Stat1cVoiD, on 05 July 2013 - 11:19 AM, said:
Heat is a balancing factor for Cadency, not for Burst-Damage. That means, even if you would raise the Heat or add more penalties.
Yes, this is a cadency fix, and yes this entire thread is about exactly that. No, it doesn't fix burst damage, however in my previous post I said PGI has that one in the bag with the upcoming weapon variants but that will take time. I'll address it again further down.
So while true, you seem to be mistaking what I was going for. I was venturing for removing the un-lore-friendly rising threshold, which puts a huge gap between your typical standard heatsink mech and your 18 to 22 DHS mech, which not only cools faster but allows a higher maximum heat, thus creating the alpha strike abuse which has resulted in what we have.
There isn't a problem with two weapons. It's a problem with 4 or more weapons boated together with pinpoint damage. This GCD concept, however, has very little difference from Paul's original idea it just has a different name and a different delivery that essentially removes the concept of custom weapon grouping, which thusly will never find itself implemented as it requires rebuilding the system from the ground up, and re-engineering it per mech.
Essentially this GCD concept is "throw the game out, start from scratch." That is the only way it will ever get implemented. Literally you'd have to re-engineer the entire system based around this principle. I kid you not, PGI have to shut down the game, reprogram it from the middle-ground up, and then allow us back in around 6 months later. To create further patches for the current game if they were to apply this mechanic would be absolutely pointless until they did so.
Raising heat penalties helps with cadency, but like this GCD concept and its attempt at reducing cadency, that's just a bandaid. Except GCD is a full limb replacement attached by said bandaid.
But if we go with what I was advocating and remove the rising threshold,
(to clarify, in MWO's current implementation: for every heatsink you add you increase the maximum heat you can take as well as how fast you cool. 22 Standard heatsinks brings you to 66 threshold. 22 DHS brings you to 110.4 + faster cooling. How is that fair?
Not only that but you add in the basic efficiency that gives you 7.5% more cooling, and then the other basic efficiency that gives you 10% more threshold, and then double them with the elite! 22 SHS you go directly to 100% with 6 ER PPCs. With 22 DHS you reach a little more than halfway, + 15% faster cooling on top of that and 20% additional threshold and you've got 132.48 maximum threshold. Is it any wonder why we have alpha strike abuse?
It should be either 30, or 60, or whatever we decide the maximum threshold is either way and then you cool faster with DHS. As it is now those "1.4" heatsinks are a decimal number short of 3 times superior to single heatsinks because of that rising threshold. Throw in the elite level efficiencies and it gets near 3.5 times superior. If DHS were 2.0 heatsinks, MWO's current implementation would have them 4 times superior without any pilot skill upgrades.)
So as I was saying if we remove the rising threshold, slip a predefined heat threshold for all mechs, we can then easily set up our little charts to say "If you alpha this many medium lasers together you'll shut down." "You boat up to this many PPCs, and shut down." It'll be very clear. No more guessing games with charts that don't make sense. Our double heatsinks can also say and be 2 times cooling, with the same alpha strike limits as single heatsinks without reinventing the wheel.
This accomplishes the goal of GCD and would only require 20 seconds to a minute to do instead of 6 months. We simply tick a value in SHS and DHS to 0 when it comes to threshold multipliers, begin testing, and churn it out next patch.
So yes, my idea reduces the frequency of alpha firing. That's exactly what this GCD thing is also vouching for, except we do not have to add in 6 months development time with another 6 months or so dedicated to testing and balancing that mechanic thusly reinventing the wheel in order to do it.
But on the other topic fixing burst damage, we don't need to do anything. That's right. To fix "burst damage," I already said PGI's got that covered and told everyone where to find it in my previous post.
So if we combine my cadency fix involving standardizing the heat threshold with PGI's upcoming weapon variants which will likely
be removing single shot AC/20s and (possibly removing the single shot)
Gauss Rifle in favor of multi-shot ACs and another way to redux the Gauss Rifles, as well as upcoming damage spread from PPCs, and it then becomes a much wider field of weaponry. Also,
your pinpoint burst damage issue is thusly, gone.
There won't be an instant pinpoint weapon anymore, except perhaps the AC/2 or AC/5 depending on how they handle that (but not the UAC/5).
Sure, there will still be the occasional boat, but the survivors will be those that have a weapon for every situation.
- ACs will still be favored for low heat, rapid damage output and range, but reigned in with recoil and multi-shots to deal the total promised damage, allowing the enemy to twist and spread damage. Example below. Cassette would be how many rounds you'd put down range to total 20 damage, the duration is how long it'd take to fire all of said rounds. Personally I'd want them to fire their burst faster.
Schrottfrosch, on 18 June 2013 - 04:04 AM, said:
- Gauss rifles will be favored for high damage output even if it won't be as precise -- but not for a lack of skill or a skill breaking mechanic like cone of fire as the Gauss Rifle is recoilless and uses magnets as a propellant. It'll be because the rifle would require more than one direct hit from a single trigger pull to get that high damage.
- The lasers, especially the small, small pulse, medium pulse, and large pulse will be favored for how rapidly they put damage into a specific area as well as their fast recycle rate, but reigned in by the heat they generate which prevent them being fired in high concentrations.
- Medium lasers and large lasers will be favored for the same reasons they always have. That being range and high damage with low weight compared to most weapons. Controlled by the same means as above.
- PPCs will still be favored as they will remain single shot weapons, but due to the damage spread they won't be as overpowered, and because of the threshold you can only safely put 2 to 3 rapidly down range before you have to worry about heat... and if you tried to fire them back to back you'd explode.
