Chapter Two, The Price of Freedom
So, in chapter one we examined the systemic changes that PGI has made to make their game, when adapting on TT, and the basic design decisions that went into making MWO. This Chapter will build on the basis of the first, and we will be looking at the balance of builds.
This post will cover a lot that other smart people have on the forums, as weapon balance has been a contentious and forefront issue the whole beta. Once again this post isn't going to be about my "thoughts" on the issue, but more on the cause and effect of changes.
So moving on, this post will be a little shorter than the first because,
The Sections of this post are:
- Cause and Effect
- Combat and Build Efficiency
- Systemic Collapse
- What Would Changes Mean?
- Totally Badass
- Here we are again
Section One, Cause and Effect
(What is Balance?)
So, in the first part we examined heat, and I established, through pretty simple math, that heat is a resource.
So looking at the way BT systems work we have several ratios to consider.
- Damage/Heat
- Damage/Ammo
- Damage/Weight
- Damage/Range
- Weight/Heat
- Ammo/Heat
- Range/Heat
- Range/Weight
Many of these relationships are apparent, an AC/2 and a Machine Gun do the same damage (TT!) but there is a massive range difference. The way the player pays for this is in sacrifices in all other aspects. The AC/2 Weighs more, has worse ammo per ton, and generates a small amount of heat.
By scaling the damage with ROF changes they have effected some, but not all aspects of weapon balance. Things that have changed (Plus an additional category for real time)
- Damage/Heat
- Damage/Ammo
- Damage/Weight
- Damage/Range
- Weight/Heat
- Ammo/Heat
- Range/Heat
- Range/Weight
- DPS/Burst
Now note I am highlighting the major changes, or rather the fundamental shifts in Design philosophy. Obviously there have been changes made to range, and all sorts of new teamplay mechanics, but as this post is examining the way builds work, (and some other stuff) we will stay away from team play and other things right now.
The addition to the second list is an important one to consider and it can actually be written a different way:
Risk/Reward
Do I, (as the player) take the gun that hits for 20, but shoots 1 time a turn, or do I take the gun that shoots many times, but deals much lower damage to any given part?
This is where a fundamental change happens in how a game has to be balanced when going from a turn based system, and a real time one, and where I think the flaw in how damage is applied is the most apparent.
So as I quoted in my snippet earlier,
Tuhalu, on 05 November 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:
Rather than 1 shot per 10 seconds, varies from 1 shot per 4.75 seconds to 1 shot per 0.5 seconds. The basic rationale is that it's too boring waiting for 10 seconds between shots... which doesn't explain why the rate was changed by varying amounts.
People are starting to see the real flaw in changes to ROF, rather than actual statistics.
I'm linking to
MustrumRidcully's thread that uses pretty much the same process as I did, to do all the weapons:
Converting the MWO Stats Back Into Table Top
So now that we are seeing the cause, lets look at the effect.
Player choice is one of the cornerstones of any game designers arsenal. No matter how small the choices a player makes are, they all serve the same overarching purpose, engaging the player.
When a player gets to customize their mech, they are making choices about what they want on the battlefield. Not only that but they are expressing what they want the role to be, more than something along the lines of, "I play light mechs" it evolves to,
"I play light mechs that are all about kiting people" or,
"I play light mechs that get in close and wreak havoc" or heck it might be,
"I gotta go fast!"On a small tangent, this is the reason that I think giving players the first mech more quickly is very important, because choice is how you get a player to feel invested in a game. I'll be doing Chapter three entirely on player choice so I don't want to go to deep into all the aspects, but this is something that I felt needed to be said in this section.
So when a player has played a few games and starts to get a feel for what they want to do these are the choices they HAVE to make.
- Class of mech (how much weight they have to work with)
- Role they want to build toward
These two choices alone encompass many other choices that the player will make when building a mech, such as optimal range, and how tanky they want to be.
So now lets examine what a player can do
Lets look at 10 tons for damage items, a player can mount:
- An AC/2, 1 Ton of ammo (150 Max Potential Damage) and 2 HS
- 2 Med Laser, 8 tons of Heatsinks
- 2 Small lasers, 9 tons of HS, (again)
- 2 LRM 5, 3 tons of ammo, (1080 MPD) 2 small lasers, 2HS
What would you do with 10 tons?
As we can see there is a lot of choice that can be made, even when working with low amounts of weight. These builds all encompass a different play style, which is pretty neat from a design perspective.
