241 replies to this topic

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Ialti, on 26 March 2013 - 08:30 PM, said:

Cheese to me means basically resting on laurels not your own. I'm a little weird about it, but when I see a ton of people running in one mech I want to go build a different one that works just as well and fight them in it. To me, the people who look at a really popular build like the current 3L streak/laser contraption and say "Oooh! I want to be the one in that thing!" are cheese.

Oddly the devs have been quoted in the past that they like OP builds because (I cant make this silliness up) "they make the game more diverse"

Anyone else remember that quote and/or where the heck it came from? I cant find it I just remember it was a gamer mag

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 26 March 2013 - 08:43 PM.

[Grey Ghost]

While pinpoint-ish accuracy does reward player skill, it also encourages Alpha-Strike gameplay. This would be less of an issue if constantly running high heat had any downside at all, and/or overheating had more detrimental effects besides temporary shutdowns.

Rethinking the way Heat Capacity works might also be worth looking into. Something like having heatsinks only affecting heat dissipation, and having Heat Capacity determined by some other factor such as tonnage, engine size, weight class, etcetera. Thus allowing for all Double Heatsinks to actually be doubled, since they would no longer inflate the Heat Capacity.

Personally though, I don't think they'll give it much thought, let alone attempt to do anything about it.

[MustrumRidcully]

Pinselborste, on 26 March 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

yes, but in TT you can fire all time long without even generating heat, variants like the hunchback H dont need any heat management cause they run heat neutral all the time.

True, and that is just fine. Not every mech needs to be able to overheat. There is always a trade-off. If you run cool, that means you invested your weight and crit slots into heat sinks, not firepower or endurance (ammo or armour). If you run hot, you have firepower that can give you an edge in a tight situation, but makes you unable to sustain it - if you waste your firepower

NinetyProof, on 26 March 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

So ... 100% of Alpha's Land? And if you miss an Alpha what happens? vs if you miss the first in a chain?

If you miss your alpha, that's bad. Try to avoid that by aiming well.

Now you could say: "But I can aim well without alphas, too!" But can you? If you line up a nasty shot every 3 seconds, that's quite a difference from having to line up one shot every 0.5 seconds.
If you, say, take 0.25 seconds to aim perfectly and always alpha your 2 PPCs, you deliver 20 damage every 3.25 seconds, that's a DPS of 6.15
If you instead fire each PPC seperately, you fire one PPC every for 10 damage every 1.75 seconds, that's a DPS of 5.71.

Realistically, I doubt people just take 0.25 seconds to aim. Most will take much longer. And so if you want to reach the same average hit rate with chain-firing then you reach with alpha-striking, you will lose significantly damage output by that aim time. And if you don't focus that much on aiming ,your hit rate will be lower and, again, you lose damage output.


From a game design perspective, this means that you want to give high rate of fire weapons a higher DPS output than an otherwise equivalent low-fire-rate weapon.
E.g. The 6 ton AC/2 that deals 2 damage every 0.5 seconds (4 DPS) might be only balanced against a 6 ton AC/2 that deals 5 damage every 1.5 seconds (3.33 DPS).

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 27 March 2013 - 01:58 AM.

[QuantumButler]

Big alpha strikes have always been popular.

[Voidcrafter]

Boating alphastriking is an issue, that dumbs the game in my opinion.
My deffinition of boating is as follows:
2xAC20s, (this one aint so much)2xGauss Rifles, 4+SRM6s, 4+(ER)PPCs, 3+LRM15s, 5+LRM5s, 2+LRM20s, 5+medium lasers, 4+Large Lasers - those are the things that causes mechs to go down faster than the dev's intent was.
So for me, the reasonable thing to do, even not canon wise, etc. , is to put penality when someone is putting a weapon number above at or above the ones noted.
Heat penality is quite enough I think - so if people try go with that they're punished with increased heat for the weapons involved in the boating.
Yea, probably alot of you won't agree with me, but on the plus side - this would push people a bit away from boating and further to the need to build versatile and creative builds.
But that's all my opinion tho - feel free to flame me for it

[MustrumRidcully]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 26 March 2013 - 08:10 PM, said:

I think I asked this several pages ago; but if the top end of the heat scale is 30, and the way heat sinks work here is to dissipate after the heat is made, why dont 6 ppc stalkers immediately explode when they alpha strike?
Ive run one on single heat sinks an it doesnt blow up creating 60 (double the max) in one shot. It usually shuts down (and not for as long as I would think it would)

The top end is not fixed at 30. Each standard heat sinks adds +1 to the capacity. Each engine double heat sink that you didn't slot yourself adds +2, each engine double heat sink you slotted yourself or each double heat sink you slotted outside the engine adds +1.4.

