My thoughts on the Beta so far... balancing and other stuff

[Long John Peter]

Hey.
i waited for the MWLL release for a long time and bought crysis just to play this mod the moment i found out it was in the works.
since the beta is out i have been playing a lot and although i love the mod some stuff really needs some tweaking.

afterall the mod is called MECHwarrior living legends and right now it feels like either BAwarrior, Tankwarrior or Aerowarrior.

in CBT i'm a big fan of tanks so when i started playing the demolisher was my weapon of choice and it worked out pretty well.
when i switched to piloting mechs which are supposed to be the kings of the battlefield i was kinda disappointed.
in opposite to tanks they feel like slow and clunky cannon-fodder.
later on well actually since the last 4 days or something i started using aerofighters and oh boy was i shocked how those things rip apart anything on the ground.

starting with the thunderbolts which might have the best no-skill to kill ratio plus they are affordable as CDT to the firebombs which can oneshot even the heaviest of mechs.
i mean how is it balanced that i can kill an atlas in a single bombing run before it even reaches the battlefield?

then there are battlearmors... more than once have i killed an undamaged MKII or an atlas as one of those suckers - stay behind them, hit their backs with C8 charges and AC2 pling pling away.

so here is some stuff to discuss for balancing:

Mechs:
- Faster torsotwist with a better response to the controls pretty much like tank turrets at the moment
- Better maneuverability (faster turnrate even at highspeed)
- JJs close to CBT as in fast long jumps which doesn't make you an easy target

Battlearmors:
- Make them a "vehicle class" as in you buy a suite of BA and stick with it till you die possibly be able to drop the suit + weapons to enter a mech/vehicle.
- Remove the armor regeneration - keep the health regeneration
- Cooldown on C8 charges with a SRM like timer

Vehicles:
- Take damage if a mech collides with them
- Destroy the vehicle if the turret is blown off
- Let the boost drain coolant instead of creating heat - no coolant left = no boost

Aeros/VTOLS:
- Let the afterburner drain coolant instead of creating heat - no coolant left = no afterburner
- Buying ammo only possible while in the bay so you actually have to land to refill ammo/coolant same as repairing at the moment
- Remove Narcs from weaponloadout let BAs / Scoutmechs Narc your targets
- Remove firebombs or reduce them to 1 and 2 instead of 2 and 4.
EDIT: - Lower the overall firepower of VTOLS either by giving them no free tons for ammo or removing some of the weaponloadout.

Weapons:
- Reduce ELRM damage by half - they already got the range advantage
- Remove the lockon for Arrow IV so it uses either TAG or NARCs
- Let ECM cancel NARCs
- Make LRMs tracking like Thunderbolts if the targets isn't keept in lock while in flight - no more fire and forget
- RAC damage boost

This is the stuff i had in mind so far i might have forgotten some stuff which i will add if i stumble appon it while playing.

In the end i want to add that i totally love the mod you guys did an awesome job so thanks a lot for creating it! keep up the good work!

[Mekabuser=12thVR=]

that sums it up pretty good. 

[Marodeur]

Battlearmors:
- Make them a "vehicle class" as in you buy a suite of BA and stick with it till you die possibly be able to drop the suit + weapons to enter a mech/vehicle.

I am right there with you. I was wondering why i have a BA if i jump out of my mech. I thought i am nearly naked inside a mech except of underpants and a cooling vest. But i can jump out my damaged mech and fight my enemy with rockets inside a BA. Very irritating and it doesnt feel right.

- Make LRMs tracking like Thunderbolts if the targets isn't keept in lock while in flight - no more fire and forget

Dont forget that with your modifications to LRM it will be much harder for a mech or vehicle to fight vtols/aoeros too. Move and keep a moving VTOL or aero in lock at the same time will be very hard.

[Long John Peter]

Dont forget that with your modifications to LRM it will be much harder for a mech or vehicle to fight vtols/aoeros too. Move and keep a moving VTOL or aero in lock at the same time will be very hard.

good point. maybe it's possible to make that change only apply to mechs and tanks.
might not be very "realistic" but would enhance the gameplay imho.
no more jump-lock-fire-repeat

on the other hand it might not be neccessary to change the tracking of LRMs but the damage to mechs should be spread out over all locations.

[Crash_411]

all of your changes reduce the risk of just running out in the open....

plus, i'm pretty freakin sure these aren't even close to the final stats on weapons....


balancing should be like the last thing on the list of thigns to fix right now. Until all functionality (mechlab, lag, mechs) is added in, this list is pretty much useless.

[Long John Peter]

did you ever play CBT? know how battletech fights are supposed to work? didn't think so. thanks for trolling tho

and yea i totally agree a mechlab is what we need for sure i mean if we get it we don't need balancing at all as everyone will build flavor of the month units.

talking about useless you might wanna consider posting constructive stuff.

