89 replies to this topic

[Belisarius1]

Sorry Z, not getting it. I agree with your first sentence, sans "entirely."

zorak ramone, on 05 April 2012 - 10:25 AM, said:

The short version of this post is that I believe that the way that MLs are balanced will dictate mech and weapon balance entirely.

Almost everything from that point on boils down to balance patches when we haven't even seen the game yet. There's no reason to implement cone of fire until it's demonstrable that the current system has failed; right now, that's not a conclusion we can draw.

In particular, I think you're vastly underestimating the effects of convergence, arm/torso desynch and burn-time. Medium lasers are going to be effective mostly at close range. By simple trigonometry, convergence errors get more severe the shorter the distance involved. Close targets also traverse your field of view more rapidly and make larger movements, accentuating desynch and burn. All these things will make the fingers of death effect extremely difficult, if not unheard of.

If a good pilot can core me with a javelin by carefully controlling his convergence, firing arms and torso separately and keeping his reticule on my CT for the duration of the shot - while I'm doing everything I can to throw him off - he deserves it. If it gets to the point where everyone can do that like in MW3, sure, but right now it's really just doomsaying.

I agree that medium lasers should be looked at more carefully than almost any other weapon, but I don't believe the situation will ever be so severe that we need to resort to cone of fire. There are far too many other tools available.

Edited by Belisarius†, 06 April 2012 - 05:22 PM.

[Siilk]

Two things will help balancing MLs: discharge duration and heat. Firing more than 2-3 MLs at a time should cause an instant heats pike, thus preventing pilot from group firing too many of them. At the same time, damage over time firing mechanics will lead to the natural damage spread as keeping reticule on the desired target long enough to inflict all the damage of all the MLs in a group will be almost impossible to do, if both you and your target are moving. This works pretty much the same in MWLL and the balance feels quite right. It would be even more so when "free" coolant would be removed(MWLL devs stated that as one of the project goals), so I guess MWO MLs will be pretty much ok right from the start.

[zorak ramone]

Belisarius†, on 06 April 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

Almost everything from that point on boils down to balance patches when we haven't even seen the game yet. There's no reason to implement cone of fire until it's demonstrable that the current system has failed; right now, that's not a conclusion we can draw.

In particular, I think you're vastly underestimating the effects of convergence, arm/torso desynch and burn-time. Medium lasers are going to be effective mostly at close range. By simple trigonometry, convergence errors get more severe the shorter the distance involved. Close targets also traverse your field of view more rapidly and make larger movements, accentuating desynch and burn. All these things will make the fingers of death effect extremely difficult, if not unheard of.

If a good pilot can core me with a javelin by carefully controlling his convergence, firing arms and torso separately and keeping his reticule on my CT for the duration of the shot - while I'm doing everything I can to throw him off - he deserves it. If it gets to the point where everyone can do that like in MW3, sure, but right now it's really just doomsaying.

I agree that medium lasers should be looked at more carefully than almost any other weapon, but I don't believe the situation will ever be so severe that we need to resort to cone of fire. There are far too many other tools available.

Cone of fire has already been implemented.

Delayed weapons convergence is cone of fire/reticule bloom by another name Basically, its just a system where you fire into a cone that gradually reduces in size over time, as opposed to a cone that changes size based on things like heat, movement, and/or range (which is what I was suggesting).

This (delayed weapons convergence) might work, and it might not. Like I said in the OP, we'll have to wait and see. The other methods I proposed were options should DWC, in combination with laser firing duration/burn time (which I am totally in favor of) not be sufficient.

As for arm/torso convergence: this should never be conceptually used as a method for balancing weapons clusters ... if it is, it would give a huge advantage to arm-only (like the novacat) or torso-only (like the Banshee) mechs. I am in favor of it as it gives mechs who put weaposn in the arms an advantage (in prior games this was strictly a liability) and it makes sense from the standpoint of """""realism""""". However, it shouldn't be a basis for balancing weapons clusters.

[zorak ramone]

Siilk, on 06 April 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

Two things will help balancing MLs: discharge duration and heat. Firing more than 2-3 MLs at a time should cause an instant heats pike, thus preventing pilot from group firing too many of them. At the same time, damage over time firing mechanics will lead to the natural damage spread as keeping reticule on the desired target long enough to inflict all the damage of all the MLs in a group will be almost impossible to do, if both you and your target are moving. This works pretty much the same in MWLL and the balance feels quite right. It would be even more so when "free" coolant would be removed(MWLL devs stated that as one of the project goals), so I guess MWO MLs will be pretty much ok right from the start.

