21 replies to this topic

[Voidsinger]

We all know the 75% free is being exploited by those who will use every little loophole to get an edge.

For this to work, it should be combined with dropping ammunition prices down to about one third what they are now.

This would mean no matter how many launchers of a type the mech carries, it gets just one free ton of ammunition for that type.

Yes, part of this is about boating. Another part is about people being more thoughtful with the ammunition they do carry, rather than just carelessly spamming fire.

It is also about encouraging some diversity in weaponry. Making those mechs that do diversify a bit rewarded over the specialist machines. If there is one reason the trial mechs look so bad it is that they are designed on the Battletech principles of being good enough for the job over a range of situations. They get creamed by the specialists.

Feedback alweays welcome.

[Nexus Omega]

I Like the 1 ton free ammo idea, and the reduce ammo costs to 1/3,

SSRM's are stupid expensive, and the fact that people are using the 75% free refill instead of rearming (missiles) is a sign things need to change,

I assume you mean this:

Currently:
Refilling SSRM's from 75% = 14,100 (PS not sure if this number is 100% correct)

A) Change to:
Refilling SSRM's from 0% = 4,700

or did you mean:
Refilling SSRM's from 0% = 18,800 (14,100 x 4 / 3)

I have noticed that firing a few rounds from a weapon, (IE MAchiengun) reduces it to 75% post game

[focuspark]

How about nothing for free and better rewards for matches?

[Voidsinger]

Nexus Omega, on 27 November 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

I Like the 1 ton free ammo idea, and the reduce ammo costs to 1/3,

SSRM's are stupid expensive, and the fact that people are using the 75% free refill instead of rearming (missiles) is a sign things need to change,

I assume you mean this:

Currently:
Refilling SSRM's from 75% = 14,100 (PS not sure if this number is 100% correct)

A) Change to:
Refilling SSRM's from 0% = 4,700

or did you mean:
Refilling SSRM's from 0% = 18,800 (14,100 x 4 / 3)

I have noticed that firing a few rounds from a weapon, (IE MAchiengun) reduces it to 75% post game

What I meant was if you have only say 1 ton of Streak ammunition on board (regardless the number of launchers), you get 1 ton free and pay nothing.

If you had 2 tons on board, you would get one ton free, and the other ton would cost (54 000/3), 18 000 CB
For 3 tons total cost would be 36 000 to rearm totally.

The breakeven point if you don't exploit the 75% free now would be at 4 tons. This is the usual standard maximum amount carried for each type of weapon in Battletech.

To clarify further, this would mean that if you have an LRM20 + an LRM10, you would still just receive 1 free ton of LRM ammo since they are both LRM launchers.

I think part of the problem is that people boat weapons to increase their damage. The more ammunition you carry, the greater the potential damage you carry for that weapon, the greater your potential income is at the end of match. So, LRM boaters who do get extra payment per point of damage they do would notice no change until above 4 tons of ammunition, and even then it would not be totally harsh on reload costs, if they cost 1/3 what they do now.

It kills the percentage exploit (wehich I admit going to 25% free would also do). I like to reward people being prepared for a number of situations though, and this would encourage some secondary armament.

[TheCaptainJZ]

I'd rather have ammo at 25% of the cost or something and no free ammo rather than what we have now. Better rewards would be nice as well.

[Skyfaller]

Voidsinger, on 27 November 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

We all know the 75% free is being exploited by those who will use every little loophole to get an edge.

For this to work, it should be combined with dropping ammunition prices down to about one third what they are now.

This would mean no matter how many launchers of a type the mech carries, it gets just one free ton of ammunition for that type.

Yes, part of this is about boating. Another part is about people being more thoughtful with the ammunition they do carry, rather than just carelessly spamming fire.

It is also about encouraging some diversity in weaponry. Making those mechs that do diversify a bit rewarded over the specialist machines. If there is one reason the trial mechs look so bad it is that they are designed on the Battletech principles of being good enough for the job over a range of situations. They get creamed by the specialists.

Feedback alweays welcome.

Do that and you will see an exponential increase in suicide farmers rushing in to get spot bonus and dying quickly merely to collect cash to pay for the missile ammo of their main ride.