EDIT: but to add some more stuff: give server ops the option to disable VTOLs and Aerofighters as well as force stock variants for all available units if the mechlab is added.
so people can at least choose how they like to run their server

[Marodeur]

CBT? You will never have CBT rules in a PC-Simulation.

Personally i think it would be fun to target a mech, fire my weapons at max range and watch most of the lasers, granades and rockets miss the target so i have to close in to get a higher chance for a hit. But most players want to hit the point under the crosshair, even at maximum range. Boring. It would be fun to have full modelled hands too, rip that damn tree out of the ground and smash the cockpit of the enemy in melee combat. But we wont see this things in a PC Mechsimulation. Maybe in a round based game, but not in a simulation.  

[Long John Peter]

somehow people tend to read stuff into my posts

but yes i would love to see that too but i'm also aware that it's not gonna happen in the near future and not with this mod.

still we can use some basics as in try to balance out the weapons so longrange weapons do not overpower all the shortrange stuff as that will lead (and it already does most of the time) to a camping game.
i'd rather see a well rounded gameplay where you actually can run out in the open and survive a barrage of lrms if you know how to evade them - not with assault mechs but with fast mechs even without jumpjets.

most of my suggestions are intended to make mechs better as they are pretty much inferior to all other units on the field at the moment while the opposite should be the case.

[Toth]

What you're describing is our combined arms, and that is fully intentional. This game is not MechWarrior with the rest tacked on for fluff, its a combined arms CBT game. We will be obviously doing a lot of re-balancing going forward, but many of your suggestions would remove exactly what we wanted in the first place, which is freedom to play ALL aspects of the game effectively. A 4 firebomb shiva SHOULD be able to nearly destroy an Atlas, if you don't want that to happen then make sure someone on the team plays AA to assist. If a BA is slowly taking out your back armor, focus on it, or have fire support. This game is not meant to be played as an every mech pilot for himself FFA affair.

 We are not planning to fix issues people have with the game by nerfing aeros/BA/tanks, but rather adding in MORE options that balance the nagging issues out. Please have patience, the game is only going to get better from here on out.

[KingLeerUK]

Short version: You are asking for MW4 where 'Mechs rule the battlefield and everything else is cannon fodder.  This was not the intention of MWLL and nor will it ever be.  Combined arms is what is being built.  There are things on the battlefield that are a threat to 'Mechs that they may not have the facilities to handle on their own.

[Defender]

I'm glad the only thing you have to complain about is balance!
That means we're doing well so far because there could be many actual game-breaking bugs instead.

[Manfromx]

It's a tight first beta, no doubt about that

[Long John Peter]

well i guess people will have to live with my firebombs

but actually the way you hope it will be played is not the way it will be played on public servers i fear :/
will work nice in clanwars tho.

just do me the favor and make mechs at least useful at the moment tanks are just better.
do you guys intend to add options for serveradmins to disable/enable stuff? so people can adjust the stuff on the battlefield to their liking?

thanks for the dev replys

[KSerge83]

Actually Long John, I've played on servers where you would not get away with your bombing shenanigans like you did yesterday. I've been there, and I've seen it happen.

As the devs said, a lot of your complaints are related to the Combined Arms feature of the game, and map design. Sandblasted and Clearcut are both maps that favor long range combat, but if you know what you're doing you can close to shortrange, and once you get within 300m those LRM and Arrow IV boats are useless. Ever seen a madcat MkII running scared from a Madcat? I have, it's the downside of choosing the Arrow IV loadout

[Long John Peter]

haha i remember you and i'm really bad with names

i see the combined armes feature and i love the possiblitys you get from it.

i just think the list i posted is some mild nerfing that would enhance the overall gameplay not a big bad nerfhammer that will make everything but mechs obsolete.

the battlearmors for example: i love playing BA only on inferno the map is just so awesome for BA action.
still i fail to see the problem with making the BA something you buy like a mech especially as soon as the claw is in for transport reasons.

same goes for aerofighters i love flying those but i don't think they will be useless if they gets slightly less effective and more tricky to fly as you have to work with a limited afterburner and can't rearm midair.
a good pilot will still be able to use them with alot of impact by choosing his targets wisely.

don't get me wrong i'm all for an easy to get in but hard to master learning curve and i might just suck with mechs but right now i only see disadvantages in using them as in legs come off way too easy, even slow tanks outmanouver them and VTOLs and Aeros can just fly so they are in a deadzone for the torso.
in my opinion they should at least be average in all aspects of combat be it against mechs, tanks, BAs and air stuff or they should really shine in ground to ground combat.

as the balancing is not done yet i will just wait and see what happens.
i just wanted to give some input from my side