123 replies to this topic

[Slyck]

Pvt Dancer, on 12 April 2012 - 10:34 AM, said:

Sooo... what is the difference between a AC 20 and 4 Medium lasers?

Well here's my answer. They average the same amount of damage over ten seconds, but the med lasers will do it over 4 seconds while the AC does it in a little less then one. On top of which convergence mechanic will affect 4 weapons more then it will one. So now the damage from the med lasers will be, on average, more dispersed then the damage from the AC. Just the way it is should be.

Quote

Pin point accuracy in a FPS is a fallacy. If I can fire 4 medium lasers and have all 4 of them hit the head at 60 meters, I will be shocked and dismayed.

The reason lost interest in previous MW games was when I discovered that I could drop any mech on the field alomst instantly with a Nova ... because of the pinpoint accuracy. So be shocked and dismayed.

[MaddMaxx]

verybad, on 12 April 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

People are voting for a ten second recycle for every weapon?

That is...disturbing. It shows an unimaginative view of the way battletech, even on TT works.

People are away that the TT game is meant to show what happens in a ten second frame of action, not that everything that happens in that frame of action happens all at once right?

Just the damage applied. How fast you fire or reload is a function of that. If an AC2 can fire every 2 seconds from even half its max range it is not a 2 pt weapon anymore when compared to the others. If we use the base max. damage over 10 seconds for any one weapon to be 20pts (a single AC20) then an AC2 can't get more than 1 shot per second (which would basically be holding down the trigger) so when weapons are combined the damage and reloads all match up equally.

[Iron Felix]

a couple of factors to consider that have not been mentioned yet, that will have an impact on how cycle times are viewed in a gameplay setting...ie;..TT=turn based vs. Sim=real-time...
Jump capable mechs...we used to call them "pop-up campers"...they would wait for a mech to fire their long-cycle weps, then pop up and fire...a good tactic, but a game-changer in terms of the value of jumpjets...IF jump-capable mechs can have their jets destroyed ( a failing in past MW games.ie;. if you had em, you had em no matter what damage you took), that would mitigate that advantage and make longer cycle times more acceptable...if jumpjets are going to remain indestructable, then longer weapon cycles are going to take some critisism as an unbalancing factor....considering there are the additional factors of "weapons convergence lag", "jump-jet recycle times", and "damage distribution on a moving target"...so, my opinion of weapon cycle times is going to relate somewhat to "can he jump again before my weps cycle, and how long does it take to get a good converged shot lined up on a moving target"....
next would be "damage over range" and "damage distribution"...ie;..am I firing a single rifle slug at 1k meters, or a shotgun at 50 meters?...will my shot have a chance to knock out a single hardpoint in one shot if I hit well, or am i stripping off a thinner layer of armor spread over several hardpoints...also, travel time to target..ie; if i shoot at his left arm while he is moving to my left at that speed, will i end up hitting his right arm by the time the shot lands...will my ac/20 reach the target?, if i manage to get within range do i have a better kill probability?...
overall..im of the opinion that 10 seconds is an eternity to wait for a weapons cycle unless it is a truly devastating weapon..any mech can be destroyed in 2 seconds if they are unlucky enough to run out into an open field in front of 6 enemy mechs, but if you are stuck in a covered position, being targeted by 3 jumpers who you know are just waiting for you to peek your head out from around the corner, its a whole different game...to me, 6 seconds is a "long" cycle time...a Simulation bears little resemblance to a turn-based dynamic, although the original cannon gives a pretty good guideline as to what the original developers had intended, it was never intended to be used in real time....but ...thats just my opinion....

[Paul Inouye]

That's it.

Global cooldown. 30 seconds

If you want to shoot faster you pay me $40 directly!