The issue is not the free ammo, its the ammo itself being idiotically expensive. I cannot run an LRM boat that has enough ammo to support the team if there was no free ammo. Hell, at 75% free my ammo costs for a full refill exceed 130k.

Given the horrid hit rate of the LRM due to terrain and lock loss, if there is no inexpensive ammo you will simply not have LRM support. People would just flock to streak cats or SRM cats and you'd be squealing away in a different post about how tired you are of getting killed by them.


My solution?

Make missile ammo as cheap as AC ammo.

Increase the cost of launchers signficantly. An LRM 20 should cost 5 million.

[Voidsinger]

focuspark, on 27 November 2012 - 02:45 PM, said:

How about nothing for free and better rewards for matches?

Here we go again....

Okay, it's in large part about balance, and not discouraging new players.

As a new player, you are likely to die quite a bit, and with huge influxes of new players, possibly have a greater string of losses.

MWO is trying to find a point where people don't race ahead too quickly, but at the same time, people don't consistently lose money due to their drop situation. I think they're doing pretty darn well at getting there.

The bug is of course Reload & Repair.

Now, nothing can be done about repair costs shoirt of overhauling the economy and pricing structure (which may be something they will do).

Reload costs get controversial. Because ammunition costs so much, they faced a choice of increasing rewards substantially, or finding a way to reduce the cost of reloading. They chose the latter, with the 75% free reloads, which would ensure mechs always entered matches with a decent ammunition load. Increasiong rewards would also have meant having to disproportionately make energy weapons more expensive to repair to make up for the fact they don't use reloads.

This has been abused by (primarily) boaters who just add an extra ton or two to get their entire missile loadout for free. That has to stop. What I propose is one method to do that, which also encourages a little diversity in weapon types (more in the Battletech spirit), while making things a touch more affordable.

As with all these things, what happens is up to the devs. We just give them ideas to kick around. Some of them might make into play, others not...

[Voidsinger]

Skyfaller, on 27 November 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

Do that and you will see an exponential increase in suicide farmers rushing in to get spot bonus and dying quickly merely to collect cash to pay for the missile ammo of their main ride.

The issue is not the free ammo, its the ammo itself being idiotically expensive. I cannot run an LRM boat that has enough ammo to support the team if there was no free ammo. Hell, at 75% free my ammo costs for a full refill exceed 130k.

Given the horrid hit rate of the LRM due to terrain and lock loss, if there is no inexpensive ammo you will simply not have LRM support. People would just flock to streak cats or SRM cats and you'd be squealing away in a different post about how tired you are of getting killed by them.


My solution?

Make missile ammo as cheap as AC ammo.

Increase the cost of launchers signficantly. An LRM 20 should cost 5 million.

I think you might be exagerating slightly.

Please remeber that I stated in my proposal that to work, ammunition would need to cost about a third of what it does now.

A quick calculation shows that you're likely to be carrying 8 tons of LRM Artemis ammunition. No mech in Battletech ever carried that amount due to overspecialisation making the mech financially inefficient to run. That is part of my point, this is meant to be for the most part a simulation, not just another video game.

Still, given that break even is at 4 tons of ammunition per type, if they reduced ammo costs to a third of what they are now, then you would be the cost of a third of a ton of ammunition worse off, or about 20 000 CB. So you might take a ton of ammunition off, and add a secondary weapon for close range use? That is what I am trying to get at, go beyond boating, and give your mech at least some other capability, meaning that your mech can be used for something else in a pinch, like base defence.

Streak cats and SRM cats would face EXACTLY the same ammunition costs issues you do under my proposal, it is not just LRMs only.

As for launcher price increases. It is a way to shift the costs on to the initial purchase. BUT, and it is a big but, consider the implications. Prices of new mechs would go through the roof if equipped with such weapons. Repair costs would also go through the roof, since they are a percentage of price. To be fair, people who already own such weapons would need to pay a retroactive 'tax' on them (or do you just want to hit new purchasers only, since you own yours already). This would mean thousands of people would have an instant multimillion credit debt to be paid off.

[DeadlyNerd]

2 words. Ammo. Bays.
Gives the mech a hard cap on ammo so people cannot exploit the 75% unless it's intended by mech design.

