54 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

The6thMessenger, on 31 July 2018 - 09:18 PM, said:

IS also has Gauss Vomit.

IS Gauss Vomit is also far more limited... because IS Gauss weighs 15 tons, not 12 tons.

CGauss absolutely should be less powerful based on the fact it weighs less.

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Clan only have one Gauss Rifle in game. Their gauss needs to be balanced with respect to the rest of the techbase, not 1:1 with the IS weapon, quite simply it has a niche to fulfill in the clans, just as the iGR has to fullfill it's niche to IS. Touch the PPFLD, and you just devalued it's sniping niche.

Thats the whole point. It should be devalued compared to IS Gauss. Because it only weighs 12 tons not 15 tons.

The game will never be balanced as long as Clans get the same damage for less tonnage. You cannot balance a game like that. period.

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LGR needs damage buff, the CGR doesn't need to be reduced to it's level.

CGauss at 12 damage would still be better than LGR, even if LGR was 10 damage, so again you dont know what youre talking about.

Std Gauss should be 15 damage with 5.0+0.75 cooldown
CGauss should be 12 damage with 3.75+0.5 cooldown and better range than STD Gauss
Light Gauss should be 10 damage with 3.0+0.5 cooldown

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Clan Gauss is not OP on it's own, but Laser Vomit and Gauss Vomit is powerful -- this is because Gauss isn't the problem, the lasers is. So the proper way to nerf Gauss Vomit, is to nerf the laser component.

Of course it is. Its 12 tons instead of 15 tons. It absolutely is OP on its own compared to IS Gauss.

About 20% overpowered given that it weighs 20% less with no appreciable downside tacked on.

And no the proper way to balance CGauss is to make it more equivalent to ISGauss. The laser component has absolutely nothing to do with balancing CGauss vs ISGauss.

Likewise clan lasers should be balanced to be more equivalent to IS lasers. The only way to balance the game properly is for every clan weapon to be balanced against its IS counterpart.

If all the weapons are balanced with eachother, then all given combination of weapons will also be balanced with eachother. see how that works?

Edited by Khobai, 01 August 2018 - 10:53 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

The6thMessenger, on 30 July 2018 - 04:16 PM, said:

What do you think?

I'm sure everyone hates it but I'm not entirely opposed to it. I was thinking about something like this actually. It would be a pretty major change to how the game is played but I would really love to see the ghost heat system replaced with something that is easier to describe and understand instead of x number is penalized x much. I'd love to close the loopholes with it. I'd love to see a mathematical solution that covers all weapons uniformly in a predictable way. And the more you fire at once, the more extra heat you build up, independent of weapon systems. It would be like a % increase on each one times the number of weapons fired. So a gauss rifle paired with anything would be the best combo unless you handle that in a different way (perhaps with existing mitigation like charge-up). Ghost heat was and always will be a hacky band-aid fix. Energy draw was an attempt to do something similar but let's just stick with heat since that's very Battletech and we don't need another meter. This will probably require a lot of tuning of each weapon's base heat value as well.

[Daurock]

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

stuff about gauss rifles

In spirit, I agree with you. Right now, clan gauss is flatly better than IS gauss, and It's one of the reasons clan mechs have a much stronger GaussVomit than IS.

However, there are other ways you can work around a that tonnage advantage. The shake they added on the PTS isn't really doing the trick, but it does at least show that they are looking at keeping the clan gauss at 15 damage, yet balanced. Other options they have could include things like dropping the number you can charge at a time to 1, or dramatically lengthening the chargeup time, leading to missed shots. (Though a charge up time increase would probably get un-fun well before it becomes long enough to actually hinder performance, similar to the long durations of lasers right now on the PTS.) Another option would include changing the reload time - for example, since the clan gauss gets 20% Alpha per ton, why not give it a reload such that it has 20% less DPS per ton, making the clan variant Pokey, but falling behind in a sustained fire situation. (The math on that comes out to about an 8.5 second charge+cooldown time, instead of the 5.75 second reload+cooldown time it currently enjoys)
They have mentioned the flat damage drop as an option too, if that gives you any solace.

