128 replies to this topic

[Wilhelm Fraek]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 06:21 PM, said:

This is something I had completely forgotten about until this thread. What balance comes into play when you have movement reduction, and possible heat explosions on heat boats? Ammo explosions would be TOOO risky, and would suck to just blow up cause your ammo cooked.. but, how does everyone feel about speed reductions? Do you think that could bring balance to the force if you will?

Well on the idea of ammo cooking off, this idea could work pretty well if the conditions are set right. it only makes sense if a guy puts ammo in his legs i should be able to blow it off with several strikes or a single good one.

[Xanquil]

I have given the heat cap issue way too much thought. And this is what I came up with.
One of my favorite examples is in TT I could have a mech with 12 SHS and a PPC, running at full speed, and never overheat.(assuming heat neutral environment) To even come close to that you need 12 DHS.
If they lowered the amount of heat cap to .5 per SHS, and 1 per DHS, and doubled the current dissipation that may get that TT feel back. It would also reduce the variable size a bit.
Example:

10 SHS+15 base would give you a 20 heat cap with a 2 heat dissipation a second would give you the ability to fire a PPC every 5 seconds and only produce a little extra heat, Moving or firing at full ROF would make it even hotter.

10 DHS(all engine)+15 base would give you a 25 heat cap with a 4 heat dissipation a second allowing for two PPCs to fire every 5 seconds without overheating, but not 3 even without ghost heat.

At the extreme with 30 DHS ( 16 in engine) +15 base would give you 45 heat cap and a 5.16 heat dissipation a second would allow 4 PPC to barely be able to fire at once without ghost heat, and wouldn't be that viable under the current ghost heat system.

Of course this all would need to be tested.
On paper math sometimes sound to me though.



* edit: better spacing

Edited by Xanquil, 09 October 2013 - 06:38 PM.

[GalaxyBluestar]

yeah i've felt the pinch as my sig 5 LL stalker has recieved climbing nerfs, heat nerfs which in turn means i overheat twice as easily as i did before, chainfire or become the laughable 6ppc stalker shutdown. a mastered 21DHS mech shouldn't be so hampered but that's the way it is, it's teir 3 at best now. it was teir 2 and bordered on teir 1 when HSR first came about. then 2 weeks later ballistics got HSR and ppc meta was born. it was painfully outranged and was always out gunned to a dedicated brawler. lasers have poor criting and hitscan spreads damage, still my boat got nerfed heavily, i was doing to well in it.

so the KDR is going down hill, can't lay on enough pain before an autocanon takes the kill, can't lay enough pain for my speed and tonnage, it's been turned into what lrmers were months back. premade up or gimp along as a standalone pugger. i'll still soldier on in it because it's MY mech {untill i can do the same with an maruader} and PGI can't take it away from me!

PS: utterly bored with dualolog ac's ppcs or missle spammers on every chassis. we've gone from one extreme, all boats no cannon like mix builds, to all upgraded duall cannons mechs. i miss lasers being viable as a primary weapon, only jenners havem cause they can't have enough SSRMS,

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 09 October 2013 - 06:43 PM.

[Davers]

FupDup, on 09 October 2013 - 06:32 PM, said:

On the other hand, if our heat system were designed in a sane fashion, lights and mediums wouldn't run nearly as hot as they do now unless they deliberately chose a high-heat loadout (a few Medium Lasers and SRMs should NOT overheat you in only a few shots, especially if you're using a lot of DHS!).

I agree.

BeardedGlass, on 09 October 2013 - 06:32 PM, said:

It would only punish light and medium mechs for equipping weapons like large pulse lasers, which in the other MechWarrior games they really couldn't equip anyway. and even then, having the appropriate weapons like small/ medium lasers wouldn't have as much as an impact on your speed as would going all out with a large pulse.

There are plenty of light and medium mechs that carry heavy energy weapons. While I agree that they shouldn't be able to fire them at will, they should not overheat after the 3rd shot either.

[Wilhelm Fraek]

Xanquil, on 09 October 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

I have given the heat cap issue way too much thought. And this is what I came up with.
One of my favorite examples is in TT I could have a mech with 12 SHS and a PPC, running at full speed, and never overheat.(assuming heat neutral environment) To even come close to that you need 12 DHS.
If they lowered the amount of heat cap to .5 per SHS, and 1 per DHS, and doubled the current dissipation that may get that TT feel back. It would also reduce the variable size a bit.
Example:

10 SHS+15 base would give you a 20 heat cap with a 2 heat dissipation a second would give you the ability to fire a PPC every 5 seconds and only produce a little extra heat, Moving or firing at full ROF would make it even hotter.

10 DHS(all engine)+15 base would give you a 25 heat cap with a 4 heat dissipation a second allowing for two PPCs to fire every 5 seconds without overheating, but not 3 even without ghost heat.

At the extreme with 30 DHS ( 16 in engine) +15 base would give you 45 heat cap and a 5.16 heat dissipation a second would allow 4 PPC to barely be able to fire at once without ghost heat, and wouldn't be that viable under the current ghost heat system.

Of course this all would need to be tested.
On paper math sometimes sound to me though.



* edit: better spacing

So what youre saying is Engine size and heatsinks decide the heat cap?

Davers, on 09 October 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

There are plenty of light and medium mechs that carry heavy energy weapons. While I agree that they shouldn't be able to fire them at will, they should not overheat after the 3rd shot either.

I dont think mediums have ever been a problem in game so much as the lights are a constant balance problem, so allowing them acess to same equipment as the mediums and up doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

was there any equipment in BT that was weight/class restricted?

Edited by Wilhelm Fraek, 09 October 2013 - 06:48 PM.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Dirus Nigh, on 09 October 2013 - 06:32 PM, said:

I and some others have been suggesting addapting heat effects to MWO sense closed beta.

The one thing I think should never be a part of the system is ammunition explosions. With the one exception of damage due to heat levels being so high they go above the automatic shutdown. Right now a mech takes damage after going over 100% on the heat scale. That damage can cause crit chances in locations. Not a very large chance mind you. Just enough to make it possible.

Ideally heat effects would effect the fallowing.

Mech speed: Max speed, acceleration, and deceleration.

Movement: Turning speed, torso, and arm movement speeds.

Targeting: Delays in weapons convergence, lock on times increasing.

Weapons: increasing weapon cool down rates, damage drop of rates after effective range. Increasing jam rate of UAC.

Target data and sensors: Target data updates take longer, sensors range is decreased, ECM/BAP effected.

HUD: Hud starts flickering in and out and fuzzing/wobbles.

i'll agree to this when GH is no more.

[aniviron]

Thought exercise: what has changed since the PPC (and PPC + Gauss) meta was dominant two months ago to make ballistics dominant? Two things:

The first is that HSR for lasers and especially for missiles has become terrible once again. While ballistics certainly have their fair share of misses that should be hits, SRMs are almost not worth using at this point, LRMs are a joke due to ECM, and lasers are dealing only a fraction of the damage they should be against any non-stationary target. If the netcode were brought up to snuff (or just rolled back to the days of early Open Beta) I'd speculate there would be a lot more build diversity.

The second thing keeping ballistics afloat is the fact that they're not affected by ghost heat; and the only one that is, the AC20, isn't seen nearly as often as the 2, 5, and 10, none of which have heat penalties. This leads to a system where players are punished very heavily for taking energy or missiles in quantity and fulfilling a specialized role that only missiles or lasers/ppcs can fill, whereas the player is free to load up an equal tonnage setup of ballistics and suffers no heat penalties whatsoever. Why would you ever take a weapon system that punishes you for using it optimally (i.e. in groups) when you can take a different weapon system that was balanced to be just as good as the first, but doesn't punish you for using it optimally? This means that either ballistics need ghost heat, or the other weapons need their restrictions eased or removed.

[GalaxyBluestar]

aniviron, on 09 October 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

Thought exercise: what has changed since the PPC (and PPC + Gauss) meta was dominant two months ago to make ballistics dominant? Two things:

The first is that HSR for lasers and especially for missiles has become terrible once again. While ballistics certainly have their fair share of misses that should be hits, SRMs are almost not worth using at this point, LRMs are a joke due to ECM, and lasers are dealing only a fraction of the damage they should be against any non-stationary target. If the netcode were brought up to snuff (or just rolled back to the days of early Open Beta) I'd speculate there would be a lot more build diversity.

The second thing keeping ballistics afloat is the fact that they're not affected by ghost heat; and the only one that is, the AC20, isn't seen nearly as often as the 2, 5, and 10, none of which have heat penalties. This leads to a system where players are punished very heavily for taking energy or missiles in quantity and fulfilling a specialized role that only missiles or lasers/ppcs can fill, whereas the player is free to load up an equal tonnage setup of ballistics and suffers no heat penalties whatsoever. Why would you ever take a weapon system that punishes you for using it optimally (i.e. in groups) when you can take a different weapon system that was balanced to be just as good as the first, but doesn't punish you for using it optimally? This means that either ballistics need ghost heat, or the other weapons need their restrictions eased or removed.

what's become misballanced is the heat to ammo ratio, ammo based mechs can kill much quicker and avoid running out of ammo {for verious reasons} where as an energy dependant mech overheats in half the ime which is simillar to running out of ammo. so infact ammo based weapons have a lot more ammo in skirmishes as energy mechs only get 1-2 salvos before they have to shutdown/retreat so ballistics mechs have free steamrolling reign at the moment. energy boats can't even one shot compensate anymore to avoid the skirmish smothering ballistics mechs can lay on them. they've been relegated to the rank of halfarsed lurmer now.

i'm sure PGI will see this shift intrend and hopefully will pull back THE CORRECT AMOUNT of nerfs to ballance this. problem is they always change 2 dozen things at the same time to an extreme level.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 09 October 2013 - 06:58 PM.

