1263 replies to this topic

[Tolkien]

Hi there,
I'm writing this post to approach what I and at least some others in the community think are problems with the meta game that are only going to get worse with the eventual introduction of the clans. I am speaking of what might be called 'high alpha' builds but is also known as a 'convergence' problem.
One of the places this is showing up is the 6ppc stalker which can be a scary beast. It has heat problems but it can put out enough damage, fast enough, and most importantly focus it on a small enough spot on your mech that you are in serious trouble. In this post you have announced that they are seriously considering a big change to the game to discourage this style of play.
From Paul I's 11 June Gameplay update:

Quote

We set a threshold of the number of weapons fired simultaneously. By simultaneously fired, we mean weapons of the exact same type being fired in under a 0.5 second time range. This 0.5 second time comes from the amount of time between weapon switches when Chain Fire is engaged. Chain Fire is a mechanism meant to help MechWarriors manage their heat and we do not want to punish those who use this mechanic.
If a player fires a number of weapons beyond the threshold, the heat scale will increase significantly for every weapon fired beyond the threshold.
...
How each weapon system will be individually tuned:
Weapons like the PPC would have their thresholds set to 3 with a higher heat penalty per additional simultaneous firing of PPCs.
3 PPC fired = 0 heat penalty
4 PPC fired = 10 heat penalty
5 PPC fired = 20 heat penalty
6 PPC fired = 40 heat penalty

The numbers might change but the concept that the devs are playing with to prevent high alpha/convergence problems is to make mechs that fire too many copies of the same weapon at the same time overheat.
This proposed approach is going to add a lot of complexity and it is going to be full of holes!

In theory the clans will be out soon and they have serious technological advantages that are going to make this system entirely redundant, and possibly even make it harder to balance clan and inner sphere technology.

If stock clan mechs are legal designs in this game, here are some of the mechs that are going to completely defeat the proposed multiple weapon copies system proposed by paul>
Hunchback IIc
50 tons
65 km/h + jumpjets
Armed with 2x Ultra Autocannon 20's

This is a jagerbomb that can doubletap... or tripletap...

Any 50 ton+ clan mech that has 2 ballistic mounts in the torsos or arms will be able to mount this.
It gets much worse...
Clan gauss rifles are 20% lighter than inner sphere ones (3 tons less per rifle) and a slot smaller so two can fit in a side torso.
Clan ERPPcs are 50% smaller (only two slots) than inner sphere, and are 1 ton lighter. They do 50% more damage for an equal amount of extra heat.
Clan Ultra AC10s are only 4 critical slots vs. 7 for the current normal AC10, while they weight 20% less (two tons per gun).
Clan lasers are generally smaller (clan ER large laser is 1 slot...) deal 25% more damage and have 30% more range for the same heat while being about 25% lighter.
Clan XL engines are smaller leaving more room in each torso. Additionally blasting out the side torso on a clan mech with an XL engine does not kill it. Clan double heatsinks are 50% smaller than inner sphere DHS, so you can pack a lot more of them in. Additionally clan endosteel is literally twice as good as inner sphere giving the same weight savings for only 7 critical slots (inner sphere takes 14) - same with ferro fibrous armor again 7 vs. 14.


Nothing will stop a customized clan mech that has a 'balanced' weapons hardpoint loadout from combining a gauss rifle, 2 er ppcs and an ultra AC10 to produce a machine that doesn't run very hot, doesn't run afoul of the proposed heat penalties since it doesn't 'boat' any weapons (a pair of a weapon is not boating) and can put out much more pain than the 6 pack ppc stalker does today.



The proposed fix to convergence and clan tech
I propose that instead of counting copies of the same weapon fied within 0.5 seconds that the following is done.
When a mech is hit by a weapon it does the damage to the location where it hits - this will mean that skillfull shots are still rewarded. However, subsequent hits to the same mech within approximately X seconds are randomly assigned to the side of the mech hit. Hits on the front/top go to the front/arms/legs, hits on the back go somewhere on the back/arms/legs.

This will mean that an atlas cresting a hill that takes fire from 2-3 mechs will not immediately lose his centre torso and will encourage a less static style of play. It will extend matches and allow mechs that have artwork problems like the hunchback to keep their precious weapons a little longer, but if they duck out of combat for X seconds they can still be hit by skillful shots to specific locations.

It's self evident that large amounts of damage to pinpoint locations are making some chassis much less viable than they should be, while pushing the flavour of the month so hard towards hard hitting long range weapons that even the devs are floating ideas on how to prevent it. The problem is they are pursuing an avenue that does not really fix the problem it just punishes it after the fact, and also leaves the clans wide open to exploit the same holes in the system.
I know some people will very much want every shot to be *boom headshot* on the pixel where the mouse cursor is, but this is pushing the game in a very unhealthy direction that will only get worse with the clans.
Please devs, take a look at this and the other ideas from the community as well as those people in the office have and pick one that *intrinsically* spreads damage around. We've tried the pinpoint solution and it is getting ugly, so ugly that you are about to introduce dramatically more complexity into the heat system to try and stamp it out.

