94 replies to this topic

[FiveDigits]

Deathlike, on 18 March 2013 - 07:17 PM, said:

[...] "3-second Jenner" [...] @ 6 DPS....

Well, the claim was that said Jenner could "core an Atlas from behind in 3 seconds".
Good luck coring an Atlas with 18 damage. (NB: It's internal structure alone has 62 hit points.)

Sustained damage with double dissipation on DHS is not a balance issue. We have presented numerous calculation examples showing that. We have to figure out a better model for heat capacity.

[Deathlike]

FiveDigits, on 19 March 2013 - 12:28 AM, said:

Well, the claim was that said Jenner could "core an Atlas from behind in 3 seconds".
Good luck coring an Atlas with 18 damage. (NB: It's internal structure alone has 62 hit points.)

That probably has more to do with designing Atlases factoring common backrage rate. I don't actually know how much back armor is commonly set to on an Atlas to know if that's accurate.

The internal structure of a mech in its back is far less than one in the front. When I was playing with LBX on a Raven-4X way before the crit buff patch, it was actually very easy to remove the side torso from a mech, particularly the Atlas, from behind. Considering the mobility of a Jenner vs the "newbie Atlas user", the Jenner really does have a significant advantage. 18 pts doesn't even need to be concentrated on a spot... it would be a better version of LBX w/o the negatives.

Shouldn't heat capacity from additional DHS just be half of what they are now (something on par with SHS), so they don't grow so obscenely high?

[FiveDigits]

Deathlike, on 19 March 2013 - 04:29 AM, said:

[...]The internal structure of a mech in its back is far less than one in the front.[...]

To my knowledge the internal structure of a section is exactly half its cumulative max armor without discerning back and front. My personal experience correlates with that claim.

Deathlike, on 19 March 2013 - 04:29 AM, said:

[...] Shouldn't heat capacity from additional DHS just be half of what they are now (something on par with SHS), so they don't grow so obscenely high?

Yes, that is one of the more popular suggestions - the one I voted for in the poll as well. It's a rather easy change which is worth trying. Albeit, I start to believe this might not be enough to keep heat capacity in check. Maybe we need a heat threshold independant from equipped heat sinks (flat general value or mech- or weight-class-based ...). Heat penalties (e.g. screen shake, vision blur, inhibited mobility) before the shutdown threshold might serve a similar purpose.

[Hellboy561]

My main problem with DHS is that it punishes Heavier mechs because you try to fit on the heavier weaponry but then your heat will be shocking because the DHS aren't actually double, then you have to downgrade weapons to upgrade your engine so you can get more heat sinks. To me its a bit rubbish!

Yes if all DHS we're 2.0 then smaller mechs that run DHS MIGHT have a small buff, but my Commando doesn't even have any heatsinks outside of its engine, it doesn't need them! But my Atlas and Stalker are punished by heat as they cannot pack more heat sinks than a smaller mech but they can have many many more weapons.

The system is broken, just make them 2.0 throughout and let us test them, like beta testers should!!

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Again, I'll just quote myself from here:

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 17 February 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

Currently the highest number of DHS that can be fitted on a mech is 28. You can't put any more of them because you will run out of crit space or tonnage. Let's look at some numbers (I can make some charts if you want ):
Current DHS:
for 28 DHS: 4.52 heat dissipation; 75.2 heat threshold
for 22 DHS: 3.68 heat dissipation; 66.8 heat threshold

True 2.0 DHS:
for 28 DHS: 5.60 heat dissipation; 86.0 heat threshold
for 22 DHS: 4.40 heat dissipation; 74.0 heat threshold

The difference in heat dissipation wouldn't be higher than 1.08, it's equivalent of 10 standard heat sinks, and for 22 DHS it's as high as 0.72 - like having 5 of current external DHS more. So it's not THAT much of a difference.
The problem might be with heat threshold - it would be significantly higher for true 2.0 DHS (up to 10.8, it's one ERPPC shot). But there is simple solution for that: decrease base heat threshold for DHS from 30 to 20. I'd also raise base heat threshold for SHS to 40, so they would be more usefull (right now DHS are mandatory anyway in almost every build).
Problem solved, plain and simple.

