141 replies to this topic

[MrTBSC]

Lord Cannon Fodder, on 23 January 2023 - 01:44 AM, said:

Gauss weapons used to be fired without the stupid charging mechanics. Until the designers lost their balls and include it. Why and what is the point? There are mechs that fire more alpha damage mix than just 2 + gauss rifles. I never used gauss rifles since this stupid feature and sold them off.

Of course, my comments will be ignored. MWOnline is a great game, saved for the stupid pointless charging mechanic of gauss rifles truly ruined it.

primary reason: most high alphaweapons lack either range so you need to get closer or they are burst or splash or splashburst weapons .. .. lasers aren´t ppfld they are burst weapons that deliver their dmg over time ...

true ppfld are gauss, ppc and IS standard autocannons, that is it ...

the chargemechanic as well as the inclusion of limiting the charge to 2 rifles at a time imho is justified specifically for builds with more than 2 gaussrifles ...
take a kodiak with 4 gaussrifles, that is 60 dmg ppfld ... it oneshot headshots over 800 meters ... and this wouldn´t be fun to anyone being on the receiving end ... same reasoning why ghostheat has been added to using er PPCs and gaussrifles together even if they have different projectilevelocities ...

50 or 60 ppfld to any component is nothing to laugh at (on the contrary actually), especially if it is a shot in the back where it would immediately kill lightmechs with IS XL engines or severely cripple clan XL lightmechs and heck even cripple assaults as their sidetorsos have only 42 points of structure .. even if the player would put 10 points of armor on it a quadgauss backshot would bust that component and potentially take over half that assaults weaponry ...

i mean just go to mechDB 2.0 for a minute and look at some of the structurequirks for light and medium mechs then think about how the average player distributes his armor ... you may want to reconsider what you are asking for ...

now again you may argue that builds like IS AC 20 + dual or tripple snub PPC exist but for one 3 snubs generate ghostheat, only 2 with an AC 20 is only 40 dmg ... and still you have to get about 300 meters close for optimal dmg ...

EVERYTHING ELSE needs to be hold on point or splashes all over the mech by default ...






you know what, you made me curios, so i´m gonna test a dual hppc + dual AC 10 annihilator for 50 PPFLD (no ghostheat) 500 meters optimal range and check how devastating that one will be on backshots ...

so i went on tourmaline dessert ... some of the mechs like the awesome have significant structure quirks
and EVEN IF you were to fully skill them with structure and armor nodes that sidecomponent would only tank one alpha at most ....

Edited by MrTBSC, 04 February 2023 - 06:44 PM.

[sycocys]

MrTBSC, on 04 February 2023 - 04:10 PM, said:

guass boating

The solution has always been pretty simple to limit to 2 guass - each one has non-dispersable heat of 40% of your cap. Eliminates 3 guass, eliminates 2 guass 2 erPPC unless you want to cook your internals with the ppcs and probably explode the guass.

Same goes for ecm/bap/cc/targeting computers, all should have non-dispersable heat since the game doesn't have any energy system. Should be a crit slot/heat cost for skills and consumables as well. I know that hits the top guys right in the feels, but it should have been long ago and and as new weapons/equipment/skills got released to keep it balanced instead of resorting to power quirk mode driving everything ditch to ditch.

[MrTBSC]

sycocys, on 04 February 2023 - 06:05 PM, said:

The solution has always been pretty simple to limit to 2 guass - each one has non-dispersable heat of 40% of your cap. Eliminates 3 guass, eliminates 2 guass 2 erPPC unless you want to cook your internals with the ppcs and probably explode the guass.

Same goes for ecm/bap/cc/targeting computers, all should have non-dispersable heat since the game doesn't have any energy system. Should be a crit slot/heat cost for skills and consumables as well. I know that hits the top guys right in the feels, but it should have been long ago and and as new weapons/equipment/skills got released to keep it balanced instead of resorting to power quirk mode driving everything ditch to ditch.

pretty bad solution you are offering

[LordNothing]

i went into depth about how to fix that on page 4, and it makes sense to revisit gauss rules when adding new weapons to the gauss family. magshot, apgauss, hags, sbgr and any i missed. it really doesnt make sense to limit you to just 2 apgauss/magshots, as those are low damage weapons you probibly want to boat (i figure charging machine guns with a condensed damage burst). and the 2 gauss rule doesn't make sense if you have a pair of hag40s because that's an 80 damage alpha, and despite being burst is a lot different than a pair of mrm40s. the current gauss rules made sense when we only had standard and clan gauss to contend with, civil war made no amendments and just used the same rules for lgauss and hgauss.

anyway the general idea is you have a charge capacity, and that gets partitioned between the grouped weapons such that the charge completes at the same time. more weapons increases the charge time and therefor also reduces the dps of the weapon. the charging generates heat (rather than firing) and ghost heat penalties apply, so charging a lot of gauss can get hot.

that said i do not think these mechanics are subject to change. so big hags might be limited in some way (perhaps with spread like racs), and little gauss family weapons will generally be free of charge mechanics.

