1263 replies to this topic

[Nostril]

I think the heat penalty per weapon basis might work but I find it just really confusing. I think it would be better to ditch that idea altogether and change that 150% heat level damage to something lower like 110%. Or make it so that increases in heat more than X amount in a 0.5 second interval do heat damage.

[ArmandTulsen]

Why is it that whenever there's a problem a new type of "solution" is introduced?
This this new "heat penalty" mechanic is a flat-out terrible "solution" to the problem of boating, if you want to even call it a problem. First there was things like double armor, then the heat system was made to be special and different, then the whole ECM fiasco, followed by rendering JJs all but useless, and now this.
Unnecessary complexity. It creates additional problems than the ones it attempts to solve.
There have been a lot of bad decisions that were made. Please, don't make more bad decisions.
Follow the damn KISS principle. Trying to be sophisticated doesn't mean it's going to be better.

Edited by ArmandTulsen, 11 June 2013 - 03:41 PM.

[Kyynele]

I'll join the choir.

Heat damage at high heat is good. That is easily understandable, and even new players will very intuitively notice that overheating is something you should avoid.

Heat penalties for boating arbitrary numbers of same weapons is magic that is hard to understand and will make understanding how the game works a lot harder. Which is a bad thing.

So, on a 9ML 4P, you shoot the 6 ML, and generate 24 heat. If you shoot the rest 3 0.4 seconds later, they'll generate 12+20=32 heat. If somebody isn't explaining this invisible law to you, you'll never figure out why it works like that, why those 3 lasers sometimes generate triple heat and likely surprise shutdown you. It sounds like SLs wouldn't be effected by ML boating, so for some reason, switching those 3 ML with weird heat with 3 SL would never do the same, and the heat would instead work like you'd expect it to. This is weird and complex and thus should not be implemented even if it would fix some problem in short term. This route will just lead to a system that eventually no one can understand without reading a manual first.

On the other hand, it is very intuitive that things would start blowing up when you go over 100%. The internal damage should imo go to the parts that the weapons fired were mounted in, or plainly blow up some of the weapons used. I initially preferred the idea of heatsinks blowing up, but there are lots of builds that don't use any heatsinks than the engine ones, so it might not affect everyone in a fair way. But in order to overheat, everyone will have weapons. Losing your weapons would be something people would really want to avoid, and could imo lead to more heat efficient builds being used in general.

/.02$

[BlackIronTarkus]

PPCs and ERPPC are the problem. Nobody cry about any other kind of boating. Dual gauss is not boating nor is dual ac20 despite that last one being a problem indeed.

Heat management should be something important with its own penality the closer you get to 100%. Its labelled 100% capacity for a reason, if you only get penalities at 150% then 150% is actually 100% capacity because bellow 150% nothing happens.

I like some of the weapon buffs, but the LPL buff is more of a nerf.

[HRR Insanity]

DV McKenna, on 11 June 2013 - 03:30 PM, said:

What he proposed was an energy system in effect.
As long as you remain within that energy system CoF does not effect you.

The choice for it is completely in the players hands, and moves alpha striking into oh crap moments.

This is much better than a permanent CoF based on movement and heat, which IMO promotes more static gameplay.

If you glance back at my post, I mentioned # of weapons as a factor in addition to movement and heat. I left it specifically non-defined (subject to playtesting) because it may be the case that # of weapons alone is sufficient to balance the game. However, I doubt that... and the Devs seem to agree because they've just added CoF to jumping... which is one of the movement types I suggested should modify the cone of fire.

My proposal that 'individually fired weapons are always accurate' is completely consistent with Homeless's proposal (single weapon such as GR with a 'bloom rate' of 50 would dissipate within 0.5s leading to accurate shots when big weapons are spaced out).

I have no problem with minimizing the impact of heat/movement on the cone of fire. My fundamental issue is the ability to combine weapons into superWeaponX... so, I'm all good with anything that does that.

Glad you're finally coming around to the fold, McKenna.

[Mechkilla]

Ok, first, thank you for trying to fix a few real issues in this mostly gorgeous game. But ...

Pulse Lasers
Very nice, I liked the big ones on my Awesomes even before they get buffed. But that was mostly because of the lagshield that played a major role during this time. Later I switched mostly to normal lasers. Lighter, cooler and with more range they are mostly better if you have a good aim. The buff is needed, but they are still too heavy (especially for the big range tradeoff).

