60 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

Xerxys, on 26 March 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

Again the main problem with the whole heat system came when PGI tripled rate of fire, tried to counter act that by doubling armor, then did this stupid thing with increasing the heat cap.

I don't think you got the order right.
They doubled the armor because of the alpha-strike capability of mechs, especially combined with mouse aiming. At this point, rate of fire isn't even relevant, what matters is that the first shot you take might already be the one that kills you, simply because your mech can't survive a 30 damage alpha strike with standard armour. That was bad for the game.
Increasing the rate of fire was probably the next reaction: "Okay, so people don't die on the first hit anymore. But man, this game is slow, the first shot doesn'T kil lanyone, and then wait for 10 seconds?"

If they had forseen these two issues together, or once the second issue cropped up, they should have thought a bi tmore deeply. Increasing the rate of fire of weapons but lowering their damage and heat per shot would avoid both the instant-shot problem and the slowness of the game.

All in all, the process of adapting the table top rules was flawed, quite possibly because they never looked at the big picture.

[danust]

Yes OP. Like very much. A good direction to take I think.

*Lower capacity higher dissipation - Where Alpha Strike is not the normal way to fire but a desperate and possibly risky "I'm in trouble here" move. Wow this is a good idea the more I think of it.

Edited by Leedair, 27 March 2013 - 02:59 AM.

[SweetWarmIce]

My idea is:
All mechs have a heat capacity of 30 as per TT.
Only the engine heat sinks increase heat capacity. This would cap out at 44 total capacity, a 350 engine with 4 heatsinks inside.
This way that Hex-PPC Stalker can still alpha (6 x 8 heat = 48 heat) but WILL shutdown and take damage if not explode. I think this will give high alpha builds a place but limits them more then the current system.

[Tehtos]

With DHS, the first 10 engine heat sinks are worth 2. The remaining heat sinks are worth 1.4.

With SHS, the first 10 engine sinks are worth 1. The remaining heat sinks are worth 1.

PGI doesn't want to use the same value for all heat sinks. Fine. If those first 10 engine heat sinks are special, they should be special for both DHS and SHS.

Bump up the value of the first 10 engine SHS. I think that would be enough to help make SHS and stock mechs a little more attractive.

The specific value can be played with. At 1.42 for the first 10 engine SHS, the same number of DHS will always dissipate 40% more heat per second than the same number of SHS. At 1.33 for the first 10 SHS, the same number of DHS will always dissipate 50% more heat per second than SHS.

It's doesn't even touch the heat capacity, which is an issue I haven't really tested yet.

[UberFubarius]

So... my idea. Heat capacity probably should not scale with tonnage. The idea is that heat-sinks ARE the one providing the heat-capacity. So heavy mechs should naturally mount more heat-sink to increase their capacity.
Mech-tonnage based heat capacity also penalizes light mechs a bit too much.
However, heat-sink's heat capacity is due only to its mass.
So, this is my idea, all mech get the same base heat-capacity level (should be low, as stated in previous post, probably something like 10 or 15).
SHS:
+1 Capacity in External/Internal
+0.1 Heat Dissipation in Internal/External

DHS
+1 Capacity in External/Internal
+0.14 Heat Dissipation in Internal
+0.2 Heat Dissipation in External

Heat System:
At >100%, heat dissipation rate is halved. Explanation is that the active heat-pump in the mech also shuts down to prevent damage, reducing heat dissipation.

In essence, heat capacity is purely a function of heat-sink weight (1 ton of heat-sink = 1 ton of heat capacity).

[Deathlike]

The only radical idea I have is to make engine heatsinks, regardless of SHS or DHS is to make them operate solely at +.1 to Dissipation per engine HS.

This is the only way to justify having full +.2 to external DHS dissipation....

[Xerxys]

MustrumRidcully, on 26 March 2013 - 02:20 AM, said:

I don't think you got the order right.
They doubled the armor because of the alpha-strike capability of mechs, especially combined with mouse aiming. At this point, rate of fire isn't even relevant, what matters is that the first shot you take might already be the one that kills you, simply because your mech can't survive a 30 damage alpha strike with standard armour. That was bad for the game.
Increasing the rate of fire was probably the next reaction: "Okay, so people don't die on the first hit anymore. But man, this game is slow, the first shot doesn'T kil lanyone, and then wait for 10 seconds?"

