147 replies to this topic

[BLUPRNT]

I own one and its powerful at a peak of 150M or less. It is every bit as weak as another beyond that. I bow to any pilot who gets within this range of me and take my as lesson learned (be more aware) with grace. In all the discussion I have yet to see anybody suggest any other build. I put one of these together long before Streakcats died out and the introduction of ECM, only because it was more challenging to work with for me than Streaks. Now they are more prevalent on the BF everybody wants it changed some how. The devs gave us a 6 missle mech and what we do with it is up to us.

I think we should make all mechs have one of each hardpoint, give us one weaon for each, make all maps flat with an unlimited variety in color on the ground, remove all obstacles, no day night cycle, no weather, and speed cap all the mechs (by class just for variety). And we can all have a game that makes us happy.

I've tried many other builds so I'm open for suggestions so I can vary my play style with this mech.

[CygnusX7]

Natasha Kerensky, on 11 February 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

SRMs should be 2 damage a missile not 2.5.

Lets beginning with that fix.

72 instead of 90.. Not much difference to the boats and then everyone running a normal number of SRM's suffers along with having to carry more ammo.
I suggest you buff your team play!

[Sifright]

CygnusX7, on 11 February 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

72 instead of 90.. Not much difference to the boats and then everyone running a normal number of SRM's suffers along with having to carry more ammo.
I suggest you buff your team play!

you could buff ammo amounts for srms by 25% problem solved.

[liku]

TheForce, on 11 February 2013 - 09:17 AM, said:

I rant because I am FORCED to make a boat to stay competitive and I want to play MechWarrior not MinmaxWarrior/BoatWarrior/Robot Jocks/World of Tanks with Legs.



I wish I could stop ranting and make intelligent posts like this.

Lol. .sorry...but really saying such thing is like crying arging that a raven should have same armor as an atlas.

I don't think you have to make such a build but to gain situational awareness. .. even with a slow as hell stalker (33kph with speed tweaks) i managed to spot almost entire enemy's force and move according telling my team.

If an ennemy is deadly at a certain range flank him outra ge him outmanoeuvre him outnumnber him....and so on thats all.

If you can't come here to seeks somes advices. ..but please let the nerf bat where she is and try to adapt to the game.

[Roughneck45]

Maybe a slight heat increase. Would certainly affect boats more than a single.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

The problem with dictating the range of the fight is...the maps don't allow this. There is one map that sort of does...but we're talking 500-600m instead of 200-300m.

There are no maps that you can really reliably say "I'm going to get wide open shots at this guy from 800m until he closes distance in the open".

It's more like "Hey, I took a couple shots at 800m, then he dipped behind cover, got to 500m, where I might get a couple more shots, and then he's ontop of me cause the map is tiny and he's moving at 80kph".

Edited by Nicholas Carlyle, 11 February 2013 - 11:11 AM.

[PropagandaWar]

Hellcat's legit, and Thundercat's just need torsos. Do that and its fine. No I don't pilot either.

[Sorek]

Gallowglas, on 11 February 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

Quote

It's a matter of perception of course. You could say the problem is other weapons are too weak. However you put it these weapons outperform others. That is the real source of catapult complaints.

This is anecdotal evidence of course, but my number of kills I regularly get in an A1 or with 4+ SRM's in a Stalker is no greater than the kills I get in my 4 ML, AC/20 Cataphract.

Wait what? AC/20 is one of the weapons that outperforms others. How does your AC/20 cataphract provide ancedotal evidence to the contrary?

[Zeh]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 11 February 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

There are no maps that you can really reliably say "I'm going to get wide open shots at this guy from 800m until he closes distance in the open".

Hey, just like I predicted two pages ago. People don't want maps that allow for long-range combat. They want maps that FORCE it. That won't be fun. (I play mostly PPC-stalkers, I'd be one of the people making it a horrible map)

[Inviticus]

Sifright, on 11 February 2013 - 08:36 AM, said:

Thats just darling, why would any one take the AC/10 it's the worst out of all the AC options you could possibly choose.