[FupDup]

Wilhelm Fraek, on 09 October 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

I dont think mediums have ever been a problem in game so much as the lights are a constant balance problem, so allowing them acess to same equipment as the mediums and up doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

was there any equipment in BT that was weight/class restricted?

No, there wasn't. The only limitations in BT are tonnage and critical slots. There are various lights in Battletech that carry PPCs, AC/10s, Gauss Rifles, AC/20s, LRM 20s, and even Heavy Gauss in one rare case.

Edited by FupDup, 09 October 2013 - 06:56 PM.

[Zyllos]

FupDup, on 09 October 2013 - 06:55 PM, said:

No, there wasn't. The only limitations in BT are tonnage and critical slots. There are various lights in Battletech that carry PPCs, AC/10s, Gauss Rifles, AC/20s, LRM 20s, and even Heavy Gauss in one rare case.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hollander

I always go back to this guy for reasons for more hardpoint restrictions. This mech, like a few others right now, is pointless without more hardpoint restrictions.

Edited by Zyllos, 09 October 2013 - 06:59 PM.

[Xanquil]

Wilhelm Fraek, on 09 October 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

So what youre saying is Engine size and heatsinks decide the heat cap?

That has always been the case in TT. It Is the case in MW:O also.

In TT your heatsinks removed the heat at the end of the round before any side effects were ever applied.
Making your effective "heat cap" equal to the total of your heatsinks (x2 for DHS) + the heat scale 30 but if you ever did that you would shut down.
To avoid shutdown most players would "ride" at around your heatsink total(again 2x for DHS) +4 or 5. this avoided most if not all of the heat scale side effects.

[Dymlos2003]

All I see in this thread is, "I want mechwarrior 4!!! Give me that or else!" What you suggest would make it so only a few Mechs would be viable instead of the certain builds making certain Mechs worthless ala mw4

[FupDup]

dymlos2003, on 09 October 2013 - 07:05 PM, said:

All I see in this thread is, "I want mechwarrior 4!!! Give me that or else!" What you suggest would make it so only a few Mechs would be viable instead of the certain builds making certain Mechs worthless ala mw4

MW3 wasn't much better.

[RandomLurker]

TT turns are stated to represent 10 seconds of combat.

30 is the absolute heat capacity (with progressively harder rolls to avoid shutdown and ammo explosions as you get closer to it).

Movement generates 1 (walking) or 2 (running) or X (for X number of hexes moved with JJ).

Heat is dissipated at the end of the turn, and heat penalties after the dissipation. Any heat generated that's under your dissipation is thus effectively neutral.

The best point of comparison, given that MWO doesn't use the 10 second scale for gameplay reasons, is to look at various tactics and compare them functionally. For example:

Assuming 10 DHS (20 Dissipation):
2 PPC's fired continuously, while stationary, is heat neutral. Movement in addition results in heat generation.

1 ERPPC is Neutral.

2 ERPPC while stationary generates 10 heat (30%)

2 LLAS is neutral.

2 ERLLAS while stationary generates 4 heat (13%)

6 MLAS is neutral. 7 MLAS generates 1 heat (3%).

And so on. From this point, look at which situations are balanced and which are not. A single Heat neutral ERPPC, for no extra tonnage invested in heat sinks, sounds OK to me. 2 ERPPC's will result in shutdown after 3 continuous shots. Also ok to me.

6 MLAS being heat neutral for no extra tonnage in heat sinks sounds OP to me.

And so on.

This gives a format for approaching heat balance. Adjust heat as needed for each weapons cooldown and perceived power level.

Now, some things about heat sinks need adjusted for this to work. First, all mechs need to have the same base heat capacity. This means getting rid of the "2.0 heat for sinks in engine, 1.4 extrenal" business. Just normalize it. Otherwise, light mechs with small engine ratings are needlessly penalized. Also, SHS/DHS need balanced. Personally, I'm a fan of the suggestion I've seen around to have SHS increase capacity, but have DHS increase dissipation. Different hardware for different purposes.