/end thread

[Alaric Wolf Kerensky]

StaggerCheck, on 10 April 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

Sure, let's give the AC/20 a rate of fire 4x normal for the game. It would take you 25 seconds to burn through the average ammo supply. Whooo... fun times right there for the rest of the game. Ok, perhaps that is a bit extreme... for sake of argument, let's give it a 5 second refresh rate, so you'd have under a minute of sustained fire. The design team have already established 16 points of armour per ton. If you hit once with the AC/20, do you still expect it to do 20 damage? What about the heat it would generate? Firing it twice should produce 14 heat, unless they mess with those stats, as well. That would overtax the Hunchback's heatsink capacity, and we haven't even talked about the Medium Lasers it has, yet. How about we strap you into a Hunchback on open terrain and pit you against a Catapult. You're out of range for your weapons, but the Cat isn't. How many salvos of LRM 15's do you take with this sped up rate of fire before you close within range to use your AC/20 and Medium Lasers? At 16 points of armour per ton, do you even have a Mech left to fight with? You've thought all this through before you made that post, right, Highlander? The only reason some people 'really value the table top stats and everything' is based on the fact that the dev team said they value them. To jump to the conclusion that these players will have a hard time with the game is rather bold on your part.

Sorry if that sounded harsh.

I do not think you got the idea straight. What he is saying is halve the fire rate, AND the damage, heat, and ammunition use. I for one think the idea of every single weapon having exactly the same recycle time is ridiculous. It makes separate weapons lose their character. For example, a small laser with a 10 second recycle is not much different from a large laser with a 10 second recycle in anything other than weight, heat, and impact. The advantage of having a close-range weapon with rapid-fire (because people tend to miss a lot with the angular velocities that increase as a target moves closer) is then lost. In addition, many people seem to be sickened by the mere mention of an Alpha-strike. Well, I hate to tell you all this, but having every damn weapon with a 10 second recycle will make alpha-strikes a lot more common.

Edited by Alaric Wolf Kerensky, 12 April 2012 - 02:10 PM.

[Solis Obscuri]

Paul Inouye, on 12 April 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

That's it. Global cooldown. 30 seconds If you want to shoot faster you pay me $40 directly! /end thread

What if I crawl out on the arm of my 'mech and manually load the AC/10 with a ramrod and powder horn?

[ice trey]

Honestly, Mechwarrior 4 vengeance has shown me why it's a bad idea for any weapons to deviate from a 10-second recycle time. You ended up with microsoft trying to make all weapons deal the canon damage per 10 seconds, but they also tried toying with the recycle times.

...This in a game where people were jump sniping and the like. It ended up making anything with a recycle time of less than 5 seconds into a pittance. The Medium Laser - the Battletech workhorse weapon, ended up being little more than a papercut in the grand scheme of things, while the Gauss Rifle and ER Large Lasers were the only way you could effectively put an opponent down (Forget even the large pulse laser).

I think that if all weapons were given 10-second recharges, not only would it give new life to the low-cal weapons, but greater variation to the loadouts people give their 'mechs.

Also, god forbid, people might actually fire weapons one at a time, rather than all at once.

[Strum Wealh]

Paul Inouye, on 12 April 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

That's it.

Global cooldown. 30 seconds

If you want to shoot faster you pay me $40 directly!


/end thread

Hmmm... what about ending the thread (and the related thread(s)) on a clarification of previous Dev statements?

As stated in Q&A 5:

Quote

Now, how will you depict Standard Lasers/Pulse Lasers in MWO? –GB_Krubarax

[DAVID] A standard laser fires a continuous beam that applies damage over time while it remains on. A pulse laser fires a continuous beam that blinks on and off. (Not the blaster bolt style of light ‘bullets’ that fly at the target.) Damage is applied in short bursts each time the laser blinks on.

-----

What, if any, mechanic will be in place to prevent a large group of single-type weapons from devastating a single location, a problem that has plagued just about every incarnation of MW to date? –Thomas Hogarth

[DAVID] We’ve got a few systems in place to handle that problem. One is having weapons such as lasers do damage over time so that, in order to deliver full damage to a single location, you have to hold your fire on the location, which can be difficult when you and/or your target are moving.
Another consideration is the separate arm and torso aim reticles. They will naturally line up with each other but, whenever you aim, you’ll lead with your arms while the torso catches up. This means that, if you want weapons in both locations to hit the same spot, you’ll have to hold your shot until they all aim at the same point.
An additional aspect of our aiming system is weapon convergence. I touched on this in a post I made in reply to Dev Blog 5, but some of you may have missed it so I’ll copy it over here:
Basically, your targeting systems are always trying to adjust the angle of your weapons so that they converge or focus at a distance of whatever your aiming reticles are pointing at. So, if you fire at a target very far away, your lasers (or whatever else) may fire nearly parallel to each other; firing at a target up close will angle the shots inwards. However, the adjustment of these angles is not instant.
For instance, if you were facing a building, while taking cover right up against it, your convergence would adjust to hit just a short distance in front of you (the distance to the building). When you step out from around that building and fire on an enemy in the distance, your convergence point would automatically begin to adjust, but not instantly. If you shoot too soon, your first shots may converge and cross a short distance in front of you and completely miss the enemy as they pass on either side of him. Or perhaps you were aiming for the centre torso and hit his arms instead, as your aim adjusts towards his centre.