Also removes the need for unnecessary weapon hard points that PGI implemented so certain variants may be different from others even though according to TT they're exactly the same armament wise.

[Skyfaller]

Voidsinger, on 27 November 2012 - 04:10 PM, said:

I think you might be exagerating slightly.

No, I am not exagerating. Those are my costs to re-arm the mere 25% of ammo I pay for.

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Please remeber that I stated in my proposal that to work, ammunition would need to cost about a third of what it does now.

Ok. Let's see.

60k cost per ton now. 1/3rd of that is 20k.
7 tons of ammo for 20k is 140k .

1 ton free ammo reduces it to 120k.

....and im still paying more than I make on a map win (100k~110k). average.

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A quick calculation shows that you're likely to be carrying 8 tons of LRM Artemis ammunition. No mech in Battletech ever carried that amount due to overspecialisation making the mech financially inefficient to run. That is part of my point, this is meant to be for the most part a simulation, not just another video game.

CatA1 is a specialized boat. Your proposal merely screws it over ten times with missile costs.

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Still, given that break even is at 4 tons of ammunition per type, if they reduced ammo costs to a third of what they are now, then you would be the cost of a third of a ton of ammunition worse off, or about 20 000 CB. So you might take a ton of ammunition off, and add a secondary weapon for close range use? That is what I am trying to get at, go beyond boating, and give your mech at least some other capability, meaning that your mech can be used for something else in a pinch, like base defence.

This is where the sillyness hits you. There is no point in loading an extremely weak medium laser or 2 capability (CatC4) in a mech that is kitted for long range support with LRMs. Its a waste of tonnage and in any practical situation it is not going to defeat a mech that gets in close with massive short range laser/AC weaponry.

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Streak cats and SRM cats would face EXACTLY the same ammunition costs issues you do under my proposal, it is not just LRMs only.

Streaks dont miss. LRMs do.. more than half time time. Im not talking about someone sitting there spamming missile, im talking about a mech in the open being fired LRMs upon and it running to cover before the missile hits. I'm talking about the team-mate stupidly breaking the lock before the LRM support reaches the guy he is losing the circle fight to...and thus guaranteeing he loses it anyway. LRM on average 'misses' 70% of the ammo it fires to cover, lost locks and to the spread not being tight enough to strike the target mech completely.

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As for launcher price increases. It is a way to shift the costs on to the initial purchase. BUT, and it is a big but, consider the implications. Prices of new mechs would go through the roof if equipped with such weapons. Repair costs would also go through the roof, since they are a percentage of price. To be fair, people who already own such weapons would need to pay a retroactive 'tax' on them (or do you just want to hit new purchasers only, since you own yours already). This would mean thousands of people would have an instant multimillion credit debt to be paid off.

The fix is simple. Mech should be sold per chassis not pre-equipped. That has been a request for a long time which the devs simply ignore. Retroactive cost of the units? Remove the existing ones from the game and make players re-purchase them (refunding only their pre-change cost). You cant make everyone happy but you can make it fair.

Thing is, your proposal of ammo cost only benefits the mechs that load missile weapons as secondary weapons. Aka the brawler mechs. There is such a thing as support mechs (CatA1/C4) who have limited brawling weaponry. Up the ammo costs for those and you remove those mechs from being viable in the game. The launcher price being high and ammo being cheap oth, takes care of all the problems with no side effects.

[Voidsinger]

OK Skyfaller, here's the thing. Your attitude shows you are exactly the sort of player my proposal is targetting. Those who would overspecialise in their niche at the expense of all other capability. They then expect others to cover the holes their overspecialisation creates.

While the A1 is indeed a canon variant of the Catapult in Battletech, it is a rare one, and indeed, in TRO:3025 was not one of the two production variants described, although it did have a record sheet In Record Shhets Volume 3, Heavy Mechs.

Why is this important?

Because every other Catapult and LRM Support mech (Archer, Bombadier, Salamander, Longbow, Naga, Naginata) all had at least 1 secondary self defence weapon.

Next up in regards to ammunition carried. You don't know how good you have it. The trial mechs are all are stock. You would know from when you purchased your A-1, that it initially had 2 LRM-15 launchers, and 4 tons of ammunition.

