301 replies to this topic

[Ralgas]

Namais, on 30 July 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

Why wouldn't the spread matter up close? If we're dealing with a time/movement convergence the spread might potentually be even wider might it not?

because if it was that bad you'd only ever be able to hit lights with streaks..... oh and movement based penalizes playstyles from the medium down while encouraging the sit back and snipe (see current) meta. To make it work the way everyone ideally wants to you need a Kotor style gameplay without pauses, which of course everyone would then gripe takes away the a lot of the realism and real-time weapons control

Edited by Ralgas, 30 July 2013 - 04:57 AM.

[Royalewithcheese]

Warge, on 30 July 2013 - 04:48 AM, said:

That's why AC/10/20 should fire short bursts.

I like this sort of idea a lot, esp. if PPCs become laser-like beam weapons. It's a way to spread damage around without dealing with glitchy splash mechanics, and unlike most convergence fixes it rewards skill-based play on offence and defense.

(Not that any AC needs a nerf. In fact if anything the rest of them need to be brought in line with the UAC/5 and the 20.)

Edited by Royalewithcheese, 30 July 2013 - 05:07 AM.

[Unbound Inferno]

Doesn't mean we need to keep Battletech heat for certain weapons.

We can balance heat around some aspects that need it desperately - Lasers - but keep high-heat effects for others that need the penalty - like PPCs and some rapid-firing AC that can be abused - so we keep a balance to what works well.

Its just a numbers game, all it needs is some tweaking and testing and we'll have it.

But the OP is right on the nail. Too many misconceptions on what "Heat Neutral" could do is leaving them scared in a corner, afraid to find an alternative to make it work.

[Tolkien]

Namais, on 30 July 2013 - 04:52 AM, said:

Also on the gauss equation - let's not forget that you're forced to carry volatile ammo for it. That doesn't have a tangible impact on the damage math but does make a huge difference to the big picture when comparing weapons.

I'm pretty sure you meant to say that the gauss rifle explodes, not the ammo, but your point is well taken when comparing energy weapons against non energy weapons - *something* somewhere on your mech can go boom.

[Sasha Volkova]

Namais, on 30 July 2013 - 04:52 AM, said:

Also on the gauss equation - let's not forget that you're forced to carry volatile ammo for it. That doesn't have a tangible impact on the damage math but does make a huge difference to the big picture when comparing weapons.

Volatile ammo?
Gauss?
You do know that gauss ammo can NOT explode, right? :b

[Ralgas]

Namais, on 30 July 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

If what was that bad - what I mean is that if you have to aim at something for x milliseconds for weapons to center, then there's an optimal distance where the target is moving across your fov relatively slowly even if it's doing an absolute 70kph. You have an easy time holding aim for precise convergence. If you're up close, it's a larger but relatively fast moving target that might not be as easy to maintain in sights. There's sweet spots up and down that range (as I picture it at least) that introduce some nice layers of skill to the game.

I think you're talking about a fixed convergence or something? I dunno.

which was pgi's solution in the 1st place, and of course they never get anything right. hence these threads.... you're method mentioned still makes shooting lights with any sort of regularity a problem though, keeping on a 150km/h mech (+ when they get movement code together) for convergence times..........

[MustrumRidcully]

Taxxian, on 30 July 2013 - 03:20 AM, said:

It seems I somehow ignored the dissipation part... sorry about that.

I thought Paul had too, but then he apparently wrote about the boogey man of heat neutral mechs as if they were terrible and could ruin the game and make it hard on noobs. Despite lots of stock mechs - giving their canonical heat production and heat dissipation rates - being pretty close to heat neutral, which means, as long as noobs are forced to play trials by default, would benefit them.

And it's not like his approach to the whole thing would make it any easier for noobs, with hidden alpha heat traps they don't even know about, in addition to mechs that produce twice the heat they were designed to handle.

Quote

This may actually work. But it makes Lasers behave more like Ballistics... instead FireBig/WaitForCooling/FireBig it becomes FireSmall/FireSmall/FireSmal just like Autocannons, with much less Alpha than we have now.

I don't know - Gauss, AC/10, AC/20 and LBX-10 for example are pretty much alpha strike weapons.

lasers are already damage over time weapons. (Which is why the heat scale limits particularly on Large Lasers seem so superflous - a 5 LL Stalker would never have the kind of threat on the battle field as the Quad PPC Stalker since those 5 LLs won't deliver pinpoint precise damage, unless both sides stand perfectly still.

[RF Greywolf]

Tolkien, on 30 July 2013 - 04:54 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure you meant to say that the gauss rifle explodes, not the ammo, but your point is well taken when comparing energy weapons against non energy weapons - *something* somewhere on your mech can go boom.

