74 replies to this topic

[Teralitha]

SpiralRazor, on 19 November 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

because we can, and the Heat issue still remains....an issue.





Well, after some of the early debacles I would have fired all of the "internal testers"....those dudes are nothing but money sinks and incompetent to boot.

yes, firing some of their staff has been suggested before also, but they probably wont do that either. PGI is stubborn like that...

[Kousagi]

Sadato, on 19 November 2012 - 08:12 AM, said:

Thanks for the info, and would be interesting to know if this is the reason that people have been exploding quickly after loosing their CT armour and not due to a laggy paperdoll.

Known bug at least for some of it. http://mwomercs.com/...gh-with-damage/

There was another bug that was reported with the randomly dying with full CT internals though.

Edited by Kousagi, 19 November 2012 - 08:29 AM.

[197mmCannon]

I don't like nerfing weapons based on the extreme builds.

1 or 2 med lasers is not op at all.

7 fired at once from a hunchback is.

1 guass is not op

2 fired from torso of a cat is.

If you nerf the weapons so the extreme alpha build is brought into check then you nerf the guy that only has 2 med lasers in his arms harder.

[MustrumRidcully]

Teralitha, on 19 November 2012 - 08:14 AM, said:

yes, firing some of their staff has been suggested before also, but they probably wont do that either. PGI is stubborn like that...

I don't like it when players suggest to fire people. We don't know enough about what is going on there to say whether it's individual testers or devs that are responsible for shortcomings, or the entire process structure. And we don't know how long it will take them to replace the person in question.

We just don't know enough. All I can say is that I would really like to have a chat with their systems guy that is responsible for balance and see what his big picture is and whether or why he things the game is moving in the right direction.

[Sadato]

Daemian, on 19 November 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

I don't like nerfing weapons based on the extreme builds.

1 or 2 med lasers is not op at all.

7 fired at once from a hunchback is.

1 guass is not op

2 fired from torso of a cat is.

If you nerf the weapons so the extreme alpha build is brought into check then you nerf the guy that only has 2 med lasers in his arms harder.

Actually I don't want to nerf them. If you re-read my post you will see that PGI have already nerfed them but I feel that they did so incorrectly.

[Ragor]

MWHawke, on 19 November 2012 - 05:00 AM, said:

Umm.. why start another post on DHS and lasers?

Simply because his one is a smart one.

(...just his editing sucks. Could be edited to be easier to read)

[Sadato]

Ragor, on 19 November 2012 - 08:42 AM, said:

Simply because his one is a smart one.

(...just his editing sucks. Could be edited to be easier to read)

Indeed it does however it is the best I can do on my mobile at the moment.

I'll clean up the post a bit when I get home!

[MustrumRidcully]

Daemian, on 19 November 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

I don't like nerfing weapons based on the extreme builds.

1 or 2 med lasers is not op at all.

7 fired at once from a hunchback is.

1 guass is not op

2 fired from torso of a cat is.

If you nerf the weapons so the extreme alpha build is brought into check then you nerf the guy that only has 2 med lasers in his arms harder.

It all depends on how hard a nerf for a weapon is. But the reason a weapon seems OP when using several of them and okay when using just one is because the imbalance magnifies. If a medium laser is,s ay, 20 % better than any other weapon, if you have a mech equipped with 6 of them, he'll be 120 % better armed. If you "nerf" that 20 % away, the mech with a single medium will not lose much, but those using 6 will lose considerably.

[Teralitha]

You know... we have alot of hunchie varients already. Why not just remove the 4sp? No more 9 medium laser boating.

If its not the weapons that are unbalanced then it must be the varients.


Speaking of which... Im beginning to see the return of the 6srm6 cata lately... And yes they hurt. Im guessing those players now find this build more useful than the 6ssrms build they were using...

Edited by Teralitha, 19 November 2012 - 08:58 AM.

[Jacmac]

Increasing the heat on laser weapons will just drive more players into Gauss Cats or AC20 Cats. Heat is already a major problem for most mech builds. If you want to stop Jenners from coring an Atlas in 3 seconds, start removing hardpoints from the Jenner. I've never seen a Jenner take down an Atlas in 3 seconds, but I don't doubt that it could be done if both were standing still in ideal conditions.

In all honesty, the large energy weapons generate so much heat now that they drive Assault mechs like the AWS-8Q into huge numbers of SHS, and nothing else, just to be competitive with missile/ballistic builds. Adding heat on the lower end weapons just makes this problem worse than it already is.

[StainlessSR]

Kousagi, on 19 November 2012 - 07:39 AM, said:

It does, but currently its not counted to kill the engine itself, same with many other parts of the mech. The only part of the crit system in right now is for knocking out weapons/ammo/heatsinks. I know they said they want to add in for actuators but not heard anything about engine kills off it.

As I know per TT rules engine hits do hurt it, cause you to slow down, have less heatsinks from it, causes heat build up and can kill it if it takes 3 hits, but as far as i know its not currently in MWO, unless they ninja'ed it in.

the engine takes damage and can be destroyed from crits thus "coring" the mech. Yes engine crits are in just like any other item can take crit damage.



As to the OP.

This would be a nice idea, it would as you stated reduce the "alpha" damage while lowering heat to allow longer firing before overheat. Lowering the laser damage/heat would also allow AC's to be a more viable choice (more one hit damage than a laser [this does not take into account heat generation of AC verses laser]). This would not be so much of a nerf as a balancing, you are losing some damage but gaining longer firing time till overheat. The only change would be to lengthen the time it takes to kill a mech with lasers.

[Odanan]

I liked the solution... I don't know if it helps mechs with big energy weapons tough.