[sycocys]

LordNothing, on 05 February 2023 - 10:23 PM, said:

anyway the general idea is you have a charge capacity, and that gets partitioned between the grouped weapons such that the charge completes at the same time. more weapons increases the charge time and therefor also reduces the dps of the weapon. the charging generates heat (rather than firing) and ghost heat penalties apply, so charging a lot of gauss can get hot.

that said i do not think these mechanics are subject to change. so big hags might be limited in some way (perhaps with spread like racs), and little gauss family weapons will generally be free of charge mechanics.

That wouldn't be an unreasonable way to deal with guass either. I would rather see the charge mechanic gone across the board, but I do agree that there is little chance they'll ever push electric draw into the system or more base level balance for skills and consumables.

[MrTBSC]

foamyesque, on 28 January 2023 - 09:16 PM, said:

I dunno, one of my fave machines is a triple PPC Shadowhawk, and I've found one-click instant 30 pinpoint is still plenty powerful. Twin gauss is *already* pretty good even with the front-loaded charge time and it helps make the weapon feel more distinct from normal autocannon.

it not just differentiates Gauss from standart AC ... the thing is other than ammunition limitations if it were possible to instafire gaussrifles there wouldn´t be any reason to take AC 2s or 5s at all ... AC 10 loses out in range and dmg ... and IS AC 20 would lose out on the HGR for even superior dmg and range ...
it´s a cold weapon that even with less dps and ammo per ton is still preferable to any other weapon were you have to expose yourself for longer ..

the charge necessacity is specifically made for that reason ... to not make a whole lot of other weapons become redundant ..
the reason ER PPCs didn´t get the charge instead (like actually is the case in Mechassault) despite being energyweapons with no ammodependency is that they are very hot and a punishing shutdown more likely ...


the only other way i could think of to ballance fired weapongroups is to include a jamchance .. like fire 3 Gaussrifles toghether one or 2 may jam, fire 2 erppcs and a gauss together one or 2 may jam ... i´d rather would have that instead of some convoluted enerymanagementsystem ..
i´d still keep the charge though

Edited by MrTBSC, 07 February 2023 - 08:01 AM.

[LordNothing]

weapons with op numbers need to spread their effect over space and time. spread and burst (hitscan can be thought of as burst but every game tick) does the former, heat and charge (also includes racs and even missile locks) and jam mechanics does the latter. velocity mechanics do a bit of both. that gives you quite a few dimensions of design space to work with.

[Widowmaker1981]

sycocys, on 04 February 2023 - 06:05 PM, said:

The solution has always been pretty simple to limit to 2 guass - each one has non-dispersable heat of 40% of your cap. Eliminates 3 guass, eliminates 2 guass 2 erPPC unless you want to cook your internals with the ppcs and probably explode the guass.

Same goes for ecm/bap/cc/targeting computers, all should have non-dispersable heat since the game doesn't have any energy system. Should be a crit slot/heat cost for skills and consumables as well. I know that hits the top guys right in the feels, but it should have been long ago and and as new weapons/equipment/skills got released to keep it balanced instead of resorting to power quirk mode driving everything ditch to ditch.

You realise that this would just mean no one ever put a Gauss on anything, right? Same for TCs etc. Its already pretty situational to take a TC over an additional DHS, and if TCs reduced your heat cap? Yeah thats just a component that is dead to me.

Id be fine with consumables taking slots though, the artillery spam is fairly annoying.

[sycocys]

Widowmaker1981, on 07 February 2023 - 10:01 AM, said:

You realise that this would just mean no one ever put a Gauss on anything, right? Same for TCs etc. Its already pretty situational to take a TC over an additional DHS, and if TCs reduced your heat cap? Yeah thats just a component that is dead to me.

Id be fine with consumables taking slots though, the artillery spam is fairly annoying.

The computers wouldn't need to have any sort of extreme cap, they already take tonnage and crit slots. It would just make more fundamental sense to have electronic gear have a load since their is not any energy system separated.

"Skills"/consumables IMO should have always had crit and/or energy(heat) to help balance them into the system. Increasing your range/reducing your duration - should add heat or cd (or one of the other stats) probably directly to each affected weapon. Adding structure/armor/ammo should lock up slots. Computer system/radar skills should either add heat or take a slot.
There should be built in mechanics that keep the skill tree system more or less a zero sum system.

-Yes it adds complexity, but I'd say its pretty silly that someone with piles of points/gxp can run the same exact mech/build as someone without and have a pretty massive advantage, especially with the reset PSR and MM that puts t1s with t4s on a fairly regular basis. If the MM was more effective it would be a lesser issue, but it compounds a skill imbalance with a functional tech/build imbalance as it's working currently - even t3's mixing down to fight t4's adds a layer of this, it's just more refined the further apart the matches are put together.

