1263 replies to this topic

[E_Crow]

Teralitha, on 25 June 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

While that would have been the genius way to go, its much better to waste lots of time, energy and resources to re-invent the wheel in your own image.(sarcasm)

Sorry. Forgot to add in (sarcasm) at the end of that sentence.

[AndyHill]

MustrumRidcully, on 25 June 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

So, why not stop people from firing multiple weapons all together?

Nothing too complicated. Remove group-fire, and force a mandatory 0.25 to 0.5 second global cooldown after every shot. If you press the Alpha Strike, you just fire all guns one after another with the 0.25 second delay. It's close enough, a table top alpha strike is performed over a 10 second turn, after all.

...

And you probably do not really want to mess with convergence. Or add complicated subsystems like targeting computers. Or figure out a way to communicate arbitrary heat penalties for group firing to the player.

OH YESSS

Just make the firing delay longer, like 1 second or so. And increase cooldown to about 10s for every weapon. And many many gameplay problems will simply go away.

Edited by AndyHill, 25 June 2013 - 12:24 PM.

[Koniving]

MustrumRidcully, on 25 June 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

So, why not stop people from firing multiple weapons all together?

Lordred said that fairly recently.

[Antarus]

Windies, on 22 June 2013 - 07:13 PM, said:

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.

This is not, entirely, true.

Since the point when PPC's were considered useless, at least 5 things have happened which made them viable:

Heat Reduction below TT values
Projectile speed increased
ECM countering effect
Ballistic State Rewind
Heavies and Assaults with Jump Jets

Even without that first one, PPCs would still be much better today than they were then. Possibly even more balanced.

[Antarus]

Koniving, on 25 June 2013 - 07:25 AM, said:

I had a better one than that. Check out the second link in my signature to find the page.

Or the short-hand version here with the medium-hand explanation one of my posts above it (with the pictures).

It's not remove double heatsinks, it's remove the fact that they raise your threshold to numbers as high as 110 when 10 standards only give you 30. Not only do they cool faster, but they allow you to have an insanely high heat cap.
So if we remove that erroneous and abuse-worthy concept that they raise our maximum heat, and preset it to something like 60 to 63:

• we then have everyone able to do only one to two alpha strikes (small weapons) without shutting down.
  
• More space between attacks.
  
• And to counter this more people will use chain fire.
  
• Buffs lights and mediums whose heat cap could never reach that without dropping virtually all of its weapons.
  
• Nerfs the alpha striking ability of the assaults and heavies as all mechs would have the same heat thresholds (we can say it's an engine limitation or something for fluff), thus removing them as the only viable mechs for more dynamic gameplay.
  
• Assaults and heavies would still be able to fire more often than lights and mediums since double heatsinks would then have true 2x cooling to bring the heat down faster.
  
• Heat management would matter once again.
  
• We'd be luke warm again on cold maps.
  
• Hot on normal maps.
  
• High heat maps could have their temperatures toned down to more realistic settings.
  
• Lots more thought would have to be put into strategies, coordination, etc.
  
• We'd actually have a thinking person's shooter.
  
• Other ideas included in previous posts help with concentrated damage, making gauss + ppcs impractical for min-maxers but usable for anyone without the overpowered pinpoint nature.
  
• It's win-win.

Check 'em out!

Every time Koniving posts, and shows off early beta videos where mechs actually run around and shoot at each other instead of just exploding from burst damage, I sigh dreamily and put hearts in the margins of my notebook, and a big one around 'MW:O' and a smaller one around '60 heat cap', both written in pink cursive, and wish that cheerleading wench of a senior Paul Inouye and friends hadn't tempted it to the dark side and all those crazy college parties with those Alpha-Alpha-Alpha fratdudebros and made him such a bad boy who I can't love anymore.

... It's Not... Creepy.

