22 replies to this topic

[venomman2]

"This is very experimental and is being addressed aggressively as I mentioned in
my previous weapons update. The first set of numbers are for the immediate
effect on the current meta-game but more weapons and balancing will occur with
each patch you see on our path to Launch." -Paul Inouye in "Heat Scale And General Update"

I believe many of us are looking at the new "Heat Scale" as a band-aid for the current PPC-meta and based on Paul's comments form the Command Chair, that appears to be accurate.

However, I believe we are also overlooking the fact that heat scale is not intended to fix the balance, but is a tool needed to adjust the balance. It's tool that balances a weapon by multiplicity, where 1 or 2 units may achieve desired balance but multiple units become unbalanced.

It was made very clear that the hard numbers for heat scale are under scrutiny and the goal of the initial release was to have an effect (good, bad, or negligible) on the current meta-game. And while some of these values may appear short-sighted and/or arbitrary, I imagine we will see multiple adjustments in the next few patches to compensate for some of these shortcomings.

But my biggest bullet point of discussion, the TL:DR of this entire topic, stems from a single question that has been asked again and again, through every avenue of communication with the devs, speculated about in every sub-forum, lurking in the back of every MechWarrior's mind;


How is PGI going to balance Clan Tech?


We may be looking at the answer right now.

[FupDup]

venomman2, on 17 July 2013 - 06:48 PM, said:

How is PGI going to balance Clan Tech?


We may be looking at the answer right now.

I wouldn't be surprised if PGI set the heat scale for Clan weapons so low that you could only carry one of each weapon and no more than 3 or 4 different weapons total without getting a 9001% heat multiplier.

[Ralgas]

It's a start, given the time and coding (apparently) restraints they've boxed themselves into. With tweaks it could be a more effective layer than it's given credit for so far

Edited by Ralgas, 17 July 2013 - 06:58 PM.

[Taemien]

I think its a start as well. Think about it this way. Did you really want a Masakari Prime to fire 4x Clan ER PPCs into one spot for 60 damage and have the DHS to do it at will? Convergence arguments out the window since the machine has a T-Computer to offset that.

One thing I like about the change is everyone has to be mindful of heat. Even 'heat neutral' builds. Because lets face it. Its easy to get heat neutral without sacrificing much.

[Joseph Mallan]

Forget PGI, How are players not going to wet their pants when an Ultra 20 Booms them??? Or Gasp... Hunchback IIC's 80 point thump!!!?

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 17 July 2013 - 07:14 PM.

[FupDup]

Joseph Mallan, on 17 July 2013 - 07:14 PM, said:

Forget PGI, How are players not going to wet their pants when an Ultra 20 Booms them??? Or Gasp... Hunchback IIC's 80 point thump!!!?

Don't worry, it'll have a heat scale multiplier of 543087569 because it's easier to prevent people from using certain weapons than it is to balance those weapons.

[Joseph Mallan]

FupDup, on 17 July 2013 - 07:15 PM, said:

Don't worry, it'll have a heat scale multiplier of 543087569 because it's easier to prevent people from using certain weapons than it is to balance those weapons.

Seyla

[Psikez]

To be fair clan tech probably needs a sledge hammer approach

[Joseph Mallan]

Psikez, on 17 July 2013 - 07:18 PM, said:

To be fair clan tech probably needs a sledge hammer approach

To be fair Clan Tech was superior to IS tech in all the games. Its why we would put Clan weapons on our Mechs in the previous games.

[venomman2]

FupDup, on 17 July 2013 - 07:15 PM, said:

Don't worry, it'll have a heat scale multiplier of 543087569 because it's easier to prevent people from using certain weapons than it is to balance those weapons.

Didn't you hear? Ultra AC/20 has a max alpha of 0, your mech just explodes when you pull the trigger.

But in all seriousness, the concept of UAC/20 in this game gives me chills.

[MustrumRidcully]

How does it work for Gauss Rifles? We can already see what kind of ridicilous penalties you have to add to affect the AC/20 "meaningful", and the Gauss Rifle is even cooler by default. It seems extremely questionable to me to use this as a general balancing tool.

The heat system and the weight system isn't really there to balance against boating or pinpoint precision. It exists to create a trade-off between (non-sustainable) burst damage and (sustainable) DPS. The heat system is only part of this system, and some weapons are designed to not be heat-limited (much), like ballistics, and instead are weight and ammo-limited. Trying to use the heat system to cover both groups is problematic.

[Kanatta Jing]

The heat system is a valuable set of adjusting screws that can help define the limits of practical boating. If it is or not at this point we may not know fully for another month.

Clan tech is best balanced at 5 versus 8 or 10 versus 12.

[Ralgas]

MustrumRidcully, on 18 July 2013 - 01:37 AM, said:

How does it work for Gauss Rifles? We can already see what kind of ridicilous penalties you have to add to affect the AC/20 "meaningful", and the Gauss Rifle is even cooler by default. It seems extremely questionable to me to use this as a general balancing tool.

The heat system and the weight system isn't really there to balance against boating or pinpoint precision. It exists to create a trade-off between (non-sustainable) burst damage and (sustainable) DPS. The heat system is only part of this system, and some weapons are designed to not be heat-limited (much), like ballistics, and instead are weight and ammo-limited. Trying to use the heat system to cover both groups is problematic.

which is a more a symptom of the heat caps we are now have. being able to alpha several times isn't working.

