43 replies to this topic

[Volthorne]

Yokaiko, on 01 May 2013 - 06:44 AM, said:

At ten seconds you don''t NEED double heatsinks, a stock Awesome -8Q would be able to fire all three PPCs at rate for like 10 minutes for it even got hot.

Indefinitely, actually, assuming you followed the 3-3-2 pattern.

[Yokaiko]

Volthorne, on 01 May 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

Indefinitely, actually, assuming you followed the 3-3-2 pattern.

I said full rate specifically, two heat with a cap of 70, that is two extra every ten seconds 3500 seconds actually 58 minutes and 10 seconds if you want to get technical.


With ten second firing rates.

Considering a 15 minute game, that isn't exactly optimal.

Edited by Yokaiko, 01 May 2013 - 02:03 PM.

[Alpha087]

Teralitha, on 29 April 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

People that prefer the arcade version of mechwarrior will hate having to deal with heat managment

Well those people should really go play something else like Hawken instead then, because if PGI continues to listen to people like that, then this game is not going to make it very far.

[Tarl Cabot]

Yokaiko, on 01 May 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

I said full rate specifically, two heat with a cap of 70, that is two extra every ten seconds 3500 seconds actually 58 minutes and 10 seconds if you want to get technical.


With ten second firing rates.

Considering a 15 minute game, that isn't exactly optimal.

You have just demonstrated the issue many believe is the issue. The heat scale itself..

[CECILOFS]

There is at least one use for SHS - equipping a Stalker with 6 ML and 30+ SHS so they run heat neutral (since you don't have the crits to do it with doubles). It's a terrible idea though. Having DPS is good but alphas are better right now, and even some lights have 30 damage alphas.

Edited by CECILOFS, 02 May 2013 - 06:36 AM.

[Corwin Vickers]

Roadbeer, on 29 April 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Firing once every 10 seconds seems right?
Count that down or use a stopwatch...

I'll wait. Let me know how that'd work out in an 'action' game.

Now, keep in mind, if you're going to change RoF to the 10 second rule, you have to do the same with movement and everything else.

Ok, start your watch...
Now

You could increase the period of fire for weapons to compensate for the 10 second round.

Like Lasers would need to be held on target for 3 seconds, ACs would have a 1 second string of rounds. Missiles would fire 1 at a time.

Not saying I would want it this way but it would make for a different game. Probably more what was intended by the board game makers anyways. ACs were always supposed to be machine guns (or rapid fire cannons if you prefer). Here they are just big cannons.

[Teralitha]

Corwin Vickers, on 02 May 2013 - 08:42 AM, said:

You could increase the period of fire for weapons to compensate for the 10 second round.

Like Lasers would need to be held on target for 3 seconds, ACs would have a 1 second string of rounds. Missiles would fire 1 at a time.

Not saying I would want it this way but it would make for a different game. Probably more what was intended by the board game makers anyways. ACs were always supposed to be machine guns (or rapid fire cannons if you prefer). Here they are just big cannons.

The auto part of autocannon does not mean it fires a burst of rounds it just means it reloads a single round automatically in a certain amount of time. So yes they are big cannons, and are called auto reloading cannons because any other type of cannon has to be reloaded manually.

[MustrumRidcully]

Teralitha, on 02 May 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

The auto part of autocannon does not mean it fires a burst of rounds it just means it reloads a single round automatically in a certain amount of time. So yes they are big cannons, and are called auto reloading cannons because any other type of cannon has to be reloaded manually.

True, but the lore also suggests that different Auto-cAnnons have different reload times and different calibres, and the AC/xy name is just something weapons with similar damage output over a 10 second interval are grouped together. MW:O would then just simulate the ones that fire some that reload a bit more often, followed by a pause.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 02 May 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[stjobe]

Teralitha, on 02 May 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

The auto part of autocannon does not mean it fires a burst of rounds it just means it reloads a single round automatically in a certain amount of time. So yes they are big cannons, and are called auto reloading cannons because any other type of cannon has to be reloaded manually.

You're wrong:

Quote

An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts. It is, basically, a giant "machine gun" that fires predominantly cased explosive shells though models firing saboted high velocity kinetic energy penetrators or caseless ordnance do exist. Among the earliest tank/BattleMech scale weaponry produced, autocannons produce far less heat than energy weapons, but are considerably bulkier and are dependent upon limited stores of ammunition.

Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage vs armor.[1] The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon

(emphasis mine, and before you say "wiki", that's lifted word-for-word from the TechManual)

Edited by stjobe, 02 May 2013 - 09:13 AM.

[Volthorne]

stjobe, on 02 May 2013 - 09:12 AM, said:

You're wrong:


http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon

(emphasis mine, and before you say "wiki", that's lifted word-for-word from the TechManual)

He may be wrong, but I'd like to see you TRY and use an AC/20 to any decent effect if it had a burst-fire mode, or worked like an MG as opposed to what we have now.

[Corwin Vickers]

But isn't that a bonus? Everyone always complains that it's too easy to deal pinpoint damage. Having to hold on target for 3 times the duration would certainly be harder.

[Teralitha]

MustrumRidcully, on 02 May 2013 - 08:56 AM, said:

True, but the lore also suggests that different Auto-cAnnons have different reload times and different calibres, and the AC/xy name is just something weapons with similar damage output over a 10 second interval are grouped together. MW:O would then just simulate the ones that fire some that reload a bit more often, followed by a pause.

the "ultra" autocannon?

[Corwin Vickers]

The Ultra autocannon fires rounds faster than a normal machine gun cannon but has a chance to jam while doing it.

