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Balance in such games is important to me, since without balance, the underpowered choices will be dropped and ignored by most players, as there are better options for the role these choices tend to fill.
So I once again made calculations and charts to assess the weapon balance. I focus on Double Heat Sinks here. Even if the current implementation of Double Heat Sinks may not be what everyone was hoping for - they are still generally better than single heat sinks, and if only because you have your engine heat sinks.
TL;DR Call to Action - Where do we need to improve things? (Assuming we do not want further changes to the heat sink mechanics)
1) Small Lasers and Medium Lasers may be too efficient, and could use a small reduction in power (quite possibly by equally reducing damage and heat).
2) At least Small and Large Pulse Lasers could use a buff, the Large Pulse Laser needing a bigger buff.
3) The AC/10 could use a small buff.
4) The PPC and ER PPC need notable buffs.
5) The Ultra AC/5 Jamming mechanic needs to be analyzed in detail - it is possible that it is currently making the weapon weaker then its theoretical potential when fired without the double shot mode, which is counter-intuitive..
6) The AC/2 could use a nerf - potentially a mixed nerf/buff - a lower rate of fire, but more ammo per ton?
7) SRM and LRM effectiveness need to be evaluated - currently they seem overly efficient, but this is based on ignoring their special missile grouping mechanics.
As a general caveat - it is difficult to consider all weapon balancing factors. Projectile Speed, ballistic drop, clustering, beam durations. All these are factors. That's why it is important to look closely into the charts and interpret values. Generally speaking - the better one of these factors is for a weapon, the higher its actual effectiveness may be - so for example, by range, we would consider the efficiency of weapons to drop off - by how much or by what formula (if it it's not a straight downwards line) is open to debate. But we can still find grave inconsistencies.
The Long Part
Methodology
The charts below are assembled based on the known weapon properties like rate of fire, damage per shot, ammo requirements, ammo per ton and so on. The underlying spreadsheet was made in Excel, but has been exported to GoogleDocs and can be viewed online. (To edit it and put in your own figures, you can download it or export it as your own document.)
Spoiler
The Charts and the Observations
I provide charts for the damage efficiency first. The efficiency value is a bit abstract, however - so there are additional charts that simply describe the weight in tons that would be required for this weapon. This should give you an idea how much tonnage you need to actually invest to make your mech work well.
High Damage (Suitable for Heavy to Assault Mech Chassis)
As a general note - we tend to see a somewhat downwards sloping efficiency with range, though it is only a weak trend. That is something we want to see, as longer range is an advantage that my efficiency calculation itself doesn't track, so instead it must be represented by a low efficiency value in the chart. The exact angle of the slope that we'd need is something that would still need some analysis (If I had an answer for that already, I would have worked range in the efficiency calculation itself, and the efficiency curve should be parallel to the x-axis.)
Notable here is how bad Flamer, Machine Gun and the ER PPC is. THe PPC, ER Large Laser, Large Pulse Laser and Small Pulse Laser also stick out as weak weapons.
The Medium Pulse Laser should be better than the Medium Laser, since it has an even shorter range, but here the question may be - is it perhaps the Medium Laser that needs a nerf? The Laser generates a lot of heat per point of damage, but it also deals a lot of damage per ton. IT may be wise to adjust his damage (and heat) down, to justify his low weight.
The Small Laser looks extreme efficient. It may be questionable whether this is ever aconcern - in the end, even the most extreme laser boats from canon don't seem to carry much more than 12 lasers (The Nova), so we may never have to fear a small laser boat.
The AC/10 is weaker than the Large Laser in shorter engagements - this may warrant a buff for the AC/10, since it seems to be its ballistic brother.
