88 replies to this topic

[PartyAlias]

tl;dr

[MustrumRidcully]

PartyAlias, on 26 November 2012 - 04:33 AM, said:

tl;dr

Just for you:
TL;DR:
Balance still isn't there. Double Heat Sinks are definitely an upgrade and make high heat weapons more competitive. Ballistics tend to get more efficient the higher their range, Energy Weapons it's the other way around - which is what you would expect for all weapons. Range is an advantage, and so you need to pay for it in some manner - for example by dealing a bit less damage for the same weight.

[Slanski]

Don't worry MustrumRidcully. We live in an age worshipping ignorance and one line solutions. The tl;dr guy is not your relevant audience.

Actually your post got me thinking that the biggest balance problems currently are probably effective range of weapons, weapons grouping (4 MLasers flawlessly hitting same spot at will) and screen shake proportions of weapon sizes (SSRM2 and AC2 worst offenders). Once those are addressed, the secondary heat issues will fall into place better.

Currently we cannot balance DHS vs ER PPC without having MLasers break the game.

[MustrumRidcully]

Slanski, on 26 November 2012 - 05:19 AM, said:

Currently we cannot balance DHS vs ER PPC without having MLasers break the game.

I don't know -w hile MLs are extremely efficient - you still can't equip more than 9 on any mech. If we had, say Triple Heat Sinks, people might still be better off "boating" large lasers or PPCs, simply because they can bring more DPS and the ML user would be forced to equip a gigantic engine to still fill his weight.

Of course, that's now. A few years from now we would get something like the Nova or Supernova and suddenly we have to deal with mechs that have 12 energy hardpoints...

I agree that we need to look at the ML and SL in the end. By which I mean "Nerf them!". Lower their damage output and heat output together, and you should have them get less efficient.
(Basically, if you half damage and heat per shot on the ML, you get a similar efficiency as the MPL has, which seems a reasonable range. Likewise, lowering the SLs damage down to 1,65 and the heat to 1.5...)

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 26 November 2012 - 05:28 AM.

[Gerbaum]

My experience is that the "bullet" speed for PPC and ERPPC is too slow. Its hard too hit moving targets more than 800m away.
Maybe speeding up bullets would make them useful for long range, for what they are built for.

[Slanski]

Actually I think single and dual MLasers are fine as they are now. The staple of low tonnage DPS for light and heavy mechs. It's the quad/hexa mounts that make them really broken. If convergence would prevent all 4-6 of them going into the same location if you decide to group them, then we would have a more balanced system.

1-2 Lasers: Behave like currently.
2-7 Lasers: Lasers number 3-7 deconverge and impact several degrees around the cross hairs in a random formation.

Player choice: Fire fewer lasers at once, preventing an alpha emulating an AC20 or scattershot the target for immense alpha, but spread damage (giving the player choices is a good thing).

[Gerbaum]

Maybe you could increase heat non linear for every laser grouped after the second one and fired at the same time.

[Antarius]

Gerbaum, on 26 November 2012 - 05:58 AM, said:

Maybe you could increase heat non linear for every laser grouped after the second one and fired at the same time.

not a fan of making the heat disposal untransparent, i would rather go with the spread of grouped weapons or maybe the lasersbeam moves the entire shotcircle for some degrees, every weapon moves in a diverant angle, so in melee combat it would be the same, through the low range, in longrange you hit with a ml, from the right legt to the leftarm spread, with an other, from left leg to right arm, for example.


For the statistic... not quite a fan, you make a mistake the most people do with statistics, you ignore to much info and believe the result has much value. Dont get me wrong, i admire your effort, but you ignor beamcicle time, shot-delay, spread-over-range, shot-move-speed, crit-space and using a impossible Mech-build as a reference.

A such complex construction like Mech-build, with so much values can only balanced in a small box of settings, if you go out of the box, it can be completly wrong, like if you use values you couldnt reach in the given box (200 dmg... endless crit etc).
All i want to say is, you cant read much out of your statistic, the devs must do it by try and error, for every single weapon.


