108 replies to this topic

[Verilligo]

justcallme A S H, on 30 June 2021 - 03:51 PM, said:

• MGs - Agreed. Manny mechs have volume hardpoints make it hard. RoF quirks will come into play on some mechs with limited ballistics so watch out for that - definitely happening/on the radar.
  
• Flamers - They are really good at what they do - heating up mechs. 1-2 flamers is enough to get a mech to a cap of 90% rather fast for minimal tonnage. You bring 4 and oh boy - any mech you look at it gonna be cookin' and you can go and do this to 2-3 mechs at a time.
  
  
  There have been suggestions around more dmg, more crits etc - right now we aren't looking to touch them because of how strong they are at what they do. Even if they did a little more damage it would not do much.
  
  Added crits increase is off table. Reasoning is - they already fast heat-cap and if you then now are having weapons crit out as well - that is not FUN gameplay.
  
  If there is a workable suggestion / idea Cauldron would be all ears - most things need a mechanic change however.
  
• TAG - 750m as it is and that is affected by skill tree and mech quirks so you can get out to 900m on some mechs which gives them that flavour option. Is that not enough range? For 1T with great range and neutralises ECM while also helping allied mechs with lockspeed. It is very powerful for that 1T investment.
  
  I cannot say Cauldron has discussed anything around TAG as we deemed that to be fine.
  
• NARC - This is an interesting one. Cauldron have discussed a mechanic change although we obviously cant do that right now - that is the true desire. Changed such that once a mech received "X" damage the NARC beacon falls off/wears off. So you cannot be under NARC for 30-45s and constantly barraged with missiles until you die - that just not FUN.
  
  
  
  NARC RoF - Feels fine @ 7s cooldown. It is very strong and given how long it lasts you can have 3-4 NARC beacons active at any given time. Does the game really need more?
  NARC ammo - Interested to hear why you think ammo is low. 16 shots and you can increase that via skill tree, that is huge. You generally need 2T max for QP with is ~40 shots. I cannot say a ammo buff has been discussed as being needed.
  NARC Tonnage - IS NARC 3T - cNARC 2T. Cauldron has not altered the tonnage of any weapons to date, crit slots yes, not weight. A slippery slope to start perhaps.

MGs: Have you considered the reverse? Buffing MGs and adding negative buffs to mechs with massed ballistics, proportional to the number of hardpoints they have? Honestly, it's really only the lighter mechs with massed ballistics that makes them a serious problem. It could be amusing to have the machine gun King Crab be a relevant threat.

TAG: It neutralizes ECM, but layered ECM and stealth armor are still serious problems for TAG to overcome. At the very least the last time I tried to use TAG, I believe nearby ECM kept a target under ECM effects, even if the primary target had its own ECM neutralized. Stealth seems to completely ignore TAG altogether. This may be the intent of the current balance, but that would be nice to know.

Narc: 16 shots per ton is plenty, provided you never miss. The trouble I see with Narc is primarily the whole "missing" business, it's an incredibly small projectile that fires very slowly and there is zero "response" from it connecting other than the icon popping up. In some ways that's part of what makes it so powerful, in that you can NARC someone and absolutely no one has any idea what's happened or where it came from. That seems a little silly to me, honestly. In combination with the fact that it's rather heavy and you have no idea, going into a QP match, whether it will be at all useful or not makes it a harder sell. If it weren't so strongly linked with being a benefit to LRMs, I would almost suggest changing its concept entirely and completely remove the "enemy spotted" comm wheel option.

[Khobai]

Verilligo, on 02 July 2021 - 06:15 AM, said:

MGs: Have you considered the reverse? Buffing MGs and adding negative buffs to mechs with massed ballistics, proportional to the number of hardpoints they have? Honestly, it's really only the lighter mechs with massed ballistics that makes them a serious problem. It could be amusing to have the machine gun King Crab be a relevant threat.

TAG: It neutralizes ECM, but layered ECM and stealth armor are still serious problems for TAG to overcome. At the very least the last time I tried to use TAG, I believe nearby ECM kept a target under ECM effects, even if the primary target had its own ECM neutralized. Stealth seems to completely ignore TAG altogether. This may be the intent of the current balance, but that would be nice to know.

