101 replies to this topic

[Der Geisterbaer]

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

inflating hardpoints for machine gun mechs was an egregious shortcut with big consequences.

Well, prior to the PIR-1 arriving on the MW:O scene there were only ACH-E and MLX-G (both of which canonically should have uses machine gun arrays) and at that time the shortcut as you call it was somewhat necessary because the weight of arrays in conjunction with the machine gun ammo values of that time would have rendered either mech "useless" (some will go as far as saying that the ACH-E was and still is useless to this very day regardless of the machine gun arrays being omitted)

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

mgas should have been used instead to solve the problem. instead of giving mechs 12 hardpoints you give them four, then install 3 mga3s for 12 mgs total.

That's the crux right there: The 12 hardpoint machine has those 12 hardpoints in canon and forcing 4 mga3 (not just 3) with a combined weight of 2 tons onto the PIR-1 would have made it just as "useless" as an MLX-G with 2hmg4s or ACH-E with 2lmga3s because of the ammo counts back then.

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

you could upgrade that to mga4s or hmga3s or some such. older machine gun lights can enjoy the party.

But they wouldn't actually have enjoyed the party either because the additional weight of mgas would have cut down ammo on them as well. Remember: Ammo counts were increased later and ammo quirks are still a novelity by comparison.

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

heavies and assaults could mount enough to matter.

And this is actually something that could be considered just as "counterproductive" as you claim that hard point inflation was. Giving heavies and assaults access to mga would pose similar balance problems. Yeah, the 24hmg (6hmga4) Annihillator isn't the real danger there but the various heavies with 3-4 ballistic hard points (or even 6 in case of a Jager) and thus more than easily 4 to 6 (h)mga3s and (h)mga4s with serious numbers of energy hardpoints that would have easily taken the niche away from those 6 (soon 7) machine gun themed mechs. So no, ...

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

these perhaps should have came out with the civil war weapons pack before the piranha came out, and it would have solved the mg problem forever.

... I can't subscribe to that underlinded claim.

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

hindsight is 20/20 and now we got a problem that should have been forseen.

And I'd say that your "hindsight" isn't that much of 20/20 and the problems of your suggestion would have been just as "forseeable".

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

fortunately there are only 6 mechs that can carry more than 6 machine guns stock (7 when the crusader hero drops), not counting omnipod kitbashes. you could probibly give mgas exclusively to those mechs simultaneously with a hardpoint reduction.

And you'd have to find a way to (further) compensate for the ammo reductions on the 20t and 25t mechs - particularly the PIR-1 while retaining their niche. The PIR-1 has typical builds with 3 to 3.5 tons of ammo for its 12 machine guns without any ammo quirks. Those builds would drop to 1 to 1.5 tons with mgas which on average wouldn't last long enough ...

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 07:12 AM, said:

then if, they do well, retrofit them on other formerly useful machine gun mechs.

... for them to "do well" even with the upcomming ammo increase for clan machine guns - particularly when also considering that you also advocate for (further) crit reduction thus wanting to turn machine guns even more into straight "face staring" dps weapons which heavier mechs with more armor can do far easier.

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 24 May 2022 - 08:36 AM.

[LordNothing]

well then what would you do about the mg problem? you seem pretty keen to shoot down other people's ideas.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Der Geisterbaer, on 24 May 2022 - 08:35 AM, said:

... for them to "do well" even with the upcomming ammo increase for clan machine guns - particularly when also considering that you also advocate for (further) crit reduction thus wanting to turn machine guns even more into straight "face staring" dps weapons which heavier mechs with more armor can do far easier.

They already are DPS weapons though.......they just happen to do significantly more against internals (because crits) so no real change other than their damage is more consistent?

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 24 May 2022 - 08:57 AM.

[Curccu]

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 08:49 AM, said:

well then what would you do about the mg problem? you seem pretty keen to shoot down other people's ideas.

Like I wrote that there isn't good solution, then again I'm not really seeing massed MGs a problem... there are plenty of ways to die quickly in this game. other ways way further away

[Der Geisterbaer]

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 08:49 AM, said:

well then what would you do about the mg problem?

Do I have to provide a different solution?

LordNothing, on 24 May 2022 - 08:49 AM, said:

you seem pretty keen to shoot down other people's ideas.

I'm absolutely not "keen to shoot down other people's ideas". But whenever I see an idea that upon closer inspection doesn't actually solve the problems it sets out to solve then I'll point out those shortcommings ... particularly if the idea presented in a way that suggests that the solution is "simple as that".

*************************************

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 08:56 AM, said:

They already are DPS weapons though.......

I didn't say they weren't?! But ...

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 08:56 AM, said:

they just happen to do significantly more against internals (because crits) so no real change other than their damage is more consistent?

.. maybe you want to re-read the posting that you took that citation from and "connect the dots" in order to note that - just like now - there was an overall sentence that started under a different citation that I made and then continued where you made your citation and that particular sentence does have preceding sentences that work on a particular context:

"The PIR-1 has typical builds with 3 to 3.5 tons of ammo for its 12 machine guns without any ammo quirks. Those builds would drop to 1 to 1.5 tons with mgas which on average wouldn't last long enough for them to "do well" even with the upcomming ammo increase for clan machine guns - particularly when also considering that you also advocate for (further) crit reduction thus wanting to turn machine guns even more into straight "face staring" dps weapons which heavier mechs with more armor can do far easier."

The vast majority of the "machine gun boats" are knife fighters with little weapon alternatives that need to "face staring dps" with both their machine guns and their side weaponry that makes them extremely vulnerable in their engagements. Removal or further reduction of the crit rates will make them even more vulnerable because they'll have to stay in that "face staring dps" stance even longer with the added suggestion of reducing their overall ammo counts by implementing (canon) machine gun arrays which reduces the amount of overall time that they actually can engage in "face staring dps" => a double nerf on niche mechs while also trying to buff machine guns for mechs that already can dps with less danger of "instant death".

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 24 May 2022 - 12:23 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Der Geisterbaer, on 24 May 2022 - 12:22 PM, said:

I didn't say they weren't?! But ...



.. maybe you want to re-read the posting that you took that citation from and "connect the dots" in order to note that - just like now - there was an overall sentence that started under a different citation that I made and then continued where you made your citation and that particular sentence does have preceding sentences that work on a particular context:

"The PIR-1 has typical builds with 3 to 3.5 tons of ammo for its 12 machine guns without any ammo quirks. Those builds would drop to 1 to 1.5 tons with mgas which on average wouldn't last long enough for them to "do well" even with the upcomming ammo increase for clan machine guns - particularly when also considering that you also advocate for (further) crit reduction thus wanting to turn machine guns even more into straight "face staring" dps weapons which heavier mechs with more armor can do far easier."