- At close range standard PPCs should have TT's capacitors that you could turn off to do any damage below 90 meters at incredibly high risk to yourself, as well as more heat than the more advanced ER PPCs.
- ER PPCs would be far significantly hotter than standard PPCs, instead of slightly hotter to compensate, but not as hot as standard PPCs with the capacitors (safeties) turned off.
- Missiles have never been precision weapons, and thusly with their flight patterns fixed (not paths, patterns; they used to fly like rabid piranhas), missiles will be a fairly legitimate weapon.
- SRM 6s, when boated in an A1 and fired 6 at a time, is a dangerously high risk of shutdown with 30 threshold. This means they will either chainfire those to keep their heat down or resort to hit and run tactics since they wouldn't be able to alpha strike twice in a row and thusly couldn't brawl.
- This means SRM-4s, and SRM-2s may become valuable alternatives as they produce lower heat and lower spread.
- Streaks, while generally low on heat, are balanced by many means. If the streak guidance were akin to closed beta, people would simply laugh at them and they would fly much more realistically. Oh sure they are guided, but you'd have to stay 150 meters away from your enemy if you wanted to actually have a chance to hit it. Dog fights would be much more interesting, and a lot more fair for mechs like the Death's Knell and the Spiders. PGI would likely tweak them to something in between now and early closed beta's realistic turning version as a compromise.
- LRMs as you well know must be paced, 2 LRM-20s on the trial C4 are a perfect example of what limits the heat threshold would place upon alpha strikes using missiles. Try it the trial C4, seriously. Go on, do it. When you come back answer me this: Do you think you could get away with boating 4 LRM-15 racks and alpha striking even once with that heat threshold? You'd have to chainfire them and pace them out!
- The rule of brawling is pace yourself for endurance or fire all at once, shut down and die.
- Overall the game would be far more tactically based, rather than the Hawken style it has been becoming as of late.
We just reigned in all the weapon systems with a combination of my idea to reduce the cadency (frequency) of alpha strikes and what PGI is already planning in terms of removing pinpoint damage through weapon variants without reinventing the wheel, without some artificial global cooldown timer, and without any other random mechanic that could be abused.
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Meanwhile, may I remind someone of something.
The reason PPCs became a problem was we originally had to generate over 200% heat to be remotely in danger of damage, well beyond 300% heat to kill ourselves.
A global cooldown won't stop that. We can still pump PPCs quite fast.
Behold the almighty 30 Particle Projection MACHINE GUN CANNON! Compared to it, a global cooldown means absolutely nothing.
Who needs an alpha strike when you have this little gem? A hunchback that can pump out 30 PPCs in 17 seconds before it reaches the 300% threshold. This thing has 15 DHS; that's a lower threshold (specifically that's only a threshold of 81) than your average assault mech is carrying. With slower PPCs, these guys do not need to stop shooting ever, which means if you throw in a global cooldown they will fire like machine guns! This will allow them to fire longer, better, faster, stronger. Oh sure you won't die instantly but who cares! Do you think the average PPC user will ever reach 100% heat if they start chain firing their PPCs with the current system? We've just created World of Warcraft.
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6." Wait 2 seconds. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6." Wait 2 seconds. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6." GCD fixed nothing.
A bandaid, is a bandaid, is a bandaid.
With the removal of rising thresholds in favor of a standardized one, oh sure that Stalker can go "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6." Shut down for 2 to 4 seconds at the 60 point threshold and still be at over 75%, so that Stalker would have to wait and cool off. If we go with the 30 point heat threshold, it'd shut down at 3 for 1 to 2 seconds, wait a few, and go up to 3 again. Or if that Stalker fired really really slow, say "1........2..............3...........4.....gettin' too hot........5..." he just might get 6 out before shutting down.
That's what we need. That's the aim of this global cooldown concept, but the threshold fix actually achieves it in a way that does not require us to reinvent the wheel. It just fixes a mistake made by people that automatically assumed that heat sunk instantaneously in tabletop and tried to translate that into real time, when in reality the weapons were fired one or more at a time over 10 seconds, and heat sunk over that same 10 seconds in tabletop. The devs just weren't speaking the same language when trying to translate it, thusly coming up with their own system that invites abuse.
PGI has finally started to fix the heat mechanic. It's a step in the right direction.
We now receive considerable damage at 120%, serious at 150%, and somewhere after that we die instantly. It's a start, but do I approve?Let's ask just what does the current fix mean?
120% threshold of 22 DHS is 132.48 heat over 110.4 threshold without basic efficiencies. Meanwhile, 22 standard heatsinks at 66 threshold, can only safely reach 79.2 heat. The average stock mech has 10 heatsinks, for 30 threshold, and will hurt itself at 36 heat, killing itself at only 45 heat generated. Hardly seems fair. In fact we just nerfed stock mechs and standard heatsinks into the ground.
Do you honestly think the bandaid of a Global Cooldown will help when faced with that? Like past solutions, this one ignores the principle underlying reason behind why we can alpha so much in the first place; why we can shoot so much with so little heat even on maps that are more than 140 degrees hotter than the average mechwarrior maps of past games?
Having them throw the game out to put this GCD in won't get us a balanced game anytime soon. If anything this GCD will add at least another 6 months to development time just to put it in. Within days of being able to play again, we can circumvent it by rapidly firing our groups and chainfire without ever overheating because our thresholds allow it and using chainfire now allows us to cool even faster since we're not generating heat anywhere near as fast, thus fixing little to nothing. As a fact that is wasted time that some of us do not have.
Edited by Koniving, 05 July 2013 - 04:55 PM.
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