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Why balance the weapons? Diversity gives weapons their unique character.
I agree that weapons should have their own unique character, but I am of the opinion that having some weapons that are nearly indisputably better than others is not a good thing for the game. People may want to run certain builds just for fun or lore reasons, but overall, the number of players who will attempt to maximise their damage potential by using the most efficient weapons will greatly outweigh that population. What I aim to do is to take into account why people use certain weapon types and thus make each weapon well-suited to a particular use, while making them less powerful than other weapons in their niche uses, so that players will mount weapons that follow their playstyle the best, instead of weapons that are flat out more efficient than other weapons. This also adds a kind of tactical element – if from the player’s loadout you can tell what they are planning to use the Mech for, you can also devise ways to move into ranges or settings that would disadvantage them. Like backstabbing a sniper… sniping a brawler… charging an LRM boat… using LBX and Streaks on Light Mechs… and so on and so forth.
What if PGI doesn’t listen to the proposal? Is the time I spend reading this thread wasted? And if this is meant to be a proposal for PGI, why create a thread on it? Why not just email them your idea and be done with it?
Even if the changes don’t occur, the values in the following chart will be very useful to you as a player, as it will inform you of what would probably be the best weapon combination for your chosen style and for your Mech type. For, say, a Jenner-F with severe weight limitations but enough energy hardpoints, this chart will show you that you should probably load it with 5-6 medium lasers or small pulse lasers and DHS the rest of the weight/space away, because a Large Laser isn’t going to be efficient. For an Atlas with plenty of weight but not much hardpoints and space, from these values you might want to take dual PPCs with Streak SRM2s and an LBX-AC/10. Understanding efficiency, alpha damage, damage per second and overall damage will help you in your mech building regardless of whether the proposal is accepted or not – and they simultaneously justify the proposal.
In short, this is not just a weapon balance proposal thread. It is also moonlighting as a full guide on weapon usage in MechWarrior Online. That is why this will not be a waste of time.
Your proposal makes the weapons depart even further from their tabletop values!
Without tabletop BattleTech, there would never have been MechWarrior. We are all keenly aware of that. However, MechWarrior is a real-time simulator. The difference in gameplay and allowing players to take control of certain aspects that were traditionally decided by dice means that values which had worked well on the tabletop do not work very well in a game such as MechWarrior Online. I attempt to stay somewhat true to the spirit of tabletop by giving weapons similar uses to what they had, but if we were to keep the numerical values the same, some weapons that were used in tabletop would be rarely, if ever, used in MechWarrior Online. It would be a pity to allow weapons to fall by the wayside… and it is my belief that weapons disappearing from the game entirely would be less true to tabletop BattleTech than it would be if the weapons are modified from tabletop values, but will still be used. BattleTech just would not be the same without NARC, Flamers or unguided SRM2… and it would certainly not resemble it much at all if every single Mech on the field was a Gausscat.
Weapon balance
Types of weapons
Long distance: Sniping: Gauss, ERPPC, PPC
Long distance: Sustained fire: ER Large Laser, Large Laser, Large Pulse Laser, AC/2, AC/5, Ultra AC/5
Long distance: Indirect fire: LRMs (with or without Artemis)
Short distance: Burst damage: AC/20, AC/10
Short distance: Scattered damage: LBX-AC/10, SRMs (with or without Artemis)
Short distance: Sustained fire: Medium Pulse Laser, Medium Laser, Small Pulse Laser, Small Laser
Short distance: Indirect fire: Streak SRM 2
Short distance: Continuous fire: Machine Gun, Flamer
Utility: AMS, NARC, TAG
I feel these 9 groups more or less encompass the entirety of all weapons in MWO. There might be grounds to create a medium distance class, but for current considerations most people tend to fight either at long range or at very short ranges, so for now to simplify things I’m splitting them this way. I will then be attempting to balance weapons within classes first, then I’ll talk about how to balance between classes. At each step of the way I’ll include my rationales first (with supporting calculations), and thereafter make my recommendations in bold. And at the end of the entire proposal, I’ll summarise in point form all of the weapon balance recommendations.
The mathematics
I’m using Ohmwrecker’s guide as my information source on the base stats of the weapons. If the weapon stats I’m using for the calculation disagree with the values you get through playtesting, do let me know if you can acquire a more reliable value. But in the absence of better information, I’ll trust his information and use it as a base for my own calculations.
Ohmwrecker already calculated damage per second (DPS), heat per second (HPS) values based on the damage and heat respectively divided by the absolute refractory period. The absolute refractory period for non-beam weapons is equal to the cooldown value. The absolute refractory period for beam weapons is equal to the cooldown value plus the beam time. This is basically a measure for how much time elapses between successive triggers of a weapon.
What I did was to divide damage per second by heat per second, which results in damage per heat – this value is then divided again by the absolute refractory period and the tonnage of the weapon, resulting in a value I dub D/HST or Damage per Heat Second Ton. I use this as the basis for determining the overall efficiency of an energy weapon when allocated to a Mech as it offsets the damage per second value by heat and tonnage. To cut the long story short, the higher the D/HST value of a weapon, the better it is when used in a sustained fire capacity – and if you have enough hardpoints, it is better for you to mount two weapons of a higher D/HST value than a single one of a lower D/HST value in most cases, unless its DPS is too low. This I’ll elaborate on later.