Theoretically speaking from TT, if you fire a PPC inside it's minimum range it had the chance to go boom too!

Heat neutral mechs are the core of the game. Battletech was not about taking out your opponent in one shot, unless you got that lucky head shot, it was about the epic slug fest between to big war machines. Finishing the game unscathed was almost unheard of.

Namais, on 30 July 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

If what was that bad - what I mean is that if you have to aim at something for x milliseconds for weapons to center, then there's an optimal distance where the target is moving across your fov relatively slowly even if it's doing an absolute 70kph. You have an easy time holding aim for precise convergence. If you're up close, it's a larger but relatively fast moving target that might not be as easy to maintain in sights. There's sweet spots up and down that range (as I picture it at least) that introduce some nice layers of skill to the game.

I think that would be a better mechanic than instant convergence. After all it still takes computers a couple seconds to adjust for all of the variables while firing.

[FatBabyThompkins]

Tolkien, on 30 July 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

Completely true - if the damage wasn't all going to one place, a 30 damage blast would be no problem.

In MPBT3025 they didn't double armour values but they did have a system where firing weapons simultaneously caused them to automatically spread (some say they just reduced the damage dealt, but I swear I remember damage spreading automatically). I know FPS purists hate the concept of their shots not going exactly where they visually land, but I truly think the game would be greatly improved by having multiple hits to a target automatically spread, with only the first shot every 0.5 or so seconds going where visually placed.

You would still need skill to put shots on target, and you would need self control to not just hammer the fire button if you actually want to target a component, but pinpoint damage would be much less of a problem and matches would probably last much longer.

I could very easily get behind, and even believe, in a time based convergence system that accounted for personal speed and movement. A pinpoint that grows when you move or torso twist fast. Slow and steady, got your on shot target. Fast and loose, shots are wild. Would reduce or even eliminate poptarts. Snipers would need to expose themselves longer to get a better shot (move out of cover and then stand still to home in the sights). Lights would suffer in particular unless they get very close, and even then, they're not directing all damage to one location (6ML Jenner), unless they stop. The death of any light mech. Speed and accuracy are mutually exclusive. Speed and survivability are mutually inclusive. Stand still to gain accuracy at the expense of survivability. Move to avoid shots at the expense of accuracy. This concept would even reduce pin-point alpha as it would inherently become less common. Good shots would be rewarded for what they are: good shots by those balancing risk vs reward.

Edited by FatBabyThompkins, 30 July 2013 - 05:09 AM.

[Roland]

Ralgas, on 30 July 2013 - 04:42 AM, said:

ok 35 point, 2 ppc and a gauss..... when they kill the current meta what did you think the new one was going to be? 0.o

give em convergence, it'll become lrms or run in and high alpha close enough the cof/spread doesn't matter, leave it pinpoint end up with what we have now, manage ppc's out you get twin gauss again. What's you're magic solution btw?

Generally, with 2 PPC and a Gauss rifle, your shots aren't converging at range anyway due to the speed difference between those weapons.

That and the fact that you have to aim ahead of a moving target, and thus converge on a point behind them.

[MustrumRidcully]

Deadmeat313, on 30 July 2013 - 03:29 AM, said:

This is so true. The effect on PPC mechs would be to encourage the pilot to stagger fire to avoid heat spikes. Possibly this would give them a UAC5 feel, as the pilots now have to work out the most heat-efficient fire rate for their build. They would still be able to take wild shots as they don't have to worry about ammo.
Ballistic weapon users should be able to pretty much fire at will, but wild shots may waste ammo.

Further points:
1) A decent base heat dissipation would make standard heat sinks viable again, which would make a lot of the stock builds viable again!
2) DHS would become a choice not a necessity. In TT there are a great many designs where DHS would be wasted, because the standard weapon loadout does not significantly overheat the Mech. DHS should be important to heat-hog energy users, but not so much to ballistic / missile loadouts.


DM

I have to disagree here, however - DHS are still a seizable upgrade. You will need to do a lot more to change that. What would be a lot better is that stock mech configs would appear more workable despite being stuck with SHS, and upgrading to DHS would make them "overcooled".

If we don't want DHS a clear-cut always-required update, I would probably change one fundamental rule: Engine heat sinks are always treated as single heat sinks. That way, you don't get a free 10 heat sinks out of the upgrade, which is the equivalent of giving every mech 10 extra tons to be spend on energy weapons. This would hurt stock DHS builds, however, which may cause issues.

