1263 replies to this topic

[No7]

Victor Morson, on 13 June 2013 - 06:25 PM, said:

They need a small, focused number of players from the community that they actually listen to. Sure the typical pug gamer might not like that (when I suggested it originally, I was practically burned at the stake for being a newbie hating elitist), but the bottom line is if you've got people who understand things helping you balance stuff - the newbies are likely to have a far better time, too, in particular if they put a little more time in to appreciate the changes.

This really can't be stressed enough.

PGI really need to do this. I am just afraid it will be 100% brawler focus.

But, the way it is now where a massive amount of people with no real insight to the game or bigger picture screams about something and PGI does something rash to please them and basically destroying the game instead.

Hopefully things will even out in the end. It took about 7 months before ECM was OK in the game. Even longer with LRMs which are now OK.
So hopefully in 6 months time we will have the JJ nerf removed and a proper JJ design implemented instead.

But this topic is pretty minor. It is less then 1% as idiotic as the JJ nerf.

This nerf will only disrupt the game for a few variations for a few mechs where the JJ nerf broke the game completely for every JJ capable mech. There is a difference. Complain on that stupidity first.

But yeah, this was a bad one as well.

Edited by No7, 07 July 2013 - 03:14 AM.

[AndyHill]

With the current MWO design it's quite easy to create minmax builds and that's a problem. Some speak about limitations not being fair and trying to force people to play a certain way is evil, but I think that's somewhat pointless. First of all, games always limit what people can do and that's a good thing. Who wouldn't sometimes want to choose which piece comes next in Tetris for example? If that was possible, however, the game would lose its appeal instantly. Also MWO already forces people to play a certain way, since instant pinpoint alphas are by far the most effective way to play. Freedom of choice in this case is simply hoping that not everybody realizes that and some become fat juicy targets for us who do.

From the stuff suggested in this thread, in my opinion

- Adding sizes (I would say three levels) to current hardpoints would create variety and make for more interesting 'mech building. The 'mechs in MWO generally carry more hardpoints they can effectively use, so changing to many smaller guns or choosing different specialization (for example taking more and bigger missiles or more and bigger energy weapons on a Stalker) is still possible, but for given setups you will need a suitable chassis.

However, Hardpoints do not completely solve boating, because there are legitimate boat designs. In fact, their ability to boat would make them very powerful if hardpoint rules are implemented.

- Heat penalties would bring new depth and interesting decisions to the gameplay. it could even encourage non-boating and make chain firing more profitable if heat cap was lower and dissipation faster. Still, the power of instant pinpoint alpha is so huge, that people might simply find the sweet spot of weapon combinations that would still allow them to do it - although this would probably be lower damage / range than currently.

However, heat based solutions do not completely solve boating, since low heat weapons can be boated. In fact, implementing harsh heat penalties will make low heat boats the most powerful units on the field.

- Convergence effects are an interesting idea. They would quite probably make instant pinpoint alphas less effective, but the gameplay itself might still be a lot of the same kind of alpha-hide style we see now. Also depending on the chosen method, this might result in superior 'mechs that would dominate - like for example an Atlas RS if it could still converge the arm PPCs / lasers and the torso gauss in one spot.

- Tonnage / drop limits is a good addition for meta at least in certain situations. But I think a robust system needs to be able to handle any kind of tonnages handily, so I think this is a bit separate issue. Besides, mediums are perhaps able to boat less weapons, but they also take less damage before falling, so that issue might go unchanged if there are no other measures taken.

It would be interesting to see all of the above implemented (I would be careful with the implementation of convergence, though) but for reasons different than preventing boating.

In fact, boating is fine. As you already probably know, my solution is simply removing group fire entirely. There have been some good discussions in this thread with well thought-out points so I would like to ask one question to help in my own ponderings:

Why should we have group fire in the first place?

I thought about different ways to prevent pinpoint damage in group firing from recoil, dispersion etc. until I realized that group fire itself might not be that important at all. Should we have it because there are desperate last-ditch efforts in BT lore? Well, lore is supposed to be based on the TT game and alphas aren't a part of it IIRC (at least without clan targeting computers etc. and even then only partially). How about as an exciting last-ditch measure in the simulation game? Well, last ditch measures tend to be in situations when your 'mech is pretty beat up, so would it really make a huge difference if your zombie 'mech fired the two CT medium laser in one boom instead of a boom-boom? To me, group fire as a "last pitch measure" doesn't really mean that an alpha from a pepsi Stalker is the last ditch for the Hunchback that catches it all in one spot.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on why alphas are necessary in MW games, it's a pretty radical idea to remove them entirely so I'd like to know if there's something obvious I'm completely missing here.

[AndyHill]

Forgot one thing: projectile spread. This kind of makes sense for at least some weapons and especially on the move. However, purely for personal reasons I would like to minimize this as much as possible. I have played a lot of WoT and to me the best thing about MWO compared to Tanks is the fluid gameplay with 'mechs in motion blasting each other with accurate salvos whereas in Tanks it's more about positioning and ambushing the enemy. I kind of like the balance between skill and luck in MWO currently, but if a cone of fire system can be demonstrated to offer huge benefits, I can probably agree to that as well.

[Lyteros]

I do not see inflated heat as a good way of balancing alphastriking or boating. It creates a whole new lot of problems instead of really adressing the issue.

The issue is high damage pinpoint alphas. The issue is people can fit a lot of weapons that are ideally under the current meta, without restrictions except hardpoints.

To solve it you have to reduce alphastriking and improve the hardpoint system.
Why not simply cutting the heatsink thereshold bonus in half (or even to a quarter) while giving the mechs predefined heat theresholds according to their type of armament and play?
Like:

Spoiler

The awesome is a heavy energy boat and boats 3 or even 4 ppcs (BT Tabletop standard layouts, which will be buyable like that and trial mech configs), so why not giving it a 30 heat thereshold so it can alpha them one time without problems. The Jenner instead is not a heavy energy boat, so only 10 or 15 heat thereshold. The stalker is a mixed armament mech, so it should not have the thereshold of a dedicated energyboat like the awesome, so more like 20 thereshold. (Numers just for explanatory purposes)
Of course that would interfere with the balance of energyweapons, so you'd have to increase the rate of heat dissiapation, which again would help against high alphas since the game switches from "1 alpha - turn away to protect yourself - wait for the cooldown - turn back for another alpha" to a game which requires you to keep firing discipline and actually aim instead of just pointing your crosshair over the enemy every 4 seconds.
This would also make it possible to balance the required skill for some mechs, since light and medium mechs with less devastating alphas could be made more forgiving in their heat management.

An much easier way would be introduction of hardpoint sizes, so for example the ballistic slot in the Catapult K2 only accomodates ballstics with a maximum of one slot, or the stalkers arm energy slots only accomodate energy weapons with up to 2 slots.

It would also make it possible to easily distinguish mechs and their variants from each other, giving each his purpos and unique strength and weakness.

[Harmin]

arghmace, on 13 June 2013 - 06:59 AM, said:

There's no sense in the fact that a STK-5M with 10, 10, 7 and 6 launch tubes makes for a better LRM boat than Catapults with lots of tubes since they're actually designed with big LRM launchers in mind.

I agree. It's both silly and unrealistic. How comes that when you shoot an LRM20 out of a 10 tube launcher, missiles 11-20 are launched after half a second. But if you shoot an LRM10 twice you have to wait 3.75 before the 2nd salvo is launched ?

Why is one reload mechanism magically so much better than another? I understand the convenience behind this approach, but it's also a bit rubbish.

-Armin

[MustrumRidcully]

AndyHill, on 14 June 2013 - 02:45 AM, said:

With the current MWO design it's quite easy to create minmax builds and that's a problem. Some speak about limitations not being fair and trying to force people to play a certain way is evil, but I think that's somewhat pointless. First of all, games always limit what people can do and that's a good thing. Who wouldn't sometimes want to choose which piece comes next in Tetris for example? If that was possible, however, the game would lose its appeal instantly. Also MWO already forces people to play a certain way, since instant pinpoint alphas are by far the most effective way to play. Freedom of choice in this case is simply hoping that not everybody realizes that and some become fat juicy targets for us who do.

From the stuff suggested in this thread, in my opinion

- Adding sizes (I would say three levels) to current hardpoints would create variety and make for more interesting 'mech building. The 'mechs in MWO generally carry more hardpoints they can effectively use, so changing to many smaller guns or choosing different specialization (for example taking more and bigger missiles or more and bigger energy weapons on a Stalker) is still possible, but for given setups you will need a suitable chassis.

However, Hardpoints do not completely solve boating, because there are legitimate boat designs. In fact, their ability to boat would make them very powerful if hardpoint rules are implemented.

- Heat penalties would bring new depth and interesting decisions to the gameplay. it could even encourage non-boating and make chain firing more profitable if heat cap was lower and dissipation faster. Still, the power of instant pinpoint alpha is so huge, that people might simply find the sweet spot of weapon combinations that would still allow them to do it - although this would probably be lower damage / range than currently.

However, heat based solutions do not completely solve boating, since low heat weapons can be boated. In fact, implementing harsh heat penalties will make low heat boats the most powerful units on the field.

- Convergence effects are an interesting idea. They would quite probably make instant pinpoint alphas less effective, but the gameplay itself might still be a lot of the same kind of alpha-hide style we see now. Also depending on the chosen method, this might result in superior 'mechs that would dominate - like for example an Atlas RS if it could still converge the arm PPCs / lasers and the torso gauss in one spot.

- Tonnage / drop limits is a good addition for meta at least in certain situations. But I think a robust system needs to be able to handle any kind of tonnages handily, so I think this is a bit separate issue. Besides, mediums are perhaps able to boat less weapons, but they also take less damage before falling, so that issue might go unchanged if there are no other measures taken.

It would be interesting to see all of the above implemented (I would be careful with the implementation of convergence, though) but for reasons different than preventing boating.

In fact, boating is fine. As you already probably know, my solution is simply removing group fire entirely. There have been some good discussions in this thread with well thought-out points so I would like to ask one question to help in my own ponderings:

Why should we have group fire in the first place?

I thought about different ways to prevent pinpoint damage in group firing from recoil, dispersion etc. until I realized that group fire itself might not be that important at all. Should we have it because there are desperate last-ditch efforts in BT lore? Well, lore is supposed to be based on the TT game and alphas aren't a part of it IIRC (at least without clan targeting computers etc. and even then only partially). How about as an exciting last-ditch measure in the simulation game? Well, last ditch measures tend to be in situations when your 'mech is pretty beat up, so would it really make a huge difference if your zombie 'mech fired the two CT medium laser in one boom instead of a boom-boom? To me, group fire as a "last pitch measure" doesn't really mean that an alpha from a pepsi Stalker is the last ditch for the Hunchback that catches it all in one spot.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on why alphas are necessary in MW games, it's a pretty radical idea to remove them entirely so I'd like to know if there's something obvious I'm completely missing here.

Well, alpha strikes are canon. They are often last ditch efforts. But they are not pinpoint accurate in canon, either.
A TT "alpha strike" means you fire all your weapons in a 10 second time span (a game turn). It doesn't have to mean that they are all fired together at the same point. It definitely didn't mean they all hit the same spot.


Why group fire can be useful in a real time game:
Humans actually need time to aim. In the table top, t here were no penalties for firing multiple weapons seperatel yin the same round. So the 8ths medium laser shot was just as hard or easy as the first, in any given turn.
In the real world, trying to get 8 medium lasers off within 4 seconds can be a bit stressful. It might be easier to group them. Or equip a larger weapon that deals the same damage as multiple smaller ones.

That said, there is another TT aspect that is important to balance. Damage per shot mattered a lot more in a game without convergence. 20 damage ot one hit location where more likely to do bad things to the enemy than 4 x 5 damage to 4 randomly determined hit locations. (Especially if you also consider criticals - even if you never hit the same location again with any of your weapons - you might have scored a crit and taken out something on that mech.)

But with mouse aiming, hit locations aren't random. It might be a bit harder to hit the same location with 4 shots than it with 1 shot, but your chances are much higher than in the TT.

So maybe it woudl be fair if we force "many-weapon" builds to fire a lot of small attacks, and allow "few-but-big-weapon" builds to fire a small number of attacks only?

[John MatriX82]

Harmin, on 14 June 2013 - 03:47 AM, said:

I agree. It's both silly and unrealistic. How comes that when you shoot an LRM20 out of a 10 tube launcher, missiles 11-20 are launched after half a second. But if you shoot an LRM10 twice you have to wait 3.75 before the 2nd salvo is launched ?

Why is one reload mechanism magically so much better than another? I understand the convenience behind this approach, but it's also a bit rubbish.

Limit the number of carry-able LRMs to the number of tubes. You have a CTPL C4 then you can mount 40 LRMs. Either 2xLRM20 or 4XLRM10. I'd give the system only the ability to mix SRMs with LRMs with the same limitations, so that if the total number of srms exceed that of the available tubes, there's no multiple salvo fire. Catapult A1s won't bring 36 SRMs anymore, but 28 at maximum, non-3H stalkers would be limited to 30 LRMs and the whole LRM thing could be rebalanced, as well as SRMs.

Solis Obscuri, on 14 June 2013 - 02:33 AM, said:

Going after five-PPC Stalkers doesn't fix anything. The dominant alpha boats are (and long have been) HGN-732 and HGN-HMs, and Cataphracts with 2-3 PPCs and a Gauss Rifle.

The heat penalty doesn't fix anything anyway, since the point of these high alpha builds is to put massive damage instantly into a very small target area. What you need is a divergence system for heavy-weapon group fire, which addresses systems like the AC/20, Gauss Rifle, and PPCs.

If you break the advantage in alpha-striking heavy point-damage weapons, people will have to adapt. As it is, they will only have to hit override slightly less often.

Yep, it doesn't fix anything. Not only, it will worse up things, yesterday I took a beating in my 4PPC cheesy stalker because of.. several Misery sporting 3xER PPC + GR. Totally outranging me, dealing more damage ad longer ranges with roughly the same heat output (and the plus to have a non-heat generating weapon such as the GR).

After the patch, 3xER PPCs will overshadow 3 normal PPCs vs the usual 4. We need hardpoint restrictions, maybe not in the way you see in my sig but something is necessary to avoid certain absurdities like k2s with AC40, 5-6 ppcs, LRM 70/90 boats and so on.

Brawling will be furtherly depressed, since we'll all have to deal with greater ranged engagements. This always with rather useless SRMs and with added heat penalties for smaller weapons as well, that have less effectiveness because range-limited.

Edited by John MatriX82, 14 June 2013 - 04:23 AM.

[IanDresarie]

ManDaisy, on 11 June 2013 - 11:06 AM, said:

Personally I think the heat penalty based on weapon amount is a bad way to go. Deciding how many weapons constitutes a heat penalty is very arbitrary, at best based on personal opinion.


150% heat also seems WAY too generous. 125% would be much more realistic as many more mechs other then the most min maxed variants would have fall into this category.


What I would suggestion is a system where max heat generated at once, decreases the effectiviness of heat sinks, rather then create more heat.

20 heat = no reduction to heat sink ability
25 heat = 5% heat sink reduction = for 3 seconds
30 heat = 10% heat sink reduction = for 5 seconds
40 heat = 20% heat sink reduction = for 10 seconds
50 heat = 30% heat sink reduction = for 15 seconds

and so on. As for how long the reduction reduction period last, that would be based on personal prefferance.

So bigger alphas would take longer to cool, with any weapon mix.


This current system also fails to deal with mixed weapon high heat alpha builds. For example, you have y SRM6 boats which also include lasers, ppcs and ballistics. Individually these weapons would not constitute boating. Together however they do.

Just saying, this would be more like the original thoughts for the BT-heat than ever before

[Victor Morson]

I don't know why so many people are opposed to simply slowing 'mechs movement and torso as they approach 100%, so that if a build runs really hot and is coming out of a shutdown, it will be further hampered. It'd be a death sentence for already slow assaults like the Stalker without even having to mess with other stuff.

I also have no problem with the heat threshold.

My sole problem is their attack on alpha strikes, when alpha strikes aren't so much the problem as specific combos of guns being superior because they're mounted on giant 'mechs.

But the bottom line is no matter what you do to this.. if everyone on the field is in an 80+ ton 'mech, playing anything less will never work right (unless you're a scout.)

[AndyHill]

MustrumRidcully, on 14 June 2013 - 04:21 AM, said:

Well, alpha strikes are canon. They are often last ditch efforts. But they are not pinpoint accurate in canon, either.
A TT "alpha strike" means you fire all your weapons in a 10 second time span (a game turn). It doesn't have to mean that they are all fired together at the same point. It definitely didn't mean they all hit the same spot.

That's actually pretty much what I thought myself. Aside from clan targeting computers & pilots (which I have no first hand experience on) alphas don't actually exist in the TT, at least not the kind of alphas we have in the sim. And I believe that's for a reason. And I also believe that if the writers didn't force the pilots to not alpha all the time, they would do it much more often.

Quote

Why group fire can be useful in a real time game:
Humans actually need time to aim. In the table top, t here were no penalties for firing multiple weapons seperatel yin the same round. So the 8ths medium laser shot was just as hard or easy as the first, in any given turn.
In the real world, trying to get 8 medium lasers off within 4 seconds can be a bit stressful. It might be easier to group them. Or equip a larger weapon that deals the same damage as multiple smaller ones.

I think it can be considered a fact that grouping weapons makes it massively easier to deliver damage, especially of course localized pinpoint damage. To me the important question is should such simplification be allowed, and at the moment I think the answer is no (more later).

Quote

That said, there is another TT aspect that is important to balance. Damage per shot mattered a lot more in a game without convergence. 20 damage ot one hit location where more likely to do bad things to the enemy than 4 x 5 damage to 4 randomly determined hit locations. (Especially if you also consider criticals - even if you never hit the same location again with any of your weapons - you might have scored a crit and taken out something on that mech.)

This is entirely true and a very good observation - and IMHO at the very core of the matter. This is why the AC20 is such a fearsome thing in the TT. In MWO it isn't because we have PPC60 that does three times as much localized damage and even the laser45 on a medium 'mech that does more than twice as much hurt in one place. And again I believe we are at the very core of the actual MWO balancing issues.

Quote

But with mouse aiming, hit locations aren't random. It might be a bit harder to hit the same location with 4 shots than it with 1 shot, but your chances are much higher than in the TT.

So maybe it woudl be fair if we force "many-weapon" builds to fire a lot of small attacks, and allow "few-but-big-weapon" builds to fire a small number of attacks only?

And I think this sums my own thoughts up quite nicely as well. This is precisely why I believe group fire shouldn't be allowed at all. The fact that firing a number of weapons consecutively is much harder than getting that one quick alpha in is IMHO a very good thing and balances the fact that with the mouse aiming we can hit more reliably than a TT pilot. I don't know if it's enough, but I really think it would be a good start if group fire as an option would simply be taken away. I'm not contesting the fact that group fire is useful - on the contrary it is very much so and that's precisely the reason I'd like to see it gone. We don't have an RNG spreading shots so I really thing we should take all reasonable measures to make the damage spread around the 'mechs as much as possible.

You are also correct in that bigger weapons do more localized damage. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, although because of the aforementioned differences between the TT and real-time mechanics some measures like ACs firing bursts and PPCs having beam length might be necessary to maximize damage spread. Earlier someone had a good point about defensive piloting not working anymore if you're firing constantly. That might be true in some cases, but it depends on cooldown times for weapons and of course heat can still be an issue from time to time.

