LordNothing, on 05 January 2024 - 09:31 AM, said:
a medium laser can be different for every variant just using quirks. you grossly underestimate the power of the quirks system and what you can do with it.
I do, I understand you can, but at the point which is what we are running into now is that with power creep, mechs get left behind. By pushing everything into quirks it means when you would want to make a change to the medium laser for all lights, you have to redo all their quirks rather than a single weapon.
It's possible any number of ways, however the question then becomes what is the least fragile. Quirks are great for flavor, but what they have become thanks to PGI's refusal to balance the base tech is they are that tech balance mechanism and its why some mechs get left behind, because you don't want to change too many mech's quirks, but some of their quirks tell their age.
The cauldron has done good with what they have, but IMO it could be better if we undid some of these stupid quirks and actually tried to balance the base tech more and then reapply the quirks that make sense per chassis.
This is a systems design thing, and at the point that every mech has a quirk for a weapon (or every mech in a weight class), the base values of weapons mean significantly less because it can be practically a new/different weapon depending on the quirks. The worst part is, because everyone is afraid to untangle this mess, we justify adding to it and add to it, making it even harder to untangle short of a complete redo.
For example if everything is getting armor quirks, that should tell you we just need to increase armor across the board and reduce the quirks accordingly. That and some quirks really probably shouldn't exist because they can impact muscle memory or have the Valorant scenario where trying to keep straight all the special quirks can be a nightmare to know what ranges for example you can abuse against certain weapons etc.
IMO, range, laser duration, velocity, and maybe even cases like RAC ramp up or jam chance probably shouldn't be quirks because they can impact that.
LordNothing, on 05 January 2024 - 09:31 AM, said:
just throw in a few apocryphal variants that use a different engine type. if you dont like your engine move your omnipods.
This just sounds like a mess, just make them battlemechs and be done with it.
Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 05 January 2024 - 10:26 AM.