The vast majority of the "machine gun boats" are knife fighters with little weapon alternatives that need to "face staring dps" with both their machine guns and their side weaponry that makes them extremely vulnerable in their engagements. Removal or further reduction of the crit rates will make them even more vulnerable because they'll have to stay in that "face staring dps" stance even longer with the added suggestion of reducing their overall ammo counts by implementing (canon) machine gun arrays which reduces the amount of overall time that they actually can engage in "face staring dps" => a double nerf on niche mechs while also trying to buff machine guns for mechs that already can dps with less danger of "instant death".

Then maybe argue for more raw damage like I've advocated for in return for low crit changes/multipliers? While I get the whole argument about we can't reduce crit rates in a vacuum I don't think many people are going to be against raw damage buffs as compensation. With the addition of MGAs whose to say you couldn't advocate for ammo quirks for mechs like the Piranha to compensate for having to waste more tonnage to run it. Then again, MGAs could also have bonus damage to compensate for the increased tonnage investment. There is compromise to be had because while I think some people wouldn't mind seeing MGs nerfed to the ground, that should never be the goal of these sort of discussions.

Curccu, on 24 May 2022 - 11:03 AM, said:

Like I wrote that there isn't good solution, then again I'm not really seeing massed MGs a problem... there are plenty of ways to die quickly in this game. other ways way further away

I would agree that they aren't really that big of a deal, but, they aren't fun to play against and that is partly related to just how crits work in this game. These weapons just happen to rely on crits to be useful (both for damage and destroying components).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 24 May 2022 - 01:02 PM.

[Magnus Santini]

"Why not just nerf clan weapons? When I was in the AFFFFFS, that was quite often the right answer." GLHF with this because balancing is very tough. EDIT: toxicity neutralized.

Edited by Magnus Santini, 24 May 2022 - 02:17 PM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 12:52 PM, said:

Then maybe argue for more raw damage like I've advocated for in return for low crit changes/multipliers?

Arguing for an increased raw damage on machine guns would be yet another can of worms there.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 12:52 PM, said:

While I get the whole argument about we can't reduce crit rates in a vacuum I don't think many people are going to be against raw damage buffs as compensation.

Oh, there certainly are more than enough people who'd heavily oppose the idea of a raw damage increase as a compensation for a (further) reduction of crit rates. Just ask yourself by how much you'd want to increase raw machine gun damage under the stipulation that machine gun crit chances are lowered to default crit chances and crit damage mulipliers of weapons!?

But before you answer consider this: I "recently" did some math on how long it takes a typical 3 hsml + 12 mg PIR-1 to deal 80 points of damage under (more or less) "perfect conditions" without any criticals and no cooldown reductions in one of the "Lights are overpowered threads". The result was something slightly above 4.85s of uninterrupted fire (which was easily beaten by various other builds in one way or another). With a 10% increase in raw damage that drops to just a tad below 4.6s. A 20% increase (which is in the ballpark of what the crits chance reduction would be) we'd be talking a fraction above 4.3s ... and so far there's no talk of compensating for the crit damage multipliers.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 12:52 PM, said:

With the addition of MGAs whose to say you couldn't advocate for ammo quirks for mechs like the Piranha to compensate for having to waste more tonnage to run it.

Of course one could advocate for that but I personally would expect that the person making the mga suggestion should bring up that aspect by themselves when presenting machine gun arrays as a "simple" means to fight hardpoint inflation (which is a different problem than machine gun crit rates) on a mech that canonically has that many hardpoints.
So here's the catch: On an unskilled PIR-1 you'd need a +133% ammo quirk to compensate while on a skilled one you'd a +250% ammo quirk to make up for the lost 2t of ammo that MGAs would incur.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 12:52 PM, said:

Then again, MGAs could also have bonus damage to compensate for the increased tonnage investment.

Which would make it an even more convoluted mess than we have now.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 May 2022 - 12:52 PM, said:

There is compromise to be had because while I think some people wouldn't mind seeing MGs nerfed to the ground, that should never be the goal of these sort of discussions.

Of course there potentially is a compromise to be had. However, I'd say that we'd first have to come to an understanding where exactly the problems lie with the current situation as well as looking at the "plainly" visible problems with the suggested solutions. To reiterate:

• There's no real consensus on machine guns being "a big deal" in the first place (you yourself say as much)
  
• machine gun arrays would turn larger machine gun counts from something "niche" on mostly Lights and some medium mechs (plus soon one particular heavy) into something that a rather large number of mechs in the medium and heavy weight class could field along with serious energy and / or missile loadouts without the limitations that the "niche" mechs predominantly have to suffer with and without machine gun arrays. I can almost hear the cries about the equivalent of 12 to 24 machine guns on heavies with 2 to 4 ballistic hardpoints with a maximum of 2 ballistic per zone. Typical PIR-1 machine gun fire power on anything with 2 ballistic hardpoints.
  
• machine gun crit rates and damage multipliers are a separate can of worms that - at least as far as I can tell - would require "compensations" that - contrary to your belief - would very likely cause serious opposition by larger numbers of players ... and I would expect objections particularly from those who are already up in arms about being killed by "machine gun boats".

[MUNTAFIRE2]

Curccu, on 17 May 2022 - 01:31 PM, said:

No **** sherlock, what do expect by creating thread like this? Loads of Yes mens to agree with you?

These 100% assaults & heavies only players with their freakin' massive alphas and DPS who are not willing to learn how to shoot light always find a way to QQ about lights and no way in hell they can see other way around how it feels to eat those 40-90 damage alphas as light mech and get cripled/killed by 1 shot 3-6 times further away than they can even dent a paintjob of those said assaults.

GIT GUD, LEARN TO SHOOT!
[/thread]

edit: PS. What is even your suggestion for PTS? I can only see multiple lines of QQ without single suggestion or solution in your post.

just coz things work as intended and you die as a light mech getting blasted from an assault... doesn't mean you should get twice the armor so you can cope with that reality. It is an accurate representation of reality, but taking that away by thinking that light mechs having double armor is a good thing and then just banking on it coz you feel like it's an underdog type thing to do is just blatantly ignorant of the effects it has. turning light mechs into something that can take out 2 or 3 assaults is something that cannot be argued as simply broken and not representative of the game as it should be. It is catering to those players that are just too weak to play appropriately and instead spend their life complaining about assaults until pgi buffs the crap out of lights so all the light boys don't cry anymore and mwo overall is a "happier" place. what utter garbage

Edited by MUNTAFIRE2, 25 May 2022 - 10:02 AM.