[Skydrive]

First off, I like where this is going. Not sure if the 150% should be lower since I don't know how much this heat penalty will apply, but nonetheless. Do think some mechs should be able to boat some weapons better then others due to quirks, like an awesome 8Q firing as many PPCs as a stalker but cooler, and have some mech quirks having heat penalties for running some weapons, like having 2 PPCs will be hotter, and some getting a penalty for firing just one PPC. The quirks should be based on the stock loadout, going deeper into the engineering of each mech. I also don't think there should be a heat penalty for firing multiples of anything but energy weapons. Ballistics are to run cooler then energy weapons for the same damage, but as a result weigh more. Missle weapons are good in their size and weight for damage, but are limited in their range.

[HybridTheory]

I like that this is being looked at and tuned... the system you propose though I don't think will have the effect you are looking for.

As many have already said... it will not in any way effect PPC/Guass builds. Since this is by far the current build of choice, and if diversity is something you are searching for as far as builds go, the heat sink penalty may be more viable. (Again someone already mentioned... adding an increased penalty to the effectiveness of the heatsinks as heat increases.... that would effect all weapons in the same way... the more heat generated, the harder it is for the heat sinks to counter the buildup.)

As far as the pinpoint damage issue that get's peoples blood boiling more and more it seems, why not adjust the PPC ever so slightly. No damage change... no heat change... but a velocity alteration. Anyone else remember Mechwarrior 2? The PPC was a giant glowing ball of plasma that shot relatively slow. Now I'm not suggesting we do that here... if it was slowed that much no one would use it. But if you make it slower than the Gauss slug instead of the same speed... might effect how people use it without rendering it useless. Sure the snipers may complain a bit but who cares? Everyone can adapt. Could be worth a look at the very least internally.

Edited by HybridTheory, 14 June 2013 - 07:20 AM.

[arghmace]

Such a long thread so not sure if someone has already suggested this, but one idea just came to me.

I really like the suggested penalties for having lots of heat like HUD problems and slower movement. But how about in addition add temporary penalties for gaining lots of heat quickly even if this wouldn't really take you high up in the heat scale? This would add a nice little difficulty to alpha strikes AND it even makes sense.

Let' say I have a car whose certain engine parts can easily manage heat of 100 degrees. The important thing to notice here is that when driving the car those parts are gonna gather up the heat over a long time which gives the metal time to adapt. But if I would raise the heat from 20 degrees to 100 degrees in an instant, that would certainly cause some damage to the engine.

[Jhon Nova Clase]

why not just put another factor with heat, make it so the pilot has a chance to pass out, or take damage, or excessive heat blurring the optics in the mech. I would love to see blood in the cockpit after being wounded from a cockpit hit...then risking black outs from pushing too hard...lol

[AdamBaines]

This is a great START. As you do with anything that is developed, you choose a direction to go and see how it works out. I expect to see this evolve as we get closer to exiting BETA. It may start with this method of heat penalty, but end up somewhere else like not restricting what can be fired simultaneously, but by occurring penalties to the mech itself like engine explosions, reducing mech speed by X%, loss of weapons functionality, etc.

Just wait and see how it pans out first before proclaiming all is lost. More then likely it will change for the better and scrapped if its really bad.

Edit: general edit.

Edited by AdamBaines, 14 June 2013 - 07:47 AM.

[Bloody Moon]

arghmace, on 14 June 2013 - 07:25 AM, said:

Such a long thread so not sure if someone has already suggested this, but one idea just came to me.

I really like the suggested penalties for having lots of heat like HUD problems and slower movement. But how about in addition add temporary penalties for gaining lots of heat quickly even if this wouldn't really take you high up in the heat scale? This would add a nice little difficulty to alpha strikes AND it even makes sense.

Let' say I have a car whose certain engine parts can easily manage heat of 100 degrees. The important thing to notice here is that when driving the car those parts are gonna gather up the heat over a long time which gives the metal time to adapt. But if I would raise the heat from 20 degrees to 100 degrees in an instant, that would certainly cause some damage to the engine.

