34 replies to this topic

[Kmieciu]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 November 2012 - 04:30 AM, said:

It would help a lot if the LB 10-X could actually use its range. The pellets need to not spread at all, or extremely slowly (maybe twice their starting size at their normal range.)

If you take away the spread, you loose the character of the weapon. And the fact that a weapon that spreads the damage has the same Alpha and DPS as a weapon with pinpoint damage is just bad game design.

If you go back to the basics of FPS shooters, the Doom had a great shotgun. It did 7 more times the damage of a pistol, so you could kill a couple of weak enemies at once. But if it did the same damage as a pistol, there wouldn`t be any incentive to use it.

Bottom line is, LBX needs more damage, and I think increasing the pellet count is the right way to go.

[ExAstris]

Hayashi, I'm glad you put so much thought into this, especially going through each weapon and giving thoughts on almost every single one.

That said, I think very few of your solutions will be beneficial.

Things that I do agree with though:

The gauss still needs work. Increasing its heat to 4, its cycle to 5 (maybe 6), or giving it a 90m minimum are the best solutions. A cycle of 7 would make the weapon extinct except on Atlai that can not afford any more heat generation at all.

The AC20 still needs more help. Increasing ammo per ton is a fine way to do so. It probably doesn't need any more heat reduction as its far more heat efficient than any energy weapon. Its mostly the absurd heat efficiency of the gauss rifle that keeps the AC20 in the hanger instead of on the mechs.

Set convergence to target, not reticle. Been tooting that horn for months. Needs to happen (or at least make it an option in the menu, so people who do laserboat and/or often shoot at secondary targets don't get screwed up by it)

The Small Pulse Laser needs help. It has the exact same loading characteristics as the Medium Laser but is outclassed in every way (except beam duration, which isn't close to worth it). You suggest giving it better heat efficiency and dps with only the range as penalty, thats alot of buff. I'd suggest upping its dps to be above the mlas, and also giving it a heat efficiency boost, but it should not be more heat efficient than the mlas, just more heat efficient than it is now.

Flamers and machine guns obviously need help. The flamer really needs better heat mechanics at work against its target, not something you adress. And the machine gun doesn't need an entire math reset, just a damage boost.

NARC also definitely needs help, your solution here seems problematic. If they just show up on the minimap, then that might be fine, but allowing target lock to them would be crazy useful for LRMs. But allowing them to broadcast their location to the minimap, but not your targeting computer seems... unreasonable. "You can see them, but you can't"... Perhaps a full target/minimap broadcast, but for a limited time (30s-1min) would be a reasonable middle ground?

Your suggestion to make Artemis for SRMs weight 0.5 tons each is probably a good one. SRMs don't really need Artemis to be effective right now, and the grouping bonus is only useful against slow/bad enemies at a range you won't stay at for more than one shot anyways. So lowering the cost for the mild benfit seems fair.

And finally, ammunition costs. Something does need to be done about them, but not what you suggest. The problem isn't the cost of ammo to start with, its the cost to reload a mech compared to a laserboat. Laserboats have no ammo costs, yet ammo mechs are being asked to pay from 20k up to 120k to top off their re-arm. I end up gimping my loadout by carrying excessive amounts of ammunition just so I don't have to pay the highway-robbery prices on ammo. The base price for ammo doesn't need to change, but what does is that we get the bottom 75% for free and the top for full cost, change it so that we pay for every shot, but only pay the ~2% or so that we do for mech repairs.


I found all of your other suggestions to be steps in the wrong directions. I'll not bother with the arguments for every single one. Summarily, I'm glad you took the time to think through them all instead of just spouting "nerf rock, buff scissors, paper is fine.", but I really do think the majority of your changes would be hurtful to the game, with a moderate chunk being neutral sidesteps that are not needed, and the handful above being the ones that are either spot-on or at least attempting to move balance in the right direction.

[Bartolomeo]

i agree with alot of that...

-but ERPPC don't need minimun range, that is why it have a high heat cost
-I think 2,5 damage for lrm is to much, and remember they have guidance system, that is some weight, so they should not have the same explosive load out of a srm missile
-LB10-X need some love

some msg and flamer suggestions:
those two are infantry weapons, but... also anti vehicles, a open structure could be damage more easy than armor.

give to machine gun and flamers bonus vs low armor and open area of a mech..

