53 replies to this topic

[Kadassa]

Throughout the history of humanity people have taken things and made them rediculous its litterally in human nature. The ONLY way to take out boats on this game is to do away with the Mechbay. Which is something that would kill this game. And you say that Scouts can't outrun a Streak cat? Uhm....My cent is running the stock engine which is what 64.kph and I can outrun them.....ALL of the scouts are faster than my cent. And I don't use a missel system on my Cent just Lasers. For some reason I have like a 2 second delay before they fire with the rest of the weapons which isen't fast enough for my playsyle. Usually a mix of ER large lasers and a few Medium lasers. I've run into quite a few streak cats in my playing and I always tear them to shreds from a distance. I think I've only had one close once or twice on me but they didn't kill me. Did they fix the issue with the Streaks heading straight for CT?

[BatWing]

My 2 cents, quickly:

Boat is not the problem. Weapon is not necessarely the problem.

About boats, play as a team. Stay out of range where possible and have your team focus firing. A boat can have 1 target, your 4 man team can fire 4 to 1

About weapon balancing, at first check if "non-boat" configs will be hardly penalized by the nerf. If a normal config becomes unusable or will have to switch to a different weapon to continue to have a decent effectiveness, then you do not have to nerf the weapon.

Boats maybe critical on 1 vs 1 fight but too many ppl forget this game is not made for 1to 1 fight, either you like it or not.

[Kadassa]

Actually I think all thoes missel hardpoints is Cannon accurate. I remember Mw4 mercs which had the hardpoint system just like MWO and the Catapult on it had like a buttload of missel hardpoints.I remember putting like 4 clan LRM20s on them alot and putting my lance mates in them Now I DO remember thoes hardpoints having a slot limit in them which would keep you from putting say an AC20 in the machinegun slot on a light mech

[Vlad Ward]

Honestly, at this point some people need to shut the **** up and wait a month for real Team vs Team play to be introduced in order to see how competitive weapon balance plays out in the metagame.

Boats are strong, but they encourage significantly greater tactical diversity than a bunch of 1xLRM + 1xBallistic + 2-4x Laser Stockbots. Putting everyone on 100% even footing in the match itself completely destroys the meta-game and defeats the purpose of the Mechlab.

[HurlockHolmes]

Kadassa, on 25 November 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

Throughout the history of humanity people have taken things and made them rediculous its litterally in human nature. The ONLY way to take out boats on this game is to do away with the Mechbay. Which is something that would kill this game. And you say that Scouts can't outrun a Streak cat? Uhm....My cent is running the stock engine which is what 64.kph and I can outrun them.....ALL of the scouts are faster than my cent. And I don't use a missel system on my Cent just Lasers. For some reason I have like a 2 second delay before they fire with the rest of the weapons which isen't fast enough for my playsyle. Usually a mix of ER large lasers and a few Medium lasers. I've run into quite a few streak cats in my playing and I always tear them to shreds from a distance. I think I've only had one close once or twice on me but they didn't kill me. Did they fix the issue with the Streaks heading straight for CT?

They generally hit ct/rt/lt still, but not nearly as bad as before.

Also a proper sscat will have an xl and go 80+.

[PYR0MANCER]

We don't even have a full game yet... Can all the nerf this and that just calm down... Some things did really need a nerf and the devs took care of it... Still are...


We have weapons in the game that still might have bugs we don't know about, just like the streaks were bugged and we didn't know, so when they finally fixed the bugs then they started working on balancing them... But guess what... Every new mech that comes in the game for a while and every new weapon/item that comes into the game sets the previous balance a little off kilter...


The real problem (in my opinion) with boats is some people (probably some, if not all, of the ones complaining) are playing this game like it's a typical FPS and just charging into battle and blasting away thinking that because they got the first shot off they will win the DPS battle no matter what weapon system they are going up against... So when a weapon system whoops their hooha they complain that it's too powerful...


This is not an FPS...


This is not an FPS...


This is not an FPS...


This is a mechwarrior game and no matter how hard PGI are trying to remake world of tanks the fact remains that it is not a typical FPS... You cannot round a corner and twitch shoot your way to victory... Beyond all that we don't have a proper game mode to play in yet... We have tiny little maps that encourage alot of short range combat with little options for any true strategy...


Yes... Some things need a nerf, and they got nerfed... The devs have already said that streaks are getting another tweak it's been posted in the forums in various threads and yet, here we go again, another thread about the same thing the devs have already said they are going to work on...


