534 replies to this topic

[Apoc1138]

MustrumRidcully, on 23 November 2012 - 08:22 AM, said:

While I maintain my belief that same DPS is usually better with a lower rate of fire than a higher rate of fire -if you don't agree with that, maybe we should first get on balancing weapons based on less subtle differences, and focus on the big differences - like one weapon needing 15 tons of heat sinks in addition to 7 tons of its own weight to deliver 3 DPS for 30 seconds, and another weapon needing when another needs only 15 tons of its own weight and 3 tons for its ammo to fire 30 seconds for 3.75?

In your opinion... and completely ignoring that you get 20 "tons" of heatsinks free... and ignoring that the weapon with heatsinks can fire alot longer than 30 seconds because it has no ammo... and around we go in this ever circling argument

since you like maths so much, here's some I just came up with...

take a chassis, mount a 300 engine, switch to double heatsinks... with 18 tons add either

1 gauss and 3 tons of ammo, 3 tons of ammo is 30 shots = 120 seconds of fire = 0.5DPS over 15 minutes
with a front load of 15 and a max DPS of 3.75

or

2 PPC's and 4 additional heatsinks (total 56.6 capacity and 25.6 dissipation, 2.56 per second)
2 PPC's fired whenever possible without shutting down = 2.93DPS over 15 minutes
and it front loads it by 20 instead of 15, and if you wait for cooldown you can have bursts of 6.66DPS

now, your answer to this is going to be that you can add more ammo, or that you don't need to fire for 15 minutes... but you can add more heatsinks and you might well need more than 450 points of damage output... averaged over 15 minutes, you would need 90 tons of ammo for the gauss to reach it's 3.75DPS, where as the PPC's only need 60 tons of heatsinks to become totally heat neutral and maintain 6.66DPS

no matter how much ammo you add or how many equalising tons of heatsinks, the PPC's always stay well ahead on all 3 metrics you've limited yourself to

you could add 3 medium lasers to exceed the burst DPS but then they are much shorter range and you still wouldn't be able to match the overall DPS of 2.93 over 15 minutes

your or Vapour Trails arbitrary 20, 30, 120 or 160 seconds is just that, arbitrary, so is my average over 15 minutes, but which one of any of these someone chooses to use for their own acceptance of what weapons to use is entirely up to the individual choosing the weapons, and totally *NOT* what PGI should be using to balance the game - they should be using server telemetry plus their own ideas on where they want weapons to sit, plus gameplay factors like screen shake, EMP or whatever that show up in the telemetry as being possibly overpowered

Edited by Apoc1138, 23 November 2012 - 07:28 PM.

[Vapor Trail]

Apoc1138, on 23 November 2012 - 06:46 PM, said:

In your opinion... and completely ignoring that you get 20 "tons" of heatsinks free... and ignoring that the weapon with heatsinks can fire alot longer than 30 seconds because it has no ammo... and around we go in this ever circling argument

Because even with those "twenty tons" of heat sinks you get free with engine, you STILL need another "two tons" of heat sinks to get a PPC to perform at the average level it did in TT (heat neutral at the same RoF as the Gauss). An ERPPC requires more than "17 tons" more.

This is in comparison to being able to run a single PPC off any engine's sinks and an ERPPC off engine + 5.

[Apoc1138]

Vapor Trail, on 23 November 2012 - 07:32 PM, said:

Because even with those "twenty tons" of heat sinks you get free with engine, you STILL need another "two tons" of heat sinks to get a PPC to perform at the average level it did in TT (heat neutral at the same RoF as the Gauss). An ERPPC requires more than "17 tons" more. This is in comparison to being able to run a single PPC off any engine's sinks and an ERPPC off engine + 5.

this is not TT... at least do me the courtesy of reading my whole post instead of just the first paragraph... you absolutely cannot balance a real time game based on what worked (and wasn't even truly balanced) in a board game... if you want TT balance then play TT instead of this... and last time I checked, 7+2 is still alot less than 15

In TT the ppc had a dps of 1 and the gauss 1.5... now the difference is 11% instead of 50% and the ppc pays for the buff in heat generation in the same way that the gauss requires more ammo per "round"

Edited by Apoc1138, 23 November 2012 - 09:02 PM.

[Vapor Trail]

Apoc1138, on 23 November 2012 - 08:09 PM, said:

this is not TT... at least do me the courtesy of reading my whole post instead of just the first paragraph... you absolutely cannot balance a real time game based on what worked (and wasn't even truly balanced) in a board game... if you want TT balance then play TT instead of this... and last time I checked, 7+2 is still alot less than 15

I did read the whole post. I actually quoted the whole post. I responded to the whole post Thing is... while I was reading (the entire page) and then typing a response (to your post), you were editing your post. Your edit is time-stamped four minutes before my post, during which I did not have the edit in front of me.

