43 replies to this topic

[Pht]

When this:

and everything needed to fully implement it (ammo explosions, internal systems/structure damage modeling, HS mechanic working as it did in the TT) are put into the game.

That's when.

[Pht]

MustrumRidcully, on 16 March 2013 - 03:18 AM, said:

When talking about the full heat scale, it boils down (no pun intended to) a "not planned for now" since forever. When talking about convergence it's "everything is fine" even if we point out that weapons that require lead time are screwed by it...

Or when people point out that there's no simulation of the battlemechs in a game about battlemechs ...

I'm not sure what to think about the complete lack of reaction to this fact.

It's not like I and others haven't been posting this for months now.

The lack of the 'Mechs reacting to heat buildup like their Lore counterparts do is just another thing that is lacking in imitation of how the mechs in the lore behave.

I understand that it's their money and jobs on the line, but the lack of reaction to this is ... stunning.

M4rtyr, on 16 March 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

Yeah i think BTech was exceptionally well balanced prior to 3055 (excluding Clan vs IS).

If you count the other factors beyond battlefied performance, it's not as unbalanced as most people usually say it is.

Obscene costs, rarirty, and the general disparity in pools of people to recruit from tends to even out the clan advantages.

The clanners are essentially the spartans - they HAD to be the best fighters of all time - simply because there were so few of them and they had to keep the lower classes in line.

It's a wonder the authors didn't get together and plan to have the clan warrior classes breed themselves out of existance, in the same way the spartatite class did.

kiltymonroe, on 16 March 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

If you scale the TT heat effects table to the MW:O heat scale, using 30 TT heat as 100% MW:O heat (the auto shutdown point in both),

If you use RPG and other modifiers, you can avoid a shutdown roll on +30.

Besides, if you look at the heatscale ... brother, if you can't blast your target to shreds without getting up to that level of waste heat ... you are doing something WRONG in the lore and in the TT.

Edited by Pht, 16 March 2013 - 04:58 PM.

[kiltymonroe]

kiltymonroe, on 16 March 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

THIS IS WHAT GROGNARDS THINK MAKES FOR GOOD GAMEPLAY.

THIS IS WHAT GROGNARDS THINK MAKES FOR GOOD GAMEPLAY.

THIS IS WHAT GROGNARDS THINK MAKES FOR GOOD GAMEPLAY.

See? I didn't lie.

[MustrumRidcully]

Khobai, on 16 March 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

The bigger problem was allowing precise aiming. tripling the rate of fire only tripled potential damage. allowing precise aiming increased damage upto five times as much.

example:
chance to hit center torso in tabletop = 20%
chance to hit center torso in mwo = potentially 100%

thats a five-fold increase in damage potential just by changing from random hit locations to aiming.

So we've got triple rate of fire tripling the damage. We've got precise aiming potentially quintupling damage. And all they put on the other side of the equation was double armor. Its no wonder mechs drop dead in seconds.

Aiming/convergence is still the single most unbalanced aspect of MWO.

But yeah certainly triple rate of fire and triple heat doesn't help either. Since they tripled the rate of fire of weapons, they also should've reduced the damage and heat by the inverse to balance it out. Not doing that is the reason why the heat system is so messed up in this game and why none of the stock mechs are effective.

This could also be handled. TT armor distributions are based on hit probabilities the designers set themselves.
MW:O hit probabilities are basically "played-decided". So the armor distribution must be based on something else. Basically - how can I encourage people to not go for the CT and H every time.

Solution: Make going for the CT and H so difficult and take so long that it's more efficient to shoot off arms, legs and side torsos. Make shooting off side torsos more difficult or take longer that it's at least sometimes worth taking out arms first.
Going from there, you can find reasonable armour distribution values that should encourage this behaviour.

[Grandmaster Ramrod]

Krazny Ivan, on 15 March 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

With the current mechanics in this game, everyone on a high-end machines enjoy the game with their big-screen monitors and souped-up video cards. Those of us on average performance machines get chewed up by them playing rough shod over us.

You what? Stop making excuses for yourself. My PC is crap, often sub 20fps, yet I still manage to hold my own. Even best some people. "Bad workman blames his tools"

[Tolkien]

Khobai, on 16 March 2013 - 12:20 AM, said:

No thanks. Heat is already punitive enough in MWO considering that weapons not only fire three times faster but double heatsinks arn't even really double.

Unless the entire heat system was redone from the ground up I can't see graduated penalties being added in.

I feel similarly, as in the tabletop many mechs ran "cool" and the heat scale was only there during intense firefights. On the tabletop even mechs with single heatsinks could be effective while here doubles are almost a 100% necessity. One of my favourite mechs is the LH2 lineholder. 55 Tons, 4 medium lasers, 1 large laser, 2 lrm 5's, 80kph heavy armor. It had 14 single heatsinks, 10 of which were in the engine. In close combat it could fire all 4 medium lasers and run (3x4+2)=14 heat and keep it up literally forever, while at long range it could run and fire the large laser and 2x LRM5 forever as well (8+2x2+2)=14.