[Koniving]

Antarus, on 25 June 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

Every time Koniving posts, and shows off early beta videos where mechs actually run around and shoot at each other instead of just exploding from burst damage, I sigh dreamily and put hearts in the margins of my notebook, and a big one around 'MW:O' and a smaller one around '60 heat cap', both written in pink cursive, and wish that cheerleading wench of a senior Paul Inouye and friends hadn't tempted it to the dark side and all those crazy college parties with those Alpha-Alpha-Alpha fratdudebros and made him such a bad boy who I can't love anymore.

... It's Not... Creepy.

I smiled reading this. But In Paul's defense this was a problem in closed beta that just wasn't realized due to only having standard heatsinks. When they put in doubles they realized it was a huge issue, to quote Garth "It removed heat as a mechanic" but I have the feeling they didn't truly understand why at the time. Now it's gone so far that in Paul's own words: "We thought of introducing a heat cap but found it nerfed all the mechs."

..As I said in the signature-linked post, that was the idea. Alpha strikes should be rare and risky weapons fire. Not the only thing you ever do.

(Edit: But yes it is creepy.)

Edited by Koniving, 25 June 2013 - 02:33 PM.

[Necroconvict]

Koniving, on 24 June 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

If that were true, the mech would never shake, the mech would never bounce, etc. and the cockpits would be perfectly still. The gyro is a way to keep balance.

Gyros! Some of the most impressive gyros in the world can't keep a mech perfectly stationary and from the bouncing the MWO cockpits do, we should bounce a bit too. It'd reduce how accurate our weapons fire is.

But yes as in that video notice how they rattle around as they walk? Pretty much what I mean.

Btw, that video is a perfect representation of when you should "do something" instead of arguing -- poor girl. Her AMS could've easily taken out those two missiles it was practically an LRM-5.

Well yes you are right, in the world of today, you are damned right there would possibly be some rattling. Now imagine the world of 1000+ years in the future, I think we can manage to work the kinks out of the system by them. Perhaps you should look at how well some of our robots move today. Such as the Asimo, from Honda. That little guy sure looks to have a smooth walk, and jog. It also looks to be good at delivering things like trays, and holding peoples hands, as well as kicking soccer balls, and only sometimes falls when going up and down stairs. All of this in a little over 100 years. Image 1000 years into the future.

[Koniving]

Necroconvict, on 25 June 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

Well yes you are right, in the world of today, you are damned right there would possibly be some rattling. Now imagine the world of 1000+ years in the future, I think we can manage to work the kinks out of the system by them. Perhaps you should look at how well some of our robots move today. Such as the Asimo, from Honda. That little guy sure looks to have a smooth walk, and jog. It also looks to be good at delivering things like trays, and holding peoples hands, as well as kicking soccer balls, and only sometimes falls when going up and down stairs. All of this in a little over 100 years. Image 1000 years into the future.

Have you seen every game's depiction of the mechs? Even more so, have you seen MWO's very own depiction of the cockpits bouncing around?





Have you read the books?

These mechs are not smooth rides nor have they ever been described as being such. I even recall that some mechs gave you whiplash. Even the original battletech cartoon depicted that you bounce around in the cockpit even just by walking.

The smoothest ride you can ever possibly expect from a mech is in your car on a smooth road. Next time you ride or drive a car tell me if you can stay perfectly still in it? If you do a sharp turn at 40 miles per hour can you sit straight up? Can you even stay perfectly still without inertia pulling you in a 20 MPH turn?

Remember two things: There was a period where much of their technology was abandoned or unimproved for at least 500 years, and that's only counting after 2500 AD. There were periods before that, too. War has been constant and never ending since the day the great houses began quarrelling who would become the next leader. Most of the battlemechs themselves are running off of factories and designs that are in excess of 300 years or more old with virtually no genuine improvements in tech.

The other thing is that the gyros have nothing to do with the fact that your head is perfectly still. Not talking about the mech I'm talking about your head.

Edited by Koniving, 25 June 2013 - 05:05 PM.

[AndyHill]

Koniving, on 25 June 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

..As I said in the signature-linked post, that was the idea. Alpha strikes should be rare and risky weapons fire. Not the only thing you ever do.

