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And to PGI, this is not something that needs to be immediately fixed, but more of the issues between making the conversion from TT to MWO. These can easily be worked on as things are being implemented. And as you guys know, the longer systems stay as they are, the harder it is to change later so it would be a good idea to look at this and plan torwards the future.
Issue One: RoF and Stock Mechs
RoF, the bane of SHS, conversion from TT to MWO, and Stock (trial) mechs.
In MWO, the RoF is so high, a single ML can almost deal as much damage as 2 PPCs, albeit it
be more spread over the target. This is in part of because of the high RoF of weapons and how useless that high RoF is to high heat weapons in extended fights. This amplifies the heat problem in this game for Stock mechs. They are built around the idea of weapons that weapons are fired at 10s. All weapons.
This is 100% the only sure fire way to fix Stock mechs without modifying SHS in some way. Decrease RoF by 100% (Medium Laser CD would be 6.0s).
What you begin to see is that a lot of the heat issues goes away from firing large weapons while small weapons are not overshadowing the larger ones when placed in arrays, constantly being fired.
Now, if you constantly alpha fired a lot of weapons, then yes, you should be producing a lot of extra heat. But there should be some reasonable area where you can equip enough heatsinks and firing a few large weapons and still be reducing your heat slowly. And that is part of the problem in MWO, with RoF being ~3.33x the TT, there is basically no number of weapons (except maybe 2 Small Lasers, which produces enough heat per second that you need 18 SHS to even be neutral, that is not good balance) you can backup fire until you cool enough heat to fire a large weapon.
This is where Heavy/Assault mechs need to be good at, firing 1 or 2 heavy weapons while staying cool enough to add in another array of small weapons fire for extra heat or firing all the small/medium weapons for producing just a bit of heat.
Issue Two: Weapon Convergence
PGI also needs to learn to accept that Light mechs, being as efficient in their weight, can produce builds which allow them to constantly fire 3 or 4 Medium Lasers. The ONLY reason why they are as powerful as they are is because of convergence. If those 3 or 4 Medium Lasers all hit different locations, they would not be NEARLY as powerful as they think it is.
An array of small weapons dealing as much damage as a larger, more heavier, hotter, and most likely harder to hit with weapon. The HBK-4P is a common example of this. 6 Medium Lasers all hitting the same location, dealing 10 damage per second, or 30 damage per fire on a single point! While they do produce 24 heat (8 heat per second), it is hard to match the efficiency of all these weapons hitting the same locations for all that damage. The arm/torso reticules does helps alleviate this a bit, but some mechs are just built to get around this and it makes it very powerful.
I suggest in making arms more important by only allowing arms to converge weapon fire. Torso mounted weapons all should just shoot straight ahead, with no convergence (they would default to converge at their maximum distance, so the AC/20, 2 Medium Lasers, and SRM/6 on an AS7-D would all converge at 540m on the torso reticule while the STK-3F 2 SRM/6 would converge to 540m and the 2 Large Lasers would converge at 900m, so you have to compensate for the weapons, which will spread the damage a lot more, not being a powerful single beam of damage).
This would give a reason for someone to fire at the arms instead of the torsos (because right now, it is 100% better to fire at torsos, as you will remove the arms along with the torso). If you see a mech that is known to have a lot of their firepower on their arms, it will be deadly because it can converge all that damage into a single point. So it would be wise to spend time to take off those arms so that it will being to start spreading damage a lot more.
Issue Three: Weapon Hardpoints
Doubling up on hardpoints in the exact same weapon port visually on the mech. I understand it adds to mechs by allowing more customization. I am 100% fine with more customization. But making weapons fire out of the same port at the same time? It visually looks bad and it cheats the player who is taking the damage. They see a single bolt but is in reality 2 or 3 weapons firing at the same time. There needs to be some mechanic that keeps from allowing weapons from the same locations (LT/CT/RT) all fire at the exact same time, overlapping their visuals. This also amplifies Issue Two: Weapon Convergence.
What I mean by this:
The perfect example: CDA-2A. Why in the world does it have 6 energy hardpoints with only 3 firing points physically on the mech?!?! If that CDA-2A could only equip 3 Medium Lasers, then weapon convergence issues would not be so bad. Hell, that CDA-2A would most likely either take the lowered DPS for the heat neutrality it offers. Or, it could decide to add a Large Laser to the mech to have added punch for some extra heat to dissipate. But when it can equip 5 Medium Lasers and firing them all onto a single point, with all that efficiency, just unbalances things. This also touches on the issue of mis-equipped weapons. The Gauss Rifle in the Machine Gun slot. We all know who it is: CPLT-K2. A simple fix to this is to add a quantifier to the weapon slots.
Issue Four: DHS and the Heat Scale
DHS really need to be the same across the board. You know, if you want heat to matter, I am fine with that PGI, but your hurting mechs that equip a lot of heatsinks outside the engine (Heavy/Assault or Medium energy heavy builds) or mechs that equip smaller engines (Commandos!). You should move them all to 0.17 dissipation, which from my calculations, produces almost the exact same dissipation for heavier mechs which equip DHS right now while lowering the overall dissipation for mechs mounting only or mostly in-engine DHS heatsinks. This is a simple fix to make the game more balance while still allowing SHS to be useful for some builds, which is what is currently in game right now. This is also probably why your Cicada could mount 5 Medium Lasers are constantly fire! Having at least a 250 engine automatically gives you 2.0 heat dissipation.
On top of this, they need to lower the DHS capacity bonus to the exact same as SHS, 1.0. This also gives SHS the capability to withstand more total heat than DHS due to the ability to equip more of them.
After adding this, they need to introduce the heat penalties. These could easily be implemented as the mechanics are already in the game, waiting to be used and places a lot more emphasis on managing heat.
