[ModPack] dZ_Consolidated_Company_Commander

[Forefall]

Well, it's worth testing out anyway. Thanks for making the changes me987654 - I feel it's definitely an improvement and hopefully makes me think twice about what to pack on my mechs.

Now, not to be annoying, but what is the point of using a large laser over ac5? The LL does no stability damage, does 10% less damage and has shorter range. It does get an accuracy bonus and can be fired at minimum range, but that doesn't really seem practical compared to stability damage and 10% more overall damage. Do you agree or no? I think the PPC also has similar problems.

 

[me987654]

Well, it's worth testing out anyway. Thanks for making the changes me987654 - I feel it's definitely an improvement and hopefully makes me think twice about what to pack on my mechs.

Now, not to be annoying, but what is the point of using a large laser over ac5? The LL does no stability damage, does 10% less damage and has shorter range. It does get an accuracy bonus and can be fired at minimum range, but that doesn't really seem practical compared to stability damage and 10% more overall damage. Do you agree or no? I think the PPC also has similar problems.

I thought about a slight adjustment... but left it for now.

It does have no ammo (very minor advantage.... but no ammo explosions) and can be used much more easily as a bracket build weapon since it's only 5 tons vs a minimum of 9 for the AC/5.

The LL and PPC have the advantage that they get a bigger bump from sharing heat sinks with MLs (and other weapons)... you can pack more total firepower for less tons if you use a bracket fire strategy. It's actually a pretty big advantage to those weapons that doesn't really show up on the spreadsheet.... you can build a mech with say 2 PPC and a bunch of MLs and you only really need enough sinks to continually fire the 2 PPCs OR the bunch of MLs..... and you can still alpha occassionally for spike damage

 

[Pyske]

Hate to say it, but I’m really not liking several of the recent changes.

- perm evasion too high (suggested: reduce by 1 and +2 w Ace Pilot, only +1 for Assault)
- AC buffs and LRM nerfs (suggested: minor AC buffs, LRMs as-is)
- Injuries Hurt unintuitive and hard to see (suggested: straight hit penalty to melee & ranged)

I like the better evasion on 5 & 6 pips, but only when not permanent.

 

[me987654]

Hate to say it, but I’m really not liking several of the recent changes.

- perm evasion too high (suggested: reduce by 1 and +2 w Ace Pilot, only +1 for Assault)
- AC buffs and LRM nerfs (suggested: minor AC buffs, LRMs as-is)
- Injuries Hurt unintuitive and hard to see (suggested: straight hit penalty to melee & ranged)

I like the better evasion on 5 & 6 pips, but only when not permanent.

The AC buffs were (IMO) pretty minor..... I think the lower heat makes sense....not as sure on the Ammo changes (although really the only 2 that are impactful changes are the AC/10 - where you can get away with 1 ton more easily now and the AC/5.. where you could share 1 ton between 2 AC/5s)..... I put them in as many had been asking. If they are too OP we can always revert.

As far as LRMs.... I'm not sure we really needed the +1 to hit penalty myself.... I do like the clustering change.... LRMs should sandpaper.... Again I had people telling me they were fine and others saying they were way OP... so I made a relatively minor change.

I agree that permanent evasion of 5 and 6 is probably too high.... I set my mod initially at max of 5..... and that's only if you have ACE Pilot and are using either a Locust or Spider. Even so I might still knock it down 1.

 

[Forefall]

Obviously I like the weapon changes and actually think them too little but I'm a heavy theorycrafter. The changes applied though are REALLY minor, so I doubt you'd even notice a difference playing, perhaps excepting LRM clustering.

I think everyone agrees that too high evasion is problematic and donZappo is looking where to put it at.

What is InjuriesHurt doing that you don't like and is unintuitive? The suggestion seems reasonable though but it's not clear what you want fixed.

 

[Forefall]

While Sandpapering does do the same amount of (or even more) damage statistically, we don't need to reduce the targets "total hp" to 0 to kill it, but only specific locations. Thus high damage to single locations will positively influence time to kill.

