301 replies to this topic

[zorak ramone]

Khobai, on 30 July 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

Heat neutral mechs are bad in MWO because of convergence and pinpoint alphas.

Heat neutral mechs are not bad in TT because of random hit locations.

Simple as that really.

Which is another way of saying that heat neutrality is not the problem, and that the core problem has always been the lack of limitations on the accurate damage that can be applied to a single panel in a single trigger pull.

[3rdworld]

zorak ramone, on 30 July 2013 - 08:32 AM, said:

Which is another way of saying that heat neutrality is not the problem, and that the core problem has always been the lack of limitations on the accurate damage that can be applied to a single panel in a single trigger pull.

Which is exactly what a lower cap is meant to address, without convoluting the system or nerfing skill.

[Koniving]

3rdworld, on 30 July 2013 - 08:38 AM, said:

Which is exactly what a lower cap is meant to address, without convoluting the system or nerfing skill.

True -- I would say exactly but in truth it's "without convoluting the system and while enhancing skill-based gameplay."

Careful heat management is a skill, a much greater skill than pointing, clicking and seeing things die. There's a reason more children enjoy Call of Duty, while more adults enjoy games with more depth.

[zorak ramone]

3rdworld, on 30 July 2013 - 08:38 AM, said:

Which is exactly what a lower cap is meant to address, without convoluting the system or nerfing skill.

First of all, the lower cap does not solve the problem because "Gauss Rifles." All you do is make GRs a requirement of any competitive build instead of just an option.

Secondly, I assume that when you say "nerfing skill", you're talking about a convergence-based method to limit the amout of accurate damage like I posted above:

Quote

I would go for a method that adds cone of fire to weapons over a certain threshold, over a certain time. E.g. if you fire 2xPPC, they converge perfectly. If you fire 4xPPC, two of them converge perfectly, the third one diverges to a degree, and the fourth divergest to a greater degree. If you fire 2xPPC, and then another 2xPPC after 0.5s, both pairs converge perfectly. If you fire the second pair in <0.5s, they diverge, the degree determined by how early you fire them after the first pair. Homeless Bill has written up a much more fully realized system. Everyone should read it.

This doesn't nerf skill ... in fact in INCREASES the role of skill! You can still accurately place pinpoint damage, therefore precise aiming skill is still a factor. However, in order to do alot of damage to a single panel, you have to aim and fire several times. What takes more skill? Aiming and firing 4xPPCs once to hit a single panel, or Aiming and firing 2xPPC twice (within 0.5s of each other) and hitting that same panel twice?

The answer is obvious, and so is the logical conclusion (but I'll spell it out): this sort of convergence based balancing mechanism INCREASES the role/significance of aiming skill.

[Koniving]

Khobai, on 30 July 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

Heat neutral mechs are bad in MWO because of convergence and pinpoint alphas.

Heat neutral mechs are not bad in TT because of random hit locations.

Simple as that really.

If you take a peek at my response to Tolkien up here and the Atlas versus Marauder and Mercury battle you'll see it's not really "random" per se, but "I'm moving, you're moving, we're shooting each other one shot at a time all in real time across 10 seconds, here's the mathematical calculation and probability results at the end of our turn."

If it's too long, just read the Atlas K versus Marauder and Mercury battle. TT's weapons are pinpoint, but the lower capacity and fear of overheating keeps them firing one weapon at a time. In TT you can't fire them all at once unless using the modified rules in Megamek for concealed opponents, but that's a loose technicality on rules. You can queue more than one but they don't fire at the same time and thus hit different body parts and miss sometimes (due to the target moving while shooting it or possibly shooting while being hit).

But yes, heat neutrality isn't the problem its pinpoint damage in a single trigger pull or sustained pinpoint damage in a very cool mech (a heat neutral build is a 10 DHS mech with 1 AC/2 for example).

[Corvus Antaka]

maybe...maybe not.

heat neutral may give certain builds like 6 Spulse jenners or 4 mlaser mechs unlimited heatcap which may be why pgi avoids heat neutrality, paul kinda hinted at this in a recent post iirc.

[Koniving]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 30 July 2013 - 11:10 AM, said:

maybe...maybe not.

heat neutral may give certain builds like 6 Spulse jenners or 4 mlaser mechs unlimited heatcap which may be why pgi avoids heat neutrality, paul kinda hinted at this in a recent post iirc.

Actually 4 ML Jenners wouldn't be heat neutral without being at less than 120 kph with canonical heat values. But MLs do 4 heat instead of 3 each.

Going with Smurfy's listed value for an SPL times 6... The 6 SPL rig generates 14.4 heat per alpha, burns and recharges to fire again in a total of 3 seconds. All calculations here are using currently listed MWO heat levels for 6 SPL.
In this build http://mwo.smurfy-ne...7787201ceab6f3b with the proposed values...

Spoiler

14 DHS sinks 28 heat per 10 seconds, that's 2.8 cooling per second.
Capacity at 30.
14.4 / 3 is 4.8 generated per second.
4.8 versus 2.8 you'd gain 2 heat per second, 15 seconds to reach capacity.

You'd shut down in 15 seconds of constant fire.

MWO's current system:

Spoiler

10 engine DHS = 20 + 4 Chassis DHS = 5.6 + 30 base = 55.6 capacity.
20 + 5.6 = 25.6 cooling per 10 seconds / 10 = 2.56 cooling per second.
Heat generated from 6 SPLs per second is 4.8, minus cooling per second is 2.24 gained per second.

Time to reach 55.6 capacity at a rate of 2.24 per second... 24.5 seconds.

24 seconds hits 53.76, and 25 seconds hits 56 to shutdown.

That is not including pilot unlocks of 15% faster cooling with Cool Run elite-level and 20% increase in capacity with Heat Containment.

Proposed system hurts your 6 SPL 'heat neutral' rig while MWO's current system rewards it with an insane firing time and dps.

To be heat neutral it'd need to cut down to 3 SPL at the most. Then he'd have to stay within 90 meters to do anything.

To be heat neutral with 14 DHS it'd have to be 2 ML. You could use 2 ML. But once you get any higher than that you're generating more heat than you can sink.

Edited by Koniving, 30 July 2013 - 11:41 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

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.

Where they a problem because they ran heat neutral? I doubt it.

I remember PvE in Mechwarrior 3. If you made a ERML boat, you could basically oneshot enemy mechs. That hadn't anything to do with being heat neutral, it was simply that you could stack too much damage in one mech and put it all in one spot thanks to perfect pinpoint convergence.

We don't have anything like this in MW:O. You couldn't stack that amount of firepower because we don't have the hard points for it, and if we stacked so much firepower:
- Lasers don't deal that amount of damage in a single blow, it spreads voer 1 second.
- The giant heat capacity and the low dissipation wouldn't stop it, because you can produce 50+ in one go.

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.

Where they a problem because they ran heat neutral? I doubt it.

I remember PvE in Mechwarrior 3. If you made a ERML boat, you could basically oneshot enemy mechs. That hadn't anything to do with being heat neutral, it was simply that you could stack too much damage in one mech and put it all in one spot thanks to perfect pinpoint convergence.

We don't have anything like this in MW:O. You couldn't stack that amount of firepower because we don't have the hard points for it, and if we stacked so much firepower:
- Lasers don't deal that amount of damage in a single blow, it spreads voer 1 second.
- The giant heat capacity and the low dissipation wouldn't stop it, because you can produce 50+ in one go.

[Tolkien]

Koniving, on 30 July 2013 - 06:44 AM, said:

To Tolkien on the Awesome firing 3 ER PPCs at once and "alpha all day."
[spoiler]


I can appreciate where that's going. I can estimate that David noticed that too. But let's really take a look at that.

Actually said Awesome, namely the Awesome 9M, cannot alpha strike in TT. No mech can. What it does is space out 3 ER PPCs over the span of 10 seconds. A 9M firing 3 ER PPCs with 20 true DHS and 30 hard heat cap can fire all 3 ER PPCs in the span of 10 seconds. Stock build. In 10 seconds the Awesome 9m fires 3 ER PPCs, generates 45 heat and sinks 40, bringing it to 5 out of 30 capacity.

Though doing the math I'm gonna keep this very interesting.

...

That's odd - you seem to have left out the exponential dependence of heat loss rate on the difference between the current chassis temperature (heat scale?) and the surrounding environment while we debate what giant stompy robots can and can't do in the future.