[Pumpkin Spice Templar]

The game is competitive, and hard. That's what makes it fun for me. When I wanna sip whisky and chill, I play MW5 (Which is a SUPERB game btw - all you need is the YAML and a few quality of life mods).

You can complain that the game isn't perfectly fair. Life isn't fair. C'est la vie.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

Arguing for an increased raw damage on machine guns would be yet another can of worms there.

How is it a can of worms? That seems like quite the hand-wavey response.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

Oh, there certainly are more than enough people who'd heavily oppose the idea of a raw damage increase as a compensation for a (further) reduction of crit rates. Just ask yourself by how much you'd want to increase raw machine gun damage under the stipulation that machine gun crit chances are lowered to default crit chances and crit damage mulipliers of weapons!?

But before you answer consider this: I "recently" did some math on how long it takes a typical 3 hsml + 12 mg PIR-1 to deal 80 points of damage under (more or less) "perfect conditions" without any criticals and no cooldown reductions in one of the "Lights are overpowered threads". The result was something slightly above 4.85s of uninterrupted fire (which was easily beaten by various other builds in one way or another). With a 10% increase in raw damage that drops to just a tad below 4.6s. A 20% increase (which is in the ballpark of what the crits chance reduction would be) we'd be talking a fraction above 4.3s ... and so far there's no talk of compensating for the crit damage multipliers.

There are ways to figure this out, I just don't remember the crit damage multiplier math to figure out the average DPS against internals. Effectively you would want to flatten the spike. Against armor MGs do 1 DPS, but let's just say for example against internals they do 2.5 DPS. You would weight those DPS values and combine them because armor is typically double internals. So 1 * 0.667 + 2.5 * 0.333 = 1.5 DPS. So if we got rid of criticals completely, to get the average DPS they had before it would require a raw damage increase of 50%. This would maintain the same average TTK against mechs without internal/armor quirks/skills. Now one could say that make them too consistent and more powerful but I mean these things are tunable, but this is what should probably be looked at. The recent change was definitely a nerf but IMO, I'd be fine with a wait-and-see approach to whether they should have their damage buffed in compensation. I mean it isn't like comp really exists anymore to really gauge how well these are with top tier players (traditionally less face stare weapons have been favored but who knows)

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

Of course one could advocate for that but I personally would expect that the person making the mga suggestion should bring up that aspect by themselves when presenting machine gun arrays as a "simple" means to fight hardpoint inflation (which is a different problem than machine gun crit rates) on a mech that canonically has that many hardpoints.
So here's the catch: On an unskilled PIR-1 you'd need a +133% ammo quirk to compensate while on a skilled one you'd a +250% ammo quirk to make up for the lost 2t of ammo that MGAs would incur.

2 tons? Arrays are only a quarter ton for Clans unless I'm missing something and 12 MGs can be supported by only 3 arrays which leads to 0.75 tons, even if accounting for the split torsos, that is still only 1 ton (4 MGAs with 3 guns per array). Again though, MGAs would have to offer something to account for the extra 0.25 tons required. Whether it be ammo, damage, or range. 20 tonners are also the lightest mech so honestly, they probably should have the craziest ammo quirks given they have the least weight to work with.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

Which would make it an even more convoluted mess than we have now.

Not sure how, MGAs shouldnt just be a tonnage penalty for those that don't have hardpoints. That makes little sense. That tonnage investment for the array should have a pay off outside of overcoming hardpoint limitations. Honestly MW4 probably did the right thing by not having individual MGs at all and only having arrays even if it meant some canon mechs weren't valid.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

There's no real consensus on machine guns being "a big deal" in the first place (you yourself say as much)

I would argue there is concensus, just the differ between the sections of the playerbase.

Better players know that lights on average are the hardest class to play against, but they also are the class that benefit the most from uncoordinated environments and this part is important because just like every powerful light before it (Firestarters, Cheetahs, etc) I would argue these mechs thrive in the lower tiers more so than the rest because well, lower tiers are really uncoordinated (the lack of situational awareness is probably the key piece) and light mechs have the speed and decent enough firepower to capitalize on isolated mechs (especially if they have bad aim). MG lights aren't really interesting in this regard other than one factor and that is the way crits work makes them really unfun to play against because there really isn't any protection and the DPS increase against internals can be surprising sometimes because it isn't something that is really ever explained by the game. All of this is to say, the crits and weapons that specifically rely on that to be useful have a gameplay problem. This compounds with the fact that lower end lights are stupidly small and can avoid being hit against some mechs because of the height/size difference again, no one should be shocked that some people in the lower end of tiers hate them. This isn't a one size fits all problem. There are multiple factors that should probably be addressed and MGs are included in that category IMO.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

machine gun arrays would turn larger machine gun counts from something "niche" on mostly Lights and some medium mechs (plus soon one particular heavy) into something that a rather large number of mechs in the medium and heavy weight class could field along with serious energy and / or missile loadouts without the limitations that the "niche" mechs predominantly have to suffer with and without machine gun arrays.

The only niche mech that doesn't have something to overcome the limited hardpoints is the Piranha honestly. The Viper, Cheetah, and Mist Lynx all have omnipods to overcome their hardpoint deficiencies. And there are plenty of light variants that really wish they had that hardpoint inflation.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

I can almost hear the cries about the equivalent of 12 to 24 machine guns on heavies with 2 to 4 ballistic hardpoints with a maximum of 2 ballistic per zone. Typical PIR-1 machine gun fire power on anything with 2 ballistic hardpoints.

MGAs are limited to 4 guns per array, so most will only be able to mount 16 MGs, there aren't many mechs with more than 4 and probably even fewer that have the speed to use them (only 2 mediums and 2 heavy non-omnis have more than 4 hardpoints). Hard to know how much of a problem that will be given that these of course also have tonnage and space requirements (MGAs with 4 guns are 5 slots and either 1.25 tons for Clan or 2.5 for IS, that's not even touching the ammo requirements)

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

machine gun crit rates and damage multipliers are a separate can of worms that - at least as far as I can tell - would require "compensations" that - contrary to your belief - would very likely cause serious opposition by larger numbers of players ... and I would expect objections particularly from those who are already up in arms about being killed by "machine gun boats".

Maybe, maybe not. How much of it would come from not even knowing that they actually did more damage from criticals though I wonder? And just thinking that raw damage would just make them even worse than before.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM.

