72 replies to this topic

[Chou Senwan]

In tabletop, you never got pinpoint alphas, because attacks scatter across the target's body. That, we all agree, is not viable for a video game, because we want success to be based on skill.

However, why can you fire all your weapons at once? Is it necessary to have the game work that way? Or could the game include something like a quarter-second delay between weapons, enough that a moving target has a fair chance of spreading damage even from pinpoint attacks?

Perhaps lasers, flamers, and machine guns (which already have damage over time) and missiles (which already scatter) can all be fired in one burst. But ballistics and PPCs would have an enforced staggered firing rate, so if you had 4 AC 2s it would be like a series of sixteenth notes in music.

The really skilled pilots would be able to track and continue leading, but at least the target would be able to torso twist and spread some damage, instead of taking a full alpha to the Center Torso.

What do you think?

[IceSerpent]

Obadiah333, on 31 May 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

What the real reason behind the current meta is. NO, PPC's are not OP. NO, ERPPC's are not OP. NO, boating is not the reason either.

The problem (and this has been pointed out infinite times) is that the penalties for overheating are not severe enough. Why is poptarting / high alpha the current meta? Becuase there is no fear of overheating. Pop up, alpha strike, overheat, drop behind cover, shut down, restart - rinse and repeat. I'm only stating this becuase I'm tired of reading the Nth forum topic on why PPC's are too OP.

We didn't forget anything - your assessment is simply wrong. If this was indeed the case, we would be seeing all sorts of energy boats and complete lack of ammo-based weapons. In reality, we only see PPC/ERPPC+Gauss combos with a few AC20 boats around. Most of those configs don't run very hot anyway.

[Demuder]

Aim64C, on 01 June 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

To be fair, the way the OP words it is... kind of ridiculous.

Graded heat effects would be fine as things start to get hotter. Making it more difficult to practically use your weapons would work quite well. Slowing down wouldn't be as big of a deal (except for lights... of course, shutting down is a very, very bad thing for them - contrary to the 6ppc stalkers).

Maybe I didn't explain it clearly. In the original rules and lore, the "muscle" system of the mech is adversly affected by heat buildup, that's why it affects everything on the mech. That's why it makes sense. Shutting down, in lore at least, and to a degree in the tabletop meant the fight was over for the affected mech.

Of course, the degree to which heat affects things is a matter of discussion in every battletech based game I guess.

IceSerpent, on 01 June 2013 - 08:37 AM, said:

We didn't forget anything - your assessment is simply wrong. If this was indeed the case, we would be seeing all sorts of energy boats and complete lack of ammo-based weapons. In reality, we only see PPC/ERPPC+Gauss combos with a few AC20 boats around. Most of those configs don't run very hot anyway.

The main problem with those (ER)PPC+Gauss builds is not so much the sniping ability, where they spend 90% of their time not firing just jumping around or hiding behind rocks. It's that even when you get close, they still got 2-3 alphas in them so they can spam them with relative impunity. It only takes one mistake if you are close or even no mistake if you are in something big and slow. So even with a brawler build, you are at a disadvantage. At least, that's how I interprete the problem and imho, increasing the heat generation and adverse effects of it, would help quite a bit.

AC40s or Dual Gauss, don't run hot, but they have other problems which I tihnk are crippling enough by themselves.

Then, you got your 6 LL stalkers, but I do give them a pass since SRMs are being useless right now, they have no choice. And they run pretty hot anyways.

[IceSerpent]

dimstog, on 01 June 2013 - 01:48 PM, said:

The main problem with those (ER)PPC+Gauss builds is not so much the sniping ability, where they spend 90% of their time not firing just jumping around or hiding behind rocks. It's that even when you get close, they still got 2-3 alphas in them so they can spam them with relative impunity. It only takes one mistake if you are close or even no mistake if you are in something big and slow. So even with a brawler build, you are at a disadvantage. At least, that's how I interprete the problem and imho, increasing the heat generation and adverse effects of it, would help quite a bit.

I completely agree with your interpretation of the problem, but increasing overall heat generation would not help at all. Just to give you an example, my HGN jump sniper (2 ERPPC + Gauss) has 1.53 heat efficiency while my Jenner 7-D (4 ML + 2 StreakSRM + BAP) has only 1.28.

