them just enough ghost heat to make it so you cant fire 8-12 machine guns indefinitely

that doesnt affect IS at all, it only affects clan machine gun boats

This is nerfing, and it straight up kicks the Piranha in the junk, along with what made the MLX actually semi-viable . As I said at the start- screw nerfs. Give the IS the capacity to use the same level of firepower if they apply the same amount of tonnage.

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no the easiest way is to put a ghost heat limit on clan machine guns since clans can boat machine guns in higher quantities than IS.

IS machine guns are already stronger than clan machine guns, they dont need to be buffed more

Two Clan MGs > one IS MG right now. This is literally the simplest Clan vs IS weapon issue to balance MWO offers.

Make all MGs of a given type (light, standard, heavy) have the same reach, cone of fire, etc etc. The only difference you have to make is IS ROF = Clan ROF x2. Clanner lights have more space, so losing 4-6 crits vs. an IS light is actually quite reasonable, given they HAVE more to begin with in all but a few cases.

The elusive Paul goal, for once, is a simple thing to achieve. No complex GH or whatever required. It even means IS robots with very few B slots have a viable light-weight option to use as heat-free secondary guns.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Brain Cancer, on 06 February 2018 - 04:38 PM, said:

As I said at the start- screw nerfs. Give the IS the capacity to use the same level of firepower if they apply the same amount of tonnage.

I certainly can get behind the general idea ... but you are aware that the IS doesn't have the same damage capability if they apply the same amount of tonnage with other (weapon) systems either!? You're asking for the creation of a precedence that would ultimately demand a general refactoring of all systems ... to a point where the game is bound to lose the already thin connection to "Battletech". I'm not sure whether this game can survive the loss of larger parts of its core fan crowd who are more than likely to get offended by such changes.

Brain Cancer, on 06 February 2018 - 04:38 PM, said:

Two Clan MGs > one IS MG right now. This is literally the simplest Clan vs IS weapon issue to balance MWO offers.

What exactly makes that an "issue" in the first place?

Now that the initial Piranha hype has worn off: How often do you actually see one of those "fearsome" MG-boats? As someone who has been exclusively using his 6-mg "Crit-Lynx" for the past 4 months prior to the Piranha release and now the Pir 1 since its release I can say: Outside that 1 week after release I haven't come across a significantly larger number of either mg boat when compared to other light mechs.

So to me it looks like the "issue" is more of a result of taking an isolated look at the mg numbers but rather the context in which they are used (or rather not used).

Brain Cancer, on 06 February 2018 - 04:38 PM, said:

Make all MGs of a given type (light, standard, heavy) have the same reach, cone of fire, etc etc. The only difference you have to make is IS ROF = Clan ROF x2. Clanner lights have more space, so losing 4-6 crits vs. an IS light is actually quite reasonable, given they HAVE more to begin with in all but a few cases.

And as a result people then start to cry about the Ember with its then equivalent of 10 mgs in a mere 4 crit slots and 2t of weight ... combined with superior armor and still decent movement rates in comparison to the Piranha/Lynx .

That aside you'd also double the IS effectiveness in crit seeking in all builds that cannot boat mgs in the first place: IS mech with two ballistics dedicated to mg off weaponry turns into a 4 mg mech where a clan counterpart would still only have 2 mgs. Doesn't sound "balanced" to me either.

Brain Cancer, on 06 February 2018 - 04:38 PM, said:

The elusive Paul goal, for once, is a simple thing to achieve. No complex GH or whatever required. It even means IS robots with very few B slots have a viable light-weight option to use as heat-free secondary guns.

Whereas the Clan robots wouldn't get the same benefit ... so the goal remains elusive

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 07 February 2018 - 02:47 AM.

[R Valentine]

Khobai, on 06 February 2018 - 11:01 AM, said:

giving machine guns ghost heat limit of 8 is the easiest fix

give them just enough ghost heat to make it so you cant fire 8-12 machine guns indefinitely

that doesnt affect IS at all, it only affects clan machine gun boats

8? Why 8? What IS mech can even mount 8 machine guns? It makes ZERO sense to have a GH limit that IS can't even reach, especially since clan MGs weigh half much, shoot further, yadda yadda because clan MUST be better for lore reasons(and mech pack sales). MGs shouldn't be GH capped. They need to fire link capped like gauss rifles are. You CANNOT PHYSICALLY FIRE more than 6 of them. Period. Boom, problem solved.

