214 replies to this topic

[Jiri Starrider]

• The weapon or 'Mech affected. - All Ballistic Weapons
  
• The specific stats of that weapon or 'Mech affected. - Projectile speed
  
• A suggested change (increase/decrease) to the stats to improve balance. - Increase speed. The tank gun on the Abrams has a Muzzle Velocity of 1500 to 1700 meters per second. The worlds first (so they will only get better) weaponized "gauss rifle" is running 2000 to 2500 meters per second - AT HALF POWER. I know a second is a long time when dealing with a moving target, but as slow as it seems projectiles are I would expect the shells to be fitted with hover jets to keep them on the flat trajectories they enjoy.

[HarlekinEO]

Lanessar, on 27 November 2012 - 01:00 PM, said:

As you wish, below:

• AWS-8Q, AWS-8M are the primary visible representations
  
• Heat generated by multiple PPCs (or any laser above a MPL) are extremely difficult to manage, even with doubles. Energy weapon builds are nearly non-existent (minus one or two LL atlas, or the 4 PPC Atlas, which are non-viable comparative to AC or LRM-based builds).
  
• Please see the following posts for community feedback or ideas on how to allow standard builds to be viable:

Heat, and why DHS isn't he problem or the solution


Why the PPC and high heat weapons are broken

Did you ever tryed to chain the PPKs?

As pure Awesome Player I cant agree with you. I got good builds for 8Q and 9M and they can play there role. You just need to lern how to manage heat, never Alpha, while you don't have the heat capacity. Rest is up to you and your team.

ER-PPKs are a bit weak, a light Damage increase would be sweet. The heating is ok, since it is the deal with this kind of weapon.

Edited by HarlekinEO, 03 December 2012 - 02:01 AM.

[Crazy Leroy]

LRMs are broken and here's why:

Disclaimer: I didn't read every post in this thread but I read a lot, don't know if I'm going to say something that's already said but I don't think so.

I've seen people say stuff like "LRMS should only do 1 damage like they do in tabletop." Well, that's wrong, because the armor was doubled in this game, so to maintain their 1:1 ratio with TT, they'd have to do 2 damage, and they do what 1.8? So that's less than TT, except....wait, no it isn't. They ought to be doing 1.7, or more specifically 1.6 repeating (rounded up to 1.7.) Why? Well, because in TT you almost never hit with every single LRM, each LRM has an average amount of damage that they do because you roll on the cluster to hit table. LRM 5's on average do 3 damage, 10's do 6, 15's do 9, and 20's do 12. If you divide 5 by 3, 10 by 6, 15 by 9 ect. what you end up with in each case is 1.6 repeating, the average damage done by LRMs in tabletop. In fact, in Aerospace rules, LRMS or LB autocannons or anything that uses the cluster to hit table only ever does it's average damage.

Ok so problem two: You could argue that by making LRM damage less than 2 in MWO you're making it so that no LRM ever does "full" TT damage, even if they all hit (which I'm pretty sure they do, barring AMS...more on that later.) So, even at 1.8 damage per missile, they're underpowered right? Wrong. Why? Because you get to fire them at twice the rate you do in TT, which is 10 seconds. You can launch at least 2 salvo's, realistically more than that in 10 seconds in MWO. So an LRM 10 is really an LRM 20, and a 20 an LRM 40. Even at 1.8 damage per missile a single LRM 20 does 72 damage in two salvos, or two 20s fired simultaneously do 72 damage, two 20's fired twice do 144. That will kill or severely damage most mechs if they all hit the torsos. Even 2 gauss rifles can't touch that kind of damage, heck the only thing that's close is two AC/20s. Given the rate of fire of these things, they should be doing only half the damage they do now, in order to balance them with the TT. People want to complain that if that were true no launcer would ever do it's full compliment of damage? Maybe that's what Artemis is for.