Section Two: Combat and Build Efficiency
(I just like this song, K?)
For this section I will be quoting people who have already done the math to a large extent. Yea, I'm pretty lazy.
First we will examine the latest stock mech that many say is in dire straits. The AWS-9M, this puppy is the postter child for IS Tier 2 tech Assaults. 3 ERPPC's plus some goodies, and enough cooling to fire those ER's for an extended period without generating substantial heat.
So to start with I am gonna quote the wonderful
Lefty Lucy
Lefty Lucy, on 04 November 2012 - 01:59 PM, said:
Firing *only* the ERPPCs, the stock AWS-9M generates 39 heat.
With full-strength, 2.0 DHS, it dissipates 40 heat per 10 seconds, allowing you an effective fire rate of once every 10 seconds. That's with *canon* DHS values.
With 1.4 DHS it dissipates only 28 heat per 10 seconds. Allowing an effective fire rate of once every 14 seconds.
So as we can see in the MWO heat system, these ERPPC's still serve as a burden, where they can only be fired once every 10 seconds to remain heat neutral.
At the original TT heat value of 15 per shot on the ER, we gain 5 heat a turn when we fire all 3. At this rate in TT it takes a long time for us to run into heat problems, and the mech acts as a powerhouse at all ranges. Like I said in the first post, I never played TT, but looking at this things stats I can see why it's called the Awesome, and why people love this mech.
If we fire those PPC's Twice in a turn (once every 5 seconds) to keep up with double armor we now Generate 50 heat per turn.
Yea...
Another Lefty post sums up some other heat considerations nicely, bold added:
Lefty Lucy, on 05 November 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:
...A mech has, at max, room for 14 DHS external to engines, and if they have the largest engine possible another 16.
So, in this extreme example they have 60 heat dissipation. What can 60 heat dissipation keep entirely heat neutral (with a disclaimer that none of these builds are actually even possible)?
2 PPCs. Yep. You can boat 2 PPCs with 60 heat dissipation.
1.4 ERPPCs
2.67 LPL
3 AC2
6ML (oh no, we're getting into real cheese territory here, boys)
4.5 MPL
-or on the low-heat weapon end of the spectrum-
24 gauss rifles
10.5 SSRM2
4.76 LRM20s
6 SRM6
...
As you can see the balance between heat generation and dissipation is pretty skewed towards heating up.
Not only that, but the weapons that a build along those lines would make "OP" are all ammo based, and have serious space and weight constraints,
(nothing can mount 24 gauss rifles lol OP)
So then, what is the combat effective choice? If threads on weapon balance are to be trusted, LRMS Gauss and SSRMs are the choice to make, (SPL and SL getting nerfed so no longer count)
Going back to munstrums chart that I linked earlier, we can see that actually this assessment is correct
on a heat to damage rationale, as these weapons are the only ones that maintain a even mildly similar ratio. LRM actually have been buffed to 2x the damage, PLUS rof changes which has put them at approximately 2.5X TT damage (2.1-3.0 depending on launcher size) in a 10 second period, while keeping heat manageable.
The LRM 20 does roughly 84 damage every 10 seconds in MWO, or 42 damage in TT terms, and generates 12 heat to do it. The AC/20, which is the other big hitting ballistic, hits for 50, or 25 In TT for 17.5 heat.
Now to be fair, the LRM will not hit with every missile and there are other drawbacks, (going back to DPS/Burst) but the other big consideration is that LRM ammo is 180/ton, and AC/20 is 7 a ton.
So the weapon that has,
more range,
more damage,
more heat efficiency and (arguably) more accuracy, also has
more ammo.
Section Three: Systemic Collapse
(Yea, I am from MN)
This is another really short section.
So what does this mean for the player?
- Optimal builds are very straightforward, and rely on getting the most damage, while taking the least possible. LRMs are strong because they are reliable and do an good amount of DPS without requiring any significant heat management investment.
Don't take my word for it though, look at atlas builds. Many players are dumping any sort of cannon, to load more LRM ammo (myself included) a 2x LRM 20 atlas, can stay heat neutral, deal more damage than any other atlas build, and can carry 1800-2500 ammo depending on what is mounted for laser weaponry. Note, I am not making a judgement here as to what is or isn't "Over Powered" because I don't know what proper balance in MWO is supposed to look like, eg Chapter 1)
- Sub optimal builds are widely available on stock mechs, meaning that as a new player currently I am forced to use something that is setup in an inferior manner, without even learning what that means from a performance standpoint.