You complain about the miss rate for LRMs? SRM users have it just as bad with some of the spreads. I have observed after death, some truly excellent LRM users, and some really terrible ones. The excellent ones follow a volley all the way to detonation, ensuring maximum numbers of hits, although slowing their rate of fire. The bad ones will dump at the apex, and search for other targets while their missiles just go to whereever the target last was, regardless of friendlies in the area. As for LRM support? It may be there in good team games, but for Pugs, it is everybody for themselves in many cases, competing for kills, and only text chat to co-ordinate matters, and call for support. Yes, you do have to look at those not in teams.

Ammuntion per ton. You don't know just how good you have it:

Missile per ton-
LRMs 180 (MWO) 120 (BT)
SRMs/Streaks 100 (MWO) 100 (BT)

Damage per missile (armour was doubled for MWO) -
LRMs 1.8 (MWO) 1 (BT)
SRMs/Streaks 2.5 (MWO) 2 (BT)

Cost per ton of ammo -
LRMs 30 060 (MWO) 30 000 (BT)
SRMs 27 000 (MWO) 27 000 (BT)
Streaks 54 000 (MWO) 54 000 (BT)
Artemis missiles double cost under both systems.

Cost per missile -
LRMs 167 (MWO) 250 (BT)
SRMs 270 (MWO) 270 (BT)
Streaks 540 (MWO) 540 (BT)


Now I don't know if you can tell, but LRMs are the only weapon that retained anywhere near their per damage shot after armour doubling. On top of this, they receive an extra 50% missiles per ton versus their original BT values to account for the fact they do need to be tracked to target, rather than fire on lock. Yes, ballistics do get an extra 50% too. However, only LRMs can potentially do more damage per ton of ammunition after the doubling of armour than their BT equivalents.

Now, on moving costs to the launcher. Now you've made a bit of cash, you propose to break the entire system that is in place to cater to yourself, and other boaters out there. It would make everything more difficult and expensive for new players. It would mean a mech is not bought ready to play, but must be outfitted at considerable extra cost to players. All this so we can make missiles cheap as chips, and have missile spam rain freely down upon us.

As I said at the start Skyfaller, it is boaters like you who would be worse off under my proposal, those who see this as just another video game to be optomised until there are very few viable designs, rather than a simulation of a rich fictional game environment. I want to encourage the diversity of mechs Battletech was known for.

[Skyfaller]

Voidsinger, on 27 November 2012 - 07:26 PM, said:

OK Skyfaller, here's the thing. Your attitude shows you are exactly the sort of player my proposal is targetting. Those who would overspecialise in their niche at the expense of all other capability. They then expect others to cover the holes their overspecialisation creates.

No, its you who is trying to force people to play a certain way in a game where customization is the name of the game. Let me put it in simple terms: Would you also force players to not be able to load more top damage and heatsinks than the max allowed in the 'canon' loadouts? Because that is exactly what you are doing to missile users.

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Because every other Catapult and LRM Support mech (Archer, Bombadier, Salamander, Longbow, Naga, Naginata) all had at least 1 secondary self defence weapon.

Yet, the A1 doesn't so this is irrelevant. The C4 can carry 2 energy and people can and do load energy weapons on it.

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You complain about the miss rate for LRMs? SRM users have it just as bad with some of the spreads. I have observed after death, some truly excellent LRM users, and some really terrible ones....yada yada yada.

And this is irrelevant because you cannot dictate who can load what where or how much based on a wide spectrum of player skill. The mechanics of the game alone makes every LRM volley 'miss' about 20% of their missiles.. when the volley hits the mech, plenty of missiles hit the ground next to it. Even one that is standing still. And this is with Artemis and TAG on target.

A mech moving more than 40kph has 30% of the missiles in the spread not hitting it. 60kph has about 50% hitting it. More than the missiles spread is simply wasted. This is all with the LRM mech guiding the missiles in the entire time.

The human factor of the target mech running for cover thanks to the silly warning system just adds to the loss. As it stands now you can only really fire at a mech engaged with another or an atlas in a relatively open area to know that they wont be able to run to cover.

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Ammuntion per ton. You don't know just how good you have it:

...