An alternate INTERIM fix to convergence
Let the players allocate all of the armor points on the mech wherever we want them.
Seriously.... until something is done about convergence let us put 10 points on each arm and 200 points in the centre torso if we want to - it will also make games last a little longer since we each know which part of which mechs tends to get blown off first.

Let me add that there are other great ideas out there like Homeless Bill's proposal to add a targeting computer stat to the game> http://mwomercs.com/...oats-and-clans/ His post does make it easy to add in the clan targeting computer in a sensible way, but it might be a bit heavy to implement up front and might encourage face hugging.
Also, I am sure others have probably made similar proposals to this one and I am sorry for not acknowledging them. I'm not as active on the forums as I could be so it's not intentional, I just haven't seen it.
I also would like to recognize MustrumRidcully as I believe he was bringing attention to this issue way back in December. That was some good foresight and I don't think many saw how big it would become.

Note: Crossposted from http://mwomercs.com/...omes-a-problem/

Edited by Tolkien, 22 June 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Coolant]

Koniving, on 22 June 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

If you have a few minutes, read these.

Couldn't find that original post where you embedded that MW4 video of the commando's. However, you conveniently used a video in No Heat setting to demonstrate a point. Of course the pilot got that many kills because look at the loadout and there is no penalty at all for heat. MW4 Mercs had heat. The default was heat. You could set up a server and make it NHUA (No Heat Unlimited Ammo). You try to give the impression using that video that Mercs was one-shot kills all the time. That was far from the case.

And, "the franchise died" was not due to the heat scale, or NHUA or how quickly mechs died. IF you actually played, then you would know that even 6 years later there were still many servers available. Even 10 years later, including NHUA, there were still about 4 servers going. Incidently, I did not play NHUA much, but it was the most popular toward the end. According to that infamous 3rd Person poll, most of the community wants to keep MWO as a sim, and yet 3rd Person and NHUA were most popular in MW4. Deny it all you like, but it was the truth and proves there is a market out there.

[Koniving]

Coolant, on 22 June 2013 - 11:42 AM, said:

Couldn't find that original post where you embedded that MW4 video of the commando's. However, you conveniently used a video in No Heat setting to demonstrate a point. Of course the pilot got that many kills because look at the loadout and there is no penalty at all for heat. MW4 Mercs had heat. The default was heat. You could set up a server and make it NHUA (No Heat Unlimited Ammo). You try to give the impression using that video that Mercs was one-shot kills all the time. That was far from the case.

And, "the franchise died" was not due to the heat scale, or NHUA or how quickly mechs died. IF you actually played, then you would know that even 6 years later there were still many servers available. Even 10 years later, including NHUA, there were still about 4 servers going. Incidently, I did not play NHUA much, but it was the most popular toward the end. According to that infamous 3rd Person poll, most of the community wants to keep MWO as a sim, and yet 3rd Person and NHUA were most popular in MW4. Deny it all you like, but it was the truth and proves there is a market out there.

The post exists but didn't have that video. It was tacked in more for the convergence point. Pin-point damage, high alphas, and the choice of one that has no heat enabled is due to the fact that heat management is essentially gone from MWO unless you have a high heat high alpha build. You actually have to get a high heat high alpha build just to even have the illusion of heat management.

Picture being the other team. What if you were someone on that team? Would you call that fun? That's what MWO has become in the higher ELO brackets. If you don't have AC/40, 3 ER PPCs and a Gauss Rifle, or some other similar build you have no chance. That's what 8 versus 8 matches have become.

There's times where you start out in a medium or a light mech and your own team kills you for being "useless" because you can't carry those weapons. That video is what MWO is becoming. "Heat penalties" only further encourages it rather than discourages it as it now invalidates 9 ML builds like the new Champion Hunchback. It invalides boating small lasers. It invalidates anything less than a PPC.

For any laser above 6 mediums, and you suffer 10 heat more. That's 2 and a half times more heat than 1 ML generates as a punishment. The 9 ML alpha strike should be unfeasible due to reaching your maximum heat threshold, not due to "well you'll probably explode if you fire all 9 ML at once, but if you fired them 3 at a time 0.5 seconds apart you can fire each set of 3 a total of 4 times in a row before worrying about heat."

Anything that isn't an instant gratification is therefore made useless as smaller weapons are punished with even more dispersion while the big weapons continue to be instant-damage for less.

Yes, it's MW4 is still available but mainly due to the fact that someone added in lots of free packs and went about rebalancing it. You still have the issue that it's mainly dominated by high alpha strikes. If you like that, sure you're still playing. If you didn't and preferred MW3's and MW2's method, well then you dropped MW4 like a rock and kicked it out the window as I had.

This also isn't a debate about third person -- I couldn't care less if it's first or third person.

