12 replies to this topic

[Markoni]

Hello all, i kinda have few ideas about what things could be changed/added in game, dont take it extremely serious i guess due to age of the game some of it could not be possibly added:

1. Lower visual splash of rotary autocannons.
2. Change color from light blue to green in weapons group tab (Extremely hard to see).
3. If possible a game could have 12/24 players against bots (Base siege, base defense, last stand etc.) Players VS. Skynet
4. Fix/Revert Fafnir hitbox.
5. Increased missile lock-on duration, or increased missile speed?
6. Collision damage against the enemy if the player's mech has a weapon bolt on equiped. (Could be an interesting game mechanism, since it is not possible to add melee any time soon due to game mechanics and age).
7. More iconic mechs (Chimera, Argus, Templar)
8. More ammo per tonnage (For ballistics, and missile mechs).
9. Lower tonnage of IS NARC by 1 ton.
10. Increased range of IS small pulse lasers.


11. Alpine Peaks removed.

[1453 R]

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

Hello all, i kinda have few ideas about what things could be changed/added in game, dont take it extremely serious i guess due to age of the game some of it could not be possibly added:

Always fun to go over ideas regardless of implementation viability. Let's see.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

1. Lower visual splash of rotary autocannons.

I take it you mean impact/received splash? I disagree, actually. Rapid-fire face stare weapons like rotary autocannons are already at a pretty severe defensive diadvantage. The visual noise they inflict is one of their only redeeming qualities defensively. Heh, want to see what you're doing? Stop getting rotary'd.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

2. Change color from light blue to green in weapons group tab (Extremely hard to see).

I think there's a Colorblind mode in the game somewhere? if not, look up how to do config file edits for the game. You should be able to implement this yourself on your client end, I think.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

3. If possible a game could have 12/24 players against bots (Base siege, base defense, last stand etc.) Players VS. Skynet

MW5: Mercenaries or MW5: Clans are your tickets here. Whole new single-player games with co-op capability. They serve the need quite well, I honestly thoroughly enjoyed my time with Mercs.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

4. Fix/Revert Fafnir hitbox.

How do you mean? Fatnir is fat. Has it ever somehow not been fat?

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

5. Increased missile lock-on duration, or increased missile speed?

Lock-on missiles exist in a quantum state of overpowered and worthless at all times. It is physically impossible to balance missiles "properly" for both T5 potatoes who stand in the explosive rain like eighty-five ton turkeys and T1 superheroes who are never more than three steps from hard cover and always have at least 80% RaDerp. Just gonna have to accept that missiles will be wonky.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

6. Collision damage against the enemy if the player's mech has a weapon bolt on equiped. (Could be an interesting game mechanism, since it is not possible to add melee any time soon due to game mechanics and age).

No reason to involve the bolt-on system. Years ago I proposed a button that would effectively be a "Charge!" option. Press button, and for [X] seconds your 'Mech deals (and sustains) massively increased collision damage. Charging is a rule in the tabletop books - just physically smash into the other 'Mech. It would be a solution for the problem of Unarmed Sticks, as one of the most cardinal of cardinal sins in shooter game design is leaving the player unarmed and unable to attack. It's actually one reason why all modern FPS games include some sort of unlimited-use melee attack.

You could play around with the damage values of charging, possibly do a visual indicator or overlay on 'Mechs that are charging so you know when someone is looking to rugby tackle you, whatever else needs to happen. It is the only form of "Melee" that is still remotely feasible for MWO. And I guarantee we will never get it.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

7. More iconic mechs (Chimera, Argus, Templar)

New 'Mechs have to be viable for all of Piranha's current games, which are MW5: Clans and MWO. They're a big expense and quite difficult to justify. Any new 'Mech has to sell like crazy and be viable for inclusion in Clans. MW4 Spheroid funkyboys missed the window.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

8. More ammo per tonnage (For ballistics, and missile mechs).

Gee wouldn't that be fuggin' nice? Tabletop ammo loadouts should be viable in MWO. I should not EVER need four tons of ammunition for a single weapon system to get through one god damned match.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

9. Lower tonnage of IS NARC by 1 ton.

Why...?