Now I don't know if you can tell, but LRMs are the only weapon that retained anywhere near their per damage shot after armour doubling. On top of this, they receive an extra 50% missiles per ton versus their original BT values to account for the fact they do need to be tracked to target, rather than fire on lock. Yes, ballistics do get an extra 50% too. However, only LRMs can potentially do more damage per ton of ammunition after the doubling of armour than their BT equivalents.

TT is not FPS. You need to understand that because we need to track and because locks are broken easily and because of the spread mechanics you simply cannot apply TT logic set to this. Twice the ammo due to twice the armor.. damage is increased and yet the miss rate on the weapon itself is horrendous. Its like trying to hit something at 400m with an LBX10. TT also had mechs firing every 10 seconds and a lot of non-human factors deciding the damage/hits. Thats why TT carried 'low' ammo compared to our standards... we fire 3 times faster (which incidentally, makes AC's and lasers three times more effective than a missile that fires every 3 seconds but takes up to 10 seconds to reach target).

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Now, on moving costs to the launcher. Now you've made a bit of cash, you propose to break the entire system that is in place to cater to yourself, and other boaters out there. It would make everything more difficult and expensive for new players. It would mean a mech is not bought ready to play, but must be outfitted at considerable extra cost to players. All this so we can make missiles cheap as chips, and have missile spam rain freely down upon us.

Please that is the weakest argument i've heard. I grinded after every wipe to get the mech and equipment I wanted and that will be the same for others. Quite frankly I'd care less if we had another full wipe and I had to grind for it again. The problem would be solved.

...and its not to get cheap missiles. Its to make the long range support mechs viable. But then again, it seems the only thing you want is to force others to play YOUR version of the game which is apparently nothing more than a no-custimization in-your-face brawler gameplay. Wake up, other people play the game differently.

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As I said at the start Skyfaller, it is boaters like you who would be worse off under my proposal, those who see this as just another video game to be optomised until there are very few viable designs, rather than a simulation of a rich fictional game environment. I want to encourage the diversity of mechs Battletech was known for.

Quite frankly I do not see how you can claim to encourage diversity when here you are stating you want to LIMIT the customization of weapon and ammo loadouts.

Edited by Skyfaller, 27 November 2012 - 08:09 PM.

[Voidsinger]

Skyfaller, I'm not going to get through to you, so I won't even try.

There have been limits on customisation placed on this game for balance and divesrity reasons.

The devs themselves have beren looking at the boating of lasers and Streaks. The only control of LRM boating is ammunition prices for massive loads.

They have changed heat values, nobbled the Double Heat Sink.

You want complex missiles to be as cheap as bullets. Here's a clue, economic warfare is a part of this too. It's about running what you can afford to run.

You seem to think fire support should have massive near unlimited amouts of ammunition available to just shoot endlessly.

Maybe the devs will just increase rewards to what they see as a reasonable level with reasonable costs allowed, and make everybody pay full price for ammunition, regardless of the losses incurred by your ilk.

I'm done on this one.

[focuspark]

Honestly, I don't care about this topic but I'd like to point out that effective military vehicles are specialized. You don't see generic ones because they're not effective enough. If somebody is "boating" they're probably emulating the real world and likely seeing a similar advantage to the one seen in the real world so long as they're in the environment/situation their designed for.

[Solis Obscuri]

I liked it better with only 25% free repair/rearm, and a higher mission payout.

Really made some of the boats and LosTech tough to spam, but stock 3025 designs were cash cows.

Edited by Solis Obscuri, 27 November 2012 - 09:19 PM.

[FerrolupisXIII]

reduce ammo cost by %75, with no free reload. same curve for us boats that are gunna have a high reload, but people wont be taking advantage of the free reloads anymore

[Skyfaller]

Voidsinger, on 27 November 2012 - 08:35 PM, said:

The devs themselves have beren looking at the boating of lasers and Streaks. The only control of LRM boating is ammunition prices for massive loads.

They have changed heat values, nobbled the Double Heat Sink.

'boating' as you call it is balanced in almost every mech except the Jenner. If you want to carry a massive alpha you need to sacrifice almost everything for it. If you want to have defense through either armor or speed you will be reducing the firepower you can carry in a visible, tangible manner.