This isn't specificly in response to you, so don't think I'm picking on you . Its mainly a response to the idea that heat (or heat spikes) can be used to balance weapons clusters.

Short version: even if you balance it for MLs, you're goint to mess things up for other weapons.

CBT is a balanced around a system where you completely eliminated heat with a sufficient number of HS. For a ridiculous example, If I made a mech with 10 million ERPPCs, but which also had 75 million double heat sinks, I could fire all 10 million ERPPCs simulataneously and never ever feel the effects of heat. I would never shut down, never risk blowing out my ammo, never damage the pilot. Heat sinks don't just drain heat, they eliminate/isolate it in CBT.

The point is that the concept of heat spikes doesn't exist in CBT, and the game isn't balanced for it. For the example of 2-3 MLs, in 3025 tech I can eliminate the heat of 3 MLs with 9 HS. I'll never feel the heat from those MLs. However if you add heat spikes (i.e. no matter how many HS I have, fire more than 3 MLs (i.e. generate more than 9 heat) and I feel some sort of negative consequences), then you mess with the balance:
-It means no mech can carry a single ERPPC or PPC (not boating, just a single weapon) without feeling the pain. Heavy energy weapons are therefore nerfed and mechs that rely on them, like the Awesome, are nerfed or unusable depending on how bad the consequences are.
-It makes balistic weapons overpowered relative to energy weapons. Consider GRs, which generate 1 heat. I could fire 3 or 4 (upper limit on GR capacity) with no consequences while a single clan ERPPC (1/4 the damage of 4xGRs) will cause some kind of heat spike no matter how many DHS you have. Compare all of the size 10 ACs which have 1-3 heat depending on the AC and compare their range and damage to MLs.

On the other hand, if heat spikes are reduced (or eliminated, as in CBT) by the number of HS you have, then heat spikes do nothing to solve the weapons cluster issue. It just makes it so that only heavies and assaults (which can pack the most HS and energy weapons) can have finger-of-death weapons clusters.

=====

Side point: I am totally in favor of damage-over-time lasers, as in MWLL and I think its great that MWO is going this direction. This is a legitimate way to balance the instant-hit nature of lasers vs the projectile-with-travel-time nature of balistics and missles.

[RogueSpear]

Heat spiking exists in the fluff and makes the most sense, but I do agree that it should be much easier to make a heat neutral mech than it was in MW4:Mercs (Only version I've played).
Laser weapons in MW:O will not tolerate 'Finger of death' formations simply due to their DoT nature, we can tell just from looking at the gameplay trailer. The medium and small laser both seem to have a one second draw (I'm assuming LL will have the same draw time) and in general are going to be used as a 'tension' weapon. They do respectable damage, but they spread it around. To me, it looks like their job is to soften up a target, rather than being the shot that kills. I think it's very rare that in anything outside the light circuit we'll see many medium laser kills, and that just makes sense to me. Nearly every AFV in the world uses a 20 or 30mm autocannon (in modern day), because it's a very useful, all round weapon that doesn't require a huge amount of weight or space - but it's not going to be taking out MBTs.
What, personally, I would like to see is medium lasers being very much a skill based weapon to be anything more than filler. Anything above a medium should not be using MLs as it's primary death dealer. It should have respectable damage and a low heat spike, allowing you to fire it repeatedly, and frequently, but the draw time should stop it from being overpowered. I think that's what they're aiming for, and from the Alpha footage released so far, I think they're doing all right.

[Victor Morson]

Belisarius†, on 06 April 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

Almost everything from that point on boils down to balance patches when we haven't even seen the game yet. There's no reason to implement cone of fire until it's demonstrable that the current system has failed; right now, that's not a conclusion we can draw.

...

I agree that medium lasers should be looked at more carefully than almost any other weapon, but I don't believe the situation will ever be so severe that we need to resort to cone of fire. There are far too many other tools available.

I do really understand the concern; I do think how MLs are balanced could impact every single other weapon in the game.

