29 replies to this topic

[SirLANsalot]

Boating. Thats a very special word there. For MW it means stacking multiples of the same weapon. That is fine in of itself and certain weapons are made to do it but what happens when you do it to guns not made for that? Well you get what we have today, multi PPC, multi large laser mechs that do nothing but use those guns. As such people have suggested many idiotic nerfs that range from damage to RoF, all of which will do nothing to fix the actual issue. Nerfing the exact weapon systems themselves is not an answer, since the guns themselves are just fine in moderation. So then, how dose one go about fixing this without actually touching the weapons cores components? Simple really, its called stacking penalties.

For the PPC and Large Lasers a heat generation penalty would be in order. This would discourage boating by making it far too hot to do, but not make it completely impossible if you wanted to do it, just impractical. So all mechs would be "limited" to 2 of any type of these guns. PPC and ERPPC would both count together against this limit, so you would not be able to circumnavigate it. Certain mechs would have this limiter increased based on there stock loadout, and if a stock loadout comes with 2 already (like the K2) the limiter would be upped by 1. So for example, a K2 comes with 2 PPC's stock, its limiter would be 3 for PPC's and 2 for large lasers before any heat penalties begin kicking in. This would apply to all mechs, and be adjusted based on its stock loadout.

For you numbers people.

PPC is 8 heat per a shot. A normal mechs limiter would be 2, meaning the first 2 PPC's of any kind you put on would work and generate heat as normal. When you place a 3rd one on, it would generate 2 more heat, so a PPC would be at 10 heat. The 4th one would be 2 more on top of that, so 12 and so on. So in the end, if you had 4 PPC's on a mech that had a normal limit of 2, you would be generating 6 additional heat per an alpha (over what you would normally would of without the penalty). A player would need to keep tack of what PPCs are in the penalty and what ones are not, so the first 2 you place on your mech will work fine, but the next ones will be running hotter. For a 6 PPC stalker, 8+8+10+12+14+16 = 58 total heat generated in a single alpha vs the 48 prior to the stacking penalties (10 extra heat or 1 1/4 extra PPC's). This would be instant shutdown, and shutdown for a while, for the stalker, no 2nd extra shot and these are with normal PPC's, not the hotter ER's.


These kind of scaling penalty would apply to the following weapons.
Large Lasers (LL/ERLL/LPL)
PPC's (PPC/ERPPC)
SRM's (only 6's and 4's).

Small and Medium lasers obviously don't need this, as those guns were intended to be used en-mass, and have there own limitations (range) in place. The SRM2....ya don't even need to mention why that doesn't need it.

Penalty would treat them as a group, so you cannot get around it by putting say 2 LL and 2 ERLL and not have the penalty apply at all. The penalty would still apply, and would default to the hotter of the grouping (so the penalty would apply to the ER's even if the normal LL were placed on after).

LRM's would not need this kind of penalty as they already have there own built in one by not only there tonnage, but also there space. Since an LRM 20 is the "king" of all missiles (like the LL and PPC are for energy), and boating that thing past 3 of is very difficult, it doesn't really need it. This also applies to ballistics, as they have there own self penalty in terms of tonnage and massive crit space used. Its only in energy that you see this issue showing up as even there biggest gun only takes up 3 crits vs the ballistics biggest gun taking up 10 crits.


Overall this system wouldn't stop anyone from boating guns, but it would DISCOURAGE it from happening. So you could still see 6 ER PPC stalkers out there.....shutting down and exploding in one shot.

Edit

Troutmonkey, on 25 April 2013 - 12:30 AM, said:

Having each weapon generate different amount of heat would be pretty stupid. Make it so that the more weapons of the same type you have, the higher the heat penalties to all weapons, say 5% extra heat for each weapon stacked after the second one.

1x PPC - 8 heat per PPC
2x PPC - 8 heat per PPC
3x PPC - 8.4 heat per PPC (5% penalty)
4x PPC - 8.8 heat per PPC (10% penalty)
5x PPC - 9.2 heat per PPC (15% penalty)
6x PPC - 9.6 heat per PPC (20% penalty)

After the extra heat is sorted, actually make penalties for overheating, like DOT for each second you're over 100% heat.

Medium lasers and smaller should be immune to these penalties

After talking about it and seeing what people have said. This one came up and by far beats what I came up with, but keeps with the idea that I was trying to propose.

It literally is the stacking I was thinking of since I was trying to come up with what EVE did with its resistance stacking penalty.


The numbers here could be tweaked and be made to be far steeper the higher you get. So its only a small 5% past the limit, but number 4 jumps it to 15% ect. As this system is being made to discourage boating by heavily penalizing it.

The system would only apply to Large Energy weapons and SRM6/4's as these weapons are easily boated with little to no penalty as they are made to be "backup" weapons (SRM's) or only a pair as mainline guns (PPC"s).

Edited by SirLANsalot, 25 April 2013 - 12:44 AM.