If you MUST have 8 as the limit, then IS MGs have to be absolutely superior to clan MGs to absorb the difference. I hate the ghost spread idea because you have to be at practically point blank range to even use MGs, so in order to make ghost spread even work it has to be massive. I'd much rather just have IS MGs do much better damage. You can nerf ammo per ton accordingly, but having clan mechs be the only mechs where you can viably boat machine guns has got to come to an end.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Here's what just occured to me. So OP wants 12-machinegun IS mech or to buff all machineguns because clans got piranhas now.

That seems to be legit, BUT. There are also unkillable "pocket mediums" like the urbanmech and the wolfhound. Sooo, why noone's asking for a clan wolfhound?

[Bud Crue]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 10:55 AM, said:

Sooo, why noone's asking for a clan wolfhound?

1) Because the Wolfhound is subsidized by massive armor quirks to compensate for its bad hit boxes and oversized profile. No one wants mechs so crappy that they must have armor quirks to be viable. Moreover there is no need for this on the Clan side because there is a mech called the Arctic Cheetah that fills the same roles but with JJ, smaller profile and superior hitboxes. So in a sense the clans already have their “wolfhound” but its just better than the IS’s.

2) Because out of all the IS lights the Wolfhound is not played by IS because it is inherently super duper good, it is played because it is the best option in a field of worse options.

Just my two cents. Hell if I could have a Spider with 6E hardpoints with a profile similar to a Cheetah you’d never see me run a Wolfhound again.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Bud Crue, on 07 February 2018 - 11:11 AM, said:

1) Because the Wolfhound is subsidized by massive armor quirks to compensate for its bad hit boxes and oversized profile. No one wants mechs so crappy that they must have armor quirks to be viable.

Does urbanmech "is subsidized by massive armor quirks to compensate for its bad hit boxes and oversized profile" too? Must be true.

[Khobai]

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8? Why 8? What IS mech can even mount 8 machine guns? It makes ZERO sense to have a GH limit that IS can't even reach, especially since clan MGs weigh half much, shoot further,

clan machine guns dont shoot farther. stop spreading fake news.

IS machine guns do however have better crit multiplier, better spread, and better crit health though. true story. Get your facts straight before you start blabbering about how inferior IS tech is, even when its actually stronger.

IS machine guns are stronger than clan machine guns, enough to make up 0.25 tons. they dont need more buffs.


the imbalance isnt that IS machine guns are weaker, because as weve already established theyre actually stronger, the imbalance lies with the fact that clans can take 8+ machine guns and IS cant. so ghost heating clan machine guns helps balance that. it effectively puts diminishing returns on the extra hardpoints clans get that IS dont.

because a 12 mg IS mech isnt happening, unless PGI completely makes up some new mech.

Edited by Khobai, 07 February 2018 - 11:51 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

Does urbanmech "is subsidized by massive armor quirks to compensate for its bad hit boxes and oversized profile" too? Must be true.

No. Urban mech is provided with its armor quirks to offset its slow base speed and limited and mixed number of hardpoints. Are those armor quirks excessive? Perhaps. But that is your answer. Think of it like a Cougar: there is nothing on the IS side at 35 tons that can match that things alpha potential, just like there is nothing on the Clan side the plays like an Urby.
Cest la.

[Zergling]

This is a totally awesome and logical idea that would drastically increase my enjoyment of the game while increasing build diversity.

Therefore I am confident it will never happen, because PGI doesn't make awesome and logical changes like this.

Edited by Zergling, 07 February 2018 - 11:42 AM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Bud Crue, on 07 February 2018 - 11:41 AM, said:

Think of it like a Cougar: there is nothing on the IS side at 35 tons that can match that things alpha potential, just like there is nothing on the Clan side the plays like an Urby.
Cest la.

Well if that is cest la vie, and its ok for one side to have something which other dont have, then IS MGs dont need buffs for it will make one side having both things and the other is left with only one thing. And that will surely ruin the balance in the force.

[R Valentine]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 10:55 AM, said:

Here's what just occured to me. So OP wants 12-machinegun IS mech or to buff all machineguns because clans got piranhas now.

That seems to be legit, BUT. There are also unkillable "pocket mediums" like the urbanmech and the wolfhound. Sooo, why noone's asking for a clan wolfhound?

Unkillable urbie? All the guns are on the arm, and light arms fall off when anything looks at them funny. It might take forever to kill, but it's a breeze to disarm.

[Bud Crue]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 11:55 AM, said:

Well if that is cest la vie, and its ok for one side to have something which other dont have, then IS MGs dont need buffs for it will make one side having both things and the other is left with only one thing. And that will surely ruin the balance in the force.

Dude, there are dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of aspects in this game that one side has that the other doesn’t. And that in and of itself is fine, in fact it is ideal, if there is a semblance of balanced play.