Spoiler

http://mwomercs.com/...0089-breakdown/

Thomas Dziegielewski said:

HEATSINKS SINGLE VS DOUBLE

EXTERNAL

Single : 0.1 heat dissipation per heatsink per second. Heatbase -1.0 per heatsink.
Double : 0.14 heat dissipation per heatsink per second. Heatbase -1.4 per heatsink.


INTERNAL - each engine has a set amount of internal heatsinks depending on its strength.

Single : 0.1 heat dissipation per heatsink per second.
Double : 0.2 heat dissipation per heatsink per second.

[hashinshin]

There's a reason why weapons in real life tend to be specialized at single tasks. And there's a reason why people in game don't make mechs that do 3 different things, but focus on doing one thing big and maybe having some medium lasers to deal with lights.

You'd have to take realism away from the game to make weird builds with weapons flying around at all different weapon ranges work.

Edited by hashinshin, 27 March 2013 - 02:15 AM.

[Voidcrafter]

hashinshin, on 27 March 2013 - 02:14 AM, said:

There's a reason why weapons in real life tend to be specialized at single tasks. And there's a reason why people in game don't make mechs that do 3 different things, but focus on doing one thing big and maybe having some medium lasers to deal with lights.

You'd have to take realism away from the game to make weird builds with weapons flying around at all different weapon ranges work.

Well yea, there's that.
But still, the cover/open spaces variety sort of makes you feel like the short range boating is the best way to go, since you're recieving the least penality for it - by a way or another you're guaranteed that you'll get in short range and havoc stuff.
Nothing can stop you from that if you have brains - maps just allow you to, combined with a mech model that in it's all vairants got atleast 2 ballistics in the hand, added to that a mech model(K2) that can be build in so many other ways - and there you have it - boating hell.
Splatcats are kinda rare for now, since the missile thingy you know.
My idea is that currently the short range builds are more versatile than the long range ones.
I'm not noting those few games in a row that I played against a team with 5/6/7 snipers in it, but what's currently out there the most, and that's the BOOM-builds(dual AC20s).
Probably would go away at some point again - part of the reason we all see so many booms is probably the fact, that the stock variant of the last new mech have paper armor as default, making it a very tempting choice of kill, doubling the efficency of the AC20s and boating builds.
Nice note tho - you're correct in my book
But in ballance terms... I dunno man...

Edited by Voidcrafter, 27 March 2013 - 02:40 AM.

[Turist0AT]

Levi Strauss, on 25 March 2013 - 08:08 PM, said:

Because people don't like playing like you? Who the Hell are you to judge how someone else builds their mech?

Why are crappy pubbie builds so popular now? Why do noobs use AC2's, 5's and LRMs? You are in no place to tell the public what is "cheese" and define what is acceptable.

Stay in your lane.

- Oh, and the "skilled" players are the people that can aim well enough to use high powered, pinpoint weapons as opposed to spamming low damage crap weapons.

this, i agree with. well said.

[Larth]

I just giggle at the TT heat table. The mere idea of people blowing themselves up cuz they got too hot and set their ammo off is just amusing. I loved it in TT when people would kill themselves that way, it'd be funny as heck if that happened here.

Ballistics ran cool cuz that was their advantage. Lasers did not cuz their advantage was not being ammo dependent. Missiles were kind of in between. Been in a lot of campaign style games where reloading between games was not allowed, suddenly the laser builds became awesome cuz everyone else was almost out of ammo or was out of ammo.

As to the whole Alpha bit, well, in the current state of play, it is the most efficient method of gacking people. .

[Corvus Antaka]

The high heatcap.

[Corwin Vickers]

Ran a 4 ERPPC 1 Gauss Atlas last match. It is VERY hot.

Ran into like a whole team of lights who were running buck wild on my team. Shoot one guy in the leg, red armor, maybe because it was a raven 3L. Hit him again and he goes down. "WTF? 1 shot?"

I giggled.

I one shot 3 more lights when they shutdown in the middle of us for 4 kills but only 200 damage.

I found it fun and I think it took some skill. Please tell me how I only had to point and click and that heat management wasn't important and how if you can only ram your idea of the game down everyone's throat you would own and all us nubs would suck.

Alpha striking is nature, not nurture. Stop the hate crimes on alpha strikers.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

MustrumRidcully, on 27 March 2013 - 02:07 AM, said:

The top end is not fixed at 30. Each standard heat sinks adds +1 to the capacity. Each engine double heat sink that you didn't slot yourself adds +2, each engine double heat sink you slotted yourself or each double heat sink you slotted outside the engine adds +1.4.