This is about weapon balance against high alpha builds that simply Cannot and Do Not work in tabletop or in lore because every time you shoot, the pilot has a large chance of losing consciousness, the mech has a huge chance of falling over, and this is all assuming you didn't self destruct. Even then it's kept balanced by the fact that you can't aim your shots to all converge on a specific body part. In tabletop I rebuilt my MWO Awesome 9M with 3 ER PPCs, 3 streaks with 1 ton of ammo and lots of double heatsinks and a big XL engine. I fired only the PPCs and I fired them three times back to back. Once each turn (once per 10 seconds). I exploded. 3 ER PPCs 3 times within 30 seconds and I exploded. Since there's 10 seconds per turn, on MWO I can pump out 3 ER PPCs over 26 times on Tourmaline Desert and not even reach 67% if I fire them once every count to 7ish seconds. Tabletop I explode, MWO I'm perfectly fine. And I'm firing at a faster rate, too, without the 'instant' sinking of heat that Tabletop has, in a much hotter environment.

It isn't fun to only live once, and be killed in a single shot by an enemy you can't even touch even while going 150 kph with PPCs of your own. It isn't fun to make a take a light mech and have to slap on PPCs to have a chance. It isn't fun to have an assault mech with the mindset to brawl, and you can't even reach your target because some medium mech squeezed in two PPCs and a Gauss rifle and is going for your eyeball or strips your weapons before you get close. It isn't fun when you try to sneak up on an enemy and they instantly turn around and know you're there before you even come around the corner.

Most of all, there is no fun to be had if only 1% of the mechs in the game are viable because nothing else can do the same thing.

Know what hooked me in? Closed beta. Know what I saw in closed beta? Lasers, cannons, missiles, the works. It was difficult to focus damage, and it took at the very least 30 seconds to kill something; sometimes a fight between two people went on for about 3 minutes or more!

Have a look. Closed beta.


This was fun.


This was fun.


This is not, even though I'm the one making fun of the other player by dancing it was NOT fun.


The weapon penalty thing? It punishes us for having certain numbers of weapons. It doesn't manage them. It's easily circumvented. (Oh, 3 PPCs is the limit? Well then 3 PPCs + a gauss! Ingenius!) Wow. Nothing got fixed. Now heat.. You fix the heat system and what do you have? Management. You need to manage your heat otherwise you're a sitting duck. How do you do that? Well it's something to think about. Maybe knowing if you alpha strike once or twice and you're stuck there for a few seconds will tell you "I better not do this. Sure I can, but it's not a good idea."

You want a player to actively choose whether or not to do it. Not "I can't do it because I'll get a penalty." Then there's all this crap to remember. "OMG, 6 medium lasers oh no. Wait, how many small lasers can I do? How many large lasers? How many AC/2s?" That's complicating a game that doesn't need to be.

Heat threshold. It's simple. You can produce this much heat. That's it. With more heatsinks you cool off faster, but your maximum amount of heat allowed does not change. Then you can simply know if I fire this combination, I generate this much heat. With that combination, I generate that much heat. If I'm packing 3 ER PPCs (Awesome 9M) I can fire twice and shut down. It's not "Well I can pack in 6 of them, and this much heatsinks, and now I can fire all 6 of them 3 times! MWAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!"

You're right about there being a market out there. We find them in 20 year olds that also play Call of Duty and use the sniper rifles like shotguns. For them we have low heat weapons like ballistics, which allow us to pump out over 150 damage a 2 second shutdown penalty. For them we have AC/20s. For them we have Gauss Rifles. You know, weapons with high weight penalties. Not a 7 ton energy weapon with no ammo limits and a rising heat threshold that allows you to actually make a heat neutral ER PPC mech.

I'm serious. It's actually possible to make a heat-neutral 3 ER PPC-boating mech in MWO that can fire and be at zero heat (+ the heat of moving which is usually 3 to 7 depending on the map) before you fire again, while moving at 70 kph.

The heat system is screwed up. Watch this.

Heat management is both fun and skill-building. The lack of it is not.

Edited by Koniving, 22 June 2013 - 12:57 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

'm serious. It's actually possible to make a heat-neutral 3 ER PPC-boating mech in MWO that can fire and be at zero heat (+ the heat of moving which is usually 3 to 7 depending on the map) before you fire again, while moving at 70 kph.

This might be nitpicky, but: NO, you can't. Almost no mechs in this game are heat neutral. If you try to use more than 3-4 Medium Lasers, you're not heat neutral, you can't boat enough heat sinks to avoid that unless you find a way to cram only Gauss RIfles in your mech.

But what our mechs are is burst-damage monsters that can kill enemy mechs before they have to shut down. In the table top, heat was punishing even if you just got 5 heat too much in a turn. In MW:O, it'S only punishing if you get to your maximum heat threshold. And that allows people to alpha after alpha before they finally overheat. And if the enemy mech is dead by then... the heat doesn't really matter any more. And the current alpha builds (and tactics) are designed around this. In the table top, the risk and penalties of high heat were higher, so unless the mech was designed for it (and some where, but they paid for this by spending more tonnage on heat sinks and less on firepower), alpha strikes were done when the chances were good that not firing everything you got could spell your end.