Let me just take my tongue out of my cheek and say that I thought I had heard of Masakari's alpha striking in the novels without detonating.

My point being if the authors/designers of the game wanted them to be able to float up into the air and pop like a bubble they would be able to.

[Tombstoner]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 30 July 2013 - 11:10 AM, said:

maybe...maybe not.

heat neutral may give certain builds like 6 Spulse jenners or 4 mlaser mechs unlimited heatcap which may be why pgi avoids heat neutrality, paul kinda hinted at this in a recent post iirc.

If this is the case then it underscores the need to not have a heat cap to hold instantaneous heat and move to an accumulated heat model for long time periods, not 4-10 seconds more like 30-60 seconds. then adjust PL heat upward.
if waiting 1 TT turn makes heat trivial and extend that period to something that is and scale heat accordingly. dont forget that damage was scaled up when fire rate was increased but armor was partially balanced 250% vs. 200%

[Tolkien]

Tombstoner, on 30 July 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

If this is the case then it underscores the need to not have a heat cap to hold instantaneous heat and move to an accumulated heat model for long time periods, not 4-10 seconds more like 30-60 seconds. then adjust PL heat upward.
if waiting 1 TT turn makes heat trivial and extend that period to something that is and scale heat accordingly. dont forget that damage was scaled up when fire rate was increased but armor was partially balanced 250% vs. 200%

Trying to eliminate heat neutral builds is a tough chore since we have some weapons that create very close to zero heat such as machine guns and Gauss rifles. Granted the dual gauss jager has explosive weapons and only ~50 shots but it can use them all in a row without needing any heatsinks other than what is in the engine. I think this is also true of a 1 gauss 1 AC20 build.

[Koniving]

Tolkien, on 30 July 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

That's odd - you seem to have left out the exponential dependence of heat loss rate on the difference between the current chassis temperature (heat scale?) and the surrounding environment while we debate what giant stompy robots can and can't do in the future.

Let me just take my tongue out of my cheek and say that I thought I had heard of Masakari's alpha striking in the novels without detonating.

My point being if the authors/designers of the game wanted them to be able to float up into the air and pop like a bubble they would be able to.

That's a book, not tabletop. But yes your point is made.

And you're right I left it simplified, although technically the temperature is 0 degrees celsius, no wind, and no I was not factoring the mech generating excess heat by moving since it was stationary, although I have yet to see tabletop charge me heat for standing still.

In MWO you get a 'heat' charge for simply being powered which is removed to zero with no chassis heat when you power down (allowing insanely rapid sinking of heat even with SHS).

[Angel of Annihilation]

Taxxian, on 30 July 2013 - 02:36 AM, said:

I think Paul is absolutely right here.

Balance is not optimal, but it is not so bad either.

Paul repied to the suggestion, he should drasticaly reduce the maximum of heat our Mechs can store, before they are negatively affected.

Problem is:
UAC5 Ilya... Gauss Jager... every balistic Mech is already nearly heat-neutral, but you would have to cut the weapons, currently installed in Quickdraws/Awesones/Stalkers , by half!

Is a Quickdraw much more powerful than an Ilya? Well after the suggested change, ballistics would be tremendously owerpowered...

The "Heat-Battery" is part of the game, reducing it would nerf all Laser-Mechs... and that is not what we want...or is it?



Absolutely, calling the developers deluded and many other things I read in this forum, will motivate them to make a much better game... really an outstanding idea...

Your wrong. If heat were functioning properly, a Quickdraw could run two ER PPCs completely heat neutral with 16 DHS and only begin to accumulate heat if he added in his MLs and SRMs. You don't have to cut the firepower in half because heat sinks should be disappating alot more heat.

This is what people are talking about in regards to threshold. You fire your two ER PPCs which should bring you to around 90% of your threshold in a single burst, however in the 4 seconds between recycle, you should be back to zero heat. Now the second time around you add in your 2 MLs to the mix and now your heatsinks can't vent all that heat so you are 8 heat into your OH scale. 8 heat doesn't offer any penalties. Next round you again fire both the ER PPCs and the MLs. This again is more heat than your heat sinks can deal with plus you still had 8 heat from early. Now you go to 14 heat on the OH scale and all of a sudden your mech becomes very sluggish, You fire the same weapons again, now your at 18 heat on the OH scale and your taking internal damage, maybe even risking an ammo explosion.