S-SRMs
Ok, now I understand why your reduction of the splash radius to 5cm was kind of pointless. This system prefered hitting spots that connects the sections of a mech that are the fundamental key components in this game. Hitting those joints mean a lot of splash damage to all sections nearby. Of course that the center torso was the 'lucky' spot. I will not express my feelings right now about your poor implemention that threatened us so so much .
How about LRMs? Are they using the same system?
I hope you will change that quite soon to the explained system. Sounds much better. Please leave out splash damage right from the start (or start with zero damage).

Heat Damage at High Levels and Heat Penalty
Are you serious? 150%? Sure you can adjust this number down but I don't believe you would go deeper than 140% if we are lucky. I think only a few super boats (5-6 ER PPC/PPC) might reach such high levels for a really short time (prove us different if I am wrong). Those pilots will either wait 1-3 seconds longer to cool down to a lower level so they will stay under 150% with their next alpha (or two 0.5-second-half-alphas) or accept the tradeoff of getting small damage (because they will not stay long over 150%).

Think about this:
Our weapon control system in our mechs should be capable of calculating the upcoming heat rise when the pilot is triggering his weapons. Together with the actual heat level it would decide wether it fire those weapons or not. Even the Lostech in 3050 (or before) should handle such easy calculations. The system either shoot all triggered weapons, no weapons at all or just so many weapons to stay under 100% heat level starting with the first weapons in the triggered weapon group(s) list. If the pilot wants to overheat, he has to hit the override button before he pulls the trigger.
With this system you might not need a heat penalty for firing too many weapons of the same type. Easier to understand for all, less calculations for your servers and also better for special variants that depend on boating. It don't make much sense to allow firing all six lasers in the hunchies hunch but punish him if he uses them together with the two single lasers in his arms that are far away from the six pack on his shoulder. Balancing all those different mech types which one can have an exception over the rest will be a pain for you (and might 'detonate' the forum ).

As suggested many times in the forum put in heat penalties that affects the pilot directly not his system (if under 100%). Let him sweat, be a little bit unprecise, blur his vision slightly and even let him pass out for 5 seconds (over 130% or so). An alpha that brings your mech in such ranges should only be for an emergency situation in hope you can kill your enemy in front of you if you can't get away. Such things are already existing in other games (like suppression in BF3 or blurry view if you are highly injured) and are accepted (so you don't have to be anxious about that from your player base). I wouldn't mind if Cadets aren't affected from the start of such things.

Those are my 2 cents . Over and out.

Edited by Mechkilla, 11 June 2013 - 03:50 PM.

[BIix]

Sounds decent over all.

How likely is it that you will take the liberty to implement a UI enhancement along with the heat penalty system? Something like, "a marker for each weapon group that suggests if any individual weapon group, when fired, would result in a heat penalty."

See picture below. (Red ^ means, "You will get a heat penalty if you fire this group.")

Edited by BIix, 11 June 2013 - 03:47 PM.

[Galen Crayn]

The Large Pulse Laser is fine as it is. With the next fix they will be not usable because of the imense heat! Most of the people dont use them now because they have so much heat for their range. To bring the damage to 10.6 is not a good compensation. So if now only 2% using them after the fix nobody will use them anymore.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

Dear PGI:


Pulse Lasers will suck, and will always suck no matter how you change the damage/heat numbers because they are the same laser burn mechanic are normal beam lasers. You (PGI, curent dev team working on weapon balance) must rework how the pulse laser weapon mechanic works entirely.

Just to give yourself an idea, that isn't very difficult, instead of having hundreds of little lasers that form to look like a single continous beam with an "over time" burn damage, reduce that number drasticaly to say, 4. Then up those 4 individual pulses to deal a quarter of current damage. For instance, The Large Pulse Laser would deilver 4 upfront damage laser "pulses" that deal 2.5 a pop damage on target up to 300m (which ALSO needs to see a range increase) in rapid succession. Now, it acts more like a laser machine gun (that, is how they are described in TT which you guys are attempting to hold the spirit of) while being its own weapon catagory, like they are supposed to -- instead of the same exact thing normal beam lasers are -- but with less range, more heat and drastically more tonnage.


For reference on Pulse Laser weapon mechanics vs Standard Beam lasers refer to the following screen shots. Note that despite personal opinion or what have you -- it is literally the same weapon with worse range, heat and tonnage.

mwhighlander, on 11 June 2013 - 08:13 PM, said:

Don't be fooled by the different audio clips used by the pulse weapons. The audio of the pulse laser does not match up with the actual weapon mechanic.