In contrast, ammunition based weapons must take their ammunition weights into account as well, so D/HST is not very good as a measure. Based on the empirical values which I’ve found to be efficient for ammunition allocation for most weapons, I back-derived that the total firing time (time in a match in which you will fire ammunition based weapons) in a 15 minute match is 150 seconds, or 2.5 minutes. This may seem surprisingly short, but due to use of cover, time it takes to aim, time it takes to approach, cooldown time, shutting down and whatnot, this value seemed to give nearly spot-on values when used to predict the optimal tonnage of ammo each weapon should carry. From this value of 150 seconds, I divide the absolute refractory time of the weapon, giving us the Time/CD value. This is the number of times the weapon will discharge in a match. The number of shots per ton is then divided from this value to give the number of tons of ammunition that would be most efficient per weapon. Note however that you can always carry less or more than this value depending on your playstyle – an LRM support boat will want to carry more than this amount, for instance, whereas a brawler/tank will want to carry less than this and more heatsinks due to the nature of their role. In any case, this tonnage value is added to the tonnage of the weapon, and this combined value is used in the aforementioned D/HST calculation. I call the result D/HSTA – Damage per Heat Second Ton Ammunition-included.
The calculation is based on the assumption that heat, tonnage and damage per second are equally important. This may not always be the case, but on average this should be true when dealing with tonnage restricted builds.
Lastly, for ammunition restricted weaponry only, I include a Max DMG value to show the total amount of damage you can expect the weapon to do if every shot hits. This is also the value of damage done to you if you get an ammunition explosion with no shot spent.
Now that all of these are mentioned, you should be able to see that:
D/HST is a value indicating the efficiency of an energy weapon.
D/HSTA is a value indicating the efficiency of a projectile or missile weapon.
DPS is a value indicating the raw damage potential of a weapon in sustained fire.
Damage is the value indicating how much damage is done upfront (important for sniping).
Max DMG is a value indicating how much damage will be done in total after all ammunition is used.
Here is the chart of all of the weapons in the game with their calculated values. The green and yellow columns are my calculations, the other columns are from Ohmwrecker – this is so you know who screwed up, if you see a wrong value somewhere. If it’s in both green and another column, it’s his fault – if it’s only in the green column, it’s my fault.
Long distance: Sniping weapons
The three weapons in this class are the Gauss Rifle, ERPPC and PPC. Sniping weapons have the characteristic of doing high alpha damage to a single location at long ranges, but have firing delay making them untenable for use in sustained fire applications. The idea is to do high alpha damage, then withdraw or hide to another sniping location, and repeat. Just like snipers in real life, who have high accuracy and usually kill in one hit, but only fire one shot before relocating. Balance of sniper-class weapons should focus on reducing damage per second values, which are irrelevant to the sniping role but which would encroach on the sustained fire rule.
Current stats:
Gauss: Dmg: 15. D/HSTA 0.21. DPS 3.75. Rng: 660m.
ERPPC: Dmg: 10. D/HST 0.04. DPS 3.33. Rng: 810m.
PPC: Dmg: 10. D/HST 0.05. DPS 3.33. Rng: 540m. Min Rng: 90m.
Looking at these values, we can observe that the Gauss Rifle has higher Dmg, D/HSTA, and DPS than both other sniper-class weapons, and has greater range than the PPC with no minimum range. That is to say, there is no advantage to using anything other than a Gauss Rifle for this role. I believe this is very bad for the sniper class as it pigeonholes everyone into Gauss builds – which we already see at present. Gauss is already going to be more effective based on its Alpha alone for this role – which is acceptable since it is a Tech II weapon – but it should not also have higher DPS and D/HSTA. The way I see to balance the Gauss rifle is to reduce the rate of fire dramatically to bring these values into more suitable ballparks, because the alpha damage value should NOT be modified – doing so would kill its use even as a sniping weapon.
Proposed changes: Increase the cooldown period for a Gauss rifle to 7 seconds, from the current 4. Include a minimum range for the ERPPC: 90m again.
Resultant stats:
Gauss*: Dmg: 15. D/HSTA 0.13. DPS: 2.14. Rng: 660m.
ERPPC*: Dmg: 10. D/HST 0.04 DPS 3.33. Rng: 810m.
Observe how its weight efficiency is still higher than that of the PPCs, and the alpha-strike damage is still higher. This keeps its ability to 2-shot enemy mechs in the hands of a good sniper, while removing its ability to be used as a cheese weapon at any range, because its damage per second value is now too low to be viable in that application. Also, by adding a minimum range to the ERPPC, it now cannot be used at overly close ranges, necessitating a secondary weapon at close ranges, preventing it from being boated by DHS builds.
Long distance: Sustained fire weapons
The distance of these weapons is similar to that of the earlier sniper class, but they should have either dramatically better damage per second values or better damage to heat ratios. Why? Because these weapons will do very little damage on first impact, but do damage over time. The need to expose your Mech to enemy returned fire (including of the sniper variety) will balance out these advantages. The purpose is to wear down your enemy’s armor as they approach you (or as you approach them) until you reach short range, where the highest damage efficiency weapons will come into play.
Current stats:
ER Large Laser: Dmg: 9. D/HST: 0.04. DPS: 2.12. Rng: 675m.
Large Laser: Dmg: 9. D/HST: 0.06. DPS: 2.12. Rng: 450m.
Large Pulse Laser: Dmg: 10. D/HST: 0.04. DPS: 2.50. Rng: 300m.
AC/2: Dmg: 2. D/HSTA: 0.40. DPS: 4.00. Rng: 720m.
AC/5: Dmg: 5. D/HSTA: 0.27. DPS: 2.94. Rng: 540m.
UAC/5: Dmg: 5. D/HSTA:0.32. DPS: 4.55. Rng: 600m.