And yes. 7 + 2 is nine. And 7 + 12 is nineteen. Add them together and you get twenty eight. That's weight in tons for adding a second PPC with the same performance as the first with double heat sinks
.
So uisng double heat sinks, two PPCs weigh less than two Gauss.

But while we're mathing, lets consider critical space.

Sixteen to twenty six criticals. That's about how many, minimum to maximum I would consider adequate critical spaces are required for two Gauss rifles and ammo.

12 and 2 is 14. and 14 * 3 + 2*3 is 48.

Don't get it? That's the math for adding a second PPC with the same performance as the first (which is LESS than the Gauss' to begin with) using true double heat sinks and the tweaked PPC heat.

Forty eight criticals in sixteen groups of 3. Good luck fitting that on ANY mech.

Singles is almost as bad. Your first PPC with the same performance balance with respect to the Gauss that TT had costs you nineteen tons in weapon and heat sinks. The second costs you twenty-nine. Total of 48 tons (and 40 criticals) in weapons and heat sinks alone.

Two Gauss: 32 to 40 tons, depending on ammo load.

How many mechs have variants that use dual PPCs as their main weapons? Marauder, Warhammer, Thug, Rifleman, Annihilator, and Hatamoto-Chi, just for starters (and most of those use singles). Most of these mechs were fixtures of Battletech combat.

"you absolutely cannot balance a real time game based on what worked (and wasn't even truly balanced) in a board game"

I find this to be high in fertilizer content. Why? Because if you can't do it, then why bother with the pretense?

The whole point of the game is to have a first person, real-time, game that has the same kind of action as TT.

Forgive me if I feel that comparable weapon performance is something of a stepping stone toward that goal.

Edited by Vapor Trail, 23 November 2012 - 10:12 PM.

[Apoc1138]

Again... performance based on *your* criteria of 160 seconds... to get the same performance over a fifteen minute round is far fewer heatsinks or far more ammo than *your* arbitrary time... as I've already mentioned, the relative dps difference has been reduced from 50% to 11% but you want them to maintain the same heat differential so you want ppc's to be outright overpowered compared with TT... if you can't see the difference between aiming with dice or aiming with a mouse, and how massively pgi have already departed from TT in their weapon values then there really is no helping you... this is MechWarrior Online not Battletech Online... none of the previous PC games weapon stats bore any relation to TT either... you haven't read a word I said or responded to my post, you've just regurgitated you broken "maths" on what *you* consider to be balance, which is so far removed from reality as to be laughable

Edited by Apoc1138, 23 November 2012 - 11:42 PM.

[Bayamon]

You cant solve weapon balancing with Math alone.
Even if you factor in Heat or the the effect a "screen shake" has its pretty much impossible.(What "value" do you attribute to something that only has a distracting effect on your enemy ? Some suffer more than others, too)

For the sake of the argument, lets asume that an AC20 will do 20 dmg per shot and an AC5 will do 5 dmg per shot and within once cycle of the AC20, the AC5 will have fired 4 times, so they both do 20 dmg in the exact same time.
Now what if you miss one of the four AC5 shots ? You still would have dealt 15 dmg. But missing a shot with the AC20 will result in 0 dmg.
By the time you reload the AC20 the AC5 will fire four times again and even if only one shot hits the target, the AC5 still comes out on top DPS wise in this situation.

The AC20 will do so much damage if it hits, that it can take you out straight away...the AC5 cant.

Thats the point at which personal preference and build diversity comes into play...some prefer to do spike damage, some prefer sustained dmg (and screen shake).

Hit&Run tactics with AC20 ? Stand up fight with AC5 ?
Other way round ?
And we didnt even start to consider dmg per ton of ammo, heat, projectile speed, rearm costs, potential crits(if a single crit of an AC5 will destroy something, critting with an AC20 isnt any more useful)


In TT the Math works...but in a (relatively) fast paced shooter it doesnt.

In some cases MWO _NEEDS_ to depart from TT rules in order to work.
Its a whole different story whether you compare stats and roll dice to determine the outcome of a battle or pilot a mech in real time in a 1st Person Shooter/Sim.


Hitting people with the Lore books is fine with me (i read pretty much all the Novels, too), but dont push TT rules on a real time action game.