A low or a fixed heat capacity is half the story. A raised heat dissipation is the other. Maybe someone, with the right build, can even make 3 ER PPCs heat neutral. But he really made it heat neutral, he really spend all the tonnage and crit slot on Double Heat Sinks to be heat neutral, so he doesn't constantly gain heat with every shot - he sacrificed real firepower for it.

[Windies]

Heat penalties are the only way you will ever get around the high alpha PPC type builds, and still hit every weapon equally. It's why it existed in TT. Even if you limited the heat threshold to the stock 20, you would just be trading PPC's for the next viably boated weapon that wouldn't spike you over the heat threshold every time you alpha'd, even if it was boating small lasers. You would still find FOTM mechs.

Well thought out heat penalties like targeting systems shutting down upon a certain heat threshold and HUD disruption or movement speed penalties and even accuracy penalties, create more dynamics to the combat and are a soft balance to all the weapons, while maximum heat threshold and cooldowns should be a hard cap on overall damage output.

Edited by Windies, 22 June 2013 - 01:23 PM.

[Koniving]

MustrumRidcully, on 22 June 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

A low or a fixed heat capacity is half the story. A raised heat dissipation is the other. Maybe someone, with the right build, can even make 3 ER PPCs heat neutral. But he really made it heat neutral, he really spend all the tonnage and crit slot on Double Heat Sinks to be heat neutral, so he doesn't constantly gain heat with every shot - he sacrificed real firepower for it.

That's the idea of heat management. You sacrifice to manage that heat and be neutral, or you manage your heat with fire control. You are the principle reason for my argument. There's this never ending mentality that you must have maximum firepower. Maximum, maximum, maximum. What's the point of having other weapons? What's the point of having anything but PPCs, AC/20s and Gauss? What's the point of a hardpoint restriction system. To Stop The Maximum!

What benefits do you get from not having maximum firepower? Much better heat management. The ability to fire when your enemies cannot. The ability to keep firing. Stamina. Right now unless you have 6 ER PPCs you have seemingly unlimited stamina in terms of firepower. Pack in 4 PPCs and you can fire out 12 to 16 PPCs before you shut down. That's 120 to 160 damage before a shutdown! Okay, so you generate 10 more heat? Big deal, space out one PPC by 0.5 seconds. That gives you that much more cooling. Heat management is gone.

Thus, if you were someone who made a smaller array of weapons to manage your heat better, you suffer. You didn't "maximize" your potential. In a game where heat management actually matter, the guy with the smaller weapons would win once he gets into range because of the fact that he can shoot more, shoot longer, and keep moving while the guy with the big guns has to stop shooting, has to stop moving, has to stop dealing damage because he's too hot.

That's why people say mediums are no longer viable. It's not the big guys that have to deal with heat management it's the little guys that are already easy to kill. Why is that? Because the maximum heat threshold rises with more heatsinks. Not just cooling efficiency. See even at 1.4 double heatsinks you have 3 times the cooling power than 2.0 double heatsinks, because unlike tabletop's double heatsinks your threshold rises with those 1.4 doubles.

Here's the standard.
Tabletop, 10 standard heatsinks. Heatcap 30. Cooling efficiency 1x (3 per second per heatsink.)
MWO 10 standard heatsinks. Heatcap 30. Cooling efficiency 1x. (3)

Here's at the lowest level. Those MWO heatsinks are looking like we can do higher alphas.
Tabletop, 10 double heatsinks. Heatcap 30. Cooling efficiency 2x.
MWO 10 1.4 heatsinks. Heatcap 42. Cooling efficiency 1.4x.


Here's at the typical level. 1.4 heatsinks are better than 2.0 heatsinks in the fact that we can exploit them with frequent alphas, over 3 times more in fact.
Tabletop, 22 double heatsinks. Heatcap 30. Cooling efficiency 2x.
MWO 22 1.4 heatsinks. Heatcap 92.4. Cooling efficiency 1.4x.

To make matters worse, the first 10 within the engine are 2.0 double heatsinks in MWO. So that 22 1.4 heatsinks is actually 12 1.4 + 10 doubles. With 50.4 in 12 1.4 heatsinks and 60 in 10 doubles we have 110.4 max heat threshold for 22 of MWO's "double" heatsinks.

For a heat management maximum heat threshold that does not rise nor lower, I'm thinking that of 15 of MWO's 1.4 sinks is more than enough. That's a heat threshold of 63 regardless of what number of heatsinks you have. Then standard sinks the heat by 1x and double by 2x. We just enhanced those STD heatsink users. Nerfed the double heatsink users (though aside from not being able to alpha more than once and a half they won't even notice) and gave them full double heatsinks to boot so they'll cool off faster even though they heat up faster.

As for your heat neutral mechs. Here. I actually meant a 3 PPC mech to be heat neutral rather than ER PPC, but here I came up with a few virtually heat neutral ER PPC builds you just have to hold off the trigger for a number of seconds.

3 ER PPCs. Fire once every 8 seconds. Heat neutral.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...dfcbe2eb524148c

Fire once every 6 seconds (count to 2 after your weapons are ready to fire again) for this build.
http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=19&l=0cd8451b2f352eaa59666d022546d49ad0156efe

Or you take 1 ER PPC, slap it on a 92 kph hunchback, fire as soon as it's ready to fire, and you have a purely heat neutral mech.