Now, you might think that since LRM 20's and AC/20's both can do 20 damage per instance of the weapon that they should both be equally dangerous right? Once again, it's not that simple. Any TT player will tell you that they're waaaay more afraid of an AC/20 than an LRM 20, for two reasons. #1 The LRM 20 is only going to do 12 damage on average, and #2 the LRM spreads the damage around and the AC/20 puts it all in one place. Even an Atlas has to worry if it takes two 20 slugs to the same location, but even if all the missiles hit and he takes 5 points to 4 locations? Please. But, let's look at the differences here in MWO. Assuming each weapon can fire twice in 10 seconds, the problem is that if a mech with an LRM 20, and a mech with an AC/20 are both 1000 km away, the LRM can fire twice, possibly 3 times before the mech with the AC/20 is even in range, now, this is true in TT as well, but the one difference in TT is that range affects all weapons equally, LRMs suffer no range penalty at all in MWO, other weapons do because they have to be manually aimed by the player. (This is where people will argue about flight time and that you can dodge them or get behind cover, but that is much more easily said than done, especially if whatever is spotting for those LRM boats is currently running circles around you and/or shooting you.)

While we're on the subject of range. 1000km? That's equivalent to 33.3 hexes in TT. No weapon in the game (aside from actual artillery) has that kind of range. If it were scaled correctly LRMs would have a maximum range of 630km like they do in TT. Now, this I for one would love to see. This would mean that any mech with LRMs would have to do more than park itself behind a hill 3/4ths the map away from anything with one finger hovering over the "launch LRM" button and the other hand holding the coffee cup. This would mean that, like in the tabletop, any mech that was in LRM range would also be in range to get shot at by anything with a gauss rifle or ER PPC, this would mean that the people firing the LRMs would have to think tactically as well as the people getting shot by them. It would also mean that one side of the battle wouldn't have to also have LRM boats, if for no other reason than to shoot the other side's LRM boats. As it stands now, only one party has to worry about moving and shooting, and that's the party not using LRMS. (Taking 1 step backwards behind the building/ridge you're hiding behind doesn't count, I should know, I used the trial LRM hunchback almost exclusively until I bought a mech.)

And if there's anyone out there who wants to say that LRMs should do 1.8 damage because AMS exists...save it. People are using tonnage, and putting ammo in their mechs that could be used for something else to field that AMS. AMS is there to make missiles less dangerous, so the missiles themselves should have no way to compensate for the fact that a mech might have AMS. Additionally, having AMS shouldn't feel like a requirement, but it does.

I say either half the damage of LRMs, or make the range more reasonable, alternatively you could just greatly increase the rate of fire. I know there was someone that argued that it was basically rock paper scissors and that fast light mechs would own LRM boats for free, but #1, even fast mechs get missiles locked onto them, and they die a lot faster, and #2 Even if we pretend any random commando can own an LRM catapult effortlessly, and the rock paper scissors analogy is true, unless you know 7 other people online at the same time, you can't exactly control what mechs are in your team when you join a random game can you? You shouldn't lose a match because your opponent has 5 rocks and you have 0 paper.

[BigMooingCow]

EmperorMyrf, on 02 December 2012 - 10:06 AM, said:

With my proposed fixes, the DPS drops from 4 to 2.86, and the HPS drops from 2 to 0.7. In addition, ammo per ton is doubled. This means what used to require 18-20 tons of dedicated tonnage now only requires 11-12 tons. The stock Jagermechs main guns now only have a heat draw of 2.7 HPS, not including the 1 HPS being sunk. So now you can fire your main guns over 1/3 the time, and will have accumulated more damage over time than the current Jagermech situation.

Hm, that's a good point, I guess. Reducing the DPS and HPS reduces its effective weight, which makes a mech with a bunch of AC/2's more viable. My Phract 4X can't sustain fire very long with its four AC/2's, and it certainly would if the heat were cut in half. Lowering the damage would make it less of a threat, however, when you DID load up a bunch of them.

Interesting idea. It didn't sink in with me when you originally brought it up.

[EmperorMyrf]

BigMooingCow, on 03 December 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

Hm, that's a good point, I guess. Reducing the DPS and HPS reduces its effective weight, which makes a mech with a bunch of AC/2's more viable. My Phract 4X can't sustain fire very long with its four AC/2's, and it certainly would if the heat were cut in half. Lowering the damage would make it less of a threat, however, when you DID load up a bunch of them.

Interesting idea. It didn't sink in with me when you originally brought it up.

Understandable, it's a lot of changes at once.