With David's answer to Krubarax's question and the first paragraph of his answer to Thomas' question being the most salient parts with regard to this discussion...

Will Standard Lasers in MechWarrior Online apply the whole of their rated damage (the per-turn damage listed in the BattleTech rules) with each continuous beam, or will the rated damage be prorated so that the combination of damage-per-beam and rate-of-fire will result in maintaining to maintain the average damage applied over time implied by the BattleTech rules, and will Pulse Lasers in MechWarrior Online apply the whole of their rated damage (the per-turn damage listed in the BattleTech rules) with each burst of pulses, or will the rated damage (the per-turn damage listed in the BattleTech rules) be prorated so that the combination of damage-per-burst and rate-of-fire will result in maintaining to maintain the average damage applied over time implied by the BattleTech rules?

Likewise, will Autocannons in MechWarrior Online apply the whole of their rated damage (the per-turn damage listed in the BattleTech rules) with a single shell or with a single burst of shells, or will the rated damage (the per-turn damage listed in the BattleTech rules) be prorated so that the combination of damage-per-shell/burst and rate-of-fire (shells/bursts fired over time) will result in Autocannons not delivering their rated damage (the per-turn damage listed in the BattleTech rules) in a single shell/burst but maintaining the average damage applied over time implied by the BattleTech rules?

And, how will each weapon's rate of fire be determined - will the collective rates of fire be based on a 10-second cycle (the duration of a turn in the BattleTech tabletop game), a 2.5-second cycle (the Solaris VII "Dueling Rules"), on the precedents set by the previous MechWarrior computer games, or some other new-and-novel system?

I pose these questions in good faith, and would greatly appreciate responses likewise made in good faith and delivered in a timely manner.

Thank you for your time.

[GrizzlyViking]

I can't imagine why it would take an auto-cannon of any size ten seconds to cycle to the next round of ammo unless there was 10 years of rust jamming the system. It is an "auto-cannon" after all, not a muzzle loader. As for laser based systems it makes sense that there would be a charging time and there is also the heat factor which will also limit how often laser weapons can be fired.

[Yeach]

(my first post after I started this thread)
Interesting how the polls are going; it does make discussion much easier to illustrate.
I was going to try to do some previous quotes but then I realize thats alot of quotes to do.

Basically here my are my thoughts.
I think Battletech has already a good balance between
1. damage
2. armor
3. ammo/heat
If you start changing one of these, the other items should also change proportionally.

The most common arguments I see are that the AC20 should do 20 damage single salvo (no matter what) ;
If you reduced the recycle time from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, that would mean Mechs would be twice as easily destroyable; in effect reducing the effectiveness of armor by half.
Are you willing to have AC20 do 20 damage and 5 second recycle with armor values twice of that of TT?

Another common item is having "smaller weapons" have faster recycle times with reduce damage (to maintain TT values) and the result was shown in MW4 where those "smaller" weapons were found to less useful; a medium laser in MW4 was reduced to doing 2 damage resulted in "death by smalls cuts". I'm not sure if this is what people want.

Anyways my main point is I don't want to see an AC20 do 20 (or more) damage with less than 10 second recycle time.

[VYCanis]

You know there are countless other real time combat games that balance their weapons and equipment just fine without adhering slavishly to some arbitrary 10 second counter across the board.

Do we really need to get so fanwankily myopic concerning battletech's rules that we are taking what was merely an arbitrary period of time to cleanly divy up turns IN A TURN BASED GAME at pure face value?

How about we let the devs create weapons and balance that is fun and workable first and foremost, and not worry so much whether a number here or there matches exactly with the TT stats.

i mean what the hell does it matter if an ac20 is not following it's old stat block if it's still a horrifyingly powerful repeating cannon that shreds targets at close range with mclargehuge shells and runs out of ammo fast?

