Battletech concepts that don't work in MWLL

[~SJ~ Atlessa]

In CBT, the UAC10 has much more burst damage than a gauss rifle!  It's strange and unusual to claim otherwise!

It is neither strange nor unusual, if you consider this:
In CBT, EACH AND EVERY BURST is EXACTLY 10 seconds long... how MANY shots are fired in this time is never ever mentioned.

So... what you call "burst damage" is in fact "damage over the course of 10 seconds." 
Devide this by a factor of ten and you have your loathed "damage per second" = DPS

But in this case I do agree, that an AC10 should do more damage than a Gauss-Rifle per [turn] or per [burst] or per [ten seconds] or per [second]  (whichever you prefer)

[xInVicTuSx]

I like the concept of DPS, but I often tweak it to "reliable dps" or "average dps".
Take my arguments in short:

1. PPC has less average DPS than ERPPC because the second or two reloading is almost always spent maneuvering,lining up a shot or waiting for heat to cool off, thus the lower burst damage hurts this weapon even if the statistical DPS equals out over a certain amount of time.

2. (This might be a bad example) The UAC5 surpasses the AC10 in DPS right now, but obviously the behavior of the weapon (not to mention availability) means it has a much lower average DPS, as no one is going to stand there and let you land all your hits in the exact same spot over 5-10 seconds, and the gunnery skill required to do this on the move is immense, trying to do that and reliably pilot and the usefulness drops again, add lag to the equation and your DPS is in the crapper. Here, it is not the damage of the weapon, it is the way it delivers, it is great for AA, but LBX,AC2,Mgun,Lasers handle AA duty already, this needs to be an anti armor weapon method of delivery.  I don't see why burst fire couldnt work in MWLL.

3. The MPL and LPL do more dps than the MBL and LBL quite well over time, (though not the CERLBL because that is silly and over 9000), but they are much much harder to use for two reasons, extreme heat spikes and the behavior of the weapon. The pulse takes longer to deal its damage than the burst of the laser so you have to be more accurate, this means even though you get another shot at it sooner you will be punished with a larger spread if you are not careful and after a couple bursts with the LPL you are in trouble with heat. Obviously when you compare the ranges there has to be some sort of advantage here to the pulse laser. Various things have been suggested but one of the chief problems is that accuracy wise they are harder to use than lasers, which as among many things in MWLL is backwards to CBT at the moment.
This too is fixable, make them on demand so that when you have only a second to fire you can fire for a second and not have to fire the whole burst(good for LPL) when you have all day make them fire for as long as you want to rack up much more damage(good for MPL, great for SPL).

When we take simulating pilot hitting into account, while we can't think of it as randomly hitting different places on the mech, we can think of it as how easy the payload is to deliver based on the behavior of the weapon, which is why heat must be a high factor in the LBL even though the damage of the UAC20 once it gets into range far out classes it, because the opportunities to use and ease of use of the weapon is much higher.

The UAC10 is a complete mess because it suffers from all forms; its' DPS is in fact lower than an AC20 over both 5 and 10 seconds and is more difficult to use because even though it has greater range, the difficulty of use rarely sees that few hundred meters taken advantage of. Remember on average one AC20 shot should hurt as much as two AC10 shots, and it just doesn't feel that way most of the time, particularly when you can use one in passing but have to stop and fire over and over to get the same results. Finally to this we add lag, which is devastating both the AC20 and AC10 in effectiveness sometimes.

A small knock up in damage, an increase in projectile speed and a straightening of flight arc should all go towards fixing this, lag is another issue.

[~SJ~ Wolf]

  Start thinking of a weapon as a thing to kill other things rather than in terms of DPS, and you'll get somewhere.

I like this statement, this isn't an MMO and I am utterly sick of people trying to apply "DPS" to it. It's retarded, and not in the HAHA your friend is an idiot way. DPS is an over time stat, and being that most encounters can end in a matter of seconds it fails to apply.

