176 replies to this topic

[Skyfaller]

Paul,

The heat solution of adding heat penalties to boated weapons will not work. Why? Because the only thing it will do is push people into the heavier, higher damage weapons which cannot be boated in large numbers to begin with.

For example, dual AC20 jagers. Is it a boated weapon? No. Its only 2 weapons. But they do 40 damage in pinpoint location.

Dual Gauss. What heat penalty when this weapon produces no heat? It does 15dmg per gun.

AC2, AC5 and AC10 would cease to be used. UAC5 would be suicidal to use in more than 1 gun as it would double-tap heat penalty your mech to its doom.

If you put heat penalties to the larger weapons when loading more than 1 of them you ruin weapon symmetry and literally force people into cookie cutter mech builds.

The game has two major design issues:

1- Alpha boating.
2- Pinpoint accuracy.

#1 is due to the dual heatsinks. No other reason. DHS is the very reason why boating is possible. Engine DHS to be more precise.
#2 comes from the game being 1st person shooter and you guys making it an arcade click'n'shoot game. BT did not have pinpoint firing, it was random roll hit location.

So, how to fix the game?

1- Re-work the heatsink mechanics. Make single heatsinks have 2.0 heat capacity and 1.0 dissipation while DHS have 1.0 heat capacity and 2.0 dissipation. The result is those who want to be able to fire 3 or 4 boated alphas before shutdown pay for doing so with a glacial cooling time. Those that pick DHS cant spam alpha because they dont have the heat capacity for it but they can cool weapons quickly which greatly benefits brawling chain fire.

2- There is a way to remove pinpoint accuracy while still allowing the player to aim in 1st person shooter. World of Tanks uses it.

Simply put, there is a dispersion cone built into the aimpoint. The longer the aimpoint remains aimed at a certain range the narrower the cone becomes. If the aimpoint is moved around the dispersion cone expands.

This system alone turns MWO arcade into Battletech combat.

There are two ways to implement the system:

A- All weapons use the dispersion cone system.
B- Torso mounted weapons do not converge and instead fire straight ahead while arm weapons have the ability to converge.

Option B would make the game far more BT like as hit dispersion would be highest while still permitting pinpoint accuracy of arm mounted weapons IF they aim at a location long enough to narrow it down to where it has a high chance of both arm guns hitting the same armor plate. It would also make mechs with mobile hands have an advantage..which they did in BT.


Apply both fixes to heatsinks and add the dispersion system and your game will be fixed.

[Karl Streiger]

Mostly I second your posting...
however ... we still didn't get any information about "stacking" of any other weapon as the PPC and the MLAS
(i expect that there is a 3 ER PPC barrier as well (AWS-9M) - but most other weapons appear in pairs only.
So will there be no penalty or penalty for every weapon above 2...

more information from Devs would help much to prevent rage....

however i totaly agree with ideas about heatsinks and cone... however most will dislike it because of skill™ so prepare to get shelled

[Svalfangr]

They have allready stated that certain weapons will generate more heat when stacked with less IE it only takes 4 PPCs to start feeling heat penalties.

So i would imagine it would only take 2 AC/20s for a massive heat penalty.

[Tennex]

They can simply lower the heat penalty on the smaller AC weapons.
and increase it for bigger weapons lol

[HighlandCoo]

I dunno - I kind of like the heat system idea. I'm willing to give it a try before complaining about it.

I kind of think that a "convergence cone" is a mechanic that LOTS of games have, but ONLY mechwarrior has Heat. It's a unique selling point and so I think we should stick with it before lazily implementing what loads of other games have done - with varying degree's of success.

PSST - Dont forget that in WOT your tank can be invisible if it sits still in a bush. There is no such thing in mechwarrior so convergence would actually be a bit of a bummer.

[Tennex]

HighlandCoo, on 12 June 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

I dunno - I kind of like the heat system idea. I'm willing to give it a try before complaining about it.

I kind of think that a "convergence cone" is a mechanic that LOTS of games have, but ONLY mechwarrior has Heat. It's a unique selling point and so I think we should stick with it before lazily implementing what loads of other games have done - with varying degree's of success.