One last thing to keep in mind though - IS will more than likely have to give up most of the quirk advantage it enjoys over clan to make those kinds of changes happen. Breaking one side of that Damage vs. Armor equation isn't going to happen without changes to the other side too, which most likely means dropping the armor advantage that many IS chassis currently enjoy.

[Khobai]

Daurock, on 01 August 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

However, there are other ways you can work around a that tonnage advantage. The shake they added on the PTS isn't really doing the trick, but it does at least show that they are looking at keeping the clan gauss at 15 damage, yet balanced. Other options they have could include things like dropping the number you can charge at a time to 1

Reducing the number of shots you can charge at a time to 1 would be worse than just making it 12 damage.

x2 CGauss at a time @ 12 damage = 24 damage
x1 CGauss at a time @ 15 damage = 15 damage (and twice the exposure time to fire two gauss)

Making it 12 damage really isnt that bad considering its rate of fire and range would both be increased. And its chargeup period reduced to 0.5. It balances Clan Gauss while also making it uniquely different from IS Gauss.

And yes Clans do need better access to PPFLD in general. And thats also why the whole burst fire mechanic for CACs and CUACs should be completely revamped. And why the beam duration on Clan lasers shouldnt be increased more. Nerfing the gauss side of gauss vomit means clan lasers need to be nerfed less.

Edited by Khobai, 01 August 2018 - 11:07 AM.

[Daurock]

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 10:56 AM, said:

Reducing the number of shots you can charge at a time to 1 would be worse than just making it 12 damage.

x2 CGauss at a time @ 12 damage = 24 damage
x1 CGauss at a time @ 15 damage = 15 damage (and twice the exposure time to fire two gauss)

Making it 12 damage really isnt that bad considering its rate of fire and range would both be increased. And its chargeup period reduced to 0.5. It balances Clan Gauss while also making it uniquely different from IS Gauss.

And yes Clans do need better access to PPFLD in general. And thats also why the whole burst fire mechanic for CACs and CUACs should be completely revamped. And why the beam duration on Clan lasers shouldnt be increased more. Nerfing the gauss side of gauss vomit means clan lasers need to be nerfed less.

Fair comments, and in all honesty, I'd tend to agree with you that a straight damage drop is the most straightforward way of addressing the gauss discrepancy, and at least starting to address the whole of GaussVomit. The general thrust of my earlier post was to talk about other options more so than acutal suggestions. I will note, however, that addressing gauss alone doesn't address the Hellbringer, Ebon Jag, or any of the other flavors of pure LaserVomit, which generally out-perform similar IS mechs. They too will need a significant toning down if the energy based variants of the grasshopper, quickdraw, roughneck, etc. expect to compete, especially if they are looking at toning down IS quirks and chassis advantages.
What direction those changes go, and how far they go, are anyone's guess at the moment. I personally feel that the first iteration of the test server was pretty close, and that clans simply needed a bit of a heat drop to give them a sustained fire advantage over similar IS mechs. Then, they'd have similar alphas to IS mechs, a little lower Damage/Tic, (Due to holding the same longer durations they have on live) and better sustain. Knowing PGI, they'll probably do something else entirely, so i'll just sit here with my popcorn bowl and watch the fireworks when/if any changes do happen.

[Khobai]

I dont know how significant of a toning down laser vomit really needs.

I tend to think just -1 damage on CERML and -1 or -2 damage on HLL would mostly suffice to lower the alpha to reasonable levels.

And then combine those nerfs with the 12 damage gauss to balance out the gauss vomit builds.

[Daurock]

I kind of think the answer to that probably depends on just how ham handed they want to be with IS armor nerfing. If they're planning on bringing the quirk levels down to the same levels as Clan mechs, (And possibly giving some agility back to clan mechs like the TBR, or HBK2) it may have to drop below 6. Alternatively, they could be only planning on dropping the IS quirks down some, and not the whole way. (like the Anni on PTS2) If that's the case, a 6 damage ERML, with similar durations to live may be plenty enough of a drop to work.