Explain? I tear things up with AC10s on my Ilya. With the 3 second recycle time and 10 Damage a piece at 450M, that's 3.33 DPS compared to AC/20 5DPS but 270M. They are slightly lighter but take up fewer crit slots and have a higher ammo capacity. You just have to know how to aim.

[Sorek]

Kryuus, on 11 February 2013 - 10:19 AM, said:

EDIT: To sum, A1 Boating isn't 'the' problem, its being able to alpha for 90, THEN pack all the ammo you could need, be heat efficient, and move like a fast medium that's the problem.

The alpha for 90 is the problem. That's not a catapult problem. It's an SRM problem.

[PropagandaWar]

Sorek, on 11 February 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

The alpha for 90 is the problem. That's not a catapult problem. It's an SRM problem.

Thats a spread out alpha at close range. I run with 2 srm 6's in my hunch. Not as effective. The cats fine.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Zeh, on 11 February 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

Hey, just like I predicted two pages ago. People don't want maps that allow for long-range combat. They want maps that FORCE it. That won't be fun. (I play mostly PPC-stalkers, I'd be one of the people making it a horrible map)

I think they should be doing all of them. And making maps big enough that you could do both. And have objectives that don't let one team stand in place waiting to snipe while the other team waits behind cover waiting to brawl.

See the problem is we have such low expectations that we think a map either has to be flat and allow unlimited sniping, or have tons of mountains and require under 100M brawling.

The fact is the devs have all the tools at their disposal to make a map that does both, and has objectives that can force the issue on both sides.

Which...TADA, will lead to us needing more balanced loadouts.

[HRR Insanity]

Mackman, on 11 February 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

It's what causes your perception of widespread imbalance, which, again, could just be your belief that "This wouldn't work in the TT, so the fact that it works here means it's imbalanced."

If you read back, at no point did I claim that there was widespread imbalance. There is an underlying weapon balance issue that makes groups of the same type of weapon much more powerful than any single weapon can be... because of the way the developers used the weight/crits/heat/damage from CBT but didn't enforce any sort of weapon spread.

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The more that a game allows for player skill (as opposed to random chance) to influence the outcome, the more you can expect to see players building for the greatest effectiveness to complement their skill. That's just how it's always going to work. The only way to discourage boating (aside from something drastic like simply increasing the weights of all weapons) would be to implement something that takes away from player skill and swings it back to dumb luck (cone of fire, lack of precision, etc).

We define 'skill' differently then. Shooting accurately is one type of skill. Managing cone of fire (as an example) to maximize precision is a whole different type of skill which you seem to discount.

Quote

Needless to say, the vast majority of players would hate such a reversion. And doing something else, like increasing heat for same-type weapons fired at the same time from the same location, would just encourage a slight .5 second delay. It would barely effect the efficacy of the build at all. And after that nerf would fail, people like you would just begin calling for another, stronger one.

Agreed. There is no way to fix this problem without actually fixing the underlying problem of grouped weapon damage.

[HugoStiglitz]

HRR Insanity, on 11 February 2013 - 11:51 AM, said:

We define 'skill' differently then. Shooting accurately is one type of skill. Managing cone of fire (as an example) to maximize precision is a whole different type of skill which you seem to discount.

One thing I've noticed most game developers hate more than anything else when trying to make a competitive game is luck based damage. Right now there are plenty of skills to be good at, info gathering, piloting, accuracy, ect. Switching to having a cone of fire would decrease the amount of skill required to do well overall, as I could aim my AC/20 to take off someone's right torso, but because of the RNG it hits his right arm wasting the shot. It would only add to the perceived problem that is boating, as more weapons = greater chance to hit, and it would take out the long range game save for LRMs, as if you can't count on your accuracy you won't want to spend your ammo/heat until you are sure you could hit.