Nope. DPS applies pretty well to this game. One of the main aspects that distinguishes weapons is dps vs burst damage. While gauss for instance deliver a high burst damage potential, an UAC10 needs some time to deliver it. On the other hand, the UAC can sustain its damage for a longer period of time, doing more damage on average than the gauss. This is what (should) make brawling attractive and moves us away from trench warfare. A high-dps-no-burst weapon NEEDS higher dmg output than its burst counterpart.
One of the better aspects of MWLL is how this plays out. It still needs work, but we're moving in the right direction.

I'm sorry but no. This cannot be about what does the most DPS, it's about what can deal the most burst. High dmg, high burst wins the day. We aren't standing here with 50,000 armor pts per part. DPS is a concept that simply does not apply. Each weapon needs to deal the maximum amount of damage per shot balanced by the tonnage, heat gen, ammo consumption, recycle time and damage effects, as encounters do not last long enough to derive meaningful dps statistics. DPS weapons are not viable weapons as you will get killed attempting to open a damage window too far in a combat sim.  We aren't standing still poking each other on an open plain for 60mins.....

I don't care how much someone likes a certain mech or loadout, there SHOULD be times when it is completely ineffective. Cheap systems should only be effective against other cheap systems. Some mechs need to be seen as "poor" for there to be any choice and decisions when designing a droplist. The challenge comes to making those "poor" mechs/loadouts still capable in a group setting. You are normally fighting in a group and therefore have to account for the damage other people will deal.

What we would need to know to contribute any meaningful feedback to the discussion of balance is what level group combat are the devs using as the measuring stick? Are they looking at 10v10 as the arena that should be balanced or is it 1v1 (impossible to balance) or 5v5 or something else? We need to know how many shots on a target to destroy that target, what kind of target it is and how many players are being considered to balance that weapon.

These vacuum comparisons are worthless.

If anything all assets need an armor buff, as under any type of sustained group fire from any combination of weapon systems you stand no chance of escape. Not to mention slightly longer encounters would be easier to balance around.

@Atless yes burst damage is still damage dealt over time, but we call it burst because you cannot sustain it for any meaningful window of time in a reasonable battle situation.

[~SJ~ Riker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2KM-_zpCno


"i has a dream"

[xInVicTuSx]

Hmmm, I don't know, I have a knack for getting away with a sliver of health even when I'm under attack from multiple enemies.
SO LONG AS, those aren't super clan boats, remember when we were playing IS only on SJ server the other day?
Those battles lasted pretty long and I at least experienced some great upsets, Bushwacker taking out heavies, couple of warhammers, a B and a Prime downing an Atlas C and such.
I'm not sure I want the game to go any slower than it does now, it already takes me a while to down lights with my Osiris Prime, I don't want it to take forever.
I do feel your pain when it comes to assaults, but when it was IS only Assaults at least had time to react.

I cannot stress enough how the Ncat and Madcat (to a much lesser extent Scat) are breaking this game.
The difference in damage output from the IS mechs to Clan mechs are best balanced in the lower weight classes, but as we go up the weights things get worse and worse, until you have the absurd death machines in the Clan heavies.

My feeling in this matter is that in 0.2.0 the difference between clan and IS was not as wide as it is now.
With the armor upgrade it feels like all the IS weapons have been nerfed, but for the better, I like the pace of the game now.
However the Clan weapons just feel like ignored the armor buff and rofl stomp everything.

Right now the greatest culprit for making games boring are Arrows, but I think with a few tweaks they can be easily balanced.

Clan tech however has become a greater concern for me, its a battletech concept I am now starting to question.
I have heard it said that clan tech went a ways to breaking balance along with the 10 free DHS in battletech.

As it is I am not sure what to do, it all depends on how true we want to be to clan tech superiority, at what point is it fun and makes the clan unique from the IS and at what point is it just getting annoying when everyone rushes clan tech with no drawbacks what so ever.
Take the CERLBL, remember when it was only 800m but did more damage than the ERLBL? It was better yes, but not annoyingly so, now you can't fight it with Gauss, ERPPC, or LRMs because it just has too much range. Sure I guess its "canon" to give it more range but it also starting to get annoying.