As Mustrum hinted at, reducing its knock will reduce its ability to supress. I hope they don't overcompensate when they remove the knock (hopefully tomorrow) so as to allow people to ignore incoming AC/2 fire.

[Crazy Leroy]

Here's another thing.

Do maximum ranges on weapons actually exist? I ask this because when spectating a few matches after I died, I noticed a mech achieving target lock with LRMS from about 1300km away. The mech he was firing at was taking damage too, but I can't be 100% certain it was by the LRMS. Either way I don't understand why achieving lock would be possible from further away than max range. Additionally I've seem the same thing with Autocannons. Weapons like autocannons/missiles seem to travel further than their maximum range and as near as I can tell, still do damage if they hit, but maybe the animations are just the same and no damage is recorded, which is what I hope is happening.

[BigMooingCow]

Crazy Leroy, on 04 December 2012 - 04:40 AM, said:

Here's another thing.

Do maximum ranges on weapons actually exist? I ask this because when spectating a few matches after I died, I noticed a mech achieving target lock with LRMS from about 1300km away. The mech he was firing at was taking damage too, but I can't be 100% certain it was by the LRMS. Either way I don't understand why achieving lock would be possible from further away than max range. Additionally I've seem the same thing with Autocannons. Weapons like autocannons/missiles seem to travel further than their maximum range and as near as I can tell, still do damage if they hit, but maybe the animations are just the same and no damage is recorded, which is what I hope is happening.

Weapons have a maximum effective range, and that's the one quoted. Weapons other than missiles do damage beyond this range, but it falls off. Check out the weapon tables:

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/

You can see, for example, that the Large Laser does full damage out to 450M, but can reach all the way out to 900M.

I make use of this added range at the beginning of matches when my heat is zero and nobody's in range, but it's generally bad to fire too much outside your maximum range because you'll be wasting heat and/or ammo.

I'm glad LRMs lock outside their maximum. That way I can fire when they finally close to firing range, and not wait for a lock.

[Imagine Dragons]

Crazy Leroy, on 04 December 2012 - 04:40 AM, said:

Here's another thing.

Do maximum ranges on weapons actually exist? I ask this because when spectating a few matches after I died, I noticed a mech achieving target lock with LRMS from about 1300km away. The mech he was firing at was taking damage too, but I can't be 100% certain it was by the LRMS. Either way I don't understand why achieving lock would be possible from further away than max range. Additionally I've seem the same thing with Autocannons. Weapons like autocannons/missiles seem to travel further than their maximum range and as near as I can tell, still do damage if they hit, but maybe the animations are just the same and no damage is recorded, which is what I hope is happening.

You can lock onto somebody from a long distance away if your teammate has a lock.

Missiles self-destruct past their listed range.

Ballistics can go 3x their listed range before dealing 0 damage (however damage fall off past the listed range is A LOT)

Energy can go 2x their listed range before dealing 0 damage.

MGs follow energy rules for some reason.

[DivineEvil]

Beside the damage reduction, Ballistic weapons are tend to lose velocity and fall from the linear trajectory, thus even though you can hit enemies far beyond optimal range of AC2, you'll have to make a vertical shift to actually hit the target.

When the hell are they're going to buff the MGs? Seriously, I have a Cicada-3C which is simply useless due to MG's pathetic damage (about 5-10 times lower than it should be by TT and general balance sense), and there's nothing I can do about it. It has 4x Ballistics and 1x Energy hardpoints for 40 tons. Even with all upgrades and XL engine you cannot mount anything viable into it, there's no space even for 2x AC2 alone. This variant is completely hard-weld 4x MG mech with an option to mount PPC or LL into remaining Energy slot. Playing it with 0.04 MGs is nothing but setting your team up. Four weapons of 2 tons, another 2 tons for ammo, melee range, scattered fire, useless in short skirmishes, with DPS of 1.6???

[Nyr Vonn]

Missiles are overpowered again. You should have left it alone from the last patch. Stop thinking of the short term money goals and start thinking about the long term money goals, because at this rate you are going to lose your die hard fan base because you put out an inferior product just to satisfiy your investors. Do it right the first time!!! Look at what happened to StarWars The Old Republic had so many subscribers and then they were losing people by the tens to hundreds of thousands monthly till now that game is basically all but dead. Learn from the mistakes.

