I dunno about everyone else, but I think I'd rather see the long number, looks more legit

Really like the proposal for the Seth. It would allow it to fill the primary tank role for groups with the resist change. Proposed turret height change obviously a benefit also.

Gropho change would allow it to sustain more damage over time; at the same time lower its ability to tank alpha strike, which i agree with. Why does the longest range bot have the best ability to tank alpha currently.

So I would like everyone to understand the kind of deep water we are treading in here with some of these suggested changes. As this opinion will be frowned upon by some of my corpmates.

We have 2 bot types that are high damage out put is controlled by two factors- Accumulator Cost and LoS. I am sure all of us have experience the damage that can be unfolded upon you by a few kains within LoS for any extended periods of time. Now this burst damage that the kains are able to put out however slows down once they are forced to regen accum in between shots. The same holds true for Lasers, however they rely heavier on crits to make up for the slight lower dps but increased range factors.

Now your gropho, can hit you for ever from behind a rock for very insignificant damage in comparison to the bots above. Now in order to off set this they arn't held to the same rules of LoS and burning high amounts of accumulator. This however can become deadly quickly when encountering 10 of these bots attacking speed fit opponents.

Now with that being said Lets look at how we can Improve these bots with outside assistance, but wait... that requires coordination and boring jobs. Why yes it does however i am sure a majority of you will be very surprised to see the effect i can achieve by using them.

Heres the Thought experiment. (lets focus on range since that seems to be the shiny here)

We have a Gropho and a seth bot fit for 800m Range. well my seth does so much damage but runs out of accumulator quickly so lets equip a bot with accum transfers for it so it can fire all the time. Now they both need Sensor amps so lets amp them.

Now that both our bots can lock and fire infinitly to 800m Lets go ahead and see if we can improve this.

Lets now bring in some Nexus's: So i can bring in a Assault nexus and a Crit nexus. This brings any decent pilots stats to the following

Gropho: 13-17% crit
Seth: 26-30% Crit
Gropho cycle:6
Seth cycle:2.1

Now unless i have guidance 10 my gropho is going to fail some rockets. But lets look at some fun facts now to see all you have to do to win.

So now we have 2 bots firing infinitly with one bot firing nearly three times in the time it takes the weaker damage bot to fire 1 volley.

What does it take to win? Superior Positioning and Support bots.

PS: Watch how long a bot lives against a seth firing 6 lasers and critting for just shy of 300 damage per gun every 2 seconds.

Now you tell me if you want to make me more mobile, better stable and base tank stronger. If i need to i will write up how i can out tank the server with resist bonus seth.

Just because a bot doesn't perform as well as another on paper self fitting does not mean it is under powered. You need to take in to account how these bots perform with support.

About swaping falloff bonus to reduction of accu usage.

That bonus is interesting and can be used by magnetic guns and firearms, so why change it.
The problem is that magnetic weapons have *** falloff to begin with.

Devs when you add falloff bonus you suggest a new player that he/she should shoot in falloff range (its the same with shield absorption), but in the end you have, i.e., medium EM guns with 75m base falloff and 150 optimal. Extensions will not boost it that much.

With all lvl 10 it'll be 80% = 135m falloff

Increasing base falloff of magnetic guns would make that bonus usefull, it would also boost Magnedart slugs.
Take a good look into the magnetic guns parameters first than look at the robots bonuses.

Sounds good, though I believe Seth will still be slower than Gropho?

5% accu recharge is a bit useless outside shield tank considering Gropho has no issues with AP. Though I guess it's a nice thing to have different gameplay heavy.

Should have small magnetics optimal increased by about 20% as well. Even with sharpshooting at 10, arbalests/yagels sit at 150 meters range with close to 0 falloff which makes those bots pretty much useless.
Please change magnedart ammo to something usefull as well, since atm it's the only faction ammo which is 100% useless outside suicde bot role due to explosion radius (100 meters optimal on mesmer/kain, 35 meters optimal on yagel/arbalest).

Great news!

The Falloff is ok and more like 75/25 atm. Decreasing optimal and increasing falloff is going to make the kains not medium range but a short range mech. The bapth would have better range than a kain.

Note that Gropho, which already has the lowest accumulator capacity, had it decreased further, so it's a nerf for shield tanking. And no, cap regen doesn't matter with a blob shooting at you.

