39 replies to this topic

[kapusta11]

Come on PGI, there is no need for it to be more than TWO times lower compared to TT, look at TDR-9S or Awesome, are they OP? Instead of doubled dissipation they have twice as low heat generation for certain energy weapons but the whole performance, more or less, match that of TT. And the best part is that you won't even need to come up with offensive quirks for the rest of the mechs. Just don't forget to implement Heat Scale penalties to keep Death Star like builds in check.

Edited by kapusta11, 20 December 2014 - 02:58 AM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Just need like a 30 heat cap for all, and I'm on board for sure.

[Yosharian]

Absolutely disagree in the most strongest terms. What you are proposing would have disastrous implications for the game.

[kapusta11]

Yosharian, on 20 December 2014 - 03:04 AM, said:

Absolutely disagree in the most strongest terms. What you are proposing would have disastrous implications for the game.

What implications?

[Tahribator]

9S is borderline ridiculous (read, OP), but it gets away with it because the chassis is essentially a barn door. Same goes to the Awesome.

Plus, they've been balancing the game around these values for 3 years now. It's permanent.

[EgoSlayer]

kapusta11, on 20 December 2014 - 03:15 AM, said:

What implications?

Time to Kill (TTK) would drop seriously with just a heat dissipation change. Many more changes would be required to make it viable, like reducing the heat capacity as already mentioned. But that probably wouldn't be enough by itself as heat neutral or near neutral builds wouldn't be affected by a lower cap.

[occusoj]

Even shorter TTK.
Take something like the Wubgoyle or Wubshee. Drastically increase cooling and it would easily get 4 alphas in before having to cool down. Thats enought to kill an assault in one go if heat cap isnt reduced by a good deal.

The Awesome isnt OP because its a bad chassis and unless you quirk its GH away, add another 50% projectile speed, heat and cooldown for PPCs its not going to be anywhere near OP.

Thunderbolt is quite strong, right on the border to OP. What saves it from corssing the border is, similiar to the Awesome, the fact that its a bad chassis. Imagine the quirks of the 9S on a timbergod or SCR. Ugh.

[HlynkaCG]

If had my way the whole heat system would get overhauled.

But simply increasing dissipation? My vote is not just "no" but "HELL NO!".

[kapusta11]

Yeah because 9S increased TTK tenfold. You sound ridiculous, it's as OP as Dual Gauss mechs.

[HlynkaCG]

kapusta11, on 20 December 2014 - 03:42 AM, said:

Yeah because 9S increased TTK tenfold. You sound ridiculous, it's as OP as Dual Gauss mechs.

It's not the 9s that's the problem it's everything else, imagine how stupidly OP a timber-god would be if they never overheated / could fire as fast as their weapons recycled. Ditto wubshees, HBK-4Ps, and any other mech with 6 or more energy hard-points.

I really don't think you've thought this through.

[Matthias Malthias]

This topic is nothing new. But it does say something about the potential for change if we have been using the same broken system for nigh on 3 years.

Heat and dissipation thereof has been one of the primary issues of this game since weapon firing rates were doubled; yet dissipation was kept the same. The current implementation is extremely problematic; both from a build variety point of view and most importantly, from a new player experience point of view. The fact of the matter is that if you want to build a mech that actually works in the current game, you must run Double Heat Sinks.

• Canon variants mounting single heatsinks are almost entirely paper tigers. The AWS-8Q running the stock build is utterly incapable of dissipating its heat - you cannot fire any more than 1 single PPC without building heat. Yet, observe its heatcap: 58.00 - you can alpha strike with all 3 PPCs, wait 2 seconds, then alpha strike again to overheat. 60 pinpoint damage output is absolutely insane - you just have to wait a "mere" 20 seconds to do it again.
  
• In-Engine heatsinks being "true dubs" - 0.2 dissipation times 10 once 250 engine rating has been reached are the most slot efficient source of dissipation. So much so that using single heatsinks means an additional tonnage burden of 10 tons more of single heatsinks to match dissipation.
  
