301 replies to this topic

[Bacl]

Easy, take the same aiming system as World of Tanks (+ some tweaking) and cut the heat cap by 2 but multiply the heat dissipation by 2. Energy weapons will be more competitive compared to the ballistic. Good example but those numbers would require some tweaking, going alpha with 4 or 5 larges lasers alpha would flirt with the heat cap but not going shutdown, wait few seconds and you can do it again ( depending on heat sinks and engine). However going for the same with 6 lager lasers in alpha would shut you down on the spot. This system would also allow you to chain lasers without overheating, you do much less dmaage in alpha but you can sustain a continuous single laser fire for days. I believe its a fair trade off.

Oh and remove that damn ghost heat system. If they do it gives me a resson to buy MC again, i m not supporting ****** systems like that just because they want to get the CoD or BF fans, no ways!

[General Taskeen]

@Koniving, I already know what the Field inhibitor is for sure, but PGI refuses to add that functionality to the game or does not acknowledge that they will. Every time I brought it up in closed beta, I don't think I remember even one dev commenting on any such question regarding it. Which is why I simply say, if they are not going to take the time to add something like that, then they need remove the min range.

And regarding Roland's question for the AC. Can't say I really know the answer myself at this point, regarding the MW:LL example. PGI basically did two things it seems - wanted to somehow make the full damage shell work in a real-time game, but in another aspect they also copied MW:LL for AC's, at least for AC/10 and AC/20. However, armor values are much, much higher in that game and all the damage values are abstracted, they are merely the "equivalent" weapons compared to their TT stats. MW:LL's AC's are definitely a joy to use.

I would be ok with PGI keeping the current AC "one shell, full damage," but maybe they could add in alternate guns, maybe a AC/5 that has a better fire rate, but fires 3 shells that do lower damage to equal out to around 5 damage or whatever. They really do need to change UAC's though, very badly.

And going back to the topic, it really is a shame many TT builds brought into MWO produce so much heat with SHS and can't disappate fast enough due to the overall "heatsink philosphy" in MWO, even though most of the builds are very minimalist in nature, where those SHS builds would have little to no heat problems firing certain groups of weapons.

[Livewyr]

We do have heat neutral mechs. Small lasers and Gauss tend to lend themselves nicely to this.

Having fully armed heat neutral mechs would be a disaster.

Hold down trigger.... ...... ..... not even CoD has that.. even there you still have to change mags...

[MustrumRidcully]

Livewyr, on 30 September 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

We do have heat neutral mechs. Small lasers and Gauss tend to lend themselves nicely to this.

Having fully armed heat neutral mechs would be a disaster.

Why? Any good reason?

THe only thing that matters is that I kill you before you kill me. And quite often, it's better for me to bring a bit more firepower than my heat sinks can handle, as long as I don't overheat before you die.

Now, you might come up with a horror scenario like: "OMG, but just imagine if those Quad PPC Stalkers would be heat neutral! That be totally OP". But you know what would have been more OP then? The Quintuple PPC Stalker that overheats as he kills you 1 salvo before you could have killed him.

The problem with "heat neutral" builds being overpowered would be when you have one-shot monsters. Which is probably a sign that your armor ratings are too low or your damage values per weapons are too high.
(MW3 definitely had stuff like this. I remember building some ER ML or ER SL boats that could one-shot away enemy mech components. Though I am not even sure those were heat neutral.)

[SteelPaladin]

Artgathan, on 30 September 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

It could definitely be done with only a single bar which would help reduce HUD clutter. The "heat reserve" exists for a few reasons (one of which is preventing the "lurching up and down" in speed every time someone pulls the trigger, another is to normalize the percentages at which heat penalties are incurred).

As for exacerbating the "peek and shoot" game play, the heat reserve definitely encourages this type of game play. However, Peek and Shoot with front-loaded damage will always be the most effective form of game play because of the advantages it confers (I get to shoot you, and you don't get to shoot me). The only way I can think of (off the top of my head) to encourage less peek and shoot would be to give damage bonuses for remaining in the LOS of your target for X amount of time (or if your heat dissipation rate increased with your current speed?).

If dissipation is high enough and threshold is low enough, peek and shoot becomes much less efficient. The amount of damage you can front load is severely restricted (you'd overheat and freeze up in plain sight) and staying in cover for an extended period wastes cooling capacity (since your mech is already cold and you're not firing to add more heat to cool). Using cover is still valid and desirable, but the hiding period between shots becomes much shorter unless you want to sacrifice a lot of your firepower.