The idea of heat management is to make a tactical decision on how to make the better mech with a choice between endurance, strength, speed or a balance.

That's gone. It's no longer about how to make better mechs with checks and balances such as high alpha but shuts down frequently, high this but can't do that, high that but can't do this. It's become how to make the mech that kills the fastest, and for that there are no checks and balances because you can't go fast enough to outdo that. You can't rely on endurance unless you sneak up on the enemy and even then bang you're dead.

Windies, on 22 June 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

Heat penalties are the only way you will ever get around the high alpha PPC type builds, and still hit every weapon equally. It's why it existed in TT. Even if you limited the heat threshold to the stock 20, you would just be trading PPC's for the next viably boated weapon that wouldn't spike you over the heat threshold every time you alpha'd, even if it was boating small lasers. You would still find FOTM mechs.

Well thought out heat penalties like targeting systems shutting down upon a certain heat threshold and HUD disruption or movement speed penalties and even accuracy penalties, create more dynamics to the combat and are a soft balance to all the weapons, while maximum heat threshold and cooldowns should be a hard cap on overall damage output.

Wouldn't say that's the only way but it would be a benefit toward balancing. Falling over, losing consciousness, sweat in the eyes blurring vision, etc. But until then I still believe that normalizing the threshold instead of allowing it to rise with the number of heatsinks you have would fit it much better. It'd make the math simpler. Make balancing simpler to look at. Fewer calculators needed, fewer equations, fewer charts, and thus more welcoming to new players.

Edited by Koniving, 24 June 2013 - 09:17 AM.

[Havok1978]

too bad Kon isnt developing for MWO, we'd be alot further along than we are now

[Koniving]

Havok1978, on 22 June 2013 - 03:43 PM, said:

too bad Kon isnt developing for MWO, we'd be alot further along than we are now

Why thank you. The support is appreciated. My own ideas are not without their own flaws, I'll confess that. They are only intended to be a start, and an easy basis to fix the rest of the issues.

The ideas are simpler, truer to the lore and basis for this game, and even mathematically simpler which would make looking at the pressing balancing issues easier even from a glance. When I'm here, I'm in here for giant walking tanks that can take a beating, that are worth the millions of cbills pumped into them. Otherwise why do we have battlemechs instead of random orbital bombardments? If mechs are so easy to destroy why use them?

Paul's alternative, while reasonable, is intensely complex and loaded with loopholes (such as Oh? No more than 3 PPCs? 3 PPCs + gauss. No more than 2 PPCs and I can't combine them with gauss? 2 PPCs + AC/20) so it isn't really fixing anything. Even then rebalancing any individual weapon is a complex endeavor in itself. My solution has no exploitable loopholes, as a finite heat threshold that doesn't raise or drop cannot be exploited. Before fixing the weapons one must look at the core mechanic.

Take a moment to look at heat management. Do we want heat management to be a core mechanic or an afterthought? Right now it feels like an afterthought. I'd prefer it to be a core mechanic.

I need a reason to avoid using alpha strikes. Using an alpha strike needs to be dangerous to me, and not because I happen to have 1 too many PPCs. When 22 double heatsinks gives us a threshold of 110 as opposed to tabletop's 30, in addition to being able to fire faster is it any wonder that "double armor" is not enough, and double heatsinks had to be cut back to 1.4 heatsinks? We're here because double armor and cutting heatsinks back isn't enough, we can still do too many alpha strikes with pin-point damage.

The only other mechanic I can think of is to double the heat of all weapons when fired at the same time -- but even then it's both more fair and easier with what I had thought of originally with the heat threshold.

Running with the firebrand I found it's heat management to be quite ideal. 15 double heatsinks. Even in my Atlas RS, using PPCs and Gauss I have to space my shots out or link fire the PPCs in groups of two or it's too hot. Assuming we increase our threshold by 3 with every standard heatsink given in MWO, 15 double (1.4) heatsinks at 3 per unit * 1.4 * 15 = a threshold of 63 heat. I can fire fairly often, yet have to pace the shots especially on Caustic Valley. Some other mechs I have I don't even reach 50% heat on caustic while firing non-stop.

Firebrand default build

Spoiler

I've been here since June 2012. Back then the game was loads of fun.

• Standard heatsinks meant we had lots of trouble managing our heat. This pushed us to build mechs with smaller weapons in groups that we can quickly cycle through. This made us use chainfire.
  
• The repair system meant we fought conservatively.
  
• Standard engines kept us from going super fast, but since the weapons were super hard to make accurate (no armlock), it wasn't much of an issue at all to have an Atlas that went 32.4 kph, to have a Hunchback that went 64.2 kph.
  
• Raven 4X could drop-kick an Atlas. Dragons used their bodies to help chase down lights. An Atlas could clothesline a hunchback and then turn around to blast it down. That's practically melee!
  