[Curccu]

MUNTAFIRE2, on 25 May 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

just coz things work as intended and you die as a light mech getting blasted from an assault... doesn't mean you should get twice the armor so you can cope with that reality. It is an accurate representation of reality, but taking that away by thinking that light mechs having double armor is a good thing and then just banking on it coz you feel like it's an underdog type thing to do is just blatantly ignorant of the effects it has.

Reality has nothing to do with this fictional game.
Your fatties have twice the armor also if you didn't know and if you carefully read my post I didn't ask for any extra armor... If you read it suuuuuper carefully you might realize that I actually didn't ask anything... well maybe I asked MG QQ people to git gud.

MUNTAFIRE2, on 25 May 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

turning light mechs into something that can take out 2 or 3 assaults is something that cannot be argued as simply broken

Because you think this represents some kind of reality how many tanks can single javelin soldier take out? Go ask Russians in Ukraine...

MUNTAFIRE2, on 25 May 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

and not representative of the game as it should be.

I'd claim that game devs decide that not you. That is just your biased assault only pilot opinion.

MUNTAFIRE2, on 25 May 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

It is catering to those players that are just too weak to play appropriately and instead spend their life complaining about assaults until pgi buffs the crap out of lights so all the light boys don't cry anymore and mwo overall is a "happier" place. what utter garbage

I don't consider myself as a weak player really, I am 99 percentile player and played Division A level EU Comp from beta to maintenance mode.

My played percents by weight class in Jarls at the moment:
lights 17%, meds 24%, heavies 27% and fatties 27%
so you can actually see that I'm not "light boy" instead I play all weight classes pretty evenly compared to your 89% assaults.

And again your reading comprehension failed you go back to my previous post and read it again few times. I did not cry about assaults being too good or buff lights, I complained that pure assault pilots (the best performing weight class in the game) dare to QQ about some lights that can actually hurt their mechs instead of learning to shoot those lights.

[Meep Meep]

Pumpkin Spice Templar, on 25 May 2022 - 11:03 AM, said:

The game is competitive, and hard. That's what makes it fun for me. When I wanna sip whisky and chill, I play MW5 (Which is a SUPERB game btw - all you need is the YAML and a few quality of life mods).

You can complain that the game isn't perfectly fair. Life isn't fair. C'est la vie.

This is the correct attitude for a random roster team based shooter. But alas there are still plenty of the types that still screech loudly about how anyone that kills them is a haxorz.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Curccu, on 25 May 2022 - 11:54 AM, said:

so you can actually see that I'm not "light boy" instead I play all weight classes pretty evenly compared to your 89% assaults.

and that's the real takeaway most times someone has one thing that utterly wrecks them. You have to ask "is it me?" "Am I doing something over and over that is inviting a weakness to one particular thing?"

Machine guns are fine. A dozen of them is a bit ridiculous, but the question becomes

A - how did I get to the point where I am helpless before this tiny mech?
B - why on earth did PGI allow a mech with over a dozen hardpoints? Did they not consider... no, they didn't.

I await the complaints about the Crusader Crael.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

How is it a can of worms?

Again a matter of context. You posed a question and then went into a more detailed explaination where you tried to answer your own question. So this time I split your question and your reasoning and simply gave a short answer to that question before ...

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

That seems like quite the hand-wavey response.

... then responding to your detailed explaination. Try re-reading that second part of my comment again (which you obviously managed to cite and comment as well) and maybe - just maybe - you'll find the parts where I pointed out the can of worms that a raw damage increase is bound to open.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

There are ways to figure this out, I just don't remember the crit damage multiplier math to figure out the average DPS against internals.

Then I suggest that you try to figure it out because that's a very important part of a proposal where you want to (further) reduce crit chances and crit damage multipliers.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Effectively you would want to flatten the spike. Against armor MGs do 1 DPS, but let's just say for example against internals they do 2.5 DPS. You would weight those DPS values and combine them because armor is typically double internals. So 1 * 0.667 + 2.5 * 0.333 = 1.5 DPS. So if we got rid of criticals completely, to get the average DPS they had before it would require a raw damage increase of 50%.

You can't really get rid of crits for machine guns without removing criticals in general (which would make crit reduction as skill nodes obsolete) and doing so would certainly be perceived as yet another "breaking Battletech lore" even if you could justify the complete crit removal just for machine guns.

But just to go with your example:
A raw damage increase of 50% would reduce the time a typical PIR-1 needs to invest in order to deal 80 points of damage (which happens to be the stock rear armor plus internal structure of an Atlas like the one you get in Testing Grounds) from ~4.85s down to ~3.36s (in either case completely without any crits) - or roughly 31% reduction in TTK. Now consider a mech with more "meta" oriented back armor numbers and tell me again that "people aren't opposed" to such an idea or why this could be considered "opening a can of worms".

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

This would maintain the same average TTK against mechs without internal/armor quirks/skills.

~hmm~ ... Not too sure about that.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Now one could say that make them too consistent and more powerful but I mean these things are tunable, but this is what should probably be looked at.

You just tried to make the point that the average TTK remains the same with your suggested change and now you're already preparing for nerfing them again because they are now somehow "too conistent" and "more powerful". Sorry, but that's contradictory.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

The recent change was definitely a nerf

Yes, reducing the crit damage multipliers certainly was a nerf. But we're not actually talking that particular nerf nor are we discussing the question of whether or not that nerf was actually warranted in the first place.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

but IMO, I'd be fine with a wait-and-see approach to whether they should have their damage buffed in compensation. I mean it isn't like comp really exists anymore to really gauge how well these are with top tier players (traditionally less face stare weapons have been favored but who knows)

None of the availible numbers on competitive players (and there still are some) would indicate that machine gun "boats" see a higher degree of usage in that environment so that's certainly not the direction from where that last nerf came from. Interestingly enough the "main game" QP doesn't show strong indications of extensive machine gun "boat" usage either.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

2 tons? Arrays are only a quarter ton for Clans

Seems like I'm getting old. Indeed, Clan versions have a weight 0.25t but somehow I was remembering them costing the same as their IS counterparts.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

unless I'm missing something and 12 MGs can be supported by only 3 arrays which leads to 0.75 tons,

The asymetrical nature of your 3 array solution that would have 8 machine guns in one torso and 4 in the other where a "legit" PIR-1 has them symetrically split in groups of 6 per side.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

even if accounting for the split torsos, that is still only 1 ton (4 MGAs with 3 guns per array).

... Still a loss of 1t on that typical PIR-1 build that you'd have to compensate with an ammo quirk of round about +30%

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Again though, MGAs would have to offer something to account for the extra 0.25 tons required.

