1
I have the impression that most players are happy with the current pace of combat - .e.g how long does it take to kill a mech, how long does a typical engagement last, how fast mechs move.
But the future advances will mostly change one thing about mechs: They can carry more weapons, or more damaging weapons, or have more heat sinks to max their rate of fire and thus their damage output.
On the other hand, there is very little in the way of defensive technology. The variant armour and internal structure types do not increase your armour points, just reduce the cost of maxing out your armour or lowering your weight so you can equip more guns, basically. The only other defensive advantage may be faster engines.
But overall, it seems to me that as the timeline progresses, the pace will be much tighter- an alpha strike with a mech decked out with level 2 tech or a Clan tech may be able to put out more damage than a typical IS mech could do now, and may be able to repeat it faster or perform it more often. Mechs will die faster than now, and/or may move around faster.
I am worried that people will not like it, at least not generally so. It could just change the customer base - people looking for a fast paced game may become attracted once we're deep into CLan tech, and players that like the current pace may eventually drop out or try to find ways to still play with "old tech" to get the pace they like
It seems to me that PGI is worried about the same thing - they already worry that DHS may speed up combat, if I may count that "Jenner cores Atlas in 3 seconds" anecdote that Garth brought up.
Is this desirable? If not, what can we do about it?
If we want to keep the pace of the game stable and mostly indepent of tech advancement, what can we do?
Option 1) Nerf Mech Loadouts
One way to avoid is what PGI seems to consider already - just remove or nerf the part of the "damage" side that enables all tha damage output - nerf heat dissipation. IMO, this is not a good choice, because it just means a lot of mechs and a lot of tech becomes useless and the game's feel is altered significantly.
I call this "nerf mech loadouts" and not just "nerf heat sinks" because this is something just altering heat dissipation does - individual emchs gets weaker, reaching uncontrollable or at least impractical heat levels..
Option 2) Nerf Gear
My preferred approach is probably balancing all the new tech. In a way, that's PGI's way, but I'll also "nerf"/"buff" the heat intensive advanced tech. Instead of IS ER PPCs producing 13 heat, I'd lower their heat down to 9, but also their recycle time to 4 seconds. Clan ER PPCs may still deal 15 damage, but their heat would be 13 and their recycle time 5 seconds. Clan weapons that are lighter than IS equivalents will lower their damage output and otherwise use more similar stats.
Option 3) Buff Defensve Techs
More advanced tech also grants you more hit points. Examples
- Tech Level 2 and Clan components are more resilient to critical hits than standard components
- Endo Steel grants more points for internal structure or damage reduction.
- Ferro Fibrous and Clan Ferro Fibrous grant additional damage reduction or more armour points (allowing you to exceed standard armour values). (For example, FF grants 12 % more armour points per ton, and also 12 % damage reduction)
Simply, across the board, give all mechs more armour and structure. Basically, instead of double table top armour values, triple them, and maybe add also 50 % more internal armour. Basically, balance armour values against the top end damage values, at the cost of "slowing down" low tech combat.
Option 5) Suggest Something!
Being smarter than the average bear, you have a better idea!
What should we do?
Reply to the poll and/or post your thoughts and ideas.
Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 November 2012 - 08:27 AM.