• Back then the highest alpha you could have within reason was 40 damage (before the discovery of how insanely overpowered SRMs were due to another poorly thought-out mechanic of adding additional damage on top of the original damage in the form of splash; rather than dividing the total damage out into the splash as would be the case in real life).
  
• 2 ER PPCs weren't even practical due to heat. 4 ER PPCs usually lead to you self-destructing.
  
• Now even if we get that back, we'll never get to enjoy it with the long range meta we have, and that's because of a rising heat threshold that allows us to abuse high alpha builds.

Now? After having pumped nearly 500 dollars into MWO, I find myself in an Atlas RS that has 4 PPCs, a gauss rifle, and I'm not having fun. I even put in weaknesses. XL engine. 1 point of rear armor. My kdr keeps going up. I feel bad for every light and medium I one-shot. Enemy assaults with similar builds I go straight for their cockpit to give them an idea of what it feels like to be killed in a single shot. The game is not much fun for me at the moment.

In my signature, second link, go there and look in the two quotes at the bottom. That's my idea of fun. Battles between 2 mechs, or even 3 mechs, that last in excess of 30 seconds.

Specifically the Muromets versus Atlas lasted almost three minutes because the Atlas kept catching my AC/20 in his arm like he's swatting at beach balls! Sometimes he just moved his arms not even twisting and caught the rounds.

The Misery versus the 4 ER PPC Stalker and 4 ER PPC + Gauss Atlas RS lasted between 1 minute 45 seconds to 2 minutes. The thrill level for me was excellent, and the two other people as you can tell from their quoted responses is they were terrified! Terrified and freaking out because I had survived so long, proven so hard to kill.

That's the thrill I want from this game. Tough battles, tough things to take down.

Even this -- yes, even this was fun.


These, recorded in mock third person by Lordred, were fun.

Spoiler

Atlas D, basics only, AC2, AC/5, 4 ML, 1 LRM-10, 1 SRM 6. Nothing overpowered.


Jagermech 6S. 4 flamers, 2 MGs, 2 AC/10s.


Hunchback 4G. AC/20, 2 MGs, 3 ML. Ninja-assassin goes against a 4 PPC, LL Stalker and a Highlander near 3:40 after lots of stealth.

[MWHawke]

Why dont you just increase the heat of PPCs to 10 (as per tabletop) and ER PPCs to 15 (as per tabletop)

[Windies]

MWHawke, on 22 June 2013 - 05:09 PM, said:

Why dont you just increase the heat of PPCs to 10 (as per tabletop) and ER PPCs to 15 (as per tabletop)

Because it was like that at one point and they were utterly ******* useless, and like I said there was a different FOTM mech and a different mass boated weapon at that time.

[Airborne Thunder]

I hate math and guessing. Are you guys going to have cheat sheets in the mech lab that warns us that our build qualifies for your arbitrary heat penalties?

[OMEGA-CHI]

This game is becoming more like a cheap Las Vegas kiddie video arcade.

Very disappointed in the direction you guys have gone.

Now 6 year olds with $200 brithday money can take out Founders.

THANKS FOR NOTHING


DFA

[Jukebox1986]

Koniving, on 22 June 2013 - 04:28 PM, said:

Now? After having pumped nearly 500 dollars into MWO, I find myself in an Atlas RS that has 4 PPCs, a gauss rifle, and I'm not having fun. I even put in weaknesses. XL engine. 1 point of rear armor. My kdr keeps going up. I feel bad for every light and medium I one-shot. Enemy assaults with similar builds I go straight for their cockpit to give them an idea of what it feels like to be killed in a single shot. The game is not much fun for me at the moment.

I know that feel. I´m an C1 Pilot since the Start. 2LRM15/3ML/TAG - nothing fancy. I´ve played through all the Up´s and Downs´s of LRM`s, played light mechs while everyone was dragonbowling, Played scouthunter-dragons...

And now i have a 4xLRM15 Stalker, an AC40 Jaeger... And almost no fun at all.

[Tolkien]

Janus Wealth, on 23 June 2013 - 01:38 AM, said:

I know that feel. I´m an C1 Pilot since the Start. 2LRM15/3ML/TAG - nothing fancy. I´ve played through all the Up´s and Downs´s of LRM`s, played light mechs while everyone was dragonbowling, Played scouthunter-dragons...

And now i have a 4xLRM15 Stalker, an AC40 Jaeger... And almost no fun at all.

Imagine what the clan UAC20 is going to do - The clanners have a 50 ton Jaegerbomb called the hunchback IIc. It has dual Ultra AC20s stock and due to the ultra AC mechanics in this game it could double tap or triple tap at 320m range (approx 30% longer range than inner sphere AC20) and has jumpjets. Not a lot of armor on that particular chassis but they have a lot of chassis that can mount 2 big ballistic slots, like the vulturec - a 60 tonner with twin gauss.

Then there is the kraken/bane that has 14 ballistic slots on a 100 ton chassis mounting 4MGs and 10 ultra AC2s. It has a variant with 4 ultra AC10s. Nothing will stop a clanner from grabbing a gauss, 2 erppcs (15 damage each, not 10 like inner sphere), and an ultra 10.

