Variants, Cost and the Mechlab.

[Haunted]

I fully agree with you on that! Especially the AC20 Osiris and UAC20 Scat are overkill. The Scat was designed for a Gauss Rifle or similiar weapon and some backup weapons. 2 huge damage dealers for a small price like currently is, once again, insane.

On the Osiris AC20.. i have to agree, too. The AC20 weights 14 tons. And the Osiris got around 8.5 tons of weapons, so it sounds a bit over the top. But many MWLL designs tend to be over armed (compared to CBT), so it might be ok.

But on the scat i have to disagree. Even in CBT the UAC20 and Gauss weight exactly the same. So swapping them is completely ok.

Problem with my arguments are... its MWLL not CBT and i got no info on the weights MWLL uses for mechs and their weapons (but here it makes sense to assume they use CBT weights)

[HAARP]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I love hearing your opinions!

I fully agree with you on that! Especially the AC20 Osiris and UAC20 Scat are overkill. The Scat was designed for a Gauss Rifle or similiar weapon and some backup weapons. 2 huge damage dealers for a small price like currently is, once again, insane.

But on the scat i have to disagree. Even in CBT the UAC20 and Gauss weight exactly the same. So swapping them is completely ok.

Swapping, yes. But having both an UAC20/Gauss AND an CERPPC (and even additional MGs in the C variant) is overkill.

[Haunted]

lol reading comprehension -1 for me (should first drink my morning coffee... then post)

Yes you are right.

[~SJ~MausGMR]

Is anyone else seeing how mech lab is going to totally screw balance when its finally released?

Nope, I see it as the reverse, as bringing balance.  Remember this isn't going to be like mechwarrior 3 where you can put 14 lasers all in your legs, head, and torsos. I'm pretty sure its pod based with certain restrictions and that should lead to seeing more light gauss, ERLL, ERPPC trumping your AC20 strikers.

I'm sure at the least there will be a server flag for preventing usage of mechlab in certain servers, so if you want to play that way then go have fun, but I think writing it off this early before you've even seen it implemented is being shortsighted.

I don’t see how mech lab could 'bring balance' to the game. It will bring choice and flexibility yes, but it will also bring with it the attached cheese you find from letting people try to break the game through custom setups. I’ve seen it in Chrome hounds, I’ve seen it in mw4, this game will be no different. Someone comes up with an amazing setup based on current game rules, so everyone copies it. Then either, someone comes up with a good counter, which everyone copies, or the dev’s  balance said overpowered mech setup. After this balance is made, a few days later someone else figures out how to make an OP’d setup with current game rules, and so the endless cycle of pointless balancing continues.  Dev’s tear their hair out, loose focus on development and just stick to balancing, game gets bland due to lack of innovation, mod collapses.

Yes ok, it could be considered far fetched, but It happened with chrome hounds when everyone started packing arty onto assault mechs, the game took a trip down monotony road and most people quit. Same could be said for MW4, if you aren’t a jump sniping boater, u aint much.

Now don’t get me wrong, my experience of battletech isn’t as much as some people here, I’ve read some books but not most and never played tabletop. I’ve played all the games but only a few online. Yes, mechlab is definitely a key factor to the mechwarrior franchise, but not necessarily the battletech franchise. Were mechs customisable to this degree in tabletop? In the books they certainly weren’t. It was only exceptional pilots who seemed to have any alterations made to their mechs outside default recommended setups by the technicians.

Yes ok servers running without it would be pleasant I’m sure, but I’m aiming playing leagues, which I’m sure will use mechlab, and I don’t want to see the gameplay degrade into a BS alpha strike fest because no one can bothered to use actual strategy. Mechs shouldn’t be able to carry enough weapons to insta pop a mech of their own weight class. If that’s the case I’ll stop playing mechwarrior and go play insta gib Unreal Tournament, because it’s suited to that kind of gameplay much better.

Maybe I’m doom saying a little bit, but I wouldn’t consider my words ‘short sighted’, considering the fact I’m going of past experiences in very similar games. You can’t say it hasn’t happened before, because it has.

[DFDelta]

[...Many true words...]

I agree with about anything you just said, and this is exactly where we have to make good use of our combined arms enviroment and the cbill system.