As long as the appropriate weapons are filling the correct niches, are balanced against each other, are fun to use, and are visually represented in ways that are both interesting and accurate to the subject matter, i could not give some 4 letter words whether something is doing 10 damage per shot or 5.

[Gigaton]

GrizzlyViking, on 12 April 2012 - 02:47 PM, said:

I can't imagine why it would take an auto-cannon of any size ten seconds to cycle to the next round of ammo unless there was 10 years of rust jamming the system.

That's assuming autocannon fires one round per firing. What if AC/2 pops 25 rounds in a second and then goes to reload new clip? It's still lousy effective rate of fire compared to belt fed weapons, mind you.

Though AC/2 is one of the weapons I wouldn't mind seeing with RoF outside 8-12 sec mark, together with AC/5, small laser, small pulse laser, flamer and MG (most of those could use DPS increase as well).

Anyway (and no longer in reply to post above), the reason I voted for 'long reload times' so to say is that I want to see instant multi gun alpha strikes of previous titles die. About 15-20 heat at once should be the maximum players could safetly go for, and even then only when they really need it (you should really feel it even after shooting 2 normal PPCs at once, and it should already come with risk of shutdown).

So if heat system seriously curbs alpha strikes, what's the advantage of having multiple weapons? Panther and Awesome now have about the same practical alpha, afterall. The advantage is increased rate of fire and better DPS. Neither Jenner or Komodo would normally shoot more than 4 medium lasers at once, but Komodo gets to shoot 2 additional banks of 3 while Jenner reloads. If med lasers fire every 2.5 secs what's the point of having 10 of them when no 'mech could handle the 120 points of heat per 10 seconds you got from them?

The idea of halving heat, halving reload time and halving damage is valid overall, but I don't see the point in this situation. Many machines would already need to stay engaged for more than a blink to unload all their weapon system in constrains of heat. The fact that ballistics heavy mediums and most light 'mechs could unload it all in a burst would be an advantage for these lighter 'mechs, while most heavies and assaults would need 2-4 bursts to do it.

Edited by Gigaton, 13 April 2012 - 05:24 AM.

[Mechteric]

I don't like any of the options in the poll, so I didn't vote. I will say that trying to make each weapons do their CBT damage every 1 or even 2.5 second would just be ridiculous. Fights would be over too fast I would think. Not to say I want stupidly slow fights but somewhere in the middle (though slightly towards fast) is certainly agreeable.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 13 April 2012 - 05:17 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

Quote

"As long as the appropriate weapons are filling the correct niches, are balanced against each other, are fun to use, and are visually represented in ways that are both interesting and accurate to the subject matter, i could not give some 4 letter words whether something is doing 10 damage per shot or 5."

So your assertion is that BT is not FUN to play on table top, and that if the Dev added very cool graphics and Sounds, made the Mechs life like in motion and damage modelling, while keeping the Ruleset (balanced as it is) in tact MWO, would infact suck?

Just curious is all.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 13 April 2012 - 05:32 AM.

[VYCanis]

MaddMaxx, on 13 April 2012 - 05:31 AM, said:

So your assertion is that BT is not FUN to play on table top, and that if the Dev added very cool graphics and Sounds, made the Mechs life like in motion and damage modelling, while keeping the Ruleset (balanced as it is) in tact MWO, would infact suck?

Just curious is all.

I never said BT wasn't fun on the tabletop, it's lot's of fun, but trying to shoehorn in rules that were explicitly meant to expedite dice rolling and pen and paper stat tracking, and taking everything at pure face value without context or artistic interpretation is asking for trouble.

One has to understand WHY the TT values are the way they are, why the modifiers are there, and why stuff is the way it is, and interpret from there, not just look at the numbers and copy it verbatim.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Unfortunately some of the rules which helped balance ballistics and missiles (especially SRMs) have been left out of the PC games such as TACs. Thats why the LBX was so good in TT, but should only be used with slugs in a PC game. Most people argueing the subject here and in similar threads do understand the basis from TT. We are, mostly, trying to adapt things to the PC without throwing the rules away.totally.
This can be difficult when you have people who regard 3 seconds as a long time to wait for a weapon to reload. The majority of people in the poll voted for the AC20 and PPC to take 10 secs to recharge. The result for the ML was totally different with over 30% saying they want it to fire every 2.5 secs while still doing 5 damage. Which would make it the weapon of choice again.
Mostly though it's something to do while waiting for the next drip of info.

