615 replies to this topic

[Kurt the Merc]

I personally don't see much incentive to use standard Auto Cannons over Ultras. They weigh the same and take the same slots. You can argue they don't jam, but if I don't double tap, the uacs work the same. So why would I ever use an Auto Cannon.

[Tesunie]

Tarl Cabot, on 18 February 2021 - 06:10 PM, said:

Remove minimum range from IS PPC series and LRMS. Each can have a greater curve then normal. In BT the weapons did damage, they simply were given a negative gunnery penalty, a - 1 for each hex under the minimum range.

For PPCs w/min range besides a reduced damage, there could also be feedback damage once under 90m (3 hexes).

PPCs are equipped with a Field Inhibitor to prevent feedback which could damage the firing unit's electronic systems. This inhibitor degrades the performance of the weapon at close ranges of less than 90 meters. Particularly daring warriors have been known to disengage the inhibitor and risk damage to their own machine when a target is at close range.

For IS LRMs, iirc it was both locking mechanism and the missiles not arming themselves until 180m (6 hexes). Inner Sphere LRM launchers achieve their superior range by firing at a ballistic launch angle, making them less accurate at close range. And IS LRMS could be hot-loaded but at accuracy expense.

I agree with much of this, but some alternative ideas to consider... What if PPCs caused an ECM like effect on the shooter when it is fired within 90m? Maybe even "disables the HUD" for a short moment to represent the electronic backfeed on their systems?

On note of LRMs, their reduced accuracy in BT was a result of the ballistic (upward) launching. At close ranges it was difficult to hit targets, and was also described as the missiles not arming in other sources, hence the hot-loaded "feature". But they where considered to still do some kinetic damage even within close range and unarmed in the novels.


Gauss, AC2s and PPCs also had minimum range penalities, but in those weapon cases it was because the weapons targeting systems was designed for long range combat, and the weapon couldn't "align" fast enough on closer ranged targets. Consider it much like the Gauss charge mechanic in the current game, which can make hitting close and fast moving targets more challenging...

[KW Driver]

dario03, on 19 February 2021 - 08:38 AM, said:

I don't know about everybody posting here, but the Gulag did consider new player experience. Actually iirc new player experience like cadet bonuses, trial mechs, starter packs, tutorials, leveling up mechs were the first things talked about.

And I agree with it.. what I don't agree with is the attitude that new players should go to the corner and be quiet because their opinion shouldn't count.

[Brauer]

I also support the balance gulag proposal. IS small lasers (all types), clan ersml, micropulse, and spl need a buff. LBX5s on both sides need a buff, LGRs need a buff, laser ams on both sides needs less heat to actually have a point in the game, etc.

Also, don't listen to requests for LRM buffs. Changes, fine. But right now LRMs are very strong. They've been brought to high level comp matches (including on Mining!!!) And have more often than not been extremely effective. They do not need a net buff.

Oh also, clan mpls could use a buff. I like Bowser's idea to increase clan mpl and lpl range.

Edited by Brauer, 19 February 2021 - 11:20 AM.

[Ukos]

Any chance that RACs can be looked at as they feel a little on the overpowered side particularly the triple RAC/2 builds you see on Marauders and Whackers. In an assault its not a fight you want to get involved in with the rate they strip armour.

Lights need the Heatsink tax removing especially for the ballistic lights who are heat neutral seen as ALL fusion engines come with ten as standard and at the lowest tonnages having to give up 3 or 4 tons to mount superfluous heat sinks is not very fun the equivalent of asking a 100t Mech to give up ten to twenty tons on non useful equipment

Missiles seem to be in a moderately good place perhaps increasing the dispersion for non LOS shots without any spotting from NARC or TAG (this would be better instead of lock on time ) but something needs to be done to get the Missile Boats to get involved with the other players rather than standing at the back just playing whack a mole with opposing mechs - The lack of interaction between players is what makes i feel makes many players dislike LRM and ATM boats especially

[xAndy199]

I don't want to clutter the thread with a big multiquote, since I just want to give my own opinion/feedback with reference - not as a response - to ideas voiced by others.

