65 replies to this topic

[C E Dwyer]

Homeless Bill, on 20 July 2013 - 01:53 AM, said:

Exiled again. Jesus Christ. Why do the other ten suggestions get to sit in Gameplay Balance?

Because they don't like fan based idea's being more sensible than the paid staff I guess

[Prezimonto]

I like it.

I like that it tells me when I'm going to earn bonus heat in and out of game.

I like that it scales with weapon combinations, so that instead of having to hand set every possible combination you set an alpha strike value will cause extra heat, which is addressing directly the real issue, rather than dancing nearby.

[Tesunie]

I'm a little tired as I read this, but the number confuse me.

I'm taking a guess here that all weapons add to the heat buffer, making a buffer of "If you shoot this value of damage at a time, your heat buffer overloads, causing more heat to be generated (not dissipated) than normal". Am I correct? If so, that sounds far more sensible to me. It'd keep the high Alphas down a bit, but leaves lots of freedom and a simpler system to understand.

One of my big thoughts with their heat penalty system is, what about the Awesome? It has 3 PPCs, but can't fire them all any more without getting even more heat? But the Hunchback can fire almost all it's weapons at once without any problems?

Then again, in lore they rarely fired all their weapons at once. They staggered them in sets of 2 or 4, or chain fired them, to prevent heat from affecting their systems. Having high heat effect systems would make for a better balance, as most of us seem to agree on. I'd like it if as I got higher on the heat scale, if my reticule started to wobble a bit, my turning abilities started to get sluggish, and/or my mech started to move slower as they muscular fibers (can't spell the word) overheats and stops contracting properly. But, PGI seems to be intent on this course... so if they are going that way, I think trying to stop the high alpha attacks would be the better solution, rather than stopping the combined fire of similar weapons. What they are doing now is more... it seems like it's a "stop the boating" quick fix, instead of stopping the real complaint, unusually high alphas with pin point accuracy. (Actually, the pin point convergence of some weapons is more of the problems. Now if I can just get my ballistics to stop shooting over the shoulders of my targets at 20m away...)

I would almost like to see them fix the super good convergence problem, and set it up a bit more like how the books describe it. In the book series, they would have the reticule go from red (bad), green (okay) to gold (perfect lock). The longer you held your reticule over your target, the better your lock with all weapons, till it turned gold and then everything should hit your targeted spot. Otherwise, it would not be fully aligned and would hit different parts of the mech, if not even the miss the target. In the books (and TT) they tend to have some shots hit, and others would miss. That included even when firing a bunch of weapons from the of the same type. Fixing the super accurate convergence would make high alpha builds... well... less effective. (But then would lead to people complaining about not causing damage to targets "they clearly hit". There would be no winning on this one.)

[Tesunie]

Sorry about spelling and grammar... too tired to fix. I'm hoping people can understand what I'm saying...

Edited by Tesunie, 21 July 2013 - 08:24 PM.

[Tombstoner]

Homeless Bill, on 20 July 2013 - 01:53 AM, said:

Exiled again. Jesus Christ. Why do the other ten suggestions get to sit in Gameplay Balance?

Because your suggesting and discussing a game "feature". Definition of features "Ideas that might make the game more fun, interesting and balanced, but didn't come from a dev. They get a special place on the forums. you can talk about game balance in game balance with numbers, opinions, feelings and such, but features that might or might not work get moved. it muddies the feed back they want to hear regarding their system. not yours.

[zorak ramone]

PGI: Instead of exiling this guy's posts, how about hiring him instead?

This is a much better proposal for a heat-based mechanism of alpha balancing. Its transparent, and it even gets around the whole "lots of different but similar weapons" loophole.

Would still prefer convergence, but this is the road that PGI seems to have chosen.

[Homeless Bill]

Tombstoner, on 22 July 2013 - 06:03 AM, said:

Because your suggesting and discussing a game "feature".

I won't disagree with the technicality. My problem is that the mods have zero consistency whatsoever. Look at Game Balance; half of the threads there are suggestions. Why does every thread of mine get poached out of Game Balance while other **** that should CLEARLY be in other forums is just left there?

Again, it's not a big deal, but I'm really not a fan of how they moderate this place. I try to be a constructive member of the community, and it bugs me that the cancerous ******** get to be front and center while ideas like this are buried.

Edited by Homeless Bill, 22 July 2013 - 09:29 AM.

[Phaesphoros]

Homeless person thrown out (again!) of hot and busy General Discussion Gameplay Balance to the deserted and cold Feature Suggestions. The irony.

Edited by Phaesphoros, 22 July 2013 - 03:34 PM.

[Malyshus]

I personally would prefer your system over the current implementation, I do think that it is more complicated than it needs to be however.

I provided my feedback within the thread provided by PGI http://mwomercs.com/...09#entry2584709

Oh yeah, and bump.

Edited by Malyshus, 23 July 2013 - 10:10 AM.

[scJazz]

Bill, I hate this idea. Seriously despise it. Why? Because it isn't your TCL idea.

TCL Fixes Everything!

This Heat Thing even when modified by someone for whom CLUE=TRUE is still a steaming pile of terribad.

[New Day]

[Homeless Bill]

Bump because bump. Any thoughts on how to improve this?

[Phaesphoros]

Homeless Bill, on 24 July 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

Bump because bump. Any thoughts on how to improve this?

Remove anything PGI hasn't already included, increase the time window, and repost via twitter

Edited by Phaesphoros, 24 July 2013 - 10:09 AM.

[Glucose]

What's the point of the simultaneous fire value? Couldn't you just stick with the Heat Buffer values?