Machinegun vs 4 or more armor= 0,05 per hit -->0,5 dps (almost nothing, same as m16 vs tank)
Machinegun vs 4 or less armor= between 0,05 and 0,1 (thin armor, or damage armor)
Machinegun vs internal structure = 0,1 per hit --> 1 dps (same dps than a small laser)

so now machinegun is a weapon with light weight that do some good damage vs structure without heat

Flamer vs armor= 0,25 heat per sec ( 4 flamers denied 10 heatsink)
Flamer vs internal structure= 0,5 heat per sec (4 flamers denied 10 doubleheat sinks)
remember that flamer give alot of heat to your mech also.

now those 2 weapons are relatively fine, and need skills to do better.
(obviusli you can play with the numbers to make it more balanced)

[Frank the Tank]

Great post! It's good to see substance behind your proposed changes. I agree with a lot of what you wrote. However, I feel like medium range weapons need to treated as separate from long and short range weapons. Because people tend to fight at close or long range is not a good reason to generalize in what was on the whole a very detailed and specific post. Specifically, anything with an effective range between 300m and 540m (excluding the LB 10-X AC although it could be included if the grouping is tightened up at ~400m) would be considered a medium range weapon.

Medium range sustained fire; Large Laser, Large Pulse Laser, AC/5, UAC/5
Medium range burst damage; PPC, AC/10
(Medium range scattered damage; LB 10-X AC)

Balancing medium range weapons compared directly to long or short range weapons losses the important aspect of range. It is true that most fighting occurs either at long or short range, this is because most people do not understand the strengths and weaknesses associated with medium range weapons. I wrote about the strengths of the Centurion as a medium range mech in my comprehensive guide to the Centurion chassis on the closed beta forums, which I intend to repost as soon as I play with the CN9-D for a bit. Basically piloting a medium range mech requires you to understand at what range you can or can't hit, and at what range enemies can or can't hit you.

For example, it is easy to hit pinpoint on target at 450m (for full damage) with an AC/10, but attempting the same shot with an AC/20 will likely result in a hit slightly off target (for reduced damage). Similarly, firing a Large Laser or PPC at a target beyond effective range will do significantly less damage than their ER counterparts. Basically keep enemy short range mechs at a distance and they can't hurt you, and don't waste ammo or heat on mechs outside of your range.

You should also treat medium range weapons as a separate group since you also intend for this post to be a guide to weapon usage. People need to understand the diminishing returns associated by firing weapons beyond their effective range.

My suggestions on medium weapons.

In order to further distinguish weapon ranges, the diminishing damage from firing beyond a weapon's effective range should be increased by reducing all weapons' (excluding missile weapons) max ranges. This would have to be tweaked on a per weapon basis in order to properly balance normal and ER weapons. Obviously, normal and ER weapons should have similar stats; however, they should foremost be balanced to other weapons in their range category.

For this example my suggested numbers are arbitrary, they serve to illustrate not to dictate. In my opinion, there is not much reason to deal with the extra heat of an ER Large Laser effective range 675m (max 1350m) when the Large Laser is effective 450m (max 900m). If Large Lasers were 450m (700m) then the ER version fills the true role of extended range. Similarly, 2 Medium Lasers and 3 heatsinks for 5 tons at 270m (540m) is seen by many as better than 1 Large Laser also 5 tons. If Medium Lasers were 270m (480m) then the Large Laser might be more justified even if it is hotter and "less" damaging (at the medium's effective range of 270m).

I love the suggestion to fix the current issues with aiming ballistic weapons, but I would like to take it a step further. The weapon should converge on the target's range until it reaches the effective range then stop. This would cause shots beyond a weapons effective range to begin to drop. Different weapons should have different drop rates. The gauss and PPCs should experience little to no drop, because to the "physics" behind them. Auto-cannons would drop more or less so depending on their caliber.

For example, an Atlas in 540m away from my Centurion. My targeting computer automatically zeroes my AC/10 to 450m, his targeting computer zeroes his AC/20 to 270m (the effective ranges of our weapons). I aim at his head and fire. The shell travels and slowly drops hitting his leg (for reduced damage). The Atlas aims well above my head and fires. The shell travels and drops more drastically, but still hits my centurion in the CT (for reduced damage). Meanwhile, a gauss cat snipes my RA off from 800m. His targeting computer zeroed the gauss rifles for 660m, but he didn't have to compensate much for the miniscule drop. Also because the max range of a guass rifle is 1980m the damage is reduced very slightly.

On pulse lasers, while I agree with your assessment that pulse laser should have more range than they do currently I would argue that giving them range identical to their normal counterparts is too much. I would recommend around 90% of the normal range; Large Pulse 400m, Medium Pulse 240m. Small Pulse should remain at 90m.

Lastly, the LB 10-X AC needs to have it spread changed to make it effective at longer range. Right now it is hard to hit the broadside of an Atlas with a majority of the buckshot beyond 300m. Rather than flying in a cone shape the shots should fly much tighter in a cylinder. The shot should never spread out wider than a medium mech.

