The Weapons Ranges Thread

[Taemien]

There is another thread discussing differences between Clan and IS. This thread is about ranges assuming there is no difference between the Tech.

And LRMs do not have a minimum range. They arc up for the first 300 meters. This is so they can hit targets out to 1000. Try hitting something on Marshes or Sandblasted if they didn't do this. Take the minimum range from clan LRM and you nerf their hit potential further then 300 meters.

In CBT a range of 21 is 630 meters. Thats not very far when you actually play it out in MWLL. The weapons in MWLL also fire differently then they do in CBT because of mechanics of gameplay. As long as a guass rifle feels like a guass rifle and a PPC, AC, ect all feel about right. Then its all good. Balance damage accordingly.

Right now I think they've achieved it. There is a minor tweak needed here and there. But putting up a CBT weapon table and saying thats how it is there, lets bring it here.

Get it out of your heads, this is MWLL not CBT. If you want to play CBT get the books, dice and mini's out. If you want to have a video game with those values, make one. The devs here did it and and outstanding job I might add. This is their piece of artwork, if they say they don't want to copy CBT to the letter, then why should we keep asking them to?

I know that they are open to suggestions, but a complete overhaul of weapon ranges is a bit much to ask for. Especially since the current ranges work and work very well.

Now if you said you'd like to see MRM's get tweaked to 700 or 600 meters from 800, or AC2s from 1200  to 1500, thats a little different. But that chart that was posted is borderline disrespectful.

[Rally]

The Vulture Prime would be a very attractive (albeit hot running) machine if the Large Pulse Lasers reached out to 952m instead of 600m.

What? No way!

The way to make Vulture prime good again is to look at why it turned bad during the transition from 0.2.x -> 0.3.x and fix those "mistakes". Let there be no fooling around, the real problems this mech has are the following:

It's LRMs take forever to lock on when you're on the move. Being on the move is the preferred way of doing mech combat. So that makes them a very bad choice as a weapon. (Also, no ECM makes this even worse: running around trying to get a lock while being seen by all your enemies? No thanks!)

It's lasers can't do serious damage to an enemy before the entire mech critically overheats. That's because everything got improved armor in 0.3.x. This is a bad turn of events for a mech that can only shoot a short time before it overheats. This short time was enough to do serious damage to a mech in 0.2. It's only enough to do moderate damage at best in 0.3 and that usually earns this mech a "second place" in a fight.

[Serious Table]

You missed the point of how balance in CBT works and now resort to the "ololol its the dice" stance. You didn't understand the point of this thread
(no offense intended)

Ah, then my mistake for misreading that!

[HAARP]

What I don't understand either is why they turned the Mad Dog Prime into the real Prime variant. That's a cool thing, no doubt. But when the A variant gets over-tonnage extras like an SRM4, 4 extra tons of ammo and an ECM, I don't get why the Prime has to keep its proper tonnage. An ECM and a few heatsinks surely would be beneficial.

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer to have no overtonned mechs at all. But this discrepancy is confusing nevertheless.

Anyways, I'm getting off-topic.

[xInVicTuSx]

I already talked about this before, but Clan LRMs should lose their minimum range.

Why? Because a lot of Clan mechs were designed with that in mind.

- Timber Wolf Prime - it is a terrible machine for matches. Could it hammer down with its LRMs at close range, it would be feared the way it's supposed to
- Mad Dog Prime - Needs to alternate between Laser and LRM fire up close. In MWLL it has only the Pulsers to rely on, and that overheats the machine tremendously. I try to like it, i really do. But it doesn't work.
- Cougar Prime - intended to alternate between LRMs and Pulsers at all ranges to avoid overheating. It can't use the Pulser at range because the range is decreased and can't use the LRMs up close. Overheats and unpopular.

Yes, I think Clan Pulser ranges are ridiculous in CBT. They need a 1/4 reduction. But what's done is done, and if we were to fix this many variants would lose a lot of efficiency. And if you touch my Primes hell will break loose >:|

Exactly. I'm not concerned about LRM effectiveness overall, I'm only concerned about their effectiveness on nonboats.
As I explained, this change would benefit the balanced Prime configs, not the boats.
And he is right, they are designed to use the Missiles at every range, as it is now, their effectiveness is cut into two zones and that hurts the Madcat's offensive capabilities in terms of seizing ground at least, but it really hurts the mad dog and most of all the Cougar prime which is entirely built around the concept, now its effectiveness is halved at any range but from 350m-600m, which is a very small window.

I'm not quite sure how you would program the arc however, i suppose you could have a smart arc depending on the range to target that you are firing at. Thus they would arc high for a far target but fly straight for a close target or when dumb fired.

I for one would like to see missiles used more in balanced variants and in an offensive manner, rather than being regulated to boats standing on a hill.

I think we should all just keep in mind we mostly want "tweaks" out of this, not sweeping conversions that change the way the entire game feels and plays.

[(TLL) Heretic]

... I will be blunt here,
fapp nah.
Large Pulse Laser    470m    (10H)   (MWLL 600m)
Clan Large Pulse     952m    (20H)    (MWLL 600m)
 
ER Large Laser       905m    (19H)    (MWLL 800m)
Clan ER Large       1190m    (2125H)    (MWLL 900m)
 

That is enough to make me stop playing this game, or at least play it much less, there will be no reason to use ACs or Missiles at all, just a lazor war if that happens. There are some slight adjustments that could be made according to this table i would support, but this insane stuff? Hell no.

As I said in my OP "although I don't not want this to turn into a Clan  Large Lasers is OP debate (that's an issue of the heat capacity of 'mechs being double what it is in CBT and not an issue of range)".  TBH the Heat system is at fault not the range , damage, duration or recycle rate of the Clan ERLarge I believe.

The weapon range comparison is useful for seeing how the weapons were meant to be vs each other as per Battletech, this is a Battletech Sim, if a Class 5 Autocannon should reach out and touch a LRM boat then that's just the way the universe works, if it doesn't match up in MWLL then we're loosing immersion & gameplay (I keep hearing how each weapon should be unique after all).

Plus this is a beta, if the Devs wanted they could change the ranges on all of the weapons and see how it works, in fact I thought we already had that capability, more or less on-the-fly, with 0.3?  So wheres the harm in trying a build with SRMs range of 430m and Clan Streaks with 570m (Imagine the SRM Vulture ) or Class 10 AutoCannons with 700-850m range, or MRMs with 700m (instead of 800m) or a Heavy Gauss that does 2/3rds of the Standard Gauss damage at 950m?

Unless we try things, tweeks here and there,  and see how it works then no-one knows.

@Cujo, the large bore ACs are already heavily nerfed in range, when compared to Battletech, class 10s are running 300m short, class 20 around 100m short, there's 2 tweeks right there that would make ACs more useful IMO.  The point on map design is subjective, either way it doesn't really pertain to weapons ranges vs other weapons.

@Taemien, 21 Hexes = 630m is of no interest to me, I picked the 1000m of the MWLL LRMs and worked out how that compared to the other weapons, CBT Hexe size is not an issue, it's about how weapons compare with each other with only range as a consideration.  Your talking damage, recycle rate and weapon "feel", that's not what I'm talking about at all.

[Sesambrot]

IMO there is no point in changing ranges now...
It works just fine, and only because the books or the tabletop game says something different is no reason to change it!
I told you elsewhere, I understand that if you're fascinated by a book (or a series) you want something as close to this in a game, especially if it's based on it.
But IMO there is no reason to make it exactly like the books.
I also said before, that balance should be done exclusively in game, and since it works pretty well atm there is no reason to redo the whole balance with CBT values just to see if it works, and to make it as true to CBT as possible...

Even though it might not look like much, but range is a big factor when it comes to balancing, and seeing your values that would be rather drastic changes which would render several weapons useless/unpopular, and destroy the awesome balance we currently have.

The list you made is a nice comparison, and it is interesting of course, but it's no reason to remake the whole balance from scratch.

[Cujo]

@Cujo, the large bore ACs are already heavily nerfed in range, when compared to Battletech, class 10s are running 300m short, class 20 around 100m short, there's 2 tweeks right there that would make ACs more useful IMO.  The point on map design is subjective, either way it doesn't really pertain to weapons ranges vs other weapons.

the point here is that ALL the ranges got scaled down, and I'm totally fine with that, I think right now it plays quite well with ranges and missiles setup the way they are, there are a few needed balance tweaks, but ranges are perfectly fine as is.

[~SJ~Azov]

meh...it's close enough to the CBT value, and it works. I honestly haven't had a real issue with ranges tbh.

[(TLL)Siilk]

The Vulture Prime would be a very attractive (albeit hot running) machine if the Large Pulse Lasers reached out to 952m instead of 600m.

What? No way!

The way to make Vulture prime good again is to look at why it turned bad during the transition from 0.2.x -> 0.3.x and fix those "mistakes". Let there be no fooling around, the real problems this mech has are the following:

It's LRMs take forever to lock on when you're on the move. Being on the move is the preferred way of doing mech combat. So that makes them a very bad choice as a weapon. (Also, no ECM makes this even worse: running around trying to get a lock while being seen by all your enemies? No thanks!)