• Heatcaps in this game are out of control. Double heatsinks, providing 40% higher dissipation out of the engine and 40% higher heatcap, make most meta builds hit around 60+ heatcap on average. It promotes massive alpha striking. Mechs that should theoretically be unable to alpha strike can do so. Sometimes, and especially now with the quirk system, do so 2-3 times
  
• The result is hugely decreased time to kill and a massive emphasis on pinpoint, frontloaded damage; then veering off to cool down. Zero weapon convergence time doesn't help. The hardpoints system with no limitation of the number of slots a weapon takes up also doesn't help. A Ballistic mounting that would hold a machinegun in the TRO (Technical Read Out) can just as easily hold an AC/20.

Consider also the new player experience. A new player, with no mechs to his name; runs a trial mech, with single heatsinks. Let's say, this one. He enters the game, with no real tutorial experience, fires his weapons a few times, and overheats within 20 seconds and dies. With overheating now also causing random internal component damage; this is even worse for the new player; because single heat sink dissipation means he'll be taking heat damage far longer than DHS would let him take. Consider that 3 years into the game we have yet to see, in game, how much heat per second our build dissipates. Instead players have to rely on online tools like smurfy, unofficial, unendorsed and not linked at the login screen to figure out if their build works in the first place. That's utterly stupid.

The current heat system drives imbalance in the form of massive alpha striking, drives down build variety (especially now, post quirks), and drives away new players. It wasn't tenable in 2012 when players spoke up, the situation got worse with the introduction of Clan Mechs, and post Quirkening and all the imbalance that entails, the situation is even more critical.

So what is needed is a massive rework of the heat system. People should be able to fire 1 weapon on cooldown on 10+ SHS without building heat. Any less is a severe diminishing of the new player experience.

A better heat system would entail the following:

• Heatcap starts at 30 and should be hard to increase beyond that. Single heatsinks give 0.15 heat/second dissipation; and Double heatsinks, 0.2. None of this in-engine 0.2; out-of-engine 0.14 stupidity.
  
• Additional (out of engine) Single Heat Sinks (SHS) should provide 0.15 heat per second dissipation; and +0.4 heat cap. Thus, there are occasions where running an engine with 25 lower rating would be justifiable. Not only that but to actually make running SHS worthwhile. Even this buff would still make canon mechs build heat; but slowly. Of all changes, this is of biggest benefit to the new player experience. It also makes 2 SHS better than 1 truedub DHS in terms of dissipation - if you have the tonnage. By reducing the heatcap contribution of SHS heatcap is also harder to "boat". You're going to need 2.5 (3) tons of external SHS just to get to 31.
  
• Bonus heatcap should be a luxury; not the status quo. Alpha striking should always be of last resort; never the opening volley.
  
• In-engine SHS and DHS provide dissipation, but no additional heatcap. If you want to increase heatcap by boating SHS, you're going to need the slots for it; and the tonnage.
  
• Double heatsinks (DHS) provide "true" 0.2 heat/second dissipation in or out of engine, but no additional heatcap. Thus, you now have a true dichotomy of choice. If you want to play fire support/LRM boat/Snipe, you will want SHS. You can alpha (once), but you will take a while to cool down. If you want to brawl, you will want DHS. You can fire things constantly; but with a heatcap of only 30, a single alpha strike will shut you down.

Overall, any reimplementation of the heat system needs to discourage alpha striking to up the time-to-kill (TTK). It increases the skill floor if you can consistently hit the same spot on an opponent repeatedly over time despite torso twisting and LOS.

The new heat system needs to provide an experience to new players that is (almost) as competitive as mechs customised to role and min-maxed. I don't think I've ever played a game that has been as so actively discouraging to new players as MWO. Stock builds are really bad right now. If the community is to grow, the new player experience must improve.

As a last point; MWO wouldn't have needed so many balance tweaks in the first place if only they had gotten the heat system right in the beginning. The values we have right now, especially for Energy Weapons, are so out of whack that they're not even recognisable. Large Pulse Lasers have 30% less heat and 22% more damage (in game they're 7 tons, 7 heat, 11 damage). It's so divergent from tabletop values because the heat system was so borked in the first place.

Also, there needs to be a place in the Mechbay UI that lets us see Dissipation of Heat per Second ingame; and the heat/second of every weapon. Seriously. It's been 2 years. UI2.0 was an utter failure in my view because it still lacks this feature.

Edited by Matthias Malthias, 20 December 2014 - 07:13 AM.