But i agree with some points made here, the big energy weapons cant use there benefits (range) because the small ones have to high range (not optimum range). Someone said above they should drop there dmg much faster after optimum range, i would go even farther, they should do there max dmg, at 80-90% of there range, and drop the dmg to 110% of optimum range. That would a bit even the field between lasers / ppcs / ballistics, because with ppcs and ballistics its much harder to hit a moving enemy at high range than with a laser (because of projectile movespeed), which makes them better weapon of choise.

Edited by Antarius, 26 November 2012 - 06:43 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I am very opposed to ideas like this. I can only say what I said elsewhere - if boating a weapon makes the mech too powerful, than it is a problem with the weapon.

Some mechs are designed to be boats, why should they recieve a disadvantage where someone that equips 2 different but equally powerful weapons doesn't get such a disadvantage?

Yes, it can make things easier when you have to consider only one range increment and one cooldown cycle and one beam duration/ballistic flight path. But not enough that you can easily excuse nerfing weapons for that IMO.

And something heat related will definitely not work well. Not all weapons produce sufficient amountsof heat that people would matter. The Quad AC/5 Cataphract 4X will not really care if you force it to accept a 25 % more heat. But a PPC or LL user will notice this quite profoundly.

If anything, I would prefer to see somethnig done about the convergence mechanics - Adding a cone of fire for example.
Or maybe if it has to be something weapon-affecting, increase the cooldown of weapons fired together in one group. (And to avoid abuse for people that are capable of pressing more than one button at a time, enforce a a small delay when people fire weapons together without a shared weapon group.)

[Indoorsman]

I really don't think it's a good idea to nerf aiming, just my opinion. The skill in TT was managing an army of many mechs which you had no direct control over. The randomness was understandable/necessary. Randomness in aiming for this game is uncalled for though. There is no other outlet for "skill" other than piloting your one mech and shooting the enemy w/it. By nerfing aiming you would be nerfing skill.

[Antarius]

Indoorsman, on 26 November 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

By nerfing aiming you would be nerfing skill.

not quite right, skill is to manage best / better than other with the given setting, if everybody has the same penalties. If you are skilled, you can overcome this penalties easier than others. For example, if your laser-beam moves while firing, you can adjust your aim to compensate. If you fire with 9 meds, at the same time, its not possible, but you can chainfire, where you need skill to hit with each one at the same component.

Its only a balancing between laser / ppc / ballistic weapon. At the moment, its much harder to hit with ppc / ballistic then with laser, because of firedelay and projectile speed, but there nearly the same dmg values like in the TT, which were quite balanced. To compensate this divergence in weaponery this should be chanced, in my opinion.

Edited by Antarius, 26 November 2012 - 09:22 AM.

[Indoorsman]

Antarius, on 26 November 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

not quite right, skill is to manage best / better than other with the given setting, if everybody has the same penalties

I know that, but right now there is one setting, and proposing aiming nerfs is another setting. Comparing one setting to the other, skill becomes less useful... nerfed.

[Asatruer]

Vapor Trail, on 26 November 2012 - 04:09 AM, said:

Possible partial solution to design problem: extend laser burn time. Smaller lasers have longer base burn times.
Eg
Small Laser, 100% of current minimum duty cycle.
Medium Laser, 66.67% of current minimum duty cycle.
Large Laser, 33.33% of current minimum duty cycle.

Or burn times of
SL: 3 sec
ML: 2.66 sec
LL: 1.4 sec

Actual duty cycle times are unchanged. So a small laser basically can fire a continuous beam... but it doesn't output any more or less DPS than it does now.

Generally speaking I have thought that this would be a good idea, but I think the burn times you suggested are a bit high for the ML and LL. A SL that fires like the MG and Flamer makes a lot of sense, but I think that it would need a bit of a DPS buff to account for how difficult it is to keep a target under the reticle for that long. A nice quality of life improvement to lasers that I think would be nice now, and would become nearly required with a greatly increased burn time, is the ability to cancel the shot early, say require holding the button down to fire, and letting up on the trigger to stop the shot early. As it is with the current burn times I often find myself having to wildly pull my beams off target because a team mate has put their back between me and my initial intended target.