Edited by Bayamon, 24 November 2012 - 12:24 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

The math between TT and MW:O obviously needs to differ. But that doesn't mean that what PGI is doing achieves the necessary differences.

And so far I haven't really shown how MW:O math is imbalanced in TT. I've shown how it's imbalanced in MW:O.
When In compare to the table top, I do not focus on individual stats, but more on the "feel" of mechs, and how their design holds up in TT and how it h olds up in MW:O. For example, when I observe that a Jagermech is heat neutral in TT and will overheat in 6 seconds in MW:O, I wonder: "Is that a sensible translation from MW:O?" "HOw can we balance the statistics of weapons in MW:O so they work for MW:O but still make the Jagermech design reasonable (not necessarily heat neutral, just reasonable."

I believe there is a way to achieve both. We won't necessarily keep mechs heat neutral that were heat neutral, and heck, maybe some mechs could become much cooler than they were in the table top, who knows, but that's not as relevant as getting the feel right. We wouldn't accept a PPC that deals half as much damage as the medium laser in MW:O, that just doesn't feel right - but it doesn't impyl that we insist on using the same balancing logic TT used to balance the PPC as a medium range high damage weapon vs the medium laser as a close range moderate damage weapon... But we'd still try to keep them in that classification.

[Allen Ward]

Asatruer, on 23 November 2012 - 10:47 AM, said:

While thinking about how the MG can be made to be as worthwhile as it should, this has been something that I have thought. Even though in TT the MG does 2/3rds the DPS of the Small Laser (that would be 0.666 DPS here, rather than the 0.4 we have), I think here it should be doing closer to, if not the same, DPS as the SL. The SL is doing its 1 DPS over the course of 3/4th of a second once every 2.25 seconds (or does cooldown start after beam duration ends?) and with the MG needing the full attack cycle of the SL to do 2/3rds the damage, the MG is more likely to have its damage spread out over multiple locations of the target, or interrupted by cover or the inability to either leg or torso twist fast enough to keep on the target. Seems only fair to buff that to a close to equal amount of DPS. Maybe the zero heat thing is a big enough advantage, but I think the ammo explosion risks make up for that


That said, I do not think the AC/2 should come close to the DPS of the AC/20, nor should it be close to the DPS of the AC/10...

Am I wrong or is the Machinegun useless in MWO? I don't mean the fractions of DPS (0.44, 0.6 whatever) - I mean in TT the MG was meant to fight infantry. In MWO (sadly) infantry doesn't exist. Never ever were MGs used to fight Mechs. Even if you boat a Mech with MGs the damage output and ammo consumption, the really bad range and so on will not make this a very attractive variant. The MG was included for completeness, nothing else. I have seen Mechs running 4 MGs, circling the enemy for a minute and longer, constantly firing, in the end a few med laser hits took them apart and the other mech (with thousands of black points on his hull) went away grinning. Let me know if you had better experiences in mounting MGs... maybe it's easier to hit a running Jenner with them, if you are as fast as the Jenner, too? In my opinion they could have thrown them out completely.

[MustrumRidcully]

The MG in the table top isn't a good weapon, but it still deals the same damage (and DPS, if that term makes any sense in a 10-second turn based game) than the AC/2, or 2/3 of that of a Small Laser. It's main liability was the ammo explosion, which was just plain ridiculous. But you could use MGs against mechs and hope to inflict damage and potentially even destroy them. It's a 0.5 ton weapon where 1 ton of ammo packs more ammo than you'll ever need, so I think it performed as well as you may expect.
If you used it against infantry, it worked even better, because its "anti-infantry" rule was not expressed by it dealing low damage, but by it having extra effects against infantry units.

In MW:O, the MG sucks really hard. Much more so than the TT MG. And the chances of us ever getting infantry units in this game are... low. The only thing they need to do is make the MG viable for its tonnage. And the only way to make it viable to me seems to make it deal more damage against mechs, regardless of whether that's the role it has according to lore or table top rules or not.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mustrum,
Though I really like your post, and follow your logic. Why would anyone WANT to carry a weapon that is out weighted by its ammo?

Increase the damage could make the MG viable, but by doing that you will have a very very expensive repair bill once the ammo explosions are properly returned to the game. CASE will mitigate some of this but if you put ammo in the arm/leg you will lose both it and the adjoining torso as CASE only protects the explosion from progressing inward from blowing out the back.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 November 2012 - 08:10 AM.