[Ursh]

People like firing massive PPFLD, and then backing around a corner to cooldown. They don't want a brawler loaded with medium pulse to be able to get in their grill and sustain firepower.

[cSand]

this thread gets 0/10

I actually think heat should be more punishing

Edited by cSand, 20 December 2014 - 10:07 AM.

[FupDup]

I'm not going to currently agree or disagree with the proposal at hand, but what I want to say is that all of the fear over "heat neutral" builds is unjustified.


The thing about heat neutrality is that if you don't generate any net heat, any time not spent in combat is actually "wasted." Normal builds use their time while unengaged to dissipate their waste heat (and reposition, etc.). So, in order to fully reap the benefits of a heat neutral build, your Gundam would have to remain exposed pretty much constantly, or else the build's only advantage would be wasted. Being exposed for a long time means that you're going to become a damage magnet for hit-and-hide enemies who don't stay exposed long enough for your continuous DPS to actually matter. And of course, your hidden enemies won't be receiving any of that sustained DPS while they're hiding.

But if you have a build that generates net heat, this means that you can't stay exposed forever anyways, so you only fire a few volleys and then take cover to cool down and stuff. Your time outside of combat isn't wasted with such builds. Builds that generate net heat have the ability to deal larger spikes of damage when their heat permits, whereas heat neutral builds are more of a "slow and steady" type.

Now of course, most builds would choose to be more heat efficient than they are now, but being completely heat neutral would be dumb. You always want to generate at least slightly more heat than you can cool off. Being heat efficient is great, but sometimes you reach a point of having "too much of a good thing."



TL;DR: Heat neutral builds are an inefficient, unoptimized boogeyman. They only way they can utilize their advantage is to stay exposed constantly, which makes them a focus fire magnet and their targets can just take cover to fully negate it.

However, Paul is utterly terrified of them, so you can rest assured that he will never permit them to ever exist:

Paul, in ATD #43 said:

Answer from Paul: There are no current plans to change the heat threshold towards TT values. Are we hard set against it? No, just at the moment there’s no need to do this.

Playing with a higher rate of cooling makes a lot more builds become heat neutral. A lot of heat neutral builds results in mid-range damage applied at a constant rate over time. This mechanism would be highly exploited by those with knowledge of building efficient heat neutral Mechs.

Edited by FupDup, 20 December 2014 - 09:57 AM.

[Darwins Dog]

Matthias Malthias, on 20 December 2014 - 07:09 AM, said:

Consider also the new player experience. A new player, with no mechs to his name; runs a trial mech, with single heatsinks. Let's say, this one. He enters the game, with no real tutorial experience, fires his weapons a few times, and overheats within 20 seconds and dies. With overheating now also causing random internal component damage; this is even worse for the new player; because single heat sink dissipation means he'll be taking heat damage far longer than DHS would let him take. Consider that 3 years into the game we have yet to see, in game, how much heat per second our build dissipates. Instead players have to rely on online tools like smurfy, unofficial, unendorsed and not linked at the login screen to figure out if their build works in the first place. That's utterly stupid.

I agree with most of your post, except that the trial mechs are all Champion mechs now. As far as I know they all come with DHS. This would be true of when they buy their first mech, but the trials, at least, are good builds.

[HlynkaCG]

My thoughts...

• Set the maximum heat cap at engine size / 10 plus 1 point for each heat-sink installed outside the engine.
  
• Each heatsink would dissipate 0.25 points of heat per second.
  
• Doubles would dissipate 0.5 points of heat per second while adding only half a point to the mech's max heat.
  
• Engines would produce additional heat equal to throttle setting * engine size / 100 points per second. This makes a 250 engine with with the minimum 10 SHS heat neutral, with smaller engines being more heat efficicient and larger ones less so.

What I think these changes would mean...

• Comparably lower heat caps coupled with movement heat means that few mechs will be able to pull off big-alpha strikes without shutting down or otherwise remaining stationary.
  
• Comparably faster heat dissipation further encourages chain-firing over alpha strikes, reducing the wider emphasis on PP/FLD.
  
• Many stock builds will have substantially higher heat capacities than their "optimized" brethren (looking at you AWS-8Q ) putting them on a slightly more even footing for that early grind.
  
