11 replies to this topic

[mike29tw]

Has anyone considered that this is the source of all the problems?

Assault mechs boating 4 PPCs or 3 PPC + Gauss - because 2.0 engine DHS provide too much heat dissipation, making the first two PPCs basically free of external heat sinks.

Medium/Light mechs cannot fulfill their roles - because they are routinely out-gunned by heavy and assault mechs that can better utilize their tonnage for more weapons with the 10 free 2.0 engine DHS without needing much external DHS.

Now I actually think that PGI's original DHS implementation is actually a better one. Engine heat sinks remain SHS while external heat sinks are true 2.0 DHS.

What were the arguments against PGI's original DHS implementation again? IIRC people complained about the original DHS because "Assault mechs don't benefit much from it". Look at where we are now lol.

If we have our public test server up and ready, AND if I have control over it, I'd like to revert DHS back to PGI's original implementation and see how does the meta shift.


In before "the problem is with pin-point convergence" folks. Please don't sidetrack what I want to discuss here.

Edited by mike29tw, 07 July 2013 - 06:20 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

But those lights could alos carry those first 2 PPCs "for free". Or a boatload of medium lasers. Only heavies and assaults have problems actually increasing their dissipation once the engine sinks are "used up".

In the end, the game needs lower heat capacity, so there are no heat-consequence-free alpha boats anymore and you actually need to bring the sinks to dissipate the heat you build up quickly.
A game where extremely hot builds are more viable then close to heat neutral mechs indicates that the whole heat balance can only fail. Ballistics are heavier than energy weapons because the assumption is that the weight difference is used for heat sinks to make the mech effective. But that's not needed.

And when it comes to heat sink mechanics, there are two choices in my opinion:
1) Double Heat Sinks are a powergamer's wet dream, except the game is balanced around the assumption everyone having DHS.So in-engine DHS being doubles and out-engine, too, is fine.
2) DHS are not meant to completely surpass single heat sinks, and that means in-engine sinks always act like single heat sinks, and if you want to reap the benefits of DHS, you need to pay the crit cost.

And failing all that - for god's sake, standardize DHS. If they can't be true Doubles, at least make them give a fixed value regardless of whether outside or inside, because there is no real logical nor balanced way to explain why out of engine sinks - that cost you a lot of crit slots - are less useful then those you get for free inside the engine.

[Fyrerock]

Damage is king, agility is queen and armor is way down the list when it comes to survivability, which means with armor being so weak compared to damage that people will play the hide and seek game to maintain there armor as long as possible before they engage at close range.

The ppc is not a great brawl type of weapon, it has to many limitations for close work and if a person can not get the job done and kill a mech before it gets close then why use a ppc at all. People use what works, just like how well the streaks used to work for lights and was the best defence the assaults had against lights, now almost no assaults are using streaks to protect themselves against lights.

Changing HS would mean that is it not worth using ppc at all, since the fire rate would become to low to make it worth using because of heat. As it stands now most builds built for snipping have a hard time dealing with brawling type mechs. A change like this would just make it that much harder making most snipping type mechs sitting ducks for anyone that can get in close.

[mike29tw]

MustrumRidcully, on 07 July 2013 - 06:31 AM, said:

But those lights could alos carry those first 2 PPCs "for free". Or a boatload of medium lasers. Only heavies and assaults have problems actually increasing their dissipation once the engine sinks are "used up".

In the end, the game needs lower heat capacity, so there are no heat-consequence-free alpha boats anymore and you actually need to bring the sinks to dissipate the heat you build up quickly.
A game where extremely hot builds are more viable then close to heat neutral mechs indicates that the whole heat balance can only fail. Ballistics are heavier than energy weapons because the assumption is that the weight difference is used for heat sinks to make the mech effective. But that's not needed.

And when it comes to heat sink mechanics, there are two choices in my opinion:
1) Double Heat Sinks are a powergamer's wet dream, except the game is balanced around the assumption everyone having DHS.So in-engine DHS being doubles and out-engine, too, is fine.
2) DHS are not meant to completely surpass single heat sinks, and that means in-engine sinks always act like single heat sinks, and if you want to reap the benefits of DHS, you need to pay the crit cost.

And failing all that - for god's sake, standardize DHS. If they can't be true Doubles, at least make them give a fixed value regardless of whether outside or inside, because there is no real logical nor balanced way to explain why out of engine sinks - that cost you a lot of crit slots - are less useful then those you get for free inside the engine.

And I'd go with the second choice. It is no secret that heat capacity needs a nerf one way or another, might as well start with fixing DHS? External double heat sinks have 1.4 time heat dissipation while engine double heat sinks have 2.0 dissipation is the rule inconsistency that I really don't like, let alone the fact that 10 engine heat sinks can be converted to DHS magically without needing more crit-slot.

