347 replies to this topic

[Stinger554]

Rusharn, on 08 June 2018 - 01:59 PM, said:

I don't think there should be any changes to the CERML as it is the mainstay clan weapon. The damage reduction is a direct hit to almost every Clan chassis. I would prefer to see the effect of the other changes first using the CERML as the control to see how the changes effect game play. I think shell reduction counts on the Ultra auto cannons is a good thing, as hit reg is a big issue with the UCA's and anything that reduces strain on the servers is good for all players. I think the IS AC20 should have the ghost heat limit increased from 2 to 3. Other wise I am on board with trying the changes.

Counter-point because it is the mainstay weapon it needs adjustment. Especially in consideration to IS ERML and laser vom being stupid strong right now. Personally would have dropped damage to 6 instead of 6.5 more impact because .5 doesn't really do very much.

[Eisenhorne]

Kiran Yagami, on 08 June 2018 - 03:23 PM, said:

Why lower the cLPL to 11 damage? Then it's equal to the ISLPL. 12 is fine. Leave it that way. It hardly gets used as is.

It's not equal to the IS LPL then... it has a SIGNIFICANTLY longer range.

[PocketYoda]

Nerfing LBX is like destroying the only real weapon usable in a high ping situation.. Not a good idea..

[FupDup]

Eisenhorne, on 08 June 2018 - 03:40 PM, said:

It's not equal to the IS LPL then... it has a SIGNIFICANTLY longer range.

And more heat, longer duration, longer cooldown. They're pretty much different roles really, rather than two guns competing for the same bracket.

[Tarogato]

Asym, on 08 June 2018 - 05:04 AM, said:

When I started playing MWO in Feb 2017, I was recruited to play IDF mechs... Missiles, pre-skill tree were sufficiently dangerous to have a dedicated IDF weapon specialist back then.
[...]
What I could do 14 months ago is impossible today.....

This spreadsheet goes back 15 months and includes every balance change in each month, plus links to the patch notes if you think we might have missed anything.

https://docs.google....44s8/edit#gid=0


Tell us what you could do 14 months ago that is impossible today. What changed?

- Artemis nerf did not affect indirect fire, Artemis only applies to direct fire LRMs
- LRM5 heat was nerfed slightly
- LRM5 spread was nerfed slightly
- All LRMs received 19% velocity buff

Quote

What took 250 missiles now takes 400+ missiles...

That is by your estimation a 60% reduction in the effectiveness of LRMs.

The only thing that could have affected LRMs like this over the past year has been the introduction of Skill Tree, which brought with it the Survival Tree. The Survival Tree makes mechs around 20-25% tankier, but only for the people who max out the Survival Tree. That cannot result in a lost effectiveness of 60% in LRMs. Furthermore, this affected every other weapon in the game as well, not just LRMs.

There of course was the nerf to lock-on retention radius, but that didn't really affect LRMs, it just made Streaks slightly less ezmode against lights. Sure, it's now more difficult to manually re-arc your LRMs, but that has very limited applications and IS LRMs can hardly even do it at all anyways. This change also cannot account for a whopping 60% loss in LRM effectiveness.


So what was it? What has changed?

[VitriolicViolet]

i think these are all good changes, they should be implemented. the only thing i would adjust is further decreasing SRM2 cooldown (clan and IS) otherwise all good. the LB20 changes i think are very necessary, theres only 3 mechs i use it on currently.

To all the people saying they havent done enough because they didnt touch ferro or DHS or XLs its because there would be no point in mentioning them. Too many people seem to think that PGI is willing to do much if anything. They simply wont do things like that, too much effort. It makes sense to propose ideas that can be changed/added with minimal effort by PGI as that is all they do themselves.

The trolls here dont help either. Nameless isnt taking any of this seriously ('i only care about what PGI want' lol) and Asym is being Asym. not that i need to explain as he already knows this but you cant make LRMs viable at high levels due to A the fact PGI likely wont go there as its to hard (see above) and B if they become viable at highlevel play it will ruin the lower teirs.