Snipers in particular would be forced to pop out much more often. They would not be able to wreck a mech w/one or two volleys and would have to keep putting fire on it to keep it from getting close. Otherwise, brawlers would easily be able to close and tear the snipers up w/heavier close-range firepower.

[SteelPaladin]

Livewyr, on 30 September 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

We do have heat neutral mechs. Small lasers and Gauss tend to lend themselves nicely to this.

Having fully armed heat neutral mechs would be a disaster.

Hold down trigger.... ...... ..... not even CoD has that.. even there you still have to change mags...

I don't see the problem.

A mech designed to be able to fire all weapons constantly piloted by a player who just holds down the trigger is rather inefficient. You aren't always firing (defensive twisting, ducking behind cover, jockeying for a good shot), so not designing a mech to take advantage of that by running a bit hot to use that spare cooling is sacrificing firepower. Weapons still have a cooldown, as well, so spray and pray dramatically increases the odds your guns will be cycling when a prime shot presents itself and you'll miss it.

So by all means, let folks make mechs that way. Players who build and play smarter will destroy them anyway.

[Hisashi No Oni]

Well sorry but you lost me at "table top". This is not BT or MW4. This is a different game and they are moving in a different direction with it. And for those of us that love the old games we have to make what I call "the choice" if we want to stay.

[Koniving]

Roland, on 30 September 2013 - 10:50 AM, said:

The thing is, if you made AC's do damage over time like lasers, then I can't really see any reason why I would use AC's... energy weapons would just be better then.

The chief benefit of AC's over lasers now is that they do damage in a single chunk, rather than the energy weapon's burn time.

While heat would traditionally benefit AC's over energy weapons, the ballistics wouldn't traditionally have the additional accuracy concerns that stem from their travel time nature.

Edit: Missed the first part. There's a few reasons for it. If recoil were implemented, multi-shot versions of smaller calibers would be preferable. But they aren't over time like lasers. They are constant, non-stop weapons (for the MG version) where lasers are beam-time weapons. Every hit causes a rattle, throwing off the potential aim of the enemy. Now, the burst-fire versions would be akin to the beam-time styles. But truth be told, I vaguely recall being able to use an AC/5 or a series of AC/2s to knock down light mechs in MW3.

Here's what the AC and UAC sounded like in MW3.


Enough rattling causes instability in the gyros, making the mech fall over. (There's a good reason right there). In the MW5 trailer the rattling of constantly firing ACs caused the Warhammer to lose its aim and its PPCs fired off in odd directions as a perfectly timed shoulder hit jerks it off to the side.

This is an example of it, although this is actually using the single shot ACs. Quite devastating. Anyone on the receiving end is likely to complain about being unable to see what they're doing with all the shaking.


Also, comments on the video I made of it suggested this awesome little idea: Multi-shot ACs get our current DPS for ACs. The single shots get a tad slower, reducing the DPS a bit.

Example if an AC/5 does 5 damage every 1.5 seconds. Change it to 2.0, and the multi-shot be 3.33 DPS like the AC/5 is now.

This vid is dated. Corrections mentioned in a previous post.


I would also note that higher caliber ACs are supposed to have a violent jerk to them, such that certain mechs are the only ones capable of using single shot ACs and UACs. Example: Cauldron Born and UAC/20.

On recoil and knockdowns -- that would be a good reason for a crouch function right there. Crouch -- you get less recoil. Crouch -- you're now more stable and difficult to knock over.

------------

Combine the 30 threshold with this. 2 ML with 30 threshold (if the heat generated instantly instead of over 1 second) would pop Every mech up to 26.67% heat just by firing once.
2 large lasers = 46.67% heat.
2 PPCs = 66.67% heat.
1 small laser = 6.66% heat.

1 AC 2 or AC 5 or UAC 5 = 3.33% heat.
1 AC/20 = 20% heat.
1 LB-10x = 6.66% heat.
1 AC/10 = 10% heat.

See the reason?

Edited by Koniving, 30 September 2013 - 09:49 PM.

[Koniving]

Hisashi No Oni, on 30 September 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Well sorry but you lost me at "table top". This is not BT or MW4. This is a different game and they are moving in a different direction with it. And for those of us that love the old games we have to make what I call "the choice" if we want to stay.

