87 replies to this topic

[VeeOt Dragon]

you know i was thinking the other day about something that would help deal with the bloat of PPFLD in the game (bare with me this is Locking weapon adjacent). say we do take the suggestion and get rid of the the ability to do IDF without TAG/NARC then how about we also get rid of auto convergence without pressing R. that was the whole reason in Lore for a TC the pilot targets and then the TC takes a moment to move all the weapons into line with it. if you don't have a target then your weapons can't converge (this would also help deal with the sniper problem a bit.) if you have that red box around the target then your weapons get the good convergence. if not they all just fire dead forward from the hard point location.

(so i wouldn't mind decoupling IDF if 1- TCs were good and gave bonuses to LRM and 2- having a TC on your mech would allow target info sharing. also if you decouple target info sharing so LRMs can't IDF without TAG/NARC then you also need to get rid of target sharing for everything else (so more more spotting unless you pop a UAV))

[The6thMessenger]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 September 2023 - 08:28 AM, said:

Look I'm done with the quote war because you are just straight up trying to have a dishonest discussion.

Strawmen, generalizations, moving goal posts, etc; anything and everything is somehow the comp players problems and we want a "dumbed" down game. Grow up .

Project much?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

VeeOt Dragon, on 20 September 2023 - 01:55 PM, said:

you know i was thinking the other day about something that would help deal with the bloat of PPFLD in the game (bare with me this is Locking weapon adjacent). say we do take the suggestion and get rid of the the ability to do IDF without TAG/NARC then how about we also get rid of auto convergence without pressing R. that was the whole reason in Lore for a TC the pilot targets and then the TC takes a moment to move all the weapons into line with it. if you don't have a target then your weapons can't converge (this would also help deal with the sniper problem a bit.) if you have that red box around the target then your weapons get the good convergence. if not they all just fire dead forward from the hard point location.

To be clear, convergence control should be a thing regardless, it's something I was sort of hoping for with MW5. You have 3 modes:

• Default behavior without target lock is to converge on reticle, ie whatever your reticle is on, however far from you it is it converges on that.
  
• If you have a target lock, behavior would be to adjust convergence to the distance of that target to allow better convergence of target locked targets.
  
• Manual override, ie put your reticle over a target at the range you want and you can "set" your convergence to that range with some ability to adjust in potentially 50m increments (like cruise control).

Convergence without target locks is dumb, you don't harm long range play, you just shift the mechs that are good at it (just like how the Gaussapult from closed beta did not care about the convergence nonsense before that).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 September 2023 - 02:03 PM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

well we could always do it so that torso weapons can't converge at all (or that you have to set their convergence point in the Mech Lab with arm weapons allowing convergence (they have actuators and such doesn't make much sense for a hard mounted weapon in the torso being able to shift its aim point unless there is room for some kind of gimbol.). though this would hit the big wide mechs pretty hard so wouldn't be a real good idea. i want to see more variation in mechs on the battlefield not less.

[ScrapIron Prime]

VeeOt Dragon, on 20 September 2023 - 01:55 PM, said:

then how about we also get rid of auto convergence without pressing R. that was the whole reason in Lore for a TC the pilot targets and then the TC takes a moment to move all the weapons into line with it. if you don't have a target then your weapons can't converge (this would also help deal with the sniper problem a bit.) if you have that red box around the target then your weapons get the good convergence. if not they all just fire dead forward from the hard point location.

Wouldn't that have the side effect of making ECM mechs harder to kill? Seems to me they have enough of an advantage already.

[ComradeHavoc]

You're not going to get any meaningful code changes. I don't think they have anyone on staff that can even touch the backend in their build of cryengine.

Focus on basic value changes.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

VeeOt Dragon, on 20 September 2023 - 02:14 PM, said:

well we could always do it so that torso weapons can't converge at all (or that you have to set their convergence point in the Mech Lab with arm weapons allowing convergence (they have actuators and such doesn't make much sense for a hard mounted weapon in the torso being able to shift its aim point unless there is room for some kind of gimbol.). though this would hit the big wide mechs pretty hard so wouldn't be a real good idea. i want to see more variation in mechs on the battlefield not less.

Yeah, most good mechs tend to already have tightly packed weapons in the torso already (again, Gaussapult had this even way back when) so your really just shifting the balance a bit and making the game obnoxious for mechs that already have bad hardpoints, which is exactly the flaw of trying to use convergence to balance anything, you just penalize mechs that already have a rough time.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 September 2023 - 05:40 PM.

[PocketYoda]

Screw LRMs fix damn Streaks they are the most useless weapons in MWO.

[ComradeHavoc]

PocketYoda, on 20 September 2023 - 08:03 PM, said:

Screw LRMs fix damn Streaks they are the most useless weapons in MWO.

You'd think they'd be the perfect anti-light weapon, but too many factors just make lasers the most viable and straightforward option.

[ThreeStooges]

Name one weapon with a cool down longer than narc. Why should I bother giving up 4-5 tons on some thing that does nothing for my damage score? When the game rewards damage over all else any thing on my mech that doesn't deal damage is a waste of space.

Streak are ok for anti-light stuff but the vast majority of lights are forced to be ecm/stealth with the always rising power creeping alphas. The reskined urbies into 2cs are not "new" lights. Add some real new light chasis into the ******* game already.