MustrumRidcully, on 26 November 2012 - 05:24 AM, said:

I agree that we need to look at the ML and SL in the end. By which I mean "Nerf them!". Lower their damage output and heat output together, and you should have them get less efficient.
(Basically, if you half damage and heat per shot on the ML, you get a similar efficiency as the MPL has, which seems a reasonable range. Likewise, lowering the SLs damage down to 1,65 and the heat to 1.5...)

Or you could decrease their RoF, which would decrease their damage and heat over time with one blow, but that goes into the realms of what is better, the weapon that deals 6 damage every 6 seconds, or the one that does 3 damage every 3 seconds. In either case, any weapon that people are calling for nerfs not when there are few of them, but when there are many of them, the solutions probably really should come from solving the root cause, the boating, and not the weapon itself. One medium laser on a Commando is not the problem, 6 on the Jenner is, and making the Commando less good because the Jenner is leveraging the convergence system is not really fair.

Slanski, on 26 November 2012 - 05:41 AM, said:

Actually I think single and dual MLasers are fine as they are now. The staple of low tonnage DPS for light and heavy mechs. It's the quad/hexa mounts that make them really broken. If convergence would prevent all 4-6 of them going into the same location if you decide to group them, then we would have a more balanced system.

1-2 Lasers: Behave like currently.
2-7 Lasers: Lasers number 3-7 deconverge and impact several degrees around the cross hairs in a random formation.

Player choice: Fire fewer lasers at once, preventing an alpha emulating an AC20 or scattershot the target for immense alpha, but spread damage (giving the player choices is a good thing).

The problem here, which Mustrum mentioned already, is that you could just put all 8 medium lasers into four weapon groups (what I do already with my -4Ps 6MLs), and either fire them all at once by pressing four buttons concurrently, or consecutively in rapid succession, or make a macro that does the either with one button press. Any game balance mechanic that can be dodged with a macro is not a very good mechanic.

MustrumRidcully, on 26 November 2012 - 06:32 AM, said:

I am very opposed to ideas like this. I can only say what I said elsewhere - if boating a weapon makes the mech too powerful, than it is a problem with the weapon.

Some mechs are designed to be boats, why should they recieve a disadvantage where someone that equips 2 different but equally powerful weapons doesn't get such a disadvantage?

But they were designed to be boats with the understanding that not all weapons would hit, and that all the weapons that hit would hit a random location. If BattleTech had one hit roll for the entire volley, and one hit location roll, FASA would never have allowed for the construction of weapon boating mechs, and most certainly would not have had canon variants that did it.

MustrumRidcully, on 26 November 2012 - 06:32 AM, said:

And something heat related will definitely not work well. Not all weapons produce sufficient amountsof heat that people would matter. The Quad AC/5 Cataphract 4X will not really care if you force it to accept a 25 % more heat. But a PPC or LL user will notice this quite profoundly.

We are already seeing this to some extent, with the current heat dissipation working on a per 10 seconds period and weapons firing closer to on a per 3 seconds period. High heat weapons are disadvantaged more by slowing cooling down more than low heat weapons. Trying to tackle weapon boating issues with heat will just exacerbate the already apparent heat issues of the higher heat compared to the lower heat weapons. More and more it seems as though PGI has been hampering the heat sink efficiency to combat the effect convergence has on boating weapons. If there were more mech variants that had more ballistic slots than energy slots, it would be pretty much instantly apparent that using heat to try and tone down convergence was not greatest idea.

MustrumRidcully, on 26 November 2012 - 06:32 AM, said:

If anything, I would prefer to see somethnig done about the convergence mechanics - Adding a cone of fire for example.

While this would probably be the best solution, I suspect strongly that the general video game playing public would not like it much at all. While it would not be too bad if only one weapon was being fired at a time (since there are many other games that people are rather familiar with that does this), having your HBK-4P's 6 ML volley fly off at random angles within the firing cone might just be too much of a stormtrooper effect and would drive people crazy. If the HBK-4P's 6ML volley fired forward with the beams all parallel, that would be more manageable for most players, and would be a middle ground between all hitting the same spot, and all hitting random spots within a cone.

MustrumRidcully, on 26 November 2012 - 06:32 AM, said:

Or maybe if it has to be something weapon-affecting, increase the cooldown of weapons fired together in one group. (And to avoid abuse for people that are capable of pressing more than one button at a time, enforce a a small delay when people fire weapons together without a shared weapon group.)

