8 replies to this topic

[Scarcer]

Here, the dev's have proposed how they plan to handle the the 'boating issue.' It appears the feedback has opposed this 2 to 1. Here is my proposal as previously posted. I would like you to vote or suggest changes to provide a visual for how many people would support this.

I believe my proposal is much more realistic and gives the pilots a tangible and believable solution without breaking the game, while leaving pilots some headroom for customization. It also gives some chassi and variants more viability and time to shine as they are designed for specific builds. Surely it can be implemented in a manner that wont heavily impact netcode.

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Consider this:

Energy Weapon Solution:
Small & Medium Energy Weapons are not effected by any penalty. No energy platform is really overpowered. The Swayback as example is no more formidable than any other Hunchback variant.

Large & Assault Energy Weapons [ERLL, PPC, etc] generate a lot of heat. Carrying/firing one (or two) has no penalty; the chassi is expected to handle the heat output reasonably well. Firing more than one puts extra stress on the chassi, the heat has to be dissipated faster, so each weapon then requires one heatsink each in the same torso/limb to avoid a penalty. This can be a DHS or a SHS. This solution also forces the dreaded ER PPC boating stalkers to utilize SHS's in order to have enough room to avoid the penalty, or to utlize PPC's instead to viably avoid heatsink requirments.

Penalty will be experienced when firing multiples before approximatly 50% of the previous weapons recharge cycle, and build up expodentially the more weapons are fired; when the Heat Sink Requirments are not met.
(Some stock builds carry 2 or more of these weapons; the penalty may be light enough for it not to be an a crippling issue, or those specific variants may have a slight & unique heat perk to handle it.)

Possible chassi to give heat-management perks is to the Awesome, since it is a large energy platform.

It is probable that DHS & SHS will require some balancing to make this work optimally. Additional heatsinks on the mech will work as normal, but will not negate the heat penalty; as the heat from the weapons will take longer to be expelled.

OPTION 2: Make independent heat scales for each weapon, reflecting heatsink placement, as well as overall heat disipation. Firing 2 weapons in the left and right torso can cause the center torso to heat up more, making the weapons cool down a little slower as the heat spreads. Firing a weapon in each arm how ever has little effect on eachother, but does effect the side torso's etc.
LIGHTBULB: While your developing UI 2.0, you can also implement a 2D graphic for the pilot to consult in the mechlab that shows the direction and intensity of heat spread and dissipation using orange & red waves during a hypothetical alpha strike. It will give the pilot a tangible idea of how effective their modifications to the chassi are.
Ballistic Weapon Solution:
Light & Medium class Ballistic Weapons [AC2/5/10, MG, LBX-10 etc] are not effected.They require more skill to fire and succesfully kill with.

Heavy & Assault Class Weaponry [AC20, Guass, LBX-20 etc] causes much more recoil. Firing one causes the chassi to shake/rattle slightly. Your crosshairs and aiming will be effected for approximatly 50ms similar to using Jump Jets but to a lesser extent (depending on the chassi/variant).

Firing 2 at a time will cause either

A ) Full Accuracy & Cause the entire chassi to shake/rattle considerably high for 160ms,

B ) Loss of Accuracy & Throw off the trajectory of both weapons, with 60ms shake.

Possible chassi to give perks for 'less penalty' would be the Jagermech. The Jagermech has significant recoil compensation, and it would make up for it's lack of armor.

Missiles & Rockets:
LRM's, SRMS & SSRMS should be unaffected; they are fairly ballanced, and while can deal much damage, are not formidable enough to destroy entire enemy teams due to the essentialy removed splash damage.

Thankyou, please take my proposal into consideration. It should be far more viable than what has been presented to us as a solution.

Sincerely,
Scarcer

Edited by Scarcer, 12 June 2013 - 04:27 PM.

[Zomboyd]

got to say the only real problem i find is PPC and Large laser boating. ballistic weapons have enough problems to boat to start with. 1 they wiegh heaps they need ammo and generate heat. most mechs carry 2 ballistic due to the size of the AC and the need to fit ammo. even A mech with 2x AC 20 even though they hit hard limits a mech, it is the same with gauss, yes they are powerful but not OP.

The problem, you find with the boating of energy weapons is that they wiegh less then Ballistics and also take up heaps less crit space allowing heaps of room for heat sinks. they also dont have to worry about ammo explosions. This is even more noticable in Large mechs thet have the ability to fit lots of lasers/ PPCs and heat sinks together.

the problem i can see wit w hat the Devs are introducing is it is hurting DPS builds while it is the Large Alpha builds which needs to be looked at. I feel a lot of this could be fixed by creating a Heavy energy and Light energy slot on mechs. Heavy allowing any energy weapon on it, while light only allows medium and small lasers to be equiped in this location.

this does stil lleave theproblem of LRM boating which honestly is not as big a problem and i feel could be fixed by increasing the size of the internel frame of the mech that is used for the Missiles to lock onto. this would hopefuly spread teh damage aroudn all over the mech and not have most LRMs hit center Torso.

Edited by Zomboyd, 12 June 2013 - 07:22 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

As I have said before, the way battletech balances weapons is with heat. PGI lowered the heat of large energy weapons. They should raise the heat back up to previous levels before making any other changes. With one exception.