The original intent of LordNothings proposal was only to reduce hard point inflation. So no, MGAs - in his original proposal - would not need to offer anything once the ammo losses are accounted for. The actual purpose of MGAs in TT is already fulfilled in MW:O by default.
So you're now suggesting yet another powercreep that doesn't properly align with your ideas on crit damage and chances being replaced by raw damage increases where you prepared yourself to "tune" that if people considered normalized damage "too consistent" / "too powerful".

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Whether it be ammo, damage, or range. 20 tonners are also the lightest mech so honestly, they probably should have the craziest ammo quirks given they have the least weight to work with.

So here's the "funny" part: Go try to find some of the older "Lights are OP" / "Machine gun boats are OP" threads where the PIR-1 ended up as the bogeyman and then try to reconcile your own statements where you say that machine guns don't seem problematic to you and how 20 tonners should have crazy ammo quirks while also advocating for changes where you're both prepared to nerf machine guns and at the same time turn them into something that not only certain mechs - predominantyl lights and mediums - with "inflated" hardpoints can claim for themselves as a niche.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Not sure how, MGAs shouldnt just be a tonnage penalty for those that don't have hardpoints. That makes little sense. That tonnage investment for the array should have a pay off outside of overcoming hardpoint limitations. Honestly MW4 probably did the right thing by not having individual MGs at all and only having arrays even if it meant some canon mechs weren't valid.

Within the context of MW:O - with hardpoints - MGAs wouldn't be a general "tonnage penalty" but instead a form of "hardpoint inflation" on anything above 40t.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

I would argue there is concensus, just the differ between the sections of the playerbase.

And I would disagree because we're seeing split opinions within all sections of the playerbase. There are more than enough lower tiers and non competitive players that consider machine gun "boats" overpowered while their peers disagree and we're seeing the exact same thing in higher tiers and among competitive inclined players ... and I would even go so far to say that in some cases there are some serious cognitive dissonances at play.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Better players know that lights on average are the hardest class to play against, but they also are the class that benefit the most from uncoordinated environments and this part is important because just like every powerful light before it (Firestarters, Cheetahs, etc) I would argue these mechs thrive in the lower tiers more so than the rest because well, lower tiers are really uncoordinated (the lack of situational awareness is probably the key piece) and light mechs have the speed and decent enough firepower to capitalize on isolated mechs (especially if they have bad aim).

So that's why we're seeing so many Lights in lower tiers? Ah, damn ... we actually don't and those we do see aren't necessarily those machine gun "boats" in increased numbers either.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

This isn't a one size fits all problem. There are multiple factors that should probably be addressed and MGs are included in that category IMO.

Now try to make an educated guess why I'm questioning proposals that make claims about "this or that" being "simple"?!

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

The only niche mech that doesn't have something to overcome the limited hardpoints is the Piranha honestly.

Yet the PIR-1 with its 12 "inflated" ballistic hardpoints is still the main "bogeyman" in each of these discussions.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

The Viper, Cheetah, and Mist Lynx all have omnipods to overcome their hardpoint deficiencies.

But any machine gun "boat" build on these chassis is pretty much locked in the same way because usually you need the equivalent of 8 - better 12 - standard machine guns in order to properly "work" in that niche. Some chassis can make it work with the (quirked) equivalent of 6 standard machine guns but playing those is truly "work" when compared against playing mechs in other weight classes.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

And there are plenty of light variants that really wish they had that hardpoint inflation.

Oh indeed ... until you realize that "more of the same" wouldn't necessarily make for a better game.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

MGAs are limited to 4 guns per array, so most will only be able to mount 16 MGs,

In case of heavy machine guns a 4 gun array represents the equivalent of 6 standard machine guns. In other words: 2 ballistic hardpoints with 4 HMGs per array do represent the machine gun firepower a typical PIR-1 with its 12 standard machine guns with no noticable differences in range and even 4.5tons of weight on the IS side are not really a problem once you're in the upper weight regions of mediums or even in heavy territory. 4 ballistic hardpoints with 4HMGs per array (with maximum of 2 ballstic hardpoints per zone) represent double of the machine gun firepower of a PIR-1 at pretty much the same range.
But even on the (then no longer) "low end" with 2x 4mga (= 8 machine guns) you'd now reach that "magic number" of machine guns it takes to make them "serious" with ease.

There are numerous heavies on both Clan and IS side that fit these bills along will still having enough space and hardpoints for what on these will still be "main weapons". For the fun of it just look at the Warhammer Black Widow and wonder what you'd put in there when going for either a 2 to 4 x4hmga or 2 to 4 4xlmga ...
Or ponder the idea of a fully armoured, max engine sized, 2x4hmga HBK-IIC-C with 3 tons of ammo and whatever you can cram in there in terms of jump jets and 4 energy weapons.


The overall result however should be pretty obvious by now: With MGAs machine gun "boats" of any size would no longer be a niche

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

there aren't many mechs with more than 4 and probably even fewer that have the speed to use them (only 2 mediums and 2 heavy non-omnis have more than 4 hardpoints).

Your misconception there is that you think that mechs in higher weight classes would need "speed" to utilze machine gun inflation via arrays. The Lights do not need their speed primarily for the machine guns (and their range limitations) but simply because of their lack of armor that is very counter-productive in dps engagements where you need to constantly face your opponent.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Hard to know how much of a problem that will be given that these of course also have tonnage and space requirements (MGAs with 4 guns are 5 slots and either 1.25 tons for Clan or 2.5 for IS, that's not even touching the ammo requirements)

I'd say I have more than enough reason to believe that readily availible inflated machine gun numbers are bound to destroy the niche itself and have a very high potential of requiring nerfs that in turn would again impact the current machine gun "boats" in the lower weight classes far stronger than those mechs you'd be granting access to that kind of machine gun firepower.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

Maybe, maybe not.

Not "maybe". It's pretty much a certainty. Just go through the "Lights are OP" threads of the past 1.5 years and you'll find more than enough people that most definitely would object to the idea of compensating crit chance / crit damage multiplier reductions with raw damage.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 11:35 AM, said:

And just thinking that raw damage would just make them even worse than before.

You have yet to actually prove that this wouldn't be the case

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 25 May 2022 - 02:16 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 02:02 PM, said:

Again a matter of context. You posed a question and then went into a more detailed explaination where you tried to answer your own question. So this time I split your question and your reasoning and simply gave a short answer to that question before ...