What Mustrum meant was that the "flavor" of different manufactures added details like "this AC20 fired 5 rounds of 80mm APFSS rounds while that other company fired 10 rounds of 40mm HEAT"

Yet they are all AC20s and they are all machine guns that fire a bunch of rounds and do 20 damage.

[Volthorne]

Corwin Vickers, on 02 May 2013 - 06:19 PM, said:

But isn't that a bonus? Everyone always complains that it's too easy to deal pinpoint damage. Having to hold on target for 3 times the duration would certainly be harder.

No, that is dumb. Then you're not doing 20 points of damage per trigger pull (which an AC/20 ALWAYS does - unless you fire outside optimal range), you'd be doing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15 damage per trigger-pull. It would be an AC/15, not an AC/20.

[MustrumRidcully]

Teralitha, on 02 May 2013 - 09:04 PM, said:

the "ultra" autocannon?

No. Every Auto-Cannon. Ultra, Rotary, you name it. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon

Quote

Caliber is fluff for the size of the barrel that the shell or shells are fired from and no standard caliber has been set for any of the classes of Autocannon. Autocannon in a class vary by manufacturer and model. With the fluffed number of shells and caliber being specified, no Autocannon has been specified to be one shell fired for each "round" or burst of fire. Probable exceptions are the 185 mm ChemJet Gun Autocannon/20 mounted on the Demolisher combat vehicle and Monitor Surface vessel or the 203 mm Ultra Autocannon/20 on the Cauldron Born A BattleMech.

Of course, sarna.net is probably not enough for you, so just dig up your Battletech books (or buy some, if you#re like me and don't have any) and look the description of all the auto-cannons and come back with your findings.

[danger uxo]

Volthorne, on 02 May 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

No, that is dumb. Then you're not doing 20 points of damage per trigger pull (which an AC/20 ALWAYS does - unless you fire outside optimal range), you'd be doing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15 damage per trigger-pull. It would be an AC/15, not an AC/20.

By canon AC 20s do not necessarily do 20 points of damage every time the MechWarrior pulls the trigger.

Thinking that is how all AC20s (and by extension all TT weapons) work is where I think a large portion of the balance issues we're seeing in MWO come from.

Here's the problem we're running into: the ten second round in BattleTech is an abstraction to allow for smooth play while still being able to have believable 'fluff' for the game universe. As has been pointed out Autocannons do not do their rated damage in a single trigger pull: the rated damage is the amount of damage they can be expected to do over a 10 second time period which may include the AC actually firing multiple times with some hits and some misses. The same sort of abstraction applies to things like ammunition. For example a ton of AC ammunition in TT provides X 'shots' but that doesn't necessarily mean that ton of ammo contains X munitions; it just means the ton of ammo contains sufficient munitions for the AC to be fired for X ten second periods.

I think many of the game balance issues we're seeing stem from the developers' decision to basically ignore the abstraction and use the TT damage and heat stats in a (more or less) 1:3 port to a real time environment. In other words, while a canon AC20 should do roughly 20 points of damage over the span of 10 seconds, the devs have increased that by approximately a factor of 3; no wonder they had to double armor! Add to that the fact that they decided for some weird reason to keep the heat dissipation cycle at the original TT value of 10 seconds and it should be no surprise that the heat system seems to be completely out of whack (and that they had to add 30 'invisible' heat sinks to 'Mechs' heat capacity).

The devs seem to lack an understanding of some of TT's underlying game design concepts. That lack of understanding led them to make some fundamental errors while trying to translate the turn based system to a real time system. As has been suggested (multiple times as I recall) on the forums, to fix those errors and restore balance I think weapon values need to be reset to the TT values and then divided by their RoF over 10 seconds. Once that is complete the designers could remove the 30 'invisible' heat sinks from the heat capacity and the current heat dissipation would work at its intended (canon) rate. Additionally it may become possible to return armor values to the canon levels allowing weapons to 'feel' more like they're described in the fiction. At that point I think weapons would be fairly balanced giving the designers a solid foundation from which to adjust as needed to get the 'feel' they want from the game.

[Corwin Vickers]

Volthorne, on 02 May 2013 - 10:15 PM, said:

No, that is dumb. Then you're not doing 20 points of damage per trigger pull (which an AC/20 ALWAYS does - unless you fire outside optimal range), you'd be doing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15 damage per trigger-pull. It would be an AC/15, not an AC/20.

We already have that with lasers. Also the reduced damage at range thing is a MWO creation as well. Range just makes it harder to hit in the board game.

[Teralitha]

So we all agree then... that removing double heat sinks would solve many balance issues...

Edited by Teralitha, 07 May 2013 - 05:36 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Teralitha, on 07 May 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

So we all agree then... that removing double heat sinks would solve many balance issues...

Excellent bait. I couldn't resist.

[MaddMaxx]

A debilitating heat system, as with TT, would be no better for game play than the 10 second total weapons load-out firing cycle.

Imagine if the Heat was as in TT, @ 5 on the scale (1/6 the full scale) your Mech starts to slow, @ 10 (1/3) it slows even more, @ 15 (1/2) you can't hit the broad side of a barn and slow down even more. So what must you do. Hide for 15 seconds to cool before trying again.

That system make the 10 second cycle sound exciting. Yes it is MechWarrior based on BT but it is 2013 and folks nowadays don't seem to want to have to do anything much beyond Point and shoot. Thinking in a game is a relic of the past and if they try it for the sake of those "few", then everyone loses out.

It would be so cool if a Community of 10K could run a game and have it just like they want. Sadly, the reality is all together different in this day and age.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 07 May 2013 - 09:11 AM.