Here we see some serious problems in balance. Firstly, the Large Pulse Laser’s range is ridiculously short, too short to deserve the name “Large”. 300m is almost the same range as medium lasers – the significantly higher D/HST of medium lasers would mean that the only reason why someone would ever use this weapon is if they don’t have enough hardpoints for 2 medium lasers – in every other respect, it can be kind of said to be inferior to medium lasers. This must be increased – since Large Lasers are already 450m, let’s use the same range.
Next, we observe that the Large Lasers have very close D/HST values to their PPC counterparts and LOWER DPS, which makes PPCs a better weapon in all instances except hitting very fast moving targets or fighting within the PPC’s minimum range – and the ERPPC will be in a sense superior in every way to the ER Large Laser at present. As the PPC class already has pretty bad DPS values, instead of nerfing the PPCs I would suggest buffing the Large Lasers by reducing their cooldown time and heat generation slightly – these will also extend to the Large Pulse Laser.
[On a side note this will probably be the point of greatest contention because PPCs are very rarely used due to a perception that they are weak, perhaps due to experiences of firing PPCs below their minimum range.]
Third, we observe that the AC/2 is actually very, very powerful in terms of both weight efficiency and damage per second, and also outrange the others in the class. As a balance they have lower alpha striking values. AC/2 users are also known to overheat even in chain fire mode. Due to the necessity of keeping the alpha value equal to 2 (naming and such), I would nerf the AC/2’s firing speed – this would also solve its overheating problem somewhat. Overall, users of the AC/2 will get almost the same firepower at the end of the day since they currently have to hold fire to avoid shutdown. This will also remove the stunlocking effect pilots experience when under fire from chainfired triple or quadruple AC/2 setups.
Fourth, the AC/5 is currently the weakest autocannon in the game in terms of damage per second, completely breaking the trend of the autocannons. I would buff its cooldown speed to fix this. The combination of this buff and the AC/2 nerf should result in a more balanced AC/2-AC/5 user ratio – as of now users predominantly use the AC/2 instinctively due to its advantages. Heat, however, should be increased to avoid overuse of the AC/5 – since we reduce its absolute refractory period by reducing cooldown, we prevent abuse by increasing its relative refractory period by increasing heat generation.
Lastly, the Ultra AC/5. It currently has a 50% cooldown advantage on the AC/5 even when used in single-fire mode, making it a better choice to the AC/5 almost every time. It even has better range. I would tie its range to the AC/5’s range – after all, it’s almost the same weapon anyway. The cooldown ratio is also overpowered at this point. Since they’re essentially firing the same thing, I would increase its cooldown to match that of the AC/5 so that if it’s not being fired in double mode, it will be functionally identical to an AC/5. Ammo per ton will be increased to 30 to match the AC/5 as well. Essentially, after this recommended change the Ultra AC/5 will take one more critical slot and weigh one ton heavier for the advantage of being able to fire twice when the button is held down.
In addition, the current unjamming mechanism can be easily undertaken by a macro but is a pain for a human to do. Therefore, to avoid giving players with better peripherals an unfair advantage, the unjamming mechanism for the UAC/5 should be an automatic unjam. The damage per second value of the UAC/5 should be slightly higher than that of the AC/5 after jams are taken into account to justify the increased weight and critical requirements, as it is not easy to hit both AC/5 shots in Ultra mode. I’m thinking along the lines of 25% greater damage per second at the moment. For now my recommendation on this is to allow the AC/5 to jam only 10% of the time, but every time it jams it takes 5 reload cycles (6.75 s) to clear. Therefore, over 20 shots the AC/5 will do 100 damage in 25 seconds, whereas the AC/5 will shoot 18 shots for 90 damage without problems within 11.25 seconds, and then jam for 6.75 seconds, leading to an overall 90 damage in 18 seconds, or 5 DPS, 25% above the 4 DPS of the buffed AC/5.
Proposed changes: Increase Large Pulse range to 450m, reduce cooldown to 3s, reduce heat to 7. Reduce Large Laser cooldown to 3s, and heat to 6. Reduce ER Large Laser cooldown to 3s and heat to 9. Increase AC/2 cooldown to 0.6s. Reduce AC/5 cooldown to 1.25s. Increase UAC/5 and AC/5 heat to 2. Reduce UAC/5 range to 540m. Increase UAC/5 cooldown to 1.25s. Increase UAC/5 ammo per ton to 30.
Resultant stats:
ER Large Laser*: Dmg: 9. D/HST: 0.05. DPS: 2.25. Rng: 675m.
Large Laser*: Dmg: 9. D/HST: 0.08. DPS: 2.25. Rng: 450m.
Large Pulse Laser*: Dmg: 10. D/HST: 0.05. DPS: 2.67. Rng: 300m.
AC/2*: Dmg: 2. D/HSTA: 0.33. DPS: 3.33. Rng: 720m.
AC/5*: Dmg: 5. D/HSTA: 0.18. DPS: 4. Rng: 540m.
UAC/5*: Dmg: 5. D/HSTA:0.14. DPS: 4. Rng: 540m. 10% chance to jam for 6.75s.
Long distance: Indirect fire weapons
Current stats (Halve all damage related values for actual damage):
LRM20: Dmg: 34. D/HSTA: 0.09. DPS: 7.16. Rng: 1000m
LRM15: Dmg: 25.5. D/HSTA: 0.12. DPS: 6. Rng: 1000m.
LRM10: Dmg: 17. D/HSTA: 0.16. DPS: 4.53. Rng: 1000m.
LRM5: Dmg: 8.5. D/HSTA: 0.44. DPS: 2.62. Rng: 1000m.
