109 replies to this topic

[The6thMessenger]

9 hours, 30 mins left.

It would be nice if we could at least update our PTS Client in advance.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 06 February 2019 - 04:37 AM.

[Mister Maf]

Jonathan8883, on 05 February 2019 - 07:38 PM, said:

So there's no longer a point in taking TAG on a missile-carrying mech, except as a counter for ECM. If you can TAG it for your own missiles, you already have direct fire locking, so TAG is useless. It's for "I don't carry missiles" mechs only. That seems counter-intuitive.

Also, no fix on the lock cone nerf means I'll probably be on the "testing against missile boats" side of the PTS, if I can get a match this time. 5 minutes in queue at 9pm Central time during the last PTS for a couple of evenings produced no play.

Disagreed on two counts:

• Countering ECM is still an extremely important function for missile mechs
  
• Even if it doesn't buff your lock timer, it still benefits the other missile mechs on your team and helps coordinate fire

Regarding the rest of the changes, we will of course have to see in testing but on paper I like the direction this is going.

[Acersecomic]

InnerSphereNews, on 05 February 2019 - 06:11 PM, said:

Greetings MechWarriors!

I know this is not test related in any way but I feel like this is the only place I could get an actual answer.
Any plans to revert on the heat penalty changes when losing a side torso with LE or XL engines? As in, not have a sudden heat spike that ends up either overheating a mech to death or shutting it down to be executed. It's a very stupid mechanic that's opposite of comfortable and exciting gameplay where just losing a side torso = death or being useless. Meta doesn't really allow for standard engines because tonnage and firepower cost is too great.
If hot heatsinks are destroyed, how the hell do they transfer their heat to the rest of the mech instead of exploding and thus losing heat.
A pipe with one half heated when cut in half does not tranfer its heat to the cool side of the pipe.
This is an extremely annoying mechanic that DOES NOT ALLOW GAMEPLAY. It's counter-gameplay.
Please revert the change. It is really, really stupid.

Edited by Acersecomic, 06 February 2019 - 06:03 AM.

[Eatit]

The6thMessenger, on 06 February 2019 - 12:49 AM, said:

While using NARC and TAG, it would also would encourage being near the target, and likely near the team precisely because LRM works better closer.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Please explain how a LONG RANGE missile works better closer.

Is it the no damage inside 180 meters that makes it better closer? I don't think so.
If I'm at 200 meters to a target that I would like to shoot some lrms at, he can just close the 20 meter gap before I even get a lock. This is the most ridiculous statement I've seen on here.

[Daurock]

Knee-Jerk Thoughts



Lock time changes -
This is the right direction, IMO. Combined with other changes, it should make the time from "sees enemy" to "missiles landed" be quite a bit lower, which should help them compete better with direct fire stuff. It will remain to be seen how LRMs fare in actual play VS. a Direct fire poker, or Dakka Boat, but that's why we test these things.

Indirect Spread Nerfs -
Also a step the right direction. LRMs only really become obnoxious when you boat a ton of them, particularly when used as a team using 8-10 boats with a few NARCers on certain maps. Nerfing the Spread not only reduces the Raw DPs that they provide, but it also reduces their effective "Damage/Heat" ratios, which should help with this to some extent. Again, how much it changes remains to be seen, (As the NARC will likely still last more than long enough to be a death sentence to someone without hard cover nearby) which is why we test these things.

Other Changes
- I'm happy we're moving away from using extremely slow velocity as an IDF nerf mechanic. It really doesn't hurt them near as much as it does a person using them in Direct-Fire. In all honesty, if we want these things to be more valuable as a "Long" ranged weapon, i'd even consider bringing up the velocity Further.
- The Heat change for clan launchers is probably warranted, considering just how many missiles you can boat on the smaller chassis, and just how many heatsinks you can mount on the larger clan chassis. Considering the IDF spread nerf, we're already hurting the heat/damage ratio there some, so I'm glad we're taking a measured approach here, and not going full hog on the IS launchers as well.

Concerns
- ATM Health changes are welcome, But I do have some concerns on the Usefulness of the weapon if LRMs become more effective in direct-fire. They're a little in danger of losing their "Niche," of medium range DF damage. Perhaps Reducing or removing the 120m damage cutoff, or changing to soft one would help give them a more "Complete" short-ranged zone. (Likely to be coupled with some buffs for Streaks as well, but that's a slightly different discussion) Alternatively, we could give them the ability to have the same "High" arc as LRMs have in IDF.

- TAG, from what I can tell, will be dramatically less useful on a missile Boat, since BOTH of the "Lock" and "Spread" bonuses appear to only apply to "Indirect" fire... which he can't use since he's in LOS if he's using the TAG. While I understand the reasoning, (I.E. you want it to be used primarily as a "Team" weapon, and not one to be used as an individual aid,) The weapon is a poor substitute for a NARC in that role, because Unlike the TAG, a NARC only requires the "Painter" to be exposed for a short time. Asking a someone to 'tag' people for multiple seconds between 1) having his team notice that a mech is painted, and 2) actually lock and fire is a pretty big ask, when compared to a more simple "shoot and run" with the narc. Even the "ECM cutter" aspect of the it is currently reduced in value, since a few patches ago you made it so that ECM no longer hard countered locks when you have LOS. It will need "Something" if it is to be useful. Perhaps its time to think about maybe lengthening the time a "Tag" paints someone out to somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds, (I.E. enough time for a teammate to notice, lock, and land 1 volley) or allowing it to cut through stealth armor?

Edited by Daurock, 06 February 2019 - 07:28 AM.

[Larsh]

I haven't hopped in the PTS yet, but I wanted to throw my 2 cents into the ring.

In regards to the Direct LOS and Indirect LOS would it benefit the players to have a different color reticle to emphasize this? I think this would help us distinguish when our shots will be Direct / Indirect.

Sometimes when I'm mid game I don't always think about which shots will be direct or indirect, but seeing a color change will help some out there play "smarter".

Here are some images to give further thought to what I'm saying.

Indirect LOS: Keep red as we have it already



Direct LOS: Change to a green color to indicate changes in Lock On

[Rizzi Kell]

what About the benefit with Beagle Active Probe?

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Rizzi Kell, on 06 February 2019 - 08:15 AM, said:

what About the benefit with Beagle Active Probe?

Which one?

[SideSt3p]

InnerSphereNews, on 05 February 2019 - 06:11 PM, said:

Missile Projectile Health vs AMS Tuning:



A shallower angle of attack within PTS 1.0 allowed LRM’s to better respond to AMS equipped ‘Mechs. Putting AMS in an odd spot where further buffs to the equipment itself would be beneficial against LRM tuning, but would aggravate current performance against other missile systems, particularly ATMs. With this PTS, we have expanded the balance tools on our end to allow us to better tune individual missile volleys against the AMS system. We will be testing this feature change this PTS under the following parameters:

• Volleys are tuned at the launcher level.
  
• Smaller volleys will be tuned with more ingrained health to allow for more missiles from smaller launchers to reach their targets.
  
• Larger Volleys will be tuned to be more vulnerable to AMS fire, resulting in more physical missiles being destroyed against larger volleys.
  
• Initial tuning for PTS 2.0 testing will be the LRM 5 launcher will be set as the baseline for what was previously tested on PTS.
  
• From there, larger LRM launchers will have less health making them more vulnerable to AMS fire.
  
• While this will increase vulnerability, this tuning is still set to AMS acting as a “soft” counter that reduces potential damage from incoming shots, instead of being a hard counter to all missile systems.
  
• ATMs have been tuned with increased health to account for their smaller per-missile volleys (although they will still be more susceptible to AMS fire compared to other weapon systems due to their relatively low volley sizes.)
  
• For the purpose of this PTS, we will only be focusing this AMS tuning on LRMs and ATMs. All other missile systems will retain their current behavior.

Design notes: Although we will only be focusing on LRMs and ATMs for the purpose of this PTS, we will be taking feedback on the changes made here and will propagate this throughout the missile systems to better tune the interactions between AMS and the entirety of the missile roster upon release.

Are we going to see AMS factored into Match Score and C-Bills soon?

I feel like AMS provides a HUGE benefit to the team but you aren't rewarded for taking up the pod space to mount the system. I'm not talking turning them into a huge cash cow, but some return would be REALLY nice.

[Larsh]

Larsh, on 06 February 2019 - 07:39 AM, said:

I haven't hopped in the PTS yet, but I wanted to throw my 2 cents into the ring.

In regards to the Direct LOS and Indirect LOS would it benefit the players to have a different color reticle to emphasize this? I think this would help us distinguish when our shots will be Direct / Indirect.

Sometimes when I'm mid game I don't always think about which shots will be direct or indirect, but seeing a color change will help some out there play "smarter".

Here are some images to give further thought to what I'm saying.

Indirect LOS: Keep red as we have it already



Direct LOS: Change to a green color to indicate changes in Lock On

After posting this in a MWO FaceBook group, one person suggested an icon instead of a color for those that are colorblind.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Larsh, on 06 February 2019 - 08:50 AM, said:

After posting this in a MWO FaceBook group, one person suggested an icon instead of a color for those that are colorblind.

icons would be the way to go;
maybe a curved 'ballistic' missile symbol, basically this in simplified and smaller ofc:




and/or text, saying "you're leeching, get LOS(t)"

Edited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, 06 February 2019 - 09:06 AM.

[Racerxintegra2k]

When they did the Engine Desync i remember feeling like i was the only one that said why .... i now feel the same ... Why ?

[Larsh]

Ok here is another example of what this could look like


Direct LOS:



Indirect LOS:

[Reno Blade]

Cato Zilks, on 06 February 2019 - 02:03 AM, said:

Quote

• Smaller volleys will be tuned with more ingrained health to allow for more missiles from smaller launchers to reach their targets.
  
• Larger Volleys will be tuned to be more vulnerable to AMS fire, resulting in more physical missiles being destroyed against larger volleys

Don't reward stupid. We don't need ******* going back to 9 LRM 5 Archers. Bigger launchers require more tonnage and space and should be harder for a single AMS to stop. Just boost ATM health and be done.

The question for me would be:
does a "volley" of 4x LRM4 count as the same "volley size" as a single LRM20 "volley" if shot together (same second, or below 0.1s or 0.5s) ?

If this is really the launcher size and has nothing todo with how many are shot together, then its not as good as if it would depend on the "shot together" part, as that would be preferable (to equally affect boating).


BTW, the notes sound fantastic on paper so far.

I really hope this is the beginning of the return/implementation of proper Information Warfare with different radar ranges and mech signatures.

[Chris Lowrey]

The6thMessenger, on 06 February 2019 - 04:30 AM, said:

9 hours, 30 mins left.

It would be nice if we could at least update our PTS Client in advance.

We often open up pre-downloads to about an hour or two prior to the PTS launch. I'll announce here in this thread when it is ready for pre-download, but just a heads up for future tests.

If this is your first time participating in a PTS, you can download the client now if you wish. Go to this link and follow the instructions. This will ensure that when we do open up the PTS for downloads prior to the launch, you will only need to patch the client rather then waiting for a full download.

[justcallme A S H]

Znozoic, on 06 February 2019 - 04:16 AM, said:

pgi, plz, buff the AMS, the AMS have to benefit from abilities tree, they also have to be affected by the ammunition nodes, as well as range and cool down. Using 1.5tn of the capacity of your chassis has to be a benefit, and not something aesthetic.... thx...

Ah... They already get buffs from the skill tree champ. Suggest you go and take a good look at it.

InnerSphereNews, on 05 February 2019 - 06:11 PM, said:

• ATMs have been tuned with increased health to account for their smaller per-missile volleys (although they will still be more susceptible to AMS fire compared to other weapon systems due to their relatively low volley sizes.)

Chris can you confirm on this one the following:

LRM Launchers, their missile hitpoints, are subjective to the launcher size - Does this apply to ATMs or is this a global buff to all ATM launcher sizes with respect to missile hitpoint?

Thanks!

Edited by justcallme A S H, 06 February 2019 - 12:40 PM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Larsh, on 06 February 2019 - 11:20 AM, said:

Ok here is another example of what this could look like Direct LOS: Indirect LOS:

What about a single circle lock on for IDF and the current double circle for DF? Do we really want to clutter the UI more?

[Kynesis]

I might just mention that while few people equip AMS (perceived as a waste of space), many more IS mechs are AMS capable (than Clan mechs) and the clan ripple-fire is much more vulnerable to being cut down by AMS, where AMS vs IS missiles by contrast has just a roughly 1 second window of opportunity.

[Chris Lowrey]

justcallme A S H, on 06 February 2019 - 12:40 PM, said:

Chris can you confirm on this one the following:

LRM Launchers, their missile hitpoints, are subjective to the launcher size - Does this apply to ATMs or is this a global buff to all ATM launcher sizes with respect to missile hitpoint?

Thanks!

It will follow the same convention of LRMs, but will be individually tuned to the ATM launchers. So where on LRM's the LRM 5 is the "baseline" analogue to the current performance that you see on live, for the ATM's, it's the ATM 12 that rests at about where it is on live with smaller launchers gaining more health per volley as you go down in launcher size.

So collectively, ATM's do fair better then LRM's on an individual missile level, but we are still keeping at least one baseline setting similar to what they currently have on live for data collection purposes.

As mentioned in the announcement, this is all subject to feedback so be sure to test it out, and we'll look into it more as we prep it for final release.

And one final thing: While we have the ability to do this across the missile lineup now, for the purposes of this test, we have only done a Tuning pass on LRM's and ATMs, as we still want the primary tests to revolve around the new missile mechanics. We'll take feedback on what is there, and apply it towards the full lineup for final release.

[Chris Lowrey]

Also, sorry, I'm just getting back from lunch, but you can begin to pre-download the PTS now. Although you will not be able to log in until it goes live in 10 minutes.