Consider: back in November when PGI first started the trend of structure/armor flips on IS under performers ike the Panther and Wolfhound, and Victor and Atlas, etc. they weren’t doing that because the Clans had mechs that had OP armor quirks for god sakes. No, they were giving some mechs on one side something that no mechs on the other side had in order to give IS players a reason...any reason... to play these crappy IS mechs. If they would have applied your logic, they simply should have eliminated all IS mechs in question with clan mechs of equal weight and vice versa. That’s silly, no?

Balance is not about ensuring that one side has the exact same thing that the other side has, but that both sides are balanced overall with analogs or equivalents.

In the case of MGs, the issue is as Khobai has indicated: the MGs one each side have distinguishing features, in fact the IS are by the numbers better but heavier. But the imbalance is caused by one side having something that has no analog on the other (e.g. mechs that can boat more than 6 MGs). No one -except apparently folks like you- looks at the Urby and thinks “IS OP! There is no Clan counter to an Urby!” Because in fact there are lots of things that are different but equal to an Urby (any Urby) on the clan side. So too, to a Wolfhound and many other IS mechs, builds and play styles as we all know. But there is no direct or indirect analog on the IS side to a MG boating Cheetah, Piranha or Crit Lynx. That is the issue at hand, to find a way working with what we have (like with PGI’s structure/armor flipping process of buffing IS under performers) to either mitigate the lack of an analog on the IS side or to compensate for it.

Edited by Bud Crue, 07 February 2018 - 12:22 PM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Kiran Yagami, on 07 February 2018 - 12:00 PM, said:

Unkillable urbie? All the guns are on the arm, and light arms fall off when anything looks at them funny. It might take forever to kill, but it's a breeze to disarm.

Ok, no problem. It wont be a porblem if we had a similarly quirked and sized clan mech then, right?

[Jay Leon Hart]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 12:18 PM, said:

Ok, no problem. It wont be a porblem if we had a similarly quirked and sized clan mech then, right?

With an IS XL? Sure!

[Nema Nabojiv]

Bud Crue, on 07 February 2018 - 12:18 PM, said:

But there is no direct or indirect analog on the IS side to a MG boating Cheetah, Piranha or Crit Lynx. That is the issue at hand, to find a way working with what we have (like with PGI’s structure/armor flipping process of buffing IS under performers) to either mitigate the lack of an analog on the IS side or to compensate for it.

So, let me get this right.

There is no direct or indirect analog to the piranha in IS. And that is the issue at hand. Correct?
There is no direct or indirect analog to the urbie in clans. And that is fine. Correct?

A see a tiny little flaw in this logic.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Khobai, on 07 February 2018 - 11:36 AM, said:

IS machine guns are stronger than clan machine guns, enough to make up 0.25 tons. they dont need more buffs.

- Double IS MG RoF
- Revert Clan MG spread nerfs
- Normalise Crit %
- Normalise MG component HP

Done.

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 12:22 PM, said:

So, let me get this right.

There is no direct or indirect analog to the piranha in IS. And that is the issue at hand. Correct?
There is no direct or indirect analog to the urbie in clans. And that is fine. Correct?

A see a tiny little flaw in this logic.

No, you missed part of it.

Urbanmech - exchanges speed for durability
Cougar - exchanges speed for firepower

Indirect analogues

Piranha - exchanges (???) for firepower
(???) - exchanges (???) for (???)

No indirect analogue

[0Jiggs0]

Jay Leon Hart, on 07 February 2018 - 12:26 PM, said:

- Double IS MG RoF
- Revert Clan MG spread nerfs
- Normalise Crit %
- Normalise MG component HP

Done.

Sounds good to me. Ship it.

[Bud Crue]

Nema Nabojiv, on 07 February 2018 - 12:22 PM, said:

So, let me get this right.

There is no direct or indirect analog to the piranha in IS. And that is the issue at hand. Correct?
There is no direct or indirect analog to the urbie in clans. And that is fine. Correct?

A see a tiny little flaw in this logic.

Sigh.

I get that you are trying to make some sort of equivelance between the clan not having an Urby and the IS not having a Piranha. But the issues are different.

One, there ARE lots of analogs to the Urby. I’ve already numbed 2. A well played Cheetah is just as tanky but not due to armor quirks. A well played Cougar kills it with a 60 point alpha before the Urby can even close.

But to keep focusing on chassis (as opposed to the more complex issue of specific weapons on specific chassis which you are hell bent on ignoring): what on the IS side can get in and finish off a mech or mechs as quickly as a a MG boating Crit Lynx, Cheetah or Pirahna can? Back in the day I would have said an Oxide or Huggin or even a Spider or Commando but with their quirks being what they are now, I just don’t think so.