... then responding to your detailed explaination. Try re-reading that second part of my comment again (which you obviously managed to cite and comment as well) and maybe - just maybe - you'll find the parts where I pointed out the can of worms that a raw damage increase is bound to open.

All I'm going to say about this subject. Everything is a can of worms because as with all things balance, everything is related so touching one thing causes a ripple effect. Nothing is ever in isolation so arguing against something because it "opens a can of worms" is kinda pointless.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 02:02 PM, said:

Then I suggest that you try to figure it out because that's a very important part of a proposal where you want to (further) reduce crit chances and crit damage multipliers.

That's irrelevant because the point is that the DPS is higher against internals because of how criticals work. If it's 30% or 50%, does it really matter? Not when talking about the mechanics objectively the goal is to flatten the damage curve, but persuading the gaming population yeah sure, percentages are scary. Ultimately it comes down to two things (which are really one):

* Does it increase the number of viable options in the game
* Does it make the game more fun (which the above can do as well)

IMO removing reliance on crits or crits in general is a huge win to the bottom point because as I brought up previously, the counter play for criticals is....less than great. The raw DPS increase is just to make sure MGs don't fall off the first one.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 02:02 PM, said:

You can't really get rid of crits for machine guns without removing criticals in general (which would make crit reduction as skill nodes obsolete) and doing so would certainly be perceived as yet another "breaking Battletech lore" even if you could justify the complete crit removal just for machine guns.

But just to go with your example:

A raw damage increase of 50% would reduce the time a typical PIR-1 needs to invest in order to deal 80 points of damage (which happens to be the stock rear armor plus internal structure of an Atlas like the one you get in Testing Grounds) from ~4.85s down to ~3.36s (in either case completely without any crits) - or roughly 31% reduction in TTK. Now consider a mech with more "meta" oriented back armor numbers and tell me again that "people aren't opposed" to such an idea or why this could be considered "opening a can of worms".

This is a bit of moving goal posts. IIRC your original post was purely about doing 80 damage ignoring criticals, that last part is the key part as criticals. Unless there is a bug there it should take 4.167 seconds to do 80 damage with 3 HML+12 MGs currently against armor (30 damage for HMLs which won't recycle in time to bother and it takes 4.167s for the MGs to do 50 damage). What are the average (with criticals, RNG plays a factor here because of crits) TTKs before and after such a change is the real question. Also, using the rear is a bit odd choice given that should also favor current MGs because of the ratio. Going to ignore HMLs and 2 MGs for the purpose of this example because it muddies the easiness of the math and I'm a little lazy. I also did the math wrong (can't weight, gotta do factoring and such), it is only 25% raw damage to match if damage is 250% on internals. Actual equation: 1 / ((0.667 / Armor DPS) + (0.333 / Internal DPS)) = Raw DPS needed to average things out when not considering rear sections.

Current example:
 
It takes 2.8s to destroy the armor (28) with 10 MGs at 1 DPS each.
It takes 2.48s to destroy the internals (62) with 10 MGs at 2.5 DPS each (cuz crits = bonus damage).
 
In total it takes 5.28s to do 90 damage.
 
My original example:
 
It takes 1.867s to destroy the armor (28) with 10 MGs at 1.5 DPS each.
It takes 4.133s to destroy the internals (62) with 10 MGs at 1.5 DPS each.
 
In total it takes 6s to do 90 damage.
 
My updated math:
It takes 2.24s to destroy the armor (28) with 10 MGs at 1.25 DPS each.
It takes 4.96s to destroy the internals (62) with 10 MGs at 1.25 DPS each.
 
In total it takes 7.2s to do 90 damage.
 
Now let's redo that assuming full frontloading:
 
Current example:
It takes 12.4s to destroy the armor (124) with 10 MGs at 1 DPS each.
It takes 2.48s to destroy the internals (62) with 10 MGs at 2.5 DPS each (cuz crits = bonus damage).
 
In total it takes 14.88s to do 186 damage.
 
My original example:
 
It takes 8.267s to destroy the armor (124) with 10 MGs at 1.5 DPS each.
It takes 4.133s to destroy the internals (62) with 10 MGs at 1.5 DPS each.
 
In total it takes 12.4s to do 186 damage.
 
My updated math:
 
It takes 9.92s to destroy the armor (124) with 10 MGs at 1.25 DPS each.
It takes 4.96s to destroy the internals (62) with 10 MGs at 1.25 DPS each.
 
In total it takes 14.88s to do 186 damage.
 

I tried doing the math for the actual DPS against internals and not quite sure I did it right or if I flubbed it like the raw DPS:

Spoiler

(DPS + (DPS * 3 criticals * (damage multiplier - 1))) * 4% chance
(DPS + (DPS * 2 criticals * (damage multiplier - 1))) * 14% chance
(DPS + (DPS * 1 critical * (damage multiplier - 1))) * 25% chance
(DPS + (DPS * 0 criticals * (damage multiplier - 1))) * 58% chance
 
 
 
(1 + (1 * 3 * 4.6)) * 0.04 = 0.592
(1 + (1 * 2 * 4.6)) * 0.14 = 1.428
(1 + (1 * 1 * 4.6)) * 0.25 = 1.4
(1 + (1 * 0 * 4.6)) * 0.58 = 0.58
Which translates to 4.0 DPS for MGs against internals which seems.....awfully high and wrong
 
An alternative is that the multiplier is multiplied by the default 15% boost which makes it a little more reasonable at 1.5 DPS (so a 50% boost which seems to line up with testing in testing grounds at least).

This is based on the info detailed in this wiki.

Der Geisterbaer, on 25 May 2022 - 02:02 PM, said:

You just tried to make the point that the average TTK remains the same with your suggested change and now you're already preparing for nerfing them again because they are now somehow "too conistent" and "more powerful". Sorry, but that's contradictory.

Consistency ironically can be powerful itself (which is why I would hedge my bets and not make it equivalent but lower parity). LRMs can be powerful.....in certain situations but most situations can be hard countered. This is why they are feast or famine, which are typically not viewed as powerful because they lack consistency. Why did PPCs fall out of favor way back when their velocity got nerfed hard due to jump snipers even after they became cooler? Consistency, if I can't reliably hit mechs with a weapon then I'm highly likely to not use it if the rewards don't match up with the risk. Too high of a reward though and things become unfun (if it is used). I can't remember but I thought this was related to the jedi curve that MtG used but I could be wrong. Anyway, all those "LRMs are OP" aren't necessarily wrong because they can be powerful in places just like lights can be OP in some cases. However those cases/situations are in the small minority and in the majority they are really underwhelming, this is generally a sign of either a noobtube-esque item or a badly designed mechanic. I'd argue both LRMs and lights are the latter.