[LordNothing]

lazorbeamz, on 08 June 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

AC5 is only used when boated on an anihilator. ANd even then this requires you to take std engine with 40 kmh speed lol. So yes right now ac5 and CAC 5 are incredibly niche. But they can be used on 100 ton ballistic boats with 6 ballistic hardpoints. Because if you boat ac2 you lose on some DPS. And 100 tons allows you to boat ac5 just barely.

there are a few other mechs that can boat ac5s pretty well. the is version does have a low tonnage niche that my urbies and light mediums dont mind. the cac5 is still a superior weapon but it just doesnt really have that much of a niche there. i run a uac10 on my adder because it can with all the clan tech not eating all my tonnage and slots. theres really no reason to take the cac5 for the light/light medium niche, and the cac2 is the superior choice for boating (points at ultraviolet). single shot (not that i dont love my burst guns), extreme range, and all that crit.

Edited by LordNothing, 08 June 2018 - 06:30 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Tarogato, on 07 June 2018 - 10:04 PM, said:

You might be right, but I don't see this as a good justification to nerf cUACs, as was suggested.

Though, the whole matter (cAC buff via shell-count versus velocity) is still up for debate. Anything else you can provide in terms of opinion/experience/justification is welcome.

In reading comments (from you, Metachanic, and everybody else) in this thread, the Outreach thread I think there is some conflating of weapon problems vs. mech problems going on. Take, for example, statements about IS LB-X overperforming versus Clan LB-X: this simply cannot be. There is nothing about IS LB-X that would cause this to be except for 3x max range, but LB-X aren't being used at 700+ meters. What this is really about is the quirks (and, in the case of CP-S vs. KDK-3, agility) on the 'Mechs they are mounted on. And even then, the CP-S and KDK-3 aren't really that far apart.

Same deal with cUAC/20 vs. IS UAC/20. Like I told Metachanic on HPG, regardless of what you do to the cUAC/20 there is really no reason to use it because it results in a build with inferior everything, including heat management, to a pure laser build thanks to Clan XL, laser, and DHS resource efficiency. And, mind you, it's not like anything is using the IS UAC/20, either, hence why I scratch my head at the Clan matching the IS one for shell count while retaining the dramatically better everything else in exchange for a tiny decrease to jam DPS.

Moving on, when it comes to cAC, it's really the fact that they serve no useful function. Want consistent DPS? Just don't double-tap the Ultra, and save yourself the slots. I like the increased velocity idea with compensatory cooldown reductions (to account for volley duration) over the single-shot idea; if it doesn't work, we can always try the single shot.

[El Bandito]

Khobai, on 08 June 2018 - 12:23 PM, said:

not really. because CAC are useless.

CUAC do more dps and take up less crits.

the only advantage CAC get is less heat, but that advantage is largely countered by the fact you can take more DHS using CUAC because they take up less crit slots.

One more advantage CAC enjoys over that of CUAC is low GH penalty. Which is why my Solaris KDK-3 with quad CAC10 performs so well. If only MCII-B did not have LAA, I woulda slapped in quad CAC10s as well.

Edited by El Bandito, 08 June 2018 - 07:43 PM.

[Tarogato]

Khobai, on 07 June 2018 - 09:50 PM, said:

the problem is hardpoints.

so give IS mechs more hardpoints.

dont try to bandaid around the actual issue. thats no different from what PGI does.

if IS mgs are inferior because IS lack hardpoints, than suggest IS mechs get more hardpoints. Dont try to balance IS mgs in an unnatural way that sidesteps the real problem.

This has multiple issues:

1. This doesn't solve the problem that IS MGs still weigh literally twice as much as Clan.

2. PGI then needs to find places to actually put the weapons on the mech. May require some model work.

3. Inconsistent inflation between variants. If for instance all Firestarters get 8 hardpoints, why should the FS9-E and FS9-FS get 10 or 12?

4. Inconsistent inflation between factions. If IS gets their ballistic hardpoints inflated by double, why shouldn't clan?

5. Inconsistent with lore. Fact of the matter is, Clans boat more machine guns, more often.


To me, it makes a lot more sense to make IS machine guns better, than it does to pull a lot of strings just to allow IS to mount more of their worse machine guns.