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

10. Increased range of IS small pulse lasers.

Cauldron gonna Cauldron. Red lasers are super strong as is, the only thing constraining them is their short range. If iSPL are underperforming(???), they're not likely to receive a range buff. More likely to receive a heat or cycle rate buff.

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

11. Alpine Peaks removed.

Nah. Let the snipers have their very rare fun.

[LordNothing]

i did an almost ace game last night in a stealth flea with 4 spls. got 7 kills before the opfor found my leg. considering my whole plan for that mission was to drop a uav and get my last event prize, it was good to have such a good game. of course we lost, because a flea killing most of the enemy team was not enough to help the other 11 players to get the remaining 5 kills between them.

people who think red things are weak need to run more red things.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 April 2025 - 03:29 PM.

[Rosarius]

1453 R, on 17 April 2025 - 10:19 AM, said:

Gee wouldn't that be fuggin' nice? Tabletop ammo loadouts should be viable in MWO. I should not EVER need four tons of ammunition for a single weapon system to get through one god damned match.

Just using AC20 as an example here, in tabletop 1t of AC20 ammo gives you 5 shots. In MWO 1t of AC20 ammo gives you 10 shots. On top of that you have skill tree nodes to boost ammo counts further.

I humbly submit that you may want to consider a more careful use of your ammunition in game

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Rosarius, on 17 April 2025 - 03:39 PM, said:

Just using AC20 as an example here, in tabletop 1t of AC20 ammo gives you 5 shots. In MWO 1t of AC20 ammo gives you 10 shots. On top of that you have skill tree nodes to boost ammo counts further.

I humbly submit that you may want to consider a more careful use of your ammunition in game

Nah, most people run absurd amounts of ammo because you are typically are facing more numerous hardened targets than in TT thanks to double structure/armor from TT and skills/quirks increasing longevity of mechs. Not to mention the 60% damage reduction on transfer that does not exist in TT.

In a typical TT match, 2 tons of Gauss ammo per Gauss is typically good enough and provides plenty of firepower for a heavy. In MWO, 2 Gauss doesn't have the DPS or the alpha to really be that dangerous in QP, and 4 tons of ammo just for double gauss just isn't enough for QP either.

The real problem is that ammo doesn't scale for the number of players on the field. 4v4 is going to have different requirements for ammo than 8v8 or 12v12 let alone 1v1s, this definitely has impact on viability of certain builds.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 17 April 2025 - 03:52 PM.

[GreyNovember]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 17 April 2025 - 03:43 PM, said:

4v4 is going to have different requirements for ammo than 8v8 or 12v12 let alone 1v1s, this definitely has impact on viability of certain builds.

Solaris recently teaching me I can afford to drop 2 tons of ammo in exchange for jump or DHS.

[Rosarius]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 17 April 2025 - 03:43 PM, said:

Nah, most people run absurd amounts of ammo because you are typically are facing more numerous hardened targets than in TT thanks to double structure/armor from TT and skills/quirks increasing longevity of mechs. Not to mention the 60% damage reduction on transfer that does not exist in TT.

In a typical TT match, 2 tons of Gauss ammo per Gauss is typically good enough and provides plenty of firepower for a heavy. In MWO, 2 Gauss doesn't have the DPS or the alpha to really be that dangerous in QP, and 4 tons of ammo just for double gauss just isn't enough for QP either.

The real problem is that ammo doesn't scale for the number of players on the field. 4v4 is going to have different requirements for ammo than 8v8 or 12v12 let alone 1v1s, this definitely has impact on viability of certain builds.

Mathematically speaking, if you have double ammo, double armour, and double structure you should still be left with the same number of shots per kill, ignoring that you're dealing with dice rolls to hit components / the mech at all.