That said, you're entirely right. Heat (thank God they removed the coolant button!) and damge-over-duration beams can solve the problem without ever resorting to a cone. I personally like and think cones would work - well - with Auto-canons, but they'd never feel right with lasers.

[Siilk]

zorak ramone, on 09 April 2012 - 07:28 AM, said:

Short version: even if you balance it for MLs, you're goint to mess things up for other weapons.

CBT is a balanced around a system where you completely eliminated heat with a sufficient number of HS. For a ridiculous example, If I made a mech with 10 million ERPPCs, but which also had 75 million double heat sinks, I could fire all 10 million ERPPCs simulataneously and never ever feel the effects of heat. I would never shut down, never risk blowing out my ammo, never damage the pilot. Heat sinks don't just drain heat, they eliminate/isolate it in CBT.

The point is that the concept of heat spikes doesn't exist in CBT, and the game isn't balanced for it.

You're a bit wrong here, as many before you were. TT alphastrike, i.e. firing all the weapons in the single round, is never supposed to be instantaneous, it's firing all the weapons during 10 seconds, one by one. Hence, heatspikes has enough time to dissipate between the shots. And that is exactly what I hope to achieve by heatspike balancing: 6 MLs could be fired in a steady succession but not all at once. You fire a single ML, reactor heats up(heatspike), heatsinks drain heat via heatpipes(quick heatspike falloff) and began to dissipate it(remaining heat). Groupfire too many MLs at once and heatspike will mess you up, chainfire them too fast and remaining heat would build up. The size of heatspike that can be manageable is regulated by the amount of heatsinks(the more of them out there the more heat they can drain out of the reactor and "store" at once), the speed of remaining heat dissipation is constant. This is actually as close to TT heat mechanics as it can get.

[zorak ramone]

Siilk, on 09 April 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

You're a bit wrong here, as many before you were. TT alphastrike, i.e. firing all the weapons in the single round, is never supposed to be instantaneous, it's firing all the weapons during 10 seconds, one by one. Hence, heatspikes has enough time to dissipate between the shots.

I'm not wrong at all.

I know the TT game and the lore around it inside and out. I am not wrong. I have been speaking about the mechanics of the TT game as it relates to balance (relevant, since the mechs, weapons and construction rules of MWO are apparently based off of the TT rules, if not copied directly). You, however, are making the mistake of conflating the descriptions in the fiction with the mechanics of the TT game.

In CBT, if you have enough HS, you can completely and totally cancel out the heat of any weapon. One of the best examples of this is the Hellstar. Its a 95 ton mech with 30 DHS and 4xERPPC. If you stand still in a hellstar, you can fire all of those ERPPCs forever and ever. You will never go above 0 on the heat scale. If it carried any ammo, it would never explode. The pilot, even if life support was completely destroyed, would never take a single point of damage. Compare this to the Warhawk prime with 20 DHS. Firing all 4 ERPPCs will cause it to overheat by 20, leading to reduced walking speed, risk of shutdown and ammo explosions (IIRC), and damaging the pilot if life support is out.

Yeah, sure, in the fluff (i.e. the novels and other fiction), they talk about waves of heat washing into the cockpit whenever anything is fired. But you know what? The fiction is inconsistent (Victor survived a GR headshot once!) and sometimes really badly written (die forever, Aidan Pryde/Jerehmiah Rose/Victor Ian-Steiner-Davion), and really has no relevance when it comes to game balance.

The facts are that MWO is based off of CBT, and that in CBT HS/DHS could completely nullify any heat build up if you had enough of them.

Quote

And that is exactly what I hope to achieve by heatspike balancing: 6 MLs could be fired in a steady succession but not all at once. You fire a single ML, reactor heats up(heatspike), heatsinks drain heat via heatpipes(quick heatspike falloff) and began to dissipate it(remaining heat). Groupfire too many MLs at once and heatspike will mess you up, chainfire them too fast and remaining heat would build up. The size of heatspike that can be manageable is regulated by the amount of heatsinks(the more of them out there the more heat they can drain out of the reactor and "store" at once), the speed of remaining heat dissipation is constant. This is actually as close to TT heat mechanics as it can get.