At least attempt to look through a couple pages of threads and check to see if someone hasn't already complained... At least attempt to search for another thread about the exact same thing...


But I know most of you won't...


Forums these days speed through pages because people post and post and post about the same thing over and over...


TL:DR

Things that need an immediate nerf get looked at and get nerfed pretty hard... Things that are bugged still and can't be balanced because of bugs, we are not privy to, and the devs work on them after the bugs are fixed... People complaining should check for threads on the same subject and complain in those... People should just complain less in general because this game is behind schedule and still has quite a ways to go before any real balancing can begin...


P.S. I will agree that trying to tackle this issue from the point of the singular weapon is the wrong way to go and if in the future these 'boats' do need tweaking I hope is is done from the standpoint of the weapon platform but not the individual weapon...

Edited by Tyros the Pyromancer, 25 November 2012 - 09:35 PM.

[Neon Samurai]

Nerf yachts

[Roughneck45]

Rhent, on 25 November 2012 - 08:18 PM, said:

Specialized boats are very easy to kill. The reason why boats exist is due to the different firing properties of the weapons and having to lead your target for AC/Gauss/PPC and directly firing and holding your fire for Laser and having to maintain a lock for Streaks or LRM's and lastly having to do a longer lead and wait for the fire to take place with a SRM.

I run boats exclusively, however I know their strengths and weaknesses and I only play them. I don't charge a LRM Boat with an AC/20 Boat at 1K. I do however follow behind the brawlers and let them open up and then pop in to start dropping dual AC/20 shots to get some quick kills before everyone focus on me and take me out.

LRM Boats:
-Send in fast moving light mechs to the rear lines and the LRM Boats can do very little to defeat them. The exception is a Catapult w/ 4 Streaks as back up. It then forces the Light Mechs to actually target the Cats arms and blow them off. Support with your teams LRM's and a Gauss/PPC Snipe in the torso before the lights charge in

Gauss Boats
-Send in fast moving light mechs to the rear lines and the LRM Boats can do very little to defeat them. The exception is a Catapult w/ 4 Streaks as back up. It then forces the Light Mechs to actually target the Cats arms and blow them off. Support with your teams LRM's and a Gauss/PPC Snipe in the torso before the lights charge in. At the very least, the light mechs will force the Gauss Boats to expend their extremely limited ammo reserves OR take them out of the fight long enough for other mechs to close and kill them.

Streak Boats
If they are a Catapult boating 6, SHOOT THEIR ARMS off, its easy to do seeing how big they are and then they are useless.

AC/20 Boat
They move exceedingly slow and have a range of 270, max 540. You can very easily LRM one to death OR destroy their AC/20's. Once the torso armor is stripped, the AC/20 is exceedingly easy to destroy. You aren't going to break 50KPH with a AC/20 Gauss Cat boat and have decent ammo to fight.

AC/5 or Ultra AC/5 Boats
If its a 4X, you shoot off their arms, again problem solved. The Ultra's also have a heat and jam issue to boot.

I know all of this.

I do not think boating is a problem.

The problem is that when certain types of boats become exceedingly better than others, like the gausscat and the streak boat, the weapon is what needs to be looked at. They are already making gaussrifles more delicate, im fairly certain something will be changed about streaks.

My personal opinion is to reduce the shake and remove the explosions right in front of the cockpit. The glaring bug only makes it worse. The damage is not unreasonable, but having that much utiliy with the lock capabilites is just over the top. LRM shake was reduced, but it should probably have even more shake than streaks considering the payload, and that it takes a tiny bit more skill to land with them.

Edited by Roughneck45, 25 November 2012 - 10:01 PM.

[Ricama]

Drakken, on 25 November 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

This is not a new issue, really. I don't see why no one saw this coming a mile away! Any time you have the opportunity to customize the loadout of your mech without explicit rules restricting it, boating will occur. I agree that a certain amount of boating is needed in the game. LRM boats truly do have their place, and if ECM would have been introduced concurrently with artemis, the affect of LRM boats would have been negated.

I also agree that the weapons should not be nerfed - especially when not all of the other equipment is in. The other equipment that is available goes a long way towards balancing against certain type of boating (the aforementioned artemis issue comes to mind).