This class includes only LRMs, by definition. The purpose of indirect fire long range weapons is to hit targets that you can’t see, but your scouts can. After the last patch, we got the LRMs nerfed pretty bad. According to the official values they do 1.7 damage per missile, but the effective damage after taking into account misses is generally known to be about 0.85 damage on setups that fire LRMs only when they have LOS to target. As an example, in an early Cat setup I had with 6 tons Artemis LRM ammo (1080 missiles), spending all the ammo on only LOS shots resulted in an overall damage of about 700. This would have been probably 850-900 damage prior to AMS activation (only 1-2 of my targets had AMS) so that puts the effective value prior to AMS at about half the stated value. Therefore, even though the LRM20 is stated to do 34 damage meaning dual launchers should do 68 damage on an alpha, in reality we’re looking at only 34 damage effective, spread around the front of the enemy Mech – or about 15 damage or less to the centre torso at ranges of 200-250 metres. That makes it hideously underpowered as this same damage value can be acquired by 3 medium lasers for a fraction of the weight or heat.
Bearing in mind that the effective damage of LRMs is actually half the stated values at current LRM accuracy, I would want LRMs to do a theoretical damage of 2.5 per missile – this would lead to damage values of 50 spread everywhere on a Mech that doesn’t have AMS equipped by a salvo of 40 missiles. Sounds reasonable? Some people will have concerns that that might make LRMs with current ammo values able to deal out too much total damage, and I share those concerns – thus, I recommend dropping ammunition per ton to 120, so that the overall damage per ton LRM ammo remains at 300 (it is currently 308, not far off).
This also means that on a 1080 ammo setup (which now weighs 9 tons in ammo) you can expect to hit about 1000 damage if all of your missiles hit. This may seem overpowered, but remember that this damage is spread everywhere, and current laserboats or snipers can already hit 700 damage targeted to the centre torso – making the LRM approach weaker overall in terms of killing potential; the LRM approach must always be weaker than the direct fire approach since it does not expose the LRM firer to return fire at all. This would become what it was intended to be – a support weapon that doesn’t really get kills on its own, but which softens up the target for allies to kill, as well as a tactical area-denial weapon that discourages enemies from charging down a path with no cover to protect themselves with. Many players at the moment completely ignore LRMs as the damage done to them is too insignificant to cause them pause. The proposed change to 1.8 damage per missile I’m hearing rumours about will not be enough to cause any significant gameplay change. Keeping the missile spread as per current values is important – by being inaccurate it not only makes missiles easier to hide from – which should be the primary defense against LRMs, it also makes it easier to accidentally hit your allies with your LRMs, preventing Light mech spotters from simply standing immediately behind an Atlas, constantly hiding in its blindspot at short range – so they’ll actually spot from a distance, like spotters are meant to do. Interestingly, SRMs are 2.5 damage per missile, so in doing so we’d equalise the damage per missile between the two types.
Between the LRMs, the cooldown drops as the launcher size increases, and the weight of the weapons moves in a very weird fashion, as PGI seems to be rounding down to whole numbers. This makes LRM5 and LRM15 unnaturally space-efficient, and discourages LRM10-10 setups over LRM15-5 setups, while the single LRM20 setup is the worst of all. First proposal is to increase LRM5 to 2.5 tons and LRM15 to 7.5 tons to eliminate this discrepancy. Secondly, while the cooldown values change linearly, the LRM5 has a uniquely low heat profile, which encourages boating it – this should be raised by one point to turn the heat scale into a linear one.
Proposed changes: Increase damage per missile to 2.5, reduce ammo per ton to 120, increase LRM5 and LRM15 launcher weight by half a ton each, increase LRM5 heat generation to 3.
Proposed stats (Halve all damage related values for actual damage):
LRM20*: Dmg: 50. D/HSTA: 0.12. DPS: 10.53. Rng: 1000m
LRM15*: Dmg: 37.5. D/HSTA: 0.15. DPS: 8.82. Rng: 1000m.
LRM10*: Dmg: 25. D/HSTA: 0.21. DPS: 6.67. Rng: 1000m.
LRM5*: Dmg: 12.5. D/HSTA: 0.28. DPS: 3.85. Rng: 1000m.
Short distance: Burst damage weapons
This weapon class includes weapons that strike hard at short ranges to a single location. The only two weapons that belong to this class are the AC/10 and the AC/20. Their way of dealing damage is similar to that of the sniping class, but instead of using cover and hiding, Mechs that use these either turn undamaged sides of their chassis to soak up damage in between reloads, circle strafe in the downtime to avoid being hit as easily, or hit and run (for very fast Mechs only). Because range is reduced, they should have either better alpha damage or better efficiency than those of the sniper class, and they should have lower damage per second values than continuous fire or sustained fire weapons.
Current stats:
AC/10: Dmg: 10. D/HSTA: 0.08. DPS: 4. Rng: 450m.
AC/20: Dmg: 20. D/HSTA: 0.04. DPS: 5. Rng: 270m.
From a look at the stats you can tell quite easily that the AC/20 can be better suited to the role. It does relatively good alpha damage and damage per second, but its efficiency is horrid as it has to deal with ammunition, heat AND weight issues at the same time, making them very undesirable for use. The alpha values shouldn’t be changed for naming reasons again, and honestly are already pretty well-balanced. But the efficiency can be changed.
Proposed changes: Increase AC/20 to 8 shots per ton instead of 7 (still in the 150 damage/ton ballpark), reduce heat to 5 points. Setting convergence to the range of the target on the targeting computer also prevents arm-mounted AC/10 and AC/20 from flying wildly off target when leading the target – and due to firing delay, an AC user must lead the target.