You can keep going back to cone of fire all you want, but randomization is very toxic to gameplay. I would rather have an overpowered weapon that I have access to, then a randomization system that screws me over 9 times out of 10.

[Mackman]

HRR Insanity, on 11 February 2013 - 11:51 AM, said:

We define 'skill' differently then. Shooting accurately is one type of skill. Managing cone of fire (as an example) to maximize precision is a whole different type of skill which you seem to discount.

You're right: They're two entirely different sets of skill: One which is entirely skill-based (I aim correctly, and i hit what I aim at), and another which seeks to minimize, as much as possible, an inherent randomness in the system (I can probably hit my target most of the time if I only fire once every <X time interval>).

I don't discount the skill of managing a cone of fire: I just don't want that in a game where everything can depend on that heavy-hitting weapon landing exactly where you aim it. There's already that frustration of seeing a projectile hit a mech, but having it register as a miss because of lag or whatever. But the frustration of seeing your ac20 or PPC round go wide due to sheer luck, and having the enemy's weapon hit home for the same reason... that would cause more than a few rage-quits, I'm sure.

When I miss, it's because I messed up, or because the enemy was juking extremely well. That means that no matter what happens, i can live with it. But when I start losing matches because my cone of fire randomly missed, and his cone of fire randomly hit, that will be a sad and angry day.

[StalaggtIKE]

Steps for dealing with Catapults:

• See Enemy.
  
• Select target.
  
• See weapons.
  
• Engage accordingly (if SRM keep distance, if LRM fight close, ect.)
  
• Problem solved.

[HRR Insanity]

Mackman, on 11 February 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

You're right: They're two entirely different sets of skill: One which is entirely skill-based (I aim correctly, and i hit what I aim at), and another which seeks to minimize, as much as possible, an inherent randomness in the system (I can probably hit my target most of the time if I only fire once every <X time interval>).

I would phrase it differently... my 'Mech can definitely converge one weapon perfectly. When I'm firing groups of weapons, sometimes my 'Mech can't pull it off because of limitations of the universe that my 'Mech lives in.

Quote

I don't discount the skill of managing a cone of fire: I just don't want that in a game where everything can depend on that heavy-hitting weapon landing exactly where you aim it. There's already that frustration of seeing a projectile hit a mech, but having it register as a miss because of lag or whatever. But the frustration of seeing your ac20 or PPC round go wide due to sheer luck, and having the enemy's weapon hit home for the same reason... that would cause more than a few rage-quits, I'm sure.

If you would read my original linked post on how to fix the problem, you would see I completely agree. Which is why, in that proposal, individually fired weapons would be pin-point accurate. The only time weapon spread would come into play would be when you fired in groups or multiple weapons in close succession (to prevent macroed avoidance of the group fire penalty).

Thus, you can have individually powerful weapons without running into the problem you're seeing here with the Catapults... or all of the other 'Mechs which run multiples of weapons to group damage.

[Turist0AT]

They work fine, no nerfs please. If PGI start listening to cry babies they will ruin the game for everyone. Let PGI do their thing.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

StalaggtIKE, on 11 February 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:

Steps for dealing with Catapults:

• See Enemy.
  
• Select target.
  
• See weapons.
  
• Engage accordingly (if SRM keep distance, if LRM fight close, ect.)
  
• Problem solved.

How about

1. See Catapult

2A. Fail to target due to ECM
2B. Target

3A. Fail to target due to ECM
3B. Lose target when drops behind cover

4. Assume it's a Splatcat, because if it wasn't it would've shot you already

5. Hope you are in Caustic because otherwise that Splatcat is moving 80 KPH and has a whole lot of cover to use to get to you

6. When it pops out, hope your team is organized enough to focus fire it, and that there is only one of them.

7. If you fail at above, prepare to lose.

Turist0AT, on 11 February 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

They work fine, no nerfs please. If PGI start listening to cry babies they will ruin the game for everyone. Let PGI do their thing.

Thanks for explaining your logic and adding to the conversation Mr. 7 posts!