... So this just gets back to my last post. Using heatspike as a basis for balancing weapons clusters nerfs energy weapons and the mechs that depend on them. If, in your example, you have to control chain fire 6MLs to keep from burning heat spikes, how is an Awesome supposed to manage 3xPPCs (which together generate the heat of 10xMLs). Furthermore, mechs that rely on balistics (especially when the GRs show up) will be able to chain bigger weapons (1ML ~= 1 size 10 AC). Even if you allow for increased heat sinks to reduce the effect of the spike, you're still giving energy weapons a unique disadvantage relative to other weapons ... unless you keep reducing the spike to the point where you converge on CBT.

This would all be ok if it wasn't for the fact that MWO was based on a game where heat spike can be eliminated.

[StaggerCheck]

Is there some rule I don't know about that says all weapons fire needs to hit the same square meter of armour on a Mech? Does everything need to converge perfectly, or the game will 'suck'? I'm fully expecting and prepared for my missile lock to result in anywhere from 1 to 6 of the missiles from my SRM 6 to hit the target and the rest to fly off and explode in the distance. I'm also prepared to get a nice lock and pull the trigger on my weapons, only to see some of them miss wide left, right, high or low. The game will be more fun that way in my humble opinion. I really hope they take everything that sucked about the previous Mechwarrior games and flush it right down the toilet. Start fresh... it has been ten years already.

[Victor Morson]

StaggerCheck, on 09 April 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

Is there some rule I don't know about that says all weapons fire needs to hit the same square meter of armour on a Mech? Does everything need to converge perfectly, or the game will 'suck'? I'm fully expecting and prepared for my missile lock to result in anywhere from 1 to 6 of the missiles from my SRM 6 to hit the target and the rest to fly off and explode in the distance. I'm also prepared to get a nice lock and pull the trigger on my weapons, only to see some of them miss wide left, right, high or low. The game will be more fun that way in my humble opinion. I really hope they take everything that sucked about the previous Mechwarrior games and flush it right down the toilet. Start fresh... it has been ten years already.

People expect tight controls with limited chance. Things like fire cones (again, I'd like this for ACs) are skill controlled, so that's neat, but having weapons fire scatter off target would be off-putting to many, many people - in particular those outside of the CBT fan community.

Like it's been said, there's other ways to do it. The fire duration thing works really well in MWLL (Even though I am not a fan of medium laser balance there and think it should be upgraded - likely a necessary evil in that game due to the Coolant button still existing), because it becomes a skill based damage spread - your skill of keeping your guns on the target and the enemy skill at not letting you do that.

Long story short is if you're firing at a good pilot, you're not going to carve all the damage to a single spot (MW4 style), despite firing all at once and precisely where you want it. It's a good trade-off that captures the TT spirit without feeling loose.

[Belisarius1]

zorak ramone, on 09 April 2012 - 07:16 AM, said:

Cone of fire has already been implemented.

Delayed weapons convergence is cone of fire/reticule bloom by another name Basically, its just a system where you fire into a cone that gradually reduces in size over time, as opposed to a cone that changes size based on things like heat, movement, and/or range (which is what I was suggesting).

This (delayed weapons convergence) might work, and it might not. Like I said in the OP, we'll have to wait and see. The other methods I proposed were options should DWC, in combination with laser firing duration/burn time (which I am totally in favor of) not be sufficient.

Convergence is different though, because it's inherently non-random. Weapons will converge at a certain speed and always towards a certain point. It will always be possible to fire a pinpoint accurate shot if the pilot is willing to wait.

Even firing before full convergence will be predictable; if I was scoped at 1000m and need to fire on a target at 100m without waiting, a weapon in my right arm will hit slightly to the right of my crosshair. Thus, if a player is familiar enough with their current 'mech they can adjust for individual weapons and be on target.

True cone of fire (as in, random scatter within a radius from the crosshair) strips away those possibilities, and so I'm against it.

Edited by Belisarius†, 09 April 2012 - 05:48 PM.

[Mad Pig]

I don't see this as a problem unless everyone plans on just standing still and trading salvos. Between mech movement, weapon convergence delay, heat management, and that rat a tat.. tat tat tat rocking from weapons fire - I just don't see what the concern is about Medium Lasers. I mean I've tried reading the argument but I just can't get past the first several sentences. Better to have a mixed load out that allows for constant firing and optimal heat control. If you want to boat lasers and play duck duck roast the goose in a one dimensional mech, go ahead and slather on the SPF 10000.