By utilizing this wisely we can make sure that no real "overpowerd-pwn-all-and-everything-design" exists, just because there are so many possible situations it may encounter that somewhere HAS to be a clearly visible weakness.
One idea would be to give every type of unit its own armor values, like it has happened to air assets when they were weakened against light AC and MG and made stronger against Gauss.
I made the suggestion in another thread to give Main Battle Tanks (like Demo or Oro) a high resistence to Gauss and a minor resi against beam lasers, while at the same time raise their vulnerability to LBX and SRM big time. This way we could make sure not everyone runs around in Gauss boats once mlab comes and give people a reason to actually use melee weapons. (I am pretty sure those two weapons would disappear if mlab went live now, and Gauss boats would swarm this place like AC Osirises any map at the beginning of a round)
And even if some ultimately op design that is able to win in practically any encounter pops up in such an enviroment we could still use the cbill system so that not more than 1 of those could run around at the same time.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Perhaps as testers we can go to the mechlab and design the most OP mech loadouts possible so that the devs can balance them back into reason.

[HAARP]

Perhaps as testers we can go to the mechlab and design the most OP mech loadouts possible so that the devs can balance them back into reason.

That's the wrong way to tackle this. Instead of nerfing every config, we should simply make them so expensive that they're rarely seen on the battlefield.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Why have chassis classes at all then?  Why not take a whiteboard approach to the mechlab and let people build mechs from scratch?  I think balancing by cost is not going to fill all the holes and would ultimately be even harder than simply disallowing certain configs.  Do you mean assigning a unique cost to every possible config?  Or do you mean adding multipliers such that a 7th ELBL costs more than the 6th and the 6th costs more than the 5th?  This wouldn't work imo because it doesn't take into account the other mech variables.

It will probably end up being a combination of the two.  The decision process should be something like, "ok, somehow this guy got 8 elbls onto his Ncat, do we allow that? If yes, then make it expensive as hell, if no, then remove or change the pod structure."

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Blhurr - 7LBL mech would destroy itself after 2-3 alpha strikes, and above 4LBLs you won't have any advantage from using more LBLs in chain fire.

Yes ok servers running without it would be pleasant I’m sure, but I’m aiming playing leagues, which I’m sure will use mechlab, and I don’t want to see the gameplay degrade into a BS alpha strike fest because no one can bothered to use actual strategy. Mechs shouldn’t be able to carry enough weapons to insta pop a mech of their own weight class. If that’s the case I’ll stop playing mechwarrior and go play insta gib Unreal Tournament, because it’s suited to that kind of gameplay much better.

Relax, devs don't want that happen too
But in any case we are so far from the mechlab that it isn't any issue at the moment.

I guess we'll be able to pick ammunition type of our own long before the mechlab, and as it didn't happen yet.... I doubt there will be a mechlab in 2010.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I'm not so well versed in BT lore I just pulled that example because it was the first to spring to mind.  But it sort of proves my point.  Maybe it's worth losing an Ncat to self-destruction in order to bring down an atlas in one alpha.  A free for all or purely cost based mech lab might allow for a kamikaze 7lbl Ncat but make it very expensive.  I'm generally opposed.  The cost model might allow for some unique configs but that should generally be hard capped by solid testing.  Mechlabs should allow for wriggle room on a chassis not the addition of new appendages.  Could someone with mad photoshop skills attach a third arm bearing 3lbls to the back of an NCAT such that it comes over the top of the NCats head like a scorpion stinger? 

[~SJ~MausGMR]

Fair point sky walker, and I'm aware that the dev's will want whats best for their game, but at the same time I do know how they can be bent somewhat to the will of the community. And yer your right, i'd love to see custom ammo in game, and mechlab probably is a long way off.

But i'd rather talk about it now than wait for it to be released before issues about it are raised. Better to get it out the way now before it ruins everything eh?

[Grimnitemare]

When they make the mech lab they just need to make sure to keep the big weaps that have more power usage and weight than a light mech can handle off of the light mechs.... The AC20 Osirus is just retarded... Light mechs should be only able to equip AC5's, smalls, srms, that kind of stuff.... Then work their way up in tonnage of the mech and make decisions on what can and cant be on a mech of 35 tons or 50 tons up to 100 tons...... That is the only way they will be able to balance everything out. Putting an AC20 which is a very destructive weapon on a light mech is just stupid.... just firing that would probably knock a 35 ton mech over....

[(TLL) Heretic]

It's pretty blatantly obvious that 'alpha strike' mentality is already on the rise.

Since the new patch, what are the most popular mechs?

AC20 Osiris
UAC20 Shadow Cat
Hvy Gauss Hollander
Hvy Gauss Thanatos
Hvy Gauss Atlas
UAC MK2
UAC Mauler

and ofc theres the long tom.

Is anyone else seeing how mech lab is going to totally screw balance when its finally released?

I have great fun atm running in mechs that have good balanced firepower that requires my aim to be solid and CONSISTANT, none of this aim for CT once, get the lucky hit, move on to next target because youve totally just obliterated that one.

