128 replies to this topic

[Rhent]

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.

Edited by Rhent, 09 October 2013 - 05:28 PM.

[FupDup]

Let's not forget the dev's chosen path of turtle-slow dissipation and high capacity for the heat system, which is designed specifically to make people fire off a series of alpha-strikes and then have to wait for a while behind cover. Ballistics have low enough heat per shot that the slow cooling rate can keep up with them and they can go full-auto all day (well, except for AC/2 spam), whereas energy weapons quickly hit a "wall" where they become ineffective until you've had enough time to cool off.

[Destructicus]

*Puts fingers in ears *
"NANANANANANAN WORKING AS INTENDED NANANANANANA"

[Nubsternator]

This is a big, BIG reason why I'm getting frustrated playing my Jenners and Cicada. I cannot stand up to AC shots. All it takes is one good AC20 shot to strip anyplace of my armor, and another to drop me. Lasers only get me so far because I need time to deal my damage. I can stay relatively heat neutral, but I get dealt too much damage at too fast. Everyone does. I see teammates drop like flies, and I wonder how they did. And then I see the 3 Ilyas come at me sporting 3 UAC5s each.

[John Wolf]

Rhent,

Thanks for sharing your viewpoint on it. And I do see a lot of ballistics but I wouldn't say they dominate the battlefield like the PPC days of not so old. Do you have any suggestions on how to correct the flaw you're speaking of? Do ballistics store too much ammo? since they are supposed to be lower heat based on limited ammunition reserves do you think that might correct things? or perhaps another option?

[Rhent]

Nubsternator, on 09 October 2013 - 05:39 PM, said:

This is a big, BIG reason why I'm getting frustrated playing my Jenners and Cicada. I cannot stand up to AC shots. All it takes is one good AC20 shot to strip anyplace of my armor, and another to drop me. Lasers only get me so far because I need time to deal my damage. I can stay relatively heat neutral, but I get dealt too much damage at too fast. Everyone does. I see teammates drop like flies, and I wonder how they did. And then I see the 3 Ilyas come at me sporting 3 UAC5s each.

Autocannons aren't the problem. The problem is the DEV's insistence on using heat as the primary limiter. Nerfing Autocannons will revert us down to everyone running light mechs or poptarts. Oh wait, they already are using that, it would just move the remaining players over.

[FupDup]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:44 PM, said:

Rhent,

Thanks for sharing your viewpoint on it. And I do see a lot of ballistics but I wouldn't say they dominate the battlefield like the PPC days of not so old. Do you have any suggestions on how to correct the flaw you're speaking of? Do ballistics store too much ammo? since they are supposed to be lower heat based on limited ammunition reserves do you think that might correct things? or perhaps another option?

It's the heat system. Heat dissipates too slowly and our capacity is way too high. What we need is for heat to cool off quickly, but with a very low capacity to prevent alpha strikes from energy boats (they would shutdown instantly if they didn't space out their shots).

Edited by FupDup, 09 October 2013 - 05:48 PM.

[Nubsternator]

True 'dat, Rhent. Problems like this are the reason why I would've been happy if PGI took the time to get it right, rather then rush it out the door.

[Rhent]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:44 PM, said:

Rhent,

Thanks for sharing your viewpoint on it. And I do see a lot of ballistics but I wouldn't say they dominate the battlefield like the PPC days of not so old. Do you have any suggestions on how to correct the flaw you're speaking of? Do ballistics store too much ammo? since they are supposed to be lower heat based on limited ammunition reserves do you think that might correct things? or perhaps another option?

I stated the solution:

"They ignored hard point limitations or to have weapon conversion change by mount placement."

Those points were brought up in closed Beta and ignored. What we have now is about the last iteration of balance that can be done using only heat. If AC's get nerfed, everyone will be playing lights, because frankly Streaks are mostly a joke against lights and lasers spread, PPC's can't hit below 90M and everything else is going to overheat while a light can slowly kill you with SL, MG's, and ML.

[John Wolf]

@Fup,

So, like go back to the 30 scale hard lock? How fast do you suggest heat dissipates? 3 ERpeeps shutsdown?

@Rhent

We talking about the older game hardpoint locks? Like If it comes with a PPC standard, you can't strip it to add as many Mediums as you want? Sorry, not following you just yet.

Edited by John Wolf, 09 October 2013 - 05:51 PM.

[FupDup]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

-
If AC's get nerfed, everyone will be playing lights, because frankly Streaks are mostly a joke against lights and lasers spread, PPC's can't hit below 90M and everything else is going to overheat while a light can slowly kill you with SL, MG's, and ML.

As a Streaktaro player I can assure you that Streaks are not a joke against lights, and even with spread lasers are still useful against them.

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

@Fup,

So, like go back to the 30 scale hard lock? How fast do you suggest heat dissipates? 3 ERpeeps shutsdown?

