461 replies to this topic

[Gulinborsti]

No mech is intended to fire 3+ PPCs or 7+ MLs at the same time ... without punishment
Ever heard of the concept of chain firing your weapons or distribute them to separate weapon groups ?

Edited by Gulinborsti, 16 July 2013 - 10:18 AM.

[Ph30nix]

can someone explain the heat multiplier for me? to me saying Multiplier means X so for the PPC's

2 PPC's 8 heat each would be 16 heat
3 PPCs (3# x7 heat) would be 8+8+56= 72 heat?

seriously? please tell me im looking at this wrong. i have to be since the multipler for some weapons is 1 which would be NO increase from the heat....

[Arctu]

So instead of using 4 PPCs people will just switch to Gauss and 2-3 PPCs. There are plenty of mechs where you can still put out huge alphas without severe heat penalties. I'm really looking forward to the 2x Gauss + ERPPC Cataphracts and the increase in double Gauss Jagermechs. My prediction is that there will be a new Favor Of The Month but the high alpha + long range gameplay will not change. The new best mechs will be the Hero Mechs which are being sold for real money (Heavy Metal and Misery), who would have thought that...

By the way: Only 2 Large Lasers before additional heat is applied? This should really be upgraded to 3 to make them a useful alternative to PPCs.

[Jacob Roamer]

Ph30nix, on 16 July 2013 - 10:18 AM, said:

can someone explain the heat multiplier for me? to me saying Multiplier means X so for the PPC's

2 PPC's 8 heat each would be 16 heat
3 PPCs (3# x7 heat) would be 8+8+56= 72 heat?

seriously? please tell me im looking at this wrong. i have to be since the multipler for some weapons is 1 which would be NO increase from the heat....

I think it would be this:

8+8+8+7=31 heat for a 3 PPC alpa with the 7 being the penalty.

[Josef Koba]

I'm interested to test this out. I'm not excited, just interested. Like my peers, I don't know what the scale multiplier thing means, but I'm guessing that a higher number is decidedly bad. So, that 24 on the AC/20 appears to be pretty bad. Looks like maybe if you alpha two of them, well, the earth explodes or something. If it's as bad as it looks, two AC/20s will still be used, but the build will be a lot less viable. I guess for everyone who has died facing the increasing AC/20 Jagers on the battlefield will be happy. Personally, I always viewed them as a worthy challenge, but complainers will be complainers.

Like some of the above posters have mentioned, I never realized that Large Lasers were a widespread problem. I have a Stalker with four LLas and two LPLas, but I only alpha in those dire situations of life or death. I chain fire the LLas exclusively and shoot the two LPLas when necessary. I have a steady hand so I do good damage with the DOT lasers. I am hoping that this doesn't jack up my Stalker using chain fire, but we'll see. Can't remember the numbers for chain fire (time)...

Hurry up and post the patch so I can rework whatever tactics I need to. Suspect I'll be facing lots of SRMs, though.

[Asatruer]

Maple Nachiman, on 16 July 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:

Just because mechs come stock with more than the heat penalty cap, doesn't mean they were intended to be fire all at once. Lets just use some heat management.

Gulinborsti, on 16 July 2013 - 10:17 AM, said:

No mech is intended to fire 3+ PPCs or 7+ MLs at the same time ... without punishment

No? Clearly that seems to be the case here in MWO, but since they were designed for BattleTech whether they were designed with the intent of firing all their weapons at once should be gauged by BattleTech standards.
The AWS-8Q with its 3 PPCs produces 30 units of heat on an alpha, with its 28 Heatsinks that means that if the 3 PPCs are fired every time they can be, the AWS-8Q only rises 2 units of heat per weapon fire cycle if it is standing still. If it is walking at 32 km/h that is one more unit of heat per weapon fire cycle, and if running at 54 km/h that is only two more heat per cycle.
So if walking and alpha firing every single time the PPCs could be fired, it would take 10 full alpha striked to overheat into forced shutdown. Heat management on an AWS-8Q consists of every couple alphas only shooting 2 rather than 3 PPCs.

The HBK-4P is a similar story. With only 23 heat sinks and 8 MLs producing a total of 24 heat per alpha, the HBK-4P is only rising 1/2/3 (standing/walking/running) heat per full alpha fire cycle. It would take 10 full alphas while running to cause a forced shutdown due to overheating. The heat management here is again, just shooting 6 MLs every other turn.


Here in MWO, even without this added heat for large alphas, this sort of sustained fire that the mechs were designed to output is completely out of the question. The boogeyman here is not alphas, or heat though, it is convergence. BattleTech solves the problem of these scarry alpha boating mechs by allowing for not all the shots hit, or all of the shots hit the same place. If MWO never does anything about this convergence issue, high alphas will always be a problem, even with arbitrary heat penalties, and applying heat penalties (like in the form of heatsinks only being 1/3 as effective or worse, and this new change) only breaks the designs of the various stock mechs whose record sheets are being imported directly for all of the variants in this game.

