70 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

Was there ever an explanation for the AC/2 heat penalty? I know between when I first reported this ninja penalty and trying it out for the first time in a while today, it's become much worse. At times I'm getting a heat spike of 30% heat in a mech with 12 DHS.

Training grounds, so no unlocks. I have 12 DHS which is 30 base + (10*2) + (2*1.4) = 52.8 capacity.
I am firing 3 AC/2s one at a time, 0.25 seconds apart. So in 3/4ths of a second I fire all 3 AC2s and begin again.

The first 6 shots bring me up by seemingly 1.5% each (fire 1, "1%", fire 2, "3%", fire 3, "4%", fire 4, "6%".) with the cooling though I won't go into the math behind that.

After that, the 7th shot goes up by + 6%. The 8th shot brings me up by + 10% on top of the last one, and it progressively gets worse and worse. At one point I saw a single shot spike of 30% heat.

Now 30% heat on this mech is a little more than 15 heat for 1 AC/2 shot fired.

I dedicated 18 tons + 3 tons ammo to make me an AC/2 MG that is timed to fire one shot at a time 0.25 seconds apart (so at twice the rate of a single AC/2), and I'm getting massively punished for it.

At the most I can get 11 single AC/2 shots out before I overheat. That's 22 points of spread damage.

Meanwhile if I alpha strike all 3 AC/2s at once, I can pump out 17 non-stop shots -- that's 17*3 = 51 AC/2 shots and 102 much more pinpoint damage for the exact same overheat.

Is this being addressed?

(This is the second original demonstration, when it wasn't so bad. It would do extra heat on the 7th shot, and then stop on the 10th to 12th shot. Now it's non stop and exponentially increases. I'm bitter in it because despite showing proof of its existence in a video I got called B.S. on because it was on a public test server, even though I said on the video itself it was on the regular server I discovered it.)

03:14 in for demonstrating in testing ground. 5:59 for demonstrating in a match.
Again this video has the OLD ninja nerf. For the super serious ninja nerf, check out the video in my post below.

Edited by Koniving, 08 August 2013 - 09:54 PM.

[B0oN]

Reporting the same issues while running a CTF-Ilya Muromets with 3 AC2 and 2 Medlasers.

Usage of a macro which has 170ms timing between shots (to have them fired all in 510 ms) makes the mech overheat in something under 5 secs.

When blockfiring (all 3 AC2´s simultaneously) I can fire for a very, very long (~19 seconds) time compared to the macro usage.

I smell the intention of boating/macro-usage curb.
If that should be the fact, please do it in another way, this community could easily provide with various versions of "Anti-boating mechanisms" and macros are just plain for showmanship as actually a macro-user is permanently losing DPS compared to blockfire.

Edited by Rad Hanzo, 08 August 2013 - 04:57 PM.

[Tennex]

its a bug. it happens if you have 2AC2s.

[Koniving]

Our penalty system is designed to punish us for firing too many weapons at the same time. I call this a bug because it's punishing me for firing one at a time.

Through further testing...

Alpha strike. Just firing all 3 at once over and over, or..

Spoiler

Q::
while GetKeyState("Q","P")
{
send {4 down}
send {5 down}
send {6 down}
sleep 250
send {4 up}
send {5 up}
send {6 up}
sleep 250
}

River City this time. I fire all 3 AC/2s at the same time, 0.5 seconds apart. I overheat in 29 volleys of 3 AC/2s, dealing 174 damage at shutdown in 15 seconds. I get no heat penalty.

Spoiler

Q::
while GetKeyState("Q","P")
{
send {4 down}
sleep 175
send {4 up}
sleep 175
send {5 down}
sleep 175
send {5 up}
sleep 175
send {6 down}
sleep 175
send {6 up}
sleep 175
}

Gets me heat spikes at the 7th shot, and it gets exponentially worse to the point where one of the shots usually gets a 30% heat increase (which is 15.84 heat for my mech). I'm doing "Pow," wait 0.35 seconds, "Pow," wait 0.35 seconds, "Pow," wait 0.35 seconds, repeat. So that's 0.7 seconds to fire all 3 AC/2s and 0.35 cooldown. This is slower firing than my previous macro. I shut down in 19 individual AC/2 shots. That's 38 damage. Shutdown in 7.24 seconds according to the vid.

Only 38 damage in 7.24 seconds but I am punished for it with a heat scale penalty against single shots, one at a time, at a rate slower than alpha striking all 3 at once.