In this game I am not even sure if you can fire a single medium laser with 14 single heatsinks while running and not eventually overheat....

They would have to redo heat from the ground up to make it less punative and get rid of this crap about heatsinks making your heat pool larger.

[Khobai]

Quote

This could also be handled. TT armor distributions are based on hit probabilities the designers set themselves.
MW:O hit probabilities are basically "played-decided". So the armor distribution must be based on something else. Basically - how can I encourage people to not go for the CT and H every time.

Solution: Make going for the CT and H so difficult and take so long that it's more efficient to shoot off arms, legs and side torsos. Make shooting off side torsos more difficult or take longer that it's at least sometimes worth taking out arms first.
Going from there, you can find reasonable armour distribution values that should encourage this behaviour.

Agreed. Armor values need to be based on the hit probability in MWO. Armor values should NOT be based on the hit probability in TT. That is one of the biggest imbalances right now because shooting out center torsos is way too easy.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

It's funny, but in real beta's, these are the kinds of things that happen. I really do think this game to could stand to have a few complete over hauls of certain systems.

It just doesn't feel right.

[M4rtyr]

Khobai, on 17 March 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

Agreed. Armor values need to be based on the hit probability in MWO. Armor values should NOT be based on the hit probability in TT. That is one of the biggest imbalances right now because shooting out center torsos is way too easy.

This is mainly due to no increa in internals. I mean when have you seen a mech lose its gyro without being cored or such. There is no point in having critical slots in MWO because entire sections are just destroyed one or 2 shots after armor is penetrated. it's very rare I lose any components before the section is just gone.

When you thijnk about it its very telling just how badly they've done things with tripling rate of fire but not really compensating for that with any of the other numbers.

We can't get proper heat systems because they changed it to their own version which is really weird and really wouldn't work with the heat scale atm. Convergence is messing up damage. etc etc the list goes on and on the more you look at things.

The only thing they can do to get heat working with any real penalty or strategy is to completely overhaul it, something I don't think they will. But if they did then they should overhaul the weapons as well to work witht he RoF.

[Khobai]

Quote

This is mainly due to no increa in internals

Internals were doubled just like armor. Head internals were also increased from 3 to 15.

The problem is more the fact players can aim all their weapons into one location... instead of hitting multiple locations. Its basically quadrupling or even quintupling the damage.

In tabletop it takes roughly 275-325 damage to kill an Atlas barring a lucky headshot. In MWO it only takes ~160 damage to kill an Atlas with well-placed shots. And thats with DOUBLE armor and internals.

So basically Atlases in MWO are dying to 25% of the damage it should take to kill them compared to tabletop. They just get their center torsos drilled out and none of the armor on their other locations even matters.

Edited by Khobai, 17 March 2013 - 12:19 PM.

[M4rtyr]

Khobai, on 17 March 2013 - 12:16 PM, said:

Internals were doubled just like armor. Head internals were also increased from 3 to 15.

The problem is more the fact players can aim all their weapons into one location... instead of hitting multiple locations. Its basically quadrupling or even quintupling the damage.


In tabletop it takes apprioximately 275-325 damage to kill an Atlas barring a lucky headshot.

In MWO it only takes ~160 damage to kill an Atlas with well-placed shots. And thats with DOUBLE armor and internals.

So I mean Atlases are dying to 25% of the damage it should take to kill them.

Didn't know that about internals. But yeah convergence is one of the problems. But even so there is something going on with internals because I almost never take damage to a component I can think of maybe once or twice I've lost a weapon or heat sink, never seen gyro hits. But then when i think about it we don't have any mechanics that would make the gyro do anything should lock them in place if it's taken out though.

Anyway... everything just seems so sloppy when you really put serious thought into it.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Having heat have a real effect in MWO would help with the pinpoint aiming issue a bit. You would no longer be able to shoot alpha after alpha with impunity. In order to maintain a stable heat level you'd be forced to chain fire or feel the effects of heat. I think it would do wonders for the game in addition to being more canon.

[MasterErrant]

right now the Developers appear to be focused on makeing new toys for players to spen cash money on rather than fixing the game. the only way tyhey are going to fix the balance issues is for US to stop spoending cash on the game.

at this moment this game is just another WOW clone money machine. (And WOW isn't anything but socila networking wrapped in a really poor game with lots of glitz and marketing. lousy game to start with)

[doKtor kALT]

MasterErrant, on 18 March 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

right now the Developers appear to be focused on makeing new toys for players to spen cash money on rather than fixing the game. the only way tyhey are going to fix the balance issues is for US to stop spoending cash on the game.

at this moment this game is just another WOW clone money machine. (And WOW isn't anything but socila networking wrapped in a really poor game with lots of glitz and marketing. lousy game to start with)

As if balancing the game and adding new toys for customization is the same department ...