One thing that MWO is lacking that could go a long way to help lessen the regularity of high alphas is actually use BattleTech's heat penalties that start occurring long before the mech is overheating and shutting down. Rather than spend to much screen space here talking about it, I will just link to another thread on the subject. http://mwomercs.com/...-jump-jet-nerf/

Edited by Asatruer, 16 July 2013 - 10:31 AM.

[H1veM1nd]

Look at the weapons with 1 multipliers though. Do they reach out at 1km? Nope. I can only assume for now that a multiplier of 1 is a placeholder for future adjustments.

[Verenus]

I am no longer surprised they're having such a big time balancing everything if they don't know the difference between scales, multipliers and flat additions.

[TostitoBandito]

I am assuming that these numbers are a flat amount of added heat, and not a multplier at all, but clarification is sorely needed.

Also, nowhere in the notes does it state what time interval is used for this feature. I know it's not just simultaneous shots, but multiple shots fired within some arbitrary and short time interval. That needs to be specified.

[Swift Hatchet]

IceSerpent, on 16 July 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

I just love white knights who welcome things without even knowing what those things are. For now we have no clue what "scale multiplier" is and values of 1.0 in quite a few places suggest that it's not a multiplier at all.

I simply stated, about as plainly as an individual can, that I welcome the concept and hope it address the gameplay issues at hand. And even injected the comment (of generic support) for the things I very plainly know I do not understand. Maybe you can explain to me why I need further knowledge to make the statement that I did. And while you're at it, maybe fill me in on the cool things I get to do as a white knight now.

[C E Dwyer]

Icebergdx, on 16 July 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

I have an issue with the 6 ML penalty, specifically with mechs such as the Hunchback 4P, which come stock with 7 or ML s if I remember right. That is penalizing a mech that is operating as designed.

I thought 6 was over generous, myself, and hunchback variation was also an adaptation of a medium mech designed to take the ac20 as standard so the 4P is just really a field lash up then put into production, much the same as happend in WW2, the sturmpanzer built from bits in the western desert which later was used as the basis of the wespe.

though I do think the awesome should have been allowed a 3rd ppc mounting without extra penalty

[WaddeHaddeDudeda]

I'm not allowed to boat LRM 15s, but can boat myself to death with LRM 20s?



Q&A (is there such a thing?) mishap or intended? o_O

Edited by WaddeHaddeDudeda, 16 July 2013 - 10:31 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Its stupid, makes no sense whatsoever. Bandaids aren't the solution, bandaids break the game.

Get rid of perfect auto convegrence and you fix all boats.

[H1veM1nd]

Doing testing with LL and PPCs

Standing still in river city, 10 DHS only, 4 LL alpha pushes me from 0% heat to 78% heat instantly.

4 PPC alpha instantly overheats the mech and causes severe internal heat damage.

Holy crap.

Edited by H1veM1nd, 16 July 2013 - 10:36 AM.

[Arctu]

WaddeHaddeDudeda, on 16 July 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

I'm not allowed to boat LRM 15s, but can boat myself to death with LRM 20s?



Q&A (is there such a thing?) mishap or intended? o_O

Given the current missile spread ... using LRM15 let alone LRM20 isnt really worth it unless your mech has bad tubes. Boat LRM10 instead!

[Kampfer]

I for one welcome our new Heat Scale overlords!

I can't tell you how many times I've played a game, died and followed another mech and they only had 1 weapons group as every shot was an alpha shot.

Welcome Chainfire!

[Mad Elf]

LRM 20, LRM 10, LRM 5, AC 10, LB-10X, AC 5, AC 2? All with NO penalties?

Two mechs penalised for their out-of-the-box build?

No explanation of what a "multiplier" is?

WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE?
Seriously, take it back out, and think of a better mechanism.

[wickwire]

i for one welcome our new heat penalty additions

[Asatruer]

Kampfer, on 16 July 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

I for one welcome our new Heat Scale overlords!

I can't tell you how many times I've played a game, died and followed another mech and they only had 1 weapons group as every shot was an alpha shot.

Welcome Chainfire!

Rather than an arbitrary addition to heat based on numbers of weapons fired, how about the old Heat Scale overlords? You know, like how BattleTech did things where increasing heat starts having ill effects long before the forced shutdown due to heat. This would do a great job of de-incentivising the alpha strikes much more than the current system does. Here, have a look half way down this other post that talks about it. http://mwomercs.com/...-jump-jet-nerf/

[PhoenixFire55]

Gulinborsti, on 16 July 2013 - 10:17 AM, said:

No mech is intended to fire 3+ PPCs or 7+ MLs at the same time ... without punishment

Thats actually not true ...

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hellstar (ERPPC)
http://www.sarna.net...ne_%28Kraken%29 (UAC2)
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Kodiak (ERML)
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Thunder_Hawk (Gauss)

And these are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more.