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TLDR: Remove ghost heat by penalizing certain builds with cooldown time, accuracy, and dps nerfs. Specifics detailed below.
We have ghost heat to thank for putting an end to the fearsome sight of six PPC stalkers and other high pinpoint damage alpha abominations. However, ghost heat is far from ideal, and is one of the many obstacles new pilots face when they begin to play the game. I believe the ghost heat mechanic should be replaced by a new system which uses penalties to accuracy and weapon cooldown times to discourage boating large amounts of certain weapons.
PPCs:
The Particle Projector Cannon was the main culprit that led to the implementation of the ghost heat mechanic. With pinpoint damage and incredible range, Stalkers armed with six PPCs terrorized the battlefield. Ghost heat, while much maligned, offered greatly needed relief. Several changes need to be made to the PPC to remove the ghost heat mechanic, and prevent the PPC from once again ascending to its previous place atop the throne of dominance.
The first change I would propose to the PPC would be changing it to a charge and fire weapon like the gauss rifle; however, there would be several key differences that would give it a very different flavor from the gauss rifle. First, the charge time for the PPC would be shorter than the gauss rifle’s charge time, lasting for only 0.5 seconds instead of the gauss rifle’s 0.75. The second difference between the gauss rifle and the PPC would be how long the PPC retains the chambered “round” after it has been charged. Unlike the gauss rifle, the PPC would be able to hold on to the charged round indefinitely; however, doing so would cause excess heat to build up in the battlemech. This extra heat could be called OMGIH heat (short for Oh my god it’s HOT). Basically the battlemech is holding a ball of supercharged/super heated plasma and excess heat is bleeding through the PPC into the battlemech. This mechanic will encourage players to fire the PPC instead of holding on for a perfect moment to fire. A third change would be as the PPC begins to charge, the weapon on the exterior of the battlemech would begin to glow (the effect would be similar to the one found in the MechAssault games on the Xbox). This effect would alert enemies of the impending PPC strike and give them time to seek cover or present a suitable component to absorb the blow.
While the previous changes try to balance the PPC by affecting its basic functions, the following changes will focus on penalties to both the accuracy and firing rate of the PPC. The first change would rely upon the charging mechanic proposed for the PPC. When firing more than two PPCs, the time required to charge the PPCs would increase. In effect, the battlemech is drawing too much energy from the capacitors used to charge the PPCs, and charge time suffers as a result. This change will cause a decrease in DPS, and encourage more balanced builds. The second mechanic would cause accuracy to decrease when more than two PPCs are fired at a single time, with the accuracy decrease becoming more significant when more PPCs are fired. In the table top game, the targeting computer of a battlemech played a huge role in the accuracy of a battlemech’s weapons. In Mechwarrior Online, this could be represented by limiting the number of ballistic weapons that can be fired accurately at any given time. In this situation, the “targeting computer” would be the reason for decrease in PPC accuracy: it cannot accurately aim more than 2 PPCs at any one given time. This would have two effects. The first effect would be the damage of a PPC volley would be spread out around the targeted battlemech, removing one of the main draws of massed PPC fire: massive pinpoint damage. The second effect would severely limit the usefulness of a mass PPC volley at range due to a large percentage of shots missing their target entirely. This would particularly affect the normal PPC since it has a minimum range of 90 meters.
ER-PPCs would be likewise affected by the above changes, with perhaps a slight increase in their charge time due to their increased range. Unlike the PPC, the ER-PPC does not suffer from having a minimum range, and as a result could bring a formidable alpha to bear at close range where the accuracy penalty would be greatly mitigated. It is in situations like this where the third change to the PPC (the addition of the visible charging effect) would be particularly important. A Stalker that is charging 6 ER-PPCs would be very conspicuous due to the six glowing energy hard points and the significantly increased time required to charge the PPCs. Ideally the targeted battlemech could escape to a safe distance, or deal with the ER-PPC wielding attacker before the alpha can be delivered (which means if you are on a TS server, or in game comms when they are hopefully implemented, frantically yelling “BRING HIM DOWN” to your lance mates). On a side note, even without ghost heat, ER-PPCs are still incredibly hot weapons, and firing off more than two will more than likely cause the offending battlemech to overheat.
Large Lasers:
Before ghost heat, large laser dependent builds were popular; it was not uncommon to see a six large laser Stalker or a four large laser dragon. Since the implementation of ghost heat, these builds have become more uncommon, and when they are seen, the large lasers are generally chain fired. The removal of ghost heat would necessitate the implementation of a new way to keep the large laser boats from being too powerful. I would suggest a general change to the mechanics of the large laser. I would suggest after pulling the trigger there would be a 0.25 second firing delay on the large laser . This would represent the time when the large laser is drawing power from the capacitors of the battlemech before the weapon fires (I personally would add a cool charging sound before the beam is fired). To make up for the 0.25 second charge time, the cooldown of the large laser would reduced from 3.25 seconds to 3.00 seconds (this new mechanic would also separate the large laser from the medium laser, which could add a little more flavor to the game). As long as only 2 lasers are fired at once the firing delay will always be 0.25 seconds; however, for each additional laser fired the duration firing delay would increase (this would be very pronounced on the large pulse laser, since it has the highest capacity for pinpoint damage). This would allow for the current dps of a pair of large lasers to remain untouched, but would significantly decrease the dps output when two or more two large lasers are fired.