[SmoothCriminal]

There's nothing in the lore preventing it

People like min/maxing

Wouldn't be an issue if all weapons were adequately balanced

This topic has been discussed at length time and time again

Team work is more important than weapon configs

Superman is really clark kent

Those that do not study the forums are doomed to repeat them. Those that do study the forums are doomed to stand by and watch it flood with clone topics.

EDIT: sorry I didnt mean to sound too dissmissive; I like the idea but ironically it would help those who boat only a few ppcs/energy weapons the most. The mech that springs to mind immediately is the already somewhat imba highlander, as it can gauss/ppc at will

Edited by SmoothCriminal, 23 April 2013 - 02:22 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Heat helps the issue, but it also can help to hide the issue. The fundamental problem is the damage possible in an alpha strike. It's not limited to high heat weapons. We've seen it with Splatapults, we've seen it with Dual AC/20 Jagermechs and Catapults. The alpha strike values of mechs currently are temptingly high and require only very few, solid hits. Heat efficiency of mechs is not relevant, and the most important thing is to get as much damage out with high enough precision as possible.

[Phingers]

Stacking penalty to the big stuff yes, as you said some designs like the 3 pcc awesome get the concession....so it keeps mechs different, the mediums and smalls no stacking...so it keeps all the medium and light mechs fun without game breaking


Yes this is a better thought idea, but i wrote similar in ppc online thread with heat stacking penalty

[Brilig]

Mustrum touched on the real problem. Its convergence that makes boats so powerful. Boated anything in a mech wouldn't be as big a deal if it were not for the fact that you can shoot it all at once and hit the exact same spot.

Edited by Brilig, 23 April 2013 - 01:52 AM.

[Therion I]

I believe there is lore for not being able to boat certain weapons as the engines cannot provide enough power to fire multiples. Think it applies to gauss but someone who is more familiar with the lore might know better.

[Naja]

SmoothCriminal, on 23 April 2013 - 01:37 AM, said:

Superman is really clark kent

God... spoiler alert...

[Terror Teddy]

All we need is a proper heat penalty scale that affects all aspects of your mech.

[Flash Yoghurt]

This is one of the better thought out ideas and I like it.
The best solution would most likely be one implementing part of all suggestions: Heat-Scale, Stcking penalties and Aim/Convergence.

I bet moey on PGI absolutely ignoring all these suggestions and delivering a half-assed nerf to PPCs in a couple weeks or so, swinging the Pendulum in another direction...

[Jam the Bam]

Convergence isn't the problem, changing weapons isn't going to affect the convergence so people are still going to stick 6 PPC's on a mech if they can, and its still going to hurt a lot if you hit, and people will still complain.

I quite like the idea, if as you said certain mechs get individual concessions to allow them to run the builds they were designed for, like the hunchback 4p, which comes with that many lasers as standard.

It would have to be implemented very carefully though.

[Brilig]

Jammerben87, on 23 April 2013 - 02:21 AM, said:

Convergence isn't the problem, changing weapons isn't going to affect the convergence so people are still going to stick 6 PPC's on a mech if they can, and its still going to hurt a lot if you hit, and people will still complain.

I agree it wouldn't stop boating. Honestly it shouldn't. It would however make boating about as effective as having a balanced build. .
Most balanced assault builds have high alpha damage. Being able to put all of that damage on a single spot is what makes boating so rough right now.

Just adding heat to leangthen the time between shots wont take care of the core problem of boating alpha strikers being increadibly efficient. Something needs to be changed so that damage gets spread around.

I'd just like to see it done with something other than RNG, or cone of fire.

[Caustic Canid]

Brilig, on 23 April 2013 - 02:48 AM, said:

I agree it wouldn't stop boating. Honestly it shouldn't. It would however make boating about as effective as having a balanced build. .
Most balanced assault builds have high alpha damage. Being able to put all of that damage on a single spot is what makes boating so rough right now.

Just adding heat to leangthen the time between shots wont take care of the core problem of boating alpha strikers being increadibly efficient. Something needs to be changed so that damage gets spread around.

I'd just like to see it done with something other than RNG, or cone of fire.

I had suggested in another topic that group fire could be changed so that instead of firing everything in one instant, it fires each weapon a nanosecond apart, impact based weapons (ac/ppc/gauss) could be given some amount of "kick", causing them to naturally spread due to reticule shake. Each shot would go exactly where the reticule is pointed, so it isn't random, and it would retain its accuracy (for the most part) in close quarters (depending on weapon) but would cause alpha striking at range to be less effective.

I also am starting to come around to the idea of a heat scale that punishes people for overheating, and punishes the more heavily the longer/more often they do it. As well as reducing the heat cap and raising heat efficiency to encourage more individual shots and less all out alphas.

Edited by Caustic Canid, 23 April 2013 - 03:14 AM.

[SirLANsalot]

Brilig, on 23 April 2013 - 02:48 AM, said:

Just adding heat to lengthen the time between shots wont take care of the core problem of boating alpha strikers being incredibly efficient. Something needs to be changed so that damage gets spread around.

