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stjobe, on 10 May 2013 - 09:01 AM, said:
Heat penalties is all good and well, but they're skirting the main problem: the heat system is broken, and has always been broken.
In their infinite wisdom, the devs tripled rate of fire - and thereby heat generation - on all weapons, but they left heat dissipation on the same 10-second cycle as the TT. This, of course, means that 'mechs in MWO run three times hotter than they do in BT.
To make this work, the devs gave every 'mech a heat cap of 40 for free, and allowed heat sinks to increase this cap as well as increase heat dissipation. In TT, as you know, the heat cap is fixed at 30 and the only thing heat sinks increase is heat dissipation.
What does this mean? It means that 'mechs in MWO have ridiculously high heat caps, which in turn means that all energy weapons are unbalanced, since they are supposed to be balanced by their heat generation the same way ballistics are balanced by their weight and ammo capacity. It also means - and here's the thing that leads to the current situation - that it's possible to fire three times larger alphas than in TT. Combine those two facts with the pin-point accuracy of MWO's direct-fire weapons, and you'll have the 6-PPC Stalkers ruling the battlefield.
So, that's the problem in a nutshell. What can be done about it? Heat penalties, yes, but that won't be enough. In an ideal world, PGI would totally revamp the heat system by doing the following:
* Lower the heat cap and fixate it, not allowing heat sinks to increase it.
* Triple the rate of heat dissipation to match the increase in rate of fire
* Allow heat sinks to increase heat dissipation (this may also lead to DHS finally being true 2.0)
* Implement heat penalties (convergence slowdown, movement and agility penalties, HUD effects, etc)
It's not at all surprising that we're in the position we are, seeing as they somehow forgot that if you increase the rate of fire you'll also increase the rate of heat generation, and that requires an adjustment of heat dissipation. What is strange is that they choose to instead increase the heat cap - which directly leads to the high-alpha gameplay we see today - and also is a pretty big factor in why stock 'mechs are useless.
In their infinite wisdom, the devs tripled rate of fire - and thereby heat generation - on all weapons, but they left heat dissipation on the same 10-second cycle as the TT. This, of course, means that 'mechs in MWO run three times hotter than they do in BT.
To make this work, the devs gave every 'mech a heat cap of 40 for free, and allowed heat sinks to increase this cap as well as increase heat dissipation. In TT, as you know, the heat cap is fixed at 30 and the only thing heat sinks increase is heat dissipation.
What does this mean? It means that 'mechs in MWO have ridiculously high heat caps, which in turn means that all energy weapons are unbalanced, since they are supposed to be balanced by their heat generation the same way ballistics are balanced by their weight and ammo capacity. It also means - and here's the thing that leads to the current situation - that it's possible to fire three times larger alphas than in TT. Combine those two facts with the pin-point accuracy of MWO's direct-fire weapons, and you'll have the 6-PPC Stalkers ruling the battlefield.
So, that's the problem in a nutshell. What can be done about it? Heat penalties, yes, but that won't be enough. In an ideal world, PGI would totally revamp the heat system by doing the following:
* Lower the heat cap and fixate it, not allowing heat sinks to increase it.
* Triple the rate of heat dissipation to match the increase in rate of fire
* Allow heat sinks to increase heat dissipation (this may also lead to DHS finally being true 2.0)
* Implement heat penalties (convergence slowdown, movement and agility penalties, HUD effects, etc)
It's not at all surprising that we're in the position we are, seeing as they somehow forgot that if you increase the rate of fire you'll also increase the rate of heat generation, and that requires an adjustment of heat dissipation. What is strange is that they choose to instead increase the heat cap - which directly leads to the high-alpha gameplay we see today - and also is a pretty big factor in why stock 'mechs are useless.
I think that mechs should have a base heat cap that is appropriate to the "stock" mech. An Awesome should have a higher cap than a ballistic mech such as a Cataphract. Adding extra heatsinks should improve dissipation but not raise the cap.
This would mean that energy heavy mechs could "boat" energy weapons, but a ballistic mechs probably couldn't.
Boats are valid in canon and are part of the game, but a ballistic or missile boat shouldn't be able to become an energy boat just because it has the hardpoints.