[Diablobo]

Apoc1138, on 23 November 2012 - 11:39 PM, said:

Again... performance based on *your* criteria of 160 seconds... to get the same performance over a fifteen minute round is far fewer heatsinks or far more ammo than *your* arbitrary time... as I've already mentioned, the relative dps difference has been reduced from 50% to 11% but you want them to maintain the same heat differential so you want ppc's to be outright overpowered compared with TT... if you can't see the difference between aiming with dice or aiming with a mouse, and how massively pgi have already departed from TT in their weapon values then there really is no helping you... this is MechWarrior Online not Battletech Online... none of the previous PC games weapon stats bore any relation to TT either... you haven't read a word I said or responded to my post, you've just regurgitated you broken "maths" on what *you* consider to be balance, which is so far removed from reality as to be laughable

The only broken math is where MWO has TRIPLED the heat of TT. Where did they massively depart from TT damage and heat values for the weapons? The only massive departure was in heat dissipation and firing rates. What is a massive departure from reality is your insistence that this system is in any way viable.

[Joseph Mallan]

Diablobo has it right. A TURN on TT was move, Fire (once), calculate heat & crits, Physicals. Which isn't 10 seconds of time we find out in the MMO. Heat sinks should still work on the principle that a Mech can over heat, but just not as much as they do now. If you read the Books Mechs ran hot firing their weapons but they only had to slap the override once or twice in the text. The right medium hasn't been reached yet.

[MustrumRidcully]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 November 2012 - 08:06 AM, said:

Mustrum,
Though I really like your post, and follow your logic. Why would anyone WANT to carry a weapon that is out weighted by its ammo?

Increase the damage could make the MG viable, but by doing that you will have a very very expensive repair bill once the ammo explosions are properly returned to the game. CASE will mitigate some of this but if you put ammo in the arm/leg you will lose both it and the adjoining torso as CASE only protects the explosion from progressing inward from blowing out the back.

You mean literally by weight, or do you mean the damage of ammo explosions? I mean, I don't care what the ammo or the weapon itself weigh, what I care about is weapon + ammo is worth its weight for the damage the weapon can inflict. I definitely care about my ammo destroying my mech, though.

I think the ammo explosions rules should simply be altered - one ammo explosions should deal the same damage per ton as the weapon deals per shot. Maybe twice of that. That will be devestating enough, and also means an exploding Gauss Rifle is not (much) less dangerous than exploding ballistic or missile ammo...

But anyway, the ammo explosion thing is yet another aspect of the game that could use some tweaking. I still maintain the heat/weapon balance issue is more critical.

[Diablobo]

Apoc1138, on 23 November 2012 - 08:09 PM, said:

this is not TT... at least do me the courtesy of reading my whole post instead of just the first paragraph... you absolutely cannot balance a real time game based on what worked (and wasn't even truly balanced) in a board game... if you want TT balance then play TT instead of this... and last time I checked, 7+2 is still alot less than 15

In TT the ppc had a dps of 1 and the gauss 1.5... now the difference is 11% instead of 50% and the ppc pays for the buff in heat generation in the same way that the gauss requires more ammo per "round"

Please do us the courtesy of not trotting out that lame, tired old line "This is a video game and not TT"
If they want to use TT weapon damage numbers, heat values, and mech designs, they are going to have to follow TT rules at least a little. Tripling the heat is most decidedly not that.

TT not balanced? Have you told the TT devs within the last 25 years, or did you just dream up this weak rationalization to justify your defense of MWO's broken heat system?

Edited by Diablobo, 24 November 2012 - 08:23 AM.

[Tickdoff Tank]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 November 2012 - 08:06 AM, said:

Mustrum,
Though I really like your post, and follow your logic. Why would anyone WANT to carry a weapon that is out weighted by its ammo?

Increase the damage could make the MG viable, but by doing that you will have a very very expensive repair bill once the ammo explosions are properly returned to the game. CASE will mitigate some of this but if you put ammo in the arm/leg you will lose both it and the adjoining torso as CASE only protects the explosion from progressing inward from blowing out the back.

The benefit of the MG is that it generates no heat while you are firing it. And some mechs have a couple extra ballistic slots that you could fit in 2 "filler" weapons as long as those filler weapons actually did something. And, even if none of our current mechs could make great use of the MG, there will be a few mechs down the road that can.

I could see a 2 MG, 1 AC10, 2 medium laser, SSRM2 Dragon 5N being viable (for instance). Not saying that mech would set the world on fire, but it might be fun.

[Tickdoff Tank]

Diablobo, on 24 November 2012 - 08:16 AM, said:

TT not balanced? Have you told the TT devs within the last 30 years, or did you just dream up this weak rationalization to justify your defense of MWO's broken heat system?