Fyrerock, on 07 July 2013 - 06:44 AM, said:

As it stands now most builds built for snipping have a hard time dealing with brawling type mechs.

Are we playing the same game ??

[Sheraf]

mike29tw, on 07 July 2013 - 06:20 AM, said:

Has anyone considered that this is the source of all the problems?

Assault mechs boating 4 PPCs or 3 PPC + Gauss - because 2.0 engine DHS provide too much heat dissipation, making the first two PPCs basically free of external heat sinks.

Medium/Light mechs cannot fulfill their roles - because they are routinely out-gunned by heavy and assault mechs that can better utilize their tonnage for more weapons with the 10 free 2.0 engine DHS without needing much external DHS.

Now I actually think that PGI's original DHS implementation is actually a better one. Engine heat sinks remain SHS while external heat sinks are true 2.0 DHS.

What were the arguments against PGI's original DHS implementation again? IIRC people complained about the original DHS because "Assault mechs don't benefit much from it". Look at where we are now lol.

If we have our public test server up and ready, AND if I have control over it, I'd like to revert DHS back to PGI's original implementation and see how does the meta shift.


In before "the problem is with pin-point convergence" folks. Please don't sidetrack what I want to discuss here.

Go ahead and boat 4 PPC with just engine heatsink

Edited by Sheraf, 07 July 2013 - 06:56 AM.

[mike29tw]

Sheraf, on 07 July 2013 - 06:55 AM, said:

Go ahead and boat 4 PPC with just engine heatsink

Your insight and argument brought light to this discussion.

[Tarl Cabot]

It is not the source of all problems. There are several but I will start with the foundation everything is being built on.

It isn't the DHS in the engine, it is how it affects the Heat Scale Cap. Engine DHS is double the cooling compared to the Engine SHS but it also allows weapons to be continuously fired before hitting the HSC.

Default 30 on the Heat Scale Cap.
Engine with all 10 HS inside: 30 + 10 SHS = 40 HSC, then 30 + 10 DHS (20) = 50 HSC

Now any extra DHS are added on top of that. Thus it takes longer for a mech reach the cap before threat of shutdown and/or damage at the damage threshold. Or to put it another way, one mech with SHS at 90% of the HSC is very different than another mech w/DHS at the same percentage.

After that there is convergence + ability to boat.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 07 July 2013 - 08:23 AM.

[Conraire]

Tarl Cabot, on 07 July 2013 - 07:45 AM, said:

Default 30 on the Heat Scale Cap.
Engine with all 10 HS inside: 30 + 10 SHS = 40 HSC, then 30 + 10 DHS (20) = 50 HSC

After that there is convergence + ability to boat.

The problem with the game's heat implementation. Which is the root cause of all the primary balance issues we have right now.

What you described there is technically how heat works in P&P/TT mechwarrior/battletech. Though, the issue is they implemented it wrong.

In TT, this is how heat worked.

Effective heatsink amount = your heat 100% cap.
30 point heat scale for anything over your heat cap, anything past 4 excess heat into that 30 points caused penalties, and dmg to the pilot. Older mechwarrior games use to handle this by speed penalties, or blowing up the mech if it was overridden too much.

That made mechs with 60pt heat output setups like a stalker with 6ppc, not feasible to use, because you could literally cook yourself in 1 round, or anything after that first alpha. The primary issue is here, there is no real penalty for melting your mech, other than shutting down. And some mild internal damage now.

[FupDup]

I've always felt that DHS should be truedubs outside of the engine but without increasing the heat capacity at all, and that SHS should increase the capacity (including the 10 engine SHS) but still dissipate heat really really slowly.

And for both SHS and DHS, dissipation is waaay too slow right now. It pretty much nerfs brawlers because shutting down actually matters for them, but snipers can get away with overheating due to being far away from danger (and poptarts can even land behind cover when shutdown).

Edited by FupDup, 07 July 2013 - 09:04 AM.

[blinkin]

i really should start keeping a record of all of these "sources of all the problems"

[Bors Mistral]

In the current game, all DHS should be 1.75 - simple as that.
That something I was arguing half an year ago, and it still holds true.

Of course, this alone will not magically solve all PPC problems.

[Corvus Antaka]

Bors Mistral, on 07 July 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

In the current game, all DHS should be 1.75 - simple as that.
That something I was arguing half an year ago, and it still holds true.

Of course, this alone will not magically solve all PPC problems.

this or something close to it. id go with 1.6 and 1.6 an increase overall dissapation by 10% while dropping the heatcap down. engine 2.0 DHS is a serious problem, external DHS have much much less value and the engine ones are much too useful.