Its the whole problem with mechwarrior unfortunately, people want to kill targets in one shot. It's why assaults suffer atm, they are much easier to land pinpoint hits on than other mechs because of their slow speed and size. It doesnt matter if your packing 20 more tonnes of armour than my madcat, if i'm landing all my shots on your CT, overall its only going to take me maybe one more gauss to take your CT out than its going to take you to kill mine....

I still stand by the concept of - screw the mech lab. Let the dev's do the variants, and keep it mainly close to CBT loadouts, to actually have us playing mechwarrior, not hillbillytech where we see who can strap the biggest and most powerful weapons, in the most ridiculous looking fashion, onto the most unsuitable chassis. We'll all run around in flavour of the month mechs, and the spirit of the setting, well we might as well just flush that down the pan, because I don't think its going to be around anymore.

+1 Karma for articulating one of my biggest fears..the removal of strategic play and it's substitution with Ego-play..

I'm against a 'mechlab for anything other than custom paint jobs and minor tweaks like AMS and EW equipment or maybe an extra heatsink, but I fear that the intended pod system seems to have little stated restrictions (other than fixed LRM or SRMs in Vulture, Cougar, Atlas etc and I assume Armour, Engine and Internal Structure etc) and even in instances where we are told there are restrictions we see variants that break those rules (Vulture arms can carry LRM20s or Gauss or Energy weapons for example)...So I see this going into MW3 territory (and while I loved MW3 it's mechlab was worse for realism than even MW4s mechlab).

Stock games were great in MW3, the open customisation system gave us legions of mostly light 'mechs with 12ersmall lasers or heavies with 2-4UAC20 or Streak-Boats etc.  All jumping around constantly like mexican beans.  That is NOT Battletech, period.  Stock games were more strategic (although Stock has some boats and they are always popular) and just felt believable; whereas most people who loved customisation were happy for a 'mecha-Doom style game where we all run around with UAC20s at 120Kph, twitching till we can't twitch no mores....

There's a thousand and one twitch games out there, I think MWLL would do well to avoid straying into that territory even more (We already got twitchers covered with the BA, lets keep the vehicle combat as SIM-like as possible...learn the variants and surprise your foe with something he was not expecting.

Not having a go at the Devs (and let no-one think for a moment that I'm not a solid MWLL Fanboy), but the downside for the Devs is that a stock only game needs more than 16 'mechs with 4 variants each (like MW3, MW4), rather, in a Clan vs IS game we would require all 16 Clan omni's and probably 8-16 of the second line battlemechs, and another half dozen tanks, and that's just the clan side...the IS side is even worse (many many more IS 'mech chassis).  The Dev's would need to open up the mod a lot more to achieve this (there's plenty of modelers who would do a good job of a 'mech or tank to an industry acceptable level), but I can't see the team achieving this with the closed-shop mindset that this game has had (not being confrontational here, just a laypersons  impartial observations on the Devs over the last few years), TBH having to sign a NDA for your free work?  For a mod?

So that's my big fear...mechlab=more munchkins...one shot kills on Assaults travelling at over 100kph, without enough chassis variation for Stock-Only option games to stay fresh and the game degenerating into the worst aspects of the Mechwarrior/MechAssault brand and away from the Battletech combined arms play that I've loved since I was ankle high to a Marauder...oh wait..I'm still ankle-high to a Marauder!

[Buzz_Litebeer]

The mech lab is going to destroy any sense of the game you are currently playing.

I dont want to get into a large post but here is the short of it.

The game is not balanced to battletech, or any known balanced weight mechanic.

A mech with 2 er meds, or 4 er meds, is probably going to lose to a mech with a single heavy gaus cannon.

This is important because the heavy gaus in battletech does about the same damage as 4 er meds at comparable ranges (a little more at the closest)

The gaus does far more damage in this game than a laser weapon.

So the mech lab in this game would have to follow completely different rules than battletech to work, if it follows a similar set of say mech4 (IE slot based rules) then there will be no benefit for not equipping a mech with 2 heavy gaus vs the 5 lasers you might fit otherwise.  (IE the heavy gaus is so much more efficient DPS for the space over lasers you would never use anything else).

The same with large lasers as well, there is no reason to use 1 ER PPC when you might be able to stick 3 er large lasers in instead.

When mech lab comes out the first thing I am going to do is to make a dual heavy gaus boat, which will kill any mech in 2/3 solvos OR maybe a mech with 3-4 gaus rifles on it.

Since, weight wise, you could do this in the current "feel" of the system on something as "small" as a thanatos, you would have an immediate victory machine at the specific ranges.

OR, you could go the other way and make the ultimate LRM boat, design a 90 ton mauler with 4 ELRM 20 and a narc launcher with 3-4 tons of ammo.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I'm definitely afraid for what the mechlab will do to an already fractious community.  I hope it is the last thing on their to do list.