Section Four: What Would Changes Mean?
(Time to Distort the Numbers!)
So again I am not trying to express an opinion here, merely facts.
By tuning the Rate of fire in the manner that the devs did, they actually moved us away from 10 second turns.
If we do the same math as before, but look at things in the manner of 5 second turns (Im nto talking solaris rules I mean like literally the TT rules happen in 5 seconds now)
Looking at the LRM 20 again we now deal about 20 TT damage in a turn, and on top of that we generate 6.5 ish heat.
TT Lrm stats show us that is really close. The lower size LRM launchers see a boost in damage and heat generation, but not as significant looking.
Looking at other systems in a 5 second turn of TT values (rounded):
- AC/20.... 12.5 damage .....8.5 heat
- AC/10...... 8.3 damage........ 5 heat
- AC/5...... 7.35 damage........ 3 heat
- AC/2......... 10 damage...... 10 heat
- SL.......... 3.33 damage..... 4.4 heat
- SPL........ 3.33 damage.... 6.7 heat
- MPL............ 5 damage..... 8.3 heat
- ML........... 4.3 damage..... 6.7 heat
- LPL..........7.7 damage.....13.8 heat
- LL........... 6.9 damage.....10.7 heat
- PPC........ 8.3 damage.....15.4 heat
- ERPPC... 8.3 damage..... 21.7 heat
- Doing graphs like this sucks pretty hard
Anyhow looking at this table, with some notable exceptions (
AC/20 AC/2) things don't look
that different than the TT stats.
So a 5 second turn structure is an accelerated game, which matches the feel that I think any Mechwarrior game is going to look for. Note that the above stats are when your firing for dear life, or pushing you mech to the
absolute limit. If you fired once in every ten second period the numbers get nice and clean, with the numbers for each gun coming out exactly as the devs have tweaked them.
That's the game we are playing, right now. Except heat dissipation is done every 10 seconds, instead of five.
If we could dissipate heat at a 2x rate, (SHS 2 per 5, DHS 4 per 5) this system would actually be in balance again.
Section Five: Totally Badass
(Or, Big mistake)
Once again lets look at the
AWXOME.
Lefty Lucy, on 04 November 2012 - 01:59 PM, said:
Firing *only* the ERPPCs, the stock AWS-9M generates 39 heat.
Yea, Lucy, I KNOW I linked this post before, you dont have to bud in again. :\
So as Lucy established buzzing off 40 heat every turn is the stock build, and firing twice in 10 seconds, which is well below the maximum speed of firing, generates roughly 50 heat per turn excess.
If we double heat dissapation we now can fire those PPC's once every 5 seconds, and remain heat neutral. If we push those PPC's to the limit we then generate about 40 extra heat.
That means if we fire at what for an 80ton PPC boat is a reasonable rate we can deal 60 damage per 10, or 30 damage per 5. Pushing it to the limit we can push out about 100 damage every 10 seconds
average.
This is how the mech was intended to function in TT, as I mentioned before, using just the ERPPCs each turn yo generated a minimal amount of heat.
By changing the heat dissipation in this manner, you are actually giving the player some choice in how to operate the mech. As it stands with 2.0 per 10 heatsinks there isn't actually an effective way to play the mech without customizing it, or by just not firing several of the ERPPCs
Section Six: Here we are again
(MCXL MEGAPOSTS NEVER END)
I readily admit that moving to a 5 second heat cycle would be EXTREMELY disruptive to how the game is played now, and that weapon balance would be effected. But as it is weapon balance is pushed toward the midline quite a bit, with players not having any real choice other than Gauss builds for dealing burst damage without sacrificing effectiveness.
And once again I land at the question:
"What is the goal for mech combat in this game, BEYOND, the balance between the different weight classes, and why?"
Do the devs not want burst to be an at all viable strategy? The only conclusion I can draw from our data is...
Yes.
Weather I am correct or not in the motivations doesn't matter. The design of the game overall seems to push players into DPS type roles with the only effective burst roles (which weren't even bursty, just pinpoint) like the old MPL
Awesome getting targeted nerfs.
Id like to thank everyone for the continued discussion, as it is informative for anyone who enters these here parts, and again if you have something to say that isn't trolltacular, join the discussion.
-
MCXL
Edited by MCXL, 05 November 2012 - 05:11 PM.
11