I do agree that some folks would abandon guass for sure (many of them will abandon anything for whatever next meta is quirked as well so there is that to factor in), likely though most of the guass people would drop to 1 so they would have heat cap space to utilize for combined damage and brawling defense. - But I'd also suggest to eliminate the charge mechanic with such a change. Dual would still be plenty powerful, just would limit it's ability to also be a brawling setup and near silent, silly fast velocity, longer range ballistic.

[Lightfoot]

More nerfed weapons?

[Meep Meep]

I'd like a step between machine guns and rac that works like this.



Use hvy mg ammo but has a higher range and near rac dps

[Chound]

I'd like to see Thunder LRMs. They carry bomblets similar to cluster bombs the military used to use. you can lay down a mine field, by firing the ordanance or damage mechs in an area.


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drmayeda@gmail.com

[Weeny Machine]

Chound, on 18 February 2023 - 09:16 PM, said:

I'd like to see Thunder LRMs. They carry bomblets similar to cluster bombs the military used to use. you can lay down a mine field, by firing the ordanance or damage mechs in an area.


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drmayeda@gmail.com

Nope...Thunder would mean more static gameplay and the Dire Turrets' pilots would get wet with excitement and cackle with glee. What we need are SWARM to break up groups and campers' camps and/or ARROW IV or Thumber.

Edited by Weeny Machine, 21 February 2023 - 11:53 AM.

[LordNothing]

lingering mines no, but if the lerms drop little bomblets it could make a pretty cool aoe weapon. lock would set the ranging, then the missiles would fly over and string out their bomblets.

[JediPanther]

Smarter ai team mates. Or at least ones that won't just spam lrm at a mech that's right in front of them less than 200m away thinking that'll kill it when they have four lasers that don't get used.

[Vyx]

Most, if not all of the above suggestions would necessitate at least one actual programmer on staff at CGI in order to handle the new charging, firing, and damage mechanics.

Sadly, I fear that time is long past.

I suggest a low-hanging fruit that could be implemented with minimal effort -- ER Pulse Lasers.

https://www.sarna.ne...ge_Pulse_Lasers
https://www.sarna.ne...all_Pulse_Laser
https://www.sarna.ne...ium_Pulse_Laser
https://www.sarna.ne...rge_Pulse_Laser

Basically, as one might imagine, this idea would combine the features of extended range and pulse into one laser weapon system at the cost of more slots, tonnage, and heat. It could be implemented by simply adding a few more modified line items to the weapon list and reusing existing pulse weapon art assets and sound effects. No additional programming would be required.

I feel the inclusion of these weapons would fill a useful niche and most importantly be easy to implement.

[LordNothing]

Vyx, on 23 February 2023 - 05:56 AM, said:

Most, if not all of the above suggestions would necessitate at least one actual programmer on staff at CGI in order to handle the new charging, firing, and damage mechanics.

Sadly, I fear that time is long past.

I suggest a low-hanging fruit that could be implemented with minimal effort -- ER Pulse Lasers.

https://www.sarna.ne...ge_Pulse_Lasers
https://www.sarna.ne...all_Pulse_Laser
https://www.sarna.ne...ium_Pulse_Laser
https://www.sarna.ne...rge_Pulse_Laser

Basically, as one might imagine, this idea would combine the features of extended range and pulse into one laser weapon system at the cost of more slots, tonnage, and heat. It could be implemented by simply adding a few more modified line items to the weapon list and reusing existing pulse weapon art assets and sound effects. No additional programming would be required.

I feel the inclusion of these weapons would fill a useful niche and most importantly be easy to implement.

the (admittingly very loose) ground rules from the get go was weapons created by tweaking xml only. while some require new mechanics, and id really like to see a mechanics pass, those are probibly not what we will end up seeing from pgi. still there are lots of things that fall into the "mod in" category, with the modders being pgi and the cauldron.

Edited by LordNothing, 23 February 2023 - 02:51 PM.

[MrTBSC]

Orion_, on 25 January 2023 - 11:30 AM, said:

If we could get one thing that does 42 ppfd or that does 21 ppfd that is light enough to have 2 of and has a range of say ~800 that would be rad.

you have a dual heavy gauss build for that already with the appropriate tonnage to use on heavy mechs and still with damagefalloff to be dangerous enough at 800 meters ...
... the only other thing closest to your request would be thunderbolt 5/10/15/20 missiles with much slower projectile vellocity and vulnerability to AMS ...

OTHERWISE experimental improved heavy gauss: same tonnage but no dmg falloff at the expense of damaging your own sidetorsostructure with every shot ...

clan to my knowledge even with HAG 10/20/30/40 similar to IS MRM 10/20/30/40 will not have a single weaponsystem with 20+ dmg that would be PPFLD at medium to long ranges and doesn´t have splash/burst or both for ballancereasons ...

MAYBE something like IS heavy PPC + capacitor or some crap like that ... but still not at the tonnage you yourself would like to have that

Edited by MrTBSC, 26 February 2023 - 10:13 AM.

[BLACKR0SE]

I wish it had an emp gun it would be nice
10 seconds limit is enough

[BLACKR0SE]

Plasma would be nice too