Narc: 16 shots per ton is plenty, provided you never miss. The trouble I see with Narc is primarily the whole "missing" business, it's an incredibly small projectile that fires very slowly and there is zero "response" from it connecting other than the icon popping up. In some ways that's part of what makes it so powerful, in that you can NARC someone and absolutely no one has any idea what's happened or where it came from. That seems a little silly to me, honestly. In combination with the fact that it's rather heavy and you have no idea, going into a QP match, whether it will be at all useful or not makes it a harder sell. If it weren't so strongly linked with being a benefit to LRMs, I would almost suggest changing its concept entirely and completely remove the "enemy spotted" comm wheel option.

Adding a secondary ability to NARC would unfortunately require an engineer.

But I had suggested making NARC explode when its duration expires and have it do like 6-8 damage

So it would still have some use even if your team doesnt have LRMs.

the NARC explosive pod is a real thing from battletech so it would just be combining that and regular NARC

[FinnMcKool]

with MGs
I don't understand how they can do so much damage to Armor,
once the armor is gone yes , crit city,
but what is armor ?
it seems like paper to MGs

[Der Geisterbaer]

FinnMcKool said:

with MGs
I don't understand how they can do so much damage to Armor,

"So much"? ~laugh~
Compared to their TT counterparts machine guns in MWO are among those few if not the only weapons that do significantly less damage than one would expect and ...

FinnMcKool said:

once the armor is gone yes , crit city,

... "crit city" is about the only redeeming element.

FinnMcKool said:

but what is armor ?
it seems like paper to MGs

Armor in MWO is less paper for MWO machine guns than mech armor is for the weapons that they are modelled after in Battletech

[Khobai]

Hit locations are random in battletech though. So even though machine guns do proportionally more damage in battletech theyre less likely to breach armor because they hit random locations.

Machine guns are far more effective at penetrating armor in MWO because you can keep aiming for a specific location.

Piranhas in MWO are far more deadly than they are in battletech for that reason.

[pattonesque]

Just shoot the piranha!

[Der Geisterbaer]

Khobai said:

Hit locations are random in battletech though.

Which is true for all weapons in tabletop unless specific rules like being prone after a fall come into play.

Khobai said:

So even though machine guns do proportionally more damage in battletech theyre less likely to breach armor because they hit random locations.

Since this would again go off-topic I'll just remind you that the same logic would then have to apply to AC2s and leave it there

Khobai said:

Machine guns are far more effective at penetrating armor in MWO because you can keep aiming for a specific location.

which again is true for any weapon in MWO ~laugh~

Khobai said:

Piranhas in MWO are far more deadly than they are in battletech for that reason.

Let's just say that my personal experiences with Piranhas in TT tell a very different story ...

[FinnMcKool]

Der Geisterbaer, on 02 July 2021 - 12:01 PM, said:

"So much"? ~laugh~
Compared to their TT counterparts machine guns in MWO are among those few if not the only weapons that do significantly less damage than one would expect and ...



... "crit city" is about the only redeeming element.



Armor in MWO is less paper for MWO machine guns than mech armor is for the weapons that they are modelled after in Battletech

but this isn't TT
we have lites with the Alpha of assaults



Cool name by the way

[Khobai]

Der Geisterbaer, on 02 July 2021 - 12:14 PM, said:

Since this would again go off-topic I'll just remind you that the same logic would then have to apply to AC2s and leave it there

it does also apply to AC2s. AC2s are significantly better in MWO than in tabletop. because you can fire all your boated AC2s into one location instead of having random hit locations like in tabletop.

a mech like ultraviolet would be absolutely terrible in tabletop. whereas ultraviolet can core people out extremely fast in MWO.

Its the ability to aim all your weapons at one location that makes armor feel like paper in MWO.

Edited by Khobai, 02 July 2021 - 12:24 PM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

FinnMcKool said:

but this isn't TT

And that's in part the reason why machine guns actually do less damage in MWO against armor when compared to the damage that other weapons do against armor in both TT and MWO
You however insinuated that machine guns in MWO do too much damage against armor.

FinnMcKool said:

we have lites with the Alpha of assaults

Also nothing that you don't see in TT

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 02 July 2021 - 12:42 PM.

[pattonesque]

Der Geisterbaer, on 02 July 2021 - 12:23 PM, said:

You however insinuated that machine guns in MWO do to much damage against armor.

dude got ganked by a Piranha-1 once

[FinnMcKool]

MGs in my opine (not yours, and i do respect your opine, even though you don't mine)

is MGs do too much damage to Armor,

so its an opine,

bitta nahmin sie ein beir mine Herr
sprieken sie mit dienen freundin vie bluda bin ich

nur spass , nay?

hey no one cares what i think why you so worried?