[Diablobo]

Triple heat Battletech sucks. Anyone who wants to pile on more penalties after the heat levels have already been tripled is only making the problem worse.

[verybad]

I'd like to see overheating cause short circuits in various places, causing off things including loss of controls for some stuff (eg, the mech loses the ability to twist past straight forward in one direction, or you get false locks with missiles. As for PPC overheating. Simple, short circuit PPC goes boom like a Gauss rifle. They both rely on capacitors to fire...

Edited by verybad, 01 June 2013 - 02:31 PM.

[Aim64C]

Diablobo, on 01 June 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

Triple heat Battletech sucks. Anyone who wants to pile on more penalties after the heat levels have already been tripled is only making the problem worse.

Then we have to completely revisit each and every weapon, the damage it does, and the recycle time involved.

Battletech was built around ten second turn lengths. It didn't matter whether you were firing a small pulse laser or a PPC - you were only able to fire once every 10 seconds.

That would make for a relatively silly real-time game - and still not properly address the issue (as you can fire each weapon once every ten seconds, but at any interval during combat you desire). Heat was calculated at each turn - which meant you were really only penalized if you fired enough weapons or included so few heat-sinks that your mech had heat remaining on its next turn.

I think there would be a way to simulate similar behavior in real-time. You simply use an algorithm that increases the severity of the negative effects the more heat has been built up and the longer it remains high.

Of course - we still might have to tweak lasers - reduce their damage a bit along with their heat generation.

It's still not a complete answer to the 6ppc stalker (unless we were to go to a more MW4-esque critical system... say what you will about it not mirroring battletech - but it did give each mech personality while also limiting the boating insanity to some degree) - but it's a partial one.

Although making missiles useful again might make some of the problem strategies far less viable in the long-run and serve to auto-correct the problem.

We think the problem is bad now... but from what I understand - host-state-rewind is only in partial effect for PPCs...

[megoblocks]

CapperDeluxe, on 31 May 2013 - 10:27 AM, said:

2. reticle shake from being hot doesn't really make much sense, instead perhaps they could introduce some vision filters that makes everything blurry (like in other FPS games where your vision is blurry when you're close to dying).

Electronic and mechanical components absolutely degrade when heat becomes an issue (not too mention in TT you take aim penalties). Call it whatever you want. Motors not functioning well. Sensors giving bad readings. Gyros not work. Whatever, but having your targeting move randomly about in a small area due to things not quite working right makes a lot of sense.

[NRP]

So shutting down and getting ripped apart by multiple enemies isn't a severe enough penalty for overheating? LOL, whatever.

[blinkin]

megoblocks, on 01 June 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

Electronic and mechanical components absolutely degrade when heat becomes an issue (not too mention in TT you take aim penalties). Call it whatever you want. Motors not functioning well. Sensors giving bad readings. Gyros not work. Whatever, but having your targeting move randomly about in a small area due to things not quite working right makes a lot of sense.

having the reticule drift slowly based on your last aiming motion could make for an interesting mechanic.

[Steel Claws]

The problem with your sugestions is that what you want basically ruins any stock or trial builds because of the nature of their loadouts. There are far too many builds that are not OP that would suffer and die because of what you want. It may work just ducky for custom builds but not everyone runs those so what about them. What you want would also reduce the game to spawn setting more than it already does. No one would be willing to get into the thick of it because of the fear of heating up. Game play would stagnate or people would start boating weapons with little or no heat and just run all over the people who had a more normal build. In addition you start adding a lot of new code to a game where we already have problems adding new features to.

The issue would be completely taken care of if the number of large - high alpha wapons were limited two for light - medium/ 3 for heavies and assaults either through a slot system or by some other factor like limiting the damage done on the heavier damage weapons based on the number equipped and fired at the same time - dimishing returns as it were. If mechs were limited by the number of large weapons that they could carry we wouldn't be having this discussion because noone would be complaining about big alphas. Oh wait, there would just be something new that people would complain about because we're all such an easy to please bunch.

[scJazz]

I want to see some super serious penalties for failing Heat Management... Like "Stackpole"!

6PPC Stalker on Tourmaline Snipers Perch...

BZZZT, BZZZT, BBB........ *KARUMPH!* (screen goes white)
Gah my eyes! W T F wuz that? Mehhhh nuthin nother 6PPC Stalker trying to win by blinding everyone!

