Risk/Reward is seriously broke - or: "Brawling is for chumps".

[Monkeybonk]

I saw the thread on rock/paper/scissors and I've kinda noticed a bit of a falloff in players as of late, thought I'd post part of what I think is a broken aspect of this game. We see all kinds of posts about 'this is overpowered' or 'this is too weak'. Ultimately the problem is that this mod, sadly, has the whole risk/reward thing completely backwards

I'll jump right into things I suppose with the obvious.

Long Toms, LRMs, and other 'artillery' weapons clearly top this list. They can be used from relative safety and yet are some of the highest-damaging weapons in the game. Long Toms can be fought with soft-counters of passive radar use, but this is hardly a counter. Ultimately when it comes down to it, the effort it takes to Long Tom spam is inversely proportional to the skill and teamwork it takes to defeat. I can sit fifteen feet outside my hangar and one-shot Timberwolves with impunity? That's terrible risk/reward. There is literally no risk, and the reward is massive. Long Tommers almost always have MILLIONS of unspent CBills.

This also goes for LRMs and Arrow IVs. They do incredibly impressive amounts of damage, require absolutely no skill, and cannot be hard-countered. The minuscule risk is the same in a Long Tom - your enemies can do some things to mitigate your effectiveness in terms of soft counters (AMS is hardly the hard-counter we all hoped it'd be), but getting close to the enemy is no guarantee (and even still they can do the 'point-blank missile swarm' which actually usually does INCREDIBLE amounts of damage since all missiles tend to hit your torso).

I can also apply this to Gauss Rifles. They do absolutely massive amounts of damage with pinpoint accuracy (disproportionally more damage than they're supposed to do in CBT. Before you say 'Well this isn't CBT', I'd like to point out that it's still fair game to weigh weapons against each other). Should Gauss Rifles do lots of damage? Sure. IIRC in CBT they do the same damage as an ERPPC. and IIRC in MWLL they seem to be better than AC-20s. When you combine this with the inexplicable lack of shakey-aim while jump jetting, you get 'poptarding', another high-reward low-risk tactic. Gauss rifles just do way too much damage for what you get and can do with them.

On this note, a poor example in other MW games of risk/reward were laser weapons. The 'single blast huge damage' reaped huge rewards for low risk (sniping). MWLL took steps to prevent this, so laser weapons are actually not TERRIBLY effective for sniping given their beam nature. I think it's safe to say that they rectified this issue admirably.

Now we move on to ASFs and VTOLs, another source of lots of balance complaining. Because the fact is, when you rule out the SINGLE hard-counter to ASFs (Partisan Prime, esp. since they nerfed the L.Gauss Harasser), you have a weapons platform that can do absolutely, ridiculously INCREDIBLE amounts of damage with 2x Thunderbolts and Firebombs with almost no risk whatsoever. It takes an incredibly good shot to smack an aircraft down with 95% of the assets in the game (and even then, most weapons are totally ineffective - VTOLs can shrug off AC-20 shots). Again, we have lots of reward (crippling damage to most targets) with little risk (the vast majority of ground assets are utterly impotent at posing even a laughable threat against aircraft).

Risk/Reward works better in terms of the Partisan Prime. While I think it does too much damage right now, the real story behind the tank is that while you can eat up aircraft, your weapons are pretty much complete garbage against anything else, save Battle Armors.

Now we can move into the more esoteric assets - 'legging' and 'arming'. On some medium, most heavy, and all assaults, legs are incredibly easy targets. The hip joint hardly moves. They have low armor, and most importantly, they have absolutely catastrophic effects on the mech itself. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks a 50% speed penalty is extreme - even for RT destruction. Maps are too damn big to cripple our mechs speed-wise that easily. A 90% speed reduction makes a mech completely worthless. Finally, there's the fact that killing a leg 'destroys' a mech faster than punching through the torso does. I could also say that 'arming' is too easy on certain mechs with too great of a permanent impact. A Nova Cat with one arm is reduced to the armament of a LIGHT MECH, forever. If I can buy a new mech, why can't I just buy a new arm and bolt one on? The risk/reward to this comes down to individual mechs. Not all mechs are as vulnerable to arming/legging, but many are exceptionally so, which is causing a disproportional impact. You get a high reward (absolutely crippling a mech in a permanent manner), with low risk (on these mechs, these body parts have extremely low armor, are usually absolutely huge, and tend to be easy to hit by virtue of size or mobility). The risk/reward for arm/leg shots is far greater than simply killing the CT. Now, as a contrast, risk/reward works better on other mechs (Atlas excluded), for example head shots. I've found killing the cockpit on a Warhammer to be particularly difficult. The reward is that you can take out a mech very quickly, but the risk is that it's going to be hard to do without good aim and a bit of luck. Many weapons are simply insufficient for this role.