Missile Based Weapons:
SRMs and LRMs have also been affected by the ghost heat mechanic, which has led the decline of some builds (LRM boats with more than 2 large LRM launchers) and the near extinction of others (Splat Cat). If Ghost heat is removed, these builds could once again be over powered. I would suggest the addition of the following mechanic to help deal with these missile boating. In lieu of ghost heat, firing off large amounts of SRMs or LRMs would instead affect the cooldown of SRM and LRM launchers. Each battlemech could fire a set, but limited, number of missiles without penalty (e.g. 20 SRMS), and if more than the limited number of missiles are fired within 0.5 seconds (e.g. a 36 SRM Splatcat Alpha) all missile launchers would reload more slowly. The limit of SRMs and LRMS that can be fired with 0.5 seconds would vary between different battlemechs (e.g. a Stalker 3H would be able to fire off more LRMS in the 0.5 second window than a Stalker 3F) and would represent the ability of the reloading mechanisms in various battlemechs. This would allow battlemech pilots to fire large missile alphas if they want to, but would leave them vulnerable while their missile launchers reload more slowly.
Autocannons:
Ghost Heat was also meant to discourage the use of several ballistic heavy builds, like the six AC/2 Jager, the AC/40 Jager, and the BoomCat. These battlemech configurations either caused massive amounts of cockpit shake or delivered too much pinpoint damage to one location on a target. I think instead of using ghost heat to discourage the use of a large number of autocannons, accuracy penalties should be used instead.
The AC/20 is the most powerful direct fire weapon in the game. It can do significant damage to any battlemech it hits, and two AC/20s can be devastating. Even with the current ghost heat penalties, many pilots with dual AC/20 battlemechs will still fire off both AC/20s at the same time when they first encounter an enemy, and only switch to chain firing after they have built up a significant amount of heat. Changes to the mechanics of the AC/20 could help alleviate this problem (and remove the need for ghost heat).I propose if a battlemech fires off two AC/20s at the same time, both shots would be inaccurate. The battlemechs that currently run dual AC20/s (Jagers, Catapults, and the odd Cicada) were not designed to fire such large weapons, and the recoil from shooting two 300 pound slugs out of two 14 ton guns in 65 ton battlemech (which is not a very stable platform to begin with) would be immense. The accuracy problems with this gun should be quite significant, even to the point of being incredibly difficult to hit the same component even at point blank range. This would also be true if two autocannon shots were fired within 0.5 seconds of each other (the second shot would be very inaccurate). I would not expect the Mechwarrior Online servers would have any difficulty detecting and applying the accuracy penalty of two AC/20’s being fired simultaneously, but if there are any issues, a slight delay (0.125 seconds) between squeezing the trigger and firing the round could be implemented to deal with this potential problem. This would apply to almost all battlemechs, since only a few battle battlemechs were designed to fire two AC/20s at once. On a personal note, I believe having a slight delay between pulling the trigger and having the AC/20 fire could be rather cool (click. BOOM!).
The AC/2 is also another weapon that has been affected by Ghost heat (in a much more effective way than the AC/20). The primary reason for the ghost heat mechanic on the AC/2 is to stop the macro-stagger fire of battlemechs like the six AC/2 Jager DD, which used a macro to fire all six AC/2s as rapidly as possible. If ghost heat was removed, this fire suppression build would no doubt return. Instead of using ghost heat to discourage this build, I believe it should become highly inaccurate. If more than 4 AC/2s are fired within 0.5 seconds all of the shots fired should suffer from inaccuracy. This would make sure that future battlemechs, like the Mauler, would not be unduly penalized for using their standard load outs, but would limit the usefulness of AC/2 suppression battlemechs. Ultimately, this change would allow the six AC/2 macro builds to return, but their effectiveness would be greatly limited since many of the AC/2 rounds would miss their targets.
Gauss Rifle:
The gauss rifle is not a weapon that affected by ghost heat, so its inclusion here may seem odd, but I believe this weapon deserves special mention. Right now it is one of the premier pinpoint damage dealers in the game, and it is quite effective when mounted on a Jager or a cataphract (I am especially fond of th3b33f’s Boomphract, RIP xCaptainStabbinx). I would suggest changing the charge mechanic (it takes longer to charge two gauss rifles than it does to charge one) and making the shots slightly inaccurate when a battlemech fires two gauss rifles simultaneously (unless it was specifically designed to do so). In exchange, the charge mechanic would also be altered: one click would begin to charge the capacitors, and a second click would fire the gauss rifle after it is charged.
Overall I think these changes would be able balance the game without the use of the ghost heat mechanic. They are also easier to explain to new players and are less arbitrary than the current ghost heat mechanic. These changes can also be used to individualize battlemechs chassis and increase their effectiveness in at a given role (e.g. an Awesome could be able to fire 3 PPC’s without any penalty [charge time or accuracy], and a King Crab could accurately fire two AC/20s without simultaneously). I welcome constructive criticism, and look forward to seeing any discussion this post generates.
TLDR: Remove ghost heat; penalize boating with cooldown time, accuracy, and dps nerfs.
Edited for formatting and spelling. Also, added a version of the TLDR to the top of the post.
Edited by BigBangA1, 26 February 2014 - 11:38 AM.
