105 replies to this topic

[Toong]

ICEFANG13, on 23 September 2013 - 09:27 AM, said:

Taking a year to reach a slight amount of balance is considered good? Knight who is White alert!

The balance is better than slight, and taking a year is a pretty reasonable amount of time. I didn't realize objectivity made me a {Noble MechWarrior}. I'll try harder to have unreasonable expectations of all the games I play next time.

[Joseph Mallan]

Toong, on 23 September 2013 - 09:43 AM, said:

The balance is better than slight, and taking a year is a pretty reasonable amount of time. I didn't realize objectivity made me a {Noble MechWarrior}. I'll try harder to have unreasonable expectations of all the games I play next time.

Sense much sarcasm in this one, I do.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 23 September 2013 - 09:47 AM.

[Der_Goetz]

I think the only really usefull solution is, engine heat sinks are single heat sinks and additional dhs are 2.0 heatsinks. So the singleheatsinks are better in heat on the top and double heat sinks are bette in heat dissipation.

So for energy boat you need doubleheat sinks and for ballistic or missle boat single are enough.

Edited by Drake Grayson, 23 September 2013 - 09:56 AM.

[Bors Mistral]

Yeah, that part of the cast had me mildly miffed too.

I'd venture that the great majority of players can easily agree on one thing: it's not "double" heatsinks that are too good - it's single heatsinks that are performing too poorly.

Single HS need a boost of some sort. I'd be happy with a simple tonnage reduction to 0.75, but there are quite a few other interesting ideas out there and that's what I'd like PGI to look into.

[Joseph Mallan]

Drake Grayson, on 23 September 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

I think the only really usefull solution is, engine heat sinks are single heat sinks and additional dhs are 2.0 heatsinks. So the singleheatsinks are better in heat on the top and double heat sinks are bette in heat dissipation.

So for energy boat you need doubleheat sinks and for ballistic or missle boat single are enough.

Not really. Heat sinks should vent heat in about 3.33 seconds so that some weapons fire faster and some slower the sinks cycle. this will better simulate the way Heat v Weapon cyclic rate works in the BattleTech universe. A Thug generated 30 heat running on 16 double sinks(-2 heat per turn). It could not Overheat unless it took an engine hit. It was one of the most efficient Mechs in the game. That build is craptastic in MWO.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 23 September 2013 - 10:03 AM.

[The Boz]

I like the trade-offs idea above. Things that need to happen:
1. Structure, Armor and Heat Sink type NEEDS to be an inventory item. Paying a premium to change from one to the other every single time discourages experimentation.
2. The two heat sink types need to have different effects. If SHS increased heat capacity and DHS increased heat dissipation, it'd be a great step in the right direction.

[Mcgral18]

How about they change it so DHS have a hard capped capacity of either 30-40, and SHS get the increase as we have it now. It will prevent excessive PPC spam (being able to fire only 2 ERs at a time), and you might even be able to make them true DHS.

Of course, that would make PGI's nightmare of heat neutral builds a reality.....

Edited by Mcgral18, 23 September 2013 - 10:29 AM.

[Deathlike]

SHS: The reason where trial/stock mechs are condemned to a burn flame of poo in the minds of MWO players YET are "competitive" in the minds of Russ and Paul's personal 19 SHS K2.

Working as intended™.

[Kaeb Odellas]

The Boz, on 23 September 2013 - 10:24 AM, said:

I like the trade-offs idea above. Things that need to happen:
1. Structure, Armor and Heat Sink type NEEDS to be an inventory item. Paying a premium to change from one to the other every single time discourages experimentation.
2. The two heat sink types need to have different effects. If SHS increased heat capacity and DHS increased heat dissipation, it'd be a great step in the right direction.

This, a thousand times. Charging C-bills every time you add or remove an upgrade just stifles creativity and encourages more cookie-cutter builds. They really ought to be something you just buy once, and then switch on and off for free if you decide you don't need it, since experimentation means you'll never really know for sure if you like a build before you try it first.

[Dan Nashe]

Russ acknowledged that the game is balanced around dhs.
So as long as tht's understood. .. make shs better, fine. But by definition if shs are usable, they are better than double and some mech, somewhere, just got more powerful.

There are two separate discussions.
(1) should shs be more powerful.
(2) should heat be worse.
I.e., should people be limited to one er ppc and a bunch of ballistics, tops!

Personally, I think the heat system is fine.
If you lower the heat cap or add penalties, people will just run smaller and smaller weapons loadouts and they'll all be ballistic boats.

A third issue is if better gear should be restricted.
Practically this means that only vets or people with premium time can afford the best gear.
Whch means splitting the community by how fast they can earn money.
Or not splitting and just accepting that people with more money will be more effective.