And in this different direction they had to double the armor and are considering doubling the doubled armor. The LRMs are firing in constant non-stop streams of LRM-15s with over 16 fired before there's any delay. The PPC spam can instantly kill assault mechs that should last longer than a minute under direct fire from 3 different enemy mechs.

The tactics and strategy are gone. It's ultimately sinking to becoming more twitch shooter than MW4 -- which is considered by most of the series' core players as the worst mechwarrior in the history of the games (not counting mech assault 2). What made that sink was a threshold of 60 allowing insanely overpowered insta-kill twitch boats.

My mech (Victor) has 88.56 threshold and twin ER PPCs. When in every other game that would shut me down instantly, I can spam them 3 times in a row and still not shut down. The same build in MW3 or tabletop would shut down even if I chain fired one every 5 seconds and gave a total of 25 seconds to 6 individual ER PPCs.

I've designed a clan tech mech that'll get over 120 threshold.

That's 8 ER PPCs fired at the same time. And there's clan mechs that could fit it, too. 8 clan ER PPCs does 120 damage. That's instant kill on virtually everything. I estimated a 15 second wait to safely fire it again. In lore that'd be nearly a minute of waiting and even then it wouldn't be safe. Actually the pilot would die.

Edited by Koniving, 01 October 2013 - 08:47 AM.

[Hisashi No Oni]

Right. It is better in many ways but the few ways it differs affect mostly tactics. They seem to know what they are doing with these changes but dont seem interested in changing them in the name or "balance". Which impossible to achieve.

[Justy Starflare]

Something the OP either neglects or does not
know, weapons in the TT game only fire 1x
per round (10 seconds). That being said wpns
in MW:O are firing between 2and 6 or more
times in 10secs. I believe SHS are cooling at
a rate of 1:1 and DHS are cooling at 1.4:1 if
I'm wrong please correct this as I'm going on
memory. Pgi needs to increase the efficiency
of DHS. As for the ghost heat I'm OK with it
as it keeps people from alpha striking through
the entire game.

[YourBusDriver]

Classic overreaction to simple niche strategy.

[Koniving]

Livewyr, on 30 September 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

We do have heat neutral mechs. Small lasers and Gauss tend to lend themselves nicely to this.

Having fully armed heat neutral mechs would be a disaster.

Hold down trigger.... ...... ..... not even CoD has that.. even there you still have to change mags...

Well if you look at this post at the top of page 12, under the spoiler called "Recent Vids", I mention a heat neutral build after a set to 30 threshold. That heat neutral build after the MW3 style fix generates 33.67% heat for firing the one PPC. And since that's only 10 heat that'll cool down fast. But compared to the (what was that, 7%? 11% it generated?) percentage in MWO, it'd be riskier after the fix than it is in the current system.

The rig happens to be 1 gauss, 1 PPC, 2 SRMs (2 and 4) and 3 SPL. Ooo. Terrifying.
----
A "fully armed heat neutral build" as in those from tabletop, would be this Awesome 8Q chain firing 3 PPCs one at a time, for a single cycle of 3, once every 10 seconds. That's a heat neutral build. Are you honestly that scared of it? EVERY mech in MWO right now is a LOT more dangerous!

A "real" heat neutral mech in MWO would have to cool back to zero within 4 seconds. The only way to do that is with twin Gauss, or with a series of small lasers or very slow firing ballistics. Heat neutral mechs are always the Weaker underdogs who traded dangerous firepower in order to have heat efficiency so that they can be the turtles that can outlast the hares.

[Koniving]

Justy Starflare, on 30 September 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

Something the OP either neglects or does not
know, weapons in the TT game only fire 1x
per round (10 seconds). That being said wpns
in MW:O are firing between 2and 6 or more
times in 10secs. I believe SHS are cooling at
a rate of 1:1 and DHS are cooling at 1.4:1 if
I'm wrong please correct this as I'm going on
memory. Pgi needs to increase the efficiency
of DHS. As for the ghost heat I'm OK with it
as it keeps people from alpha striking through
the entire game.

It's a bit more complicated than that.

Cooling wise.. SHS is 1:1. Engine DHS is 2:1. Chassis DHS is 1.4:1

Here's where it gets tricky. Threshold. In past games this is a universal value (usually 30. And it was considered poor balance when it was 60 in MW4 due to the boating potential, leading to complex hardpoint limitations).