These kind of arguments I want to keep separate from "heat is broken" kinds. Heat system is doable in MWLL, right now it is pretty broken yes, but the Ncat presents an annoying problem in that you cannot nerf it alone without changing the design itself, which isn't fair.
Heat system changes are probably going to come in the effectiveness of Heatsink dissipation rate and MAYBE slightly more heat for certain weapons. The problem here is that almost all the heatsink change suggestions are going to effect every mech in the game, making heat a pain in the ass for all of the other lower HS designs while maybe making the Ncat doable.

Let's take the Awesome A for example, a true laser boat, but it is not easy mode by any means, it takes one and a half alphas to take an Arm off of a medium or heavy and you only really get one full alpha and a staggered alpha until you are forced to stop and handle the heat. From there you can hug the red line if you slowly chain fire but that is difficult to keep the damage in one place, trade offs.
The Ncat on the other hand has no such tradeoffs, how do we balance the two out?
If we nerf the heatsinks to balance the Ncat out it will cripple the Awesome A, if we give the Awesome A DHS to compensate that will make it too easy to use, I like the Awesome A as it is, the Laser Ncat should be a SLIGHTLY better version (More range and a bit more firepower, less armor).

Finally, remember that the larger these "target" team sizes are for balance the harder it will become due to the increasing variation of asset make up on each side.

[HAARP]

I'm sorry but no. This cannot be about what does the most DPS, it's about what can deal the most burst. High dmg, high burst wins the day. We aren't standing here with 50,000 armor pts per part. DPS is a concept that simply does not apply. Each weapon needs to deal the maximum amount of damage per shot balanced by the tonnage, heat gen, ammo consumption, recycle time and damage effects, as encounters do not last long enough to derive meaningful dps statistics. DPS weapons are not viable weapons as you will get killed attempting to open a damage window too far in a combat sim.  We aren't standing still poking each other on an open plain for 60mins.....

Yay. Let's all sit on/behind our hills and poke out to snipe, then wait for weapons to recharge in safety. That's the kind of game you want? I don't.
And no, mechs tend to survive longer than the 3 seconds you mentioned. There IS a point behind dps.

[zombat]

Typical engagements generally last around 20-30 seconds, which is a life time on the battlefield

There are of course times when the battle lasts only a few seconds, but thats usually an Osirus getting whacked by 4 PPCs into it's side torso

[~SJ~ Atlessa]

This too is fixable, make them on demand so that when you have only a second to fire you can fire for a second and not have to fire the whole burst(good for LPL) when you have all day make them fire for as long as you want to rack up much more damage(good for MPL, great for SPL).

What I read into this (and support):  You want them to behave like "Laser-machine-guns" ?
-> like they did in MW2

NOT talking about the projectile-velocity, but the refire-rate!

@Atless yes burst damage is still damage dealt over time, but we call it burst because you cannot sustain it for any meaningful window of time in a reasonable battle situation.

You're taking my post out of context -.-   
I was only referring to Brainwright's concept of a "CBT" -burst

[Leeko]

What I read into this (and support):  You want them to behave like "Laser-machine-guns" ?
-> like they did in MW2

NOT talking about the projectile-velocity, but the refire-rate!

I have always wanted this, I feel like the weapon would work much better that way. Although, it would probably be harder to use without overheating, and harder to balance.

[=KoS= Eldragon]

So the designers have to put limiting factors into the game that prevent boating. Battletech uses Heat, Crit-space, and Tonnage. It is the exceedingly difficult job of the developers to balance these three issues out so no one weapons is the preferred "Boat" weapon, and instead players need to carry a mix of weapons to maximize their potential DPS. But a mix of weapons don't have the same projectile characteristics, so you can't alphastrike into your targets CT every time. And so  the cycle of balance is compete (in theory)

Except that boats are still the favored form of mech. People will still take boats over mixed arms mechs because the idea of making several weapons inefficient when using them together is poor balance.  Start thinking of a weapon as a thing to kill other things rather than in terms of DPS, and you'll get somewhere.

