114 replies to this topic

[Meep Meep]

GARION26, on 19 March 2021 - 05:11 AM, said:

The AI is not great - but honestly at lower mech weights the base game is quitechallenging and lots of fun. The issue is they can only really have 12 AI assets on the field and you are smarter then them. When you have a max tonnage lance with highly skilled pilots and lots of advanced tech upgrades it's much harder for the AI to compete. The base game partially balances this by allowing you to increase the difficulty of essentially accessing this.

The various mods actually up the difficulty to varying degrees quite a bit - some come with the warning from experienced BT gamers it's not for the faint of heart (i've just been looking at them last weekend as I'm curious about installing as I've been watching another Baradul Battletech Advanced mod video.)

You can also play remotely against a friend which is a real win in a Corona in the world. How good your friends FI (Friends Intelligence) is up to the company you keep

Do these mods address the AI shortcomings or do they use brute force stuff like bonus damage and other AI buffs the player doesn't get?

[Wildstreak]

Offhand I would say:

1 - You can only get locks through use of TAG or on NARC'd targets.
2 - Allow different damage values to LRMs at less than 120 meter to simulate the Hot Load TT rules. Clans have this already but IS should get it too.

[Fae Puka]

Wildstreak, on 19 March 2021 - 08:19 AM, said:

Offhand I would say:

1 - You can only get locks through use of TAG or on NARC'd targets.
2 - Allow different damage values to LRMs at less than 120 meter to simulate the Hot Load TT rules. Clans have this already but IS should get it too.

That's why there are nodes to pick up in the skills trees.

Sensors have various ranges that will detect heat, sounds and movement that allow the targeting in the first instance, BAP, NARC & TAG speed up locks because of additional focus or resources the mech has. Requiring an absolute of having to have one of these to have any lock would simply break the weapons system in their entirety, so not an option.

[dario03]

Meep Meep, on 19 March 2021 - 02:51 AM, said:

This already exists with los locks gaining better spread and velocity over idf so more missiles hit the ct and the reduction of the size of the zone you have to keep your aim point in to keep locks. Target decay is what affects not losing lock when your aim point drifts out of the zone. Also idf locks are painfully slow unless someone else has tagged or narced it. If you want your lrm boat to maximize its performance you are going to be sharing armor and getting los locks right behind the brawlers.

Its not quite the same thing. I'm talking more about having the weapons performance be determined by how well the reticle is kept on target. So like if you barely keep it on, then the missiles spread a lot, if you keep it perfectly on they don't. Maybe something like a smaller box pops up when you achieve lock and you try to stay in that smaller box. So now, not holding the lock in the smaller box well would result in a lot of spread, but keeping in the little box would let you focus certain components.

[Heavy Money]

There's lots of fancy ways to solve the problem, but i think the easiest is just to make the difference between direct and indirect fire even more stark. (I'm not opposed to more complex solutions, but simplicity makes it easier to implement and try.)

The core of the LRM problem is that they don't take much skill to use against unskilled targets, and no amount of skill makes them useful against skilled targets. This is why they are complained about in t5 but considered irrelevant in t1 and comp play.

So the simple solution is to make indirect fire worse, and make direct fire even better. Give indirect fire even worse velocity and spread, and give direct fire even better velocity and spread.

To incentivize the use of tag/narc/teamwork, improve direct lock times and nerf indirect lock times on non-tagged/narced targets. This way, an organized indirect fire group with a spotter can still perform as they are now. But if you're trying to just sit behind your team and indirect fire solo, you're weaker than now. Target Decay could also be effected.

Further improvement could be reduction of minimum range deadzone when direct firing, and increasing it when indirect. Having Tag and Artemis effect this would also be good. It should be possible to eliminate the deadzone entirely if you have artemis and tag.

[Grus]

Dosnt NARC fix all these issues? I hardly if ever use lrms so I dont know.

[Quandoo]

Just release MWO2 finally. This game is ancient and needs a new engine. I was so dissapointed that MW5 wasn't the follow up game...

Edited by Quandoo, 19 March 2021 - 10:38 AM.

[Bud Crue]

I don't know about a rework, but it seems like last night a whole bunch of folks who previously were trying out the new PPC changes suddenly decided that they weren't working for them, and en masse they all changed over to LRM boats. It almost felt like the old LRMagedon days. Had three matches in a row where two of us running dual AMS Jesters actually ran out of ammo (Polar, Terra and Crimson).

It does make me wonder why LRMs are so often the default weapon for so many, and that maybe something should be changed with them or other systems to encourage an alternative.

[Quandoo]

My answer to LRM (events) is my Marauder-IIC-D with ecm, 2 gauss, 2 large laser and 1x6 streak. Then counter rotate into their back (or hide close to starting position) and do your 800-1300 backstab dmg. It's fun watching how they run in panic. Sometimes half their team goes after you, turning their backs to your own team

And some are confused, thinking your a light mech...

Edited by Quandoo, 19 March 2021 - 11:11 AM.

[GARION26]

Meep Meep, on 19 March 2021 - 07:36 AM, said:

Do these mods address the AI shortcomings or do they use brute force stuff like bonus damage and other AI buffs the player doesn't get?

I haven't gotten any of the mods - tried to download this weekend but I've never used nexus mods before.
There's a whole reddit about the mods including this pinned posts that at least one of the most famous three mods improves AI. I'm sure other modders have worked on AI alone
https://www.reddit.c...guide_to_chose/

Really the AI isn't too bad, yes it could be better. But when the player has access to significantly better mechs and pilots then the AI and leans into the mechanics that can be cheesed - it's hard to make up for that. Some of the mods I'm interested in fundamentally make it harder (apparently) to lean into those easy mode mechanics.