It's utlimately a design decision: DO we want new tech to be upgrades like they were designed to be in the table top, or are they side grades? PGI never made a clear-cut statement on what they wanted - they are mucking around the issue, basically. Both are viable options, I think, but you should probably segregate low level tech players from high level tech players, just like most modern MMOs don't force 1st level players with their Rusty Longswrods to fight in PvP with endgame players with their epic level ultra-rare +20 Vorpal Longswords of PvP Baddassitude.

[Jungle Rhino]

The irony that surrounds PGI's stance on pinpoint weapons and 'skill' means that while your shots go exactly where you want them to - thanks to HSR the TARGET may or may not be where you think it is

But just to be clear we need to separate the discussion between limiting alphas of 60pts (what PPC stalkers used to be capable of) and solving the pinpoint damage issue. Dropping heat cap and raising dissapation solves the former - and does so a lot more eloquently than the cumbersome boating penalty currently in place.

Pinpoint damage is fairly easily solved by introducing reticle sway when moving. You can still fire pinpoint alphas but you need to be stationary to do so - thus making yourself an easier target. Seems pretty fair to me. This is logical - afterall gyros aren't perfect. Plus it opens up a whole new range of P2W GXP modules they can sell to us to reduce this reticle sway, call it 'enhanced gyros'!

[MustrumRidcully]

Namais, on 30 July 2013 - 04:38 AM, said:

GR was the go to before the arbitary HP nerf. Give it the HP back and see what happens.

The greatest nerf to the Gauss Rifle has always been the double heat sink.

30 heat neutral is great and all, but a hot 40+ will still kill you 33 % more quickly, as long as you don't overheat before the kill.

The only reasons you don't see triple Gauss Rifle mechs out there in the field beating those Quad PPC Stalker is because the only mech that can do it with its hard points is a 70 ton Hero Mech. Give us an Assault with 3 ballistic slots in 3 seperate, non-torso, non-leg, non-head positions. Heck, you probably only need to give us a Dual Gauss capable Assaults and you'd see more of them. The only Dual Gauss capable mechs are 65 and 70 tons, after all, even if that is a highly effectice build, it has to compete with 85+ ton mechs.

[Fooooo]

I don't really have many problems with heat neutral mechs, I guess if you had some baseline where this is the max dps you can do and still have heat neutrality, then rebalance every weapon around this new scale.

Weapons above the new DPS baseline would get more heat to make them non heat neutral. (or at least, less neutral than the ones at the baseline)
Weapons below the baseline would get other advantages. (like mgs for example)

Not sure if I explained that right, but doing anything to make the game more heat neutral is a fairly big change to how the game is played.

FatBabyThompkins, on 30 July 2013 - 05:06 AM, said:

I could very easily get behind, and even believe, in a time based convergence system that accounted for personal speed and movement. A pinpoint that grows when you move or torso twist fast. Slow and steady, got your on shot target. Fast and loose, shots are wild. Would reduce or even eliminate poptarts. Snipers would need to expose themselves longer to get a better shot (move out of cover and then stand still to home in the sights). Lights would suffer in particular unless they get very close, and even then, they're not directing all damage to one location (6ML Jenner), unless they stop. The death of any light mech. Speed and accuracy are mutually exclusive. Speed and survivability are mutually inclusive. Stand still to gain accuracy at the expense of survivability. Move to avoid shots at the expense of accuracy. This concept would even reduce pin-point alpha as it would inherently become less common. Good shots would be rewarded for what they are: good shots by those balancing risk vs reward.

While this is a little offtopic I wanted to reply to it.

Why bother with adding mechanics like that when you can get the same effect by just seperating convergance of weapons. (removing it basically.)

I'll leave this fairly crap photoshop I did of what the recticles for an atlas would look like.

Spoiler

As you can see, at 200m if an atlas alphaed he would hit the top of the commandos leg with his AC/20, the commandos arms with his arm weapons, and the top left (or over the shoulder) of the commando with his SRMS.

The further the range, the more you have to adjust for the 5 sections of a mech that can hold weapons.

The closer you get the more confined the dmg you deal from all 5 sections, meaning a light that is close is still going to be easy to hit...well just as easy as it is now really, except you are forcing spread dmg without any silly mechanics people cannot understand easy.

Edited by Fooooo, 30 July 2013 - 05:22 AM.

[Master Q]

Tolkien, on 30 July 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

I know FPS purists hate the concept of their shots not going exactly where they visually land, but I truly think the game would be greatly improved by having multiple hits to a target automatically spread, with only the first shot every 0.5 or so seconds going where visually placed.

No kidding. Unfortunately, there are too many brain donor "FPS Purists" out there who don't realize that sure, their favorite Call of Doody stinker clone may give them "pinpoint aim" but it also doesn't let them load up and fire 7 different weapons all at the same time. And even most of those FPS games these days either have recoil (so only your first shot goes where intended) or else cone-of-fire (which reduces when you crouch or stop moving, making you a much easier target in exchange).

They want to be able to run, bunny-hop, and place pinpoint shots with their aimbot software. Convergence fixes would take that away and make their aimbot software less workable and that's the truth of what the whiners who say "convergence isn't broken" really means.

[Dracol]

In prior mechwarrior games, heat neutral laser builds were an issue. IMHO, I believe Paul was referencing those types of builds when he made his comment. Heat neutral ballistic builds have to manage ammo instead of heat.

[Master Q]

Dracol, on 30 July 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

In prior mechwarrior games, heat neutral laser builds were an issue. IMHO, I believe Paul was referencing those types of builds when he made his comment. Heat neutral ballistic builds have to manage ammo instead of heat.

In prior Mechwarrior games, heat neutral laser builds were an issue because they could place pinpoint-accurate shots on any panel at will, with 100% convergence. Think of someone putting 8 medium lasers on CT and doing the full damage to just that one panel Every. Single. Time.

The fix for lasers was to make them a beam weapon, because it all comes back to convergence. Making lasers a beam weapon forced their damage to spread. The long term fix to this game HAS to be a convergence fix becausee perfect convergence is and always has been what is breaking the game balance.

[FatBabyThompkins]

Fooooo, on 30 July 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

While this is a little offtopic I wanted to reply to it.

Why bother with adding mechanics like that when you can get the same effect by just seperating convergance of weapons. (removing it basically.)

I'll leave this fairly crap photoshop I did of what the recticles for an atlas would look like.

As you can see, at 200m if an atlas alphaed he would hit the top of the commandos leg with his AC/20, the commandos arms with his arm weapons, and the top left (or over the shoulder) of the commando with his SRMS.

The further the range, the more you have to adjust for the 5 sections of a mech that can hold weapons.

The closer you get the more confined the dmg you deal from all 5 sections, meaning a light that is close is still going to be easy to hit...well just as easy as it is now really, except you are forcing spread dmg without any silly mechanics people cannot understand easy.

You're right, it was offtopic, and I'm not sure how I got on that soap box... (after reading it was because of the message that Awesome's could alpha, but I was replying that they may very well fire 3 PPC over 10 seconds rather than all at once.)

That said, I can understand peoples desire to want 1:1 convergence. I'm an old quake/tribes 1 player from back in the day, and those are still some of my favorite games to play. The difference here is that we aren't firing one weapon and trying to hit 2 hit boxes (head/body). Many weapons hitting many hit boxes.

I'm split between a time based convergence to no convergence. Shoot and hit what you're aiming at, but only if you've allowed your targeting computer to "catch up". Or just throw out convergence and have to manually adjust each weapon.

Back on topic, avoidance of heat neutrality is akin to saying sustained damage is bad. We wonder why people flock to front-loaded damage and it because their is incentive to. Compounded with sustained DPS builds that are punished or not possible pushes further into front-loaded builds.

Edited by FatBabyThompkins, 30 July 2013 - 05:43 AM.

[Roland]

Generally, heat neutral builds are rarely an issue, and were never an issue in prior games.

What the best players tended to do was build crazy, over-the-top energy builds which exploited the broken heat mechanics.. For instance, originally in MW4, when your heat hit the top of the cap, it effectively disappeared into the ether.. So firing huge alpha strikes, then overriding and tapping your coolant flush made you able to run at the top of your heat scale 100% of the time. Even before I fully understood the heat scale in that game, I ran builds which really had no business existing (like 2 ERPPC's, 100 LRM's, in a mech Nicknamed "The Super Skyfox").

Even without the broken mechanics, the most advantageous builds are likely going to be ones which run very hot... because it's better to run really hot and dish out burst damage, as long as you can keep the enemy at range to prevent him from exploiting your poor heat efficiency.

But this is kind of how balance works... hot builds end up being effective, but there is a way to beat them. As opposed to what we see now, where they are effectively dominant at all ranges.

[Royalewithcheese]

Master Q, I'm not entirely sure where your association between CoD and pinpoint comes from. CoD uses a variety of mechanics (spread, bloom, recoil, scope drift, magnificently terribad netcode) that have the combined effect of minimizing the role of pinpoint aiming in actual gameplay. Games that I associate with pinpoint would be stuff like TF2 (for most weapons) and Tribes.

I think that if we all like lasers as a convergence fix, that makes a pretty good case for balancing stuff like PPC along similar lines. The hard part here would be avoiding direct conflict role-wise between the PPC and the LL.