It's lasers can't do serious damage to an enemy before the entire mech critically overheats. That's because everything got improved armor in 0.3.x. This is a bad turn of events for a mech that can only shoot a short time before it overheats. This short time was enough to do serious damage to a mech in 0.2. It's only enough to do moderate damage at best in 0.3 and that usually earns this mech a "second place" in a fight.

 Mad dog prime is almost fine as it is. It's not a front line mech, after all, but a second line fire support, intended to hunt on the wounded or provide additional fire for a brawling team. The only thing he lacks now is being able to use LRMs at closer distances(as well as Timber Prime do). And yes, removing ECM from it wasn't a good idea too.

 As for SRM4 on a Gauss Mad Dog, I think it should be removed. It makes this variant overweight without giving it anything useful. Same goes for ECM, as running active radar is not necessary for a gauss sniper mech.

[Az]

21 Hexes = 630m is of no interest to me, I picked the 1000m of the MWLL LRMs

I am interested in the canonical weapons ranges, so I redid your table with 1 hex = 30m.

The MWLL LRMs have about 58% more range than in CBT, so they make a terrible comparison point.
It's true that balance is about the relative range between weapons, not the size of a CBT hex, but it skews perception nonetheless.

With a 30m hex, the Clan ER LBL scales back from a 1190m range to a much more reasonable 750m, the Clan LPL goes from 952m to its canon 600m, and the AC ranges aren't so bad any more.

Weapon	CBT	Hex	MWLL
LRM	630m	21	1000m
ELRM	1140m	38	1500m
MRM	450m	15	800m
SRM	270m	9	350m
Streak SRM	270m	9	350m
Clan Streak SRM	360m	12	350m
Medium Laser	270m	9	500m
ER Medium Laser	360m	12	600m
Clan ER Medium Laser	450m	15	700m
Large Laser	450m	15	700m
ER Large Laser	570m	19	800m
Clan ER Large Laser	750m	25	900m
PPC	540m	18	700m
IS ERPPC	690m	23	900m
Clan ERPPC	690m	23	900m
Medium Pulse Laser	180m	6	400m
Clan Medium Pulse Laser	360m	12	400m
Large Pulse Laser	300m	10	600m
Clan Large Pulse Laser	600m	20	600m
Flamer	90m	3	110m
AC2	720m	24	1200m
UAC2	750m	25	1200m
Clan UAC2	810m	27	1200m
LB-2X	810m	27	1200m
Clan LB-2X	900m	30	1200m
AC5	540m	18	800m
UAC5	600m	20	800m
Clan UAC5	630m	21	800m
LB-5X	630m	21	800m
Clan LB-5X	720m	24	800m
AC10	450m	15	550m
UAC10	540m	18	550m
Clan UAC10	540m	18	550m
LB-10X	540m	18	700m
Clan LB-10X	540m	18	700m
AC20	270m	9	350m
UAC20	300m	10	350m
Clan UAC20	360m	12	350m
LB-20X	360m	12	450m
Clan LB-20X	360m	12	450m
RAC2	540m	18	800m
Clan RAC2	540m	18	N/A
RAC5	450m	15	500m
Clan RAC5	450m	15	N/A
Light Gauss	750m	25	1200m
Gauss	660m	22	900m
Clan Gauss	660m	22	900m
Heavy Gauss(1)	600m	20	700m
Arrow IV	4080m	8*17	4300m
Clan Arrow IV	4590m	9*17	4300m
Long Tom	15300m	30*17	1500m(2)

⁽¹⁾ Damage drops to 2/3 of a Gauss rifles damage at long range.
⁽²⁾ That's what the Wiki says, but it seems too short. I have no idea of the actual LT range in-game.

[Rally]

Mad dog prime is almost fine as it is. It's not a front line mech, after all, but a second line fire support, intended to hunt on the wounded or provide additional fire for a brawling team. The only thing he lacks now is being able to use LRMs at closer distances(as well as Timber Prime do). And yes, removing ECM from it wasn't a good idea too.

You're saying it's almost fine, but aren't statements like "second line" and "intended to hunt the wounded" are just another way to say it's rather bad? I'm not sure I understand you. I mean why have a second line (inferior to first line) mech in the game anyway? What's the advantage of that? And seriously, any mech is good at hunting the wounded. I don't see the thing that makes Vulture prime especially suitable for this task. Now I want to know how you really feel about this mech.

I completely agree that removing the minimum range from clan LRMs to make them more useful is a good idea. But that's just the first step. The second step has to be changing the game to make killing faster again, or modifying the variant to be more heat efficient by stripping some energy weapons and adding heat-sinks. The second step absolutely has to be done or this sad mech still won't be really useful.