Could also just not let multiple groups fire at the same time, but I do not think that is a good idea at all.

[Antarius]

Indoorsman, on 26 November 2012 - 10:09 AM, said:

I know that, but right now there is one setting, and proposing aiming nerfs is another setting. Comparing one setting to the other, skill becomes less useful... nerfed.

As you have stated, MWO isnt a TT, its more or less a FirstPersonShooter with more complexity. So we compare it to one everybody knows, Counterstrike. In CS everyweapon have shot-spread, if fired fast. This made it harder to hit, you needed skill to hit with a AK-47, maybe singlefireing or countermovement with the mouse, this made the game harder to play, so the need for skill wasnt nerfed it was increased. Everybody can point at a location and hit a button, it needs knowlege of the weapon and a bit of handiness to hit with a weapon that needs countermovement to hit.

I am not talking about random hit for every weapon, i talk about make it difficulter to hit only one component with lasers, especially with many of em, to get them even with other weapon types, like rockets, and ballistics.

[Indoorsman]

Antarius, on 26 November 2012 - 11:10 AM, said:

As you have stated, MWO isnt a TT, its more or less a FirstPersonShooter with more complexity. So we compare it to one everybody knows, Counterstrike. In CS everyweapon have shot-spread, if fired fast. This made it harder to hit, you needed skill to hit with a AK-47, maybe singlefireing or countermovement with the mouse, this made the game harder to play, so the need for skill wasnt nerfed it was increased. Everybody can point at a location and hit a button, it needs knowlege of the weapon and a bit of handiness to hit with a weapon that needs countermovement to hit.

I am not talking about random hit for every weapon, i talk about make it difficulter to hit only one component with lasers, especially with many of em, to get them even with other weapon types, like rockets, and ballistics.

Well if we're comparing to Counterstrike, spread already exists. In Counterstrike there was 1 health pool. Shooting a guy in the head, hand or kneecap is dealing damage to the same health pool. In this game we have 11 hitboxes w/armor, 8 w/o armor, each with their own hitpoints. So compared to Counterstrike there already is "spread", compared to TT maybe not so much.

Let's compare this game to the other Mech Warrior PC games though. Did they have spread?

[Asatruer]

Indoorsman, on 26 November 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

Well if we're comparing to Counterstrike, spread already exists. In Counterstrike there was 1 health pool. Shooting a guy in the head, hand or kneecap is dealing damage to the same health pool. In this game we have 11 hitboxes w/armor, 8 w/o armor, each with their own hitpoints. So compared to Counterstrike there already is "spread", compared to TT maybe not so much.

Counter Strike does indeed have one health pool, but shooting a guy in the head does a lot more damage than shooting the same guy in the leg. So accuracy on where you are shooting and hitting does matter.

Indoorsman, on 26 November 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

Let's compare this game to the other Mech Warrior PC games though. Did they have spread?

Two wrongs do not make a right.

[MustrumRidcully]

Asatruer, on 26 November 2012 - 10:31 AM, said:

We are already seeing this to some extent, with the current heat dissipation working on a per 10 seconds period and weapons firing closer to on a per 3 seconds period. High heat weapons are disadvantaged more by slowing cooling down more than low heat weapons.

Exactly. THe Gauss Rifle user just doesn't care that he now produces 2.5 times the heat he did in the table top, it's just 1.5 points of heat more, and he gets a neat shiny 22.5 more damage (over 10 seconds) out of it.

And the problem with boating has always been that it magnifies the weapon's strength and weaknesses - and imbalanced weapons have more strengths to magnify than weaknesses to magnify. And within the limits of 20 to 100 ton range, 2 Gauss Rifles is already pretty "boaty" for a Gauss Rifle.

Asatruer, on 26 November 2012 - 10:31 AM, said:

While this would probably be the best solution, I suspect strongly that the general video game playing public would not like it much at all.

There are, as far as I know, popular videogames that have things like cone of fire. But most of those don't have you fire 6 of them together, just one gun.

Asatruer, on 26 November 2012 - 10:31 AM, said:

Could also just not let multiple groups fire at the same time, but I do not think that is a good idea at all.