[Corvus Antaka]

1. SHS are completely unviable. The only way SHS would be viable is if DHS give no more than 1.5 dissapation from engine to slots.

2. the heatcap is way to high...let me say again WAY TO HIGH. With the exception of the dual gauss boats out there, nearly every single boat (LRM/SRM/ETC) can be curbed in its alpha strike warrior potential with heat. IE - you cannot fire more than 6 MLaser at once, this takes you to 90% heat, fire 12 and you instantly die. Same for more than 4 ERPPC, or 4 Large lasers.

in Mechwarrior 3 boats like the Nova where limited because of this, and it was only icemaps that created bizarre situations.

PGI is not learning the heat lesson well. Instead we are seeing mechs that have the highest and biggest alpha strike possible. This is the most intelligent mech choice currently, because with an organized team, focus fire you WANT every teammate to hit hard, duck behind cover, cooldown.

And indeed, more and more we are seeing this gameplay. Heat efficiency means little. Hiding behind cover means everything. LRMS cant indirect fire, so now we get artillery strikes.

3. almost all these problems could be fixed simply by cutting the heatcap in half and doubling dissapation, as well as instantly exploding any mech that exceed 125% heat.

DHS must be reworked, primarily because taking DHS outside the engine is almost worthless at the current time, the best builds stuff 10-14 into the engine and then max firepower and crits outside the engine.

SHS also need a dissapation boost if they are to maintain any viability. I havent used SHS in 3 months they are utterly useless.

However, my primary point remains - HEAT can stop the entire boating problem we see - 6 SRM 6 cats 1 shotting a hunchback from the front 2 times and killing him.

PGI's flawed heat design is a primary reason we have such bizarre builds that are easily viable.

In norespawn, the kill means more than anything, and as such HEAT is vital to balance, but in game right now and with the coming fluid flush HEAT means almost nothing, and the alpha strike warrior peak and shoot gayness is only goin to get worse.

At this point I have come to conclude that this is the gameplay PGI is actually aiming for, inbetween ECM, LRMS & jumpjets and the current heatscale we are actually looking at worse peek-a-boo and wack-a-mole than mech4 ever gave us.

[urmamasllama]

why are so many people wanting true double dissapation and threshold. the game will never be balanced if they implement that
0_o.

[FiveDigits]

urmamasllama, on 19 March 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

why are so many people wanting true double dissapation and threshold. the game will never be balanced if they implement that
0_o.

I am equally miffed about the amount of people in the "the current 2.0/1.4 is fine" camp ... and don't get me started about the "1.4/2.0" crowd. I doubt any of them ever thought about what this would do to lights and mediums ...

The lack of a strong sensible community voice on this issue gives PGI the excuse to do nothing about it.
Third person and P2W consumables were easily understood by the masses. The echo was unanimous and PGI had to act.
Heat is a much more tricky subject to voice a coherent feedback on. So we keep getting ignored.

[Deathlike]

FiveDigits, on 19 March 2013 - 07:06 AM, said:

I am equally miffed about the amount of people in the "the current 2.0/1.4 is fine" camp ... and don't get me started about the "1.4/2.0" crowd. I doubt any of them ever thought about what this would do to lights and mediums ...

TBH, I'm not well "edumacated" in the part about the heat threshold part. The heat dissipation part is actually very easy to figure out. If the threshold portion was broken down into its simplest form, we might have better informed discussions. The 2.0/1.4 part is not that complicated with respect to the rate of cooling... I don't think the majority that have selected that vote knows how the threshold portion works like myself.

Edited by Deathlike, 19 March 2013 - 07:12 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Deathlike, on 18 March 2013 - 07:17 PM, said:

I've just realized that the "3-second Jenner" is actually built off of 6 small lasers... not 6 medium lasers.

Based on Smurfy's Mechlab data...

JR7-F

It would run virtually indefinitely with true 2.0 DHS across the board. It's already 75% heat efficient, and that's with the current 1.4 external DHS system. With Coolrun+Elite bonuses, it has a sustainable DPS of 5.1. True DHS should probably put this literally @ 6 DPS....

How does it kill the Atlas in 3 seconds?

FiveDigits, on 19 March 2013 - 07:06 AM, said:

I am equally miffed about the amount of people in the "the current 2.0/1.4 is fine" camp ... and don't get me started about the "1.4/2.0" crowd. I doubt any of them ever thought about what this would do to lights and mediums ...