Here is the burn of a pulse laser (Notice the "hundreds" of little dots that fire to make up the continous beam)



And here is the burn of normal beam lasers. (Also note the "hundreds" of small dots that make up the continuous beam).


It is literally the same weapon mechanic with just a shorter burn time. Hence why pulse lasers suck, same weapon with less range, more heat and MUCH more tonnage. Tweaking the numbers will do nothing.

Edited by mwhighlander, 11 June 2013 - 08:21 PM.

[Muffinator]

With respect, the anti boating thing doesn't really address any issues I'm currently seeing in the game. 6 ppc/9ML/2 AC20 builds are for the most part gimmicks, some of them good gimmicks sure, but all with plenty of weaknesses that can be worked around. The builds that I see dominating the meta are heavies and assaults using a combo of 2-3 gauss/ppcs. These are the guys one shotting my medium brawlers often enough that they aren't much fun to play any more. I think a better adjustment would be just to restrict the number of heavy weapons any mech can carry or, ideally IMO, limiting some hardpoints to medium/small weapons. That would give amazing balance control on a per-mech basis compared to a blanket heat penalty which nerfs balanced and op builds alike.

[DisasterMedic]

I find it hilarious that :pgi: doesn't realize the only problem with non-energy weapons is that they are shackling themselves to stupid table top rules to satisfy a vocal minority of grognards instead of just making ballistic and missile weapons actually work.

But then again, that would make the game fun.

[Aerik Lornes]

GroovYChickeN, on 11 June 2013 - 01:50 PM, said:

First off to the fourm users.

Stop being {Richard Cameron}. Responding with some venomous ******* remark will not get you what you want. All it will do is make everyone say "he must be a 6erppc Stakler pilot".

You guys need to give CONSTRUCTIVE feed back. Not nerd rage.

STOP BEING {Richard Cameron}!

I've been here since closed Beta. People have tried logic, they have tried math, and they have tried reason. Multiple better solutions were shown to them back in closed beta and more since. After a while many people just fling poo because it's all they have left.

[RedDragon]

It is nice to see that finally something is done to balance high-heat builds.
But as it is detailed in the OP, it just seems like a bad way to implement this.

As many others have already said: Damage for going into the heat scale should start at 125%, 100% would be even better.

The penalty for firing multiple weapons is - as also has been said many times - a really bad idea. This is a completely arbitrary and unnecessary mechanic that will make the game a lot more complicated while doing nothing to enhance it. You want to add 3rd person view to cater to the casual gamers and then you want them to play a system where you shouldn't use a random number from each weapon because it will inflict penalties on your heat? That really doesn't make sense.
And even with the penalty, 0.5 seconds is a rather odd time frame. Not even a second delay between 2x3 PPCs means nothing, except maybe that lucky head shots won't happen that often any more.

Give us a proper hard-point system and the boating will stop. Give us a proper heat-scale and the boating will stop. Don't just heap arbitrary rules onto another until no one has a clue anymore.

[XX Sulla XX]

Seems like it might work OK considering this is just a starting point. I will have to wait and see how it plays out to really tell.

[Koniving]

mwhighlander, on 11 June 2013 - 03:48 PM, said:

Just to give yourself an idea, that isn't very difficult, instead of having hundreds of little lasers that form to look like a single continous beam with an "over time" burn damage, reduce that number drasticaly to say, 4. Then up those 4 individual pulses to deal a quarter of current damage. For instance, The Large Pulse Laser would deilver 4 upfront damage laser "pulses" that deal 2.5 a pop damage on target up to 300m (which ALSO needs to see a range increase) in rapid succession. Now, it acts more like a laser machine gun (that, is how they are described in TT which you guys are attempting to hold the spirit of) while being its own weapon catagory, like they are supposed to -- instead of the same exact thing normal beam lasers are -- but with less range, more heat and drastically more tonnage.

You just described exactly what they are. They deal damage in 'pulses' or bursts with the most being 6 spurts, each dealing x amount per 'pulse' where the damage dealt is instant per 'thump' in the pulse. You should try using them.

For example the current (not proposed, current) LPL generates 2 damage per thump/pulse, for a total of 5 'thumps' or pulses spread over 3/4ths of a second. Less than 1 second!

While dated, this is just two large pulse lasers and two SRM-2s (Not streaks, Short Range Missile-2s). Since I only had one ton of ammo, it's mostly the LPL. At the time they generated nearly as much heat as the ER PPCs do now.


Response to his rebuttal given later.

Edited by Koniving, 12 June 2013 - 06:56 AM.