The numbers are just guesses and are just for the example:
At 60% heat reduce maximum velocity by 15%, at 70% heat reduce arm/torso/leg turn speed and maximum radius by 30%, at 80% reduce maximum velocity by 30%, at 90% comes a shutdown (overridable) with random 1.0 damage while heat is over 90%. For every 10% beyond 90%, increase the damage done to random locations by 1.0 (these count as a hit, thus all having a chance to cause a critical). All penalties, except for the random damage, will only be removed if you go 10% below the threshold which caused it. So 50% heat will remove the 60% penalties, 60% heat for the 70% heat penalties, so on and so forth. This makes going over that threshold a penality that will last, not something that will immediately disappear if you barely hit the threshold.
The random heat damage should also happen even if your mech is shutdown. It makes no sense, and is kinda exploitable, in a sense that it is better to just fire and shutdown, knowing you do no damage to your mech, unless you override.
Your mech should never just explode as it does now, either. The random damage mechanic is what should cause the mech to explode, not if they have been over 100% X amount of time while being overridden. The whole point to override is to let your mech damage itself while still being useable. As it sets now, overriding does nothing because if you continue to fire, you will just blow up. At least with the random damage mechanic, you can survive a bit while being hot. I would also suggest making mech power-up take a bit longer, like 6.0s. As it is now, you deal more damage just firing and shutting down instead firing and letting yourself cool off, trying to avoid shutdown.
With this implemenation, while having a bit less heat generation, provides reasons to reduce your DPS in an attempt to stay heat neutral, either by using excess tonnage for heatsinks or firing smaller, heat efficient weapons until you can safely fire larger weapons.
Issue Five: ECM and Other EW Equipment
The complete overshadowing of ECM has caused some mechs to just be a figment of the past. The RVN-4X is a perfect example. Why pilot one?
There has to be some type of drawback to using ECM while ECM itself needs to be toned down. The implementation of ECM is fine, it's just the numbers are in such a scale that it overshadows other variants and other weapon systems outside it's intended use. The following are some suggestions I have seen, along with some of my own ideas included:
- Reduce the ECM sensor reduction range from 75% to 50%.
- Allow Counter ECM to counter all ECM within 180m.
- Mechs using Disrupt ECM can not lock-on (but can still target lock) with SSRMs and LRMs.
The other EW equipment in the game, NARC and BAP, also need to be looked at. Here are some suggestions that myself and others have given feedback on:
- Give the BAP users pings (like Thermal vision) on all ECM equipped mechs.
- Change the NARC to provide non-LoS targetting for 30s. Allow PPCs EMP effect to destroy them. Leave Disrupt ECM as a counter to them.
Artemis also has some issues. One is how the LRM/SSRM system is combined into one system. Since Artemis effects LRMs, it also effects SSRMs (which it never did in the TT) due to both weapon systems using the same locking mechanic. Another is how the Upgrade mechanic in the Mech Lab works. Applying the Artemis upgrade applies it for all launchers on the mech. But, the player should have the option of what launchers are equipped with Artemis. I am surprised they even added this into the Upgrade section and not just added a new weapon with the Artemis upgrade included. Maybe it's more difficult to add new weapons than Upgrades?
Issue Six: Always SSRMs
While the netcode issues might be the reason why Light on Light fights are almost always with ECM/SSRM circle jerk fights, many still believe SSRMs are not in a good place. There are two major issues, beyond netcode, as to why Lights almost exclusively use SSRMs:
- SSRMs lock mechanic works like LRMs, being much to easy to keep the lock.
- SSRMs turn radius is much too tight.
- SSRMs only lock onto LT/CT/RT instead of also including LA/RA/LL/RL.
- SSRMs guarantee damage, thus higher DPS of the same SRM launcher size.
Some suggestions on helping make SSRMs more balanced with SRMs:
- Seperate the lock mechanic from LRMs. For every 0.5s the crosshair is on the target, a SSRM (not the whole SSRM launcher, just a single SSRM) is locked.
- Can continue to gain SSRM locks until every SSRM is locked.
- When a SSRM is launched, the launcher itself goes on CD (in the event of partial launches).
- SSRMs lock mechanic is much more touchy than LRMs. Not having the crosshair on the target for 1.0s, all SSRM locks are lost. But during that 1.0s, SSRMs can be launched for those that have gained the lock.
- SSRMs CD should be ~150% of a SRM launcher of the same size.
- SSRMs lock mechanic only starts within 270m range (SSRM range).
- SSRMs should have a maximum turn radius of 45 degrees (pi/2 radians) per second.
- SSRMs should also include the LA/RA/LL/RL into the random locations to home into.
What this should do is make the SSRMs overall DPS approximately 50% of a SRM launcher of the same size, assuming 100% hits with both launchers. Thus, if a player can land 50% of a regular SRM launcher missiles, he/she should produce 100% the damage of an SSRM launcher. This makes SSRM launchers better at sustained combat where you are making sure all of your SSRMs are landing on the target for damage while the SRM is better at sudden attacks, where firing as many missiles as quickly as possible then backing off or overwhelming the enemy with using as many SRMs as possible in a short amount of time, ignoring the amount of ammo used.
Review
So, to recap and densely consolidate what was explained above, or if you do not want to read all of it:
- Reduce RoF
- Introduce more spreading mechanics
- Remove/fix the stacked hardpoints
- Change DHS
- Add heat penalties
- Modify the random damage/instant death mechanic for overheating
- Modify ECM, NARC, BAP, and Artemis
- Modify SSRMs
EDIT: For the many (and probably still present) typo errors.
Edited by Niko Snow, 03 January 2013 - 12:32 PM.
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