So if you only had the engine single heat sinks and had no more on the mech, with a stock non XL engine then your max heat is Ten? Again, why doesnt it explode when I fire 6 times that on an alpha?
(yes, I know TT nevwer had mechs exploding from heat, that is the most stupid heat penalty Ive ever seen in a mecxhwarrior game and said so when they caved to ppl QQing that you could override shutdown a while back)

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 27 March 2013 - 05:10 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 27 March 2013 - 05:10 AM, said:

So if you only had the engine single heat sinks and had no more on the mech, with a stock non XL engine then your max heat is Ten? Again, why doesnt it explode when I fire 6 times that on an alpha?

No, the base is still 30, and then you add the heat sink bonus. So with a 250 rated STD or XL engine and STD heat sinks, you're at a heat cap of 40 (and a dissipation of 1/sec), and with a 250 rated STD or XL engine and double heat sinks, you're at a heat cap of 50 (and a dissipation of 2/sec).

I interpreted your post that you thought the max heat capacity was always 30, which isn't true. If you already meant that the heat cap is 30 and you add heat sinks

Quote

(yes, I know TT nevwer had mechs exploding from heat, that is the most stupid heat penalty Ive ever seen in a mecxhwarrior game and said so when they caved to ppl QQing that you could override shutdown a while back)

TT had mechs exploding from ammo explosions triggered by high heat levels. And you couldn't override the shutdown at max heat level, but there were 2 or 3 othe rpoints on the heat scale where your mech might power down. I am not sure if it was a random roll or a skill roll to avoid.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 27 March 2013 - 05:30 AM.

[Ialti]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 26 March 2013 - 08:34 PM, said:

Oddly the devs have been quoted in the past that they like OP builds because (I cant make this silliness up) "they make the game more diverse"

Anyone else remember that quote and/or where the heck it came from? I cant find it I just remember it was a gamer mag

What I'd really like to see is a situation where we have three or four 'OP builds.' I mean, you know how it's usually just one or two thing that are popular on a given week? Like ECM-Streak builds or LRM boats?
I would like to see a situation where there are three or four 'easy modes,' and people would have to choose between them. I'm not even asking for one where the 'easy mode' mechs are 'balanced' against each other--that kind of balance would work itself out. I'd just make it harder for people to choose between builds.

[TruePoindexter]

Why is playing to win considered "cheese"? I'm really confused - are we not playing the same game? By what definition is something "cheese" or not? What defines "cheesey" play?

My gut tells me this is the age old conflict between role playing and min-maxing. The min-maxing players optimize raw stats sometimes ignoring the intended path as set forth by the game makers. Role players stick within the defined path but are offended when someone strays from that path. Is this really a problem though? I don't think so but maybe it is.

/I'm a min-maxer if you can't tell from my own builds

[Shibas]

So, from what I gather reading this thread, "Cheese" builds is apparently limited to the raven 3L (ml/ssrm) and everything else is varying degrees of complaints but not so much "cheese." And "boating" seems to be all over the place from 2 of the same weapon, to 3+ of the same weapon, to anything that fires multiple of the same weapon together. This of course is what I mentioned earlier that nobody has a clue what boating is and just says it for namesake. Not to mention "boating" as it's described by most to all people is actually cannon (for all you TT junkies). Pretty much most mechs at any point have a variant that supports multiple of the same weapons to be fired. Look at Sarnia.net for all your battletech needs.

[Teralitha]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 26 March 2013 - 08:34 PM, said:

Oddly the devs have been quoted in the past that they like OP builds because (I cant make this silliness up) "they make the game more diverse"

Anyone else remember that quote and/or where the heck it came from? I cant find it I just remember it was a gamer mag

They believe that if some mechs builds are OP, that it would force the players to come up with ways to counter such mechs, thereby creating diversity and balance. Its not turning out like they expected. Instead ppl are playing only OP builds and there is no diversity.

[Bubba Wilkins]

Alpha Striking is neither the most effective method of playing nor produces the most damage.

The only thing it has going for it is that it is the easiest way to play.

As it should be.

[TruePoindexter]

Teralitha, on 27 March 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:

They believe that if some mechs builds are OP, that it would force the players to come up with ways to counter such mechs, thereby creating diversity and balance. Its not turning out like they expected. Instead ppl are playing only OP builds and there is no diversity.

I would argue that as there are more than one supposedly "OP" build that they are in fact in balance against each other. Otherwise I would expect players to all use the same build.