You (and others) seem to have latched onto word "DPS" from my post and missed the main point.  I will refrain from using DPS as is shorthand for describing damage dealt by a player over an unspecified period of time, due to the MMO connotations. When all I meant by the term is the player's desire to do as much damage as possible by any means necessary.

My whole point is that you need balancing factors to prevent boating, or at the very least give a reason for players not to take the boat mechs.

In CBT boating was not different that using a mixed set of weapons because all weapons fired and hit independently, so the balance design in CBT does not account for it.  In MWLL even the worst pilot has no problem getting 80% of his shots to land on target. Having all of the same weapon just makes hitting targets much easier. In order to encourage mixed weapon loadouts, MWLL needs to change the balance dynamic from CBT in some ways so that boating all of the same weapons has its drawbacks.

 I'm not saying having multiple of the same weapon has diminishing returns (e.g. 2PPCs does the damage of 1.8PPCs, 4 PPCs does the damage of 2.5 PPCs or anything like that.)  MWLL has Pod-space, heat, heat-sinks, tonnage, etc. All these factors can balance the game just fine.

Boating energy weapons should still be effective but would have massive heat problems. Boating Gauss is limited by pod space and tonnage. While a mech with a mix of PPCs, Missiles, and Gauss wouldn't have the heat issues and be able to fit more weapons on the chassis. Thus the Mech has much better damage potential for a skilled pilot who can manage those weapons, and such a pilot should be rewarded. Since it takes more skill to deal with a mixed weapon loadout.

Even now Novacats can't alphastrike with all of those weapons, most pilots chain fire them and ride the red line by tapping the coolant key. So energy boats are almost balanced with the current design, just a few tweaks are needed so that we seem more mixed loadout mechs late game. And it will be even more important if/when there is a mechlab.

[xInVicTuSx]

This too is fixable, make them on demand so that when you have only a second to fire you can fire for a second and not have to fire the whole burst(good for LPL) when you have all day make them fire for as long as you want to rack up much more damage(good for MPL, great for SPL).

What I read into this (and support):  You want them to behave like "Laser-machine-guns" ?
-> like they did in MW2

NOT talking about the projectile-velocity, but the refire-rate!

Yes.

[Brainwright]

What I read into this (and support):  You want them to behave like "Laser-machine-guns" ?
-> like they did in MW2

NOT talking about the projectile-velocity, but the refire-rate!

Fully automatic pulse lasers

You're taking my post out of context -.-   
I was only referring to Brainwright's concept of a "CBT" -burst

We're really only parsing over details, but I'm telling you, concepts of burst damage versus high dps aren't useful here.  They're useful in situations where your target can heal, where high burst puts your target on the defensive and high DPS is, quite simply, the one equipped to overcome all defenses.  Without that healing factor, weapon effectiveness a matter of how quickly a weapon can deal fatal damage.

Yay. Let's all sit on/behind our hills and poke out to snipe, then wait for weapons to recharge in safety. That's the kind of game you want? I don't.
And no, mechs tend to survive longer than the 3 seconds you mentioned. There IS a point behind dps.

Currently, the strongest factor in fatal damage is precision, which means "high burst," weapons always win.  Cut it any way you like it, but any balancing factor that doesn't account for precision just means players will move on to the next more precise weapon.  The game strongly favors that kind of play right now because the range profile of many weapons is unreliable, particularly when combined with other factors like enhanced optics.  You've seen Puma primes lurking at the edges of combat and Shadowcat C's poptarting from behind hills.  You know they're ridiculously effective.  Only by removing the ease of these arrays can you really start reducing the effect of boats.

Boating energy weapons should still be effective but would have massive heat problems. Boating Gauss is limited by pod space and tonnage. While a mech with a mix of PPCs, Missiles, and Gauss wouldn't have the heat issues and be able to fit more weapons on the chassis. Thus the Mech has much better damage potential for a skilled pilot who can manage those weapons, and such a pilot should be rewarded. Since it takes more skill to deal with a mixed weapon loadout.