As for streakcats, the answer is one of those "duh" solutions, really: decrease the number of missile slots on it. I mean, really...or here's an idea...blow its darn arms off! Without missile pods, there can't be any missiles....nuff said about that, I think.

For every one person that cries "foul" about boating, there are three tactics that could render that particular boat inert, or less effective - again, assuming all the equipment is in. So no...don't nerf the weapons. Heck, don't even nerf the boats yet! Just get the rest of the darn equipment in and see how it all balances out first! THEN start tweaking the balance. You cannot look at the game as it is now and start whining...at least wait until all the equipment is in before you do...

I would actually argue that the system explicitly allows boating, since there are mechs with all the same hardpoint. The A1 in particular: there's only 3 weapon systems it can mount (and streaks are basically a subset of srms) and it's suppose to be a surprise that people boat in them?

Now the other parts I agree with and will just add, boating doesn't just magnify weapon imbalance like a lot of people seem to think, it also magnifies strengths and weaknesses in your design. This is why some people have no problem with boats and others can't win no matter what they try. I also feel that they should hold off on nerfing things until pugs, trials and groups get their own separate playgrounds and then see what's going on with balance.

[MustrumRidcully]

Sybreed, on 25 November 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:

It seems PGI aren't seeing the issue from the correct angle.

Any decent weapons, if boated, can become OP. (well, except for MGs and Flamers)

No. An OP weapon that is boated leads to an OP mech. A mech boating a balanced weapon is no more powerful than a non-boat that has a mix of balanced weapons. It's only strengh will be that it is specialized in one distance class typically - the class where it's best at.

If you'd boat PPCs (laughable in M:WO right now), you're better at 500m than someone that uses Medium Lasers and AC/5s. (If all these 3 weapons were balanced). But if that non-boat gets within close range, the close range advantage of the MLs will shine, and eventually the minimum range of the PPCs might hurt you.

All this requires that weapons are balanced, obviously.
The PPC is worse than Medium Lasers at close range because it pays more weight (in terms of the weapon itself and the heat sinks required to fire it) than the Medium Laser, so that the Medium Laser user can equip more. Someone that mixes weapons will lose a bit in the long range department but gain in the short range department, meaning that he can out-damage a foe that "boats" a long range weapons. And if the boat is using short range weapons, than he'll outperform him at long range.

That boating is seen as a problem is primarily a result of imbalanced weapons, weapons that are either too strong at their own rule or have no weaknesses even if used outside their role.


Of course, ther are some other advantages to boating - like better benefitting of convergence. But you don't actually need to need identical weapons here - if you run a PPC and a Gauss Rifle, both weapons have similar convergence profiles. Same for all Lasers.
The only other advantage is that of specialization - having only weapons for your designated range/role will make you the tough to deal with if engaged at your range and within your role parameters. But outside, you will only not suffer if your weapon is imbalanced.

[BoomDog]

Kadassa, on 25 November 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

Throughout the history of humanity people have taken things and made them rediculous its litterally in human nature. The ONLY way to take out boats on this game is to do away with the Mechbay. Which is something that would kill this game. And you say that Scouts can't outrun a Streak cat? Uhm....My cent is running the stock engine which is what 64.kph and I can outrun them.....ALL of the scouts are faster than my cent. And I don't use a missel system on my Cent just Lasers. For some reason I have like a 2 second delay before they fire with the rest of the weapons which isen't fast enough for my playsyle. Usually a mix of ER large lasers and a few Medium lasers. I've run into quite a few streak cats in my playing and I always tear them to shreds from a distance. I think I've only had one close once or twice on me but they didn't kill me. Did they fix the issue with the Streaks heading straight for CT?

I encountered the delay in firing missiles on the Centurion. Luckily, an old veteran filled me in. You have to open the missile bay doors at the beginning of the match by hitting the "/" key.

[AHZeruel]

I agree with OP, but i think boating also has a place in the game.

Boating weapons is fine, good weapons are fine, the problem is when boating a slightly over powered weapon

[Dwarfling]

How about, and this might sound crazy to PGI, we buff around the rest of the weapons around the SSRM2 and fix the netcode so we can hit lights without having to guess where they actually are?

[clanwolf3050]

Lets not forget the some 'mechs are boats out of the box, most Catapults, HBK-4P, just of the ones off the top of my head. Being a boat is sometimes part of the role the 'Mech plays on the battle field. You should look at the TT 'mechs and there are loads of boats.