Proposed stats:
AC/20*: Dmg: 20. D/HSTA: 0.05. DPS: 5. Rng: 270m.
Short distance: Scattered damage weapons
This weapon class includes weapons that do a large amount of inaccurate area damage. They are good for hitting fast moving targets at moderate range, and do an insane amount of point damage when fired point-blank. Basically, they’re shotguns.
Current stats:
LBX-AC/10: Dmg: 10. D/HSTA: 0.13. DPS: 4. Rng: 540m.
SRM6: Dmg: 15. D/HSTA: 0.19. DPS: 3.75. Rng: 270m.
SRM4: Dmg: 10. D/HSTA: 0.25. DPS: 2.67. Rng: 270m.
SRM2: Dmg: 5. D/HSTA: 0.36. DPS: 1.43. Rng: 270m.
Arguably, this category needs probably the least amount of work. I would only change 3 things: firstly, SRM6 is currently occasionally fired in 2 volleys of 3, making them about as hard to land as an UAC/5. This should be fixed to launch a single valley of 6. Second, the ammunition per ton of SRM ammo should probably be increased from 100 to 120. This would give their overall damage per ton ammo a value of 300, the same as LRMs. At present they’re a little bit ammo-inefficient. Thirdly, Artemis is too heavy to be of value to SRMs at present. SRM2 weighs 1 ton… Artemis SRM2 weighs 2 tons. This is kind of ridiculous – I have never encountered an Artemis SRM boat that did not run out of ammo before the end of the match. Also, the missiles are unguided, unlike Artemis LRMs, so the amount of equipment required should logically be lighter. Thus I would recommend changing Artemis on SRMs to take up only half a ton per launcher.
Proposed changes: Increase SRM ammo per ton to 120. Reduce Artemis weight to 0.5 tons. Launch SRM6 in single volleys.
Proposed stats are the same as current, as modifications are minor.
Short distance: Sustained fire weapons
These weapons generally do the bulk of damage in a balanced game. They are the 2nd most efficient weapon type on the field, but pay for these with limited range, the need to hold the beam on the target to do maximum damage and the need to expose the user to return fire.
Current stats:
Small Laser: Dmg: 3. D/HST: 1. DPS: 1. Rng: 90m.
Small Pulse Laser: Dmg: 3. D/HST: 0.36. DPS: 1.09. Rng: 90m.
Medium Laser: Dmg: 5. D/HST: 0.31. DPS: 1.25. Rng: 270m.
Medium Pulse Laser: Dmg: 6. D/HST: 0.16. DPS: 1.6. Rng: 180m.
I think the small laser is where it should be right now, as is the medium laser, but I’ve a few problems with the balancing of small pulse and medium pulse. The small pulse laser is slightly more efficient than the medium laser, but its DPS is lower – even though it needs to be fired more often than a medium laser to deal its full damage, its maximum damage potential is lower. It also has a shorter range. However, they have identical tonnage, hardpoint and critical space requirements – this makes the Small Pulse somewhat weak relative to the Medium Laser. They are both about as effective on lights, but the increased alpha damage and damage per second of mediums makes them more useful against anything else. At this point there is very little to recommend using the small pulse over the medium in any general build. I would follow the trend of the pulse lasers, and buff its damage to 4. This single change makes small pulse lasers weaker in alpha power, more powerful over time, and its small range means you need to expose yourself to greater amounts of return fire, making it a viable option for brawlers.
Medium pulse lasers, on the other hand, have relatively good damage and efficiency values already, but their usefulness is a bit hampered by range considerations in the same way Large Pulse is affected. Therefore, I would raise the range to 270m to be equal to that of the Medium Laser.
Proposed changes: Increase Small Pulse Laser damage to 4, increase Medium Pulse Laser range to 270m.
Proposed stats:
Small Pulse Laser*: Dmg: 4. D/HST: 0.48. DPS: 1.45. Rng: 90m.
Medium Pulse Laser*: Dmg: 6. D/HST: 0.16. DPS: 1.6. Rng: 270m.
Short distance: Indirect fire weapons
The only weapon in this class for now is the Streak SRM2. Their main use is to get confirmed damage against Light mechs, but is balanced by lack of range, poor damage per second, poor damage efficiency, poor alpha damage and spread damage.
Current stats:
Streak SRM2: Dmg: 5. D/HST: 0.29. DPS: 1.43. Rng: 270m.
This weapon class, to me, is almost perfectly balanced for now against the other classes. The Streaks have a niche use – boating the Streaks would make a user very weak against Heavies and Assaults, but a Light pilot’s worst nightmare. Increasing the damage in any way would overpower it against Lights, and reduction would make them even more useless against other Mech types. It used to have a problem about always homing to the Centre Torso, which was recently fixed. The only reservation I have is that If Streaks of a larger volley size are ever added, they might be a bit of an issue, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. In spite of having guidance capabilities, their missiles are the same ammunition per ton as normal SRMs, though, making this have very few ammunition problems even with a single ton of ammunition for 2 launchers on some builds. Just to deal with this, I’d reduce its ammunition per ton to 90. This is really a very minor change though.
Proposed changes: Reduce ammunition per ton to 90 missiles.
Proposed stats are the same as current, as modifications are minor.
Short distance: Continuous fire weapons
These two weapons do low damage over time with very low alphas, but they fire a constant stream of damage, and also have additional utility uses. They are the Machine Gun and Flamer. The Flamer has the additional effect of raising heat on your target. The Machine Gun has the additional effect of causing a larger critical hit rate as critical hits are calculated per impact, and it has a lot of impacts.