The game is going to an ugly place if damage like that is pinpointable as it is now...

Edited by Tolkien, 23 June 2013 - 02:10 AM.

[Koniving]

Tolkien, on 23 June 2013 - 01:53 AM, said:

Imagine what the clan UAC20 is going to do.

The game is going to an ugly place if damage like that is pinpointable as it is now...

If you would, Tolkien, leap back to my one post (now featured as the second link in my signature) and have another gander at it. I went through and edited it a bit, cleaned up some ideas, and even put in one on convergence. Let me know what you think?

[Tolkien]

Koniving, on 23 June 2013 - 02:29 AM, said:

If you would, Tolkien, leap back to my one post (now featured as the second link in my signature) and have another gander at it. I went through and edited it a bit, cleaned up some ideas, and even put in one on convergence. Let me know what you think?

That is an impressive wall of text, built I am assuming by Liao to keep the marik mongols out?
As for your ideas I like the thoughts about making the ppc splash spread damage intrinsically, and about having ACs/UAcs from different manufacturers fire submunitiions that would also serve to spread things around a little.

With that in mind, I still get heartburn thinking about convergence and have a nit to pick about the heat scale.

The comment you have about the heatsinks adding to heat threshold as well as dissipation rate is valid in that it seems to be adding to the problem here by allowing energy builds to fire more weapons more often and more times in a row, causing a sort of exponential rise in short term firepower output with added heatsinks rather than a linear one. Just to play devil's advocate though heatsinks do sort of do this on the tabletop, and here is how: If you have two mechs that can generate 40 heat from weapons fire in a turn, one with 10 DHS, one with 20 DHS, imagine they both fire all their weapons. The mech with 20 DHS can obviously do this twice as often since he has twice the heatsinks. However, the 2nd turn the mech with 10 DHS is still at 20 heat on the 30 heat scale and is slow as hell, can't hit anything, and is in danger of shutting down or exploding, while the 20 DHS mech has no such problem. In short extra heatsinks do effectively give you a bigger heat scale to play with. I do not like how it is manifesting in this game and have similar concerns to you, but can see why it was put in.

My bigger heartburn still comes from convergence, since that kraken mech example with his 14 ballistic slots can still put 14 weapons on the same point in space. With your idea of submunitions that would help that specific weapons system to spread around but would require tweaking and tuning of all weapons systems to make sure they all have spreading mechanics that are sensible. That's why I advocate for doing it on the target side or letting us put our armour where we want it - the community can adapt faster than the devs can patch.

So I like the direction you're pushing and am pushing that way too, but I don't advocate the same methods.

I recognize that my proposal of automatic damage spreading so only the first weapon per 0.X second interval goes where pointed will upset those who want their 5+ boomsticks to all shred the same pixel (despite what that does to game balance), but it's easier to explain this than it is the current heatsink system (e.g. Double heatsinks are 1.4 heat. Well actually the ones in the engine are 2.0 but the ones outside are 1.4. Hang on the first 8 double heatsinks in the engine are 2.0 then the others are 1.4 inside or out... They also add that amount to your heat threshold which starts at X [X=30?])

Edited by Tolkien, 23 June 2013 - 03:10 AM.

[Koniving]

Tolkien, on 23 June 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

I recognize that my proposal of automatic damage spreading so only the first weapon per 0.X second interval goes where pointed will upset those who want their 5+ boomsticks to all shred the same pixel (despite what that does to game balance), but it's easier to explain this than it is the current heatsink system (e.g. Double heatsinks are 1.4 heat. Well actually the ones in the engine are 2.0 but the ones outside are 1.4. Hang on the first 8 double heatsinks in the engine are 2.0 then the others are 1.4 inside or out... They also add that amount to your heat threshold which starts at X [X=30?])

I'm figuring the threshold starts out at 30 for 10 standard heatsinks. 22 double heatsinks when you total the heat of PPCs fired required to get to a percentage of heat comes out to about 90 threshold. 30 / 10 = 3 * 1.4 * 22 = 92.4. If you add in that the built-in heatsinks of an engine (maximum of 10 for 250 engine) are true doubles and the other 12 are 1.4s, then it comes out to 110 something threshold.

We're getting the weapon variants either way so it's a welcomed factor. It'll be weird to see purple large laser beams by x manufacturer, but hey variety is good. Personally I'm looking forward to the Chemjet Gun (another variant of the AC/20).

Moving on...

Automatic damage spreading seems a little... odd, though, and extremely unrealistic. In my idea the weapon variants doing multiple shots to total their damage (as written in lore) would fire in a straight line as any other cannons, but good luck keeping a rapid 10 shot AC/20 burst (2 damage per shot of the Super Crusher Heavy Autocannon AC/20) on the same spot of a moving target. Picture the flash, the smoke generation, etc. on top of the fact that your target and likely yourself are both moving and you really don't even need random spatterings of damage data being thrown at random body parts for absolutely no reason. I'm picturing the firing rate to be 1 shot per 0.1 seconds to total a burst of 10 in 1 second or 1 shot every 0.2 seconds for a burst of 10 in 2 seconds. Either way it's rapid.