Battle Armors are another good example of risk/reward. The risk is obvious - you die in a few Small Laser blasts. The reward is obvious - you get some pretty great harassment weapons and C8 does good damage.

Tanks are another aspect of poor risk/reward. They're expensive, slow, very poorly armored, and as a whole there isn't that much of a reason to grab one. I don't think I've ever even considered buying an Oro... especially not now with the new huge pricetags.

So how does this all tie into what I said up in my topic? Brawling is for chumps. I love brawling. Brawling is what this game is ABOUT. It's why weapon ranges are unrealistically short. It's what every mech video in the history of battletech has featured. How many showcase a Catapult jump-jetting over a hilltop, firing a lot of missiles, and then landing, doing this over and over? But the fact is that brawling has the WORST risk/reward associated with it. I shouldn't have to explain too far into this, I'm sure most of you will understand, but brawler mechs, except for maybe the AC-20 boats, don't really put out what I would call staggering levels of firepower. They have to deal with fighting the long-ranged boats that are playing a higher-reward lower-risk game than you. Finally, brawling is ultimately the highest-risk tactic simply because you WILL get shot up, and you will get shot up a LOT. Brawling means being in the front, and everyone's going to want to shoot you. This goes with the legging / arming thing as well. A 'brawler' at 50% speed is dead in the water. A brawler missing 50 or even 33% of its weapons is dead in the water.

Brawling is fun. It's hard to say that brawling is anything but a suicidal tactic that, given the plethora of infinitely easier options at our hands, can only be described as idiotic to partake in. I won't stop doing it, but I never once have felt that being a brawler was somehow more effective than, say, being a missile boat or gauss poptard.

I'm not really a fan of rock-paper-scissors design. Ultimately I don't see a way to fix these problems with huge sweeping changes to the game. I have a few theories I won't put here, not yet at least, but this is my... two cents. A lot of two cents, but yeah

[ratbuddy]

TLDR: QQ

[Monkeybonk]

I'll also add that poor risk/reward perception is what frustrates players. Feeling that they got killed by something they couldn't do anything about, couldn't even *see*, and couldn't fight back against does massive harm to a growing community. Things with high-reward/low-risk are usually those that are 'cheap kills'. For example, a 50k light aircraft, 800m away hitting my 80k+ mech with a NARC (zero warning for NARC, no indication on my behalf I even have been NARCd, no counter whatsoever once I have a NARC on me) and following up with blind-firing two TBolts, able to core out my RT instantly (again, NARC, so no warning) and cripple me (50% speed) along with splash damage and follow-through to CT.

It's zero risk for pilot (in fact he hardly even has to aim), it's high reward (huge damage). To me it feels cheap. Things like this are what games try to avoid - in fact the 'kill cam' in TF2 was specifically so that players who get one-shot-killed can see who killed them, with what, from where, eliminating some of the cheese feeling. I think it's clear that this is having a negative impact on the game right now

[Flyingdebris]

good points all around

[BQfromNY]

Excellent Post! and I agree w/ everything you said... EVERYTHING!!  Mods.. Please read and respond.

[[SF]JT Kirk]

I agree with most of the points raised except map size, personally id like to see them at least 4 times larger than they currently are even bigger if possible.

I get that these are SA maps (solaris arena) and so are small, but i loved the continent sized maps of crescent hawkd inception and revenge and mechcommander

[(TLL)Siilk]

 Hmm... While some OP points are valid, no risk for LT for example, generally I cannot agree with his point of view.