Posters have said that weapons like the IS Light Gauss need a buff and Voice of Kerensky mentioned that the charging sound makes firing a pair of them difficult. Some poster suggested to remove the charging mechanic altogether. While I agree that LGauss and the IS PPC line need some work, I disagree that removing the charging mechanic Gauss Rifles and the min range mechanic on PPCs is the way to go.
The way I understand it is that Gauss and PPCs are supposed to offer an advantage in damage and easy of landing shots at range over Autocannons and Lasers of a comparable damage output.
The mechanics that make brawling difficult with these weapons are fine, but then the weapon and ammo weight are outright wrong.
Plain buffing the the LGauss and the IS PPCs would be nice, but I'd prefer the weapon weights to be revised instead.

I'd further extend this to say that weight balancing versus usefulness is broken in general. The AC/2 is already nerfed in DPS for its advantage range relative to the bigger ACs, either it's ammo/ton needs to go up or the weapon needs to be lighter. AC/10 gives you, what 23 10-damage shots, while AC/2 gives you 87 2-damage shots, 230 vs 174. With two AC/2s, you will match AC/10 DPS, get more range, but you need more hardpoints AND you lose potential damage. To make matters worse, in MWO, that extra range is only useful often enough in faction warfare. The AC/20 and UAC/20 only make sense when you have excess tonnage you need to waste (i.e. you're an Assault). A UAC/20 that doesn't jam on you makes for some meme-y comebacks, but outside of crisis moments, you're cheating yourself out of performance with any chassis below 90 tons.

So the changes I would like to suggest are
- IS Light Gauss keeps its mechanics and weight, but gets 10 damage / shot
- IS Light PPC goes to 2 tons and 1 slot, to become a very high heat ER-ER Medium Laser
- IS Snub PPC copies Large Laser weight, has higher heat and less range, but gets splash damage
- IS PPCs will have Snub PPC weight and slot size, but retain min range and high heat
- AC/2, AC/20 and Gauss get more ammo/ton, AC/5 gets slightly more ammo/ton
- Artemis grouping bonus gets even tighter, to justify the tonnage penalty (e.g. equivalent damage to Center Torsi from Artemis +1t of ammo vs Standard +2t)

I mainly play IS, so I can't speak much for the Clans, but their laser stats seem to be off for the game. The meat of MWO skirmish happens between 200 and 500 m, where IS weapons are still competitive and are either cooler or shoot faster. Clans either get more range than they need or they have to deal with too much duration / cooldown, and are at a heat disadvantage in all cases, but that's just a Bushwacker main's perspective on clannery.

[Tesunie]

Ukos, on 19 February 2021 - 09:31 AM, said:

Lights need the Heatsink tax removing especially for the ballistic lights who are heat neutral seen as ALL fusion engines come with ten as standard and at the lowest tonnages having to give up 3 or 4 tons to mount superfluous heat sinks is not very fun the equivalent of asking a 100t Mech to give up ten to twenty tons on non useful equipment

You seem to be under a misconception... Engines all require 10 heat sinks for basic safe operation (by lore and the rules of Battletech). The larger engines can fit additional heat sinks within the engine itself as it's got more space for it. The smaller engines hold less than 10 heat sinks inside (and in MW:O, the weight of those missing heat sinks are deducted from the engine's weight). Thus, to be "safe operation" level, smaller engines require some heat sinks to be mounted outside the engine itself. The tonnage works out, so the only penalty that mechs with smaller engines have are crit spaces for those heat sinks.

[--GameOver]

I have some solution for LRM:
1. At a distance of less than 180m, the missiles should move along a normal ballistic trajectory (as they do now), but still cause damage without auto-targeting. At a distance of more than 180 m, the automatic homing begins to work. If the enemy mech is located at a distance of less than 180 m, then it should be impossible to perform automatic homing on it.
2. It is also desirable to reduce the number of LRM missiles in 1 ton of AMMO (this will force a reduction in the number of LRM installations per mech).
3. It is also possible to increase the LRM spread.

Edited by --GameOver23Rus--, 20 February 2021 - 07:35 AM.

[Tesunie]

--GameOver23Rus--, on 19 February 2021 - 09:43 AM, said:

2. It is also desirable to reduce the number of LRM missiles in 1 ton of AMMO (this will force a reduction in the number of LRM installations per mech).

Keep in mind that this would wreck builds that don't boat LRMs... and would actually force LRMs to be boat or go home weapons...

I know my Huntsmen build (2 LRM15s, 4 ERMLs) would no longer have enough ammo to function if the amount of missiles was dropped too much lower. My Stalker (2 LRM15s, 4 MLs and 2 MRM10s) also would become hard pressed and probably would need to be complete overhauled as well. Etc.

I don't think missile ammo count per ton of ammo is the problem...

[Kurt the Merc]

Laser Ams heat reduction?

[xAndy199]

KW Driver, on 19 February 2021 - 12:34 AM, said:

And how are you going to suggest that new/less skilled players have a good experience? not everyone has the ability to dedicate 20 hours per week playing the game to "git gud".. While I can commend the expert meta players for their admirable skill sets, you can adapt to changes.. new players get scared off by getting stomped constantly for weeks on end because they don't have the time or cognitive ablility to dedicate toward achieving your skill level. There are exploits that experienced players use for seal clubbing (Lurmers, I'm looking at you with 6-8 mech group indirect fire that can cause 800 damage in less than 5 seconds, and is completely indefensible)..

Two of my adult kids tried playing this game, and left, never to return because the games just weren't fun. They would get thrown into maps they couldn't understand and get wiped out in seconds by the spammers.. they'd be involved in so many 0-12 matches that their opinion was that no matter how cool the game looked, it was broken by so many exploits and piss poor matchmaking that it wasn't worth their time... So back to World of Tanks, War Thunder and CoD they went..

SO, if you want your game to stick around, you have to at least listen to the concerns of the new players (after all, they are the ones that will spend money on this game, not the top shelf players that already have all the content in the game)...

I'm logging back in to like this and give it a reply so it keeps bothering people on another page of this thread.
I'm not an MWO pro, I'm here as an RTS player that needs to scratch the MechWarrior spot in my heart I got from MechCommander (2).
I don't have nearly as much time as I'd wish to play this game and whatever surplus I have I necessarily must put toward some old RTS games because of friends that need me there, where we log back in because of an emotional need more than anything.
RTS-ing against the same group of people forever has made me a habitual minmaxer and I spend a stupid amount of my MWO time in the mechlab, chasing ever more "max damage in 5 seconds".

Point is, with my minmaxxer attitude, it's glaringly obvious even to me as a non-pro MWO player that some weapons either don't work at all or are never the better choice.
As an example, snubs only work if you're meme-boating them, and even then Large Lasers would have been the better choice.
I'd be inclined to say ER Large Lasers are pointless, but that's only so in Skirmish - they're fine in Faction Warfare;
they are, however, completely outclassed by mediumboating if you have the hardpoints.
MWO's wide variety of weapons and configurations only exists on paper. The game is not broken only as long as you're playing the "Baradul builds", if you try to be a funny wise guy, you have, like, a 1/100 chance of finding something that works as good or better than an established meta build, which is a problem.

[Poor-Life-Choices]

Can't speak for weapon buffs, but the #1 over powered weapon IMO is the machine gun. They should not damage armor, and the crit chances are too high.

[TercieI]

Two things really drove me away from the game: Skill Maze and the crushing of SPLs and their associated play style, which was among the most fun, high-risk, high-reward ways to play MWO. Please make SPLs usable again. It kills me that since I started playing and rebuilding mechs, I haven't equipped a single SPL.

[dario03]

Tesunie, on 19 February 2021 - 09:38 AM, said:

You seem to be under a misconception... Engines all require 10 heat sinks for basic safe operation (by lore and the rules of Battletech). The larger engines can fit additional heat sinks within the engine itself as it's got more space for it. The smaller engines hold less than 10 heat sinks inside (and in MW:O, the weight of those missing heat sinks are deducted from the engine's weight). Thus, to be "safe operation" level, smaller engines require some heat sinks to be mounted outside the engine itself. The tonnage works out, so the only penalty that mechs with smaller engines have are crit spaces for those heat sinks.

Less crit slots sometimes means dropping (light)ferro. So it can also cost them some weight savings.
It also means if you lose a component with heatsinks in it you lose those heatsinks. This can be a little bit of an issue on some builds. A standard 170 K9 with mpl and jjs for instance will only have 6dhs if it gets its torsos shot off and can actually be a little hot. A standard 250 jj Phoenix Hawk 1k with the same 2mpl in the CT though can have 10dhs and be fine.

[Flying Blind]

Missiles, especially SRMs suffer from not being able to do damage beyond their optimal range. all other weapons can do this and are commonly used this way. All that would need to be done would be to increase spread beyond optimal range so that damage will be reduced by missiles just not hitting.

I would prefer all weapons not doing damage beyond their optimal range but that is a drastic change and probably unappealing to most players.

Range Equality for missiles!

Missile Range Matters!

[Chickenman23]

Gauss Rifles explode when hit because of the Capacitors involved with EM charges to shoot the inert round. If they are charged to shoot, then they should be able to fire as soon as triggered. If you have to charge to shoot, then they can't explode if NOT charged. As it is, I like them, but they are so hard to shoot based on my game play that I skip them.

I myself don't like playing clan mechs, as the recharge times are too long for the slight elevation in damage. I stick to innershere, but I believe that was the goal there.

[Brauer]

Kurt the Merc, on 19 February 2021 - 10:00 AM, said:

Laser Ams heat reduction?

If this is statement that LAMS needs to have its heat reduced, yes.

If this is a question about the idea of reducing LAMS heat: LAMS currently produces so much heat that the only impact removing LAMS from the game would have right now would be improving the builds of anyone who actually runs LAMS.

[xAndy199]

LordNothing, on 19 February 2021 - 08:37 AM, said:

you did see the yes part? no? ive thumbed through so many of those. i even like his post after perusing the data. im just saying they shouldn't be the only ones you are listening to. because that worked really well when they tried to fix faction play.

throw some play for fun types, because they will run the weapons no-one will touch just to see if they can make them work. so they have a better understanding of how to make those things the meta players wont even touch work. that rac5 is great dps, but you face off against a vomit boat and you are cored before it even gets through the spinup. i know because ive been on both sides of that trade. the rac2 is actually better despite how terrible it looks in the stats as you can buffer the range to out trade some midrange skirmishers.

i do not recall asking for nerfs the uac5/10 or atms. these weapons have clear tradeoffs that make them strong in some situations and weak in others. things like the lppc are nothing more than a ppc i use on lights. and the lgr? you cant tell me that peashooter is meta, if anyone uses it, its to hide at the edge of the map and snipe the whole round. the lb2 is fine, especially the is version, with that 3x max range. the ac5/cac5 have all fallen short with reguards to the other autocannons. the rest of the cacs are weapons i use a lot, and enjoy, and the last thing i want is their burst fire taken away. as for both lb5s, the is version has potential if the spread can be reduced and it can actually use the 3x range the 2 enjoys.

I found a viable way to squeeze in the Light Gauss into gameplay with the High Roller. Switching the LRM for an MRM, with a Large Laser and 3x Medium Lasers, I put the Light Gauss into the right arm to dampen down the heat, and to get some long-range harassing fire on the side. It's the only build I found where LGauss makes sense

[MookieDog]

denAirwalkerrr, on 19 February 2021 - 05:49 AM, said:

You know you're missing 2 AC2s on that build right?

Actually no I didnt. I was just out messing around. It was more of a trial by fire. BUT.. I can give six AC2s a whirl!

[Matmoesa]

I'm not a huge fan of how most effective mech builds are just boating 1 weapon type.
I have done a few years of comp play, and it dribbles into quick play etc and it does ruin variety.

Its a missed opportunity in a game that has you piloting a multi weapons platform with the possibility of having 6 firing groups I generally only have one or 2 active weapon groups and one weapon type.
You can even look at any box art from most instalments of Mechwarrior, and it usually has a mech boating multiple weapons. It adds interest to your mechs and in your matches.

I don't know exactly how you would change this, but a few ideas that come to mind are.
-stacking penalties to multiple weapons. EG. 1 med pulse has a cooldown of 2 sec, 2 med pulse has a cooldown of 3 secs, and so on, so the more you have, the longer your cycle rate and heat generation. It could then mix in SRMs or small lasers or maybe a snub PPC into the build.

- large quirks for weapon quotas. E.g. AC20 quirk of 20% cooldown as long as 1 AC20 is equipped.
this would allow you to spec mechs into rolls and perhaps give some of the iconic bracket builds (mixed builds) a leg up to stay competitive in the current game.