Khobai, on 07 June 2018 - 09:50 PM, said:

6 CERML at 6 damage is still better than 6 ISERML at 5 damage even at +1 damage clans still maintain their damage advantage. its just 20% instead of a ridiculous 40%. we could even get rid of some of the over-the-top IS laser quirks then. because IS wouldnt need as many quirks to try and make up for a 40% damage gap anymore.

This is taking a step toward symmetrical balance though. You're making the cERML more similar to the ERML, instead of differentiating it.

Yes, the change suggested in the proposal also does this, albeit to a lesser degree. I'd rather not do this either. My perfect solution to all of this is to increase the burn duration on cERML and change nothing else. But nobody else seems to want to accept this solution. Instead they'd rather ditch assymetrical faction balance...

MischiefSC, on 07 June 2018 - 11:53 PM, said:

I'm also going to echo the bits about imbalance on engines, DHS/Endo/FF. Comparing weapon to weapon stats is great but in practice the Clans are going to have better cooling, more tonnage and more space and often more hardpoints to use it all with. If you removed Clan weapons entirely and just made it all IS weapons the Clan mechs would generally still be stronger because CDHS/CXL/CEndo/CFF.

This is just my personal opinion:

I prefer things the way they are. I like how Clan engines, DHS, Endo, and Ferro are better. The result is that the mechs are built differently. So IS must be stronger in different areas, such as durability, or the manner in which their weapons deal damage (duration, spread, velocity, shellcount, etc) It's a fundamentally different philosophy between the factions. It would be a shame to lose this by changing the properties of these fundamental equipment.

Nema Nabojiv, on 08 June 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

There are nerfs to crucial clan weapons and buffs to irrelevant ones. 100 m/s CAC5 velocity? 0.20 LB5X spread? Yay! So important, much balance.

Overall the whole list consists of insufficient buffs to bad weapons, and nerfs to few good ones. I dont see how's that different from what Chris does, and Chris is notoriously horribad at his job.

You think it's not important to buff weapons that are so useless that they aren't used? You'd rather they remain useless?

And yes, a lot of these buffs to bad weapons may be insufficient. But what's the alternative, ask for all of the buff just to have Chris and Paul look at it and say, "What if that's too much... no, we're not going to do that. Thanks for trying."

This is about suggesting incrementally stepped improvement, not necessarily outright instantly fixing everything.

[TLBFestus]

So sorry to hear you people wasted all that time making considered, thoughtful recommendations that will not survive PGI and Russ Bullocks egos.

Thanks for trying.

[Tarogato]

Dragonporn, on 08 June 2018 - 06:05 AM, said:

I don't generally agree with any buffs to LBX family, aside from *maybe* 5s. This weapon system is so brutally overpowered, that giving it even one small buff will force everyone to boat it like laser vomit these days. Leave it as it is, or even nerf it to hell.

Dragonporn, meet dwwolf.

dwwolf, on 07 June 2018 - 11:26 PM, said:

LBX cannons will remain useless.
The only fix is to give them a fixed spread that doesnt balloon.

dwwolf, meet Dragonporn.






... FIGHT!

[Khobai]

Tarogato, on 08 June 2018 - 08:31 PM, said:

1. This doesn't solve the problem that IS MGs still weigh literally twice as much as Clan.

They weigh 0.25 tons more.

They get better spread, better crit multiplier, better crit health, etc...

What IS MGs get more than makes up for their extra .25 tons

Again the problem is the lack of hardpoints on IS mechs. IS mechs need more hardpoints.

This isnt a weapon balance problem. Its a mech balance problem.

Tarogato, on 08 June 2018 - 08:31 PM, said:

4. Inconsistent inflation between factions. If IS gets their ballistic hardpoints inflated by double, why shouldn't clan?

Simple. Because clans dont need more hardpoints.

And its not inconsistent inflation to give IS the same number of hardpoints as Clans. Thats common sense.

It was inconsistent inflation to give clans more hardpoints than IS in the first place. This is correcting that mistake.