May your slop be golden.

[Siilk]

zorak ramone, on 09 April 2012 - 11:24 AM, said:

I know the TT game and the lore around it inside and out. I am not wrong. I have been speaking about the mechanics of the TT game as it relates to balance (relevant, since the mechs, weapons and construction rules of MWO are apparently based off of the TT rules, if not copied directly). You, however, are making the mistake of conflating the descriptions in the fiction with the mechanics of the TT game.

In CBT, if you have enough HS, you can completely and totally cancel out the heat of any weapon. One of the best examples of this is the Hellstar. Its a 95 ton mech with 30 DHS and 4xERPPC. If you stand still in a hellstar, you can fire all of those ERPPCs forever and ever. You will never go above 0 on the heat scale. If it carried any ammo, it would never explode. The pilot, even if life support was completely destroyed, would never take a single point of damage. Compare this to the Warhawk prime with 20 DHS. Firing all 4 ERPPCs will cause it to overheat by 20, leading to reduced walking speed, risk of shutdown and ammo explosions (IIRC), and damaging the pilot if life support is out.

Again, you seem to react without actually understanding what I was saying. Pleas, read this carefully and think about what TT round is. It is true that mech could start the round with 0 heat, fire some energy weapons and still be lest with 0 heat at the beginning of the next round. But that doesn't mean there is no heatspike. The heat that weapon produces when firing is a heatspike and it's up to heatsinks to manage it during 10 seconds of a round. It does not lasts, if heatsinks are there to dissipate it but it is there. Even if mech alphastrikes in TT, weapons are not fired simultaneously, they are still fired one by one or in small groups during the while round.
A Hellstar from your example fires all PPCs in a round, but not simultaneously. They are fired one by one during 10 seconds of TT round, so heatsinks can do their job and drain the heat out of the reactor. So, to translate TT behaviour into real-time environment, Hellstar starts a 10-second interval at 0 heat, fires PPCs, one by one, waiting for heatspike to falloff and have enough time for it's heatsinks to cool it down back to 0 at the end of 10 seconds interval. That is pretty much what TT alphastrike is if looked at in real time.

zorak ramone, on 09 April 2012 - 11:24 AM, said:

... So this just gets back to my last post. Using heatspike as a basis for balancing weapons clusters nerfs energy weapons and the mechs that depend on them.

And that is worse that actually nerfing energy weapon damage? How so? Besides, I thing that with pinpoint accuracy and no ammo to be worried about, energy weapons would be ok with a bit of indirect heat-related nerf.

zorak ramone, on 09 April 2012 - 11:24 AM, said:

If, in your example, you have to control chain fire 6MLs to keep from burning heat spikes, how is an Awesome supposed to manage 3xPPCs (which together generate the heat of 10xMLs).

Why are you see it as a problem? 3 PPCs shouldn't be fires at the same time. You have to understand, this is not how alphastrike works in TT, so we don't have to make this possible. Quite the contrary, we must came up with a way to avoid such things.

[Hollister]

If you watch the GDC video closely when the Altas fires the 4ML the heat spikes to what looks like by about 40% which is alot, but the heat also disappates rather fast. Though this Atlas has 20 heatsinks and is in about a up to the ankle in water. They also seem to have about a 3 second cooldown.

The part is at the beginning. The Altas after attacking a bit waits to about 52% max heat and fires the 4ML and it spikes to 91% from the looks of it.



So if firing 4ML which have 3 heat a peice for 12 heat total and cause 40% heat spike, that would be a max total of 30 heat if using the Table top heat for weapons. This would allow for a Awesome to Alpha with the 3 PPC which cause 30 heat total to max the heat in a single alpha.

(Edit added some more info)

Edited by Hollister, 10 April 2012 - 06:43 AM.

[T0RC4ED]

Have faith in the devs, they are fans of Battletech just like us and they will make sure things are tip top before allowing us to go on a laser boating spree.

[zorak ramone]

Siilk, on 10 April 2012 - 02:08 AM, said:

Again, you seem to react without actually understanding what I was saying. Pleas, read this carefully and think about what TT round is.

Its going to be really hard to have an intelligent conversation with you if you keep patronizing me. I read what you said. I understood it. Just because I didn't agree doesn't mean that I didn't. Also, stop assuming that I don't know what a TT round is, and what the BT fluff states.