Falloff nerf is also a gimp. Despite what people say, falloff is a huge factor that's utilized every time someone activates a gun outside of pve. You will feel this nerf in game, as you can no longer activate guns at the range you're used to. In many pvp situations, falloff dps is the only dps many people in heavy end up getting to do. They will now do no dps. Lupus's disingenuous wall of text make it as if falloff doesn't count, in order to achieve his goal of convince devs of his "buff me, nerf you" ideas. The side effect of that will bite everyone in the ***.

Falloff nerf in favor of alleviating nonexistent cap issues (blob on either side will have finished off you or the target long before cap runs out) is an effective nerf.

Balancing to mechs shouldn't be done according to pve, only pvp. If you want to balance pve, change the rats.

It's still way off. Complex missile launch level 9, missile launch level 7, and my T4 medium launcher cycle time is still 7.3 seconds.

Also, 3 range extender to get 800 range? I have propellent mixing level 10 and 3x T4 range extenders and barely get 650 range.

I don't belive I am about to say this....:::slaps self:::... but I find myself in agreement with Dev Calvin.  This would go a long way to balancing the issues.

agree with Jack - do not change robot attributes or bonuses for this.

Laser power consumption change, better LoS and reworking the LWF game mechanic = already enough to completely change the whole balance of mech-pvp.

no need to for all the secondary changes which reduce the fitting possibilities of the robots even more (if your not planning to implement about 3 new chassis per class and faction at the same time)

Additionally, a lot of this perceived inability for anything but a group of gropho's to be dominant in pvp is all based on large battles before l-demobs.

These things will most certainly be able to change the face of fights and close the gap to make mesmers much more useful and seths even stronger.

We should really go light on the changes until we have some time to experience a lot of the new mechanics that were added right before the intrusions stopped happening.

I just did a short math for Yagel and Arbalest ...

WITHOUT any extensions:
Yagel 250: akku, 120 second recharg => 2,08 e/s
Arbalest 400: akku, 180 second recharg => 2,22 e/sec

T2 small EM: 3 e/shot, 5 second cycle => 0,6 e/s
T4 small EM: 5 e/shot, 6 second cycle => 0,83 e/s

Yagel: 4*T2 = 2,4 e/s, 4*T4 = 3,33 e/s
Arbalest: 5*T2 = 3 e/s, 5*T4 = 4,17 e/s

NOTE: without any extensions it is NOT posible to fitt T4 weapons except you start with nothing but weapons !!

with akku-ext and akku-reg-ext at 5:
Yagel: 287,5/102 = 2,82 e/s
Arbalest: 460/153 = 3,01 e/s
with akku-ext and akku-reg-ext at 10:
Yagel: 325/84 = 3,87 e/s
Arbalest: 520/126 = 4,13 e/s

What does it show?
- If you start without ANY extension, you will not be able to shot infinity.
- If you start with decent (5) energy skills, you will be able to shot T2 infinity.
- If you start with perfect (10) energy skills, you can shot T4 infinity with the Yagel and nearly infinity with the Arbalest.

- even without any extension you can shot 1,25 (Y) or 2 (A) minutes if you don't count energy regen using T4 guns (which don't fitt at all without extensions!!) ... more then enough time to kill you.
- If you start to PvP without extensions ... you deserve to die .
- If you start with decent extensions ... you can't expect to be stable when using the best tiers! (and wast NIC)
- If you have perfect extensions ... you don't care anymore anyway .

Overall this should point out, that there is NO NEED to gimp Yagel and Arbalest with a USELESS "less energy peer shot" bonus !!!
And in addition they realy need the falloff bonus for PvP and PvE .

Get some extensions to use propper fittings and you are fine.
If you don't do it, you deserve to be unstable (and to die).

PS:
I did not calc other extensions or moduls (till now). So rapid fire, weapon upgrades, akku batteries, energy injectos, energy recharger WILL change the results!

PPS:
- The Arbalest might be happy about +10 BASE akku .
(410 akku =>  2,28 e/s without extensions, 3,08 e/s with extentsions at 5, 4,23 e/s with extensions at 10 => T2 stable at 5, T4 stable at 10)
- The Yagel is perfectly fine.
- small EM guns are perfectly fine.
- if MEDIUM EM guns have a to high e/s ratio => fix this!! But don't touch the robo/mech bonis!

PPPS:
T3 small EM do have the same e/s ratio as T2. So with decent (5) extensions you can use decent (T3) weapons for a good "result vis cost" ratio!