Tarogato, on 08 June 2018 - 08:31 PM, said:

5. Inconsistent with lore. Fact of the matter is, Clans boat more machine guns, more often.

Clans are also unbalanced in battletech. So it seems like ignoring lore in favor of balance is prudent.

In the interest of balancing MWO, lore should be ignored, and IS mechs should get more hardpoints.

MischiefSC, on 07 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:

I'm also going to echo the bits about imbalance on engines, DHS/Endo/FF. Comparing weapon to weapon stats is great but in practice the Clans are going to have better cooling, more tonnage and more space and often more hardpoints to use it all with. If you removed Clan weapons entirely and just made it all IS weapons the Clan mechs would generally still be stronger because CDHS/CXL/CEndo/CFF.

^ this.

the techbase fundamentals need to be balanced before anything else.

Tarogato, on 08 June 2018 - 08:31 PM, said:

This is just my personal opinion:

I prefer things the way they are. I like how Clan engines, DHS, Endo, and Ferro are better. The result is that the mechs are built differently. So IS must be stronger in different areas, such as durability, or the manner in which their weapons deal damage (duration, spread, velocity, shellcount, etc) It's a fundamentally different philosophy between the factions. It would be a shame to lose this by changing the properties of these fundamental equipment.

that's what we already have now. and it obviously doesnt result in a balanced game.

engines, heatsinks and endo/ferro need to be balanced first before anything else. weapon balance comes after. the game will never be balanced as long as the techbase fundamentals remain imbalanced.

and no one wants to get rid of asymmetrical balance. simply to make the two tech bases equal but different. rather than clan tech being outright superior, and IS constantly needing to play catchup with quirks, and not quite getting there...

-ISDHS should ALL be true double heatsinks because they take up more crit slots than clan DHS.
-ISXL should survive side torso destruction and LFE and STD should both get corresponding buffs
-ISFF and ISEndo should get armor/structure buffs because they take up twice as many crit slots.
-all IS quirks should be reevaluated based on the above

Tarogato, on 08 June 2018 - 08:31 PM, said:

This is taking a step toward symmetrical balance though. You're making the cERML more similar to the ERML, instead of differentiating it.

not really. 20% more damage and 10% more range with longer beam duration/cooldown and more heat is still a considerable difference compared to the ISERML.

there is no reason the CERML needs to do 40% more damage. that is excessive. and it contributes heavily to the laser vomit epidemic that currently plagues the game. It also means IS have to have crazy laser quirks to balance out that 40% damage gap; by reducing the absurd damage gap we can also get rid of some of those equally absurd quirks on the IS side.

again 6 damage is where CERML should be.

It also fits the same pattern of the ISERML doing 1 less damage than ISMPL. At 6 damage, CERML would do 1 less damage than CMPL. Even more reason it should be at 6 damage.

Edited by Khobai, 08 June 2018 - 10:09 PM.

[Tarogato]

Quandoo, on 08 June 2018 - 06:13 AM, said:

I completly disagree. On few weapons thoughts are not going far enough.
Calling Clan AC useless is nonsense.

Then get a KDK-3, put 4xAC10 + 4 medium lasers and ignore ghost heat while alpha striking. See what you get. Repeat with UAC instead of AC. I bet you kill faster with ACs - less heat, less spread, optimized cooldown.

For how much they spread damage, you are better off with 4x cLB10 which at least deal an extra 20% crit damage on average.

If you are going to sit and trade, I'd still rather the 4x cUAC10 and put up with the 0.5s delay to get the 13% more average burst. (and even without the 4x cERML, the 4x cUAC10 still deals an average alpha of about 73, versus the 68 of the cAC10 build.)

The cAC10's need something more to entice me to mount them.

Quote

I would say most of those suggestions come from static gameplay. And when I see those people play ingame, I hardly see them to ever split up in lances, set traps or surround. Fix that first, then go for balancing.

You can't just fix how people play the game.

How people play the game is a product of how the game is balanced. It it is because things like mid-range laservomit are strong that the metagame is static rangey-pokey nascar. It is because of things like brawl not being strong enough that people would rather just sit back and poke instead of charging in and trying to smash in faces. Tweak the weapons, and then there is a hope in the world that player behaviour may adapt. But if you change nothing first, then players will continue to do what they are encouraged to do by the current state of weapons in the game.