IMRO the main problem is that (pinpoint) alpha strikes as a concept are so advantageous tactically that even if the risks were huge, people would still do everything in their power to do them, building 'mechs that get around the risks as effectively as possible. Being able to smash a huge load of damage whenever you see just a glimpse of the enemy is a big deal and DPS doesn't mean much if the alpha-based opponent can cool down safely behind an obstacle, preparing for the next, potentially crippling or fatal alpha.

Although I'm a proponent of heat penalties for making the game more varied and tactically interesting, they might actually be detrimental to gameplay if not done right (which I'm slightly worried about in this case). In MWO the 'mechs are so insanely hot that DPS doesn't really exist. In fact, the alpha boats are better suited for hot environment, because they are built around the concept of blast and hide -warfare whereas the DPS brawlers are committed and exposed once they engage and when they eventually (usually sooner rather than later) overheat, they're right next to the enemy.

Currently the ability to pinpoint alpha strike is probably the number one factor for determining weapon effectiveness in MWO. That's why there are so many PPCs, Gauss and AC/20 around. Laserboats aren't far behind, though, and 'mechs capable of boating LLAS - MLAS -combinations are 11 in a dozen. As long as alpha strikes are possible, PGI have to balance a huge number of weapon combinations instead of focusing on any single one. And that's quite challenging.

[TheUncle]

I think the gameplay changes proposed are good

[Koniving]

AndyHill, on 25 June 2013 - 11:28 PM, said:

IMRO the main problem is that (pinpoint) alpha strikes as a concept are so advantageous tactically that even if the risks were huge, people would still do everything in their power to do them, building 'mechs that get around the risks as effectively as possible.

I'm aware. But if you backtrack enough or just click on the link in my signature, by the time you get through the balance tweaks of my post the only pinpoint weapons are the gauss rifle (which has its explosive drawbacks) and the laser. Since people always move with lasers it's not truly pinpoint.

My changes inevitably make pulse lasers the only most powerfully concentrated and useful boating weapon aside from twin / triple Gauss Rifles and you know what kind of high-risk death trap that is for the user. With my proposed threshold limit 2 AC/2s, 2 PPCs and 2 MPL were extremely hard to manage and that was firing very, very, very sparingly. Imagine what an LPL boat must suffer?

If the convergence tweaks are not in the second link in my signature, then try here for the medium-hand, or a post of mine below it for the short-hand.

Edited by Koniving, 26 June 2013 - 09:06 AM.

[BatWing]

I just read this "announcement" about the Boating Solution.. lol.. it looks like I am in late of about a few hundreds posts.. lol.. yeah.. i don t pay too much attention to this kind of "news".

However, i just want to post my 2c. and this will go simply lost in this infinite reply thread.

Besides being good or bad or just a way to start a "work in progress' on this subject, what i noticed and I didn not like it was:
... an HBK 4p is considered a Boat and most importantly has to follow the Boat rules.

First of all, the actual META completely killed MEDIUM mechs. just stab a bit more a poor Medium chassis, because they didn t get it enough.

Really?? an HBK 4P is considered an issue? with 9 ML that need to stay on target for a couple of seconds to deliver a semi-decent damage ?? That poor useless Mech, need to be further nerfed down to use max 6ML at once?
Not only the "hunch" has the lowest survivability in the entire game, but it has to suffer a "minus" if it uses its full potential.

Devs, what are you thinking?

Here the issue are not the "beam" weapons but the "instant shot - Instant damage" weapons, aka PPCs, GAUSS, ACs.

You need to work on preventing THAT kind of boating, not on preventing any use of Medium mechs.

What has been done so far?

SRM Nerf = CN9 chassis useless now, Any medium counting on the SRM firepower is useless now, aka HBK 4sp.

Why? because a freaking HEAVY and an ASSAULT, see Catapult C1 and Stalker are SRMS BOATs. So, nerf the boat and kill the Medium on the path.

You are geniuses in your adjustment, thats what i have to say.

[Demuder]

Koniving, on 25 June 2013 - 05:01 PM, said:

Have you seen every game's depiction of the mechs? Even more so, have you seen MWO's very own depiction of the cockpits bouncing around?