This also goes for LRMs and Arrow IVs. They do incredibly impressive amounts of damage, require absolutely no skill, and cannot be hard-countered. The minuscule risk is the same in a Long Tom - your enemies can do some things to mitigate your effectiveness in terms of soft counters (AMS is hardly the hard-counter we all hoped it'd be), but getting close to the enemy is no guarantee (and even still they can do the 'point-blank missile swarm' which actually usually does INCREDIBLE amounts of damage since all missiles tend to hit your torso).

 You're slightly exaggerating. LRM spam is a known problem, but it's not that bad. And FYI, it's easily countered by aforementioned Long Tom.

I can also apply this to Gauss Rifles. They do absolutely massive amounts of damage with pinpoint accuracy (disproportionally more damage than they're supposed to do in CBT. Before you say 'Well this isn't CBT', I'd like to point out that it's still fair game to weigh weapons against each other). Should Gauss Rifles do lots of damage? Sure. IIRC in CBT they do the same damage as an ERPPC. and IIRC in MWLL they seem to be better than AC-20s. When you combine this with the inexplicable lack of shakey-aim while jump jetting, you get 'poptarding', another high-reward low-risk tactic. Gauss rifles just do way too much damage for what you get and can do with them.

 Gaus rifle being OP? I rather believe that LBLs are. Gauss has good travel speed, but it's not a hitscan weapon. It is limited by ammo. It's damage is high, but not too high, compared to LBLs. And UAC20, with possible range of 1200m, has even more direct damage and a significant splash damage. Now HGauss is another story, of course. As for PPC, I agree, it's slightly underpowered now.

Now we move on to ASFs and VTOLs, another source of lots of balance complaining. Because the fact is, when you rule out the SINGLE hard-counter to ASFs (Partisan Prime, esp. since they nerfed the L.Gauss Harasser), you have a weapons platform that can do absolutely, ridiculously INCREDIBLE amounts of damage with 2x Thunderbolts and Firebombs with almost no risk whatsoever. It takes an incredibly good shot to smack an aircraft down with 95% of the assets in the game (and even then, most weapons are totally ineffective - VTOLs can shrug off AC-20 shots). Again, we have lots of reward (crippling damage to most targets) with little risk (the vast majority of ground assets are utterly impotent at posing even a laughable threat against aircraft).

 Oh, please! ASF are most fragile assets in the game, except for Harasser and BA. And what did you meant by single "hard counter"? Partisans, Huits, LRM boats, mechs with AC5s and MGs, other ASFs. Hell, even base turrets are dangerous for ASF. As was stated on the forum many times, and my personal experience confirms is, in 0.2.0 even a single partisan can keep all enemy ASF trembling in fear as LT does to ground assets. And, BTW, hitting an aero with LBL or gauss is not very hard, even for a mech. To add to this, ASF flys like hell, tend to loose climb at low altitude and are a real bitch to land.

Risk/Reward works better in terms of the Partisan Prime. While I think it does too much damage right now, the real story behind the tank is that while you can eat up aircraft, your weapons are pretty much complete garbage against anything else, save Battle Armors.

 But that's exactly what it's designed for! Partisan is AA tank, so being good at AA and suck at damaging ground assets is in his nature. Still, if you want to deal damage to mechs, any other Partisan variants are great for that. LBXs? Light dies in a couple of seconds. RACs? Same story, but for even longer range. LRMs? Need I say anything here?

Now we can move into the more esoteric assets - 'legging' and 'arming'. On some medium, most heavy, and all assaults, legs are incredibly easy targets. The hip joint hardly moves. They have low armor, and most importantly, they have absolutely catastrophic effects on the mech itself. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks a 50% speed penalty is extreme - even for RT destruction. Maps are too damn big to cripple our mechs speed-wise that easily. A 90% speed reduction makes a mech completely worthless. Finally, there's the fact that killing a leg 'destroys' a mech faster than punching through the torso does.

 Another valid point. But if you look around a little, you'd see that there's already a thread and even a poll on this issue. No need to munch the same things over and over again in new threads.