[MustrumRidcully]

TheRulesLawyer, on 18 March 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

Having heat have a real effect in MWO would help with the pinpoint aiming issue a bit. You would no longer be able to shoot alpha after alpha with impunity. In order to maintain a stable heat level you'd be forced to chain fire or feel the effects of heat. I think it would do wonders for the game in addition to being more canon.

What about mechs that boat low-heat weapons? Gauss Rifles, AC/5s, AC/10s, Ultra AC/5s. If we ever get a mech that could carry 4 ballistics in 4 different hit location, this mech is not at all penalized by heat.

Heat Capacity limits (and heat effects are partially that) can solve some issues - those with energy-intensive weapons. But if it doesn't cover all weapons is that really a solution to our problem at hand then? What do you invent for the low-heat weapon options? Just ensure that the 65- to 70 ton mechs will forever be the only mechs that could carry 2 Gauss Rifles? How lame is that? What do you do with Clans?

The heat system needs a rework, but it doesn't mean that this rework will fundamentally address boating.

[TheRulesLawyer]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 March 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

What about mechs that boat low-heat weapons? Gauss Rifles, AC/5s, AC/10s, Ultra AC/5s. If we ever get a mech that could carry 4 ballistics in 4 different hit location, this mech is not at all penalized by heat.

Heat Capacity limits (and heat effects are partially that) can solve some issues - those with energy-intensive weapons. But if it doesn't cover all weapons is that really a solution to our problem at hand then? What do you invent for the low-heat weapon options? Just ensure that the 65- to 70 ton mechs will forever be the only mechs that could carry 2 Gauss Rifles? How lame is that? What do you do with Clans?

The heat system needs a rework, but it doesn't mean that this rework will fundamentally address boating.

That's actually the benefit of low heat weapons. Besides low heat weapons tend to be so heavy it is very hard to boat without significant trade offs.

[Targetloc]

Man. I worked so hard to make those terrible pictures and no one even commented.

[Hauser]

Targetloc, on 20 March 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

Man. I worked so hard to make those terrible pictures and no one even commented.

Put it in it's own thread. People just want to argue about table top here.

[M4rtyr]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 March 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

What about mechs that boat low-heat weapons? Gauss Rifles, AC/5s, AC/10s, Ultra AC/5s. If we ever get a mech that could carry 4 ballistics in 4 different hit location, this mech is not at all penalized by heat.

Heat Capacity limits (and heat effects are partially that) can solve some issues - those with energy-intensive weapons. But if it doesn't cover all weapons is that really a solution to our problem at hand then? What do you invent for the low-heat weapon options? Just ensure that the 65- to 70 ton mechs will forever be the only mechs that could carry 2 Gauss Rifles? How lame is that? What do you do with Clans?

The heat system needs a rework, but it doesn't mean that this rework will fundamentally address boating.

Actually boating low heat weapons is even less impacted on the current system then if they used the heat scale. Because its easy with low heat weapons to not overheat completely and shotdown.

Witht he heat scale they can still heat up enough to get movement penalties and such. As thing as if you are boating balistics and overheating, even on the high heat maps then you are really doing something wrong. You'd have to alpha so much you'd run out of ammo before worring about heat.

[focuspark]

kiltymonroe, on 16 March 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

If you scale the TT heat effects table to the MW:O heat scale, using 30 TT heat as 100% MW:O heat (the auto shutdown point in both), you get:

16.2 kph speed reduction at just ~17% heat
Some sort of aiming interference at ~27% heat, increases from here
32.4 kph speed reduction at ~33% heat
1/12 chance of automatic shutdown every 10 sec at ~47% heat, increases from here
48.6 kph speed reduction at 50% heat. Many assaults completely stationary at this point.
1/12 chance of ammo explosion every 10 sec at ~63%
64.8 kph speed reduction at ~67% heat. All assaults and most heavies can't move at all.
5/18 chance of ammo explosion every 10 sec at ~77%
81 kph speed reduction at ~83% heat. Only lights and fast mediums can even move.
21/36 chance of ammo explosion every 10 sec at ~93%

These are massive penalties for shooting just about any weapons at all. This game would become Gausswarrior:Online in very short order.

THIS IS WHAT GROGNARDS THINK MAKES FOR GOOD GAMEPLAY.

THIS IS WHAT GROGNARDS THINK MAKES FOR GOOD GAMEPLAY.

THIS IS WHAT GROGNARDS THINK MAKES FOR GOOD GAMEPLAY.

One quick tweak to your logic, but not saying you're wrong, is that in TT heat sinks applied before penalties were calculated. SO that somehow needs to be incorporated.