Threshold in MWO is determined by 30 + your heatsink's cooling rate.

For SHS.
Threshold: 30 base + 10 = 40. + pilot skill Heat containment (master level aka 2x basics) 20% additional threshold = 48.
Cooling: 10 / 10 = 1/sec + pilot skill Cool Run (master level) 15% additional cooling = 1.15/sec

For Engine DHS. 250 engine (max engine DHS) demonstrated.
Threshold: 30 base + 10 (*2 Engine DHS) = 50 + pilot skill Heat containment (master level aka 2x basics) 20% additional threshold = 60.
Cooling: 20 / 10 = 2/sec + pilot skill Cool Run (master level) 15% additional cooling = 2.30/sec

So, not only does DHS cool twice as fast, it's got 10 more points of alpha strike potential for standard mechs, and an additional 2 more points of alpha potential after skills.

For Chassis DHS (Note: This assumes no engine)
Threshold: 30 base + 10 (*1.4 chassis DHS) = 44 + pilot skill Heat containment (master level aka 2x basics) 20% additional threshold = 52.8.
Cooling: 14 / 10 = 1.4/sec + pilot skill Cool Run (master level) 15% additional cooling = 1.61/sec

But in reality, it's a mixture of engine + chassis.

Since we already gave the max engine DHS, let's try the Locust and Flea max engines.
170 engine (6 engine DHS) + 4 chassis.
Threshold: 30 base + 6 (*2 Engine DHS) + 4 (*1.4 chassis DHS) = 47.6 + pilot skill Heat containment (master level aka 2x basics) 20% additional threshold = 57.12.
Cooling: 17.6 / 10 = 1.76/sec + pilot skill Cool Run (master level) 15% additional cooling = 2.024/sec.

So... after skills: 10 DHS with a 250 engine... 60 threshold, 2.30/sec cooling. 10 DHS with a 170 engine, 57.12 threshold + 2.024/sec cooling.

11 DHS with a 170 engine = 58.8 threshold (after skills) and 2.185/sec cooling. Still inferior. I don't see this as fair.

--------

With what we've been fighting for in this thread:

Any engine size. Any heatsink type. Threshold: 30. Could have 1 standard or 500 DHS, it'd still be 30.

10 SHS: 10 heatsinks / 10 seconds = 1 heat cooled per second.
10 DHS (doesn't matter where) 10 heatsinks *2 / 10 seconds = 2 heat cooled per second.

Wasn't that just so much simpler?

On a side note as mentioned before, I've come up with clan builds that using MWO's heat system would allow me to exceed 100 threshold and still carry ER PPCs. I currently have an 80 ton Victor with 88.56 threshold (and I don't have my skills mastered so it'll go up another 10%) and 2 ER PPCs.

That's why we're fighting so hard to get it changed. It's insane. Mind boggling.

[MustrumRidcully]

Hisashi No Oni, on 30 September 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Well sorry but you lost me at "table top". This is not BT or MW4. This is a different game and they are moving in a different direction with it. And for those of us that love the old games we have to make what I call "the choice" if we want to stay.

Too bad, you missed the entire point, which wasn't to shoehorn table top mechanics into M:WO, but to explain high level balance concept that are independent of real time vs turn based or mouse aiming vs dice rolls.

[Karl Streiger]

While I like this discussion, the outcome is the same...what are the major drawbacks of overheating in MWO?
You can shut down - and while you did you get heat damage -

That means we have two - penalties but both happen in the same moment.
Thats wrong...

Before we start to change heat mechanics ... why not add some shutdown steps?

I knew its a little bit offtopic - but i want to show you something:

For example at 14+heat sink threshhold the first shutdown warning appears - you have 4s time to respond. (more as enough maybe you don't even need it)
Every 7additional heat you get a new warning - with reduced time to respond.

At 31 heat + heat sink threshhold - the mech gets damage (for example 0.25 damage point per heat above 51 for every second)

In following - example: Atlas firing 2,3 and 4 MLAS
firing 2 MLAS is virtually heat neutral = ineffective
firing 3 MLAS will overheat your mech - but short breaks will keep heat acceptable
firing 4 MLAS will overheat your mech - doesn't matter what you do.



After the 4th Alpha the first shutdown warning flashes up...you have 4sec to respond - but you have to do it - when you want to fire a 5th Alpha - after that the 3rd Warning flashes - you have 2sec to respond - maybe after 10sec in high heat levels you should get additional heat warnings.

