14 replies to this topic

[Caladore]

I really don't like the new heat penalties as they feel very arbitrary, inconsistent, and poorly implemented. I understand what they are trying to accomplish with them and have little issue with the intent.

Alpha Strike Issue
Firing a 4 PPC alpha strike, I generate bonus heat. Firing a 4 large laser alpha strike, I generate bonus heat. However, a 2 PPC 2 large laser alpha strike does not get a penalty, and generate far less heat than all PPCs or all large lasers. This simply doesn't make sense. An alpha strike with 2 large lasers and 2 PPCs should generate a heat level somewhere in between the 4 PPC and 4 large laser alpha strike.

What's worse is that an alpha strike consisting of 2 PPCs and 2 ERPPCs doesn't generate the bonus heat. A 4 PPC alpha strike will shut down nearly any mech. Firing before the heat reaches almost 0% will cause damage to it. Whereas I can get some additional range by changing to 2 PPCs and 2 ERPPCs, generate less heat, fire more alpha strikes, and do less internal damage.

Huge Penalty for Firing Just a Little Too Fast
The penalty for firing too fast can be huge since the penalty is applied at 100% for a set duration after firing. I think the bonus heat timer is 1 second, and for sake of argument, let's assume it is 1 second. If I fire 2 PPCs, wait 0.99 seconds, then fire 2 PPCs, I take a full heat penalty. If I had only waited 0.01 second longer, I wouldn't have been penalized. This is a bad mechanic.

Chain Firing Issue
The new rules for heat state that I can fire 2 PPCs with no heat penalty, and this is true. If I chain fire 4 PPCs, I generate no bonus heat. But if I setup 2 groups of 2 and chain fire each group simultaneously, I generate the bonus heat. I am only firing 2 PPCs at the same time, then firing 2 more as soon as the system will allow me. This should not cause a penalty.


Heat Shutdown/Override
The heat shutdown and override doesn't seem to make sense to me. We're piloting a several million cbill mech in the future, and the fire control system will let me cook myself, especially with the new heat penalty system if I'm not really careful? And the mech only tries to protect itself with a heat shutdown when the max heat has been exceeded which doesn't do much after an improperly timed alpha strike.

Proposed Solutions
Only applying the bonus heat to like weapons is arbitrary. Simply firing 2 PPCs and 2 Large Lasers should generate bonus heat somewhere in between 4 PPCs and 4 Large Lasers. Firing 2 PPCs and 2 ERPPCs and generating less heat is even worse. I don't have any ideas yet on how to fix this, but it needs to be fixed as this causes me to suspend my belief when immersed in the game.

To not penalize people for firing only a little too fast, there should be a decay to the bonus heat percentage. Firing a 3rd and possibly a 4th like weapon immediately should take 100% bonus heat, but as the heat penalty timer runs down, the bonus heat applied should decrease too. In other words, the percentage of bonus heat applied should be set to 100% the instant a pair of weapons are fired to be applied to the next like weapon, and should decay over the penalty timer duration.

Chain firing 2 groups of 2 like weapons each should not cause the bonus heat issues. Either make your heat penalty timer match the duration of the chain fire delay and/or apply a decay to the penalty.

For the shutting down due to heat, there seems like there should be 2 levels of heat override. Level 1 prevents the firing of any weapons that would cause you to exceed something like 85% heat (85% is an arbitrary number for sake of argument). Overriding that will allow you to go up to 100% and beyond. If you go beyond, you heat shutdown and take damage, but you can override the shutdown and fire your weapons until your mech explodes. This would be a great application of a piloting skill too as it could raise your level 1 override from 85% to 90% or something like that.

[Tasselfus]

I tip my hat to you and agree to such a step towards a more balanced game.

[Onomaris]

I would agree with this. This also seems to go counter to what they stated the other day with ER PPCs and PPCs supposedly going into the same bucket. If they aren't adding to the same heat penalty, then it becomes an easier work around to just set up the groups into two and two. Yes you have to sacrafice weight and heat generation to do it, but it still breaks their intended fix.

[Teop]

Concur with the above - dosn't seem balanced - quick runs of the testing grounds seems to allow some quick work arounds. Also the impacts go against cannon on heat and alpha strike potentials, pretty sure there are cannon mechs that have more than the stated numbers. An alpha strike should not cause you to shut down from 0 heat.

