The issue here is that the risk vs. reward curve needs to be adjusted significantly for several weapons. Gauss right now deliver very good performance with very minimal risk, which is further minimized by equipping them to difficult-to-hit target locations. Increasing the risk of using them adjusts for that a bit, but it applies a disproportionately high risk for some applications over others, and so is only part of adjusting them to fit properly balanced gameplay.
Missiles exist as a very variable risk weapon, as they can be fired from the protection of cover but become useless inside a minimum range. In the same way as the Gauss needs risk tweaks, changes to the "reward" element of LRMs are double-sided and the inherent risks really have to be considered. In this case the largest manageable "risk" of LRMs is their cost effectiveness, or the mean number of missiles that must be fired to achieve their desired effect vs. the respective cost per quantity of that missile.
In the end achieving game balance is a matter of having the potential "reward" of a piece of equipment directly proportionate to its "risk". That is to say that the best possible result with a weapon needs to be polar-ly comparable to the worst possible cost. Effective range, damage burst, damage over time, heat generated, weapon cost, weapon reliability, weapon weight, weapon availability/accessibility, additional effects on target, ect ALL play into game balance, and so they ALL have to be considered.
For those with heated and polarized opinions on LRMs and Gauss, consider that perhaps it is something other than the weapon itself that is emphasizing any actual unbalance that may exist, and that adjusting the weapons themselves might have less positive impact on balance than adjusting the factors which lead to the actual imbalancing behaviors in-game. That is to say that changing an individual weapon's characteristics have far-reaching implications in the metagame and that changing more localized factors can be a much more successful balancing tool.
Ideallly what Paul has proposed will work out well, or at the very least give us the ability to clearly identify the actual source of imbalance as opposed to incessantly whining about the nearest and most "apparent" source of gameplay issues.
Edited by TrentTheWanderer, 16 November 2012 - 02:19 PM.
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SpiralRazor, on 16 November 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:
