1263 replies to this topic

[Sybreed]

Thorqemada, on 11 June 2013 - 08:02 PM, said:

Well, the real big Problem of MWO is that a DPS-Setup is inferior to Alpha Striking bcs its so freaking easy to aim and hit.
Their Alpha Strike Mortality Rating is way superior to DPS builds that tend to spread their damage.

Alpha Strike Build:
Low exposure time
Pinpoint Precision
High crit damage

DPS-Build:
High exposure time
Spread damage
Low crit damage

A different Heatscale does not change anything on that.

that nail?

you hit it

ON THE HEAD

[kesuga7]

good....goood....good!!!!!!!!!!

Srm, flamer , large pulse buffs.....

Coming under fire baby!

[aniviron]

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

Most of the changes seem great to me, except the heat penalty for multiple copies of the same weapon. This is a really arbitary, hard to learn and non-thematic way to nerf the boating. If I'm a new player I'm probably never going to understand why my heat in my 6 medium laser hunchback shuts me down and I'm not likely to believe anyone that tells me since the rule is so out of place agaisnt the others. Most of the rules regarding heat are based on pretty understandable physics - weapons generate more heat as you fail to vent the previous heat and if that bar caps you take damage or shut down.

The fact that a 6 Large laser stalker can generate more heat than one that swap it for 3 PPCs is really odd. Are extended range PPCs considered the same weapon or can I just swap out the 3 PPCs of my stalker build for 3 ER PPCs and avoid the heat nerf rule?

If my mech is mounting multiple AC2s is it also going to be under heat penalty? What about if a Commando 2D uses it's third missile slot?

Most of the changes seem great to me, except the heat penalty for multiple copies of the same weapon. This is a really arbitary, hard to learn and non-thematic way to nerf the boating. If I'm a new player I'm probably never going to understand why my heat in my 6 medium laser hunchback shuts me down and I'm not likely to believe anyone that tells me since the rule is so out of place agaisnt the others. Most of the rules regarding heat are based on pretty understandable physics - weapons generate more heat as you fail to vent the previous heat and if that bar caps you take damage or shut down.

The fact that a 6 Large laser stalker can generate more heat than one that swap it for 3 PPCs is really odd. Are extended range PPCs considered the same weapon or can I just swap out the 3 PPCs of my stalker build for 3 ER PPCs and avoid the heat nerf rule?

If my mech is mounting multiple AC2s is it also going to be under heat penalty? What about if a Commando 2D uses it's third missile slot?

Something else that hasn't been addressed is how this is going to affect missiles. if you're boating LRMs, you can just split the launchers to avoid the heat penalty- just use a two 5s and two 15s instead of two 20s; or will the penalty be per missile? Now it's getting complex, and in a bad way.

[Five by Five]

The more I think of the heat stacking, the less I like it. I could justify if it was done as chassis variant quirks, but I just don't like it as a way of trying to restrict high alpha builds.

The heat sink efficiency solution seems much more realistic to me and much less restrictive in player options and puts much more focus on heat management rather than playing with the weapon group rules.

Heat sink efficiency solution: Ever boiled the liquid in your radiator? Efficiency goes way down. So basically, once your heat goes over 100%, your heat sink efficiency rapidly drops off, which means you are stuck over 100% heat for longer, and the higher over 100% heat you go, the longer per point over you are stuck. That means that you either take much more internal damage if you don't stay shut down, or you stay shut down much longer. So, yeah you can still do your 9 medium build hunchie or 6 large or PPC stalker, you can still alpha all nine and not have some arbitrary scaling factor shut you down, but if you alpha twice in a row, now you're shut down and waiting and extended period because your heats sinks are too hot and only dumping half or less of the heat they normally do.

And I gotta caution on unintended consequences. One of the builds my team was starting to get good results from was a Stalker with 2 erppcs and a large pulse, big engine and lots of heat sinks. Yes the alpha was low but you still did 20 points damage every 3 seconds with the erppcs and you never overheated. As soon as the PPC recycle got bumped to 4 seconds, that build was dead, much better to go with 3 or 4 PPCs firing at a slower rate.

I guess the message is be wary of what the solution is actually doing and if it is really going to have the intended impact. Upping the recycle rate of PPC's hurt the builds that used fewer PPCs and did nothing to builds that used 4 to 6 PPCs. Doing the heat scale solution may hurt the 6 PPC build, but it will do nothing to the 3 PPC 3 Large laser build, nor does it touch the 3 PPC 1 Gauss build. You still will have high alpha builds and people can still get away with poor heat management by grouping weapons around the arbitrary threshold. Doing something that reduces heat sink efficiencies will penalize people not for their build or grouping but for not watching their heat and firing a high, hot alpha/group when they are already hot! And if they do that, then they are sitting duck while they wait to restart.

[MasterC]

I'm not at all in favour of the proposed heat penalty. It is not needed and will only make the game less fun. If it is implemented, I will most likely not play as much or put more money into the game.

[Gerwig]

Pulse lasers need to be buffed, not nerfed, raising the heat on LPL is crazy, they need their tonnage reduced. The sacrifice of range is more than enough to offset the slight damage advantage, extra tonnage is not needed. At this time there is no reason to take pulse lasers over regular lasers.

I don't like the heat fix personally, threshold needs to be lowered and DHS needs to dissipate 2 not 1.4

[White Bear 84]

Just nerf the Assaults and bring the meta down a class or two...

p.s. Interwebs disclaimer; this post is not designed to be taken seriously....

[Caviel]

Quote

We considered the notion of doing a max heat threshold reduction but this would have ended up nerfing every weapon system and every Mech in the game. This is why the heat scale penalty path was chosen since it lets us address every weapon individually and also allows us to take into consideration all Mech builds.

It took a bit for this moment of clarity (I blame the complex heat scaling proposal mental processing time), although you already have this mechanic with the weapon heat generation values. Raising a weapon's heat scale will balance it out exactly the same way without all the overly complex heat scaling per variant rules. Taking a look from just the PPC/ER PPC perspective:

-A light mech can generally mount one PPC. This is balanced in the fact that the light mech is a one trick pony that will run very hot in short range combat. You might get one or two shots before you have to either back off or risk a shut down if you continue to push with a third shot. Same general damage they would do with a few medium or small lasers, probably less over a longer period of time.

-Assault mechs could do 1 or 2 PPCs and still mix in other weapons with good heat management skills. 3 if they were completely devoted to having heat sinks to backstop the heat generation, although you might still hit 75% to 80% heat with firing all three so it's going to run pretty hot. This is a common comment regarding the 3 PPC Awesome, btw, it runs very hot. At 4 PPCs you would generate enough heat that you just shut down from the huge heat spike after one alpha.

Alpha strikes become a desperation or finishing move as intended, not a primary method of fire.

Right now my 4 ER PPC hits about 45-50% heat after a full alpha strike. These changes might bump me up to 60% or so which I can completely avoid if I stagger my shots .5 seconds apart. Even if I fire three alphas in a row, I still won't hit 150% to even take damage unless I don't stagger my shots.

It isn't the mech variant that is the problem, it's the weapons themselves. Tune the weapon heat higher so there isn't such a clear min/max frontrunner in the PPC and Gauss Rifle setup by upping the heat. It's worth a try, and it's a lot less coding and troubleshooting than this new heat system.

[SpiralRazor]

Everything is good except for the Heat Penaties per weapon.

That **** if ******* stupid and will cause players to leave in droves.

Heres a clue for the clueless: People will always min/max and exploit the next best thing....If you seriously attempt to equalize everything, your game will die.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

I'm of mixed opinion (some for, some against) about most of your post ... but this point, I really disagree with ...

and zero, on 11 June 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

Currently streaks really do almost always hit CT on light mechs. More importantly even if they didnt it wouldnt matter. Light mechs are so compact the damage would still spread about the same.

Since they nerfed splash radius to virtually zero, this does matter ... at least I imagine that it does ... we'll see in practice.

In my SRM carriers (HBK-4SP, w/ 2x ASRM-6 for example), I can pretty reliably hit either a light mech's legs or his arms/torsos at close range ... on larger targets, I can focus damage mostly on one component (right leg, left torso, etc.). With my JR7-D (w/ 2x SSRM-2), I almost always hit the CT ... even if I wanted to hit the legs, I couldn't.

I'm guessing that this will be a huge nerf to SSRMs. Just because they always hit doesn't mean that they're always effective. Pounding the CT over and over again ... that was effective.

(I do, however, agree that the missiles themselves are far too maneuverable ... they should fly straight for at least 10m, and have a moderate turning radius while homing. ... 100m seems about right.)

[Dedzone]

Hey Paul, here is a much better idea than you guys trying to complicate things by a factor of x100. Simply remove the heat threshold that adding more heat-sinks gives a mech. Heat-sinks have NEVER increased the amount of heat anything could initially handle. heat-sinks simply give the mech an increased ability to dissipate that heat once it is there.

Get rid of the increased threshold and give the double sinks their double heat dissipation value as they should be and the heat problem of people firing 9 medium lasers or 6 PPCs will fix itself. Since adding heat-sinks currently increases the initial amount of heat a mech can take, THAT has caused a major problem.

Get back to basics and just stop trying to make things so damn complicated guys!!! You are falling into the same trap just about every developer has made, and it just snowballs things and screws it up even more and more.

[Brilig]

150% overheat before you start taking internal damage is a joke.

Out of all the good ideas there were for fixing the issues with pinpoint high damage alpha strike builds you picked this one. Its unintuitive, and cumbersome. You would have been far better off actually addressing this issue by tweaking the way heat works, and the way convergence works.

3 issues it leaves right now are.
1. 3PPC+Gauss Cataphracts. Really popular build. The fix doesn't touch this.
2. Warhawk(Masakari) Clan mech built to carry 4PPCs.
3. Macros. .5 second fire delay wont keep people from putting 2 groups of 3 PPCs in the same spot on anything slower, or bigger than a light mech.

There were a lot of good ideas on the forum for fixes. This wasn't one of the good ones. I know there are a few moderators that are supposed to be pulling out the forum highlights, and funneling them up to you guys. Please read them. Or poke around in here yourselves.

PS. Here check this out. http://mwomercs.com/...ns/page__st__60

A lot of good ideas in this one.

Edited by Brilig, 11 June 2013 - 09:15 PM.

[Haruspex Pariah]

I thought the problem with alpha builds was pinpoint damage, not heat/shutdown.

PGI took elements from the table top but in this case they seemed to miss the fact that the ability to do massive damage to a single locations skews everything off center. The ability of a single weapon to inflict high damage to a single location (AC/20, Gauss, PPC in some cases) is what gives it it's value compared to other weapon systems. If all weapons fired at the same time simply converge on a single point...then you need to rethink everything. Maybe just throw out that copy of Total Warfare or whatever reference they're using because the game changes completely and copy-pasting from TT fails hard.

In case it isn't known, the Battletech tabletop game randomly allocates the hit locations for each weapon fired, making alpha builds far less problematic there.

I still believe that some kind of convergence delay for weapon grouping would work best, proportionate to the number of weapons grouped maybe accounting for size/damage/weapon location/actuators or whatever game balance factor is needed. It doesn't differentiate between ballistics and energy, it doesn't punish single weapon snipers, it doesn't let you cheat by plugging different weapon types.

[SpiralRazor]

Actually, now that i think of it, this will be the most fail patch ever. Too many sweeping changes at once.

And some are just bad ideas.

Edited by SpiralRazor, 11 June 2013 - 09:19 PM.

[ShadowbaneX]

A few comments...(not that anyone is likely ever to see this, but *shrug*)

MG buff is insufficient. They need to be able to crit components like actuators, the gyro or the engine, along with the penalties associated therewith, ie 2 hits to the gyro or 3 to the engine = disabled mech, hits to the actuators = disabled limbs, etc.

Streaks, I'm glad to hear they're getting changed, but is there any provision for rear torso vs front torso. If I'm being shot from behind with streaks, I should be hit from behind with streaks, not in the front.

Also, any chance (even a small one) of Streaks being able to hit the head?

As others have said, 150% heat threshold is too high. I'm in favour of actually killing the pilot if the heat gets too high. Component damage should start @ 100-110% and scale upwards, potentially to 150% at which point the mech should just explode.

Edited by ShadowbaneX, 11 June 2013 - 09:42 PM.

[WolvesX]

My heart is burning for Battletech and MWO... maybe a bit to much, that's why I feel insulted, by such a not thought threw system like heat plenalty.

Its komplicated.
Its artifical.
Its anti-canon.
Its illogical.
Its simple minded.
Its anti-physics.
It solves nothing.
Its unfun.
its just bad.
Adds hidden laws.
Its newb punishment.
Its terrible.

The person who has come up with this,

can not play the game.



It is, simply not possible.

I don't want to harm or insult, but I simply can not belive, that this is the idea to fix what?

Medium Laser boating?

Edited by WolvesX, 11 June 2013 - 09:30 PM.

[Vaan]

Why not just impose internal weapon overheat & damage similar like UAC5 jamming when use more than 4 same class of energy weapons instead of giving heat penalty? Wont it be fair enough for those want to boat?

If use more than 4x ERPPCs or PPCs will result in % chance of getting internal weapon overheat & % weapon hp damage depending on how a player control the firing rate..

4x PPCs = 5% chance of 1-2 PPCs overheat for 20 seconds with % weapon hp damage
6x PPCs = 10-12% chance of 3-4 PPCs overheat for 20 seconds with % weapon hp damage

Example: I shoot 4x PPCs .. weapons cool down 4secs and i immediately fire again ( The weapon overheat/damage kick in )
I shoot 4x PPCs .. weapons cool down 4secs but i wait for 10-12secs before fire again ( Nothing Happen )

Having this method will help players to think twice before really alpha strike as fast as more than twice as the 2nd alpha strike shot may not be powerful and can get weapon hp damage as well..

Edited by Vaan, 11 June 2013 - 09:39 PM.

[Monky]

Vandal, on 11 June 2013 - 07:04 PM, said:

That destroys the strengths of a lot of canon builds.
A bad idea.

No, it just makes them have to click twice. Further, many, many canon builds are already unplayable in practical terms.

Zharot, on 11 June 2013 - 07:06 PM, said:

This just illustrates the insanity of the heat scaling. Shoot one GR, 1 heat. Shoot two at once, 12 heat. Shoot two in quick succession, 2 heat.

Why? Nobody knows.

Why? to spread damage around so that at least some mechs die with other components than the CT damaged/destroyed. Additionally, this is more of 'A Modest Proposal' than a serious recommendation.

Edited by Monky, 11 June 2013 - 09:44 PM.

[Epicedion]

Instead of cranking up the heat from simultaneously-fired weapons, what you should really do is apply that jump-jet scattering routine to where shots are directed in and around the reticle. So 9 MLs fired in chain will all shoot at the same spot, but 9 MLs fired in alpha will scatter all over the place and hit different locations.

You could even use a plausible lore-esque reason that it works like this: basic targeting computers are awful at calculating the proper convergence for multiple weapons situated all over the Mech, since the programs originally used in the days of the Star League for pinpoint convergence are all lost or corrupted or were hacked to pieces to work in specific Mechs. So one targeting computer originally designed for a Shadow Hawk now crammed into an Awesome just can't simultaneously keep all those PPCs at pinpoint convergence without taking half a second to individually calculate the position of each weapon relative to the range and the position of the targeting reticle.

This would consequently slow people down to chain-fire rates for long-range sniping (otherwise divergence would cause excessive misses), and likewise either slow down fire rates to chain-fire rates or else scatter alpha-strike damage across the target Mech in mid-range or close-range fights.

Also since it's a balance that doesn't rely on heat, it could equivalently affect all weapons, not just high-heat weapons (no one cares if two Gauss Rifles fire at double heat).

[grayson marik]

Hmm sounds at least as a method... even if a clunky one.
Why not simply going the battletech way? Something similar like the TT heat penalties?
First reduced speed, then speed +aiming then shutdown and damage, risk of ammo explosion etc. etc etc.

It appears to me that TT already has a complete set of heat rules, that would just need to be translated to MWO almost 1:1 and it would be fine. And it would actually make more sense than just putting a weapon stacking penalty on top of everything...