Yes, I am biased. I will quit if economic balancing or other barriers to entry are added.
So I don't want to see any system like eve in place, where only some players can afford tier 2.

[Mawai]

Toong, on 23 September 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

I truncated your quote a bit for sake of space. In NGNG podcast 88.5, I believe Paul Inouye said that in-engine heatsinks work at 1.4 efficiency as well. I'd go on further to explain why double heat sinks are a bad idea, but the second half of that interview already mentions the nightmare world of 2.0 efficiency doubles. If you don't agree with what Russ explained, there's nothing I can say that'd probably convince you any better.

Hi .. I truncated your reply to get at the jist of my concern. According to you, Paul stated that in-engine heat sinks work at 1.4.

Off to the testing grounds we go for some in-game analysis. (Which cost me 750k cbills to downgrade one of my Jenners to SHS by the way ... more than an hour of play time for me anyway).

Forest Colony - Jenner -

255XL engine - SHS - no additional heat sinks - not moving
4 medium lasers - 38% heat scale - 16.3 seconds to reach 0% heat
2 ERPPC - 72% heat scale - 29.8 seconds to 0% heat

255XL - SHS + 10 external SHS - not moving
4 medium lasers - 28% heat scale - 8.2 seconds to reach 0% heat

255XL - DHS - no additional heat sinks
4 medium lasers - 28% heat scale - 8.2 seconds to reach 0% heat
2 ERPPC - 58% heat scale - 14.9 seconds to reach 0% heat

250STD - DHS + 5 external DHS
4 medium lasers - 23% heat scale - 5.9 seconds to reach 0% heat

Conclusions: 10 in-engine double heat sinks work EXACTLY the same as 10 in-engine SHS and 10 external single heat sinks for both total heat scale and heat dissipation times. I think that makes it quite clear that in-engine heat sinks as currently implemented in MWO are true double heat sinks. Total time spent testing this - 10 minutes.

So my hope is that Paul did NOT actually say that in-engine heat sinks were also 1.4x or it becomes clear that the lead designer doesn't know how his game actually works.

In addition, all these comments about "What can be pulled off with true double heat sinks!" seems exaggerated to me since as my original post pointed out the difference between current double heat sinks and true doubles is only about 15% to 20% of heat dissipation with 10 extra double heat sinks (30 slots) ... 34 vs 40 heat dissipation. So ... I am a bit dubious about their testing procedures.

[MustrumRidcully]

One of the best ways to balance SHS vs DHS is to treat all engine heat sinks the same.

Whether you should treat them as DHS or SHS is up for debate, but the most important thing is - they should provide the same benefit, regardless of whether your other sinks are double or normal sinks.

The biggest advantage DHS give mechs is that they give you basically 10 tons worth of heat sinks. Think of how many upgrades in this game can give you an upgrade worth 10 tons? Even Endo-Steel only gives you what - 5 tons on a 100 ton mech?

Think of what you can put in 10 tons! That's bascially a free AC/5 with ammo to last half a match.

Fix this, and you might have done the most important step. All those complicated ideas on stuff like "let's only have Standard Sinks add to threshold" and all that - has anyone ever actually calculated through that and figured out if he could create a balanced system?

[stjobe]

MustrumRidcully, on 23 September 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

One of the best ways to balance SHS vs DHS is to treat all engine heat sinks the same.

Whether you should treat them as DHS or SHS is up for debate, but the most important thing is - they should provide the same benefit, regardless of whether your other sinks are double or normal sinks.

The biggest advantage DHS give mechs is that they give you basically 10 tons worth of heat sinks. Think of how many upgrades in this game can give you an upgrade worth 10 tons? Even Endo-Steel only gives you what - 5 tons on a 100 ton mech?

Think of what you can put in 10 tons! That's bascially a free AC/5 with ammo to last half a match.

Fix this, and you might have done the most important step. All those complicated ideas on stuff like "let's only have Standard Sinks add to threshold" and all that - has anyone ever actually calculated through that and figured out if he could create a balanced system?

As long as us lights get the same benefit as the heavier 'mechs (currently we get short-changed on DHS since we often mount sub-250 engines, and don't get the full complement of 2.0 in-engine DHS) I'm all for it.

As an example of the above, my Commandos regularly run with XL195 engines; these come with 7 heat sinks. Now one cannot drop with 7 heat sinks, so I have to put an additional 3 in - but those are 1.4 DHS.

So instead of 20 SHS equivalents, I get 18.2 (7*2 + 3*1.4). Perhaps not the biggest of differences, but still a very unnecessary difference.

[Kaeb Odellas]

How about something like this:

-All engine heatsinks (SHS and DHS) add 1.5 capacity and cooling.
-Each additional SHS adds +1 cap and cooling.
-Each DHS get 2.0 cap and cooling.

These changes give both systems an equivalent baseline, so the weight and space tradeoffs actually matter. If you lots of space but are already running heavy, you use DHS. If you've got spare tonnage but are running out of space, you use singles.

[Deathlike]

stjobe, on 23 September 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

As long as us lights get the same benefit as the heavier 'mechs (currently we get short-changed on DHS since we often mount sub-250 engines, and don't get the full complement of 2.0 in-engine DHS) I'm all for it.

As an example of the above, my Commandos regularly run with XL195 engines; these come with 7 heat sinks. Now one cannot drop with 7 heat sinks, so I have to put an additional 3 in - but those are 1.4 DHS.

So instead of 20 SHS equivalents, I get 18.2 (7*2 + 3*1.4). Perhaps not the biggest of differences, but still a very unnecessary difference.

I had suggested in many older threads that the engine should be able to hold 10 engine heatsinks... in the sense that they still produce the same # internally as they do now, but external heatsinks can be added to the engine w/o consuming crit space. If you're concerned about heat balance, just use the external HS values. DHS would suffer, but at least it doesn't get you consuming valuable crit space that you'd need for endo and ff as a light mech.

So in your example, you can put in 3 more DHS into the engine and still keep FF. I remember this when I've tried to build the common COM-2D.

Edited by Deathlike, 23 September 2013 - 11:54 AM.

[stjobe]

Kaeb Odellas, on 23 September 2013 - 11:45 AM, said:

How about something like this:

-All engine heatsinks (SHS and DHS) add 1.5 capacity and cooling.
-Each additional SHS adds +1 cap and cooling.
-Each DHS get 2.0 cap and cooling.

These changes give both systems an equivalent baseline, so the weight and space tradeoffs actually matter. If you lots of space but are already running heavy, you use DHS. If you've got spare tonnage but are running out of space, you use singles.

That... Would actually make it worse to have a full complement of engine heat sinks?
250 engine + 5 DHS: 15 SHS equivalent (SHSE) from the engine, 10 SHSE from DHS = 25 SHSE.
195 engine + 8 DHS: 10.5 SHSE from engine, 16 SHSE from DHS = 26.5 SHSE

Edit: Probably the only solution is to stop removing engine heat sinks from sub-250 engines. Every 'mech needs 10 heat sinks to be able to launch, so don't faff about with them.

Edited by stjobe, 23 September 2013 - 11:53 AM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

stjobe, on 23 September 2013 - 11:52 AM, said:

That... Would actually make it worse to have a full complement of engine heat sinks?
250 engine + 5 DHS: 15 SHS equivalent (SHSE) from the engine, 10 SHSE from DHS = 25 SHSE.
195 engine + 8 DHS: 10.5 SHSE from engine, 16 SHSE from DHS = 26.5 SHSE

Edit: Probably the only solution is to stop removing engine heat sinks from sub-250 engines. Every 'mech needs 10 heat sinks to be able to launch, so don't faff about with them.

That was more of a general suggestion, not something targeted towards your commando build.

I'd prefer to just abolish the minimum heatsink limit altogether. That limit only punishes the smaller light mechs.

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 23 September 2013 - 12:03 PM.

[stjobe]

Kaeb Odellas, on 23 September 2013 - 12:02 PM, said:

That was more of a general suggestion, not something targeted towards your commando build.

Oh, I never thought it would; my Commando actually benefits from it.

Kaeb Odellas, on 23 September 2013 - 12:02 PM, said:

I'd prefer to just abolish the minimum heatsink limit altogether. That limit only punishes the smaller light mechs.

We used to be able to drop with less than 10 heat sinks - it was hell. I don't want that back. I just want my 10 heat sinks free like every other 'mech.

[Orkhepaj]

realy overpowered item imho
my victor has 360 engine can put 4 sinks into the engine and voila lots of tons/slots saved and even better heat efficiency than single heat sinks

many mechs already too heat efficient with lots of lasers/ ppc-s etc , they can nearly fire nonstop even on high temp worlds
game should be much more tactical ---> change light mechs role from combat to scout , and make combat more heat dependant , so the better player who know what weapons to use has upper hand over lame alpha kiddoes

[Lightfoot]

MWo doesn't support Energy based mechs already. The stock AWS-9M blows itself up in about 10-15 seconds of firing it's main weapons. In Battletech it could fire 9 salvos of 3xERPPC's before missing a turn to cool down. Before anything else is done with Heat and heatsinks PGI needs to make the stock AWS-9M work close to it's Battletech stats.

MWO just uses heat as a balancing crutch. It makes no sense to so severely limit energy loadouts while letting AC's fire at 2x normal recharges. They need to just get rid of 2x Recharge and create a more balanced game. Certainly they need to dial down the heat nerfs.