Quote

It is true that mech could start the round with 0 heat, fire some energy weapons and still be lest with 0 heat at the beginning of the next round. But that doesn't mean there is no heatspike. The heat that weapon produces when firing is a heatspike and it's up to heatsinks to manage it during 10 seconds of a round. It does not lasts, if heatsinks are there to dissipate it but it is there.

The first point is that functionally, DHS eliminate heat spikes in the TT rules. Heat generated-DHSx2 = residual heat.

The second point is that the part that I bolded, i.e. that conceptually there is a heat spike is dead wrong and can be proven wrong with the example of the ERPPC. I refer you to the CBT heat scale reposted by Pht in this thread:
http://mwomercs.com/...es/page__st__80

An ERPPC generates 15 heat. If there is a heat spike then the mech heats up to 15 heat and then the HS drain the heat away. If this was true, then the mech would have to make a avoid shutdown roll each and every time it fired a single ERPPC. So you see, you can't escape this with the whole "well mechs actually manage heat spikes with chainfire, so its consistent with TT" thing.

The fact that a mech with a single ERPPC and at least 8 DHS will never have to make a shutdown roll proves that the idea of heat spikes is conceptually wrong.

Quote

Even if mech alphastrikes in TT, weapons are not fired simultaneously, they are still fired one by one or in small groups during the while round.
A Hellstar from your example fires all PPCs in a round, but not simultaneously. They are fired one by one during 10 seconds of TT round, so heatsinks can do their job and drain the heat out of the reactor. So, to translate TT behaviour into real-time environment, Hellstar starts a 10-second interval at 0 heat, fires PPCs, one by one, waiting for heatspike to falloff and have enough time for it's heatsinks to cool it down back to 0 at the end of 10 seconds interval. That is pretty much what TT alphastrike is if looked at in real time.

The part that I've bolded here is the part that you're just completely making up.

Maybe you're getting it from the fiction, but I'm sure that if I cared enough I could go to my bookshelf, and find some example in one of the books where a mech alphas with a high-heat config (with alot of DHS) and doesn't immediately explode due to heat spike.

Quote

And that is worse that actually nerfing energy weapon damage? How so? Besides, I thing that with pinpoint accuracy and no ammo to be worried about, energy weapons would be ok with a bit of indirect heat-related nerf.

As others have already discussed in this thread, lasers will have the unique property of doming damage over time, just like in MWLL, while ACs appear to be a single projectile (concentrated damage) with travel time (mitigating factor). So lasers already have a mitigating factor for their instant hit properties, just like ACs have a mitigating factor for their damage concentration.

The second point is that, as I pointed out in the OP, laser weaponry, and MLs in particular, are absolutely foundational to CBT weapon balance (again, for repetition, MWO is heavily based on CBT, so CBT is relevant here). If you nerf MLs, you completely throw weapons balance. Just look at the mechs that have already been released: with the exception of the Awesome, they're all either built around MLs or use MLs to fill their configuration out.

Do not make the mistake of the MW4 dev team in nerfing MLs in reaction to MW3.

Quote

Why are you see it as a problem? 3 PPCs shouldn't be fires at the same time. You have to understand, this is not how alphastrike works in TT, so we don't have to make this possible. Quite the contrary, we must came up with a way to avoid such things.

RE part in bold: don't tell me how things work in TT. I know how things work in TT.

As I've shown, the idea of heat spikes is contradicted by the example of the single ERPPC, and the whole "well they're actually being fired in chains" is something you've made up in your own mind. Sure they CAN be ... but they don't HAVE to be.

Finally, why shouldn't 3xERPPCs be able to be fired at the same time? Also, if heat prevents 3xERPPC to be fired at once, it sure as hell won't prevent 3xGR (same if not more power) from being fired at once. If you rely on heat spikes to balance clusters, don't you see how this 1) nerfs energy weapons relative to balistics and 2) doesn't solve the problem as people will just shift to balistic-heavy mechs for massive alphas?

Edited by zorak ramone, 10 April 2012 - 07:06 AM.