I could also say that 'arming' is too easy on certain mechs with too great of a permanent impact. A Nova Cat with one arm is reduced to the armament of a LIGHT MECH, forever. If I can buy a new mech, why can't I just buy a new arm and bolt one on? The risk/reward to this comes down to individual mechs. Not all mechs are as vulnerable to arming/legging, but many are exceptionally so, which is causing a disproportional impact. You get a high reward (absolutely crippling a mech in a permanent manner), with low risk (on these mechs, these body parts have extremely low armor, are usually absolutely huge, and tend to be easy to hit by virtue of size or mobility). The risk/reward for arm/leg shots is far greater than simply killing the CT. Now, as a contrast, risk/reward works better on other mechs (Atlas excluded), for example head shots. I've found killing the cockpit on a Warhammer to be particularly difficult. The reward is that you can take out a mech very quickly, but the risk is that it's going to be hard to do without good aim and a bit of luck. Many weapons are simply insufficient for this role.

 Again, you're slightly exaggerating. Damage to individual components is a cornerstone of a BT games. If arms(or even legs) would became überarmored, there would be no point in targeting them altogether and all the distinctive hitboxes and armor values would be effectively dumbed down to a "mech with a lifebar", as in Armored Core. As for destroyed arms are irreparable, I see nothing wrong with it. Changing and arm is not a work for a field technician crew. BTW, you may not knew this, but no single component(except for cockpit) could be restored if it's destroyed(i.e. blacked on damage diagram). Moreover, destroying an arm or a side torso compartment to disable a weapon means that your opponent ignores your CT, thus makes you to last longer in a fight. You can destroy his mech in that time, escape, or get help from teammates, even go for his weapons in return, while your opponent wouldn't get kill points, unless he cores you. So, I see no flaws in "arming".  Following your logic, the next thing you say is that "torsoing" is wrong, because it destroys a mech beyond repair.

Battle Armors are another good example of risk/reward. The risk is obvious - you die in a few Small Laser blasts. The reward is obvious - you get some pretty great harassment weapons and C8 does good damage.

 A good example, indeed. But you haven't stated what it is example of: a good or bad risk/reward balance.

Tanks are another aspect of poor risk/reward. They're expensive, slow, very poorly armored, and as a whole there isn't that much of a reason to grab one. I don't think I've ever even considered buying an Oro... especially not now with the new huge pricetags.

 Another valid point. It was already stated numerous times, that armor assets are overpriced in 0.2.0. But in 0.1.0 there were no problems with armor. I saw Oros and Demolishers all over the map that days.

I love brawling. Brawling is what this game is ABOUT.

  Well, not exactly. Brawling is what you want to this game be all about. Devs have different view on MWLL, making it combined arms game, with all aspects of BT warfare: direct mech-to-mech combat, air support, artillery, armored infantry, et.c. Brawling is only one of these aspects.

But the fact is that brawling has the WORST risk/reward associated with it. I shouldn't have to explain too far into this, I'm sure most of you will understand, but brawler mechs, except for maybe the AC-20 boats, don't really put out what I would call staggering levels of firepower. They have to deal with fighting the long-ranged boats that are playing a higher-reward lower-risk game than you.

  I think you even get that "brawling" thing wrong. You try to bring duel brawling in an army combat situation. But for that situation, brawling isn't just blindly charging the enemy head on until you can punch him in the face with your mech's fist. It's more like being a pointman of the attacking group, keeping a best distance to the enemy, so that he would be at disadvantage, weapon range-wise, and keeping the enemy attention off your second and third line support. You must understand, a group of all close-range mechs on sandblasted, attacking LRM boats is a suicide. A couple of close-range mechs with support of LRM boats, aeros and armor is a pinpoint of attack. There would be game modes with brawling only in mind, coliseum for example, but for SA or TC that's not going to work.

Brawling is fun. It's hard to say that brawling is anything but a suicidal tactic that, given the plethora of infinitely easier options at our hands, can only be described as idiotic to partake in. I won't stop doing it, but I never once have felt that being a brawler was somehow more effective than, say, being a missile boat or gauss poptard.