Here's the math.

1) Sum up all the heat buffer levels of the weapons fired in the last 0.5 seconds, call this B
2) Sum up the base-heat of all the weapons fired in the last 0.5 seconds, call this H
3) If the B > 100, use their lookup table curve to apply a heat penalty. For example, I hit 110 B, so I'll add on an additional 10% of H as a heat penalty as a result of the weapon attack.

This algorithm will have to be cleaned up to handle staggered firing (like what happens if you fire 4 weapons in an alpha strike, and then 2 chained shots within .5 seconds. The goal of course is the last shot needs to have generated the same amount of heat penalty as if all 6 were fired at the same time. (This is actually pretty easy, just keep around an "heat penalty applied" value of the last 0.5 seconds, and if you fire again, add the difference between where you are on the new penalty curve, and where you were)

But anyway, the nice part about this -- you only need a heat buffer value per weapon. It implicitly tells you how many you can safely fire. If your max value is100, and you have a heat buffer value of 10 -- well then you can fire 10 of these safely by themselves.

The part I'm real interested in. Is you can then tweak a mech (and their variants) heat buffer level. You could give the AWS-8Q a higher buffer value so it can boat 3 ppcs, for instance.

Edited by Glucose, 25 July 2013 - 05:35 AM.

[Wildgrin]

Glucose, on 25 July 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

What's the point of the simultaneous fire value? Couldn't you just stick with the Heat Buffer values?
....

I am pretty sure that Homeless just included that so that people could understand the Heat buffer value numbers a bit better. Not as an actual number used in the system. As you say it can and is derived by the total heat buffer value/weapon heat buffer value.

[EmperorMyrf]

I like it, but I feel it could be slightly improved.

Instead of a heat buffer, implement an "Energy Cache" for lack of a better name. Energy output from the engine that's dedicated for weapons fills up this energy cache over a given period of time, and firing weapons depletes it. If you don't have enough energy, you don't fire. Simple. The amount of energy depleted per weapon can be dependent on damage, and as before with your other suggestions cap the damage output at 20, and replete the energy fully every 0.5 seconds.

One thing would need to be considered with beam weapons though. If it depletes energy as its firing then it would mean that your energy would be completely untouched by 4 beams (as it's regenerating as fast as it's being depleted), and that a maximum of 8 could be fired. This would mean that beam weapons would have to deplete about 50% more energy per unit damage than other weapons to both account for this effect and the fact that laser alphas are harder to aim with consistently, thus making the 4Ps hunch (and only the hunch) untouched by this mechanic.

The other option would be to dump all of the necessary energy into the laser the instant you fire. Then to accommodate for the difficult to aim alpha it would need to deplete 66% energy per unit damage. This would be easier to code as there would not need to be any sort of beam interrupts present in the other option.

This would of course be a solution for those in favor of removing large alpha strikes altogether. Not everyone wants that, sure, but if the majority does then I feel this is a solid solution. And yours, Bill, I would be happy to see in game in lieu of the current system.

[Merit Lef]

Its all about balance right...then keep it simple. Alpha any combination that would do more than 20dmg = penalty. Therefore you have to chain fire and only use alpha as a last ditch effort (as it was intended for). Don't have to quirk individual mechs or weapons. Why should 6ML on Hunchback (soon Battlemaster) be allowed but 3 PPC on an Awesome be penalized (same damage).

[Homeless Bill]

Glucose, on 25 July 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

What's the point of the simultaneous fire value? Couldn't you just stick with the Heat Buffer values?

Like Wildgrin said, the simultaneous fire value is just there for reference; it was calculated using the Heat Buffer values.

EmperorMyrf, on 25 July 2013 - 01:35 PM, said:

Instead of a heat buffer, implement an "Energy Cache" for lack of a better name. Energy output from the engine that's dedicated for weapons fills up this energy cache over a given period of time, and firing weapons depletes it. If you don't have enough energy, you don't fire.

I'd be totally okay with this approach. Ultimately, I think they're sticking with heat penalties, and that's why I've proposed this. Honestly though, your Energy Cache modification is the best way global cooldowns could be implemented.

Merit Lef, on 25 July 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

Why should 6ML on Hunchback (soon Battlemaster) be allowed but 3 PPC on an Awesome be penalized (same damage).

Because medium lasers have a shorter range, they're more difficult to aim, and they're practically guaranteed to spread their damage. I believe tying anything directly to damage is a terrible idea. Right now, pinpoint weapons are the ones that need a nerf. Tying any penalty directly to damage would nerf the living **** out of spread weapons like SRMs while allowing the pinpoint weapons an even greater advantage.

The problem I have is not with burst damage. It's with burst, pinpoint damage.

[Farpenoodle]

I just found this thread from listening to the goon town hall. Lol.

But I wrote a post in Gameplay Discussions http://mwomercs.com/...the-heat-scale/

Didn't realise someone already had basically the same idea. I have a video you're free to borrow.

[Miken]

Homeless Bill, on 19 July 2013 - 08:46 PM, said:

• Ballistics
  
  • Machine Gun
    
    • HBV: 0.8 (8 / second)
      
    • Simultaneous Fire: 125
      
    • Continuous Fire: 12 + Change
  • Gauss Rifle
    
    • HBV: 75
      
    • Simultaneous Fire: 1 + Change

Something wrong. Gauss and machine guns have no serious heat at all. Don't break the lore.

IMHO: Current heat system already broken. For avoid addition unnecessary "heat penalty" just enough to limit heat treshold (amount of heatsinks = limit heat treshold) and accelerate heat dissipation