Even now Novacats can't alphastrike with all of those weapons, most pilots chain fire them and ride the red line by tapping the coolant key. So energy boats are almost balanced with the current design, just a few tweaks are needed so that we seem more mixed loadout mechs late game. And it will be even more important if/when there is a mechlab.

Well then, it comes back down to heat, because a Nova Cat can alpha strike rather effectively.  I actually find the Nova Cat quite manageable when it can't fire all its lasers in under a few seconds.  The problem is we know that without a rework of the way heat sinks work, any penalty against the Nova Cat further exacerbates the heat woes of mechs with less heat sinks.

[(TLL)Siilk]

Yay. Let's all sit on/behind our hills and poke out to snipe, then wait for weapons to recharge in safety. That's the kind of game you want? I don't.
And no, mechs tend to survive longer than the 3 seconds you mentioned. There IS a point behind dps.

 Yep, pretty much what I think. Less high-burst weapons is what we need to make combat less static. Players should have to expose themselves more to deal considerable damage.

I cannot stress enough how the Ncat and Madcat (to a much lesser extent Scat) are breaking this game.
The difference in damage output from the IS mechs to Clan mechs are best balanced in the lower weight classes, but as we go up the weights things get worse and worse, until you have the absurd death machines in the Clan heavies.

 Lower classes? Puma prime, anyone? But seriously, that's what Clan tech is supposed to feel. And it should be balanced by bigger BV/price alone. IS tech is inferior but cheaper and easier to maintain. Cut IS mechs' price and score for damaging them a little and things would become much more balanced.

Clan tech however has become a greater concern for me, its a battletech concept I am now starting to question.
I have heard it said that clan tech went a ways to breaking balance along with the 10 free DHS in battletech.

 Not breaking balance, but changing it. IS would never be the same after the Clan invasion had begun.  It's 3050, man, deal with it.

My whole point is that you need balancing factors to prevent boating, or at the very least give a reason for players not to take the boat mechs.

In CBT boating was not different that using a mixed set of weapons because all weapons fired and hit independently, so the balance design in CBT does not account for it.  In MWLL even the worst pilot has no problem getting 80% of his shots to land on target. Having all of the same weapon just makes hitting targets much easier. In order to encourage mixed weapon loadouts, MWLL needs to change the balance dynamic from CBT in some ways so that boating all of the same weapons has its drawbacks.

 Yes, that's exactly the source of boating being so tempting in MWLL(and pretty much any other MW sim). And yes, boating any weapon should have more drawbacks in sim environment than in tabletop.

Boating energy weapons should still be effective but would have massive heat problems. Boating Gauss is limited by pod space and tonnage. While a mech with a mix of PPCs, Missiles, and Gauss wouldn't have the heat issues and be able to fit more weapons on the chassis. Thus the Mech has much better damage potential for a skilled pilot who can manage those weapons, and such a pilot should be rewarded. Since it takes more skill to deal with a mixed weapon loadout.

 +1, IMO it's the best and most natural way to prevent boating.

[MatthewPryde]

Now, I might be old fashioned but I believe typical mech fights tend to last about... an hour. Give or take. The video games have things over and done with in a heartbeat, but in CBT your fighting, taking it, dishing out the damage in a massive slugfest where you are dodging and weaving through attacks and giving your own. I cannot help but feel that the game tends to inch towards the standard robot game of big hits, instant explosion. Which seriously, if you want that. There are plenty of games. Battletech should be the slow pandering behemoths who fight al la battleship against each other in a tactical situation. (And hiding and pop tarting does not constitute "tactical")

Anyways please continue your argument on DPS and boating weapons. If you need me, I will be painting small metal robots like the nerd I am...

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Battletech should be the slow pandering behemoths who fight al la battleship against each other in a tactical situation. (And hiding and pop tarting does not constitute "tactical")

+1 to whatever he says

*bow*