The same time is a difficult thing to quantify - I suspect that when I press key A followed by key B, that there will be a small time delay between the two, and if only because that's how the keyboard transfers the information to the computer. Within a program, each key press will be its ouwn input event, which means they will be handled at different times. So either a delay or a time frame in which weapons fired togehter are treated as such - and the frame must be long enough to matter.

[Antarius]

Indoorsman, on 26 November 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

Well if we're comparing to Counterstrike, spread already exists. In Counterstrike there was 1 health pool. Shooting a guy in the head, hand or kneecap is dealing damage to the same health pool. In this game we have 11 hitboxes w/armor, 8 w/o armor, each with their own hitpoints. So compared to Counterstrike there already is "spread", compared to TT maybe not so much.

more hitboxes dont necessary mean more spread, it mean more possible spread.

If every weapon shoots always accurate where your mouse points to, its no problem to hit allways the same spot, with this big mechs. I talking about, coreing a mech, which is very easy with mass-laser. (for example i can kill a atlas with my 6ml laser-jenner in short time, without doing any dmg to an other part than centertorso rear) Thats to easy i say, its to easy to pinpoint your dmg with lasers, even over mid-range.

this is a reason laser-boating is a bit out of balance, if the pilot isnt a moron.

My opinion:
Not only this isnt in the "spirit" of Battletech / Mechwarrior to only core an enemy and dont harm any other part, its not balanced with other weapon groups (rockets / ballistics) which havent this ability if the target moves. It should be a challange to hit an open bodypart while full speed and the enemy trys to protect it. The dmg should spread a bit over the Mech, like in the TT ( more style, more epic, more fun)

[Zyllos]

I am 100% in the boat that convergence is why everything is out of wack.

Lasers are easy to choose locations to hit with. And they make hitting fast/small targets much easier. While I agree that the laser duration was ment to fix this by having to keep the weapon on target, the issue is that this can partly be circumvented with enough lasers firing at the same point.

Projectile weapons are farely hard to hit with, at least against moving targets or yourself moving. Now, if you hit, they deal their entire damage to that location but requires a lot of work to get them to land on the target, much less on a single location. Convergence does not fix this issue due to either having to lead targets to land shots or just completely missing.

Now on top of this, covergence allows small array of weapons to act EXACTLY like larger weapons, dealing all their damage to a single location on each fire.

Another problem that is presented here, the range advantage of weapons. Not so much the damage dealt at optimum range but how much you pay for that extra range. Paying an extra 3 heat per firing of the ER LL is not worth the extra 225m. This is because to conversion from turn base to real time. There are so many intricacies that is generalized or flat out ignored in the CBT turn.

But, in reference to convergence, there was a post by PGI stateing that they want to allow their mech warriors to choose their locations to hit. I just hope they decide that this decision is not a good idea.

[Asatruer]

Zyllos, on 26 November 2012 - 02:05 PM, said:

Now on top of this, covergence allows small array of weapons to act EXACTLY like larger weapons, dealing all their damage to a single location on each fire.

Not quiet exactly like, but at least nearly exactly like in respect to the damage they deal. Looking at the 4ML vs an AC/20 example, the beam duration of the 4MLs does cause the damage caused to be less focused, though at the same time this beam duration has the advantage of making it a bit easier to hit a faster moving target for at least some damage. Though beyond damage dealing, the 4MLs are lighter than the AC/20, take up less critical spaces, and have no ammo, but run hotter and require more hardpoints. One big thing that the 4MLs have in their favor, is that they can be mounted in more diverse locations (CT and Head) and by being scattered around in the mech are less prone to complete destruction, because each destroyed ML only reduces the damage output rather than completely shutting it off like destroying the AC/20.

This last one bring up a question, as I understand the critical hit system and damaging components, wouldn't it take 40hp of damage to destroy the four medium lasers compared to the 10 it would take to destroy the AC/20? If this is true, then the 4MLs can be stuck in the same location and still be less prone to destruction than the AC/20...

This is probably why I never see anything less than all of my HBK-4P's RT mounted lasers go dark, and then only when the torso itself is completely destroyed.