The quote war is getting crazy so just going to keep the main points in.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 25 May 2022 - 07:37 PM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

All I'm going to say about this subject. Everything is a can of worms because as with all things balance, everything is related so touching one thing causes a ripple effect. Nothing is ever in isolation so arguing against something because it "opens a can of worms" is kinda pointless.

And what I'm going to tell you there is: Even with your recognition that "nothing is ever in isolation" presented your solutions "in isolation". So for me it's certainly not "pointless" to make the reminder about other opened "cans of worms" whenever that happens.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

That's irrelevant because the point is that the DPS is higher against internals because of how criticals work. If it's 30% or 50%, does it really matter?

Yes it absolutely matters because unlike criticals - that may or may not happen in streaks that defy your "smoothened" dps calculation - those 30% or 50% increases in DPS do result in specific and - as you put it - consistent reductions of "TTK" that are already scaring the **** out of a portion of the player base (and a certain 99 percentile player is fueling those fears regularly).

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

Not when talking about the mechanics objectively the goal is to flatten the damage curve,

See, that's another problem right there: Is there actually an agreed upon "goal to flatten the curve"? You might have that goal as part of a response to a "problem" that not everyone even sees as a "problem" and as something that would be needed as a fix for another thing that was created by a "solution" to an entirely different "problem" where we also lack a true consensus of its existance.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

but persuading the gaming population yeah sure, percentages are scary.

Raw numbers can be just as scary for "them".

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

Ultimately it comes down to two things (which are really one):

* Does it increase the number of viable options in the game
* Does it make the game more fun (which the above can do as well)

IMO removing reliance on crits or crits in general is a huge win to the bottom point because as I brought up previously, the counter play for criticals is....less than great.

And your "huge win" comes at the price of "muh Battletech 'lore'" (warning: not my personal opinion) and - as soon as you want to get rid of criticals in general - requires more than just an XML-value overhaul.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

The raw DPS increase is just to make sure MGs don't fall off the first one.

The "problem" being that a raw dps increase means two different things there:

1. maintain (not increase!) the viability of specific mechs in play
2. increase of viable options for mechs that aren't necessarily in need of further options

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

This is a bit of moving goal posts.

Nope.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

IIRC your original post was purely about doing 80 damage ignoring criticals, that last part is the key part as criticals.

It was about doing 80 damage in total (although 90 would have actually been the correct number) against a "stock" Atlas und perfect conditions (target stationary, attacker stationary, within optimal range, etc.). Since we're ignoring criticals for the time being it doesn't matter what the exact armor and structure values are but for completeness: 28 points of armor and 62 points of structure.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

Unless there is a bug there it should take 4.167 seconds to do 80 damage with 3 HML+12 MGs currently against armor (30 damage for HMLs which won't recycle in time to bother and it takes 4.167s for the MGs to do 50 damage).

An unskilled mech has a burn duration of 1.1 seconds for a total of 19.5 damage with 3 HSML. During that time 12 standard machine guns will do 12x 1.1 = 13.2 damage. That leaves 47.3 (57.3) points til 80 (90) remaining. Now the HSML unskilled cycle is 3.75s. During that cycle time 12 standard machine guns will do 12x3.75 = 45 damage. Remainder 2.3 (12.3) points of damage to hit those 80 (90) points. Used time so far: 1.1s + 3.75s = 4,85s. The missing 2.3 (12.3) points of damage will then be delivered in about 0.07s (0.41s) within the next burn phase. So we're talking 4.92s (5.26s) "to kill" without criticals.

With a 50% damage increase on the raw damage of machine guns this changes to

12*1.5*1.1 = 19.8 damage plus 19,5 damage (= 39.3 damage) over the first HSML burn and leaves 40.7 (50.7) damage to be delivered. With 12dps *1.5 = 18 dps that amount is delivered in 40.7d /18 dps = 2.26s (2.82s) which is lower than the cycle time of those HSMLs which - unlike with the current values - aren't thus needed to even "top it off". The combined duration "to kill" is now ~3.36s (3.92s). Now that's about 69% (75%) of the time it originally took or a 31% (25%) reduction of the original raw TTK.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

What are the average (with criticals, RNG plays a factor here because of crits) TTKs before and after such a change is the real question.

So now you'll have to show that "on average" those 12 machine guns do already do these 80 (90) points of damage against a mixture of armor and structure in roughly 3.36 (3.92) seconds. While I'm sure that you can figure out the exact math for it, how about testing it instead? For example in the testing grounds where you can walk up behind one such Atlas and then fire away under perfect conditions. Let's just say that you'll rarely see the Atlas die in 3.4 to 4 seconds and but you'll see it die regularly in 4.5 to 5 seconds.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

Also, using the rear is a bit odd choice given that should also favor current MGs because of the ratio.

Using rear - that actually favours machine guns with current criticals even more so when engaging mechs with even more "meta" armor distributions - is a very deliberate choice there because that's what the majority of players refer to most of the time when talking about the "unfairness of being killed by a machine gun boating 20t mech" (or when making biased to outright intellectually dishonest videos that show the "OP-ness" of PIR-1s and VPR-Fs).

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 May 2022 - 06:17 PM, said:

Consistency ironically can be powerful itself (which is why I would hedge my bets and not make it equivalent but lower parity).

Which brings us back to your claim that "nobody would oppose the idea"

TL;DR: We're not necessarily in disagreement about "a solution" to "a problem" being possible. We're in a bit of a disagreement on what actual "problems" this game has with regards to specific weapon systems and how "simple" such "a solution" can be in a complex multi-variable environment like MW:O.

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 26 May 2022 - 02:56 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Is there any actual statistics showing that machine guns overperform or that these lights in question who can boat many of them overperform? Are they averaging extremely high winrates for example? (This would be the strongest argument if true because winrates reflect the actual impact on matches)

If that isn't the case we're discussing "solutions" to a made up problem, at least as far as balance is concerned.

You can say that you don't like how it feels to fight against them, or that you don't like certain play patterns, or that you think the game should be imbalanced in favour of assaults (because lore or immersion or whatnot). That's ok but it's not about balance.

I'm open to the possibility that something is too strong or too weak, but in this case I basically never see any strong evidence even from the more credible proponents. For example DATA frequently claims lights and mgs are OP but his most serious attempt to show this so far is a "test" where a mg light kills a bunch of long range assaults and heavies in close range 1v1 and you're left wondering why it shouldn't win those engagements? If a close combat specialist build isn't supposed to win against mid to long range builds in close range then when is it supposed to win?

