14 replies to this topic

[Phoenix Branson]

Ghost heat is a bad design and makes the game more confusing for new players. The developers should seriously consider removing ghost heat entirely, but as a trade off, make Engine DHS's 1.4. I'm not sure if this has been looked at, but all DHS should be 1.4, regardless if they are located in the engine or not. Having DHS at 2.0 in the engine is way to powerful. This will also have the added benefit of making SHS slightly more attractive. I would argue the vast majority of the community would like to get rid of ghost heat at the expense of DHS. Thoughts/Opinions?

edit: DHS come in two varieties, those included in an Engine and those that are added separately. DHS included in the engine are 2.0, where the DHS that are added to the 'Mech, even those that are added to the engine are 1.4. I'm talking about the DHS that comes with the engine at 2.0

Edited by Maverick01, 24 September 2013 - 09:21 PM.

[BlackDrakon]

Do u mean the ones that comes with the engine or the ones u manually add in the engine? coz the ones u add are already at 1.4..... POST 300!! w00t

[Phoenix Branson]

BlackDrakon, on 24 September 2013 - 08:58 PM, said:

Do u mean the ones that comes with the engine or the ones u manually add in the engine? coz the ones u add are already at 1.4..... POST 300!! w00t

The ones that come with the engine. Updated OP.

Edited by Maverick01, 24 September 2013 - 09:09 PM.

[Conan Librarian]

After heat nerf done to PPC's I'm fairly sure it's safe to remove ghost heat.


Making SHS viable option would also make some totally useless (as of now) engines more viable - the ones in range 100-200.


So I guess I support both suggestions.

[EvilCow]

I support the proposed change.

[Xanquil]

Sadly your Idea isn't going to get rid of ghost heat. Ghost heat was put in the game to combat high damage pinpoint alpha strikes. Making people wait longer to fire any weapon because of a slower cooldown removes the reason why rate of fires were increased in the first place. (firing every 10s was deemed unfun) As long as we have pinpoint alphas we will have ghost heat.

[stjobe]

Xanquil, on 25 September 2013 - 03:15 AM, said:

(firing every 10s was deemed unfun)

This comes up now and again as a reason why rates of fire were increased 2-3 times (or 20, as in the case of the AC/2), but it misses one very important point: Each weapon can be on its own trigger.

What this means is that even if every weapon had an individual 10-second cooldown, you could still be firing way more often than once every 10 seconds - unless you alpha fired all your weapons at once, of course.

Say for instance you have 1 LRM 10, 1 AC/10, 2 ML (spot the 'mech, round 1 ) - during the course of 10 seconds you could fire one weapon system every 2.5 seconds.

If you had 9 weapon systems, you could fire one every 1.1 seconds.

All this would do would be to slow the pace of the game down a bit, perhaps even enough that we didn't need double armour any more (although that has more to do with pin-point alphas than anything else at the moment).

Either way, having a 10-second cooldown on each individual weapon does not mean you can only fire once every 10 seconds. You can't alpha every 2-4 seconds any more though - which in my book might not be such a bad thing.

Currently alpha-striking doesn't have much of a penalty - if it locked you out from firing during the next 10 seconds though, people might not want to alpha all their weapons every time; and Ghost Heat may well not be needed any more to curb that behaviour.

Edited by stjobe, 25 September 2013 - 03:56 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Remove Ghost heat and make all double heat sinks actually double!

To fix the double fire rate to single heat. set Heat sink recycle rate at around 3.5-4.0 seconds. This way some weapons recycle faster and some slower than you heat vents. After all you got:

1 weapons fire burst
1 Physical attack
1 complete heat vent

and your enemy did also in 10 seconds. 10 seconds is just to long for a live action game so reduce how long a combat turn is so you have the proper feel of how the BattleTech Universe raged war. This games idea of how a good war machine works is a joke.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 25 September 2013 - 04:23 AM.

[The Boz]

In the TT, the rules stated pretty clearly that weapons did NOT, in fact, fire every 10 seconds. The AC20 is NOT always a massive meter-caliber cannon that fires six times a minute; it is the military designation of any weapon that uses an autocannon mechanism and deals 20 damage within 10 seconds. Hell, AC2s could fire slower than AC20s, it wouldn't matter; the AC20 delivers more damage in 10 seconds than AC2.

[Joseph Mallan]

Not in MWO. It just spreads the damage out.

[stjobe]

The Boz, on 25 September 2013 - 04:40 AM, said:

In the TT, the rules stated pretty clearly that weapons did NOT, in fact, fire every 10 seconds. The AC20 is NOT always a massive meter-caliber cannon that fires six times a minute; it is the military designation of any weapon that uses an autocannon mechanism and deals 20 damage within 10 seconds. Hell, AC2s could fire slower than AC20s, it wouldn't matter; the AC20 delivers more damage in 10 seconds than AC2.