'boating' a missile mech sacrifices practically all, including self-defense to provide the team with strong support firepower. The team benefits a lot more from having support that seriously injures the target mech they are brawling so they can punch its ticket quickly and move to the next mech than to have a mediocre support damage and very poor short range damage, mediocre speed mech in the team.

Besides, there is one thing you have not considered as part of this issue/equation: When large maps are introduced the 'multipurpose' builds will become significantly more important than 'boating'. Right now brawlers 'boat' short range weapons because everything is short range within a minute of a map starting... long range support functions so well because it only takes half a minute to get to a spot where practically the entire map is inside its missile range. Large maps will seriously hurt 'boaters' that sacrifice speed for damage...and those that will 'boat' for speed will have poor damage but they can dictate engagement ranges. In such a setting the multi-purpose setups you so desire make sense. Right now in these little maps its DUMB.

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You want complex missiles to be as cheap as bullets. Here's a clue, economic warfare is a part of this too. It's about running what you can afford to run.

You seem to think fire support should have massive near unlimited amouts of ammunition available to just shoot endlessly.

Not endlessly. Even with my 7 tons of LRM ammo I am very,very careful when I shoot and I guide my missiles in. Even then I run out of ammo in most maps simply because the guy im shooting at has the smarts to run for cover before the missiles hit or because the team-mate I was supporting loses the lock.

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Maybe the devs will just increase rewards to what they see as a reasonable level with reasonable costs allowed, and make everybody pay full price for ammunition, regardless of the losses incurred by your ilk.

Like I said, the problem with having a system where the ammo costs more than it should will only cause problems by people farming cash with suicide mechs. It doesnt matter how much you dislike it you know it will happen. It happens now as people grind like that just to buy the mech they want. If you get your wish you'll just create a whole bigger mess for yourself.

A perfect example of this is World of Tanks. For a very long time, Artillery in the game had the same effect that you are whining about here. One unit had full-map range, an extremely powerful yet largely inaccurate weaponthat could cripple or kill an enemy tank in one shot... had very slow speed and was defenseless if an enemy tank got within firing range of the artillery unit. The ammo costs for the artillery used to be so expensive that you could only make money if your team won the match AND the artillery survived (repair costs = loss even in win).

However, recently, WOT increased the repair cost and shell ammo for the artillery. The result was a disaster. Artillery vanished from the game overnight for a couple of weeks. In those weeks and ever since then, the matches people play are filled with players that drive the cheapest to repair tanks and drive them merely to suicide against the first enemy tank they find.

In any one match you would see two or 3 such players per map. All of them were merely suicide farming cash (win or lose cash they'd still make money due to low repair cost) so they could afford the ammo on their artillery.

Their solution to 'too many artillery' in a few maps became 'too many suicide farmers' in almost every map. That is exactly what will happen to MWO.

Another solution needs to be found. Ammo cost is not the solution.

Perhaps ECM will do it. Perhaps not. Perhaps increasing the price of launchers and making the cost of missile ammo cheap is another. Perhaps both together will do the trick.

[Gavin McStine]

The point of the costs is to get you out of your missile boat and run other mechs that dont require as much to run, otherwise people will just run heavy hitting ammo mechs and rank up the kills, making other mechs usless.

[KhanCipher]

Gavin McStine, on 28 November 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

The point of the costs is to get you out of your missile boat and run other mechs that dont require as much to run, otherwise people will just run heavy hitting ammo mechs and rank up the kills, making other mechs usless.

i used to play a f2p game that tried to balance the best stuff by making it expensive to make, what happened was that everyone ran the item that made the past ones useless (unless you had complete control of your battle environment, and even then you needed to be super awesome at playing it)

[Gavin McStine]

KhanCipher, on 28 November 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

i used to play a f2p game that tried to balance the best stuff by making it expensive to make, what happened was that everyone ran the item that made the past ones useless (unless you had complete control of your battle environment, and even then you needed to be super awesome at playing it)

I dont get it, your saying they made the best stuff expensive but then you said that people ran the item that made the past one useless?(if the new one is expensive then how can you keep running it)

The point is to pervent people from just playing cats with LRM 20s. This would force you to use lighter mechs to make cash for the ammo.