I think the devs should keep the much closer to the TT values as it is possible. The rate of heat dissipation should be increased (allowing the use of stock mechs) and DHS should dissipate 2.0 full. Currently, heat is an issue in every (non-Gaussapult) mech - that's too much.

And double armor = double ammo. Period.

- Gauss = looks like the weapon was balanced recently (by increasing the fire delay). It's not the king of brawling any more.
- Autocannons = still need some love. They should have no fire delay at all and a very high projectile speed (and maybe improved ROF).
- SRMs = should have minimal guidance (not necessary locking). Because you can't hit anything past 100 meters.
- SSRMs = are fine. (but AMS should have some chance to shoot down some SRMs and SSRMs)
- PPCs and ER PPCs = need major improvements.
- LRMs = should travel much faster and have slow ROF (to save ammo). Currently, it's too easy to find cover against incoming missiles.
- Small and Medium Lasers / Pulse Lasers = instead of just increasing the heat, I liked your suggestion of decreasing the damage.
- Large, Pulse and ER Large Lasers = almost balanced.
- Machineguns = need to do more damage.
- Flamers = need to make more heat.

[PhigNewtenz]

Teralitha, on 19 November 2012 - 08:55 AM, said:

You know... we have alot of hunchie varients already. Why not just remove the 4sp? No more 9 medium laser boating.

The 4SP has 5 laser hardpoints. You're thinking of the 4P.

[Orkhepaj]

Lanessar, on 19 November 2012 - 05:27 AM, said:

...and was quickly debunked. I agree with the OP's assessment.

The dumb thing was that this was theoretically possible (granted a stationary, dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks target) with SHS, let alone DHS, so bringing that up as an analogy was rather silly.

I concur with the OP; however, I also am of the scorched earth tactic on weapon damage - weapon heat- rate of fire. It needs to be re-worked, and not from TT values. Or if you do use TT values, USE TT VALUES against ROF increase.

This

Why balance on TT values?? It makes no sense , the hit chance for weapons in TT and MWO is so different, especially with ballistic weapons at med+ range... , also the range at witch mechs fight is much smaller,as way easier to get to close range.
So instead of trying to somehow bend TT balance to suit MWO , just throw out the whole TT charts and start from 0 , with every weapon its role cleary defined and then tested.If I want to play by TT rules i go play megmek.

[tenderloving]

Grokmoo, on 19 November 2012 - 05:48 AM, said:

The whole "3 seconds" statement was clearly hyperbole. It is insane how people have taken that literally.

And you don't see a problem with the folks that are tweaking these things basing their decisions off of hyperbole? It's almost worse if he was exaggerating, given the tons of hard math that the community has thrown at PGI.

[wanderer]

Sayyid, on 19 November 2012 - 07:30 AM, said:

Easy fix...

Remove two laser hard points from the Jenner, so it only has 4 laser hard points.

Problem solved.

And then the -F is inferior to the -D, because the -D already has 4 energy HP AND 2 missile ones.

Bad idea.

[MustrumRidcully]

Orkhepaj, on 19 November 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

This

Why balance on TT values?? It makes no sense , the hit chance for weapons in TT and MWO is so different, especially with ballistic weapons at med+ range... , also the range at witch mechs fight is much smaller,as way easier to get to close range.
So instead of trying to somehow bend TT balance to suit MWO , just throw out the whole TT charts and start from 0 , with every weapon its role cleary defined and then tested.If I want to play by TT rules i go play megmek.

Yup, range is a big changer in this game, I don't disagree here. But you could still use the TT values as a basis, if you'd like to, and simply try to estimate how much they calculated the weapon range was worth, undo the effect of that manipulation, and instead apply your own range effect.

For example,y ou could either make a weapon like the LL deal 50 % more damage, or you could make the Medium Laser deal 50 % less damage - if you figure that the LL was 50 % less effiicent than the ML in the table top because that's how good the range advantage was.

But in the end, I don't care whether you use table top stats or entirely self-made - just figure some reasonable ones. I would suggest sticking with the weight and crit values. You would probably still get decent stock configs if you balance the weapons reasonably.

[John Norad]

zhajin, on 19 November 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

I know its not TT cannon but again with the firing rate changes MWO needs to move away from cannon in some areas.

Yes and no.

Yes, of course you need to make changes if you translate a TT game to a realtime computer game. First and foremost because random dice rolls are replaced with player controlled input. In MWO's case you get pinpoint accuracy (which is a bad thing imho), making aimed burst damage and sniper shots much more of a balancing issue.

No, you don't necessarily have to change much if you increase the RoF. It only applies if you also change the dps (keep dmg per shot). A medium laser is supposed to do 5 damage in 10 seconds. If you double the RoF but at the same time half the damage, there's no difference to the TT. You can do that with every weapon and play around with cooldowns, creating a lot of variety.
Basically, from my point of view, you can take a different and more interesting/balanced route than what PGI opted for.

Ragarding weapon range and viability:
that's actually a map design issue, not weapon balance.
If maps were bigger with lots of open terrain, you'd want to have long range weapons instead of medium lasers.
Balance is more than just one chart.

Regarding TT values:
You can't base your system on TT values, then change them, and if it doesn't work out blame it on the TT values.
That's just stupid.
I'm absolutely positive that the TT values work pretty well, if you implement them in the right way. But it is a bit more complex than comparing stats on the weapon chart.

Edited by John Norad, 19 November 2012 - 10:02 AM.

[MCXL]

Beep boop, read my thread.

[John Norad]

MCXL, on 19 November 2012 - 09:58 AM, said:

Beep boop, read my thread.

Yep, I'd like to endorse that. Good stuff. Definitely more than I could be bothered to put together