[HAARP]

I agree with Rally. Do not put a first-line Clan Omnimech into the second line

btw, the Mad Dog Prime is not really "fire support". It just uses the LRMs to weaken the enemy, then swoops in and finishes while alternating LRMs and Pulsers.

[(TLL)Siilk]

Mad dog prime is almost fine as it is. It's not a front line mech, after all, but a second line fire support, intended to hunt on the wounded or provide additional fire for a brawling team. The only thing he lacks now is being able to use LRMs at closer distances(as well as Timber Prime do). And yes, removing ECM from it wasn't a good idea too.

You're saying it's almost fine, but aren't statements like "second line" and "intended to hunt the wounded" are just another way to say it's rather bad? I'm not sure I understand you. I mean why have a second line (inferior to first line) mech in the game anyway? What's the advantage of that? And seriously, any mech is good at hunting the wounded. I don't see the thing that makes Vulture prime especially suitable for this task. Now I want to know how you really feel about this mech.

 "Second line" means "not a brawler", in the same way NCat or SCat is. Less armor, more weapons, speed and mobility, emphasis on the longer range combat with limited close combat capabilities. It's somehow weak armor that is making it not very good in engaging brawlers one on one, so it needs a damage soaker in front of it to be effective part of the  attacking lance.

Let me just quote Sarna for you:

The Mad Dog is a heavy Clan OmniMech used for long-range indirect fire support.
...
The (IS -- ed.)name also fit the battlefield role of the Mad Dog; the main role of the Mad Dog is to act as a support 'Mech, and it often holds a hill maintaining constant watch over the entire battlefield, like a vulture waiting for its prey.
...
The Mad Dog carries eight and a half tons of Ferro-Fibrous armor for decent protection, although it will not be able to stand up to heavy fire.
...
For its fire support purposes, the Mad Dog is armed with twin shoulder-mounted LRM-20 missile racks, which allow the 'Mech to inflict heavy damage on any opponent it may target.

 BTW, not every mech is good for hunting wounder enemies, as speed is often the key element here. Mad dog is fast enough to effectively pursue even some of the medium mechs, not to say heavies and assaults. It can use LRMs at range and pulse lasers as it getting closer to it's pray.

 As for how I feel about Mad dog, I really like that mech, especially Prime and Gauss variants(boat configs are too specialized for my tastes). I prefer Timber Prime over Mad Dog Prime but I assure you, it's only matter of personal aesthetic preferences and emotional attachment.

[(TLL) Heretic]

@Az, thanks for posting that, the reason why I went with the 21 Hexes = 1000m was because they'res a LOT of MW4 types around and if you suggest that a LRM should be 630m they'll squell ('cause it was 1000m in MW4!)    And TBH with 1.5-2K draw distances we're better using 45 or 50m as 1 Hex.  Also I think the Devs did the same thing, because many weapons on that list are roughly equivalent to what they would be if a Hex was 47.6m(1000/21).

It's good however to see the exact CBT values for comparison as it makes the same point, and is easier to read than my table.

Here's some little tweaks I'd like to see that I think would help gameplay:

MRMs reduced 100m to 700m range.
SRMs (including IS StreakSRMs) increased by 50m to 400m,
Clan Streaks increased to 500m.

PPC increased 150m to 850m
ERPPC & Clan ERPPC increased a 100m to 1000m (the LRM boats nemesis, as it should be)

Class 5 Autocannons adding 200m to 1000m (all except the old AC5 which should gain 50m to 850m)
Class 10 Autocannons increasing range to 800m (except the old AC10 to range 700m)
Class 20 Autocannons new range of 550m (old AC20 range to 450m).
RAC5s increased 200m to 700m (making it a medium range weapon as it should be)

As you'll see the changes are only tweeks to place the weapons in their intended range brackets relative to each other for better Simulation, mostly it's a tweek of 100m more or less, but it would be great to try out; of all the tweeks I would like to see I think the Class 5,10 & 20 AC changes are the most needed, right now the CheapHammer and the UAC10 MadCat feel more like short range machines than medium range specialists, and anything with a UAC20 feels like short range is really Extreme-CloseUp.



Off Topic: Clan LRMs fired at point blank ranges are part of the design strategy of the Cougar, Mad Dog and Timber Wolf so I really think we miss the soul of these machines if we insist on a 300m minimum range.  I'd like to see Clan LRMs not arcing if locked on target & under 400m, instead I'd like to see a Lock + <400m meaning that the Clan LRMs switch to firing like MRMs (spread out damage instead of an accurate concentrated stream) and I'd like to see an  increase the cost of the Clan LRM by 30-50% to compensate for no minimum range.

LRM lock time reduced slightly (10%) to compensate for the fact that so many weapons can now touch the LRM boats.

EDIT: Forgot RACs!