This is a common misconception. Sandpapering doesn't reduce all areas equally, it is just randomly applied damage. A mech killed with an LRM will have half damage on one arm the other destroeyd, 1/4 damage on a leg, the other destroyed, the right torso nearly fully intact and the LT and CT destroyed. You'll find the results with an LRM will be relatively similar to most other weapons, as multiple shots will hit multiple locations. So unless you're calling shots or using an AC20, LRMs won't kill someone slower and it won't kill them "evenly".

 

[Ganimal]

Do you think SLas should continue to be clasified as support weapons?

Yes I absolutely think they should continue to be classified as support. Many mechs can boat MLAS, not that many can boat SLAS. If you do, you're sacrificing a ton of range, and usually need a pretty specialized pilot too. Other builds can mount a few SLAS, which is helpful in melee, but wouldn't 1 shot a light. Also, the way I play SLAS boat (grasshopper / firestarters), is usually using them primarily as sensor lock scouts, then tactically jump in at the opportune moments to precision a back CT. This is not something that can be consistently done every turn like LRM spam.

 

[Forefall]

I think RogueTech eliminated support slots for 3 reasons:

1: it's Classic TT rules
2: their melee strikes were overpowered and this helped nerf them
3: they had "elite" mech chassis that had over 20 slots available making ridiculous closing strike loadouts.

As such, I think we'd be better off without the change.

 

[don Zappo]

Thanks for the update! You are always more conservative in your changes than I am.

Also, stop apologizing for being annoying, people! I personally love balance feedback. The only way to find broken stuff to fix is by bringing it up!

The evasion will be addressed in tonight's patch to some degree. Any feedback on values for anything right now are appreciated.

Talking to Lady I think support weapons got reclassified because of their ability to ignore evasion. Their evasion in RT is way higher than mine, so it turned out to be particularly game breaking.

 

[3dahs]

HBS just dropped a patch.


Release 1.1.1 Notes, 6/27/2018

• Fixed an issue where the starter MechWarriors (Glitch, Behemoth, Dekker, Medusa) could occasionally also appear as hireable Ronin MechWarriors in hiring halls later in the game.
  
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause tooltips to fail to spawn in the Store under certain conditions.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where tooltips could sometimes appear truncated at the bottom.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where users could be unable to use Lance Configuration via the Multiplayer Skirmish Lobby if they had not yet played the campaign or single-player skirmish since updating to BATTLETECH version 1.1.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where loading a save game generated in the Axylus priority mission, right after securing the crash site, could result in a progression blocker.
  
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing attacks to hit 'Mech head locations more frequently than intended.

 

[3dahs]

Hoping they have some hidden bug fixes with Escorts and the firing arc of misses

 

[me987654]

Forgot to mention ... I added 10 ammo (total of 16 shots) to the 2 + model flamers (stock is still 6 shots)

 

[don Zappo]

That's your hope? I hope it doesn't break all of the mods!

 

[don Zappo]

Do I have full reign over the current round of evasion tweaks, then, since nothing made it into the Overhaul?

EDIT: Er, not all the sort of change ideas made it in.

 

[me987654]

Do I have full reign over the current round of evasion tweaks, then, since nothing made it into the Overhaul?

EDIT: Er, not all the sort of change ideas made it in.

I put your new perm evasion by movement in mine...just nerfed it by one (only 140 and up get perm evasion)....this is prob something we'll need to tweak

 

[Max_Killjoy]