While I basicly agree with you, do not make the mistake of thinking that TT is "balanced" to everyone. I find a lot of the newest equipment to be unbalanced, and the arguments on TT balance have been on-going for a long time. But the way TT can balance equipment is vastly different from how a video game must obtain balance. To me, the #1 balancing factor in TT that is missing from MWO is the random weapon spread when you hit a mech. 9 small lasers (in TT) would spew their damage all over the place, in MWO those 9 small lasers can do their full 27 damage to 1 spot (depending on pilot skill). That makes all weapons in MWO much more deadly.

That said, I do *not* want all of our weapons to hit random locations on the enemy mech like they do in TT, I was just pointing out that, IMO, the random hit locations vs. concentrated fire is the single largest departure from TT, with the heat scale/heatsinks a close second. But many rules that work in TT are "clunky" for a real time video game. I like what MWO is doing for balance, but it is most definately a work in progress.

Edited by Tickdoff Tank, 24 November 2012 - 08:28 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

MustrumRidcully, on 24 November 2012 - 08:16 AM, said:

You mean literally by weight, or do you mean the damage of ammo explosions? I mean, I don't care what the ammo or the weapon itself weigh, what I care about is weapon + ammo is worth its weight for the damage the weapon can inflict. I definitely care about my ammo destroying my mech, though.

I think the ammo explosions rules should simply be altered - one ammo explosions should deal the same damage per ton as the weapon deals per shot. Maybe twice of that. That will be devestating enough, and also means an exploding Gauss Rifle is not (much) less dangerous than exploding ballistic or missile ammo...

But anyway, the ammo explosion thing is yet another aspect of the game that could use some tweaking. I still maintain the heat/weapon balance issue is more critical.

A bit of both. The ammo weighs more than the guns and per ton MG Ammo was the most explosive ammo. At .6 damage per bullet and How many rounds per ton? MGs are the most expensive explosion. Well your idea is almost the actual rule. LRM AMMO does the LRMs damage times the amount of salvos left per ton. (LRM20 ammo with 4 salvos left 80 damage internal) If that explosion crits an untouched ton of ammo then it was 20*6 for 120 damage internal. MGs were the bad boy ammo 200 rounds at 2 damage per round or 400 points internal.

Gauss explosion isn't as bad due to it being an component and not a ton of explosives. Not many Mechs could survive a Gauss blowing up in its Side torso though.

Quote

I could see a 2 MG, 1 AC10, 2 medium laser, SSRM2 Dragon 5N being viable (for instance). Not saying that mech would set the world on fire, but it might be fun.

Personal preference I guess. I have pulled MGs from every Mech that ever had them. 400 point ammo explosions are not my idea of a good weapon in MY Mechs.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 24 November 2012 - 08:27 AM.

[Diablobo]

MGs are fun for scaring new players with a lot of flash and noise. While it doesn't cause the rocking that an AC or SRM does, it is still enough to unnerve some new players....plus it's kind of fun to spray all over the place.

Edited by Diablobo, 24 November 2012 - 08:28 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

I cannot rebut that Diablobo

[Lexeii]

... f*cking long thread... read to 13, then 23

So what exactly is the state of the argument? (while I'm quite sure this is no proper english I suppose everyone knows what i want to get to?)

Have been doing some math as well... just to get away form heat neutrality, looked at dmg/(ton*second*heat)... adding 4 tons of ammo to ton. anything wrong with my assumptions? just so i know...

Comparing these values, Gauss:PPC = 3.7 : 1
Gauss:ERPPC = 5.4:1

(intresting to see the small laser and AC2 getting really high ratings this way...)

So... what do these numbers tell us?
if you do it you will see the flamer getting a rather high rating too... can't be, it's the worst weapon there is?
well, not per tonheatsecond. its bad because you don't use your available tonnage.

Weapons with less weight have to get higher ratings in order to be considered usefull, for they simply don't do enough dmg if not... I'm speaking ratings of 0.6something to 0.01something (only exception is the small laser, ending up at somewhere round 1). while being a great weapon (maybe a little too great, but there is not many ppl complaining about it) it is ok, for it being a small weapon.

Looking at ppc and gauss comparison, the gauss has a higher tonnage, and uses more slots (its not hard to do the math with slots included... /slots. if you want weigh it with some factor) but has a higher (!) rating (although when considering /crit with 4 tons of ammo crits added it is almost the same as 1:1 (Gauss:PPC) / 1.5:1 (Gauss:ERPPC))... but still, heavier, bulkier, and more dmg/heavybulk -> its unbalanced.

so... how do u guys say? Just my 2 cents.