The lack of a strong sensible community voice on this issue gives PGI the excuse to do nothing about it.
Third person and P2W consumables were easily understood by the masses. The echo was unanimous and PGI had to act.
Heat is a much more tricky subject to voice a coherent feedback on. So we keep getting ignored.

I am getting the impression that most people simply vote the status quo in these situations because they know they can somehow deal with how things are and fear change may be for the worse.

[Deathlike]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 March 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

How does it kill the Atlas in 3 seconds?

It doesn't. The point of the "3 second Jenner" is that the mech is literally heat neutral with 18 DHS (@ 2.0 on both external+engine) with all efficiencies acquired (not sure about the cooldown tweak though). So, when it can shoot something within its range, it would virtually fire indefinitely until death or DHS removal through crits.

[Corvus Antaka]

Deathlike, on 19 March 2013 - 07:21 AM, said:

It doesn't. The point of the "3 second Jenner" is that the mech is literally heat neutral with 18 DHS (@ 2.0 on both external+engine) with all efficiencies acquired (not sure about the cooldown tweak though). So, when it can shoot something within its range, it would virtually fire indefinitely until death or DHS removal through crits.

if the heatcap was low enough so that firing 6 medium lasers put the jenner at 75% heat and after that link firing had to occur this wouldnt be so bad.

I'm not averse to DHS at 1.75, true 2.0 is not necessarily the perfect point, but with the heatcap as high as it is it'll never be doable unless the heatcap comes down significantly.

[Deathlike]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 19 March 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

if the heatcap was low enough so that firing 6 medium lasers put the jenner at 75% heat and after that link firing had to occur this wouldnt be so bad.

I don't have the exact #s, but firing 6 medium lasers to get to 75% requires 2 alphas to get there (assuming 250 engine minimum with DHS).

Sustained DPS drops dramatically.. as I've run 13 DHS before and it can only dish half the lasers while barely under the heat warning (80%+ heat) on maps like Caustic. Lights are actually fine for the most part...

[Corvus Antaka]

Deathlike, on 19 March 2013 - 09:54 AM, said:

I don't have the exact #s, but firing 6 medium lasers to get to 75% requires 2 alphas to get there (assuming 250 engine minimum with DHS).

Sustained DPS drops dramatically.. as I've run 13 DHS before and it can only dish half the lasers while barely under the heat warning (80%+ heat) on maps like Caustic. Lights are actually fine for the most part...

meh...I definitely know what you mean deathlike. This is not a simple problem to address.

[sC4r]

again this... sigh

if DHS are to be changed they should go with some middle ground between 1.4 and 2.0
i did math some time ago and the current system provides pretty much 2.0+ average heat dissipitation per heatsink with 2x basic pilot skills

with some 1.7-1.8 and mastered mech it should bring you around 2.0

[focuspark]

If you ask me (and you haven't) the whole double heat sink thing needs to be rethought.

First, only getting 1.5 EHS (effective heat sinks) from a three critcal + one ton piece of equipment sucks. So why do people "upgrade" to DHS? Because the engine EHS goes from 10 to 20 with no extra investment - and there's your problem.

To balance SHS and DHS engine heat dissipation needs to be fixed, regardless of the type of heat sink used. So here's my succinct proposal:

• Integral engine heat sinks dissipate 1.5 heat each regardless of type of heat sinks
  
• Double heat sinks dissipate 2.0 heat, single heat sinks dissipate 1.0 heat
  
• Allow mixing of single and double heat sinks on a single mech

Yay, a more flexible and easier to understand system. Yeah, yeah, it's not cannon - I don't care.

[TheRulesLawyer]

urmamasllama, on 19 March 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

why are so many people wanting true double dissapation and threshold. the game will never be balanced if they implement that
0_o.

That's easy. Same reason unlimited ammo, no heat games were so popular in previous mechwarriors. Most people just want to pew pew without worrying about heat management. People who voted for that would probably rather see heat removed from the game.