On the earlier comparison between the AC5 and LL, the AC5 weighs 3 more tons, 4+ more with the ammo, and needs ammo. The LL probably needs heat sinks, but unlike ammo it can share that heat dissipation with other weapons depending on what the player fires that turn.

~~~~

Regarding sandpapering, compare an energy or ballistic weapon doing 60 damage, to an LRM15 doing 60 damage. The direct-fire weapon is going to do 60 damage to one location, while the LRM15 is going to do about 27 damage to that location and the rest of other locations spread out across the mech -- and that's in vanilla before any mods to "clustering" spread it out even more.

I think some are really downplaying the fact that even in vanilla, the LRM is doing less than half its damage to that "main" location it hits, even on random locations from a regular shot.

The LRM makes a good follow-up weapon for after something else has knocked a big chunk of armor off, so thank goodness they tend to hit last if they're fired in volley with other weapons.

 

[3dahs]

Well, it's worth testing out anyway. Thanks for making the changes me987654 - I feel it's definitely an improvement and hopefully makes me think twice about what to pack on my mechs.

Now, not to be annoying, but what is the point of using a large laser over ac5? The LL does no stability damage, does 10% less damage and has shorter range. It does get an accuracy bonus and can be fired at minimum range, but that doesn't really seem practical compared to stability damage and 10% more overall damage. Do you agree or no? I think the PPC also has similar problems.

The Large Laser also generates more than double the amount of heat as an ac5 as well. LL heat is 24 while the Ac 5 is 10. Where do you see the 10% more damage overall? I'm in the game and I see they both do 45 dmg. Is there something I am missing? Although large lasers seem worse it does costs 3 less tonnage to equip and doesn't require ammo like an AC5. Plus the accuracy and minimum range bonus you mentioned. That could be 3 extra mods: 3-6 Support mods, 6 JJ's, 3 boxes of ammo, 3 medium lasers. This alone makes a huge difference. Not saying LL's couldn't use a small buff, but each weapon shouldn't just be compared to another. They sometimes fit different roles or allow for varied builds.

The PPC does more damage, more stability, while not requiring ammo and is one less ton. That saves you 2 extra tons right there if we're comparing to Ac5. Also, the PPC is great for debuffing/damage mitigation by reducing the opponent's accuracy. Any mech hit by a PPC receives an accuracy penalty to all weapons. I'm not sure if the debuff stacks, but if it does that alone would be insane.

 

[Forefall]

Killjoy, I don't think that's how it works. First off, very few builds really on a single heavy damage source and most have damage at around 20-50. And most fire about 6 weapons per round. So the idea that you have one shot firing is uncommon. Once you have multiple weapons firing, without called shots, they also spread their damage. The spread is equivalent to the likelihood to hit each part of the targetted mech. This ends up being similar to the damage the LRM does anyway. The difference now (hopefully) is that on called shtos the LRM will still spread the damage so it can't focus, whereas other weapons will be able to have focused fire with called shot. Previously you could do about 65% damage to any successfully hit target with a called LRM and now it will likely be 33%.

Remember, this has to compensate for the LRM have 10-20% increased damage, and 80% increased stability damage with no refire penalty and indirect fire capacity. Personally, I'm not sure its enough. But we'll see.

 

[Forefall]

3dahs, me987654's spreadsheets compare damage/ton. The ton part includes the amount of weight reasonable ammo and heat dissipation would consume. All put together, the AC5 does about 10% more damage than the large laser and 15% more than the PPC per ton.

The PPC's debuff is pretty worthless, especially in campaign mode. If you fire a PPC and it doesn't miss and you're targetting a mec you're not going to kill or disable/knockdown, then the return fire is reduced by 5% accuracy. For 1 turn. If you're fighting 6 enemies, by firing a PPC you'll typically reduce the damage you take next turn by somewhere less than 1%. In other regards, the PPC is also less than spectacular. Again, look at me987654's spreadsheets posted earlier on this page for a per ton comparison.

Both weapons do benefit from being able to do an "alpha strike and run" strategy or putting them on a rotating weapon strategy. Also all mecs have natural heat dissipation so if you have a mec that runs heat negative you could theoretically equip either at better rates. And they have decent minimum ranges. I don't think they're that far off balanced. But if given the choice, pretty much all the time I'd take an AC5 over either so I think they could use some love. But they're reasonably positioned, so it doesn't seem critical.

 

[don Zappo]

Okay, I've starting piecing together things for the next version. Once again, time to speak up if you think there is anything we've missed or must be added.