[ScrapIron Prime]

ThreeStooges, on 21 September 2023 - 08:32 AM, said:

Name one weapon with a cool down longer than narc. Why should I bother giving up 4-5 tons on some thing that does nothing for my damage score? When the game rewards damage over all else any thing on my mech that doesn't deal damage is a waste of space.

Correct, you only ever see NARCs used by one member of a 3-4 person team, and even then rarely because while the NARC mech might enable his LRM buddies to rack up huge match scores, the pilot running the NARC will often have a negative PSR gain. Attaching a NARC to an enemy mech needs to be WAY more lucrative in terms of PSR gain.

But that won't happen, because the folks making the calls for these kinds of changes don't like LRMs at all and don't want them to be a viable weapon system.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Who is playing around PSR gains? Not good players, that's for sure. If it provides wins, you are probably taking it, it just doesn't leave you room to do anything else which is unfortunate/boring. PSR really should've been dropped for ELO like we originally had.

That said, NARC is a bit borked in the counter play department as well:

• it requires too high of an investment for what mechs would mount it
  
• doesn't shake off if the section it hit is destroyed nor is the duration impacted by damage
  
• ECM is also a hard counter unless the ECM mech is NARC'd

[ScrapIron Prime]

Once you get to Tier 1, you don't really care about PSR. You can afford to lose a bunch of matches because you won't drop to Tier 2, so you can play that build that focuses on teamwork instead of raw damage.

I mean, most folks don't, but maxxing T1 gives you that luxury.

[ComradeHavoc]

ScrapIron Prime, on 21 September 2023 - 10:43 AM, said:

Once you get to Tier 1, you don't really care about PSR. You can afford to lose a bunch of matches because you won't drop to Tier 2, so you can play that build that focuses on teamwork instead of raw damage.

I mean, most folks don't, but maxxing T1 gives you that luxury.

Why would I want to play in the sweaty meta mech sniper tier when I can goof around with fun builds against casuals in playing for fun tiers?

[ScrapIron Prime]

ComradeHavoc, on 21 September 2023 - 01:25 PM, said:

Why would I want to play in the sweaty meta mech sniper tier when I can goof around with fun builds against casuals in playing for fun tiers?

I tend to agree, but I seem to do well enough that PSR bubbles me up to where I rarely encounter T5 players and usually serve as food for the top players.

[The6thMessenger]

ComradeHavoc, on 21 September 2023 - 08:12 AM, said:

You'd think they'd be the perfect anti-light weapon, but too many factors just make lasers the most viable and straightforward option.

Yeah, but comp over there doesn't like counter-play.

He prefers smart weapons that get out smarted.

ComradeHavoc, on 21 September 2023 - 01:25 PM, said:

Why would I want to play in the sweaty meta mech sniper tier when I can goof around with fun builds against casuals in playing for fun tiers?

Yeah. My real complaint with Tier 1.

[LordNothing]

ComradeHavoc, on 21 September 2023 - 01:25 PM, said:

Why would I want to play in the sweaty meta mech sniper tier when I can goof around with fun builds against casuals in playing for fun tiers?

my case for t3 is that it really gets the wait times down. ive made no attempt to regain my t2 status and now im dead average and can level mechs without having to spend hours in the meta builds playing the game in possibly the most boring way just to break even.

Edited by LordNothing, 21 September 2023 - 05:08 PM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

i agree about NARCs as well as TAG i personally think the mech giving the NARC or TAG should gt a portion of the credit for the damage dealt by locking weapons to that target. (now if its your own TAG or NARC you shouldn't get any extra credit for the damage dealt by your weapons). its dangerous and risky for a scout to get close enough to plant a NARC or give their location away with a TAG, they should get credit for that.

as for T1 yeah i'll stay down here in T3 thank you. before the change in the Tier system i was was pushing pretty close to T1 myself and i have to say it was getting boring. hell i love when i am playing a match and see someone on the field in one of the lesser used mechs. its fun oh i treat them like any other mech but its nice to see something different.

[ScrapIron Prime]

VeeOt Dragon, on 21 September 2023 - 10:00 PM, said:

i agree about NARCs as well as TAG i personally think the mech giving the NARC or TAG should gt a portion of the credit for the damage dealt by locking weapons to that target. (now if its your own TAG or NARC you shouldn't get any extra credit for the damage dealt by your weapons). its dangerous and risky for a scout to get close enough to plant a NARC or give their location away with a TAG, they should get credit for that.

That would be lovely... you get match score for say 10-20% of all damage that hits the target when you have it TAG'd, and 100% of all damage when you have it NARC'd. (Since NARC is harder to use and otherwise a waste of tonnage._

[pbiggz]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 September 2023 - 01:04 PM, said:

No indirect fire lock ons without TAG or NARC painting the target (and change the lock rectangle so this is obvious), faster missiles so direct fire LRMs are competitive.

How about distinguish between indirect locks and direct locks?

Indirect locks get you much slower missiles but they can do at least a bit more elaborate tracking (figure out their way around hills and stuff). Direct locks (you got the lock) are fire and forget with much much faster missiles but its more of a "missile go straight to bad robot" kind of deal?