PSST - Dont forget that in WOT your tank can be invisible if it sits still in a bush. There is no such thing in mechwarrior so convergence would actually be a bit of a bummer.

i like the concept behind paul's idea.

but i hate the numbers. they don't seem to be tailored to this game even. Hopefully they were just numbers used to illustrate example.

[scJazz]

The Heat Scale Solution won't work for far simpler reasons than that. It has a 1 word answer in fact.

Macro

Because anyone with half a brain will Macro a 0.51 sec delay into their Swayback, Stalker, whatever.

Any solution that can be overcome with minimal effort by using a Macro is doomed to failure. All you have done Paul is ensure that newbs who don't have macros will get ROFLSTOMPED by !newbs who do.

WTG!

This doesn't even consider the 1 GR, 3 PPC setups we will be seeing... already see... or address future builds!

[Sam Slade]

Great post. Great ideas, particularly the second one: the more I play the less enthused I am by MWO... I feel like I may as well play something like CS.

[3rdworld]

So PPCs are really good, so much so that people stick as many as possible on pretty much any mech with energy points.

So lets nerf aiming.

If you get heat corrected to value DPS over alpha, you will fix the "pinpoint" damage issue without have to implement artificial limitations to skill. Adding in Cone of Fire is more or less reverting Host State Rewind.

[HighlandCoo]

3rdworld, on 12 June 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

Adding in Cone of Fire is more or less reverting Host State Rewind.

Very well put. Lets stick with the unique mechanic which is HEAT. Forget your WOT cone of fire random number generator nonsense.

[Svalfangr]

scJazz, on 12 June 2013 - 05:52 AM, said:

The Heat Scale Solution won't work for far simpler reasons than that. It has a 1 word answer in fact.

Macro

Because anyone with half a brain will Macro a 0.51 sec delay into their Swayback, Stalker, whatever.

Any solution that can be overcome with minimal effort by using a Macro is doomed to failure. All you have done Paul is ensure that newbs who don't have macros will get ROFLSTOMPED by !newbs who do.

WTG!

This doesn't even consider the 1 GR, 3 PPC setups we will be seeing... already see... or address future builds!

So all they need to do is make it so you cant use macros.

They are nothing but exploits anyway.

[Roland]

Quote

The heat solution of adding heat penalties to boated weapons will not work. Why? Because the only thing it will do is push people into the heavier, higher damage weapons which cannot be boated in large numbers to begin with.

Since they are able to adjust the heat penalties, and the number of weapons fired which trigger them, this is not a true statement.

Since PPC's will trigger larger heat penalties while only firing 3-4 of them, while smaller energy weapons will not trigger those heat penalties until you fire more of them, then your worries here are unfounded.

Quote

The Heat Scale Solution won't work for far simpler reasons than that. It has a 1 word answer in fact.

Macro
Because anyone with half a brain will Macro a 0.51 sec delay into their Swayback, Stalker, whatever.

Macroing in a half second delay will result in you spreading those shots over multiple locations, which is actually the real issue that they are trying to address.

Macros aren't really going to help you get around the heat penalty, without sacrificing accuracy.

[Bagheera]

Tennex, on 12 June 2013 - 05:51 AM, said:

i like the concept behind paul's idea.

but i hate the numbers. they don't seem to be tailored to this game even. Hopefully they were just numbers used to illustrate example.

Where are these numbers?

I'd hate to think that suddenly every energy hard-point laden medium is suddenly even more worthless because Paul can't come up with a solution for 6PPC stalkers without nerfing ******* medium lasers.

[Chavette]

Why do you say ac5 or ac1O would suffer from this, they havent even published a number for minimum penalty. And by the looks of the 6ml thing, they are pretty generous. Calm down.

[Kaldor]

How about we leave heatsinks alone, and just fix the heat system right?

Reduce heat cap by 50%, increase dissipation by 50%. Leave everything else alone, test it, make changes from there.

Convergence cone? No thank you. I do not need to be penalized by the game for being a good shot.

The issue is not convergence. The issue is not pin point accuracy. The issue is a heat system that allows people to alpha too many high damage front load weapons like PPCs, gauss, and AC20s with no real penalty. If you increase the amount of shots they have to take to keep from over heating, their accuracy will not go down, but as a side effect they will need to expose themselves longer to get damage on target, instead of step out, alpha, and step back in to cool.