[Khobai]

Given that CACs are entirely made up weapons to begin with, theres no reason PGI cant reduce the number of crit slots they take up by -1, so they at least arnt bulkier than CUACs. That doesnt violate canon crit slot values because they dont technically exist in battletech.

And then just make them single shot but with a longer cooldown and higher heat than ISACs. And both ISACs and CACs should have better range and velocity than their UAC counterparts.

Edited by Khobai, 08 June 2018 - 10:36 PM.

[Tarogato]

Khobai, on 08 June 2018 - 09:21 PM, said:

What IS MGs get more than makes up for their extra .25 tons

Again the problem is the lack of hardpoints on IS mechs. IS mechs need more hardpoints.

This isnt a weapon balance problem. Its a mech balance problem.

Okay. But you're going to have to be the one to convince PGI that their modelers need to add new hardpoints to all of their IS MG mechs (of which there are between 10 and 13 chassis, depending on how you qualify them).

Good luck with that.

In the meantime, we're going to stick with an actual realistic solution of buffing what we have.



"But what if new IS mechs come along with more hardpoints?"

There won't. The Flea is the most we get. Here is every other remaining mech we could ever get in MWO under 60 tons that could boat MGs:

20ton - LCT-5T - 6MG
30ton - RZK-9S - 4MG
30ton - JVN-11F - 6MG
35ton - RVN-SR - 4MG
40ton - SNT-04 - 4MG
50ton - BJ2-O - 6MG
55ton - MS1-OE - 8MG

Non-plausible:
UCU-F4 - 8MG (way outside of timeline)
SCP-1N "Rubinsky" - 12MG (mixed IS and Clan tech, also quadruped)

Quote

It was inconsistent inflation to give clans more hardpoints than IS in the first place. This is correcting that mistake.

Clan weren't inflated. They kept their stock MG hardpoints.

Quote

Clans are also unbalanced in battletech. So it seems like ignoring lore in favor of balance is prudent.

Battletech didn't have laser durations, spread values, shell-counts, or projectile velocities. These are very powerful tuning variables that we have available in MWO that weren't available in Tabletop. Furthermore, Tabletop didn't have the freedom to frequently tune damage, heat, and range values. In MWO, we do. We have all the tools available to us to achieve greater balance, it's only through incompetence that it hasn't been achieved.

Quote

that's what we already have now. and it obviously doesnt result in a balanced game.

engines, heatsinks and endo/ferro need to be balanced first before anything else. weapon balance comes after. the game will never be balanced as long as the techbase fundamentals remain imbalanced.

And the distinctions between the factions starts to become meaningless once engines, heatsinks, endo, and ferro are equalised. Like I said, it's removing one of the fundamental differing principles between the two.

It doesn't result in a balanced game because PGI isn't doing a good job of it. IS could be made literally overpowered solely by weapon tweaks. Easily. There is near-infinite resolution to the tweaks that can be made to impact inter-faction balance on just weapons alone. You don't need to uproot fundamental principles of the techbases in the game in order to accomplish this.

Edited by Tarogato, 08 June 2018 - 10:51 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

"But what if new IS mechs come along with more hardpoints?"

there is no reason PGI cant simply add more hardpoints to the IS mechs that need them.

if lore is keeping IS mechs oppressed with hardpoint deficiency then we probably should abandon lore.

Quote

Clan weren't given more hardpoints than IS. Clan were given omnimechs.

I dont understand your flawed logic. If Omnimechs get more hardpoints then clans were given more hardpoints. Besides clan battlemechs often get more hardpoints than their IS counterparts too.

It doesnt matter how clans get more hardpoints, what matters is the fact they have more, and its not balanced.

IS mechs need more hardpoints to balance things out.

Quote

Okay. But you're going to have to be the one to convince PGI that their modelers need to add new hardpoints to all of their IS MG mechs (of which there are between 10 and 13 chassis, depending on how you qualify them).

huh? clans dont have 10-13 chassis that can boat 8+ machine guns.