Current stats:
Flamer: Dmg: 0.4. D/HST: 1.33. DPS: 0.8. Rng: 64m.
Machine Gun: Dmg: 0.04. D/HSTA: Undefined (zero heat). DPS: 0.4. Rng: 90m.
Their DPS and damage values are low as they are partial utility weapons, and their efficiency should be high to offset this weakness. However, the lack of DPS and alpha damage is a rather crushing weakness combination, and so to make them viable for use, their utility effects require a buff.
To increase the critical hit rate of the Machine Gun we should increase its firing rate while dividing its damage per bullet by the same factor. I would recommend quadrupling its firing rate and quartering the damage per bullet. Also, as Machine Guns have very bad ammunition efficiency at the moment (80 damage per ton, as opposed to all other ballistics at 140-150 damage per ton), I would raise the damage per ton by a factor of 2 to equalise them – as firing rate is quadrupled, ammunition per ton will be multiplied by 8 to achieve this.
And to increase the utility effect of the flamer, I would raise the heat dealt to the enemy target by 25% over the current value. This value cannot be so high that it can keep a Mech shutdown indefinitely, but it should not be so low that Mechs are completely unaffected by it. Also, it has an absurdly short distance of 64m at the moment, making it nigh-impossible to hit most Mechs with it – this should be raised to 90m to reach the standard of the Small Lasers and Machine Guns.
Proposed changes: Increase flamer heat dealt by 25%, raise Flamer range to 90m. Increase rate of fire of Machine Guns to once per 0.025 seconds, reduce damage per bullet to 0.01, increase ammunition per ton to 16,000 bullets.
Proposed stats:
Flamer*: Dmg: 0.4. D/HST: 1.33. DPS: 0.8. Rng: 90m.
Machine Gun*: Dmg: 0.01. D/HSTA: Undefined (zero heat). DPS: 0.4. Rng: 90m.
Utility weapons:
This class includes weapons that don’t do any damage at all, but have useful secondary effects. AMS reduces damage from incoming guided missile fire by destroying missiles in the air. TAG and NARC increase guided missile accuracy.
AMS and TAG are where they should be, in my opinion. NARC is a different story. The number of beacons per ton is 6, the NARC beacon is unguided and slow (unlike the instant hit TAG), and doesn’t even transmit for the whole match.
To make NARC not completely useless, I would give NARC guidance so fast Mechs can actually hit targets with it, not being hampered by their own or their target’s speed. Also, NARC, when hit, should permanently transmit a signal until the beacon is removed at Mechbay during repairs and rearming. To balance out the permanence and homing capabilities, I would reduce NARC ammo per ton to 2 – so if you want to NARC the whole enemy team, you will need to have 7 tons free.
Also, to allow NARC and TAG to be used in concert by dedicated missile support Mechs as opposed to being mutually exclusive options, I would advocate their effects to be slightly different. TAG will reduce the grouping of incoming guided missiles, whether they be Streak or LRM – this will make using TAG to aim Streaks a viable option. NARC, on the other hand, will make enemy Mechs show up on radar at ranges and visibility similar to that of friendly Mechs. So while it doesn’t increase LRM damage directly, it will allow you to fire LRMs under conditions where you do not have LOS to enemies. ECM should mitigate this to some extent, when it is released.
Proposed changes: Reduce NARC ammunition per ton to 2. Guide NARC beacons. Change NARC effect to make enemy NARCed mechs show up on radar at ranges like friendly mechs for the rest of the match.
And to sum it all off, this is my proposed weapon balance chart. It has the same calculations as the one at the start of the thread, but I’ve modified the values here as proposed to let you see what the final chart will look like.
Equipment balance
This section deals with balancing other non-weapon factors in the game.
Ferro-fibrous armour upgrade against Endo Steel
Traditionally, the Ferro-fibrous armour upgrade has always been less useful than the Endo Steel internal upgrade, as both take up the same amount of critical slots but Endo Steel always saves more weight. However, Endo Steel was supposed to be a difficult refit as you are changing all the internals, whereas Ferro Fibrous armour is armour plating tacked on top of a Mech. I wouldn’t want to touch the values for FF or ES, but this difficulty in refitting is not properly reflected at the moment as all upgrades cost C-Bills to fit and remove.
I would double the cost of all Endo Steel upgrades/downgrades from their current values, and downgrading should always have a cost as it is a difficult refit.
However, as Ferro Fibrous armour is just attached to a Mech’s exterior and doesn’t require monkeying around with the chassis, I would remove the cost of the upgrade/downgrade completely. The only costs associated will be the costs of buying more points of armour that are not yet in the inventory. They already take damage very early on as they are the first line of defence, so repair costs will be the cost factor for Ferro Fibrous armour.
Artemis upgrade/downgrade
Artemis upgrades and downgrades are basically modifications to the launchers and their ammunition, not to the Mechs themselves. Therefore, I would remove the cost of upgrading/downgrading ENTIRELY. This switch just changes the guidance type of missiles. To compensate for this, the purchase costs of all Artemis missile systems should be quadrupled. But once you buy a system once, it can be transferred to any other Artemis chassis for free.
Double (1.4x?) Heat Sinks
The Double Heat Sinks are again a change to the equipment – external heat sinks, and engines – that don’t actually affect the chassis itself. But they affect the engines. At present you can switch a single engine between multiple chassis with and without DHS – that defies logic since it implies the engine can magically change between DHS and SHS types for free. Also, currently, DHS upgrading costs money even without an equipped engine – when the upgrade does nothing to the chassis and therefore should cost nothing.
