2
Medium Laser = 5 damage, 1.25 DPS, 1.25 Damage Per Ton.
The heat difference between the two is negligible per Damage.
LL = 36 Damage, 28 Heat, or 9 damage for 7 heat.
ML = 35 Damage, 28 Heat, or 8.75 damage for 7 heat.
ML are clearly Much more efficient. They are negligible in the fields they are worse in.
This is where hardpoints, IS being non-modular, and so on come in.
In TT, what you see is what you get. You can change weapons, but you're replacing one for one.
Clan was not only more damage, better heat sink, but also modular design. We are already using that modular design to a degree, with the hardpoint system. This is what made Clans so deadly, apart from their better weapons. Clans were actually OP, but balanced by fielding HALF the mech forces an IS would have.
In having this system, it becomes possible to "boat". You can drop some weapons to get a grouping of weapons that you specifically build towards supporting, making you more efficient.
Even though they NERFED DHS to stop medium laser boating, it will not stop it, nor will it make other weapons that are heavy more desirable, especially with the short ranges we deal with.
two MLs are nearly double the damage of 1 LL, 2/5th the tons, and though they generate 1 more point of heat, that is easily offset by 1-2 more heat sinks than the LL user gets, with still a whole ton of free space for armor or more weapons.
Boats are possible in a modular system. TT wasn't modular. This game tried to invoke the rules of TT regarding heat, damage, firing speed, etc, in its own variation. Modularity with hardpoints allowed boating. Boating caused DHS to be nerfed and people to cry, Yet it still isn't going to fix the problem, because:
The game design of Battletech is that things become less efficient the bigger they get, but their lower efficiency is compensated by being more powerful, and the armaments of smaller mechs being limited by the Basic Variant designs, with limited rules on swapping out weapons that is usually on a 1:1 basis.
For example: If you could stuff 1 Large laser there, you could stuff 1 Medium Laser instead. With hardpoints, if you could stuff 1 Large laser, but there's 2 en hardpoints, you can stuff 2 Medium lasers.
Nerfing heat sinks and other components will not solve the issue.
Larger weapons must provide enough benefits that the tradeoff is worth it. Take LRMs. An LRM 15 will produce less heat than 3 LRM 5. This is a good thing in the very heat hungry atmosphere of the current game. The tradeoff im making for it is one extra ton, but Im also opening that weapon system up to being crited and destroyed more easily.
In Summation:
Weapon damage must go up as efficiency in fitting goes down.
Weapon placements must be severly limited, otherwise individual weapons of smaller calibre are boated and come out superior in every regard to larger weapons.
As weapons go down in size in MWO, they lose rule #2. Actually its more of a Bell curve. Its bad for small lasers and large lasers, but good for medium lasers, right in the middle to take advantage of the versatility.
To modify this system, hardpoints must either be limited to a 1:1 basis with TT (which noone will like and they will complain about), or weapons, while they become less space efficient and more vuln to crits as they increase in size, must become more energy efficient than their smaller cousins.
Nerfing DHS will not solve the issue, because it's an issue with the core design. You just change the goalpost. You cannot build a straight house on a crooked foundation. Top down design is always going to fail and provide irregular and unpredictable results.
Edited by BerryChunks, 29 December 2012 - 12:20 AM.