If your deveating from cannon imput the overide protocols listed above.

[Wintersdark]

ERPPC's and PPC's will be in the same bucket next patch, which is how they said it would work. The coding on that was not completed in time for this patch.

Why chain firing two groups of 2 is screwing you:

What's happening is you're pressing two buttons, at very nearly but not exactly the same time. This causes your PPC's to fire roughly like this:
Group 1 PPC 1
50ms delay
Group 2 PPC 1
450ms delay (500ms after group 1 PPC 1 as per chain fire norm, but only 450 after group 2's PPC)
Group 1 PPC 2
50ms delay (as with above)
Group 2 PPC 2

So, because you never have a 500ms delay between PPC bolts, they trigger the heat scaling penalties.

This actually was a problem I had with this system. The only real solution is to make a macro that fires one group of 2,waits 500ms, then fires another group of 2.

[Razerbeast]

tried 4 er ppc with 18 dbl heatsinks in my awesome. used alpha and shutdown. this heat thing definitely favors the smaller, less potent mechs. I hear everyone saying this is a good patch, this patch is garbage. they haven't had a good patch in a while.

[Shevy]

oh good u cant 4ppc anymore lol

btw this is coming from an early adopter of the 4ppc stalker who was totally sick of having 2 run that build 2 be compeditive

if lights and mediums have more of a chance im all for it

less assult mech online is a GOOD thing

[TELEFORCE]

I'm liking what I'm seeing in the patch so far. I just wish they'd give the AWS-8Q and 9M a quirk which would allow each to fire 4 or 3 PPCs, respectively, without the heat penalties (four for the AWS-8Q since a later model, the AWS-9Q, can fire all 4 PPCs with very little heat problems).

I made this suggestion in the feature requests forum a couple weeks ago, but it didn't seem to catch on.

Edited by TELEFORCE, 16 July 2013 - 05:01 PM.

[evlkenevl]

PPC boating wasn't a problem in closed beta because they generated massive heat back then. The whole PPC meta came about because PGI lowered the heat to nearly the same as a Large Laser. This happened because everyone said the PPC was a useless weapon. Rewind came in and all of a sudden we have a PPC boat problem. I figure that raising the PPC's heat to midway between these extremes would accomplish the same objective as this complex and bizarre thing we have now.

The Gauss is at 1 heat because that's what it is in Battletech. Same with the AC/20. I applaud PGI's early efforts to keep this game faithful to BT values, but the heat numbers just didn't work for a real-time first-person shooter.
Guess my main concern is that while so many things about giant robot combat don't make sense, this is really out there.

[Caladore]

evlkenevl, on 16 July 2013 - 05:10 PM, said:

PPC boating wasn't a problem in closed beta because they generated massive heat back then. The whole PPC meta came about because PGI lowered the heat to nearly the same as a Large Laser. This happened because everyone said the PPC was a useless weapon. Rewind came in and all of a sudden we have a PPC boat problem. I figure that raising the PPC's heat to midway between these extremes would accomplish the same objective as this complex and bizarre thing we have now.

To me this is a very acceptable solution. Up the heat to balance it out as opposed to penalizing people for firing more than 2 within .5 seconds or whatever the time limit is set to.

Also, there are several mechs (not yet in MWO, but canon nonetheless) that come with 3 or 4 of the penalized weapon systems, so I think the new heat penalty system is setting the game up for more problems with the introduction of clan mechs. Per canon, the Marauder IIC has 3 ER PPCs, the Dire Wolf (Daishi) has 4 ER Large Lasers, the Kodiak has 8 ER Mediums, and I could go on with some lesser known mechs. These are very popular mechs that were designed with these weapons, and I assume were designed to alpha strike with them. These mechs would be fairly crippled with the heat penalty as is, and these mechs are too popular not to implement.

Game balance is not attained by placing some fairly significant arbitrary rules in place. I think the PPCs should generate a little more heat than they do. If they are still too powerful, slow down the projectile a little so they can be dodged a little easier. That is how you implement balance in the game. Also, the counter to PPC boats should be the fast mechs with flamers and spotting for LRMs.