IS only needs the same amount of machine gun boats that clans have. thats like 2-3 chassis at most.

You give IS 2-3 mechs that can boat 8-12 machine guns and that balances IS MGs fine.

Quote

It doesn't result in a balanced game because PGI isn't doing a good job of it. IS could be made literally overpowered solely by weapon tweaks. Easily. There is near-infinite resolution to the tweaks that can be made to impact inter-faction balance on just weapons alone. You don't need to uproot fundamental principles of the techbases in the game in order to accomplish this.

and thats a bad way to balance because it results in a lopsided game.

its the same principle behind why IS superquirks are bad. they create lopsidedness.

you dont overbuff IS weapons to compensate for IS engines, heatsinks, FF/ES, and hardpoints sucking. You buff IS engines, heatsinks, and FF/ES instead. And you give IS mechs more hardpoints. Thats the logical way to balance things.

And its not uprooting the fundamentals of the game. Because the fundamentals were always shaky and were never balanced properly to begin with. The fundamentals favored clans the moment clans were added to the game and still favor them. Clans were poorly implemented from day 1.

Weapon balance alone is not gonna fix everything thats wrong with MWO. The game has balance problems in virtually every aspect of its design... they all need to be addressed in a logical order. And weapon balance is not the first thing on that list. Balancing the core techbases and updating all the hardpoints on IS mechs should come first.

Edited by Khobai, 08 June 2018 - 11:14 PM.

[El Bandito]

Tarogato, on 08 June 2018 - 10:45 PM, said:

And the distinctions between the factions starts to become meaningless once engines, heatsinks, endo, and ferro are equalised. Like I said, it's removing one of the fundamental differing principles between the two.

It doesn't result in a balanced game because PGI isn't doing a good job of it. IS could be made literally overpowered solely by weapon tweaks. Easily. There is near-infinite resolution to the tweaks that can be made to impact inter-faction balance on just weapons alone. You don't need to uproot fundamental principles of the techbases in the game in order to accomplish this.

This is where I disagree. The lack of balance between faction tech, and the over usage of quirk crutches had resulted in Solaris divisions mostly getting dominated by IS mechs. Base tech balance is indeed a solid ground to start, before weapons. It will even make weapon balancing easier, and helps to reduce the inflation of quirks.

Of course, you did a good job of thinking things through in terms of weapon balancing, but if you do not take tech balance seriously, sooner or later another perfect storm of a mech will arrive and upset everything you have done. I'm just thinking of long term solution.

And again, "equal" does not have to mean "same".

Edited by El Bandito, 08 June 2018 - 11:16 PM.

[Tarogato]

Khobai, on 08 June 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

huh? clans dont have 10-13 chassis that can boat 8+ machine guns.

IS only needs the same amount of machine gun boats that clans have. thats like 2-3 chassis at most.

So which 2-3 chassis are the ones that allowed to be viable with MGs while the rest must continue to wallow in uselessness?

Quote

you dont buff IS weapons to compensate for IS engines, heatsinks, and FF/ES sucking. You buff IS engines, heatsinks, and FF/ES instead.

You say earlier that "nobody wants to get rid of asymmetrical balance", and then right here you suggest exactly to take one of the major tenants of asymmetrical balance and make it symmetrical instead.

So which is it?

[The Lighthouse]

I would not say this if asked 6 months ago. But after all of the debacle, this is my current opinion:


We can just follow Jihad/Dark Age; at this point mixtech is really the only answer. Let us use whatever we want on all mechs. I really want that 12 X IS ML nova so badly.

We have already threw away the whole silly faction-specific flavor with these mercenaries and removal of penalty from changing contracts, so what's the rationale left that we cannot use Clan/IS stuffs on opposite faction?

And please no "then we will have obsolete weapons!". We already have plenty of obsolete weapons, like Clan ACs, standard engine except for heavy gauss builds and etc. Just when was last time someone was using normal IS Small Lasers?

This whole stupid Stock Mech MWOWC is the ultimate result of what we have been trying to 'balane' IS and Clan tech. At this point, I am tired of PGI wasting time trying to balance out things, thus now I want quick fix.