I don't think this idea was mentioned and it seems logical.
However i've posted about this recently on the Blazing Aces (our merc corp's) forum.

Any heat based "fix" on pinpoint high damage alphas will only give a temporary and not fully functional solution.

For example only 2 PPCs can be fired without penalty at the same time.
Snipers will adapt in a way and use the same designs as before except it is somewhat limited for now to 1Gauss+2PPC, 2 Gauss or 2Gauss+1PPC loadouts for now.

Seemingly the overwhelming amount of snipers get reduced until most players adapt to the new meta. Since the core of the issue was not fixed this can lead to 2 conclusions:

1. These designs prove to be just as effective as their big brothers were and we'll get the same situation in a couple of days or weeks we're in now. Except with different dominant designs.

2. The new designs are not that effective anymore to gain widespread popularity and this becomes a sleeper problem which will resurface when certain mechs get added to the game that can mount 2Gauss+2PPC without problems.

Your idea is a more logical version of the one in the OP, maybe it has potential in adding more depth to the game, but sadly it won't do anything about the original problem.

[Buehgler]

After reading the proposed ideas, I felt it was important to chime in.

Then I saw this:

MajorChunks, on 11 June 2013 - 12:35 PM, said:

I don't normally chime in on these topics. But it really seems like you're overcomplicating things by making it weapon-specific. It rewards making arbitrarily confusing builds like ERPPC+PPC+Gauss, or 6 ML+2SPL, and so on. It confuses new players and adds unnecessary hidden values.

A simpler, but almost equivalent solution, is just to scale the amount of heat generated with the initial heat burst, independent of weapon type. So (using completely made-up numbers) if you fire a group of weapons for 30 heat it gets increased to 35, fire a group for 40 heat it gets increased to 50, and so on. Fire 6 PPCs and the heat output doubles, for example. This makes it fair for everyone and prevents silly abuse cases. I'd be totally on board for this, even with my Medium 'mech ML builds.

I do think it would be very interesting to have simple heat-related 'mech quirks. Hunchbacks could have increased dissipation, Awesomes could have an increased heat cap, and so on.

The heat penalty delay could easily be increased to 1 second, as long as it doesn't stack. Even if you're chainfiring, you're at most going to be experiencing penalties for 2 weapons at once, so it's not really a huge deal and doesn't really penalize chain fire much. If the delay times aren't synced up it also gives us the freedom to later tune the chainfire delay individually while still retaining the penalties.

And to echo other posts: 125% seems much more reasonable to me, as far as a heat threshold goes. Overheating past 100% should be serious business.

and realized I had nothing to add.

Please keep it simple, the whole idea of counting how many of a particular type of weapon fired in a particular time window seems far too complex and ripe for abuse to me. Keeping track of total heat generated in a time window and penalizing that seems quite clear/simple to me. The numbers will need to be carefully chosen, but implementing this should be much more straightforward and transparent to players (just keep track of heat generating events over the past 0.5-1 sec and tack on a penalty if/when it crosses certain boundaries.

As for heat damage starting at 150%, that just seems crazy to me. It should start at 100% (ok maybe 105%), the amount of damage should be proportional to the heat level, and it should continue until you are down below the threshold.

[AlmightyAeng]

Anyone notice that since the June 11 gameplay update from Paul...no one is complaining about 3PV anymore? They're all complaining about a convoluted heat mechanic.

Well played, PGI.

Edited by Ghost Badger, 14 June 2013 - 08:27 AM.

[jay35]

HBK-4P as next Champion mech: Purposeful irony or lack of foresight?

Given the new heat penalty will directly affect the 4P's most effective loadout, one wonders if the offering of the 4P as the next Champion mech is an act of purposeful irony or simply the usual lack of foresight.

Edited by jay35, 14 June 2013 - 08:29 AM.

[Atak Snajpera]

HEAT DAMAGE SHOULD START AT 110% not at 150% !!!