[MaddMaxx]

VYCanis, on 13 April 2012 - 09:48 AM, said:

I never said BT wasn't fun on the tabletop, it's lot's of fun, but trying to shoehorn in rules that were explicitly meant to expedite dice rolling and pen and paper stat tracking, and taking everything at pure face value without context or artistic interpretation is asking for trouble.

One has to understand WHY the TT values are the way they are, why the modifiers are there, and why stuff is the way it is, and interpret from there, not just look at the numbers and copy it verbatim.

Fair enough, but given we will be using the same armor values, the same base ranges for the weapon set (with fall off past max.), why would it require a major overhaul of the damage, heat, RoF, ammo loads etc etc. already set out in the Rules.

Sure some things need to be tweaked, but around here some want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Once enough things change then the game is no longer related to the Parent. It is the relationship to the Parent game that draws so many. That in of itself should be a valid reason to try and preserve that relationship as best as possible.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 13 April 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[Yeach]

MaddMaxx, on 13 April 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

Fair enough, but given we will be using the same armor values, the same base ranges for the weapon set (with fall off past max.), why would it require a major overhaul of the damage, heat, RoF, ammo loads etc etc. already set out in the Rules.

Sure some things need to be tweaked, but around here some want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Once enough things change then the game is no longer related to the Parent. It is the relationship to the Parent game that draws so many. That in of itself should be a valid reason to try and preserve that relationship as best as possible.

Hoping we are talking about the same rules.
Battletech TT or Solaris dueling rules? choose one.

[BerryChunks]

verybad, on 12 April 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

People are voting for a ten second recycle for every weapon?

That is...disturbing. It shows an unimaginative view of the way battletech, even on TT works.

People are away that the TT game is meant to show what happens in a ten second frame of action, not that everything that happens in that frame of action happens all at once right?

the problem is that this is untrue. if it was trying to show what happens in a 10 second timeframe, explain the ac20 to the CT of light mech one hit kill?

If the AC20 is firing to spread its damage over the 10 seconds, instead of up front, that means you're likely to be hitting all over the light mech, and maybe even missing some.

This is not reflected by the game saying that "when an AC is shot, distribute 20 damage randomly among enemy mech's parts" or "Roll dice 1d6*7 to see which parts are hit". If this phrase existed, your view could be true. However it does not exist. AC damage is applied in one spot, meaning it's only fired once. Otherwise damage would go all over.

[BerryChunks]

GrizzlyViking, on 12 April 2012 - 02:47 PM, said:

I can't imagine why it would take an auto-cannon of any size ten seconds to cycle to the next round of ammo unless there was 10 years of rust jamming the system. It is an "auto-cannon" after all, not a muzzle loader. As for laser based systems it makes sense that there would be a charging time and there is also the heat factor which will also limit how often laser weapons can be fired.

think of it as a sudden burst gun like this

Now, since they make ranges of AC from 23mm to 203mm, Smaller ones are machine gun style like the one above. larger ones are tank cannon style. But they are still self loading and clearing, so they are "autocannons".

Do you think it's unreasonable for this gun in the video to take 10 seconds to reload when it fires its entire group in less than .1 second? Do you think it's unreasonable for a main tanks gun to takes 10 seconds to reload? Yes. there is a new auto-loader out that can load shells into an artillery cannon in less time these days, but the makers of battletech were working with what they could observe in the 80's and applying some artistic license to make the 10 second round work.

if anything, their description of the minigun style ACs that do the same damage as a 203mm gun is eerily foretelling of this new gun that has 1,000,000 RPM with 180 bullets.

here's a 203mm for comparison.

http://en.wikipedia....itzer#Operators

here's a 105mm http://en.wikipedia....yal_Ordnance_L7

which is fitted onto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

Notice that the howitzer is almost two times bigger, and thats what mechs use. So between that. and the super small mm machine gun that fires off all its ammo in just a moment, Is it so farfetched for 10 second reload times?


this concept of firing off multiple salvos in a heartbeat, or one big shot in the same time, is the concept of concentrating damage on a single point, precisely so that you don't spread damage all over, provided you can aim and pull the trigger properly.

that other 9 seconds is reloading time.

Edited by BerryChunks, 13 April 2012 - 07:01 PM.