However the 6th Alpha - with 1sec to respond will damage your mech - but you still walk on.
In this example the Mech shutes down automatically at 69 heat - it will start its engine at the lowes heat level of 34 heat points - that will last with 2 dissipation 17,5 sec... and your internal structure got damage of ~32... but that is only an extreme.

However that is strictly linear... but heat is now more dangerous for warriors - and it needs more heat skill to adept.
But we are not there - at a challenging level to manage with heat - and weapon fire.

When you are able to generat build that run cold - for example the 2MLAS version no warning, no danger but 2sec at 0 heat.
But firing 3 MLAS at once - could cause shutdown warnings - although you loose that heat much faster - but you may not be able to fire a third alpha at once the weapons are ready - not without danger to cross the line were your mech gots damage. So that you have to reconfigure your weapons fire 3 MLAS - 2 MLAS -3 MLAS - 1 MLAS to avoid damage and instant shutdowns.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

I am exceedingly curious as to why there has not been a PGI official response to Koniving's proposal in this thread yet. I would have expected at the very least 'Nice to know you care, but we have our own ideas.' Even without an explanation of what they're thinking, some form of acknowledgement of the large amount of work and thought that have gone into this is deserved.

Very nice work Koniving.

[Koniving]

Elli Gujar, on 01 October 2013 - 03:23 AM, said:

I am exceedingly curious as to why there has not been a PGI official response to Koniving's proposal in this thread yet. I would have expected at the very least 'Nice to know you care, but we have our own ideas.' Even without an explanation of what they're thinking, some form of acknowledgement of the large amount of work and thought that have gone into this is deserved.

Very nice work Koniving.

There's been two.
One, in Ghost Heat's first announcement: "We have considered locking the heat capacity allowed on a mech and determined it would nerf all mechs and all weapons. This allows us to target specific weapons that are being boated."
Two, less official and completely random: "Wow! Look at all the features we're not implementing."
I have the feeling the second is rather sarcastic. It's the reason I've stopped collecting heroes (besides I'm thinking an excess of 600 dollars is more than enough to have put into the game).

I've noticed when I do mention something, it sort of happens but not the way I mention it.

Example. I wanted the firing delay back for PPCs. (Link to the post as to why)
We wound up with a charge up mechanic for Gauss.

Splash damage concept for PPCs once missile splash is fixed to be a percentage of overall damage from a missile, rather than missile damage multiplied by splash (CryEngine's default mechanic). Gets mentioned by Russ himself in ATD 36 I think it was. ....Idea got abandoned, reworking the splash mechanic breaks about a dozen other things in the game.

I'm thinking that's what's happening with heat. From this thread: http://mwomercs.com/...n-fire-control/ I made this post.

Spoiler

Koniving, on 28 September 2013 - 03:58 PM, said:

In past games, a threshold limit of 30 heat (40 in MW2, 60 in MW4) prevented you from firing massive amounts of high-heat, high damage weapons. In which case, firing weapons in a rapid chain of blasts was favorable until the discovery of ER Large and ER Medium lasers being virtually instant damage.

In closed beta, even with the increasing threshold system, the lack of DHS or ENGINE HEATSINKS (didn't exist) and the lack of XL engines kept players barely able to function. They had thresholds with a minimum of 30 (no heatsinks equipped) with an average of 45 (15 tons of heatsinks). This introduced a fun game with a heat management system that caused 1 times armor battles to really draw out (until the discovery that the head is super easy to kill). Soon they did some hitbox fixes. Had some problems still but it helped out. The game was loads of fun.

Then they introduced engine heatsinks built in, and a requirement of 10 heatsinks.

Everyone had a minimum of 40 threshold. Bigger weapons could be used. Chainfiring wasn't as necessary. The 9 ML Hunchback became King with the Gauss Rifle now de-throned. Immediately PGI implements double armor.

DHS and XL engines become introduced. Average threshold became 50. Alpha striking became common, but limited. Repair and rearm disappeared. Pilot skills became implemented.

Average threshold is 52 (with skills) and up to high 60s.

6 PPC joke builds began appearing. Those with good connections butchered everything in sight. Implementation of 20% increase to Threshold came with pilot skill Heat Containment at the Master level. Thresholds by now are in the 50s to 70s.

