339 replies to this topic

[Trauglodyte]

Adding in vehicles and troops just to make the MG/Flamer decent is pretty rediculous. Anyway, its like the old addage states, "Play the name of the game/what's on the front of the book."

[CrackersPhinn]

Here's an idea. Have the MG be able to manually shoot down missiles. It doesn't change balance that much, it just gives it a use outside of doing damage. This will mostly apply to light mechs where they dont have the tonnage to take larger ballistics, it'll help light mechs shake off LRMs or help other slower mechs from large barrages. It takes some skill to use it properly this way though.

Well I'm done with my ramblings.

[Spheroid]

Mahws, on 11 January 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

Why exactly would we assume that PGI are going to implement a ridiculous game breaking feature? The entire reason they added hard point restrictions to the current mech line up is to avoid ridiculous boating builds. If you honestly think that they're going to completely unrestrict the omnis then boating MG is the last thing you should be concerned about. Unrestricted SSRM boats comes to mind.

Omni mechs will be restricted in the number of weapons they can equip, just not the type. Anything else would be a disastrous, game breaking, pay2win farce.

Omni mechs will be balanced by the fact that you cannot alter engine rating/type, armor allocation/type or fixed equipment including non-intergral heatsinks. In my opinion those are huge disadvantages for most builds. Only the Stormcrow and Timberwolf are anything near optimized platforms. That Hellbringer can streakboat all it wants but it still has paper thin armor. If they ever implement a proper engine damage model the Clan advantage will recede even further.

Look at the Nova Prime. You don't have that many criticals to work with if you start swaping out lasers for heatsinks. Even boated ER smalls would carry a heavy heat burden under the MWO heat system.

Edited by Spheroid, 11 January 2013 - 10:19 PM.

[Mahws]

Not being able to change the engine rating/armour isn't going to stop an eight CSSRM2 Puma from one hit killing most light mechs or chain firing anything so hard it won't know which way is up. Yes that would be somewhat of a balancing feature for some of the clan mechs, but people just won't use them, not when there's a handful of mechs that have optimal/exploitable builds.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think hard point number limitations is going to fix the impending balance *********** either (a 3 UAC-20 Daishi comes to mind), but if they're hoping to retain any sense of balance it's going to have to be something that avoids both small weapon boating and large weapon flexibility.

As far as I can see the only way to avoid that problem is to put a cap on both the number of weapons and total slots used for each pod. Any other method and you may as well toss out half the games content and tip any semblance of balance on top of it.

[stjobe]

Apparently, the MG is to be a crit weapon, according to this Command Chair post.

Quote

For example, the current Machine Gun does 0.04 damage per bullet. IF the Machine Gun crits, it has the potential of doing 0.04, 0.08 or 0.12 damage to an internal item. Obviously that's not a lot of damage. Hence the new system implemented allows me to add a multiplier to this damage model.

What does that mean to you? After I've completed my first pass at multiplier numbers and after it goes through testing, you will notice that the Machine Gun will become a formidable weapon when used against a component that has no armor. Basically it will start to shred items that are mounted on the targeted component.

I doubt it, unless that multiplier is larger than 20-25x.

[Even Dark]

mg is useful!

i use the mg in my cata as target sytem for the ac5u

if the mg fire hit the target then i start fire the ac5u. so that was not so bad and 2nd good thing is many mechs are scarry about the sound and runs away, was funny to see ^^

[Gorith]

MGs need to have the same damage output as an AC2 OR allow us to have major crit chances through armor

[SpiralRazor]

Congzilla, on 09 January 2013 - 06:32 AM, said:

The machine gun never was a viable weapon against other mechs. It is an anti-infantry / light armor weapon.

Congzilla, on 09 January 2013 - 06:32 AM, said:

The machine gun never was a viable weapon against other mechs. It is an anti-infantry / light armor weapon.

Except that it was, and there were no infantry or light armor when the game was introduced....those came months later.

[shintakie]

stjobe, on 14 January 2013 - 03:17 PM, said:

Apparently, the MG is to be a crit weapon, according to this Command Chair post.


I doubt it, unless that multiplier is larger than 20-25x.

So...it'll still be useless as far as I'm readin there. Cool.

And to think I actually got excited when they said they'd buff machine guns and flamers. They sure showed me.

[KerenskyClone]

Yeah, major, major fail. I really dont understand the reasoning behind these decisions. How often do you get to shoot at unarmoured mechs? Basically those guys are dead anyway so way to go PGI you just made the Spider DOA. (Not to mention any other build that wants to load up on more than one machine gun)

[MustrumRidcully]

Looks like this battle is lost. But the war may not be over yet.

I hate to say this, but I have the impressions the Devs just aren't good at math or modelling. Is it up to the community again to come up with models of their crit system and showing what crit multipliers will do or not do?

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 15 January 2013 - 01:52 AM.

[KerenskyClone]

MustrumRidcully, on 15 January 2013 - 01:51 AM, said:

Looks like this battle is lost. But the war may not be over yet.