• The choice to run DHS, becomes less clear-cut as having a higher max heat level will help some builds more than the increased dissipation of DHS will.
  
• You can still run and gun but there is now a sound tactical reason to move at less than 100% throttle or use a smaller engine as doing so improves cooling efficiency.

Edited by HlynkaCG, 20 December 2014 - 10:17 AM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Matthias Malthias, on 20 December 2014 - 07:09 AM, said:

This topic is nothing new. But it does say something about the potential for change if we have been using the same broken system for nigh on 3 years.

Heat and dissipation thereof has been one of the primary issues of this game since weapon firing rates were doubled; yet dissipation was kept the same. The current implementation is extremely problematic; both from a build variety point of view and most importantly, from a new player experience point of view. The fact of the matter is that if you want to build a mech that actually works in the current game, you must run Double Heat Sinks.

• Canon variants mounting single heatsinks are almost entirely paper tigers. The AWS-8Q running the stock build is utterly incapable of dissipating its heat - you cannot fire any more than 1 single PPC without building heat. Yet, observe its heatcap: 58.00 - you can alpha strike with all 3 PPCs, wait 2 seconds, then alpha strike again to overheat. 60 pinpoint damage output is absolutely insane - you just have to wait a "mere" 20 seconds to do it again.
  
• In-Engine heatsinks being "true dubs" - 0.2 dissipation times 10 once 250 engine rating has been reached are the most slot efficient source of dissipation. So much so that using single heatsinks means an additional tonnage burden of 10 tons more of single heatsinks to match dissipation.
  
• Heatcaps in this game are out of control. Double heatsinks, providing 40% higher dissipation out of the engine and 40% higher heatcap, make most meta builds hit around 60+ heatcap on average. It promotes massive alpha striking. Mechs that should theoretically be unable to alpha strike can do so. Sometimes, and especially now with the quirk system, do so 2-3 times
  
• The result is hugely decreased time to kill and a massive emphasis on pinpoint, frontloaded damage; then veering off to cool down. Zero weapon convergence time doesn't help. The hardpoints system with no limitation of the number of slots a weapon takes up also doesn't help. A Ballistic mounting that would hold a machinegun in the TRO (Technical Read Out) can just as easily hold an AC/20.

Consider also the new player experience. A new player, with no mechs to his name; runs a trial mech, with single heatsinks. Let's say, this one. He enters the game, with no real tutorial experience, fires his weapons a few times, and overheats within 20 seconds and dies. With overheating now also causing random internal component damage; this is even worse for the new player; because single heat sink dissipation means he'll be taking heat damage far longer than DHS would let him take. Consider that 3 years into the game we have yet to see, in game, how much heat per second our build dissipates. Instead players have to rely on online tools like smurfy, unofficial, unendorsed and not linked at the login screen to figure out if their build works in the first place. That's utterly stupid.


The current heat system drives imbalance in the form of massive alpha striking, drives down build variety (especially now, post quirks), and drives away new players. It wasn't tenable in 2012 when players spoke up, the situation got worse with the introduction of Clan Mechs, and post Quirkening and all the imbalance that entails, the situation is even more critical.

So what is needed is a massive rework of the heat system. People should be able to fire 1 weapon on cooldown on 10+ SHS without building heat. Any less is a severe diminishing of the new player experience.

A better heat system would entail the following:

• Heatcap starts at 30 and should be hard to increase beyond that. Single heatsinks give 0.15 heat/second dissipation; and Double heatsinks, 0.2. None of this in-engine 0.2; out-of-engine 0.14 stupidity.
  
• Additional (out of engine) Single Heat Sinks (SHS) should provide 0.15 heat per second dissipation; and +0.4 heat cap. Thus, there are occasions where running an engine with 25 lower rating would be justifiable. Not only that but to actually make running SHS worthwhile. Even this buff would still make canon mechs build heat; but slowly. Of all changes, this is of biggest benefit to the new player experience. It also makes 2 SHS better than 1 truedub DHS in terms of dissipation - if you have the tonnage. By reducing the heatcap contribution of SHS heatcap is also harder to "boat". You're going to need 2.5 (3) tons of external SHS just to get to 31.
  