Host State Rewind became implemented. PPCs always hit. Always. MWO became all about the alpha strike. Everything became hit as hard as you can. Thresholds can reach in the 90s as all other weapons became dropped.

Ghost heat became implemented to control that.

Now you can spam more fire than before if you truly wanted. My limit used to be 12 LRM-15s. Now I can do 16 LRM-15s in rapid succession with the same mech and build. Thanks to Ghost Heat not letting me fire it all at once, it also focuses more on the center torso where before it used to spread all over the enemy mech and damage everything.

July 2012 -- uploaded long after the NDA is lifted. DX 11, awesome graphics, 14 SHS (no engine heatsinks at the time, so that's a threshold of 44).


Today, I have a 2 ER PPC + several MG Victor with 88.56 as my threshold. I haven't got elite skills yet, or I can add another 10% to that and breach 90. I can't overheat except on hot maps. In MW3, firing 2 ER PPCs at the same time is an instant shutdown and the build would never work without chain firing.

Which documents the gist of the MWO changes over time regarding the actual changes in the core heat mechanics.
There is one thing it fails to mention though. Up until a certain point in time there was a hardset rule that lasted until after the release of the Stalkers.

If you hit 101% threshold, you died instantly. At 96 to 98% threshold, without heat containment (which did not increase your threshold but the limit of threshold to shut down) you shut down. The only reason to override was to override the forced 4 second shutdown, at the risk to yourself.

With twin UAC/5s and twin AC/2s on my first Cataphract (4x), I could destroy an Atlas in 6 seconds. Sometimes if they had lots of front armor (a common practice was to allocate 90% or 100% front armor due to brawling being common), it'd take 7 seconds. The problem was if I fired non-stop for 8 seconds I instantly self-destructed. So we still had the illusion that heat management mattered and in a way it did.

Then they changed the overheat mechanic to this. This was a stock Fang versus a custom made one. 40 threshold. SHS. Even with DHS if the limit was 40 you'd notice heat management mattering at least twice as much as it does for the average build in MWO.


What happens is at 101% heat you started taking damage to random components. Pretty good, right? But heat containment got changed to increase your maximum threshold by 10% and for full elite, 20%. They also felt the override wasn't being used enough, so they raised the max heat to receive damage limit to 150%, and the massive damage to 200%.

Now we've got a problem. This problem. <--watch that until the 30 PPCs back to back in 18 seconds. This was 13 or 14 DHS.
At the high end, 14, and considering the engine is an XL 170 engine.. 30 + 6*2 DHS + 10*1.4 = 56 threshold + 20% = 67.2 threshold. 56-30 = 26 / 10 = 2.6/sec + 15% = 2.99/cooling. Then add another 20% increase to both because of the map (thanks to SCJazz for figuring this out; temperatures mean nothing. Terra Therma, Caustic, Tourmaline are all -20% threshold and - 20% heat dissipation Frozen is + 20%. Alpine and Forest Snow is +10%. The rest are +/- nothing).

Now, insane, isn't it? They only just recently thought to make the PPCs fire as slow as medium lasers (like...DUH!?) or to make flamers do more heat to the enemy than yourself in addition to their 0.7 damage (which used to be more heat to yourself than to the enemy + 0.114 damage to the enemy....what the...? The recent rates in between those two points were were 0.2 damage/sec to the enemy, 0.4 heat/sec to the enemy, 0.6 heat/sec to yourself plus the Heat Penalty Multiplier for using it too long!)

....Face palm. If they're going to do it that way, I'd rather flamers throw a sort of goop that catches fire on the enemy mech and has a 7 second recharge time (knowing PGI they'd do something like that). Hopefully that continues to do damage after the fact and apply heat.

The only way I can use them is to blind people. That's the only use, and I have to abuse a bug to do so.


I miss fights like this.
In the mean time, enjoy this read which is a true story of a real match in MWO. Twin Miseries -- where the first one falls quickly -- against the Atlas Stalker cheese rigs before Paul's penalty system.

Spoiler

Koniving, on 11 June 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

Yesterday me and another guy were piloting Miseries on voice comms. We've been brawling enemies in two on one battles when they are isolated. Finally it boils down to two enemies left. Both of them had 4 ER PPC rigs (one a stalker, one an Atlas RS with a Gauss Rifle on the side). They had just killed the 6th player, leaving only the two of us.