If they had forseen these two issues together, or once the second issue cropped up, they should have thought a bi tmore deeply. Increasing the rate of fire of weapons but lowering their damage and heat per shot would avoid both the instant-shot problem and the slowness of the game.

All in all, the process of adapting the table top rules was flawed, quite possibly because they never looked at the big picture.

Nope. They increase RoF because a 10 sec round makes for an awful combat simulator game. This is what made Alpha strikes blow through the armor of mechs at TT standards. After 2 generations of closed beta testers saying that heat was out of balance PGI increased heat cap by increasing it per heat sink.

If they made absolutely no changes transferring over from TT this absolutely would not have been possible. I can't think of a single TT build that can core a mech with just one Alpha, even if every shot managed to hit the exact same area of the mech via rolls. Not certain about that, but I know RoF was increased because if you had to wait 10 seconds between each shot it would be really boring.

[MustrumRidcully]

Xerxys, on 27 March 2013 - 09:00 PM, said:

Nope. They increase RoF because a 10 sec round makes for an awful combat simulator game. This is what made Alpha strikes blow through the armor of mechs at TT standards. After 2 generations of closed beta testers saying that heat was out of balance PGI increased heat cap by increasing it per heat sink.

If they made absolutely no changes transferring over from TT this absolutely would not have been possible. I can't think of a single TT build that can core a mech with just one Alpha, even if every shot managed to hit the exact same area of the mech via rolls. Not certain about that, but I know RoF was increased because if you had to wait 10 seconds between each shot it would be really boring.

What kind of Alpha are we talking about? The full damage per turn in the table top would suffice for many mechs against many mechs.

Hunchback 4P delivers a 48 points alpha in the worst case. A Dragon DRG-1C happens to have 28 CT armour front and 20 points of internal armour - total of 48. So a 50 ton mech can take out a 60 ton mech in one alpha.

But if we use a rate of fire of 1 shot per 5 seconds in a real time adaptation and adjust damage per shot accordingly, that alpha drops to 24 - insufficient to drop a Jenner, but sufficient to drop a Commando or Locust - Incidentally, this is the same damage to armour ratio we have now with doubled armour...

Worst case Alpha in the table top might be a Nova with 12 Clan ER Medium Laser - 84 damage. Enough for a an Atlas, actually!
42 damage alpha on a 5 second fire rate.

What I might do for adjusting fire rates and damage:
- Pretend that table top turns are actually 12 second long, not 10. Then you can use 2, 3 and 4 as divisors to get clean rate of fires. You might pick 2 for low damage weapons (up to Medium Laser), 3 for large damage values (Clan ER Medium Laser, Large Laser to PPC and AC10) and 4 for extreme high damage values (Clan ER PPC, Gauss, AC/20).

This will blunt every mech's alpha strike capability. It wil also lower the maximum heat load of the high heat/high damage weapons per alpha, which allows you to run with lower heat capacity figures. Even a 6 PPC Alpha would only deal 15 damage and 15 heat in this case. So a heat capacity of 30 would be easily doable even for the heaviest weapon loads, and you could have a real heat scale from 0 to 30.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 28 March 2013 - 01:11 AM.

[Slanski]

You're solidly on target there, Mustrum. Alphas of boated weapon are now the key remaining issue with gameplay. It's the classic 4 Medium Lasers proxy an AC20 for 4 tons. There are two potential solutions to this dilemma: Solve it on the heat side or solve it on the convergence side:

1. Heat: Lower the heat cap and force players to rely on dissipation more.

2. Alternate heat: Increase penalties for passing heat threasholds as in the board game. Your mech gets slower, weapon accuracy suffers, the HUD experiences malfunctions as you exceed the performance envelope of your mech. Penalties start at 50%, 75% and shut down at 100%.

3. Convergence: When grouping more than two weapons, added weapons will slightly and randomly deconverge when fired together, creating more of a spread pattern and scattered hits over the enemy mech. You still hit them with a deadly punch, but it is brute force instead of surgical.

Ultimately a combination of 2 and 3 might be the less heavy handed approach giving best choice to the mechwarrior.

[MustrumRidcully]

Considering all the complains about pop tarters, PPC alpha strikers and what not, I think this topic is still relevant.