[MustrumRidcully]

Deathlike, on 19 March 2013 - 07:21 AM, said:

It doesn't. The point of the "3 second Jenner" is that the mech is literally heat neutral with 18 DHS (@ 2.0 on both external+engine) with all efficiencies acquired (not sure about the cooldown tweak though). So, when it can shoot something within its range, it would virtually fire indefinitely until death or DHS removal through crits.

So it's just a recycle time 3 seconds,and has nothing to do with how fast you can core an Atlas with it.

One of the secrets of "heat neutrality" is that it's not actually that useful to have in many cases.

What you care about is killing the enemy before he kills you. A Mech with 1 Medium LAser is perfectly heat neutral, but a 6 PPC Stalker will kill this mech even though it overheats on the second salvo and is shut down half the time.

The trick is dealing the damage needed to kill your enemy before he can deal enough damage to kill you. If your mech is too cool, a less heat efficient mech will out-DPS you and then cool off over your smoldering ruins. So you must risk some heat gains,a nd you have to find the right equilibrium. That's not easy and maybe not always possible, but generally - it is a good idea to select a build that deals more DPS than most builds in your weight class. That means you can out-damage equally strong opponents and weaker ones. Of course, you have to ensure that the maximum potential in your weight class is actually better than that of lower weight classes. That's not guaranteed dependent on the available hard points in your class. I'd argue then Awesome may have a serious problem in that regard, which is even inflated because he actually can be matched against opponents that even have a higher weight class.

If your heat-modified damage output over time is put on a curve, you try to optimize for a higher integral about a certain time than your enemy.

TheRulesLawyer, on 19 March 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:

That's easy. Same reason unlimited ammo, no heat games were so popular in previous mechwarriors. Most people just want to pew pew without worrying about heat management. People who voted for that would probably rather see heat removed from the game.

You know, if people really wanted that, they might just say so and ask "Give us a No Heat Game Mode"! They don't. Could it be that it is for most really about game balance and gameplay quality, and not just simplifying the game because they are too dumb to figure out heat? You may notice that most of the posters discussing the topic in depth really know a lot about this game and took great pains to analyze it - suggesting that maybe they are not too lazy or too dumb to figure out heat, but instead smart enough to figure out that some things are problematic?

[Deathlike]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 March 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

So it's just a recycle time 3 seconds,and has nothing to do with how fast you can core an Atlas with it.

One of the secrets of "heat neutrality" is that it's not actually that useful to have in many cases.

What you care about is killing the enemy before he kills you. A Mech with 1 Medium LAser is perfectly heat neutral, but a 6 PPC Stalker will kill this mech even though it overheats on the second salvo and is shut down half the time.

The trick is dealing the damage needed to kill your enemy before he can deal enough damage to kill you. If your mech is too cool, a less heat efficient mech will out-DPS you and then cool off over your smoldering ruins. So you must risk some heat gains,a nd you have to find the right equilibrium. That's not easy and maybe not always possible, but generally - it is a good idea to select a build that deals more DPS than most builds in your weight class. That means you can out-damage equally strong opponents and weaker ones. Of course, you have to ensure that the maximum potential in your weight class is actually better than that of lower weight classes. That's not guaranteed dependent on the available hard points in your class. I'd argue then Awesome may have a serious problem in that regard, which is even inflated because he actually can be matched against opponents that even have a higher weight class.

If your heat-modified damage output over time is put on a curve, you try to optimize for a higher integral about a certain time than your enemy.

Yes, practicality over being idealistic. Sure, I'll buy that.

I don't think there's any easy answer, but it would require something like a huge diagram or a series of videos on how effective the system is working would probably go further than our theorymeching.

[TheRulesLawyer]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 March 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

You know, if people really wanted that, they might just say so and ask "Give us a No Heat Game Mode"! They don't. Could it be that it is for most really about game balance and gameplay quality, and not just simplifying the game because they are too dumb to figure out heat? You may notice that most of the posters discussing the topic in depth really know a lot about this game and took great pains to analyze it - suggesting that maybe they are not too lazy or too dumb to figure out heat, but instead smart enough to figure out that some things are problematic?

Right. And you know that the people discussing it intelligently are the ones who voted for that? BTW I'm not the one suggesting anyone is dumb or lazy. Those modes were *very* popular in previous MW games. It would be unsurprising to see a substantial portion of the votes for the most forgiving option actually mean they would like those modes given it wasn't an option in the poll.