Just nitpicking here, please consider this a "fun" post, not something to hold on to. I will try to be as simplistic as possible without betraying my scientific background.

Actually humans and pretty much every animal that moves has a gyro and a built-in system to hold certain body parts steady. There is no gyro per se, rather an assortment of sensors and organs that more than make up for the functionality of a gyro.

In terms of resources allocated to this system, they are varied in quality and quantity among the species, but they are quite significant. Namely, in all vertebrates, you have the cerebellum, the inner-ear system, joint, tendon and muscles sensors and a very complex reflex system that evaluates body stance and spacial positioning constantly as well as maintaining it through the musculoskeletal system..

Lorewise, that's why the neuro helmet taps in the brain's ability to process the mechs stance. It is far more advanced than anything we could realistically build.

All that boils down to this. Shaking violently, would hardly impair your visual concentration and/or focus. The above system is designed to keep the eyes and brain as steady as possible. You can see the difference by jogging over a distance while taking a video with your phone at eye level - turn off any technology that would remove motion shake in the phone. The video you have taken will be pretty much un-viewable and Blair-Witch-Project-level annoying. The reason you don't get that feeling when walking around looking through your eyes is that your built-in gyro keeps your eyes (by moving them or adjusting your head positioning) as steady as possible in relation to what your are watching through a complex system of reflexes in your cervical and ocular muscles, as well as filtering everything through a pretty advanced motion shake filter in your occipital lobe (the lobe responsible for interpreting visual stimuli).

The above process is even more evident if you have access to a chicken. Grab it by holding its wings against its chest (come on, I know you all know how to grab a chicken) and shake it violently. Alternatively you can do this with your cat, but it won't as evident due to the shorter neck. You will see that its head effortlessly remains relatively level and motionless no matter how hard you shake the body.

Based on all this, the visual representation of the JJ shake is pretty accurate. In order to have the terrain shake violently, the mech would need not only shake but actually spin on at least two axis (axii ?). Otherwise the pilot's eyes would keep their focus (again dues to occular and cervical muscles) and cerebral filtering and interpretation would augment that as well. On top of that, the reticule shake is also quite realistic, since it lies on a point in an imaginary line that goes eye-hud reticule-object. The direction of the line shifts constantly while JJ shaking. The object it targets is stationary, but the pilots eye and the HUD shake - in a non-linear way as well. This means that the HUD has to update the position of the reticule constantly in various directions, thus making it shake.

TL:DR. It is a slow day at the office. I hope you had as much fun reading this as I had writing it.

All that being said, excellent ideas about balancing heat Koniving. Watching your videos makes me feel sorry of missing the founder's promotion and closed beta. I would like to see your suggestions given some serious thought by PGI. I think that with additional small tweaks to convergence - like partial or total implementation of Homeless Bill's system - they would give us a very robust and interesting gameplay.

[AndyHill]

Koniving, on 26 June 2013 - 09:02 AM, said:

I'm aware. But if you backtrack enough or just click on the link in my signature, by the time you get through the balance tweaks of my post the only pinpoint weapons are the gauss rifle (which has its explosive drawbacks) and the laser. Since people always move with lasers it's not truly pinpoint.

My changes inevitably make pulse lasers the only most powerfully concentrated and useful boating weapon aside from twin / triple Gauss Rifles and you know what kind of high-risk death trap that is for the user. With my proposed threshold limit 2 AC/2s, 2 PPCs and 2 MPL were extremely hard to manage and that was firing very, very, very sparingly. Imagine what an LPL boat must suffer?

If the convergence tweaks are not in the second link in my signature, then try here for the medium-hand, or a post of mine below it for the short-hand.

I've read the posts and I do like your ideas about heat - I'm not sure if it's the ultimate solution ever, but the direction is correct - but I don't think they are the solution to alphaing. Yes, they would limit firepower for a while, but soon PPCs and LLs would be back with a vengeance, simply because of the way PGI balances things. We have actually already gone through this and I think you were there when Gauss Cats rules the land of ML in between catastrophic LRMpocalypses. PGI sees that some weapons are underused and they get a buff.