I do think, that whatever path they take with clan lasers, they need to bring them down far enough that other clan options start to look competitive without any major changes. I agree that a few clan weapons probably do need a little help, like the CAC20/UAC20, but I'd be careful about across the board CAC changes that could easily bring us to the same problem we have with gauss right now. Couple that with the developers' stated desire to not go about buffing/changing half the weapon list, and I think that if we attempt to go down that path to far it will get shut down before it even starts. (See - Dev comments about the Community balance list) In addition to that, I actually believe that most clan non-laser weaponry is actually decent, except that it gets overshadowed by clan laser/gauss vomit, or goes face to face with IS armor. The orion2, for example is a reasonably strong mech, using few to no lasers, due to it having chassis quirks on-par with IS tech. Assuming that the current IS Armor advantage narrows at the same time clan laser damage gets toned down, many if not most clan omni-mechs could also do that.

All that being said, I will support the idea of more clan Mid-Ranged, Non-Lock on weaponry. Clan right now doesn't have any weapons suitable for that 4-600 yard range outside of the typical vomit lasers, and maybe the 10-Class autocannons. It's a big, glaring hole in their Weapon List. They need a Dumb-Fire ATM, A Cooler, shorter ranged PPC, or maybe something else intended for that range, to compete with the IS MRMs, IS HGauss, etc. Clan PPFLD weapons intended for that range bracket would definitely be a yes from me, assuming that they don't over-shadow other clan options.

[The6thMessenger]

Athom83, on 01 August 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

Incentivizing something =/= disincentivizeing the other option. The problem here is you're disincentivinzing firing an alpha and claiming that it incentivizes chainfire. Meanwhile, you massively nerf things that have to alpha because they can't carry the weapons to chainfire (mainly light mechs and heavier mechs with very few hardpoints).

Whether the other option is deincentivized, that depends on the execution of the design. This is nothing more than a concept, there's little solid info but how the heatcurve is defined. It could be high base heat, but low heat gain in such a way that old builds are still in the sensible amount of heat.

Athom83, on 01 August 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

There are other ways of addressing this, like adding recoil/shake to kinetic weapons (ACs, PPCs, and Missiles) and changing they way convergence works (made a topic on this in the suggestions looooooong ago).

Sure, but we're still looking at the Ghost Heat loopholes, and unbelievably high heat penalties.

Athom83, on 01 August 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

Edit; On the original suggestion. Instead of making it so firing more weapons increase the heat each weapon makes, how about instead they decrease the heat dissipation efficiency for a short time after firing. Hotter weapons decrease the efficiency more while cooler weapons don't effect it as much. And each weapon adds its own negative to that, so if you fire enough really hot weapons, your heat will freeze at its peak for like a second or two before it starts cooling off.

So basically like it's COD regenerating health? Well, i suppose, but again what about the GH Loopholes and the crazy high alpha heats like 3x PPC.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

IS Gauss Vomit is also far more limited... because IS Gauss weighs 15 tons, not 12 tons.

CGauss absolutely should be less powerful based on the fact it weighs less.

Not at the expense of it fulfilling it's role to the other side.

And IS Gauss Vomit is also far more limited because of other aspects such as worse engine, shorter-range ermls, and we have to result to mostly large lasers to do so.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

Thats the whole point. It should be devalued compared to IS Gauss. Because it only weighs 12 tons not 15 tons.

The game will never be balanced as long as Clans get the same damage for less tonnage. You cannot balance a game like that. period.

But again, CGauss has it's own niche to fulfill on the other side. Period.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

CGauss at 12 damage would still be better than LGR, even if LGR was 10 damage, so again you dont know what youre talking about.

But 14 - 15 damage with 1.0s charge + 6s CD.

Lol, i don't know what I'm talking about? You're the one narrow-minded to consider the impact of the gauss changes more than just 1:1 to IS Gauss.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

Std Gauss should be 15 damage with 5.0+0.75 cooldown
CGauss should be 12 damage with 3.75+0.5 cooldown and better range than STD Gauss
Light Gauss should be 10 damage with 3.0+0.5 cooldown

No. They should be:

CGR, 15 damage, 2 Heat, 1.0s Charge time, 6.0s Cooldown Time, 1650 Projectile Velocity.
ILGR, 10 damage, 0.75s Charge time, 2.5s Cooldown Time, 2300 Projectile Velocity.
IGR, 15 damage, 0.75s Charge time, 5.0s Cooldown Time, 2000 Projectile Velocity.
IHGR, 25 damage, 0.75s Charge time, 5.0s Cooldown Time, 1650 Projectile Velocity.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

Of course it is. Its 12 tons instead of 15 tons. It absolutely is OP on its own compared to IS Gauss.