Edited by FinnMcKool, 02 July 2021 - 12:37 PM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Khobai said:

it does also apply to AC2s. AC2s are significantly better in MWO than in tabletop. because you can fire all your boated AC2s into one location instead of having random hit locations like in tabletop.

~cough~ As I said before: It's true for all weapons and that's why your "argument" with regards to machine guns is just worthless nonsense as usual (including your intellectual dishonesty about it).

Khobai said:

a mech like ultraviolet would be absolutely terrible in tabletop. whereas ultraviolet can core people out extremely fast in MWO.

Well, TT's equivalent for MWO's "Ultraviolet" happens to be the mech called Kraken a.k.a. Bane and that mech somehow isn't terrible at all [redacted]

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 05 July 2021 - 05:36 AM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

FinnMcKool said:

MGs in my opine (not yours, and i do respect your opine, even though you don't mine)

is MGs do too much damage to Armor,

~laugh~ Yeah right, this is certainly me not "respecting" your opinion when I'm telling you that your opinion is based on a flawed assumption and it's total demonstration of you respecting me (or my opinion) when you start writing stuff like this:

FinnMcKool said:

bitta nahmin sie ein beir mine Herr
sprieken sie mit dienen freundin vie bluda bin ich

nur spass , nay?

So "neg" this is not "nur Spass" but you quite obvisouly showing very personal disrespect.

[Thorqemada]

Call it a feature or a flaw that Battletech Armor is ablative armor:
Armor (BattleMechs & Combat Vehicles) - BattleTechWiki (sarna.net)

That means even a weak weapon like a MG does damage to it and many weak weapons combined add up to become a serious damage dealer.

Edited by Thorqemada, 02 July 2021 - 12:42 PM.

[FinnMcKool]

hasnt anything to do with your opinion just just trying to let you know im not ignorant or dumb,

(well my spelling is very bad)

not disrespecting you at all

but again no need to worry about me, i have no ones ear, and no one cares about what i think

[MyriadDigits]

Der Geisterbaer, on 02 July 2021 - 12:01 PM, said:

"So much"? ~laugh~
Compared to their TT counterparts machine guns in MWO are among those few if not the only weapons that do significantly less damage than one would expect and ...

Actually incorrect. TT MGs deal 2 damage to battlemech armor in a single turn, which is 10 seconds long, which would've been 0.2 damage per second aka 1 fifth the DPS of an MWO machine gun.

[Der Geisterbaer]

MyriadDigits said:

Actually incorrect.

Nope not "incorrect". You just missed the point of the statement you just quoted
Instead you're making an ill-advised direct DPS comparison between TT and MWO. However, ...

MyriadDigits said:

TT MGs deal 2 damage to battlemech armor in a single turn, which is 10 seconds long, which would've been 0.2 damage per second aka 1 fifth the DPS of an MWO machine gun.

... a TT mg has the exact same "DPS" as a TT AC/2 because both of them deal the same 2 damage to battletech armor over the course of a single turn - which within the same faulty DPS comparison you just made - would mean that the AC/2 also has a 0.2 DPS in TT vs. the 2.78DPS it has in MWO.

As a matter of fact all weapons in MWO have a higher DPS than their TT counterparts but two weapons with identical DPS in TT quite obviously have significantly different DPS values in MWO => The MWO machine guns - just as I wrote - when compared to their TT counterparts do significantly less damage in MWO (by a factor of 2.78) than one would / could expect.

[edit]Not so serious "idea": Remove all the crit bonues from machine guns in MWO and give them the same DPS as AC/2s ... That would be a field day for all lights that sport 4 or more machine guns and maybe then I'd give credit to the idea that the PIR-1 might be the (not so) big bad bogeyman.[/edit]

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 02 July 2021 - 01:33 PM.

[Verilligo]

Khobai, on 02 July 2021 - 06:23 AM, said:

Adding a secondary ability to NARC would unfortunately require an engineer.

But I had suggested making NARC explode when its duration expires and have it do like 6-8 damage

So it would still have some use even if your team doesnt have LRMs.

the NARC explosive pod is a real thing from battletech so it would just be combining that and regular NARC

Not add a secondary function. Replace a primary function so that Narc has no impact on missiles and instead simply keeps someone marked and on radar over a very extended period of time. Have it such that lock times are so long via Narc-only locks that it's pointless to use it as an LRM enabler. But no one would go for that, partly because of the expectation that Narc and missiles have a symbiotic relationship because they do in tabletop. I should have listed that as more of a tangent than anything else.

[Leone]

That would defeat the purpose.

~Leone.