You can, however, tack on Homeless Bill's idea of targeting computer stress which combined with multi-shot versions of the current ACs with increasing cones of fire due to firing so much at one time and we now have an entirely feasible solution to do what you wanted but without the unrealistic method random damage distribution. (I mean seriously if I hit you in the gut, how on earth would you explain damage to your foot?)

An alternative can be 'bob'. You're moving. Yet if you zoom in you can't even tell you're walking because you are perfectly still with no bob. In fact the immersion is completely lost zoomed in as you are literally 'gliding'. Solution? Head bob as you walk, causing your crosshairs to bob ever so slightly. It's not much if anything at all up close but at long range you wouldn't be able to snipe and walk at the same time and you'd have to go to a complete stop like a real sniper. Simplest method in the book but somehow lost on PGI in favor of an artificial bob. This is likely due to technical reasons with the server authority.

The free armor distribution thing seems kind of ridiculous, because you and I both know exactly where we'd put the armor. Side torsos, head, torso, legs. With a concentration of 120+ armor on the front center torso of our commandos. It's an idea loaded with ways to abuse it. With any idea someone has you must think of how it can be exploited and abused. (I hate to say it but for this idea, Paul's weapon cap idea is better and that isn't saying much).

On to the table top heat argument...
The reason it's that way in tabletop is the mech with 20 double heatsinks sinks the heat faster than the 10. Trust me once you see a low heat cap and true double heatsinks in MWO, your heat will sink faster so you can shoot more often with smaller weapons but you won't be able to alpha much at all without a shutdown. Snag some megamek. Whether you're a Mercury with standard heatsinks or an Awesome 9M with a bunch of doubles, the threshold is 30 heat. The difference is how fast it cools.

To be honest I like Homeless Bill's idea quite a bit which would make a logical reason for convergence to be taxed. Though realistically rather than a 'cone' of fire an actual machine calibrating pin-point damages of multiple systems would have an "arc of error" to the left and right, where the shots may cross too soon or too late since the weapons do not calibrate vertically only horizontally. The end result would be complaints about bad or slow convergence issues and thoughts that this is a bug.

Many others suggested manual convergence settings (which would make it MUCH easier to hit a light mech with autocannons) that you can tick up and down in intervals of 25 or 100.

My own idea is enable actuator damage. That way if I damage your actuators, they do not aim properly and so your weapons fire off-center. Lower arm actuator damaged, your left/right firing is off so one arm might fire 7 degrees off from where the other arm fires. Upper arm actuator damaged, your vertical calibration becomes 'off'. Compile this with leg actuators and a damaged left leg actuator might drag and therefore you find yourself 'shifting' left as you walk and having to compensate for it. A damaged foot actuator might make it difficult to handle landings.

Those are things likely already planned, of course.

Heat penalties such as blurry vision, blacking out, slower mech, things exploding inside the cockpit, etc. are also ideal.

[Tolkien]

Koniving, on 23 June 2013 - 03:43 AM, said:

On to the table top heat argument...
The reason it's that way in tabletop is the mech with 20 double heatsinks sinks the heat faster than the 10. Trust me once you see a low heat cap and true double heatsinks in MWO, your heat will sink faster so you can shoot more often with smaller weapons but you won't be able to alpha much at all without a shutdown. Snag some megamek. Whether you're a Mercury with standard heatsinks or an Awesome 9M with a bunch of doubles, the threshold is 30 heat. The difference is how fast it cools.

Before I can take the time to take the rest of what you said seriously, you'll have to revise this. I've played a fair bit of megamek and tabletop, and you're completely overlooking that the mech with more heatsinks can fire more weapons in a single turn before it suffers *any* heat penalties. If it does get up its heat scale it also dissipates those penalties faster, ergo it has both higher dissipation rate and behaves as though it has a higher heat capacity.

We can have a lively discussion on whether this game should emulate that or not, with both of us probably leaning towards not, but you need to at least acknowledge that's the way it works.

Koniving, on 23 June 2013 - 03:43 AM, said:

Automatic damage spreading seems a little... odd, though, and extremely unrealistic.

Realism and adherence to cannon both need to take a back seat to making a balanced game. For example, if we doggedly adhere to realism then additional heatsinks add additional thermal mass that takes energy to heat up, so they would add to heat capacity as well as dissipation rate. You might argue that it would be counter intuitive to new players or break immersion, but we're stomping around in fusion powered manbots blasting each other with energy bolts. Let's focus on gameplay mechanics and balance before trying to make the energy bolts realistic.

Edited by Tolkien, 23 June 2013 - 05:17 AM.

[therealswilly]

MY 4SP CAN BE FEARED NOW!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

[DeaconW]

Koniving, on 22 June 2013 - 12:38 PM, said:

Heat management is both fun and skill-building. The lack of it is not.

Just wanted to say the same is true of Repair and Re-arm...but that's a whole other thread....