The Ultra Auto-Cannon numbers are weird. I put in the weapon twice, once trying to use its single shot mode and fire rate, and once trying to use its double shot mode, which also brings with itself jamming. THere is some margin for error in this, since the jamming mechanics are not well documented and analyzed yet - but it seems all wrong to me. Assuming the weapon could be fired without jamming in single shot mode (it cannot), shouldn't it fire just as fast as the regular AC/5 and thus be a little less efficient than the AC/5 (since its heavier?), and shouldn it not gain in the double shot mode?
The Gauss Rifle doesn't seem as great as it sometimes perceived. I believe a big factor in the favoritism of the Gauss Rifle was that there was only one mech that could field 2 of the larger ballistic weapons - the Catapult K2. And the Gauss Rifle still has the highest DPS of all available mechs, and the highest alpha strike damage, and still allow an XL Engine. The AC/20 high crit slot requirements make it less attractive for these purposes, and it's low range doesn't help it either. With the Cataphract we now have a mech that can field other ballistic weapon combinations, for example Quad AC/5 - this opens up new opportunities, and at least allows to surpass the Dual Gauss Rifle's damage output (even if not its alpha strike capability.)
The missiles seem to operate in an entirely different playing field. Is this warranted? Maybe, they tend to spread their damage, and some of them have unique locking mechanics. Still, it seems a bit off, and one wonders if adjustments aren't necessary.
Low Damage (Suitable for Low to Medium Mech Chassis)
The Medium Laser and SMall Laser once again stick out among the ballistic and energy weapons as extremely efficient. Very few weapons can compete here, and it overall seems as if as a light or medium mech, medium or smalls should make out the most out of your weapon arsenal. It may be noticeable here that the Medium Laser has the same efficiency for all targeted engagement times - that basically means that the build required for these "TETs" doesn't actually need any extra heat sinks - its engine double heat sinks are sufficient.
High Damage Weight Requirements
It's notable that you can achieve a lot of damage with little weight. It should be obvious that the low figures for the engagment time fo 15 second is primarily possible with the engine heat sinks.
It is notable again how little you need for a good damage output with medium or small lasers, and how much you need for PPCs, Pulse LAsers and ER Lasers. The heat is really costly.
Maybe as a tip to understand some figures - when a weapon does have the same weight requirement for every targeted engagement time, it probably needs no additional heat sinks to avoid overheating in the targeted engagement time. I set the targeted engagement number and the targeted engagement durations so that the same amount of ammo and damage would be achieved after all engagements - based on the assumptions that you still need to bring the same damage potential to defeat your opponents, whether you do it with 15 second potshots or 30 second brawls.
This may also suggest that these builds will be able to sustain their fire even longer than the targeted engagement time, which can be very handy if you cannot retreat in time - or allow you to add just one or two twons of extra weight for a side weapon.
Low Damage Weight Requirements
The low damage figure is really low -with smalls or mediums it's extremely trival to achieve and doesn't need many additional heat sinks. It seems very unwise to take much larger weapons, the jump is too extremle. The "Gauss Raven" doesn't look like such a great idea here - and it's questionable that the range advantage is that great in practice.
Contrasting Low and High Damage Weight Requirements
One observation I take from this is - being heavy isn't all that attractive damage-wise - you can already deal a lot of damage with low weight weapons. Maybe that#s a reason why Mediums remain so popular? It'S not just the lag shield, the light mechs can only use the ligher weapons, bu the lighter weapons are much more efficient and you can get powerful damage builds out of them, allowing you to fight enemies above your weight class.
General Conclusion
Ballistics look relatively good, though some could need a little help. Energy weapons seem to be in extremes - the Large Laser now looks good, but the medium and small laser too good, while the ER Large Laser, the pulse lasers and the PPCs need help.
MG and Flamer are extremely weak, so it's no surprise we don't really see them anymore on the battlefield.
If you didn't see any big surprises here and all knew this already and wonder what's all the fuss and charts are about - remember that these are charts based on mathematical properties. They are not anecdotical data or server statistics. But if they seem to fit what you already observed - the methodology may be sound.
Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 December 2012 - 05:47 AM.