[Kaspirikay]

NRP, on 01 June 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

So shutting down and getting ripped apart by multiple enemies isn't a severe enough penalty for overheating? LOL, whatever.

Most of the time, you don't overheat when theres enemies around. You can overheat when you're in an advantageous position, like JJing over an obstacle. Or, sniping a brawler.

[Monky]

Heat penalties, and in my opinion, reworking heat capacity, would fix a lot of the energy boat long range alpha problems. It would also do jack squat about the eventual triple gauss builds. Quad Gauss can be done on some mechs (given the right ones are chosen to be put into the game) but is horribly slow, forced to take an XL to even move 35 kph, and can carry about 4 tons of ammo without basically stripping all armor from the mech. So we're left with triple Gauss and a PPC with limited staying power, or dual Gauss dual PPC as the 'cooler running' high alpha builds eventually.

Gauss rifle, really, I wish the original btech made it have high heat. At least 5 or so... being cool running on top of long range, accurate, and hard hitting, it's just imbalanced with the rest of the stuff. Either that or if they had added another 5 tons to it...

[blinkin]

scJazz, on 01 June 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

I want to see some super serious penalties for failing Heat Management... Like "Stackpole"!

6PPC Stalker on Tourmaline Snipers Perch...

BZZZT, BZZZT, BBB........ *KARUMPH!* (screen goes white)
Gah my eyes! W T F wuz that? Mehhhh nuthin nother 6PPC Stalker trying to win by blinding everyone!

that would be very funny, and if it weren't too late i would suggest something like that for a one day april fool's joke patch.

just go into a match and see 3 bright flashes come up from a nearby ridge line. it would be epic.

Monky, on 01 June 2013 - 09:52 PM, said:

Gauss rifle, really, I wish the original btech made it have high heat. At least 5 or so... being cool running on top of long range, accurate, and hard hitting, it's just imbalanced with the rest of the stuff. Either that or if they had added another 5 tons to it...

in table top i think it has a minimum range to help balance it out.

[Demuder]

IceSerpent, on 01 June 2013 - 02:02 PM, said:

I completely agree with your interpretation of the problem, but increasing overall heat generation would not help at all. Just to give you an example, my HGN jump sniper (2 ERPPC + Gauss) has 1.53 heat efficiency while my Jenner 7-D (4 ML + 2 StreakSRM + BAP) has only 1.28.

Oh, I see now what you mean. Well, for one, I believe we are - or at least I am - not talking about a change to heat penalties without revisiting the heat generation of every weapon.

What's more, personaly, I find the HGN loadout you mention quite sane, I wouldn't categorize it as a boat or even a poptart. It's the fact that in a pug, you currently find that aside from the Highlanders, every friggin Cataphract, Catapult, Trebuchet, Spider etc is carrying more or less the same loadout :-)

[LethalMezzle]

Yeah, I'd like to see this too. I think MWO's heat system is a bit too forgiving.

I remember when I put loads of PPCs onto a mech in MechWarrior 3 and fired them all at once to see what would happen. I exploded instantly. I want that to happen sometimes, it's funny.

[Stardancer01]

PPCs, Gauss rifles & ECM should only recharge/reload/work if your mech is under 50% heat.

This could show how EMP is effecting your systems without have a separate EMP metre/bar.
These EMP weapons and equipment have been causing all the problems with game balance since closed beta, it is about time they had a decent penalty.

Edited by Stardancer01, 02 June 2013 - 09:19 AM.

[Chemie]

In the novels, weapons take energy and time to charge. If you fired your gauss, lasers were not available for a period of time. PGI's cycle time is not really true becuase you should not have have the energy to recharge those 6 PPCs all at the same time. You should only be able to recharge each weapon at one time.

I would say PPC, ERPPC, LL should all have to charge one at a time (using cycle time as the basis). Shot one, it recharges the current 4 seconds. Shot 6, and it takes 24 seconds for them each to sequentially recharge. of course, you can adjust this for balance but you get the point.

Edited by Chemie, 02 June 2013 - 09:59 AM.

[Budor]

Jesus people they are WORKING on it allready. Just give em a few months (3-5) and itll all be fine. I bet PPCs will be brought in line when we get community warfare next year.