Though I will freely admit that this appraoch will do nothing to deal with Triple+ Gauss Rifles, should they ever become possible. For that, we'd have to open the can of worms that is called convergence...

[Kmieciu]

MustrumRidcully, on 17 April 2013 - 10:49 PM, said:

Considering all the complains about pop tarters, PPC alpha strikers and what not, I think this topic is still relevant.

Though I will freely admit that this appraoch will do nothing to deal with Triple+ Gauss Rifles, should they ever become possible. For that, we'd have to open the can of worms that is called convergence...

What makes the pop tarts so effective? They can jump and make snapshots with perfect accuracy. It only takes tenths of a second to line up a perfect shot. In the other game, I jumped and hit a running cicada in one leg with 2xPPC+Gauss, and then my next salvo destroyed the other leg.
The only thing that would discourage me from using 2xPPC+Gauss would be a slow convergence. If I had to aim for one second, I would probably not jump-snipe.
So in my opinion the convergence speed should be decreased. That would discourage boating lasers and PPCs without nerfing the individual weapons.

[JuiceKeeper]

i voted No for one reason.
If we start to play with HEAT ingame we will see drastic increase of coolant modules being used on high heat alpha builds to deal with high heat issues. Then there will be incredibly huge QQ about p2w items and having coolant shot for everygame. Which in the end will be just more hurtfull then what we got now.
Issues with high damage alphas cant be solved anymore just purely with heat since we got consumables. It has to be solved with ROF and convegerence of weapons after certain ranges.
I am all for hud failures when u hit like 70% heat mark or something how it was in mw4. Even it might be questionable becouse good players will just learn how to shot to the middle of screen without having hud on for few seconds. Maybe huge shake after shooting from all ur weapons at once? so u wouldnt been aiming on same spot after alpha shot but u would have to aim again for second one.

[Cyke]

JuiceKeeper, on 18 April 2013 - 01:14 AM, said:

i voted No for one reason.
If we start to play with HEAT ingame we will see drastic increase of coolant modules being used on high heat alpha builds to deal with high heat issues. Then there will be incredibly huge QQ about p2w items and having coolant shot for everygame. Which in the end will be just more hurtfull then what we got now.
Issues with high damage alphas cant be solved anymore just purely with heat since we got consumables. It has to be solved with ROF and convegerence of weapons after certain ranges.
I am all for hud failures when u hit like 70% heat mark or something how it was in mw4. Even it might be questionable becouse good players will just learn how to shot to the middle of screen without having hud on for few seconds. Maybe huge shake after shooting from all ur weapons at once? so u wouldnt been aiming on same spot after alpha shot but u would have to aim again for second one.

That doesn't seem to be the case.

- This idea involves increasing the heat dissipation rate of heat sinks, while decreasing total heat capacity.
- The Coolant Flush modules increase the rate of heat dissipation, by a fixed amount, for a certain duration.

Thus, the temporary effect of Coolant Flush (increased heat dissipation) will be decreased in value compared to the increased rate of sink dissipation. Another way to put it is that heat sinks will already be dissipating heat so much faster, that the current effect of Coolant Flush will seem even more minor, being barely noticeable.

So it's quite the opposite.. the value of Coolant Flush modules would actually be decreased if the OP's proposal was accepted. If anything, PGI would have to boost the effectiveness of Coolant Flush to avoid it from becoming irrelevant and valueless.

Edited by Cyke, 18 April 2013 - 03:51 AM.

[Cyke]

In response to the general idea, I'm all for it.

The style of gameplay will generally be much faster-paced and more dynamic, both for actual veteran players as well as outside observers (say, non-players watching gameplay videos of the game on YouTube or something like that ).

Let's ignore the percentage-based heat meter on the HUD and look at actual number of heat points..
The number of heat points would rise as it does now, but players would hold off on firing their entire arsenal at once to avoid it hitting the cap, and importantly, the heat points would drop faster than they do now, thus increasing the total amount of firepower being thrown around over a period of time (though the actual number of weapons fired simultaneously in a single groupfire would be lower).