This is how TT values worked and as you can see, even with 2 ER PPCs and 16 DHS, your easily running into the danger zone really quickly. That being the case, how many Quad PPC builds do you think your going to see? Not very many because it is just too much heat, too quickly.

Instead, you opt for a lower heat build, maybe 2 LL and 2 MLs instead of 2 ER PPCs and 2 ML for a maximum heat of 30 which means your never going to go above 90% of your threshold and never have to worry about the OH scale. You have a heat neutral build....which is now balanced not by heat, but by the firing delay of the weapons which prevent you, despite not having to worry about heat, from ever exceeding a maximum damage value of 28 per recycle.

See how much easier this is to balance and guess what....it is based entirely on TT rules and values.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 30 July 2013 - 11:59 AM.

[Tolkien]

Viktor Drake, on 30 July 2013 - 11:58 AM, said:

Your wrong. If heat were functioning properly, a Quickdraw could run two ER PPCs completely heat neutral with 16 DHS and only begin to accumulate heat if he added in his MLs and SRMs. You don't have to cut the firepower in half because heat sinks should be disappating alot more heat.

This is what people are talking about in regards to threshold. You fire your two ER PPCs which should bring you to around 90% of your threshold in a single burst, however in the 4 seconds between recycle, you should be back to zero heat. Now the second time around you add in your 2 MLs to the mix and now your heatsinks can't vent all that heat so you are 8 heat into your OH scale. 8 heat doesn't offer any penalties. Next round you again fire both the ER PPCs and the MLs. This again is more heat than your heat sinks can deal with plus you still had 8 heat from early. Now you go to 14 heat on the OH scale and all of a sudden your mech becomes very sluggish, You fire the same weapons again, now your at 18 heat on the OH scale and your taking internal damage, maybe even risking an ammo explosion.

This is how TT values worked and as you can see, even with 2 ER PPCs and 16 DHS, your easily running into the danger zone really quickly. That being the case, how many Quad PPC builds do you think your going to see? Not very many because it is just too much heat, too quickly.

Instead, you opt for a lower heat build, maybe 2 LL and 2 MLs instead of 2 ER PPCs and 2 ML for a maximum heat of 30 which means your never going to go above 90% of your threshold and never have to worry about the OH scale. You have a heat neutral build....which is now balanced not by heat, but by the firing delay of the weapons which prevent you, despite not having to worry about heat, from ever exceeding a maximum damage value of 28 per recycle.

See how much easier this is to balance and guess what....it is based entirely on TT rules and values.

Having the lower heat cap would allow 4, 5 ppc stalkers but it would force them to space their shots about 1-1.5 seconds apart to avoid overheating. Currently a stalker can still put those 4 ppcs out in one blast and nuke a single spot.

[MustrumRidcully]

Tolkien, on 30 July 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

Having the lower heat cap would allow 4, 5 ppc stalkers but it would force them to space their shots about 1-1.5 seconds apart to avoid overheating. Currently a stalker can still put those 4 ppcs out in one blast and nuke a single spot.

Pretty much this.

Let's say you have 20 DHS and 4 PPCs. You're heat neutral, so you can fire all day long if you want to.

But every salvo produces 32 heat. That is too much heat in one shot, you would overheat every alpha.
So you have to spread the shots. You need to build in a 0.5 second delay minimum between the salvos to avoid overheating.

Since you have to chain-fire in some manner now anyway, you can also consider running another mech that requires you to chain-fire, like a mech mixing two different weapon types. You could build a 2 PPC + 2 ER LL build for example, and use the spare weight for some short range side arm like an SRM6 or few medium lasers.
(Note: the game is still not perfectly designed for this, since PPC, ER LL and SRM6 have different cycle times - if we could adjust that, too, we get closer to making versatile loadouts to be competitive - the more weapons you can mix and put into an ideal power rotation, the merrier)

[akaChrisHimself]

FatBabyThompkins, on 30 July 2013 - 06:12 AM, said:

I had made a post on some heat based reticule penalties to simulate penalties to shooting as in TT.