 But why do you thought brawling was supposed to be most effective in a combat situation? Attackign group needs a pointmen, but it always was a high risk assignment and pointmen alone can never conduct a successful attack.

I'm not really a fan of rock-paper-scissors design. Ultimately I don't see a way to fix these problems with huge sweeping changes to the game. I have a few theories I won't put here, not yet at least, but this is my... two cents. A lot of two cents, but yeah

 Following your train of thoughts, fixing this "situation" means removing all aeros, LT and missileboats, leaving only mechs with a single hitbox and a lifebar, indestructible limbs, armed only with lasers and ACs, and making a strict duel-only rules of engagement. Exaggeration, I know, but that's what your post suggests.

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

QFT "Brawling is for chumps"

Look, if my best weapons don't lose damage over long distances, why would i get up close?  The only weapons that require you to be "close" (less than 300m) are flamers.  All AC ballistics (well not lbx) can be arced way beyond their "max distances".

The only way to mitigate damage in mechwarrior games is to use cover or make your target miss by using maneuverability.  If you get close to a target you already give up cover, and if you're in a slow mech then you give up maneuverability as well, ie "Now you're screwed".  The only thing you can hope if that your armor will out last the targets.  But as we've seen, people will leg big mechs cause there's no way a smaller mech would win a "who has more torso armor" race.

SO if we were really thinking about making brawling part of the game, then the "knock back" effect of getting hit by Big AC (all versions) would need to be brought back.  This would give those slow mechs a way to mitigate damage, since they already gave away cover and maneuverability.

[Danger]

I agree with alot of what was said. In Mercs 4 I was a brawler through and through. I would charge into the heat of battle and wreak havoc with an Annihilator beatstick or a 8x LBX5 Fafnir. In MWLL if I am foolish enough to charge towards the enemy like that, I get pounded by 100 LRMS and usually loose all my weapons before before I can close the distance and use my lbx's or short range weapons.  Because of this I've had to develop other tactics, running without Radar, circling around enemies to come at them from the back, give up my lbx's for longer range weapons, heck I've even done jump snipping which is something I hated with a passion in Mercs. Overall I think that there can be a time for brawling, like when an enemy force is right outside your hanger and you are trying to get out, but if you are crossing half the map to meet the enemy, probably bringing a brawling mech isn't the greatest idea.

[HAARP]

I mostly agree with op.

Well, not exactly. Brawling is what you want to this game be all about. Devs have different view on MWLL, making it combined arms game, with all aspects of BT warfare: direct mech-to-mech combat, air support, artillery, armored infantry, et.c. Brawling is only one of these aspects.

Precisely. Although to make a combined-arms game, tanks would actually need armor and be able to turn :[
Also, tanks are NOT SUPPSED TO have to deal with heat. They automatically have enough heatsinks to deal with any heat their weapons may build up.

[=KoS=toasterpastries]

Of course brawling is for chumps if you run out into fire and get limped before getting in range of anyone.
That's why you talk and move with your teammates who can engage at range, soften up and distract targets, and give you a chance to close in.
Or group up mechs with AMS. Or come in quiet on a flanking run. Or use a little thing called "cover".
Or MASC. Or JJ's (I LOVE hopping over incoming missles...so satisfying.)
Et cetera blah blah blah.

Conclusion:
There's no such guy as John J. Rambo; brawling without your teams support is for chumps.


I do feel like some things need balancing out, but not strongly enough to put this forum through another new thread about it.

[Rally]

From what I remember of MW4, it was the same. Long range mechs all of the time. Sure, brawler mechs did get used quite a bit on the city maps, but almost never on other maps.

I understand this is just the way any MW game will turn out, unless something is done about it. Of course, I've no idea what that something is.

[Monkeybonk]

I'll respond to the plethora of posts in a general sense at once.

First of all, no I don't have an issue with map size (but frankly we don't have the playercount to support massive maps). But the issue is with speed penalties for leg and BT damage. Mobility is a huge deal for EVERY mech, even an Atlas, and losing it is absolutely devastating. The point being that if you manage to cripple a Timberwolf halfway across Clear Cut, he has three options. Limp forward and ineffectually do nothing except get absolutely annihilated by long-range weapons, limp back to base and put him out of the game for a good six-plus minutes, or ditch his mech altogether / suicide.