Since the most important determining factor for a weapon's usefulness in MWO is its ability to be alpha-boated, PPCs would eventually return and we would be right back where we started, probably with a layer of two of convoluted stop-gap measures bolted on top by PGI. In fact I hypothesise that because of pinpoint-alphaing there will by design invariably and always be a clear weapon of choice and a group of more or less useless ones. Depending on the heat level and penalties it's PPCs, MLAS, Gauss or whatever everywhere depending on what is the sweet spot between alpha power and frequency.

In fact, one of the reasons you see such straightforward builds is MWO being so intensely hot already and although heat penalties would be good for gameplay, they wouldn't help balance at all unless heat is made more manageable. There is never a point where you would be better off taking kicker weapons that would be useful in certain specific situations, because it is always and every time more useful to take heat sinks or ammo instead, no matter what main weapons you are fielding.

As for the comments on removing group fire (what I've been campaigning for since beta), your friend had the right idea but missed slightly on the execution. Of course you couldn't fire groups any more frequently than you could individual weapons. Groups would simply be used to pick which one you want to shoot next. There would always be a global cooldown even if you used weapons from different groups. To me it's just such a simple and absolutely effective way to limit alphas and make the gameplay more BTech-like.

I don't believe heat should be used to limit firepower, because it's simply one factor of many that effect weapon balance. In fact I think that the new balancing factor in MWO (alphaboatability) is destroying the gameplay and any and all balancing efforts in the past and the future. It's the biggest difference between tabletop and simulation and as long as it exists, tools from BTech (heat, size, weight, range, damage) will never be able to balance the gameplay. I can't prove it, haven't had the time to do my homework on the subject, but I have a very strong hunch (more on the belly side) that this is indeed the case and nothing short of removing alpha strike will bring balance to the mechforce.

Edited by AndyHill, 27 June 2013 - 11:55 AM.

[Rinkata Prime]

AC40 problem is only MWO problem not any previous MechWarrior game.
Make Autocannons do burst fire instead of a single shot with spread depended on shell size, like they always do before MWO. It will be the only solution. Also you can increase spread if autocannon placed in Mech arm and decrease spread if it is in a torso.
So dual AC20 will still do a lot of damage, but it will be very hard to shoot one piece of targeted Mech.
And no heat penalty.
Also burst length depended on shell size will help a lot. For example if AC2 burst length is 2 and it has a very low spread, then AC20 burst length must be 10 with high spread. Look at LBX now and how players use them - they try to come closer - and how they use AC20? dual AC20, 400 metters range - BANG, nice shot, next one.

And projectile spread must be not only Autocannon problem. PPC and Gauss Rifle must be not so accurate. If it will be so, 6x PPC will look like a shotgun. And not so much spread need to make a solution - 2 or 3 degrees will be enough.
And no heat penalty again.

Edited by Rinkata Kimiku, 27 June 2013 - 06:18 AM.

[Milt]

ok, 63 pages of mainly discontent about this proposed change. have we heard anything at all from the devs to even remotely show us that they are taking our thoughts in to consideration?

[Koniving]

Rinkata Kimiku, on 27 June 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

AC40 problem is only MWO problem not any previous MechWarrior game.
Make Autocannons do burst fire instead of a single shot with spread depended on shell size, like they always do before MWO. It will be the only solution. Also you can increase spread if autocannon placed in Mech arm and decrease spread if it is in a torso.
So dual AC20 will still do a lot of damage, but it will be very hard to shoot one piece of targeted Mech.
And no heat penalty.
Also burst length depended on shell size will help a lot. For example if AC2 burst length is 2 and it has a very low spread, then AC20 burst length must be 10 with high spread. Look at LBX now and how players use them - they try to come closer - and how they use AC20? dual AC20, 400 metters range - BANG, nice shot, next one.

And projectile spread must be not only Autocannon problem. PPC and Gauss Rifle must be not so accurate. If it will be so, 6x PPC will look like a shotgun. And not so much spread need to make a solution - 2 or 3 degrees will be enough.
And no heat penalty again.