[Imagine Dragons]

DivineEvil, on 04 December 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

When the hell are they're going to buff the MGs? Seriously, I have a Cicada-3C which is simply useless due to MG's pathetic damage (about 5-10 times lower than it should be by TT and general balance sense), and there's nothing I can do about it. It has 4x Ballistics and 1x Energy hardpoints for 40 tons. Even with all upgrades and XL engine you cannot mount anything viable into it, there's no space even for 2x AC2 alone. This variant is completely hard-weld 4x MG mech with an option to mount PPC or LL into remaining Energy slot. Playing it with 0.04 MGs is nothing but setting your team up. Four weapons of 2 tons, another 2 tons for ammo, melee range, scattered fire, useless in short skirmishes, with DPS of 1.6???

But wait! MGs in battletech are 50cals! The gun on top of humvees and abrams! Nevermind that the MG itself weighs almost twice as much as the GAU-8 on the A-10! /sarcasm

[Buckminster]

DivineEvil, on 04 December 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

When the hell are they're going to buff the MGs? Seriously, I have a Cicada-3C which is simply useless due to MG's pathetic damage (about 5-10 times lower than it should be by TT and general balance sense), and there's nothing I can do about it. It has 4x Ballistics and 1x Energy hardpoints for 40 tons. Even with all upgrades and XL engine you cannot mount anything viable into it, there's no space even for 2x AC2 alone. This variant is completely hard-weld 4x MG mech with an option to mount PPC or LL into remaining Energy slot. Playing it with 0.04 MGs is nothing but setting your team up. Four weapons of 2 tons, another 2 tons for ammo, melee range, scattered fire, useless in short skirmishes, with DPS of 1.6???

Then why'd you buy it? :-P

Nyr Vonn, on 04 December 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

Missiles are overpowered again. You should have left it alone from the last patch. Stop thinking of the short term money goals and start thinking about the long term money goals, because at this rate you are going to lose your die hard fan base because you put out an inferior product just to satisfiy your investors. Do it right the first time!!! Look at what happened to StarWars The Old Republic had so many subscribers and then they were losing people by the tens to hundreds of thousands monthly till now that game is basically all but dead. Learn from the mistakes.

Thanks for the constructive post. My assumption is that 1) you don't have AMS, 2) run out in the open, and 3) stand still. LRMs are fairly easy to counter with a little equipment and know-how.

[MustrumRidcully]

Nyr Vonn, on 04 December 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

Missiles are overpowered again. You should have left it alone from the last patch. Stop thinking of the short term money goals and start thinking about the long term money goals, because at this rate you are going to lose your die hard fan base because you put out an inferior product just to satisfiy your investors. Do it right the first time!!! Look at what happened to StarWars The Old Republic had so many subscribers and then they were losing people by the tens to hundreds of thousands monthly till now that game is basically all but dead. Learn from the mistakes.

What should they learn? How to lose more than hundreds of thousands of subscriber per month? Wouldn't that be pointless, MW:O didn't even have that many subscribers to begin with...

[Glythe]

ECM is too strong. I suggest making the change so that anyone using an ECM device cannot acquire locks on the enemy with SSRMs or LRMs under any circumstance. Note Allies under an ECM shield that they do not generate will operate normally.

Currently the strategy as a light is to hunt for the enemy light... if he doesn't have ECM and you have streaks you get a free kill and take minimal damage. This is horribly broken. I can imagine new players earning enough money to get a new commando only to be repeatedly destroyed by someone running the 2D and deciding to stop right there.

[Buckminster]

I'm trying to slog through the current ECM implementation, waiting to see what they do in this next patch. By then they'll have had a solid week of playtesting and comments, and they'll hopefully come up with something to tone it down.

Although what I'm really hoping for is a mtachmaker fix. The class-based drops lead to a lot of issues - right now if I drop in a trial awesome, the other team gets an undefined assault, from a trial awesome all the way up to an ECM'd Atlas. They're asking for trouble - there's no way a new pilot in a trial awesome is going to be as effective as a vet pilot in his tricked out Atlas D-DC.