[Edson Drake]

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Alpha Strike issue:

It makes sense: sort of. This was made due to the constant whining about boating. It wasn't an elegant solution, but this is a very difficult issue and I wouldn't want to be a programmer in charge of solving that. I'm satisfied with their effort though.

The PPC/ErPPC group is going to get adressed soon. But I think different weapons=different group. I should not receive penalty for alpha PPCs mixed with Large Lasers. Unless in your view, the groups are energy, ballistic and missiles. This wasn't the way they implemented it, it's same weapon setups that suffer penalties, not weapon types.

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Huge Penalty for Firing Just a Little Too Fast:

Again it makes sense. there is a difference between 0.99 secs and 1 sec in heat transfer. While the water boiling point is 90°C it won't boil at 89°C for example. Same mechanic here but less flexible.

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Chain Firing Issue:

Say, you are really fast in your fingers, there's no difference between chain fire and alpha, all PPCs will hit the same place at almost same time, making no difference at all. See how there's already discussion about macros being set so people can already circumvent the penalty? For this same reason.

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Heat Shutdown/Override:

Indeed we're in the future with massive death machines. However, we're in a future where tecnology, while advanced, it isn't perfect and it is very dangerous to pilot a machine powered with a nuclear fusion reactor. While it isn't possible to blow in a typical nuclear bomb style, it is a dangerous engine to have close by and as such you as a pilot, should take great care of it. Not only for the mech, but for your own health as well.

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Proposed Solutions:

Your suggestion indicates that penalties should occur within weapon types and not individual weapons like we have now. I disagree with the idea, because it will punish the player by trying every type of weapon.

Now we have: 3 PPC= Penalty
2 PPC and 2 LL = no penalty

To me, it makes sense. They are different weapons, and inside the treshould value. Why the penalty?

By the way the threshould for LL should be at least 3.

(I noticed something interesting about the post after the OP: everyone that agreed with his ideas soon after his posts, has 1, 2 and 3 posts respectively, very interesting)

[Teop]

The 4 of us that posed right after Caladore's post are 1) friends who were discussing the topic and decided it was worth commenting on - in some of our opinions nothing to date other than 5,6,7 player groups has really required commenting on and 2) Legendary founders ... that's alot of $$ to spend for someone to get 4 posts in as the previous poster implied.

Bottom line this patch is fundamentally against cannon and changes the tactical and meta game. It forces a change in gameplay style. It is very hard to remain true to cannon and maintain game balance in real time. We applaud the teams effort to do so. An alpha strike taking you to 75% heat after the heat modifications could work but an auto shutdown for an alpha strike regardless of weapon composition dosn't make sense.

Looking forward to what the next phase of modification is as the dev team continues to try to balance the game while keeping the feel of tabletop. They've been quite successful so far.

[Edson Drake]

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The 4 of us that posed right after Caladore's post are 1) friends who were discussing the topic and decided it was worth commenting on - in some of our opinions nothing to date other than 5,6,7 player groups has really required commenting on and 2) Legendary founders ... that's alot of $$ to spend for someone to get 4 posts in as the previous poster implied.

Oh. That's exactly what I thought. However:

I am getting some slightly passive-aggressive tone for the founders comment: I wasn't a founder, but I spent way more than a founders package in this game(and considering the Phoenix package as well), by the way.

The thing with your friends comment was that I've seen it happening before: people en masse start commenting about an issue they dislike about the game, for example, as far as I remember, the poptarting screen shake thingy. People complained about motion sickness.

While I do believe some people genuinely had the problem, I saw players in-game(and in real life), organizing groups to complain here, therefore, attempting to manipulate the devs to change it, so that, they could poptart again. I'm not accusing you or your friends, don't get me wrong, just wanted to point that out.

Edited by Edson Drake, 17 July 2013 - 03:55 PM.

[Teop]

I don't actively follow the forums - apologize for any misinterpretation on my part. We play with a group of about 9 people of which 2-7 are online any given night. We tend to have a similar take on the game and most of us are old school table top players and play a lot of games together. We tend to post in forums for that game when the group has similar issues with a game. So far only two thing in MWO have caused us to comment thus far. No idea what the poptart thing was.

Hope to see you in-game some time.

[Edson Drake]

No need to apologize, it's all good.