The variant part of that proposal is already in the works, actually. In two separate ATDs it's been referenced and in Paul's own post that we're all so discontented with it's been said that pulse lasers have been standardized for something upcoming. That would be weapon variants. Not long from now we'll be seeing purple large lasers, pink small lasers, and who knows what else. Among them would hopefully be the Chemjet Gun (3 to 5 round slow-fire AC/20), the Super Crusher Heavy Autocannon (10 round rapid burst AC/20), and several others.

Time will tell if PGI pulls these multi-shot ACs smoothly or if they make mistakes in the execution. I actually hadn't considered the idea of a spread as it sounds more like a shotgun. Though 'recoil' would be an ideal factor. In firing it the recoil jerks the cannon upward and you have to fight it with your mouse. That would be cool and fitting with their original vision (as PPCs had such strong recoil that the arms thrust high into the air).



The main reason I'm vouching for removing the raising heat threshold is back in closed beta, everyone had to chain fire since the heat threshold possibility for standard heatsinks and the slow cooling we couldn't alpha strike more than twice or we'd shut down and that's with 9 small lasers! If we did it a third time before cooling off it was instant death. Even in this video, the mechs are chain-firing. Bam. Bam. Even the small lasers are being chain-fired.

If one to two alpha strikes (depending on weapons) would bring us to shut down, and a second or third kill us, we'd basically remove most of the issues we're having. Those who still used those high alpha builds would have to sit and wait to cool off which makes them extremely vulnerable.

[Solis Obscuri]

Koniving, on 27 June 2013 - 08:51 AM, said:

The main reason I'm vouching for removing the raising heat threshold is back in closed beta, everyone had to chain fire since the heat threshold possibility for standard heatsinks and the slow cooling we couldn't alpha strike more than twice or we'd shut down and that's with 9 small lasers! If we did it a third time before cooling off it was instant death. Even in this video, the mechs are chain-firing. Bam. Bam. Even the small lasers are being chain-fired.

What Beta were you playing? Everyone was boating small lasers in their Swaybacks and Jenners in Closed Beta for MWO. They weighed next to nothing, hit hard at close range, and were the only energy weapon that didn't quickly overheat you with SHS.

I disagree with making autocannons fire bursts - they'll just become overweight lasers, and it'll ninja-buff PPCs and Gauss Rifles.

[Koniving]

Solis Obscuri, on 27 June 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

What Beta were you playing? Everyone was boating small lasers in their Swaybacks and Jenners in Closed Beta for MWO. They weighed next to nothing, hit hard at close range, and were the only energy weapon that didn't quickly overheat you with SHS.

I disagree with making autocannons fire bursts - they'll just become overweight lasers, and it'll ninja-buff PPCs and Gauss Rifles.

Autocannons by lore fired in bursts, very few if any fired single shots. If you read the other posts, PPCs would be ninja-nerfed by the dispersion concept, leaving only Gauss Rifles to be the go to weapon for concentrated fire. As easily as gauss rifles are taken out it won't be much of an issue.

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. Autocannon are grouped into the following loose damage classes:

• Autocannon/2
  
• Autocannon/5
  
• Autocannon/10
  
• Autocannon/20

Beyond the "standard" models, variants include the shotgun-like LBX, quick-firing Ultra and the gatling-type Rotary. Light-weight variants and capital ship scale models also exist. The experimental Hypervelocity Autocannon has also entered limited production.[2][3]

Caliber
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.

The Chemjet Gun is mentioned elsewhere as doing 3 shells per burst.

Also I played this closed beta. Enjoy it.

Spoiler

It was a really fun game.

[Solis Obscuri]

Koniving, on 27 June 2013 - 03:09 PM, said:

Also I played this closed beta. Enjoy it.

It was a really fun game.

I know. Teasing.

I miss the days of CB sometimes.

But on a serious note, I do think that damage-spreading ACs would be boat-anchors, regardless of the fluff-descriptions.