34 replies to this topic

[Tabrias07]

Weapons and heatsinks both had their values copied from TT, but ROF is not specified in TT rules. Weapon damage is an abstraction, with ten second long turns during which each weapon can normally be fired once. In reality, "AC/2" represents a class of different ballistic weapons with various calibers and rates of fire, which all do roughly 2 damage per 10 seconds.

For MWO, weapon stats were copied without consideration for their DPS and HPS values.

What would people think of reworking weapons and armor to be TT equivalent, on a 5 sec base timer?

Some weapon stats as an example:

Keep doubled armor

Make SHS cool 1 heat per 5 seconds

AC/20
5 sec cooldown
20 damage per shot
7 heat per shot
20 damage per 5 sec

ac/10
2.5 sec cooldown
5 damage per shot
1.5 heat per shot
10 damage per 5 sec

ac/5
1 sec cooldown
1 damage per shot
.1 heat per shot
5 damage per 5 sec

ac/2
.5 sec cooldown
.2 damage per shot
.1 heat per shot
2 damage per 5 sec

UAC's could be identical to their AC counterparts, with a toggleable Rapid Fire mode, which gives you double RoF with a chance to jam (jamming is permanent in TT but far less likely to happen, actual implementation would need to depend on gameplay tuning.)

Ammo would need to be multiplied by the number of shots per 5 seconds for weapons with ammo (i.e., AC/20 keeps same ammo count, AC/2 gets x10 ammo per ton.

Lasers would need to be reworked as well, with ML dealing 5 damage over 5 seconds, and producing 3 heat. Actual duration/cooldown is arbitrary.

Missiles could be made so all launchers have a 5 sec cooldown, with the only difference between them being the number of missiles launched and heat generated.

Really the only important thing is that they do the same relative DPS/HPS.

(I'm not trying to say things should be implemented this way, as I think the weapons would all feel too similar, but I think it would make a good baseline.)

Edited by Tabrias07, 25 March 2013 - 10:52 AM.

[Lyteros]

Several people have tried to reason (and math) on this particular topic since closed beta, sadly without much effect, PGI do not want to balance heat due to dangerous 3-second-jenners.

The heat dissiapantion comes from solaris rules, which breaks the CBT turns down to way shorter phases.

I'd prefer a system that goes away form alphastriking and thus only aiming once every 4-5 seconds.

Get the heat thereshold away from heatsinks, give the thereshold to mechs depending on role and size (e.g.: awesome is energy boat, so give it 25, catapult as LRM heavy mech only 15, but the k2 as ppc variant gets 20...).
Then get the heatsinks dissiapating a lot more then now, maybe back to their true value from the TT. So people would have to stagger shot which requires a lot more skill now. High heat weapons would also be less crappy then they are now, because the ratio of heatsinks vs ammo for more salvos will not be as bad as it is now. The math right now is roughly 3 times the heat you produce as heatsinks to get neutral (which is not even neccessary, but still means you need 3 times the amount of HS you're supposed to).

Lets compare this on two weapons which are very close to each other... damage bracket and range. But one is ballistic with low heat and one is high heat energy.
PPC: 10 damage 9 heat, you end up with roughly 27 heatsinks. weapon tonnage is 7. => total 34.
AC10: 10 damage 3 heat, you need 12 tons for the ac, lets say 2 tons for ammo (30 rounds). Now we're up to 23 total tonnage.

As stated, you don't need to get heat neutral, so how about cutting 1/3 of heatsinks each? Makes 18 vs 6. Still 12 tons difference. Cutting more? Enjoy getting hit by the AC10 during your shutdown. Even if you consider projectile speed etc... it's still not worth ~10 tons difference.

As long as this basic mechanic remains like this, the weapons can hardly be balanced.

Lets look at this from TT perspective
7 tons 10 dmg 10 heat => 17 tons
12 tons 10 dmg 3 heat (+2 tons ammo) => 17 tons

uh-oh... who would have thought about that?

TT balance was far from perfect, but it was a lot better then this here is. Especially if you only consider weapons its a lot better then what we have. I just bring it up as example. They could also go and drop all weapons to 66% or even 50% of the current heat... who cares if the heat values are fractional - display a dps counter on the weapon info in the mechlab, the conputer can calculate it ingame just as well as natural numbers.

This would also get us away from poptarting, which favours firing and cooling down for a long time - poptarting that is disliked and even hated by a lot of people. But with the balance of the game right now its one of the few viable options.

[MustrumRidcully]

Hey, where were you in Closed Beta when people already pointed out the obvious flaw in the conversion process from table top to real time?

It probably wouldn't have mattered, there is no sign that anyone at PGI is interested in this discussion. They have never joined in any of them and are just ignoring them, unfortunately.

[Tabrias07]

@Lyteros

I wasn't aware of the heat capacity rules. are they assigned per chassis in tabletop? or does everything just have the same heat cap?

MustrumRidcully, on 25 March 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:

Hey, where were you in Closed Beta when people already pointed out the obvious flaw in the conversion process from table top to real time?

It probably wouldn't have mattered, there is no sign that anyone at PGI is interested in this discussion. They have never joined in any of them and are just ignoring them, unfortunately.

Of course I was, and I realize it's futile to talk about now, as I'm sure they're not going to do anything drastic to the heat system, but I saw the thread about removing SHS and figured we wouldn't need to if weapons weren't running at 3 times their effective heat.

[Lyteros]

In TT there is no thereshold like here. Every weapon used generates X heat, heatsinks remove Y per turn. Minimum Heatsinks are 10, either single or double.
Every point that remains after heatsinks influences your mech speed, your aiming, your chance of ammo explosion and pilot damage / death (cooked pilot due to ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA is possible...).
Like on +5 heat you'll get -1 movement (~10 kph), on +7 you additionaly get -1 to hit...

But hey... instead of a balanced heat system we got pay2flush.

[Tabrias07]

Lyteros, on 25 March 2013 - 11:10 AM, said:

In TT there is no thereshold like here. Every weapon used generates X heat, heatsinks remove Y per turn. Minimum Heatsinks are 10, either single or double.
Every point that remains after heatsinks influences your mech speed, your aiming, your chance of ammo explosion and pilot damage / death (cooked pilot due to ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA is possible...).
Like on +5 heat you'll get -1 movement (~10 kph), on +7 you additionaly get -1 to hit...

But hey... instead of a balanced heat system we got pay2flush.

Ah, I heard about penalties for running hot but it didn't make any sense to me. Especially cause I heard you have multiple chances to shut down as your heat increases.

[MustrumRidcully]

Tabrias07, on 25 March 2013 - 11:05 AM, said:

@Lyteros

I wasn't aware of the heat capacity rules. are they assigned per chassis in tabletop? or does everything just have the same heat cap?
Of course I was, and I realize it's futile to talk about now, as I'm sure they're not going to do anything drastic to the heat system, but I saw the thread about removing SHS and figured we wouldn't need to if weapons weren't running at 3 times their effective heat.

I really don't know. It's very frustrating to me that I think I have some good ideas on how to vastly improve the game's balance, but know that the ideas will never get heard, and I'll never get solid feedback indicating why my ideas might be bad.

But should I ever win the lottery and have enough money over to make a Mechwarrior game, I'll consider you as a Beta Tester and general rules-sanity checker.

[Lyteros]

Tabrias07, on 25 March 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

Ah, I heard about penalties for running hot but it didn't make any sense to me. Especially cause I heard you have multiple chances to shut down as your heat increases.

In TT auto shutdown is not just happening, it's a chance to happen. The pilot has a chance to override it, the more heat the mech has, the harder it gets for the pilot to override.

It's even quite easy to implement. Since MWO is real time, you just need some puffer zone, aka thereshold to give heatsinks time to absorb, or you'll have all the bad stuff instantly.

1. Get a Heat counter, if you want just like MWO numbers.
2. If the mechs thereshold gets exceeded, bad stuff happens, as long heat is above it.

If it hits 5 above your threashold, for the time beeing you get -10 kph
if it hits 7 your targeting circle expands to double size and the shot is somewhere in there, you will still hit 90%, but its a little more missing
Then somewhere the auto shutdown comes up which can be overriden with consequences:
If heat raises further increase the problems and introduce chance on ammo explosion, mech gets even slower, internals receive damage, targeting gets even worse, pilot "red outs" due to heat (blur the screen in some way so people cant see much)

Edited by Lyteros, 25 March 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[3rdworld]

TT had a 30 heat capacity.


Here we have 30+Heatsinks+ pilot skills.

IMO it should have been balanced per chassis so energy boats would have more cap than others. Like the 3ppc awesome should be able to generate more heat than the 4 LRM awesome.

But ya, weapons balance for heat is terrible.

[Team Leader]

1 heat per 5 seconds = 0.2 heat per second = DHS.... So make SHS cool at regular DHS rates, then what would DHS be? 0.4 HPS? Actually, I dunno, seems like heat wouldn't be an issue anymore. That would be kinda wonky.

Edited by Team Leader, 25 March 2013 - 11:24 AM.

[Tabrias07]

Team Leader, on 25 March 2013 - 11:22 AM, said:

1 heat per 5 seconds = 0.2 heat per second = DHS.... So make SHS cool at regular DHS rates, then what would DHS be? 0.4 HPS? No thanks.

Yes. Exactly.

2 heat per 5 seconds, rather than 2 heat per 10 seconds

[Davers]

All the heat effects rules will just further weaken energy builds. Since every good build is either ballistic or missile based, and therefore run much cooler, it will not effect them much. When Awesome 8Q's are dominating the game we can revisit the issue.

[Lyteros]

Team Leader, on 25 March 2013 - 11:22 AM, said:

1 heat per 5 seconds = 0.2 heat per second = DHS.... So make SHS cool at regular DHS rates, then what would DHS be? 0.4 HPS? Actually, I dunno, seems like heat wouldn't be an issue anymore. That would be kinda wonky.

Follow the math.

0,4 per second.

Lets use a 3 PPC Awesome because I'm lazy... 27 heat per 3 seconds.
27 / (3 * 0,4) = 22,5 dubs to cool down within that 3 seconds.
Thats more then the Awesome can actually fit due to hardpoints. You cant get heat neutral.
Lets say 19 is possible, then each cycle you have 22,8 dissiapation, with 27 heat leaves you with 4,2 additional heat per salvo.

4,2... if you walk or run heat is even a little higher, I'll go with 5 for this purpose .
First salvo is without consequences (if you walk and thus additional heat, you'll have -10 kph)
Second salvo is making it harder to hit (same when walking)
Third salvo makes you 20kph solower, if you were still walking also a lot harder to hit AND you got the first shutdown thereshold | and here we're in shutdown in MWO.

Actually the first system rewards firing discipline instead of alpha, because you'll get penalized on your aiming and moving... And needs more skill because you not only need to aim 3 alphas, but probably 9 entirely separate shots if you dont want to run hot and not waste much time in between, so you optimize the firing rythm.

Davers, on 25 March 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

All the heat effects rules will just further weaken energy builds. Since every good build is either ballistic or missile based, and therefore run much cooler, it will not effect them much. When Awesome 8Q's are dominating the game we can revisit the issue.

It's a suggestion for revamp to a better system. And if you read the post it also states changes to heat, because utterly broken heat is the whole issue for this suggestion. You stated this fact yourself.

Lets try to change that.

Edited by Lyteros, 25 March 2013 - 11:37 AM.

[Tabrias07]

Davers, on 25 March 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

All the heat effects rules will just further weaken energy builds. Since every good build is either ballistic or missile based, and therefore run much cooler, it will not effect them much. When Awesome 8Q's are dominating the game we can revisit the issue.

I'm not talking about implementing heat penalties, that was an aside.

[PurpleNinja]

Do we have a precise and definitive guide on Battletech weapons?
From my point of view, everything is speculation.
Back when I played the table top version, I used to think that a laser, if fired for two consecutives turns, was a single bean lasting for 20 seconds. PGI implementation makes more sense to me, today.

[Tabrias07]

PurpleNinja, on 25 March 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

Do we have a precise and definitive guide on Battletech weapons?
From my point of view, everything is speculation.
Back when I played the table top version, I used to think that a laser, if fired for two consecutives turns, was a single bean lasting for 20 seconds. PGI implementation makes more sense to me, today.

The TT rules are available, i know there's sarna.net but not sure entirely how accurate their stats are.

Basically, various novel writers wrote the weapons however they wanted.

The rules specify that all weapons fire once per turn, and do a certain amount of damage, and that turn is ten seconds. Whether its a 1 sec beam and 9 secs of cooling off, or a 10 sec beam with heat dissipated as it's fired, doesn't really matter.

[PurpleNinja]

Tabrias07, on 25 March 2013 - 11:37 AM, said:

The rules specify that all weapons fire once per turn, and do a certain amount of damage, and that turn is ten seconds. Whether its a 1 sec beam and 9 secs of cooling off, or a 10 sec beam with heat dissipated as it's fired, doesn't really matter.

It matters when you need to translate this onto a multiplayer online video game.
Holding a medium laser for ten seconds over a target would be a pain.

[Lyteros]

PurpleNinja, on 25 March 2013 - 11:41 AM, said:

It matters when you need to translate this onto a multiplayer online video game.
Holding a medium laser for ten seconds over a target would be a pain.

There was no such statement in the whole thread, where do you get this idea from?

It's about improving balance of the current heat system implementation to achive a better game experience. The references on CBT implementation were just for comperative purposes.

[Tabrias07]

PurpleNinja, on 25 March 2013 - 11:41 AM, said:

It matters when you need to translate this onto a multiplayer online video game.
Holding a medium laser for ten seconds over a target would be a pain.

That's why it says in the OP that laser implementation would be up for debate/tuning, as long as a ML does 5 damage and produces 3 heat over 5 seconds, it will be equivalent with the other weapons and the heat system.

If it were up to me, i'd make them the inverse of what I was talking about with missiles. all lasers have 1 sec duration, followed by 1 sec cooldown, only differences between them are heat/range/damage. this means 2 lasers of any kind can be chainfired and keep the beam up constantly, and a ML would require just 1 SHS to keep it heat neutral.

ML stats for comparison:
1 second duration, followed by 1 sec cooldown, for 2 second recycle time
1.67 damage per shot
1 heat per shot
5 damage per 5 seconds

Edited by Tabrias07, 25 March 2013 - 11:52 AM.

[PurpleNinja]

Lyteros, on 25 March 2013 - 11:44 AM, said:

There was no such statement in the whole thread, where do you get this idea from?

It's about improving balance of the current heat system implementation to achive a better game experience. The references on CBT implementation were just for comperative purposes.

Yep, completely off topic, it's a troll thing.

About the topic, aside from missiles, which go from useless to definitive weapon and then to useles again every now and then, I think weapons well balanced. At least I don't see the same weapon being used over and over.

But it could my ELO.