I hate to say this, but I have the impressions the Devs just aren't good at math or modelling. Is it up to the community again to come up with models of their crit system and showing what crit multipliers will do or not do?

I think the exact opposite is true. The devs are very good at math and modelling, they are just very bad at actually playing the game. Or rather they play it very rarely. You cant model the fact that unarmored mechs are not very common on the battlefield, and that by the time any mech is stripped of its armor it is already dead.

Edited by KerenskyClone, 15 January 2013 - 07:17 AM.

[Boogie Man]

KerenskyClone, on 15 January 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

I think the exact opposite is true. The devs are very good at math and modelling, they are just very bad at actually playing the game. Or rather they play it very rarely. You cant model the fact that unarmored mechs are not very common on the battlefield, and that by the time any mech is stripped of its armor it is already dead.

This seems more likely to me as well. Though to be fair I think that is pretty common with most game devs.

[stjobe]

Boogie Man, on 15 January 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

This seems more likely to me as well. Though to be fair I think that is pretty common with most game devs.

Most game developers are no different than any other developers; when you spend all day developing something, that something isn't the first thing on your mind to actually use when you get some free time.

I.e. when you spend all day busting your behind to implement some feature of a game, you probably don't want to play the game when you get off work, no matter how proud you are of your game, or how good it is. More likely you just want home to your SO and/or get some food into your system.

I can see them playing once in a while, but not constantly like some of us

[MustrumRidcully]

KerenskyClone, on 15 January 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

I think the exact opposite is true. The devs are very good at math and modelling, they are just very bad at actually playing the game. Or rather they play it very rarely. You cant model the fact that unarmored mechs are not very common on the battlefield, and that by the time any mech is stripped of its armor it is already dead.

I think you can model that, actually.

A mech has x points of armor and y points of internal and a component has z hit points.
The likelihood of a component taking damage is equal to [Crit Slots Used by Component]/][Crit Slots used up in Hit Location].
A weapon deals d_armor and d_crit
x_max/y = 4. (You can carry up to 4 times the internal armour value as armour per hit location.)

So, if you deal d_armour, it can take up to 4*y / d_armour to get to the internals, where d_crit becomes relevant. So you spend up to 80 % of your time not dealing damage to internals and not needing critical hits. So you have 20 % of the time to destroy a component. Destroying a component may have various effects, but let's say for example you destroy a weapon and lower's the enemy damage output. But of course, killing a hit location will also take away that weapon's damage (and possibly multiple weapon's damage).
So for a weapon to be worth being really bad regular damage but good at criticals, you need to overcome the penalty of being bad 80 % of the time by compensating being much better the other 20 % of the time - basically you must destroy the enemies weapon so much faster in that 20 % time frame that being able to kill the entire enemy more quickly (which also takes out all other weapons) will net you more taken damage. That sounds like an incredibly unlikely proposition.

And we shouldn't forget that the MGs are still some of the worst weapons for taking out components, because the damage comes in so many small damage packages that the damage is likely to be spread across the enemy. Basically in the worst case, you will deal ~8 % of your d_crit to each component. If d_crit = d_armour that basically requires that the hit location must have 8 times as many hit points as the item or you will destroy the hit location before any item. (The real case is not that bad, because not all crit slots are filled, and most items will need more than one crit slot. But it's still bad.)

An AC/10 or PPC (not exactly one of the best weapos on the block) will simply destroy a component per crit, even if they get no extra mutliplier. And when I equip an AC/10 or a PPC, I know that I can spend the 1 ton of MG much better on a heat sink or extra AC/10 ammo...

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 15 January 2013 - 09:04 AM.

[Novawrecker]

MustrumRidcully, on 15 January 2013 - 01:51 AM, said:

I hate to say this, but I have the impressions the Devs just aren't good at math or modelling.

Or, maybe, they have a grasp of a greater picture than the majority of us see or can fathom.

Until you see the results in action, stop doubting ...

Edited by Novawrecker, 15 January 2013 - 09:08 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Novawrecker, on 15 January 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

Or, maybe, they have a grasp of a greater picture than the majority of us see or can fathom.

Until you see the results in action, stop doubting ...

I see the results of their actions so far. That's why I doubt.

[Garth Erlam]

stjobe, on 09 January 2013 - 05:44 AM, said:

Here's what Paul said on Dec. 12th: source: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1591483 I'm seriously worried about this, because the MG will not become a viable weapon by either "a very slight damage increase" or "crit at a higher rate with a crit damage boost". It needs a substantial damage boost, even in conjunction with a crit boost

Which is why we are testing both

[Orzorn]

Garth Erlam, on 15 January 2013 - 09:12 AM, said:

Which is why we are testing both

Thank you for your clarification on the issue.

[stjobe]

Garth Erlam, on 15 January 2013 - 09:12 AM, said:

Which is why we are testing both

Thanks for chiming in with some hard facts, Garth. Could you possibly divulge what kind of damage buff you're testing? It seemed in the last Command Chair post that a damage buff wasn't on the table; that you were going only for the crit buff?