Compared to 15 seconds for 174 damage of firing all 3 at once (alpha striking them) with their normal 0.5 second cooldown time.

I'm essentially being punished for doing 3 shots every 0.7 seconds, with a 0.35 second cooldown in between them. That's 1.05 seconds when the next volley of 3 starts.

But it's okay to alpha strike 3 AC/2s to do 6 shots every second.

3 shots every 0.7 seconds = Punish!
6 shots every 1.0 seconds = Okay!

Why? Why am I being punished? I am purposely spreading out my damage to help lighten the pinpoint issues and make the game more fun for the people I'm shooting, and being punished for not giving into the "Omg you gotta alpha and instant-kill everyone" meta.

But this...

Spoiler

{
send {4 down}
sleep 200
send {4 up}
sleep 200
send {5 down}
sleep 200
send {5 up}
sleep 200
send {6 down}
sleep 200
send {6 up}
sleep 200
}

Gives me no penalty. I'm going Pow, wait 0.4, pow, wait 0.4, pow, 0.4 cooldown, repeat. That's 0.8 seconds to complete the cycle of 3 shots with a 0.4 second cooldown before starting again. I was at 50% heat for 117 shots That's 234 damage in 51 seconds.

With no penalty the same 117 shots and 234 damage in 51 seconds at 0.8 seconds per 3 shots is 0.7 seconds per 3 shots is 44 seconds to reach the same 117 shots.

174 damage in 15 seconds is okay for alpha striking 3 AC/2s non-stop. No penalty.

But firing one AC/2 at a time with the same 3 AC/2s, intentionally gimping myself to deal 234 damage in 51 seconds is punished by cutting me off at 7.24 seconds and 38 damage through a massive heat penalty.

I suppose the good news is you have a choice. 174 damage given in pinpoint intervals of 6 damage in 15 seconds just holding down alpha strike. Or 234 damage given in pinpoint intervals of 2 damage in 51 seconds by using a macro. Gee, I like choices... >.< I liked the old choices, of setting any firing speed of either identical to MWO's default or slower. I should never be punished for firing slower than maximum speed.

Edit: Fixes based on sitting, watching the video, and counting rather than counting while playing.

Edited by Koniving, 08 August 2013 - 10:04 PM.

[Koniving]

Tennex, on 08 August 2013 - 05:43 PM, said:

its a bug. it happens if you have 2AC2s.

Support says this is intentional. The penalty rate is higher than it is supposed to be and will be addressed in an upcoming patch.

[Rippthrough]

Good old Ghost Heat, bugging the hell out of the last patch has distracted people, but it's still a terrible POS.

[Koniving]

Vid should be ready in any second. Placed in second post. Fixes in math done by using the video rather than counting while playing.

[Lordred]

This is wrong, this is very very very very wrong. Why should, of all weapons, the AC/2 be subject to this.

No macro here, only using keybindings.

Edited by Lordred, 08 August 2013 - 08:03 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Koniving, on 08 August 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

Support says this is intentional. The penalty rate is higher than it is supposed to be and will be addressed in an upcoming patch.

Wow... Just Wow!

[Koniving]

Joseph Mallan, on 08 August 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

Wow... Just Wow!

At best guess it's because people cry about macros and rapid fire AC/2s for the "why." That, and if you only had one AC/2 you'd be heat neutral.

Rad Hanzo, on 08 August 2013 - 04:55 PM, said:

I smell the intention of boating/macro-usage curb.
If that should be the fact, please do it in another way, this community could easily provide with various versions of "Anti-boating mechanisms" and macros are just plain for showmanship as actually a macro-user is permanently losing DPS compared to blockfire.

The macro thing in my eyes helps spread out the damage. It really does. No matter how you set it you will always lose firing rate when you set ACs to fire one at a time. You also add in scare factor, which is the only thing really going for an AC/2. Without the scare factor you have a largely inferior weapon set.
(Strays off topic, spoilered.)

Spoiler

The problem is you can run them for so long. I say if you want to address the problem behind being able to fire for so long, then simply reduce how much heat we can take. It'd solve a lot of MWO's balancing issues by reducing how much we can fire. Tabletop is 30 capacity (threshold to shut down). MW3 is 30. MW2 is 40. MW4, often regarded as the worst balanced mechwarrior in history before Mektek, had 60 capacity.
What's ours?
MWO is 22 DHS = (10 engine HS *2) + (12 chassis HS * 1.4) + 30 base = 66.8 + (heat containment unlock 10% * 2 for Elites) = 80.16 capacity. So to avoid heat neutral builds, PGI took 0.06 per second cooling away from every double heatsink after the 10 in the engine, and gave them rising capacities. It's actually easier to be heat neutral as a result of the penalty system designed to curb the alpha strikes that this system encourages.
Second link in my sig if you want to talk on that aspect though for an appropriate thread.

Edited by Koniving, 08 August 2013 - 09:50 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Does the penalty also occur when you don't macro? I mean, you can replicate the overall effect (machine-gun like AC/2 fire) this way:
- Put all AC/2s in group 1.
- Put each AC/2 in its own group 2 up to 6 (however many AC/2s you actually have)
- Roll a finger over 2-6.
- Keep group 1 pressed.

You will likely not be able to figure out the exact heat penalty, but you should notice any significant differences.

EDIT: Looks like Lordred already confirmed it even happens for finger virtuosos. Ridonkolus.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 08 August 2013 - 11:25 PM.

[Koniving]

MustrumRidcully, on 08 August 2013 - 11:23 PM, said:

Does the penalty also occur when you don't macro? I mean, you can replicate the overall effect (machine-gun like AC/2 fire) this way:
- Put all AC/2s in group 1.
- Put each AC/2 in its own group 2 up to 6 (however many AC/2s you actually have)
- Roll a finger over 2-6.
- Keep group 1 pressed.

You will likely not be able to figure out the exact heat penalty, but you should notice any significant differences.

EDIT: Looks like Lordred already confirmed it even happens for finger virtuosos. Ridonkolus.

Yes Lordred did it without a macro.

2 at the same time and one separate doesn't get as much of a penalty as 3 at 3 separate times. Btw if you try this with 6 AC/2s in the style Lordred did you would just explode. So don't.

It makes me mad because I was going to work on new Autocannon concepts for AC/2s, AC/5s, and UAC/5s and how to squeeze them into MWO through the use of macros to demonstrate how they would look when fired within MWO. Kind of like this old vid on the Devastator, Chemjet Gun, and Crusher Super Heavy Autocannon AC/20 variants.

[MrWhite]

Nice to see PGI can still break two things while trying to fix one. Oh well back to giving my money to wargaming.net

[Lord Perversor]

**WARNING WILD THEORY AHEAD**

Yesterday i ran a match with my Quad Ac/2, of course i had to alpha shoot all 4 at once in order to avoid the heat bug and while doing so, a friend in comms voice asked me how i was able to keep firing despise my heat indicator was at 100%

It seems that while i was sitting at 30-50% heat they on spectator mode saw the indicator at 100% heat this is something it happened before not only in spectator view but also on the own player heat indicator and was a side effect of the 1st **atmospheric heat** with the release of caustic.

This thing led me to think and ponder wich led me to the following toughts.

Point A: So as far i'm aware (due PGI explanation)the server run a main simulation of the game.
Point B: my sistem run it's own simulation wich can order some inputs to prevail over server simulation (that's how we choose to turn/shoot/shutdown)
Point C: other players run their own simulation too wich can show a difference with our current simulation
Point D: despite my lack of Code-Fu i know the online games have a priority order of execution, wich in layman terms means that some orders are prioritized over others.

Theory begins here:

since closed beta most of ppl it's kinda aware the **vision** of another player tru spectator mode it's not 100% guaranteed exact, it's often see the other pilot firing off-aim, or not turning enough but despite it they seems to still dealing the dmg and operating perfectly fine (it's common see some guy firing behind an enemy mech and the laser trails behind the mech and still turns red and show dmg in the paperdoll)

This seems to be explained with each player runs a different simulation, with the increase in netcode and HSR being less noticing, but still should explain why someone who just died and switch to another pilot, sees this delay and effects, mostly due his simulation lacking some data (mech skills like faster turning as example).
This may explain why my friends see me at 100% heat when i'm hardly at 60% with the Quad Ac/2 build.

Also the server it's running it's own simulation, if we consider that when this bug appeared the original info datamined by Smurfy shows a heat penalty on Quad Ac/2 plus the extremely fast fire rate may explain the whole Ac/2 heat bug.

I think our client DOES calculate the Heat penalty (from the data) and when the mech reach the overheat point it's send a high priority command to SHUTDOWN BY OVERHEAT wich the server obeys despite our mech being at something like 20-40% real heat (in their simulation), similar at what will happen if we hit shutdown button while firing.

This may explain why despite PGI claiming the Ac/2 have no boating heat penalty (They said that the SERVER do not run the same data as our client) We still suffer it it's just some side effect of some ancillary code orders, who PGI made just to avoid the original mechs figthing at 100% heat since caustic early days.

Also it explain why despite the massive heat build up it's very very rare that the Quad Ac/2 mech suffer CT dmg after shutdown (despite it's heat raising at 20-30% per shoot) wich should suffer if he tresspass the 100% heat.

I know it's something odd and quite rare, but sometimes the devil it's in the details and i think it's quite easy to check if this maybe somehow related.

P.S: edited to rephrase a bit more clearly and solve some typos.

Edited by Lord Perversor, 09 August 2013 - 05:27 AM.

[Garrond]

I just played a match with my quad AC2 Cataphract and as it seems the heat generation for AC2s is still bugged. I didn't use any makros, just put all my AC2s in one single weapon group and fired along.

There are two official threads in the Command Chair section about heat penalties. Neither does mention the AC2 being affected by penalties. As long as it's not in one of those threads, I call it a bug.

http://mwomercs.com/...cale-the-maths/

http://mwomercs.com/...general-update/

AC2s have high DPS but very low alpha damage. We're allowed to fire groups of 6 medium lasers - why not have quad AC2s?

[B0oN]

Garrond, on 09 August 2013 - 02:18 AM, said:

AC2s have high DPS but very low alpha damage. We're allowed to fire groups of 6 medium lasers - why not have quad AC2s?

My wildly black and sarcastic thinking leads me to the conclusion :
-Too scary for all the beginners because of massive screenshake, making it even harder to learn anything, lest see clearly
-Might scare away many a player, sitting at the receiving side is intimidating to say the least
-Macros are for showmanship because of permanent loss of DPS, why not subtly discourage from their use altogether, atleast for smaller ballistics.

Oh well, nothing makes me wonder, no more ...

[Kurogawa]

same issue here. its impossible to fire ac2 trying to shorten time between ac2 fire. even with only 2 the heat punish is very bad. amnd with more its unusable.

i hope this bug is fixed soon. many of my mechs uses 2 ac2 and they all are rusting in the garage now. not to mention my 4 ac2 and 5 ac2 builds

[MaxStr]

Been raging about this for weeks, somehow instead of an easy hotfix they keep making it worse every patch. This is so frustrating...feels like nerfing yourself using ballistic weaponry in MWO anyways, especially in 12v12, now we have to have this garbage on top of it.

It went from denial, to "we are working on it", to "working as intended", I expect next patch it will be "why aren't you using PPCs noob?". If this is intentional why not put it in any of the patch notes, its like they are trying to make themselves look incompetent. I don't understand why they seem to hate ballistics so much, not even a single assault currently or planned that has more than one section with ballistic hardpoints.

Edited by MaxKarnage, 09 August 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[mariomanz28]

I would like to saying using my Quad AC/2 Jager has become useless to the point I fitted it with another setup. I don't use a macro but I have 2 guns each in 2 groups and fire with my L and R mouse button. Hitting both buttons together or firing them staggered makes me overheat in about 4-5 seconds. However I do also have Fast Fire so I have a feeling this compounds the problem even more.

[Koniving]

It's a possibility, Lord Perversor. It can apply to some things, but this is a consistent and easily recreated issue that runs off server (testing grounds), on public testing servers, and on live matches.

Also, while not an official response (it's not like someone did a command chair post about it) it was said that this is intentional. They said it's bugged, too, as the 'penalty is too high'. I asked for clarification, saying it isn't happening when I fire them at the same time but when I stagger and spread them out to fire at separate times. "Intentional."

My best guess is like the heat capacity system, we must alpha strike or nothing. Heat neutral builds with great sacrifices of firepower in favor of high endurance is punished and scorned. Damage over time weapons get the shaft. Medium lasers get +1 to their heat, making 2 of them generate identical heat to 1 PPC before this patch (with identical firing rates, too).

So rather than spreading our damage for the psychological 'fear' factor, it's better for us to deal 174 damage of concentrated pinpoint fire in 15 seconds rather than let us spread it out for 88 damage in the same time with the awesome and terrifying sounding blitzfire.

Needless to say I am not happy.