Edited by RandomLurker, 09 October 2013 - 07:17 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 05:28 PM, said:

The developers went the route that HEAT would be the primary limiter of the game for weapon use. They ignored hard point limitations or to have weapon conversion change by mount placement. Welcome to the end of the game, Autocannon Online.

The limitation now is on autocannon mounts on mechs. The game is in a poor state of affairs at the moment. The main reason you haven't seen a 90+ ton mech that could dual wield gauss or AC/20 IMHO is that the mech with most Autocannons will tend to win a match now.

Maybe if you're in a low ELO bracket...

[Wilhelm Fraek]

Zyllos, on 09 October 2013 - 06:59 PM, said:

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hollander

I always go back to this guy for reasons for more hardpoint restrictions. This mech, like a few others right now, is pointless without more hardpoint restrictions.

now looking at this I think its a fair bit of balance if it was kept to just the gauss. now my question with this is

whats with the range giving?

Quote

he only weapon carried by the Hollander is a Poland Main Model A Gauss Rifle, with two tons of ammunition, which gives the Hollander the capability to bombard an enemy at up to 660 meters

Yet in mwo the range is 1980m, im wondering if what the game would be like, if the stats were brought in line more with the original bt stats.

[Rhent]

Mister Blastman, on 09 October 2013 - 07:19 PM, said:

Maybe if you're in a low ELO bracket...

Pick the same mech chassis with equivalent pilots with AC mounts and without AC mounts. Build one mech using AC's and the other mech don't use AC's. The mech using AC's will always win due to a smaller reliance on heat.

The designers relied on heat and now the weapons are screwed. You can burst better with AC's than you can with Energy. You can do sustained fire better with AC than you can with Energy. Popping in and out to do a high energy burst and you will have longer down time while waiting for your heat to dissipate.

Relying on heat as the only limiter has screwed the game.

[GalaxyBluestar]

we used to argue over hardpoints again and again as months dragged on so i doubt it will ever change. i'd love to see more hardpoints added for speciallist mechs but then restrict it with crit slot ammount values. ie awesome's side torsos only have 2 energy HP. so you're forced to use two big weapons {ppc's or LL} or you're wasting tonnage firepower with lesser weapons. whereas if we had 5 HP but only 7 crit slots then you can have 2 LL 3ML or 2 ppc 1 ML and so on. do that over all the mechs and chassis can become more diverse and niche centric whilst not destroying customisation play. better than the dualopoly of ac ppcs on every mech that isn't a missle boat like we have in our customisation game now.

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

Pick the same mech chassis with equivalent pilots with AC mounts and without AC mounts. Build one mech using AC's and the other mech don't use AC's. The mech using AC's will always win due to a smaller reliance on heat.

The designers relied on heat and now the weapons are screwed. You can burst better with AC's than you can with Energy. You can do sustained fire better with AC than you can with Energy. Popping in and out to do a high energy burst and you will have longer down time while waiting for your heat to dissipate.

Relying on heat as the only limiter has screwed the game.

and saddly this system will never change, they didn't want to experiment with other stuff during CB, it's
definitely not going to happen now.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 09 October 2013 - 07:30 PM.

[Prezimonto]

Khobai, on 09 October 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

Exactly convergence is the real problem here.

I wish they'd just add a delay and target lock required to perfect convergence. Essentially, your weapons zero in from neutral (aimed perfectly forward on the width of your mech, unless you have actuator on your arms to allow better) as you hold your cursor over a mech, after you acquire a lock.

This mirror's the LRM lock on system, without requiring a lock to fire. All weapons are better after a target lock and "zoom in" time. Firing on the go is harder, perfect convergence requires that you expose yourself. It's a good balance.

It would also instantly illustrate the completely awful implementation of ECM to all players rather than just LRM users.

Edited by Prezimonto, 09 October 2013 - 07:35 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

Pick the same mech chassis with equivalent pilots with AC mounts and without AC mounts. Build one mech using AC's and the other mech don't use AC's. The mech using AC's will always win due to a smaller reliance on heat.

The designers relied on heat and now the weapons are screwed. You can burst better with AC's than you can with Energy. You can do sustained fire better with AC than you can with Energy. Popping in and out to do a high energy burst and you will have longer down time while waiting for your heat to dissipate.

Relying on heat as the only limiter has screwed the game.

It all depends on your ELO bracket. I can assure you wholeheartedly that in my bracket, you don't see much AC boating. You DO see lots of high-alpha damage, but you don't see it being done strictly with ACs. You also see lots of players smart enough to exploit the advantages of their weapons, whatever they might be, over the weapons the enemy is using to overcome them.