To rectify this, I would remove the upgrade/downgrade costs for DHS on Chassis, and leave that option there just as a free toggle. However, engines should have DHS and SHS versions – and an option to change engines from DHS versions to SHS versions and vice-versa. The cost of such an engine change should be equal to half that of the entire engine cost – this will keep the overall cost of implementation of DHS similar to current values. Non DHS engines will be unequippable on DHS chassis and vice-versa. Admittedly of all the suggestions so far this will require the most programming work, as a completely new ‘upgrade’ button will need to be added to engines. Alternatively, one might want to sell DHS or SHS versions of all engines currently available so instead of paying to upgrade, one pays permanently for a new engine – thereafter, switching between the engines in your possession will be free; this option requires less coding work.
Also, at the moment engine DHS are dissipating at 2x and external DHS are dissipating at 1.4x. This is biasing the system towards builds that make use of engine DHS and limited external DHS. External DHS already have a balancing factor of limited critical slots, whereas internal DHS has NO BALANCING FACTOR whatsoever – this makes them somewhat overpowered. There have been threads before on the forums where people suggested raising the heat dissipation of all DHS to 2.0x, but reducing the heat capacity of DHS from 2.0x/1.4x back to 1.0x. Thus, this will discourage people from alpha striking their energy weapons all the time as they will still overheat, but DHS will allow them to fire their weapons more often overall. My memory is hazy as to who first started this suggestion, but if I recall correctly Zverofaust started one of the threads on this in the old Closed Beta forums before the forum got nuked. I agree with this approach, really. People who wish to boat ERPPCs can now do so instead of having an overheating monster at their hands… but people who wish to alphastrike ERPPCs in said boats will still overheat. As it is, the system makes the PPCs or higher heat weapons untenable reducing the power of Heavy or Assault builds, while making Jenners overpowered, since their builds (with an XL300) can mount a lot of critical-free DHS, which dissipate at 2.0x as they are engine heat sinks.
Repair and rearming costs
This is the last balancing suggestion. Non-Artemis users may not be aware, but every Artemis LRM user is keenly aware of this problem. Artemis ammo costs 2x that of standard LRM ammo. I don’t have exact numbers at the moment, but it costs about 60k per ton Artemis ammunition, and 30k per ton standard LRM ammunition. To be viable a current dual LRM20 Artemis build now fields 7 tons of LRM ammunition. That is 420k total – but since 75% is reloaded free, the final cost of ammunition on Artemis is 105k. This is a very big deal, as it means that if the Mech is lost in battle with a few upgrades, you are looking at a 180-190k repair/reload bill for a Catapult – which costs more than the C-Bills the pilot would have earned for a win unless he had Founders or Premium Time privileges. Or if the Mech survives the battle but loses it, it will be, best case, 105k cost, to about 90k loss C-Bills – leading to a net loss of 15k. I support the idea of repair and reload costs making it such that higher power builds cost more to maintain and therefore earn less profit than if the same result was achieved using a cheaper, simpler design. However, this takes the cost way too far into the unreasonable range. To address this, I would reduce Artemis LRM costs by 40%, and reduce standard LRM costs by 20%. This would be 36k per ton Artemis LRM ammunition, and 24k per ton standard LRM ammunition. Said LRM20 Catapult will now face reload costs of 63k for Artemis, or 42k for standard LRMs. A loss-survival would now result in a 17k gain if zero damage is taken and all missiles are used, a win-death will now result in a 50-60k gain – giving pilots that incentive once again to give their lives (ahem, Mechs) in combat for victory.
Similarly, SRMs should also have -40% costs for Artemis versions and -20% costs for normal versions, but the costs for Streak ammunition should be left as they are as very little ammunition is usually mounted, and they have a unique role.
Gameplay changes
Disconnection
This isn’t really about balancing per se, but we’re seeing some players who hit Alt-F4 as soon as their centre torso turns red, denying the other team a kill and simultaneously sabotaging their own team, while padding their own kill-death ratio. It has become one of the standard griefer techniques for some pilots to do this, and it’s starting to grate on the nerves of quite a few pilots. To fix this, all we need is that when a pilot is disconnected or closes his window on purpose, his Mech remains in the game (with his account) for 20 seconds, and in that time it shuts down. Deaths in this state are still tracked to the player, and kills and damage are still awarded to the other team. This should be sufficient such that doing such a thing will now give no benefit – rather, it guarantees the other team an easy kill, whereas disconnecting at the start of a match due to bugs or whatnot that make the match unplayable (FPS bug, for instance, or sudden lag spike to 1200ms) will have no negative effect on the player. On that topic, it is sometimes annoying how players may disconnect at the start of matches as this skews the player ratio in favour of the other team, but as this occurs with equal frequency on both sides of the team I do not believe that warrants any action at this point.
Team damage
At present team kills result in XP penalties and C-Bill penalties, but team damage does not. A small group of griefers has started to exploit this by critically damaging as many teammates as they can, but not finishing them off – this costs them nothing except minor ammunition costs, but the teammates who return fire to eliminate the griefers from the game have to pay XP and C-Bill penalty costs. While all players that grief in this manner should be reported to the Game Master at support@mwomercs.com, that necessitates moderator involvement prior to any negative feedback to this antisocial behaviour occurring – and if nobody reports the player, they may get away scot-free. By tracking team damage in addition to team killing, and enforcing C-Bill penalties and XP penalties based on damage as well, this adds a strong ingame disincentive to do this, while the Game Masters will thereafter deal the finishing blow with disciplinary action.