• Bonus heatcap should be a luxury; not the status quo. Alpha striking should always be of last resort; never the opening volley.
  
• In-engine SHS and DHS provide dissipation, but no additional heatcap. If you want to increase heatcap by boating SHS, you're going to need the slots for it; and the tonnage.
  
• Double heatsinks (DHS) provide "true" 0.2 heat/second dissipation in or out of engine, but no additional heatcap. Thus, you now have a true dichotomy of choice. If you want to play fire support/LRM boat/Snipe, you will want SHS. You can alpha (once), but you will take a while to cool down. If you want to brawl, you will want DHS. You can fire things constantly; but with a heatcap of only 30, a single alpha strike will shut you down.

Overall, any reimplementation of the heat system needs to discourage alpha striking to up the time-to-kill (TTK). It increases the skill floor if you can consistently hit the same spot on an opponent repeatedly over time despite torso twisting and LOS.


The new heat system needs to provide an experience to new players that is (almost) as competitive as mechs customised to role and min-maxed. I don't think I've ever played a game that has been as so actively discouraging to new players as MWO. Stock builds are really bad right now. If the community is to grow, the new player experience must improve.

As a last point; MWO wouldn't have needed so many balance tweaks in the first place if only they had gotten the heat system right in the beginning. The values we have right now, especially for Energy Weapons, are so out of whack that they're not even recognisable. Large Pulse Lasers have 30% less heat and 22% more damage (in game they're 7 tons, 7 heat, 11 damage). It's so divergent from tabletop values because the heat system was so borked in the first place.

Also, there needs to be a place in the Mechbay UI that lets us see Dissipation of Heat per Second ingame; and the heat/second of every weapon. Seriously. It's been 2 years. UI2.0 was an utter failure in my view because it still lacks this feature.

can I like this some more?

THis game totally needs a lowered heat scale.

lower heat scale, then we can have our 15/15 CERPPCs and no one can *****, cuz its not like we could dire star them anyway....and we wouldnt need Ghostheat. And with true 2.0 DHS....yes sir.

[EgoSlayer]

FupDup, on 20 December 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

I'm not going to currently agree or disagree with the proposal at hand, but what I want to say is that all of the fear over "heat neutral" builds is unjustified.


The thing about heat neutrality is that if you don't generate any net heat, any time not spent in combat is actually "wasted." Normal builds use their time while unengaged to dissipate their waste heat (and reposition, etc.). So, in order to fully reap the benefits of a heat neutral build, your Gundam would have to remain exposed pretty much constantly, or else the build's only advantage would be wasted. Being exposed for a long time means that you're going to become a damage magnet for hit-and-hide enemies who don't stay exposed long enough for your continuous DPS to actually matter. And of course, your hidden enemies won't be receiving any of that sustained DPS while they're hiding.

But if you have a build that generates net heat, this means that you can't stay exposed forever anyways, so you only fire a few volleys and then take cover to cool down and stuff. Your time outside of combat isn't wasted with such builds. Builds that generate net heat have the ability to deal larger spikes of damage when their heat permits, whereas heat neutral builds are more of a "slow and steady" type.

Now of course, most builds would choose to be more heat efficient than they are now, but being completely heat neutral would be dumb. You always want to generate at least slightly more heat than you can cool off. Being heat efficient is great, but sometimes you reach a point of having "too much of a good thing."



TL;DR: Heat neutral builds are an inefficient, unoptimized boogeyman. They only way they can utilize their advantage is to stay exposed constantly, which makes them a focus fire magnet and their targets can just take cover to fully negate it.

However, Paul is utterly terrified of them, so you can rest assured that he will never permit them to ever exist:

When everyone's DPS goes up, and everyone's cool down times goes down, it means everyone can disengage and reengage faster.


So yes, looking a it as 1 mech that is heat neutral vs. how we play today, it's only advantage is DPS and being able to reengage faster then everyone else when using the same tactics of today. But when it applies to *everyone* then everyone's cool off out of combat time goes down, and TTK goes down with it.

It's not an "unoptimized boogeyman". The current "laser vomit" builds become even more powerful with more sustained DPS and have to stay out of combat less to cool off. Dual AC/20 builds get of more rounds per engagement and spend less time out of combat as well, and so on.
Just think about it; Put two equal skill players in the exact same TW laser vomit/SRM build. One with Dissipation at 3.5 and the other at 7.0. Who will win more matches? You're fooling yourself if you think they would be equal.

Edited by EgoSlayer, 20 December 2014 - 10:19 AM.

[FupDup]

EgoSlayer, on 20 December 2014 - 10:19 AM, said:

When everyone's DPS goes up, and everyone's cool down times goes down, it means everyone can disengage and reengage faster.


So yes, looking a it as 1 mech that is heat neutral vs. how we play today, it's only advantage is DPS and being able to reengage faster then everyone else when using the same tactics of today. But when it applies to *everyone* then everyone's cool off out of combat time goes down, and TTK goes down with it.

It's not an "unoptimized boogeyman". The current "laser vomit" builds become even more powerful with more sustained DPS and have to stay out of combat less to cool off. Dual AC/20 builds get of more rounds per engagement and spend less time out of combat as well, and so on.
Just think about it; Put two equal skill players in the exact same TW laser vomit/SRM build. One with Dissipation at 3.5 and the other at 7.0. Who will win more matches? You're fooling yourself if you think they would be equal.

The tradeoff for using the one that isn't heat neutral is that it can do larger spikes of damage when its heat bar permits it to, and it can use time out of combat to cool down. The heat neutral one has a lower (but continuous) damage output, and as said before its fast cooling abilities get "wasted" when it's out of combat.

To repeat a point that I made earlier but perhaps not clearly enough, I'm not saying that "walking oven" builds like 6 PPC Stalkers would be better than heat neutrality. I'm saying that having some level of net heat is a good thing for a build, because being exposed constantly means constant risk of being shot. Having net heat doesn't mean spiking up to 80% after one salvo, it just means that you generate at least a little bit more heat than you can dissipate.

The difference between having a manageable level of net heat and being 100% neutral can be summed up as "too much of a good thing." You want to be efficient, yes, and able to fire for decent periods, but firing forever isn't necessary.


Also, your Timber example isn't a very good example. You can't give two builds the same weaponry while one having twice the dissipation power. That's impossible due to the construction system. In order to get more cooling, the Timber would have to strip off some of its weaponry and replace it with DHS. Aka, a tradeoff.

Furthermore, in a 1-on-1 gladiator duel scenario, less mechs around means that focus fire at long-medium ranges can't happen, which means that it's a lot easier to close in to brawling range. This gives the heat neutral build more of an advantage in a 1-on-1 than it would have in a team-versus-team battle.

Edited by FupDup, 20 December 2014 - 10:31 AM.

[EgoSlayer]

FupDup, on 20 December 2014 - 10:27 AM, said:

<snip>
Also, your Timber example isn't a very good example. You can't give two builds the same weaponry while one having twice the dissipation power. That's impossible due to the construction system. In order to get more cooling, the Timber would have to strip off some of its weaponry and replace it with DHS. Aka, a tradeoff.

Furthermore, in a 1-on-1 gladiator duel scenario, less mechs around means that focus fire at long-medium ranges can't happen, which means that it's a lot easier to close in to brawling range. This gives the heat neutral build more of an advantage in a 1-on-1 than it would have in a team-versus-team battle.

My TW example was that the exact same build with more dissipation is more powerful, not trying to build two TW's in the current system where one has more dissipation.

I'll try again, and your 1 on 1 is a bad example.

There are for simplicities sake three main reasons to disengage.
1) repositioning
2) under fire/avoid damage
3) At/near heat threshold/can't combat

There are plenty of times where one, two, or all three are in effect.
But in a fur ball, even in today's environment, there are also plenty of times where only #3 is in effect. Where you are not under fire, have free shots, and the enemy is unable or unwilling to retaliate. And these situations are where the "unbalanced boogeyman" changes the game and drops the TTK. The SPL Firestarter vs the lone DW for a 1 on 1 example.
End even more, everyone's time in #3 is reduced, so everyone can reengage faster; thus all combats get shorter.

"Too much of a good thing" means everyone can spend more of their time shooting, it doesn't matter if 80% of the time it's a wasted benefit, because it's the 20% of the combat time that matters.

Edited by EgoSlayer, 20 December 2014 - 10:47 AM.