I agree the heat penalty on the ac/20 is too high, but then i also think it currently has too much dps in addition to it's frontload (needs a further rof drop, 5 sec at least).

As i've been saying since the system was announced, to do it right weapons need a "group" system similar to the terrain typing to catch everything, with gauss being thrown in with the ac/20 as "1" before penalty. using it alone will be practically heat free, using a second weapon will be warm but worth the dmg gain and gauss +2 a decent heat penalty almost not worth the weight/ammo to fire together and gauss +3 for noobzorz only unless a kill is guaranteed. It would still mean you'd see the ac/40 out there and a lot more user friendly, but firing together wold still be suboptimal.

[mike29tw]

Ralgas, on 18 July 2013 - 02:10 AM, said:

which is a more a symptom of the heat caps we are now have. being able to alpha several times isn't working.

I agree the heat penalty on the ac/20 is too high, but then i also think it currently has too much dps in addition to it's frontload (needs a further rof drop, 5 sec at least).

As i've been saying since the system was announced, to do it right weapons need a "group" system similar to the terrain typing to catch everything, with gauss being thrown in with the ac/20 as "1" before penalty. using it alone will be practically heat free, using a second weapon will be warm but worth the dmg gain and gauss +2 a decent heat penalty almost not worth the weight/ammo to fire together and gauss +3 for noobzorz only unless a kill is guaranteed. It would still mean you'd see the ac/40 out there and a lot more user friendly, but firing together wold still be suboptimal.

Seeing that they're grouping PPC and ERPPC together for max alpha on the 30th patch, I think this could be how PGI is going to deal with other frontload damage weapons.

[MustrumRidcully]

Ralgas, on 18 July 2013 - 02:10 AM, said:

which is a more a symptom of the heat caps we are now have. being able to alpha several times isn't working.

I agree the heat penalty on the ac/20 is too high, but then i also think it currently has too much dps in addition to it's frontload (needs a further rof drop, 5 sec at least).

As i've been saying since the system was announced, to do it right weapons need a "group" system similar to the terrain typing to catch everything, with gauss being thrown in with the ac/20 as "1" before penalty. using it alone will be practically heat free, using a second weapon will be warm but worth the dmg gain and gauss +2 a decent heat penalty almost not worth the weight/ammo to fire together and gauss +3 for noobzorz only unless a kill is guaranteed. It would still mean you'd see the ac/40 out there and a lot more user friendly, but firing together wold still be suboptimal.

I challenge the claim that the AC/20 DPS was ever a real problem. It's all the burst damage capability. Now that I chain-fire my AC/20s, I feel notably less effective, simply because I spread my damage more often, and I have less time for torso twisting then before.

[Ralgas]

mike29tw, on 18 July 2013 - 02:19 AM, said:

Seeing that they're grouping PPC and ERPPC together for max alpha on the 30th patch, I think this could be how PGI is going to deal with other frontload damage weapons.

I hope so. The sig link is a more detailed write up of how it would work, gauss being treated as above would even allow 3 Llas/ppc's back again and stop a lot of the wtf moments.

[Snowcrow]

It's a good start I think.
But they need to explain this to the players through the mechlab. Otherwise people who don't read the forum will have no idea what's going on with their weapons.

[Ralgas]

MustrumRidcully, on 18 July 2013 - 02:21 AM, said:

I challenge the claim that the AC/20 DPS was ever a real problem. It's all the burst damage capability. Now that I chain-fire my AC/20s, I feel notably less effective, simply because I spread my damage more often, and I have less time for torso twisting then before.

which is why the dps is too high, even solo it still has both the best burst and dps for it's heat in the game right now. Even were it to be regulated vs other ac's (@4 dps) it would still be considered the "go to" ac along with the gauss due to it's concentrated dmg

[MustrumRidcully]

Ralgas, on 18 July 2013 - 02:32 AM, said:

which is why the dps is too high, even solo it still has both the best burst and dps for it's heat in the game right now. Even were it to be regulated vs other ac's (@4 dps) it would still be considered the "go to" ac along with the gauss due to it's concentrated dmg

Why shouldn't it be the "go-to" weapon? It's 14 tons heavy, after all. The PPC delivers half the DPS for half the weight and with twice the range.

I don't see an issue there. The other ACs need to be better. I tend to think the A/C10 also needs 5 DPS to be worth its weight. The 2 ton difference and more armor for the AC/10 would be to compensate the alpha advantage the AC/20 enjoys.

[Ralgas]

MustrumRidcully, on 18 July 2013 - 02:40 AM, said:

Why shouldn't it be the "go-to" weapon? It's 14 tons heavy, after all. The PPC delivers half the DPS for half the weight and with twice the range.

I don't see an issue there. The other ACs need to be better. I tend to think the A/C10 also needs 5 DPS to be worth its weight. The 2 ton difference and more armor for the AC/10 would be to compensate the alpha advantage the AC/20 enjoys.

I spose that's where we should agree to disagree, i'd argue the more powerful stuff needs a tone back (across the board), with a few of the very weak ones buffed. Moreso given the info we have is that we aren't likely to see any sort of convergence mechanics this year, and a lot of the qq amounts to mechs are dying too quickly

Edited by Ralgas, 18 July 2013 - 02:47 AM.