Secondly, Siilk I don't think you totally understood some of my points. In one I say that 'Partisan AA aside' and you loudly proclaim in your response that the Partisan AA invalidates what I'm saying. ASF / VTOL were problematic in 0.1.0, and the only thing in that regard that changed was the Gauss got nerfed to be useless against them while AC2s / AC5s got their damage enhanced. While a pilot may OCCASIONALLY put themselves into a position where, for some asinine reason, a NovaCat is able to fire against them, any halfway-competent pilot will be able to avoid these situations 90% of the time. ASF/VTOL armor is on par with a light mech, and even landing sporadic potshots isn't enough to destroy a light mech. I've hit VTOLs and ASFs with various anti-vehicle weapons like ERPPCs, AC20s, etc and while they do damage, they simply don't do enough to actually bring them down. I'll also point out that anything short of DESTROYING an aircraft is worthless. They usually have to return to the airfield on a regular basis, they can be repaired and back in the fight faster than any other unit in the game. So merely damaging an aircraft is rarely enough.

Gauss was a fairly useful counter against aircraft and I'm not sure at all why they decided to nerf it. I'm not saying aircraft need to be destroyed by a small laser, but the ground-attack variants carry weaponry that is simply overpowered for what you get by virtue of being an ASF. There's a few ways you could fix this - for example, NARC is defeated by ECM, simply reducing TBolt splash, changing FBombs to individual precision attack munitions that have to be guided with TAG, and not just a big goddamn nuke. Honestly, just look at how other combined-arms games have done things, especially in terms of the ground/air relationship. You can complain about teamwork all you want, the point is that Rock Paper Scissors balance always sucks, and what MWLL is 'trying' to do is not only rarely successful (as evidenced) but there's been plenty of games that have already come up with solutions to these problems.

Secondly, the whole 'brawling' thing, teamwork blah blah blah.

Fact is, almost everyone is playing on pubs. Most of us don't care to deal with clan drama and elitism or have the time. You complain about pubbers missile boating, poptarding, and in general, on every map, you can see your entire team clustered around a tiny point with only one or two moving towards the center. This is because pubbers aren't stupid. They've already identified that missile spamming gets them results for little effort. The poor risk/reward relationship in this game is specifically why pubbers are defaulting to irritating tactics like camping. Because the game allows it. If the game were adjusted to brawling being better risk/reward than missile boating, you'd see them gravitate towards those tactics.

That's why you talk and move with your teammates who can engage at range, soften up and distract targets, and give you a chance to close in.

I appreciate the insinuation that I'm a shitty player, but I know what teamwork is. And you've completely missed the point. The point here is high-reward low-risk. Why should I have to deal with a swath of teamwork to defeat individualistic loners who are relying on the computer to autoaim their TBolts for them, or are simply jumping up behind trees and potshotting? That is the very DEFINITION OF THIS PROBLEM. It should NEVER take an disproportional amount of teamwork to defeat a tactic. If two people are working together on the enemy team, it's absolutely terrible balance to say that I should need three people to defeat it.

Well, not exactly. Brawling is what you want to this game be all about. Devs have different view on MWLL, making it combined arms game, with all aspects of BT warfare: direct mech-to-mech combat, air support, artillery, armored infantry, et.c. Brawling is only one of these aspects.

No. In CBT (which is combined arms), weapons are balanced the way they are to allow brawling. LRMs are unreliable weapons. Gauss doesn't do hilariously sick damage. Aircraft are free-game for any ground unit as long as they're in range and not occupying the same hex. Brawling is why weapons have unrealistically short ranges. Here's a point - why *don't* we have realistic-ranged weapons in this game? Why can't my lasers reach infinity? Why can't I guide an Arrow IV cruise missile in from 8 miles away with just the press of a button? Because that would be lame? The fact is, weapon ranges are already nerfed in Battletech to reflect an element of brawling.