[zorak ramone]

Hollister, on 10 April 2012 - 05:35 AM, said:

If you watch the GDC video closely when the Altas fires the 4ML the heat spikes to what looks like by about 40% which is alot, but the heat also disappates rather fast. Though this Atlas has 20 heatsinks and is in about a up to the ankle in water. They also seem to have about a 3 second cooldown.

The part is at the beginning. The Altas after attacking a bit waits to about 52% max heat and fires the 4ML and it spikes to 91% from the looks of it.



So if firing 4ML which have 3 heat a peice for 12 heat total and cause 40% heat spike, that would be a max total of 30 heat if using the Table top heat for weapons. This would allow for a Awesome to Alpha with the 3 PPC which cause 30 heat total to max the heat in a single alpha.

(Edit added some more info)

Thanks for the observations from the videos, I should have checked myself.

My hope would be that there would be some sort of "hidden" heat capacity in the heat bar. I don't remember if the heat bar has colors in the videos (can't watch from here), but my hope is that part of the bar is actually the part where heat is being canceled/held by the heat sinks. I.e. if an Awesome fired 2xPPC, it would still stay in the "green" just like an Atlas firing 4xML, because they both have the HS to deal with that heat.

[zorak ramone]

Belisarius†, on 09 April 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

Convergence is different though, because it's inherently non-random. Weapons will converge at a certain speed and always towards a certain point. It will always be possible to fire a pinpoint accurate shot if the pilot is willing to wait.

Even firing before full convergence will be predictable; if I was scoped at 1000m and need to fire on a target at 100m without waiting, a weapon in my right arm will hit slightly to the right of my crosshair. Thus, if a player is familiar enough with their current 'mech they can adjust for individual weapons and be on target.

True cone of fire (as in, random scatter within a radius from the crosshair) strips away those possibilities, and so I'm against it.

I see your point about randomness and the possibility of having pinpoint accuracy. I was just making the point that delayed convergence is just a different implementation of cone of fire/reticule bloom. I mean, you had a similar thing in BF2142 (last BF game I played): if you were running with an assault rifle, your reticule would spread, but if you crouched/held still, the reticule would collapse and you would get pinpoint (or so close to pinpoint it didn't matter) accuracy.

I don't think we really disagree much on this point. We're just quibbling over specifics. The main point is that delayed weapon convergence is a mechanism of controlling weapon clusters becoming fingers-of-death. What remains to be seen is if its sufficient.

T0RC4ED, on 10 April 2012 - 06:35 AM, said:

Have faith in the devs, they are fans of Battletech just like us and they will make sure things are tip top before allowing us to go on a laser boating spree.

Sure, but these kinds of discussions are helpful for them, I'm sure. Its good to get outside input to reevaluate your pre-concieved notions.

[guardiandashi]

one thing I will point out is that even in battletech heat spikes occur its just that the heat spike effects are not seriously detrimental wheras sustained heat IS

IE if I have a mech with 20 heat dissipation /10 seconds and fire 1 ppc or erppc the unit is going to momentarally hit 10-15 heat, but immediately start cooling off its when you fire the second weapon (or the weapon a second time) that you will exceed the sustained heat dissipation rate of the unit.

on the other hand there is the solaris 7 boxed set dualing rules, this ruleset changed the heat generation of all systems up 4X and the turns from 10 seconds to 2.5 seconds so overall heat works more or less the same... but heat spikes DEFINATELY occur when ever any weapon is fired

[zorak ramone]

guardiandashi, on 10 April 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

one thing I will point out is that even in battletech heat spikes occur its just that the heat spike effects are not seriously detrimental wheras sustained heat IS

IE if I have a mech with 20 heat dissipation /10 seconds and fire 1 ppc or erppc the unit is going to momentarally hit 10-15 heat, but immediately start cooling off its when you fire the second weapon (or the weapon a second time) that you will exceed the sustained heat dissipation rate of the unit.

on the other hand there is the solaris 7 boxed set dualing rules, this ruleset changed the heat generation of all systems up 4X and the turns from 10 seconds to 2.5 seconds so overall heat works more or less the same... but heat spikes DEFINATELY occur when ever any weapon is fired

I'm not familiar with the solaris 7 rules, but in the normal TT rules, the concept of heat spikes exists (if it exists at all), only in the fluff. Mechanically, there are no heat spikes and HS completely eliminate heat, as shown by the ERPPC example in my reply to Siik.