Stage 1: reticule jumps randomly every once in a while



Stage 2: Reticule fades out and jumps randomly.



Stage 3: Reticule fades, jumps and disappears



The overall idea was to distract the human behind the keyboard when they are running high heat. It is not an end-all-be-all solution, but something that could penalize those heat banking. As for skill, those with the ability to learn and overcome will adapt thereby increasing skill cap. Note: this is only a graphical reticule jump, not weapons will fire where the reticule jumps to. So they'll still fire forward (or where your reticule actually is), but your targeting computer is overheating and can't accurately represent that information to you.

I like the idea and mech games in the past have done something similar. But if it's just a graphics/immersion effect and doesn't affect aiming in some way, those people already min/maxing and heat banking will just put a tiny physical dot in the center of their monitor, making their own ret to use when this happens.

Edited by BaneReIIiK, 30 July 2013 - 12:40 PM.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

Heat neutrality is already in game. A single PPC is heat neuatral with 10 base engine DHS (coincidently 2 medium lasers work out to the same HPS).

Double the number of PPCs (2), and you can fire both 6 times before overheating, which is 120 points of damage. Which is enough for an accurate pilot to take down most mechs. (That build, by the way, is what I used to run on my 40 ton Cicadia).

I honestly do not feel that we need lesser heat neutrality threshold in a game balanced by heat mechanics. If you want to be able to fire your weapons longer, take more heat efficient weapons. Missiles and Autocannons are specifically designed to generate greater damage at lower heat.

Raising the heat neutrality bar will do nothing except push smaller mechs towards hotter lighter beam weapons, and there is currently no shortage of those mechs. In fact next to the assault class PPC + Gauss snipers, Light laser boats are currently the second most popular mechs in the game.

[Kaldor]

Mustrum,

As much as I respect you, you are preaching into a hurricane. The devs are not listening. We have hashed this idea over a couple hundred times across various threads on these forums over the last year. I know, I championed this idea for the last 9 nine months or so after someone explained to me how the real tabletop mechanics work.

Still we see nothing.

The simplest solution often turns out to be the best one. Unfortunately, the simple solution is being ignored.

[FatBabyThompkins]

BaneReIIiK, on 30 July 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

I like the idea and mech games in the past have done something similar. But if it's just a graphics/immersion effect and doesn't affect aiming in some way, those people already min/maxing and heat banking will just put a tiny physical dot in the center of their monitor, making their own ret to use when this happens.

Thankfully MWO doesn't entirely use center of screen. The torsos "lag" behind the center and the arms reticule can be all over the screen. It is only once torso movement stops does true center of screen mean that's where I'm firing. Arms can be a whole different location altogether. Those with the ability to adjust, especially those that like "hardcore mode" in other shooters were the HUD is missing, would become paramount. It is less about I always know where my shot will fly and more about my shot should go about here...crap I was off by a bit. If anything, those dot on monitor people will have to wait an extra fraction of a second to ensure their shot "lines up", thereby reducing TwitchWarrior Online.

[Tombstoner]

Kaldor, on 30 July 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

Mustrum,

As much as I respect you, you are preaching into a hurricane. The devs are not listening. We have hashed this idea over a couple hundred times across various threads on these forums over the last year. I know, I championed this idea for the last 9 nine months or so after someone explained to me how the real tabletop mechanics work.

Still we see nothing.

The simplest solution often turns out to be the best one. Unfortunately, the simple solution is being ignored.

Sigh...... i cant disagree with what you wrote. Everything has been hashed. but the purpose of rehashing is to get new players to the forum active in the discussion.

The bottom line for a heat mechanic is that if its heat neutral it becomes trivial as a game mechanic. Pauls right in that regard but heat neutral also comes with a price paid for in the mech lab. unfortunately movement modifiers are not being used. if they where it would completely change how heat need to behave before an effect on combat is seen.

The thing is even if mechs were allowed to be heat neutral all you need to do is increase base heat for all weapons and you make heat neutral come at Huge premium in tonnage or really small alphas. heat neutral can be balanced with higher heat levels and movement penalties

Edited by Tombstoner, 30 July 2013 - 01:33 PM.