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Weapons - We’ve been busy getting more systems implemented for fine tuning our way to launch. Here are some of what’s been going on and is still in production:
S-SRMs are undergoing a revamp on their targeting solutions. There are 7 bones that are randomly selected by each SSRM missile. Right now, those bones are located at joints rather than center-points for each of the components. We are looking at changing that so the bones are placed further apart and more toward the center of each component. We are also looking at weighting the torso bones in a manner that make them not a priority for SSRMs. For example, all components would have a weight of 1.0. The Torsos however would take a weighting of 0.35(LT) 0.3(CT) 0.35(RT). The reasoning behind this weighting is that if all the torsos had an equal value of 1, each missile would have a 3/7 chance of going for a torso. Any sort of torso twist/movement would increase the chance of a missile in flight to hit the CT (since it’s the biggest component on a Mech) if they were to target a side torso.
Flamers and Machine Guns are getting a damage boost. Flamers will be increased from 0.4 damage to 0.7 damage. Machine Guns will be going from 0.08 damage per bullet to 0.1 damage per bullet. (June 18th Patch)
Pulse Lasers are being normalized to have their variances standardized between the different sizes. This is in preparation of them being tuned as we move toward launch. What this directly means is that for now, Small Pulse Lasers will have their damage increased to 3.4 and their heat reduced to 2.4. Large Pulse Lasers will have their damage increased to 10.6 but their heat is also increased to 8.5. This puts all 3 pulse lasers in alignment of having an approximate 1.25 variance for DPS and a 1.3 variance for HPS. Once this is implemented into the live servers, we will be looking at how they play out and making further adjustments as needed. (June 18th Patch)
Heat Damage at High Heat Levels
We now have a system in test that will apply damage to your Mech’s internal center torso if your Mech exceeds 150% of its tolerable heat level. While your Mech is above 150% heat, it will take damage over time. Once your Mech has cooled below 150%, it will no longer take heat damage. Be careful with that override button or high heat alphas when you’re near your max heat threshold.
Heat Penalty
Last update, I let it be known that we would be investigating a heat penalty for high alpha builds. It is understood that this raised the eyebrows of the many but at the same time a lot of assumptions were made which should hopefully be cleared up here.
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.
How it works:
- We set a threshold of the number of weapons fired simultaneously. By simultaneously fired, we mean weapons of the exact same type being fired in under a 0.5 second time range. This 0.5 second time comes from the amount of time between weapon switches when Chain Fire is engaged. Chain Fire is a mechanism meant to help MechWarriors manage their heat and we do not want to punish those who use this mechanic.
- If a player fires a number of weapons beyond the threshold, the heat scale will increase significantly for every weapon fired beyond the threshold.
An example:
Mech Model: Hunchback-4P
This Mech (known as the Swayback) is capable of firing 9 energy weapons all at the same time. There are 6 energy hardpoints in the pod on its shoulder, one on each arm and one on the head. The most common build for this Mech is to boat it with Medium Lasers.
We take into consideration that the 6-pack pod is intended to be fired all at once and a player should not be penalized for this. It is for this reason that we would set the Medium Laser threshold to 6; meaning that firing 6 MLs simultaneously will NOT suffer from a heat scale penalty. The 6 MLs will generate the standard amount of heat currently in the game.
The heat scale penalty kicks in when the player fires 7 or more MLs and for each ML fired beyond 7, the heat scale increases. The breakdown would look as follows (Keep in mind, these numbers are for demonstration purposes only):
6 ML fired = 0 heat penalty
7 ML fired = 5 heat penalty
8 ML fired = 10 heat penalty
9 ML fired = 20 heat penalty
To avoid the heat penalty while playing a Swayback is easily avoided if the player fires 6 MLs and waits 0.5 seconds and then fires the remaining 3 MLs. Doing so will result in 0 heat penalties.
How each weapon system will be individually tuned:
Weapons like the PPC would have their thresholds set to 3 with a higher heat penalty per additional simultaneous firing of PPCs.
3 PPC fired = 0 heat penalty
4 PPC fired = 10 heat penalty
5 PPC fired = 20 heat penalty
6 PPC fired = 40 heat penalty
Again, if a player wants to play a 6 PPC stalker, they can freely do so and can avoid heat penalties by triggering 3 PPCs, waiting 0.5 seconds and then firing the next 3 PPCs.
Missile and Ballistic weapon systems will be equally looked at in terms of their heat penalty thresholds.
At the end of the day, some weapons may never see a heat penalty the others will and in the long run, we hope this encourages a more varied build of player Mechs or make players much more aware of their heat management.
I’ll update this post for delivery dates as soon as I have confirmed them.
Please post your feedback here: http://mwomercs.com/...ate-11-jun-2013