Brawling is why entire chassis of mechs exist and why whole classifications of weaponry were made. Saying brawling isn't a huge part of 'what the game is about' is lunacy. Clearly FASA thought it was. MWLL has already decided to take some rather gross liberties with how they think things should work and look at what you have - MW4-style 'line up on ridges and fire from 1km away'.

Brawling is broken because this game has terrible balance. Full stop. There's no "combined arms" elements about this, unless you're simply trying to find excuses for the broken nature of the game. "Teamwork" is not a valid balance point because it's unreliable, it's almost completely anecdotal, and most of it is bullshit anyway. Finally, why don't we all stop swinging our dicks at each other and ask what makes this game actually fun? After initial release, this game fielded eighty/a hundred players at almost any time of the day. All four Mechwars servers were routinely full. Nowadays, you're lucky to see more than twenty players on. Our absolutely stagnant playercounts, to me, indicate that most people don't think this game is very fun.

What do you care more about, making the game fun, or boasting about how you have more teamwork to an empty server, while flogging the 'combined arms' dead horse?

Let me put this another way. Because brawling relies on short-ranged weaponry and generally higher armor loads, you're faced with two problems. First of all, speed. You have to find a happy balance between durability and mobility. And you're probably going to be using range-limited weapons. Now you have to deploy these weapons. Ignoring teamwork, the first thing you have to do is get to the enemy. This means subjecting yourself to all weapons and weapon platforms that outrange you. This means you are defenseless against all aircraft, all extreme and long-ranged weapon platforms. You will have to defeat these with clever tactics or maybe also get shot up in the process. As you get closer to your enemy, you subject yourself to more firepower. All long-ranged threats are perfectly valid for use against you at every range. Your weapons are only good at ONE range.

And once you get into that range, what then? Where's your Golden Gun? There isn't one. The most brawleresque of all brawler weapons, the LBX-20, is absolutely worthless.

What, pray tell, is the reward for the HUGE risks you take in brawling? 2x Gauss boats are still more than capable of blowing your legs off.

[HAARP]

I'll have to agree with the Monkeyboy

[Monkeybonk]

To be more constructive, I think a major source of balance problem is that we've gravitated too far from CBT.

Yes, you can't just copy-paste CBT in. There's things you can do in there that aren't possible in an FPS, and there's things that arise in an FPS that aren't issues in CBT. But there's one thing that should be able to carry over flawlessly - every weapon in CBT is designed like it is for a reason, whether it be a specific purpose they had in mind (for example, LB-20Xs being crit-seekers), or a relationship with another weapon (LRMs vs. Thunderbolts - LRM-20s do 1 point of damage for every missile all over a mech. Thunderbolt 20s do 20 points of damage as ONE missile to a SINGLE part of a mech).

You should be able to get that translated in-game with no problem. Right now we have a noodly spaghetti mess of weapon balance that is making it hell to make the game work. Because we take liberties with one weapon, it affects the relationship with another weapon which ends up turning into a domino effect of balance problems.


I'll give you one more example of poor rules translations having a negative impact in-game.

Ultra autocannons fire twice in a round (2x rate of fire). Autocannons do caliber-specific damage (20 damage for an AC-20) to a single section of a mech.

LB-20X autocannons can fire two kinds of ammo - cluster (the shotgun ammo we know them to use) and standard (ie: it functions as a normal autocannon (not ultra!). Cluster rounds are useful for two things - first of all, they can crit through armor, and secondly, they can, by virtue of being cluster-based, hit all parts of a mech at once and thereby ravage exposed internal sections (from, perhaps, the standard anti-armor AC-20 round you fired out of the LB-20X earlier). Also, all LB-__X cluster shots are also extremely effective against aircraft.



Here's how this translated into MWLL:

Ultra autocannons fire a rapid two-round-burst instead of simply cycling twice as fast. Autocannons have tremendous splash associated with them, damaging all parts of a mech in addition to the main damage being applied to the point of impact.

LB-20X autocannons only fire cluster ammo. They fire caliber-specific number of pellets for 100 damage each. There are no critical hits in MWLL, so they do not find crits. There are no internals in MWLL so they do not find missing armor pieces. They are also completely worthless weapons against aircraft.