My teammate had been soaking most of the damage up to this point. When we charge them, he dies in the first volley of 8 ER PPCs. The enemy stalker shuts down. The Atlas is still moving. Since the enemy stalker was the weakest of the two in terms of armor, I went for him. With both of them pelting me from different angles at every opportunity that they could, I had my twin standard PPCs, 3 Medium Lasers, UAC/5, and Streak SRM-2 loaded up. I tore through the side of the stalker. He began to panic and move behind the Atlas.

I whirl around to give chase -- all of us repeatedly powering down because every single one of us are running hot on Tourmaline. With the Atlas between me and the other stalker while it cooled down, I began using only the streak and the UAC/5 to help facilitate my own cooldown while still doing damage but the damn thing keeps jamming! I cut to just the cannon as I push past the Atlas; I was going to disable that stalker altogether. When the stalker peeked to shoot at me from behind the Atlas, I let off an alpha strike. PPCs at 89 meters, 3 ML, streak and a UAC/5 into his surviving shoulder. Cherry red but I shut down. The Atlas just did another alpha strike into my side and powered down. I hear sparks. I've lost my side. It's now or never. I power up prematurely. "Override shutdown." Another alpha! Power down immediately. The stalker lost his other side torso. He's effectively weaponless.

The Atlas is panicking, powers up to give off another alpha just to shut right back down. Since I lost a laser, a PPC, and a streak, I now had better heat efficiency. Though I lost a few heatsinks as well. Still I was able to power right back up. My CT armor is gone thanks to that last strike. I whirl around counter-clockwise, not giving him any more chances to hit the weakened side. If he's gonna hit me he's gonna hit armor. I go for the gauss rifle. He's within 60 meters, so that PPC won't do jack here. Twin ML, UAC/5 barrage (when the thing doesn't jam), his armor shreds on the right torso. The Gauss Rifle explodes on him. His internals go to dark orange immediately. His last alpha with the gauss and 4 ER PPCs went into my arm and armored side torso; both went red in armor only. I'm still pumping UAC/5s into it and follow up with a PPC though I've been circling and not backing away (staying this close makes his ER PPCs imprecise and spreads the damage). His arm falls off, his shoulder is gone. My heat's doing so much better now. He's down to two ER PPCs.

But now I have a problem. His good arm is on the same side as my weak torso. There's no getting around this, he's got me pegged. By this time he'd been stripped of armor all along his back and on his center torso, but it's still bright yellow. My CT's become dark orange. We tussel a bit more. Ramming each other even though knockdowns are gone. Targeting each other's weak spots. We still occasionally get shut down but nowhere near as often now. The enemy stalker, now just a walking phallus on legs, attempts to interject by ramming me and getting between me and my enemy in seemingly coordinated attempts to soak up my fire and then hit me when my weapons are recycling.

Ultimately he becomes cherry red. A shot or two would kill him. I've lost my other side torso leaving me with only a medium laser in the center torso. I line up my shot. He lines up his. I fire and cutting into the beam is that damn stalker! The stalker dies. As he falls over I'm stuck waiting for the laser to recharge. The Atlas fires two ER PPCs into my center torso. From my perspective it may as well have been to my cockpit.

Defeat.

The enemy Stalker: "OMFG why won't you just die!?!?!?!?!?" came his response over the chat. "Holy ****!"
The Atlas: "You were one pain in the *** to put down."
Koniving: "Good fight."

-----------------------------

My partner said if I went with an AC/5 instead, I never would have jammed and I would have won that since I spent most of the fight with the thing jammed. I have to agree.

[Koniving]

Karl Streiger, on 01 October 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

While I like this discussion, the outcome is the same...what are the major drawbacks of overheating in MWO?
You can shut down - and while you did you get heat damage -

That means we have two - penalties but both happen in the same moment.
Thats wrong...

Before we start to change heat mechanics ... why not add some shutdown steps?

After the 4th Alpha the first shutdown warning flashes up...you have 4sec to respond - but you have to do it - when you want to fire a 5th Alpha - after that the 3rd Warning flashes - you have 2sec to respond - maybe after 10sec in high heat levels you should get additional heat warnings.

However that is strictly linear... but heat is now more dangerous for warriors - and it needs more heat skill to adept.

One of our major points (in a 30 threshold) is you wouldn't be able to alpha more than once and in most cases you'd shut down doing so..

The below was said based on the misconception of forcing shutdowns based on how many lasers you fired at once. Spoilered.