But sure, I'll take an ammo buff. I'll always take the opportunity to free up tonnage for more guns

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Rosarius, on 17 April 2025 - 11:35 PM, said:

Mathematically speaking, if you have double ammo, double armour, and double structure you should still be left with the same number of shots per kill, ignoring that you're dealing with dice rolls to hit components / the mech at all.

Technically you'd be right, realistically though, most TT matches aren't 12v12, and if they are it's likely a bunch of lighter mechs. So mechs are expected to do well more than double the damage they'd do in TT if they need to "carry".

Really the biggest thing is how much of a tax do you want ammo to be on builds. For lights gaining a couple of tons is pretty huge (it's why ammo quirks are so prevalent on lighter mechs), for bigs it's less of a big deal since you are generally more space constrained than anything, just depends on the builds and what's expected of each mech.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 18 April 2025 - 07:05 AM.

[GreyNovember]

Also consider that damage falloff and burst fire is a thing.

An AC20 here doesn't always do 20 damage per trigger pull, nor is it always on one component, assuming they hit.

This is in addition to durability quirks, and the nonlinear lowering of accuracy as your target gets smaller.

[Gasboy]

Markoni, on 17 April 2025 - 08:35 AM, said:

1. Lower visual splash of rotary autocannons.
2. Change color from light blue to green in weapons group tab (Extremely hard to see).
3. If possible a game could have 12/24 players against bots (Base siege, base defense, last stand etc.) Players VS. Skynet
4. Fix/Revert Fafnir hitbox.
5. Increased missile lock-on duration, or increased missile speed?
6. Collision damage against the enemy if the player's mech has a weapon bolt on equiped. (Could be an interesting game mechanism, since it is not possible to add melee any time soon due to game mechanics and age).
7. More iconic mechs (Chimera, Argus, Templar)
8. More ammo per tonnage (For ballistics, and missile mechs).
9. Lower tonnage of IS NARC by 1 ton.
10. Increased range of IS small pulse lasers.


11. Alpine Peaks removed.

1) You can edit the config file to reduce the glare.
2) This is fair, but probably a colour other than green, as a consideration for one of the more common colour blindness colours.
3) Could be fun as an event, dunno if it's possible since I don't think there's any AI, and I dunno how they'd handle the jankiness of the game.
4) Depends on what the issue is.
5) There are skills to increase lockon time and speed.
6) There used to be physical damage and knocikdown. Both got removed after a developer was constantly knocked over in the great "Dragon Bowling" debacle. People do too much jostling around at the start to make it a serious consideration though.
7) I mean, more mechs are always nice.
8) There are skills that give more ammo.
9) Why? Smells like you have a very specific build in mind, and a change just for that's not really a good reason.
10) Again, there's a skill that increases range.
11) What would the LRMers do if you remove the LRM map?

[kalashnikity]

Gasboy, on 18 April 2025 - 12:07 PM, said:

1) You can edit the config file to reduce the glare.

The problem is that PPC's are controlled by the same variable as screen flash, so reducing it enough that RAC's are not blinding, also leaded to invisible PPCs, suddenly you can't tell where PPC fire is coming from. You can test it out for yourself, thew lower the number the farther away a PPC become invisible. The tradeoff for me was PPC visibility at around 150m, which still leaves significant screen flash from being hit with RAC fire.

[kalashnikity]

in user.cfg

e_ParticlesMaxDrawScreen = 0.05

is about as low as you can make it and still be able to see PPCs reliably in most circumstances. If you bump it down to (IIRC) 0.01, then RAC fire is minimal, but you can't see PPCs within ~800m, which is a significant disadvantage.

You could tune it so PPC are visible only if they are farther than ~400m perhaps, but that's still going to lead to you miss trajectory info on a significant amount of PPC fire, all for a mild reduction in RAC screen flash.

Ideally Bullet/Missile impact need to be decoupled from PPC visibility, then you could tune them independently. I would think that would be an easy tweek in the game code, but I don't know.

Edited by kalashnikity, 18 April 2025 - 12:31 PM.

[nanashi0110]

Can't wait to see No6 and No11 realized...!