Thanks again for the detailed post. Hopefully more people will take the time to get through it.

Frank the Tank

Edited by Frank the Tank, 24 November 2012 - 04:45 PM.

[Yeach]

Nice attempt but did you attempt to balance weapon damage vs armor?
Assuming TT values x 2 / 10sec/TT turn.

Gauss = 15 x 2 / 10 = 3 DPS
AC20 = 20 x 2 / 10 = 4 DPS
compared to your values of

Gauss 2.14
AC20 5

Definitely made the gauss ALOT weaker than was necessary IMO.

[lsp]

Longest wall of text, ever. And no to weapon balance, I don't know why people think weapon balance makes a good game. Might as well just make them all the same with a different skin, mechs too. All weapons should be effective at what they do, have advantages and disadvantages you know, like real life.

Edited by lsp, 19 November 2012 - 08:04 PM.

[Bartolomeo]

lsp, on 19 November 2012 - 08:02 PM, said:

Longest wall of text, ever. And no to weapon balance, I don't know why people think weapon balance makes a good game. Might as well just make them all the same with a different skin, mechs too. All weapons should be effective at what they do, have advantages and disadvantages you know, like real life.

you read the title and jump to conclusions?

the idea of the post is to make everything usable, no everything the same with a different skin

Edited by Bartolomeo, 19 November 2012 - 08:25 PM.

[Tyrzun]

OP I will not respond to everything at this time.

You are mostly correct on the different "style" types. However, some of those styles do not WORK in MWO right now.

However, you didn't fix anything with your ER or LONG range opinions.

Yes, GAUSS is far superior that all of the other weapons. You're solution was to NERF it which is wrong.

You talk about shooting and running to another sniper spot. IF you try backing up or going sideways a meech giong 80+ kmh will force you into BRAWLING range before you ever get a 2nd shot if you force a 7 second delay.

FYI most popular weapon of all, medium lasers. They are not OP, but most other weapons are very under powered.

Examples
4 X medium lasers = 20 damage per shot 16 heat and 4 tons.
Leaves a LOT of room for heat sinks so you can shoot constantly.

2 X PPC = 20 damage 18 heat and 14 tons
Can'y be used uner 90 meters
So, which enemy are you going to kill or stop in 1-2 shots? You're not. They are going to get in brawling range and HAMMER and do double the damage you do over time with their 4 medium lasers.

What about a ballistic solution?

2 x AC/10 =20 damage 6 heat 24 tons NOT including ammo.

So if we are going to talk 24 tons of weight for 20 total DPS then this is what you face
8X medium lasers = 40 DPS 32 heat 8 tons. Leaving 16 tons for heat sinks.

They are going to do 2X the damage you do and NEVER stop.

Again, that 1 MAYBE 2 shots you get on them BEFORE they close range is NOT enough damage to even it out.

So, your solutions aren't fixing the problem.

I BETA test the weapons all the time. I've used the PPC consistently and it is FAR less effective than medium lasers. Because 90% of the battels are up close brawls. Those long and longer range weapons need to hit a LOT harder to offset this. The brawler should be HURT as they enter brawling range. So, they have superior fire power up close. So, it should come down to pilot skill in the end. Did the brawler get the sniper to hit different locations? Can the snipers brawling skills hang with the brawler and finish them off if they did hit the same spot at range? ETc... Right now... the Brawler will win 100% of the time with equal pilots. The sniper can't do enough damage at range before the distance is closed. PPC ERPPC need their DPs upped a lot.

Or just throw em away and forget they exist because really they don't exist right now as a "good" weapon choice. I'm still using em to work out the "aiming" issues as well, but damage vs usefulness wise they are garbage when considering all the factors.

Edited by Tyrzun, 19 November 2012 - 08:31 PM.

[Frank the Tank]

I don't understand your completely contradictory statements:

lsp, on 19 November 2012 - 08:02 PM, said:

no to weapon balance, I don't know why people think weapon balance makes a good game.

lsp, on 19 November 2012 - 08:02 PM, said:

All weapons should be effective at what they do, have advantages and disadvantages you know, like real life.

"I don't want weapon balance, its not fun."
"All weapons should be balanced to be effective under different circumstances."

huh?

[ODonovan]

And this thread started with the old, tired assertion that BattleTech was so broken that nothing should be used in MWO.

Quote

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.

YES, the TT values work PERFECTLY WELL in a realtime game! The ONLY ONLY ONLY skills which are not used from the TT game are the piloting and gunnery rolls because we're the pilots actually using our own skills, so those values are no longer needed.