Spoiler

The general description initially gave me the impression of akin to what Ghost Heat is trying to do -- but it's forcing an artificial mechanic. 30 threshold would accomplish much the same thing but wouldn't care how many lasers you fired. From your proposal it sounds as if I were to fire 4 ML I'd get a huge heat punishment. What if I fired 1 ML and 3 SL and 2 PPCs and a gauss? Doesn't sound like anything will happen.

MWO, 10 DHS. Skills unlocked. 250 engine so all engine DHS are 2.0. Here we go. 60 threshold, 20 cooling.

2 PPCs = 20 heat + 1 ML 4 heat + 3 SL (6 heat for 3) + 0.25 Gauss = 30.25 heat total out of 60. By the time I can alpha twice more + 2 seconds of waiting per firing, I'll have cooled enough to complete a total of 3 alphas in 12 seconds.

In the 30 threshold we petitioned with NO changes no mechanics no b.s. no weird stuff no goofy charts no insanity:

2 PPCs = 20 heat + 1 ML 4 heat + 3 SL (6 heat for 3) + 0.25 Gauss = 30.25 heat. That's more than 30. Shutdown.

In about 4 seconds I'll have cooled with 10 DHS 8 heat to be at 22. In 8 seconds I'll have cooled 16 heat to be at 14 heat. In 10 seconds I'll be at 10 heat. In 15 seconds after firing I'll be able to alpha for the second time.

That said, I like the idea of being shutdown in a way that is locked and you can't power back up. This is one of the major flaws with the shutdown punishment for overheating is you can usually start back up within a second.

In the past as mentioned in a previous post, you could shut down within 98% heat but back then at 101% heat you blew up instantly. What if there were chances of shutting much like TT's. Any heat level over 24 (out of 30) had a chance of the mech powering off and the pilot losing consciousness (usually if you're that hot at the end of a turn you've just run through 60 to 90 heat in the last 10 seconds which is twice to three times the mech's limit). Since the difficulty of overcoming that dice role relied on pilot skill, something like your "chance to react" mechanic could come into play there.

As far as heat stages go.. I did these two mock up videos before we had a betty.
Heat in stages in the form of warnings. Keep in mind that SPL at the time due to a bug generated less than 2 heat per shot. I have 19 standard heatsinks. 30 + 19 = 49 threshold. Cooling at 1.9/sec. I created a number of computer voiced warnings as well as "target damage readouts".


And this was an abandoned single player mockup. Incomplete.


I'll have to read more into your idea soon. Some parts as mentioned sounds far too much like ghost heat. But the shutdown aspects. It sounds like when you hit certain steps you have to respond by overriding it. I sort of like the idea but it sounds like this is really going to intimidate and bash new players. It can use some hashing out.

I will say this, though. If I'm in a trial mech (40 threshold) and you're in a customized mech (say 80 threshold; it's a fairly common high point), you cool down more than twice as fast as me, and can alpha strike twice as much + some extra due to cooling. ...that leaves me rather screwed. But if both mechs had 40 threshold and the customized one just cooled twice as fast, I've got a chance. We can alpha just as much, I just need more time to cool off than he does. With the thresholds at 30... there's no choice but to alpha strike or do no more than twin ML firings.

Edit: (Mkay, sorry I misread it initially. N/m on it sounding similar to the ghost heat. Stages of shutdown and you used the ML thing as an example. It gave me the impression it'd target boats.) But stages of shutdown are a neat idea. How might you apply it to a 30 to 54 threshold? (54 is the highest point I've hit with a concept of hardset thresholds with variations assigned to specific variants of different chassis with the current pilot skills; it was for an Awesome 9M which began with 45 as a threshold and after 20% increase hits 54).

Edited by Koniving, 01 October 2013 - 12:57 PM.

[Zyllos]

There are so many valid points here that it would take a LONG time to reiterate them.

Accuracy, heat, RoF, armor, ect.

But what else can we, as a community, do to convince PGI that the current core mechanics are just not working?

I am constantly posting in any thread that has a hint that some weapon needs a change, or some mechanic doesn't feel right, or I died too fast but it feels like it falls on deaf ears. I completely understand how Koniving feels about attempting to continue to push for mechanic changes that are needed but largely ignored by PGI and the community as a whole.

The only thing I know what to do is keep bringing it up every now and then hoping someone will notice that something is wrong.