The fluff stated the weapons didn't fire once every 10 seconds, the rules stated they did. One attack roll per weapon every 10-second turn.

[FerretGR]

Maverick01, on 24 September 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

all DHS should be 1.4, regardless if they are located in the engine or not. Having DHS at 2.0 in the engine is way to powerful.

This is why we can't have nice things. Some goober comes along and ruins it for us all.

DHS 2.0 are necessary. Your proposal would severely gimp lighter mechs who are limited to engine HS. I hate ghost heat, I think it's a stupid mechanic and I think it should be removed post-haste, but nerfing everything below 50 tons to do so is a pyrrhic victory for the anti-ghost-heat crowd at best.

A better plan would be to get rid of ghost heat, give us true 2.0 DHS everywhere, and balance the weapons based on heat alone. Perhaps that and a 30 heat cap a la Battletech would solve every problem, but I haven't thought it through so I can't say for sure. It would certainly limit the multiple PPC builds, at least.

Edited by FerretGR, 25 September 2013 - 05:17 AM.

[The Boz]

stjobe, on 25 September 2013 - 04:43 AM, said:

The fluff stated the weapons didn't fire once every 10 seconds, the rules stated they did. One attack roll per weapon every 10-second turn.

One attack as defined by the rules is not one shot in the BT universe.

[stjobe]

FerretGR, on 25 September 2013 - 05:14 AM, said:

This is why we can't have nice things. Some goober comes along and ruins it for us all.

DHS 2.0 are necessary. Your proposal would severely gimp lighter mechs who are limited to engine HS. I hate ghost heat, I think it's a stupid mechanic and I think it should be removed post-haste, but nerfing everything below 50 tons to do so is a pyrrhic victory for the anti-ghost-heat crowd at best.

A better plan would be to get rid of ghost heat, give us true 2.0 DHS everywhere, and balance the weapons based on heat alone. Perhaps that and a 30 heat cap a la Battletech would solve every problem, but I haven't thought it through so I can't say for sure. It would certainly limit the multiple PPC builds, at least.

Currently my XL195 Commandos are at 18.2 Single Heat Sink Equivalents (7 in-engine 2.0 DHS, and 3 external 1.4 DHS). Making all DHS 1.4 would take it down to 14 SHSE, a clear nerf of 4.2 SHSE. Adjusting DHS to 2.0 would take it up to 20.0, a slight buff of 1.8 SHSE.

On the other hand, making DHS 1.4 (or 1.5-1.6) would perhaps make SHS more attractive in some cases which could be a good thing.

I think the most important thing is that this nonsense of DHS being two different values depending on where they are located needs to go; it doesn't make any sense and it's detrimental to any 'mech running a sub-250 engine (e.g. most light 'mechs).

The Boz, on 25 September 2013 - 05:26 AM, said:

One attack as defined by the rules is not one shot in the BT universe.

The rules are an abstraction of the fluff to simplify and stream-line gameplay. However, the rules "stated pretty clearly" that each weapon fires once per turn. That the fluff says that's really an abstraction and that this particular gun actually fires in a 100-round stream of projectiles does not mean the rules state anything but what they state: One shot per weapon per turn.

Now whether or not one wants to go with the rules or the fluff when translating to a real-time game is of course preference; PGI has gone with a more fluff-based approach to some things, and a more rule-based approach to others.

Personally, I think it'd be interesting to see what a 10-second CD MWO would be like; preferably with burst-fire ACs and the PPC as an energy beam weapon (not the energy ballistic weapon we have now), single armour values, and proper convergence.

Edit: Oh, and proper heat penalties that start at about SHSE + 5 and increase in severity to about SHSE + 30, where shutdown occurrs.

Edited by stjobe, 25 September 2013 - 05:42 AM.

[Xanquil]

Now if you want to bring TT heat into this;

At 14 you hit the first override-able shutdown.

At {18, 22, and 26 you can still override the shutdown but it is harder.(takes longer to restart)}

At {30 you shut down no override. (will restart after a long time on it's own, if you haven't died first)}

At 5 and 10{every 5} heat you would loose 16.2kph from your speed.(not a %)

At 8 and 13{17,24} your targeting would start to go all wonky.( like JJ shake, or 3ed person)

At {15 the pilot starts to take damage (6hp total) at 25 it is x2}

At {19, 23 and 28 you start having ammo explosions}

All of this happens every 10secends (5-6 is more likely in MWO) that the heat is at or above these levels.

This is all above the heat cap created form installed/working heat sinks. (1per SHS, 2per DHS)

If you did not generate enough heat to reach the cap than any extra heat sink cooling would reduce the heat total you were currently at.

For MWO I would start at heat cap(1x SHS, 2x DHS) + 14 for when we overheat (our current shutdown point), and just a have every thing in { } happen if your are dumb enough to bypass that.

At the same time I would increase heat recovery from SHS to 1.4to1.6 and DHS to 2x that.