EVERYTHING else...ranges, speeds, heat values/dissipation, et cetera, can be translated EXACTLY from the TT game to MWO and they will work fine. How do I know, you ask? I played realtime BattleTech online in the early 1990s, using THOSE VERY SAME TT VALUES. We had massive realtime battles and campaign scenarios which lasted for months. They were the BTech MUSEs and MUXes. I was there. The TT values work just fine in realtime!

GET ANOTHER ARGUMENT!

The further the devs have gotten away from the TT game the LESS balance the game has had. In the TT game, weapons all had disadvantages...weight, heat, range, whatever. If a weapon was lighter and generated less heat, it did less damage and/or had less range. If if was a long range, high damage weapon (such as the PPC), it generated a lot of heat and had a minimum range penalty. THERE WAS BALANCE! It wasn't perfect, but it was a LOT better than what we have in MWO now!

Start with TT values. 'Mechs are dying too quickly! Let's double the armor! But wait...now, with double armor, the game is too slow...so TRIPLE THE RATE OF FIRE! Now armor is only 2/3 as strong as it should be and heat sinks are 1/3 as effective as they should be. Any suggestion of game balance has, at this point, already been thrown out the window.

If, with TT values, 'mechs are dying too quickly from headshots, make a smaller (standard sized) head hitbox for all 'mechs to make headshots less frequent. If the game is then going too slowly with TT values, move the firing rate up from every 10 seconds to every 7.5 seconds or so, but increase the HS heat dissipation so each HS removes one point of heat in that same amount of time. Maintaining balance is so freaking EASY it's unbelievable.

Instead, I see the game going further and further into this black hole of imbalance, where gauss rifles and indirect fire LRMs rule the world and many of the classic BattleTech weapons and iconic 'mech designs have fallen into disuse because the game is simply that broken.

Breaking the system further is NOT fixing anything. Just my $.02 from a long time BattleTech player and veteran of realtime online BattleTech from almost 20 years ago.



-Irish

[Reno Blade]

Very good post Hayashi!
Also very good points Frank!

Most changes are well thought and usefull.
I think the Pulse lasers should be 75% range not 50% or 100% or normal lasers.
Also PPC, erPPC, erLL and LPulse should do 1 less heat.
LRM at 2.0 or 2.2 dmg.
LBX10 with thighter spread (to hit a mech at 400 meters).
+The rest of your points.
and + Pauls changes to "earthquake" shake effects
+ PPC shake and small emp.

[Hayashi]

Holding for a while. The post is now horribly out of date, and will become even more out of date with the next patch.

Need to get a bit of playtesting in after the next patch before next update.

[Suicidal Idiot]

ODonovan, on 19 November 2012 - 09:39 PM, said:

YES, the TT values work PERFECTLY WELL in a realtime game!
...
If the game is then going too slowly with TT values, move the firing rate up from every 10 seconds to every 7.5 seconds or so, but increase the HS heat dissipation so each HS removes one point of heat in that same amount of time. Maintaining balance is so freaking EASY it's unbelievable.
-Irish

Hayashi, do you have any opinions on ODonovan's opinions?

My own opinion is to chuck the mech lab, or at least restrict weapon swaps to the same power or lighter. If the mech lab is chucked, PGI will sell more mech variants, and the vast majority of the complaints about 'boating' vanish.

The idea you can swap a catapult's twin machine guns for twin AC/20's is as ridiculous as swapping a hummer's roof mount .50 for a 120mm howitzer from an Abrams. Twice as ridiculous, actually.

Also, if PGI wants to nerf the streak cats, they could just declare that the targeting mechanisms interfere with each other when mounting 3 or more on one mech, and disallow it in the mech lab. You're already limited to one BAP, so the coding is already in place.

[ElLocoMarko]

So I suffer from short attention span and only looked at the chart...

Max Damage says it is ammo * damage. It isn't. It seems to be related to your "damage when fired for 150 seconds" except that doesn't add up perfectly either. Please fix. And if you include your column definitions in the chart then it becomes more portable (save image to "My pictures" and read later without the accompanying post)

[Hayashi]

ElLocoMarko, on 14 January 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

So I suffer from short attention span and only looked at the chart...

Max Damage says it is ammo * damage. It isn't. It seems to be related to your "damage when fired for 150 seconds" except that doesn't add up perfectly either. Please fix. And if you include your column definitions in the chart then it becomes more portable (save image to "My pictures" and read later without the accompanying post)

First of all the chart is horribly outdated. This was before ECM, and PGI made a huge number of changes since then, so disregard.

Max Damage = Ammo/Ton * Tons ammo (when fired for 150 seconds) * Damage/shot. Everything should add up perfectly, the energy weapon part requires the beam time to be taken into account for calculations, if that is your issue.

But to reiterate it's horribly outdated. Haven't had the time or interest to update it yet.