For example in the basic games you can eventually get access to what is essentially a clan gauss, or bonus damage PPCS or boat multiple bonus damage long range smaller weapons. Enough to headshot a mech with one hit or kill the pilot as multiple hits to the head will kill the pilot as each does 1 damage to a 3-6 or so HP pilot. The game allows for a pilot development system that makes some pilots very very good at called shots to single locations, and some mechs (Marauder) get a 30% bonus on called shots. Even if you had another human player on the other end if there was a significant imbalance on how good the pilots were, and how good the mechs were - it would be hard to compensate for. Harder modes in the base game make it harder to get those better mechs, and your own pilots die more frequently preventing them from racking up the skills.

That tech/pilot imbalance is above and beyond the ability to use a fast moving hard to hit light mech to distract the not so smart AI from the mechs actually able to kill them (which frankly works just fine against real life human pilots in MWO as we well know!) Yes the AI doesn't concentrate fire well . . . but again try to drop call in QP in PUG groups. . .

[Vlad Ward]

LRMs are fueled by schadenfreude. They're just not fun to play against.

Frankly, for those of us who don't delight in schadenfreude, they're not very fun to play either. They take a fun action combat game and turn it into point-and-click online.

I feel like LRMs would benefit a lot by killing the fire-and-forget lock-on mechanic altogether. Make them laser guided munitions where missiles will turn to try to follow your reticle. Advanced players could pull off crazy maneuvers like shooting around rocks or other obstacles. Weaker players would lose the ability to farm damage while making a sandwich.

Admittedly, this does impact the other big group of LRM users - disabled folks who love Mechwarrior but can't move the mouse the way they'd need to to play an action game. I feel like ATMs can still give these folks the mechanic they need to play the game with much better balance overall.

[The6thMessenger]

Vlad Ward, on 19 March 2021 - 06:19 PM, said:

LRMs are fueled by schadenfreude. They're just not fun to play against.

Altana Vult?

Vlad Ward, on 19 March 2021 - 06:19 PM, said:

I feel like LRMs would benefit a lot by killing the fire-and-forget lock-on mechanic altogether. Make them laser guided munitions where missiles will turn to try to follow your reticle. Advanced players could pull off crazy maneuvers like shooting around rocks or other obstacles. Weaker players would lose the ability to farm damage while making a sandwich.

Admittedly, this does impact the other big group of LRM users - disabled folks who love Mechwarrior but can't move the mouse the way they'd need to to play an action game. I feel like ATMs can still give these folks the mechanic they need to play the game with much better balance overall.

Streaks are Fire-and-Forget, the LRMs and ATMs needs constant locks.

Yes, like HL1 Rocket Launcher. But that is just too much setup, too complicated. That sounds like what TAG is supposed to do, but LRMs as base weapons should be able to find their own way.

My suggestion, again, is just limit IDF to NARC and TAG, the IDF that which dreaded the casuals and annoyed the comps, pushes IDFing with dedicated spotters and into proper role-warfare. Where the Dedicated Spotters can be disabled, which also disables IDFing.

[Meep Meep]

This was mainly los locks with no tag or narc and a bit of ams defense.





Games which are mainly idf don't get me near this performance. So what exactly needs to be rebalanced? Lrm can be very effective when used properly and thats true of every weapon type. They can also be easily mitigated by cover or massed ams.

[PocketYoda]

Make Lurmers get their own locks like it should be.

[Meep Meep]

Samial, on 19 March 2021 - 07:03 PM, said:

Make Lurmers get their own locks like it should be.

They already do if they want to maximize their damage output.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Meep Meep, on 20 March 2021 - 04:25 AM, said:

They already do if they want to maximize their damage output.

which means they usually don't.
the typical mwo-lurmer doesn't pick them to maximise damage.

can't type in the real reasons they pick it, cause there's the constant [redacted]-sword flying over my head whenever you stating something objectively, cause certain -again objective- truths hurt certain egos.

Edited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, 20 March 2021 - 06:12 AM.

[East Indy]

Assuming Gulag changes to ATMs, I think it's simple:

1. Indirect fire deals considerably less damage. Video game logic and be done with it.
2. NARC beacons have longer range, higher velocity and more ammo per ton, but require a lower damage total to "fall off."
3. Streaks deal proportionately less damage to lower-tonnage targets. Again, video game logic.

[Meep Meep]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, on 20 March 2021 - 06:11 AM, said:

which means they usually don't.
the typical mwo-lurmer doesn't pick them to maximise damage.

can't type in the real reasons they pick it, cause there's the constant [redacted]-sword flying over my head whenever you stating something objectively, cause certain -again objective- truths hurt certain egos.

I can only speak for myself. What others do is beyond my control or the control of the devs. You can't balance stupidity unless you want to dumb the game down to window licker levels.

[East Indy]

I'll add that if you really wanted to get fancy you'd implement a "missile-per-second" soft cap that increases cooldown and introduces diminishing returns to 50-tube-plus boats, simulating the time it takes dozens of missiles to reload.

[Meep Meep]

East Indy, on 20 March 2021 - 06:30 AM, said:

I'll add that if you really wanted to get fancy you'd implement a "missile-per-second" soft cap that increases cooldown and introduces diminishing returns to 50-tube-plus boats, simulating the time it takes dozens of missiles to reload.

So a nerf to chainfire because thats the only way to boat more than a couple of lrm launchers? I mean sure as that will reduce heat and make it possible to just fire all day long non stop. As it stands on that sunspider even with max coolrun and heat nodes I can only sustain chainfire for a little while before I have to do my own manual slowdown to keep heat in check.