There should be consequences to running a mech at high heat levels, and spiking heat over the shut down limit. I think PGI should implement drawbacks into running high on the heat gauge. Battletech already has a heat chart for mechs. It's really about translating that into MWO like every other system has been.

[Gaan Cathal]

Zomboyd, on 12 June 2013 - 07:21 PM, said:

got to say the only real problem i find is PPC and Large laser boating.

There's a problem with large laser boating? Lasers have the beam duration mechanic avoiding the issues of low-skill massive pinpoint damage that massed PPC or PPC+Gauss setups have. They're less of a problem than AC/40 is (and AC/40 isn't actually a problem).

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 12 June 2013 - 08:51 PM.

[Neolisk]

Zomboyd, on 12 June 2013 - 07:21 PM, said:

got to say the only real problem i find is PPC and Large laser boating.

PPC boating is the only problem, because it does 60 dmg to one location. Introduce a charge mechanics, as suggested in another thread here and the problem is gone. With this mechanics, PPC first eats all the heat it needs to fire and only then fires. If you shut down during the charge, you don't fire. Boating problem solved.

Edited by Neolisk, 13 June 2013 - 10:22 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Add scaling, soft heat penalties when your mech is running hot. Reduce accuracy (introduce cone of fire), lower max speed, slow turn and twist rates, and so on. Have the penalties kick in at, say, 25% heat, and increase as your mech gets hotter.

Add hard heat penalties when drastically overheated, for instance engine kill at 150%+ (instead death, counts as suicide). Add internal damage when in Override mode and over 100% heat. Add internal damage when shut down at over 125% heat. Have both sets of internal damage stack, so you really die fast when Overriding and beyond 125%.

This is far better than any kind of crazy, complicated set of arbitrary rules that affect different weapon systems in different ways. Both your system and PGI's both are inconsistent and arbitrary, and penalize certain weapon systems while leaving others essentially alone. Far better to make heat management matter, and impose penalties when pushing your mech too hard, making it a conscious choice on the part of the pilot whether to go slower and be less accurate for a time in order to squeeze that extra shot in.

[Scarcer]

Neolisk, on 13 June 2013 - 10:22 AM, said:

PPC boating is the only problem, because it does 60 dmg to one location. Introduce a charge mechanics, as suggested in another thread here and the problem is gone. With this mechanics, PPC first eats all the heat it needs to fire and only then fires. If you shut down during the charge, you don't fire. Boating problem solved.

Good idea, this game doesn't have a charging mechanism anyway and would make PPC an entirely unique item by function so it's no longer about mounting PPC vs Guass and will make it make it more difficult to fire the two weapons together.

How ever I think the charge should be quick so it doesn't get in the way of chain fire.

All the heat would be built up during the charge, possibly with no extra on fire, this prevents boats from running hot so they have to make smart choices. Balance would also have to be met in the middle, any change sought should really be 50% because you will experience double the inconvenience in that case.

I like it.
'PzzzZzZzZzZRRRR VRUW'

Edited by Scarcer, 13 June 2013 - 10:53 PM.

[Scarcer]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 13 June 2013 - 06:05 PM, said:

Add scaling, soft heat penalties when your mech is running hot. Reduce accuracy (introduce cone of fire), lower max speed, slow turn and twist rates, and so on. Have the penalties kick in at, say, 25% heat, and increase as your mech gets hotter.

Add hard heat penalties when drastically overheated, for instance engine kill at 150%+ (instead death, counts as suicide). Add internal damage when in Override mode and over 100% heat. Add internal damage when shut down at over 125% heat. Have both sets of internal damage stack, so you really die fast when Overriding and beyond 125%.

This is far better than any kind of crazy, complicated set of arbitrary rules that affect different weapon systems in different ways. Both your system and PGI's both are inconsistent and arbitrary, and penalize certain weapon systems while leaving others essentially alone. Far better to make heat management matter, and impose penalties when pushing your mech too hard, making it a conscious choice on the part of the pilot whether to go slower and be less accurate for a time in order to squeeze that extra shot in.

I came up with mine as an alternative, since PGI's is pointless and non-believable.

Simpler approach I suppose would always make it easier for most players. Then again I'm the kinda guy who likes playing with all the different statistics for what I'm building.
While your talking about the heat penalty system; they should make PPC's run far hotter, lower the heat cap, and increase heat dissipation.

How ever I disagree with you on the mech performance as the heat increases; since systems like the stalker already have to worry about poor convergence, it doesn't need to be further cripped by degraded mobility.

But maybe to borrow on your idea; lower the shut down damage to 125, and also add some very minor sensor/aiming malfunctions around say approximately 80% heat.

This will slow down people using ER PPC who willingly fire-shutdown as a tactic without removing them, and tone down the amount of mid/long range repetitive fire by chassi firing multiples. PPC will become a little more useful; while in the mean time you'll still be able to aim decently in medium/close quarters where it counts.

Heat and Trajectory speed would make it simpler to tune once the other sweet spots are met.

Edited by Scarcer, 13 June 2013 - 11:08 PM.

[Neolisk]

Scarcer, on 13 June 2013 - 10:50 PM, said:

How ever I think the charge should be quick so it doesn't get in the way of chain fire.

To keep it simple - just reverse the order of events, first heat, then fire, meaning instant charge. It won't make a difference if you have enough heat. So only boaters are affected.