This also encourages people to hold their fire when teammates cross their path, instead of firing through them. If it costs more to damage your own teammate than to damage the enemy, people will tend to do accidental friendly fire less often on the whole, which should lead to a better game environment. This also punishes people who are not malicious, but who absent-mindedly test their full alpha strike damage potential on the backs of Commandos at the spawn location. In these cases I wouldn’t push for disciplinary action to be taken against such players, an ingame penalty for not watching their fire should suffice.
Critical hits
They are an interesting mechanic, but at present they happen too frequently, such that certain heavier chassis always die via critical hits before their internals can ever be destroyed. The overall critical hit rate should be halved. Machine guns will still be more effective after this slew of changes at critically hitting than they are at present, but everything else will be less effective than at present.
Epilogue
If you’re actually thinking about this, I’m pretty sure that quite a few of you won’t agree with every single change I’m proposing. Why? You have experience with using weapons in a certain way that my calculations do not account for. You have seen emergent effects when certain weapons are boated that can’t be accounted for when one considers the weapon singly. In moments like this, please comment below. This proposal is not final yet, and I’ll edit it accordingly if good feedback is raised, and it will become a better proposal for your contribution. But without starting it off on the right foot, I don’t think we can have a proper player-driven balance drive.
We can’t just say “LRMs are underpowered, PPCs are underpowered, Gauss is overpowered.” Say PGI agrees with you. What are they to do? Raise damage? Drop cooldown? Increase ammunition? Reduce heat? There are multiple factors that can be changed, and while they are the developers – the experts in the engine and game design, we are the beta testers – the experts in gameplay experience and weapon usage. We play this game more than they do because it is our job to play and their job to program. And we feedback because otherwise, we wouldn’t be beta testers, we’d simply be early players. We’ve already seen what happens when feedback is nonspecific. People thought the Artemis inception patch made LRMs overpowered – and it was. But nobody really gave them values as to how to balance them properly, we just said ‘drop angle of descent, drop damage per missile, increase missile grouping (aka reduce accuracy)’. They did EXACTLY as we fed back… and the result is our currently underpowered LRMs.
This thread attempts to start discussion on weapon balancing off on the right foot, and hopefully set up a direction for a future weapon balancing patch in which all of the weapons will approach balanced usage. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough such that there will never be a case where the playerbase will agree that a weapon should never be used in MechWarrior Online except for jokes.
You may now post.
Appendix – AKA Tl;dr section
Full recommendation list
- Increase the cooldown period for a Gauss rifle to 7s.
- Include a 90m minimum range for the ERPPC.
- Increase Large Pulse range to 450m, reduce cooldown to 3s and heat to 7.
- Reduce Large Laser cooldown to 3s and heat to 6.
- Reduce ER Large Laser cooldown to 3s and heat to 9.
- Increase AC/2 cooldown to 0.6s.
- Reduce AC/5 cooldown to 1.25s.
- Increase UAC/5 and AC/5 heat to 2.
- Reduce UAC/5 range to 540m, cooldown to 1.25s and ammo per ton to 30.
- Increase damage per LRM missile to 2.5 and reduce ammo per ton to 120.
- Increase LRM5 weight to 2.5 tons and heat generation to 3.
- Increase LRM15 launcher weight to 7.5 tons.
- Increase AC/20 ammunition to 8 shots per ton and reduce heat to 5 points.
- Set convergence of weapons to the range of the active target on the targeting computer instead of the range of the texture under the targeting reticle.
- Increase SRM ammo per ton to 120. Reduce SRM Artemis weight to 0.5 tons greater than standard SRM launchers of the same size. Launch SRM6 in single volleys all the time.
- Increase Small Pulse Laser damage to 4.
- Increase Medium Pulse Laser range to 270m.
- Reduce Streak SRM ammunition per ton to 90 missiles.
- Increase flamer heat dealt by 25% and raise Flamer range to 90m.
- Increase rate of fire of Machine Guns to once per 0.025 seconds, reduce damage per bullet to 0.01, increase ammunition per ton to 16,000 bullets.
- Reduce NARC ammunition per ton to 2. Guide NARC beacons with missile locks. Change NARC effect to make enemy NARCed mechs show up on radar at ranges like friendly mechs for the rest of the match.
- Double cost of Endo Steel upgrades/downgrades.
- Remove cost of Ferro-Fibrous upgrade/downgrade completely.
- Remove cost of Artemis upgrade/downgrade completely, but quadruple the cost of all Artemis launcher systems.
- Remove cost of DHS upgrade/downgrade from chassis completely. Either introduce a cost to upgrade/downgrade DHS on engines (at 50% engine cost), or require that players buy DHS and non-DHS engines separately, or both. Either way, DHS engines will be interchangeable between DHS chassis, and SHS engines will be interchangeable between SHS chassis.
- Increase heat dissipation rate for all DHS to 2.0x from the partial 2.0x/1.4x at present. Reduce additional heat capacity per DHS from 2.0x/1.4x to 1.0x.
- Reduce ammunition costs for Artemis missile systems by 40%, and non-Artemis missile systems by 20%. Leave Streak SRM ammunition costs as they are.
- Closing the client or disconnection will shut down the Mech and initiate a 20 second timer. Within that period, they are counted as shut down active players. After that period, they are counted as disconnected players.
- Track damage done to friendly Mechs instead of only team kills, and deduct C-Bills and XP accordingly for team damage.
- Halve overall critical hit rates.
Credits
Ohmwrecker, for his incredibly useful statistics guide.
P.S. This is officially the longest post in existence on the MechWarrior forums with a grand total of 8670 words.
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Now, to address this issue:
