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Chris Lowrey, on 08 June 2018 - 10:58 AM, said:
So as Paul stated in his overview post found here, we will be looking to directly address the current state of clan Alphas and bring them closer into alignment with the capabilities on the Inner Sphere side of the tech factions. The current trends of sustainable Alphas on the clan side reaching up to 94 damage when the IS typically cap out at around 60-65 effective damage without serious build concessions is too great of a divide to have fully slanted into the corner of a single faction and we will be taking steps to bring them closer into alignment.
You are broadening the problem beyond what it is. Very few Clan 'Mechs can run double Gauss + lasers + heatsinks to use them (as you are correctly discarding gimmick builds). This is due to hardpoint or tonnage limitations or both. List of 'Mechs that *can* run and back up double Gauss:
Night Gyr
Supernova Boiler (max achievable Alpha without ghost heat is 76 but it can handle the Gauss comfortably).
Mad Cat Mk.II - 1
Mad Cat Mk. II Deathstrike
Blood Asp
Dire Wolf
Kodiak 3 (no one uses it for this, but it's possible)
Clan heavies can't run this setup and most Clan assaults are not designed for it. The Night Gyr is also borderline as the most it can tease out is 83 damage and that requires getting pretty gimmicky. It still can work with 4 tons clear for Gauss ammo though so I included it.
Single Gauss + lasers fits in the acceptable damage range already. So it's not worth discussing.
That's it. So the question isn't even so much as "are Clan assaults a problem" as "are these specific Clan assaults a problem played this way?"
It's relevant that only heavyweight Clan assaults can do this because of the possible changes you propose.
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[color=orange]Base Direction[/color]
To streamline discussion on the topic, it's best to think of solutions that we will be looking into following two overall approaches that we can take when looking at individual changes:
To streamline discussion on the topic, it's best to think of solutions that we will be looking into following two overall approaches that we can take when looking at individual changes:
- Changes that result in Desynced fire as the optimal method of fire to reward the clans overall higher damage outputs.
- Reduction in baseline Damage output to something that is much better aligned to what the Inner Sphere is capable of keeping up with.
Because these loadouts only fit on Clan assaults, there is a problem making them take more face time to deliver them. Clan assaults are not designed to tank. The Dire Whale is quite fragile if just standing there, which is a fine tradeoff for it having the ability to two-shot assaults or kill lighter/damaged 'Mechs outright. That's what the Dire Wolf has always been in BT/MW. Difficult to use, God help you if you face tank it. It will remain a really bad idea to do this regardless, just worsening quality of life a little for Dire Wolfs (which are hardly OP because of their other shortcomings).
The Boiler can't achieve a truly high spike build either, although it can be in 75+ band much more comfortably than the Night Gyr.
Excluding the KDK-3 build no one runs, the remaining offenders (MkII, Blood Asp) are 90 tonners with no defensive quirks. While they are much better laid out than a Dire Wolf, they're still no Annihilator. Requiring more exposure would nerf them without compensation which is a problem because two are pay-only 'Mechs. While both can kind of stand a nerf of some kind, this is difficult to achieve by nerfing weapons as I will go into below.
I'll also note that PGI was responsible for the design of the most dangerous weapon boat offender - the Deathstrike. Sure it comes with UAC but the potential for Dire Wolf+ firepower in-line with the cockpit was obvious.
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[color=#ffa500]Options[/color]
What is described bellow are some of the options we are considering for addressing this. These are all individual things being explored, and should not be seen as an "all or nothing" series of changes so much as what options we have on the table to address the above points. We are divulging these things to spur discussion on the matter and monitor what is considered the best way forward to address this particular issue. Based on feedback received, we will more then likely only integrate either a single larger change to a single item, or a series of smaller changes across multiple items depending on community feedback on overall direction.
[color=#FFA500]Clan Gauss Rifles[/color]
The 3 less tons needed to equip Clan Gauss rifles need to come with meaningful give and take compared to their heavier IS equivalents. Off of two clan Gauss rifles, the 6 saved tons over their IS counterparts is often plenty of tonnage to compliment the weapons with payloads that their IS counterparts are often strapped to compete with. This will be adjusted to offer fairer give and take between the two tech base's rifles.
[color=#FFA500]Option 1: [/color]
What is described bellow are some of the options we are considering for addressing this. These are all individual things being explored, and should not be seen as an "all or nothing" series of changes so much as what options we have on the table to address the above points. We are divulging these things to spur discussion on the matter and monitor what is considered the best way forward to address this particular issue. Based on feedback received, we will more then likely only integrate either a single larger change to a single item, or a series of smaller changes across multiple items depending on community feedback on overall direction.
[color=#FFA500]Clan Gauss Rifles[/color]
The 3 less tons needed to equip Clan Gauss rifles need to come with meaningful give and take compared to their heavier IS equivalents. Off of two clan Gauss rifles, the 6 saved tons over their IS counterparts is often plenty of tonnage to compliment the weapons with payloads that their IS counterparts are often strapped to compete with. This will be adjusted to offer fairer give and take between the two tech base's rifles.
[color=#FFA500]Option 1: [/color]
- Upfront damage reduced to something more in-line for the tonnage invested in the weapon, Other attributes adjusted to keep the same current DPS.
- The Clan Gauss rifle is given a recoil effect similar to, but not as intense as, the Heavy Gauss rifle. No other attributes are changed.
- The Clan Gauss Rifle and all Clan Large Class Lasers are linked into the same heat penalty group.
Nerfing Clan Gauss hurts *all* Clan 'Mechs that build around a Gauss, which is a lot of them, all of which deal alpha strikes in the "acceptable" range as-is. This is nerfing things that aren't the problem.
Linking lasers with Gauss will not work because probably the best way of playing these things to begin with is the Gauss slugs being "beam riders." Fire laser and Gauss triggers at same time, discharging the lasers and charging the Gauss, then fire the Gauss slugs into the laser burn. Funny thing is that while it isn't intended for this, the Gauss charge guarantees you won't trip ghost heat with the lasers. So if this change was made it would not impact these builds at all.
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[color=#FFA500]Clan Lasers:[/color]
The upfront damage of Clan lasers, and the ease of access the clans have at supplementing their fire with heavy upfront damage, at decent ranges, for minimal tonnage directly contributes not just to those Alpha's at the top, but a general lopsidedness in most build performance throughout the entire clan / IS lineup and often sees the Clan 'Mechs with access to a large number of energy hard points consistently outperform equivalent 'Mechs on the IS side. While the popular adage sees the belief that only a handful of 'mechs consist as "problem" 'Mechs, the reality is that as a whole, the overall performance of even an average clan 'Mech can put up are often consistently higher then what the average IS 'Mech can put up provided they have access to a certain number of energy hardpoints. This will be a change that is targeted to either raise the skill cap needed to utilized mass Clan laser fire, or will be reduced to a level that does not completely overshadow the IS equivalent weapons.
[color=#FFA500]Option 1: [/color]
The upfront damage of Clan lasers, and the ease of access the clans have at supplementing their fire with heavy upfront damage, at decent ranges, for minimal tonnage directly contributes not just to those Alpha's at the top, but a general lopsidedness in most build performance throughout the entire clan / IS lineup and often sees the Clan 'Mechs with access to a large number of energy hard points consistently outperform equivalent 'Mechs on the IS side. While the popular adage sees the belief that only a handful of 'mechs consist as "problem" 'Mechs, the reality is that as a whole, the overall performance of even an average clan 'Mech can put up are often consistently higher then what the average IS 'Mech can put up provided they have access to a certain number of energy hardpoints. This will be a change that is targeted to either raise the skill cap needed to utilized mass Clan laser fire, or will be reduced to a level that does not completely overshadow the IS equivalent weapons.
[color=#FFA500]Option 1: [/color]
- Upfront damage is reduced to IS equivalent levels. Superior range values are kept.
- Instead of superior upfront damage, we can reduce the cool-downs, heat, and other attributes to move the natural boosted per-turn damage that the Clan weapons are historically known for in the fiction, as a higher rate of fire leaving them overall where they are now, but shifting the added damage perks away from Boosted Alpha strikes and more towards higher overall DPS. Keeping closer alpha damage
- Clan Laser's heat scale triggers set to 30 damage caps similar to their IS counterparts. All other weapon attributes remain unaffected.
- This will keep the superior damage for the weapons as it is now, but mass lasers will come with a higher skill ceiling in order to effectively utilize the entire payload in combat.
It's been said before (specifically with the unannounced laser change) but the problem with nerfing Clan lasers is that it nerfs everything besides the Gauss boats worse than it nerfs them. Because they're using double Gauss to begin with. Double Gauss is the best weapon system in the game and moreover it is the least impacted by laser ghost heat because, with it contributing no heat, you can still eat large penalties and stay running. For example, even after the PPC/Gauss heat merge, firing two Gauss lets you still fire 2xGauss/1PPC and stay running while the 'Mechs that don't have tonnage for more than 2xPPC and 1 Gauss can't use it because of the PPC baseline heat. Moreover, the 2xGauss pilot knows he can do this because he can fire ice cold alphas for his next exchange or two that still have to be respected because its 30 pinpoint damage.
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[color=#ffa500]In Closing:[/color]
As stated above, we will not be looking to integrate everything at once, but instead focus on player feedback, concerns, and opinions, and move forward for addressing this particular issue. If the community can produce an alternative solution that meets the same intended goals of reducing Clan upfront damage alpha from its current 94 damage peak, to instead peak off closer to the 60-65 damage peak the IS reaches without serious build concessions, as outlined in Paul's overview post, then we are open to implementing that solution provided its technical feasibility.
Additionally, while we know that many like to utilize other forms of social media to express feedback, in this instance we request that the primary discussion for this topic be centralized within this thread as there will be multiple eyes on these discussion topics.
As stated above, we will not be looking to integrate everything at once, but instead focus on player feedback, concerns, and opinions, and move forward for addressing this particular issue. If the community can produce an alternative solution that meets the same intended goals of reducing Clan upfront damage alpha from its current 94 damage peak, to instead peak off closer to the 60-65 damage peak the IS reaches without serious build concessions, as outlined in Paul's overview post, then we are open to implementing that solution provided its technical feasibility.
Additionally, while we know that many like to utilize other forms of social media to express feedback, in this instance we request that the primary discussion for this topic be centralized within this thread as there will be multiple eyes on these discussion topics.
I've got a more direct solution for going after gigaspike alphas - nerf the Deathstrike. Specifically, change the hardpoints in the torsos to 1E 1M/B and knock the Deathstrike back to a maximum laser alpha of 56. That solves two problems, the second being that the Deathstrike is flat-out superior P2W over the base MkII-1, rather than just different.
Dire Wolf doesn't need nerfs and can run so many different things it will still remain a bad idea to stare at. Blood Asp is too new to nerf and its weapon locations aren't as dangerous as the Deathstrike.
In general, I think the faction balance thing is also the wrong way to approach this. Faction Warfare is not played by most of the community bar events and isn't a focus of the Solaris 7 branding either. The top-tier Clan assaults are, for most players "just" the capstone item in the game, the expensive thing that is worth it once you've worked your way up to that. QP - and it is QP where these builds are used, Solaris disfavors them because you don't have time to cool off safely - should not be balanced around factions anymore than it is balanced around Solaris. Most top Solaris builds don't work well (if at all) in QP.
I suggest doing what most games do and when there's a specific standout problem vehicle/player weapon in FPS, nerf that.
Edited by SmokedJag, 12 June 2018 - 03:44 AM.