The rest is just anecdotes or theoretical hyping (OMG the dps is INSANE...that kind of stuff), basically not the kind of things you should take into account in a balance discussion.

It's unfortunate that we can't extract data in more detail, we can see that lights in general are definitely not overperforming (it's the weakest weight class in average performance) but there is no way to extract the data for specific mechs which is a shame. It would be great for the cauldron and balance discussions if we could to that.

Edited by Sjorpha, 26 May 2022 - 04:30 AM.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Sjorpha, on 26 May 2022 - 04:27 AM, said:

Is there any actual statistics showing that machine guns overperform or that these lights in question who can boat many of them overperform?

At least to my knowlegde: No. The closest thing to such an statistic that I saw "recently" where usage numbers of Lights in drop decks for competitive gameplay where the "strongest" Light (with the highest use rate) ended up being one of the Firestarters (and I'm not sure if it even was one of its 4 machine gun variants). In those statistics the first "machine gun boat" was IIRC the PIR-CI that came in around rank 10 with low single digit percentage for usage way before any of the rest of the machine gun "boating" Lights.

Sjorpha, on 26 May 2022 - 04:27 AM, said:

Are they averaging extremely high winrates for example? (This would be the strongest argument if true because winrates reflect the actual impact on matches)

They do not seem to do that either. For what it's worth: I'm still waiting for someone to show up in that Ace of Spades-thread saying that they've done it - possibly even more than once - in one of the better known machine gun boat builts. So far the vast majority of mentioned mechs in that thread were not in the Light category and those that mention a Light certainly don't look like machine gun "boating" builds.

Sjorpha, on 26 May 2022 - 04:27 AM, said:

If that isn't the case we're discussing "solutions" to a made up problem, at least as far as balance is concerned.

This is what I tried to point out several times now. However, this thread as at least in part about the "feelings" that these mechs do create regardless of whatever their actual balance state is ... and it's that "touchy-feely-craft" that brings forth such "solutions" and no amount of logic (or statistics) will change the feelings that players have.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sjorpha, on 26 May 2022 - 04:27 AM, said:

Is there any actual statistics showing that machine guns overperform or that these lights in question who can boat many of them overperform? Are they averaging extremely high winrates for example? (This would be the strongest argument if true because winrates reflect the actual impact on matches)

If that isn't the case we're discussing "solutions" to a made up problem, at least as far as balance is concerned.

My favorite example is LRMs, which in the right situation, can being pretty brutal. Things like NARC last too long with no real counterplay other than try to find cover or find ECM. Those are niche situations though as yeah, there are plenty of hard counters to LRMs. But if something is incredibly powerful even in niche situations, that is still imbalanced. And the fact they are almost worthless in all the other situations is again, part of an imbalance. It isn't just about what FotM is running around and what is awful.

You can say that you don't like how it feels to fight against them, or that you don't like certain play patterns, or that you think the game should be imbalanced in favour of assaults (because lore or immersion or whatnot). That's ok but it's not about balance.

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 May 2022 - 02:54 AM, said:

And what I'm going to tell you there is: Even with your recognition that "nothing is ever in isolation" presented your solutions "in isolation". So for me it's certainly not "pointless" to make the reminder about other opened "cans of worms" whenever that happens.

While I may have brought up a single solution, pretty sure I've laid out several things just within this thread (or maybe I'm thinking of the other thread, highly possible I'm confusing the two threads).
* Remove crits
* Buff raw damage for weapons relying on crits for extra DPS (which includes MGs)
* Buff armor/internals of lighter mechs and embiggen again so that they can't hide underneath your toes (this comes down to counterplay)
* Potentially give boosted dissipation/ammo quirks to lighter mechs to help overcome lack of tonnage to invest.
* Remove some armor/internals of heavier mechs and shrink them a bit so that sections aren't as easy to isolate.
* I liked LordNothing MGA point because hardpoint inflation is real and dumb.

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 May 2022 - 02:54 AM, said:

See, that's another problem right there: Is there actually an agreed upon "goal to flatten the curve"? You might have that goal as part of a response to a "problem" that not everyone even sees as a "problem" and as something that would be needed as a fix for another thing that was created by a "solution" to an entirely different "problem" where we also lack a true consensus of its existance.

Expecting a consensus is an exercise in futility. I mean technically so is me complaining about crits like I did even way back when they first introduced the new critical hit mechanics (was digging for the crit math McGral18 used to post but failed to find it but did find the first PTS thread around the introduction of this nonsense) because let's be honest, the devs don't pay attention to this and I doubt the Calderon or whatever it is cares about these forums either given higher tier players general disdain for these forums (aka the brown sea).

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 May 2022 - 02:54 AM, said:

12*1.5*1.1 = 19.8 damage plus 19,5 damage (= 39.3 damage) over the first HSML burn and leaves 40.7 (50.7) damage to be delivered. With 12dps *1.5 = 18 dps that amount is delivered in 40.7d /18 dps = 2.26s (2.82s) which is lower than the cycle time of those HSMLs which - unlike with the current values - aren't thus needed to even "top it off". The combined duration "to kill" is now ~3.36s (3.92s). Now that's about 69% (75%) of the time it originally took or a 31% (25%) reduction of the original raw TTK.

Using rear - that actually favours machine guns with current criticals even more so when engaging mechs with even more "meta" armor distributions - is a very deliberate choice there because that's what the majority of players refer to most of the time when talking about the "unfairness of being killed by a machine gun boating 20t mech" (or when making biased to outright intellectually dishonest videos that show the "OP-ness" of PIR-1s and VPR-Fs).

Just want to point out that I apparently misread HSML as HML which is the source of my bad math on the TTK there since I was assuming an extra 10.5 damage. Still, ignoring criticals when talking about TTK pretty disingenuous especially considering why you chose to talk about the non-meta ratios. You cannot just hand wave part of the game away when they are crucial to the discussion. I did do testing though and it seems like they only have a 50% damage buff against mechs without crit quirks like the Atlas in question (40% crit reduction, but not sure whether that reduces damage or the chances of crit, I'd assume the latter but who knows). I was using the Awesome for testing instead.

With only 50% DPS against internals, raw damage would only have to be brought up 12.5% if there were no more criticals so that's probably more palatable, still something seems amiss with the extra damage from criticals, I had to have missed changes made to the damage formula around them somewhere...

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 May 2022 - 02:54 AM, said:

Which brings us back to your claim that "nobody would oppose the idea"

Fair

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 26 May 2022 - 06:24 AM.