[Captain Davis McCall]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 11 June 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

This heat penalty system sounds great, but it appears that it won't do anything to deal with dual AC/20 boats or dual gauss boats. Does PGI not feel that dual ac/20 boats or dual gauss boats are an issue? or is other balancing in the pipes for this? How about 4 lrm 15's?

I'd continue to prefer a system that stacks heat based on the damage output of the alpha rather than the # of weapons fired as the big instant alphas of same weapons are the continued problem rather than the # of weapons - like 9 small lasers.

Also 150% is way too high. Whats wrong with 100% and forcing mechs to be built for more heat efficiency rather than just DHS in the engine and then as many guns as you can cram onto the mech?

exactly!!

I think 100% will be right ...

[White Bear 84]

Kitane, on 11 June 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

1) Treat ER PPC and PPCs as a one type of weapon, ER LL and LL too.

2) Set the PPC limit to 2, 3 PPC + Gauss builds should already be affected by a penalty.

3) AC20 should be limited to one, with a significant heat penalty for firing two at once.

4) 150% heat limit is not going to have any noticeable effect on the game. Most builds will never get that high even if they tried.

This +1. Point 4 - +999999999!

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 11 June 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

This heat penalty system sounds great, but it appears that it won't do anything to deal with dual AC/20 boats or dual gauss boats. Does PGI not feel that dual ac/20 boats or dual gauss boats are an issue? or is other balancing in the pipes for this? How about 4 lrm 15's?

Also 150% is way too high. Whats wrong with 100% and forcing mechs to be built for more heat efficiency rather than just DHS in the engine and then as many guns as you can cram onto the mech?

1. This raises a question - what if dual gauss is canon? Also, do we consider that the gauss is already a glass cannon - the most fragile weapon in game. If anything i would personally argue that the focus should be on the dual AC/20 builds

2. Again, spot on. 100% should be the limit.

I also wonder about the AC/10/5/2 builds, how would these be affected? Would having 4 AC/5's be considered boating, or more to the point, would 2 AC/5's and 2 UAC/5's be considered boating? This could potentially nerf a lot of jager and cataphract builds. I wont deny though that these two are the best heavies right now..

p.s. My personal thought is no changes to the AC/5/2/10 or Gauss.

[Ningyo]

I do like this, and Kitane and a few others beat me to saying some weapons like ER-PPC and PPC should count as the same for these purposes.

I would go slightly further though and say:
ERLL, LL, ML, and SL should all be grouped (3ERLL, 3LL, 6ML, 9SL or 2LL/2ML, or 1ERLL/2ML/3SL would all be fine at once you get the idea)
LPL, MPL, SPL should all be grouped (again 3LPL, 6MPL, 9SPL, or combos just like with regular lasers) these on a separate grouping that regular lasers because they act very differently and a mixed Alpha is not that great really.
ER-PPC, PPC should be grouped (and I think drop these to 2 at once but could be tweaked later)
AC/20, AC/10, AC/5, AC/2, LBX-10AC, and UAC/5 should be grouped (though it should take a really extreme build to hit limits with these 2xAC/20, 3xAC10, 5xAC/5 would get heat penalty, but AC/20+2xAC5 would be fine) {might leave out AC/2 its already very high heat and plays very differently than the others.}


Just my suggestions, I think the concept while imperfect will be an improvement over present. Hope the input helps.


PS: in response to post above me it just doesn't matter, firing 2 gauss at 2 heat or at 7 heat, you could still add a PPC and the 10 double heatsinks in an engine would let you fire nearly forever.

Edited by Ningyo, 11 June 2013 - 04:17 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 11 June 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

If you use damage instead of # of weapons you can easily cap damage at 20 damage every .5 seconds. Any mech shooting out more than 20 damage per .5 seconds incurs a heat penalty equal to the amount of damage over the 20 base damage.

At a glance you can then see just by looking at your "firepower" how much extra heat your mech will build if you do not pace it properly, and know exactly how much more heat an alpha strike wor big hit will cost you in terms of heat.

this creates a simple easy to understand system that gives a benefit and disadvantage to firing more than 20 damage out per single shot.

you could then gives mechs like the awesome quirks like "fire an extra 10 damage with PPC only without incurring a further heat penalty"

in example.

simple, easy, workable, achieves the desired result. also will help with clan tech in the future.

A- Overly complex and unnecessary

But more importantly:

B- High ROF weapons would horribly mislead this system.

[Kodiak Jorgensson]

sounds like it could work, dont understand why they didnt just increase energy weapon cycle times though :\