[Crimson Fenris]

Pretty smart idea, I like the dispersion cone solution, and the heatsink revamp that will makes SHS useful again.

If the heat penalties was retained, I proposed another solution for calculating them, as I strongly believe there must be some penalties from firing multiple weapons at once (but maybe not the numbers that have been submitted by PGI).

The system will penalize more the higher heat weapons, and all thats required is to setup a desired graphic with linear, than apply those values for each case, instead of giving some artificial numbers that imbalance all the non-OP builds.

Let's have a look in my post and let me know what's your thoughts about that

[Livewyr]

3PPC/1Gauss Highlander.

[Roland]

Quote

The issue is not convergence. The issue is not pin point accuracy.

Technically, these actually are exactly the issues that are breaking the balance of the Battletech game design.

People may be afraid of various solutions to those problems, but they ARE the problems, whether you want to admit it or not. They are the root of why high alpha, boated weapons will always dominate mechwarrior. And they always have been.

[Skyfaller]

HighlandCoo, on 12 June 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Very well put. Lets stick with the unique mechanic which is HEAT. Forget your WOT cone of fire random number generator nonsense.

BT was a random number generator 'roll' to determine where each weapon hit. WOT's cone of fire is ideal for MWO and it works in tandem with heat system. Heat controlling the rate of fire/damage output max while the cone of fire controlling the hit rate.

MWO's cone of fire narrowing speed would be equivalent to a mastered tank using the 76mm american gun (fast). The whole idea is to have on-the-move firing be generally accurate enough to hit a mech's body but not accurate enough to pinpoint it all in one armor section. For that, you would need to STOP your mech and fully aim.

HighlandCoo, on 12 June 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

PSST - Dont forget that in WOT your tank can be invisible if it sits still in a bush. There is no such thing in mechwarrior so convergence would actually be a bit of a bummer.

There is ECM and there is also stopping your mech and aiming, firing and then moving. There's also range..many times ive sat at 1.1km dumping AC2 and ER PPC into people equipped with med lasers. There is also the fact that much of the game you can stand still aim and fire at enemy mechs that brawl with one of your team-mates.

Svalfangr, on 12 June 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

They have allready stated that certain weapons will generate more heat when stacked with less IE it only takes 4 PPCs to start feeling heat penalties.

So i would imagine it would only take 2 AC/20s for a massive heat penalty.

That's where the problem with Paul's solution lies. You begin to make up little rules for every weapon type and that becomes overly complicated and very hard to balance.

Why would 4 PPCs fired at once, inflicting 40 damage, have no heat penalty when 2 AC20s doing the same 40 damage (and weighing more plus ammo plus slot cost) would have a heat penalty? Both do 40 damage and both do it in pinpoint. What about Gauss? 15 damage no heat, less slot/weight cost than ac20... i could boat 2 of those instead.

The problem is not just heat cost. Its pinpoint accuracy of high damage boated weapons (or lots of medium/small damage fired at once to add up to high damage). The heat issue comes into play AFTER the pinpoint accuracy does its thing: You can fire a 2nd or 3rd or 4th massive damage alpha at the same spot because your heat allows it.

Hence, to fix things, you need to remove the pinpoint fire, allow boating but make the penalty for it come from the heatsink mechanics not in the form of heat penalties or tweaking heat cost of weapons.

[Bilbo]

scJazz, on 12 June 2013 - 05:52 AM, said:

The Heat Scale Solution won't work for far simpler reasons than that. It has a 1 word answer in fact.

Macro

Because anyone with half a brain will Macro a 0.51 sec delay into their Swayback, Stalker, whatever.

Any solution that can be overcome with minimal effort by using a Macro is doomed to failure. All you have done Paul is ensure that newbs who don't have macros will get ROFLSTOMPED by !newbs who do.

WTG!

This doesn't even consider the 1 GR, 3 PPC setups we will be seeing... already see... or address future builds!

Why use a macro when chain fire gives the same effect anyway? Either way, it does what it is intended to do.