About 20% overpowered given that it weighs 20% less with no appreciable downside tacked on.

That's the problem, you are only comparing it to gauss. But you still have a lot of other variables to consider. Do you even know how to experiment? What is Independent Variables, Dependent Variables, Confounding Variables? We need to be nuanced in how to handle Gauss, because Clan is OP in more ways than just Gauss being lightweight. You don't seem to get that.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

And no the proper way to balance CGauss is to make it more equivalent to ISGauss. The laser component has absolutely nothing to do with balancing CGauss vs ISGauss.

No, it's not. You're looking at this too narrowly as usual. Again, Clan is OP in more than just the Gauss way, and it must be touched accordingly, not 1:1. The Gauss has it's own niche to fulfill in it's own faction.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

Likewise clan lasers should be balanced to be more equivalent to IS lasers. The only way to balance the game properly is for every clan weapon to be balanced against its IS counterpart.

You are only looking at this with symmetrical balance. There's also such a thing as Asymmetrical Balance. If you aren't narrow-minded, you'd know that.

Khobai, on 01 August 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

If all the weapons are balanced with eachother, then all given combination of weapons will also be balanced with eachother. see how that works?

It works as symmetrical balance, but we're looking at different flavors of faction right here. It's not like Clan has RACs and MRMs right now, or IS has ATMs and Heavy Lasers. See how that DOESN'T work?

You need to stop being so god damn narrow-minded.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 02 August 2018 - 01:55 AM.

[Khobai]

The6thMessenger, on 01 August 2018 - 03:31 PM, said:

It works as symmetrical balance

nope.

clan gauss doesnt work as asymmetrical balance

not when clans also have better heatsinks, better engines, better ES/FS, and better other weapons

it is all upsides. there is no downside. that is not balance.

[The6thMessenger]

Khobai, on 02 August 2018 - 12:17 AM, said:

nope.

clan gauss doesnt work as asymmetrical balance

not when clans also have better heatsinks, better engines, better ES/FS, and better other weapons

it is all upsides. there is no downside. that is not balance.

And what is balance? 1:1 without any nuance?

Okay, now what you admitted that Clan is OP more ways than one, why on earth are you just touching Clan Gauss to 1:1 balance with IS?

Again, ******* again over and over again, Clan Gauss has it's own niche to fulfill to the Clan, having it simply do 1:1 balancing to IS wouldn't do it any good because it's performance is calibrated to the over all performance of the entire Clan. It's mean't to mix with it's own techbase, we're looking at mechs that couldn't change engine and a bit more fragile and less agile mechs, of less ergonomic lasers. IS already has it's over-quirked mechs, and unless that's going away then the 15 damage from a 12-tonner already has it's balancing factor.

You want 1:1 clan gauss, it would be more appropriate if everything else becomes 1:1 as well, but that's not happening. It has to function with respect with the niche it's supposed to do.

[iLLcapitan]

GH on machine guns... gauss vomit needs to be 'fixed'... chain fire and arbitrary GH spikes are good...
you guys are insane and PGI will love it.

[denAirwalkerrr]

Are you guys trying to build a Trump wall with all your posts?

P.S. Read only first post. Two words: delusional delusion.

Edited by denAirwalkerrr, 02 August 2018 - 02:45 AM.

[The6thMessenger]

denAirwalkerrr, on 02 August 2018 - 02:44 AM, said:

Are you guys trying to build a Trump wall with all your posts?

P.S. Read only first post. Two words: delusional delusion.

Delusion would have been unfounded false belief that is rigidly held.

[SneekiBreeki]

This thread gave me Cancer and several consecutive aneurysms. :U

Edited by SneekiBreeki, 02 August 2018 - 03:10 AM.