Damage output would be higher.. but without the ability to perform full Alpha strikes, concentrating that damage output would be the province of more careful and skilled players who keep their reticle target tracking over several separate firings, rather than just one big groupfire.
And for the less skilled of us, the increased heat dissipation means we'll generally be firing more frequently anyway, so I don't see why we have any cause to complain


Lastly, it'll all need tweaking of course, but with the right settings, SHS might see use again!

Edited by Cyke, 18 April 2013 - 04:01 AM.

[Fooooo]

Tbh they should have probably just used their own set of numbers and just tried to keep the weapons at their "lore" standings.

IE AC/20 is powerful shortrange, gauss is sniper etc etc etc.

The numbers they use really make no difference to me, as long as they are balanced and make for a good game.

They could make the armor values 1000+ and AC20's do 500+ dmg a hit and I would not care as long as the weapons keep their feel / lore matched etc etc.

They could have made heatsinks dissipate 2000 heat per second etc......

The point is, the numbers only matter when it comes to balance with each other, not that they match what someone else said they are.

Trying to stick to TT rules and numbers will never work well. It never has.

As for the OP, I somewhat agree I guess as I was all for SHS getting more threshold and DHS having faster dissipation but lower threshold. Would have made the choice between them a little more even. Your idea is similar.

Edited by Fooooo, 18 April 2013 - 06:02 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

The topic is still relevant.

[Ralgas]

Put my thoughts on it here. Based on what Pgi are looking into currently

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Just had a game against a clan with FX in their names I guess.

Everyone, Atlas, Stalkers etc. had 4 + PPC's.

It was the cheesiest game I've ever been involved in.

Good lord.

[ArmageddonKnight]

Still relivant. still ignored

I really wish PGI would wake up and change the heat system and or hardpoint system. All this balancing on a per weapon bassis and balancing via boated figures. Causes weapons to be usless when not boated, and also means balance will take ages.
If they just changed the system the weapons use, it would balance almost all weapons at the same time.

Weapons are only called Op when they are boated, stop boating and weaposn are no longer OP, infact al lthe ones they have recently 'balanced' sudenly become UP.

Edited by ArmageddonKnight, 03 June 2013 - 06:57 AM.

[topgun505]

So you can't use 4 PPCs very effectively if this was implemented?

Let's look at that for a moment.

How many IS tech 1 and 2 mechs mounted 4 PPCs (including ALL eras, not just the one we are playing in the timeline)?

TWO.

Annihilator 1E, and Awesome 9Q

That's it. The bottom line is it WAS just too hot to run that many PPCs.

So people sacrificing a weapon in favor of more heat sinks sounds like right direction to me.

Zyllos, on 20 March 2013 - 11:39 AM, said:

While that is a good suggestion, what happens in situations where you can't alpha strike 4 PPCs, so instead you chain fire those 4 PPCs. Even chain firing the 4 PPCs will over heat you if fired in rapid succession therefore you fire your 4 PPCs slower than their own cooldown.

This basically removes any ability to do high alpha strikes while also kills the use of multiple weapons to chain fire because the RoF is so high on weapons.

Take the PPC for example, in a quad setup, they will produce 32 heat, or a shutdown if following TT designs. So, you can choose to chain fire them, the minimum amount of time between each shot must be 0.75s each. Thus, to chain fire the whole group (and actually utilize all 4 PPCs), the heat production will be 32 heat over 3 seconds. Thus, if you was running with approximately 3.1 dissipation (~15 DHS on a 300 rating engine), your total heat would be 22.7. That is enough heat to only fire one more time before overheating, and in doing this to gain that extra one shot, your spreading damage unless your an excellent shot.

What this will force on the community is that it's just better to drop another weapon to have more heatsinks to alpha strike onto a single location. And if we keep lowering the heat capacity, players will continue to reduce their large weapons down to an array of smaller weapons so that they can continue to alpha strike onto a single point.

The path of least resistance here is that all weapons converge onto a single point. As long as that path exists, no matter how you modify heat, RoF, or other statistics of weaponry, players will always try to find ways to link only 1 or 2 weapon groups to converge all weaponry on.

There are many various problems that are leading to the overall issues with this game. High heat capacity, RoF, weapon convergence, and some specific mechanics of weapons (mainly missiles but a few weapons are at issues right now). Weapon convergence is exasperating the other problems.

So, while I partially agree, I am not in agreeance enough to vote "Agree". Thus, I will abstain/undecided.