By that you mean overheating in one shot and either exploding, or being shutdown for a very long time.

The way I had it written was there was no way to circumnavigate the system, and no way to "mitigate" the heat penalty. If you place 4 LL on your mech, the last 2 you place will have the penlites on them. However if you try to mitigate it by placing 2 ER first and 2 Normal last, the ER's would gain the penalty and not the normals. This way you cannot try and get around it, no matter how hard you try.

its the same system EVE has for resistances. There is a penalty for putting on multiple hardeners of the same type, each one past the first has a reduction on it. Its not very steep on the 2nd one but it gets pretty hard by the 3rd/4th one to where its pointless to place anymore then 2 of any one type.

[Jam the Bam]

How about somthing like this:

Most people are suggesting a heat penalty for boating because most boating builds are heat intensive, and I think that it is one good way of controlling it.

First I like the idea of specific heating limits to allow mechs that were designed with certain kinds of boating in mind to continue to be able to do this.

My idea would be to have a heat penalty scale, which other people have suggested, but simplified, for each time you overheat/hit a cap you gain a penalty marker which lasts for 1 minute (suggestion), you can have a maximum of 5 heat penalties stacked at any one time.

Each penalty point reduces your turn rate, convergence speed and top speed by a small amount (5%?), so stacked you become much less effective, and importantly, much more vulnerable to counter attacks.

This would mean that if you are clever and well protected you can boat, but if you are caught alone or unprotected you get your arse handed to you. Make boating more of a trade-off.

[Therion I]

How about a a sliding scale of shutdowns with possible ammo explosions and mechwarrior blackouts and deaths a la tabletop rules. Fire 6 PPCs and fry the pilot.

[Jam the Bam]

I

Therion I, on 23 April 2013 - 05:51 AM, said:

How about a a sliding scale of shutdowns with possible ammo explosions and mechwarrior blackouts and deaths a la tabletop rules. Fire 6 PPCs and fry the pilot.

I was suggesting a 'pip' system to make it simple, can you imagine anyone (like me) who hasn't played TT trying to understand what the hell is going on if we had pilots blacking out and a difficult to understand sliding scale coming into play?

If we have a system like this it has to be simple.

[James The Fox Dixon]

SmoothCriminal, on 23 April 2013 - 01:37 AM, said:

There's nothing in the lore preventing it

People like min/maxing

Wouldn't be an issue if all weapons were adequately balanced

This topic has been discussed at length time and time again

Team work is more important than weapon configs

Superman is really clark kent

Those that do not study the forums are doomed to repeat them. Those that do study the forums are doomed to stand by and watch it flood with clone topics.

EDIT: sorry I didnt mean to sound too dissmissive; I like the idea but ironically it would help those who boat only a few ppcs/energy weapons the most. The mech that springs to mind immediately is the already somewhat imba highlander, as it can gauss/ppc at will

Actually, in the lore it's very difficult to change weapons etc... on an existing chassis. If an existing chassis has weapons swapped out there is a very good chance that it will malfunction in some way. These rules were introduced in the first Mercenaries Handbook and continues to be used in the current edition of the BattleTech rules. Keep in mind this is for customizing an existing chassis.

The construction rules are completely different as they are to build new mechs and do not apply for customization. Since MW:O does not have constructing new mechs as an option we are left with customizing existing mechs, so they should implement something along the lines of the mech customization rules to offset these high heat alpha mech builds.

PGI should also implement heat sinks and the heat scale properly. The heat sinks should be applied after all weapons and movement are done with. What this does is it makes these high heat alpha builds self destruct from the heat in the first alpha. A proper heat scale will impose penalties to movement in the beginning and go all the way up to killing the pilot. If we want to get really gritty the heat should affect the pilot's vision and coordination. One way of implementing the vision effect is to distort the screen with a heat wave pattern. Affecting the coordination can be done using randomization of the shots, so a pilot's shots will not necessarily hit where they were aiming at.

Edited by James The Fox Dixon, 23 April 2013 - 08:11 AM.

[Jonathan Paine]

Yet another ill conceived attempt at solving a problem not fully understood. How does your solution affect Gauss+Dual ERPPC? Double Gauss? Double AC20?

Here is the solution:
No more pinpoint alphastrike damage. Spread it out. If you want pinpoint accuracy, use chain fire with a small delay between shots. Skill, not a single lucky all in alphastrike.

[Syllogy]

So... the HBK-4P, AWS-9M, all 3 Jager's, Stalkers, Cicadas, Jenners, and Commandos are up the creek then, right?

Edited by Syllogy, 23 April 2013 - 08:15 AM.

[Abledime]

As a pilot who runs a 6 LL stalker I personally find that the Alpha strike is fairly useless, I much prefer to chain fire from a distance, I have maybe two alphas if I'm lucky, but i can chain fire almost indefinitely, an Alpha is only used to kill a meck I have badly damaged and blow off most of its weapons...

or if i have a pesky light running straight at me and then they just deserve a alpha.