30 is the most popularly suggested number, and that's what I'll go with for now. If you fired 3 ERpeeps with a 30 cap, that would put you at 45 heat instantly (not counting ghost heat) and you'd probably cook to death from internal damage. Even just 2 ERpeeps at once would shutdown with a cap of 30. We'd probably have to buff the ER and normal PPCs if we went with a cap of 30 (i.e. increase their projectile speed by a large amount to make them deadlier at long range).

As for heat cooling rate, I'd suggest roughly double our current values for now. I can't know for sure what the exact "just right" numbers should be without playtesting, but these are some good starting points.

Edited by FupDup, 09 October 2013 - 05:55 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Autocannons aren't the problem. The problem is the DEV's insistence on using heat as the primary limiter.

Agreed. Nobody likes hot weapons. Theyre neither intuitive or fun. Thats why autocannons are preferred over all other weapons.

Heat isnt the reason weapon damage is so high. The real reason is the introduction of aiming/convergence which exponentially increases damage and the fact were still using archaic armor ratios based on random hit locations. Why does my center torso only have 20% of my mech's total armor when its hit more than 50% of the time?

Instead of just fixing the real problem PGI continually bandaids it by increasing heat. And finally theyve increased heat on everything so much that nothing but autocannons are worth using.

Quote

So, like go back to the 30 scale hard lock? How fast do you suggest heat dissipates? 3 ERpeeps shutsdown?

Heat should dissipate at the same rate weapons fire. If weapons fire three times faster then heat should also dissipate three times faster. Because thats how battletech works... weapons and heat are on the same 10 second cycle... not different cycles like in MWO.

Of course the aiming/convergence issue still has to be addressed, but that can be done by redistributing armor values based on how often locations get hit in MWO (which can be datamined).

Edited by Khobai, 09 October 2013 - 06:06 PM.

[Alexandrix]

Fup,I love your sig LOL.good stuff.err bad stuff...err yea you know what I mean.

[Wilhelm Fraek]

May i suggest either higher heat counts with faster dissapation or lower heat counts with slower heat dissapation, as for ballistics the ammo count is far to high, on my hunchback 4g before i sold it i ran around with 3 medium lasers and 42 shots, i dont remember ever run out. With lasers you cant just spam them in a fight or you overheat and die, ballistics dont have that issue. since the new set up ive seen more jagermechs,blackjacks,Ilya and now the occasinal atlas with x2 AC/5 but its just getting ridiculous.

If anything add muzzle climb for alpha strikes and long periods of firing.

[Rhent]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

@Fup,

So, like go back to the 30 scale hard lock? How fast do you suggest heat dissipates? 3 ERpeeps shutsdown?

@Rhent

We talking about the older game hardpoint locks? Like If it comes with a PPC standard, you can't strip it to add as many Mediums as you want? Sorry, not following you just yet.

There were two things brought up by smarter people than me in closed Beta:

Hard Point limitations:
Lets say Energy:
Small = Small Laser/SPL
Medium = ML/MPL + Small
Large = LL/LPL + Med
X-Large = PPC/ERPPC + Large

All of a sudden, an Awesome that comes with 3 X-Large energy slots and is one of the few mechs that can carry 3 PPC's becomes competitive. It has a huge torso and is easy to kill BUT it can shoot 3 PPC's as well. You also would quit seeing 2 PPC 3L's running around.

Conversion:
Weapons mounted in the arms will converse on the same target on the enemy mech. Weapons mounted on the torsos would converse on the same target on the enemy mech. Firing weapons from different mount areas would not necessarily hit the same area.

I have no incentive now to buy another mech in the game. I have all the hard points in the mechs I'll ever need due to ghost heat.

[John Wolf]

FupDup, on 09 October 2013 - 05:50 PM, said:

30 is the most popularly suggested number, and that's what I'll go with for now. If you fired 3 ERpeeps with a 30 cap, that would put you at 45 heat instantly (not counting ghost heat) and you'd probably cook to death from internal damage. Even just 2 ERpeeps at once would shutdown with a cap of 30.

As for heat cooling rate, I'd suggest roughly double our current values for now. I can't know for sure what the exact "just right" numbers should be without playtesting, but these are some good starting points.

I'm used to 30 from my TT days, and endless mech sheets with that table on them. It kinda gets burned into your mind. Has anyone done any 'paper' playtesting in the system? Come up with some ingame scenarios right now for weapons, and do the math on a new heat scale conversion?

I have ALWAYS figured the hardest thing to convert from the tabletop to online play is the head system, since its live time and not the 'turn based' system if you will.

[Wilhelm Fraek]

Rhent, on 09 October 2013 - 05:57 PM, said:

There were two things brought up by smarter people than me in closed Beta:

Hard Point limitations:
Lets say Energy:
Small = Small Laser/SPL
Medium = ML/MPL + Small
Large = LL/LPL + Med
X-Large = PPC/ERPPC + Large

All of a sudden, an Awesome that comes with 3 X-Large energy slots and is one of the few mechs that can carry 3 PPC's becomes competitive. It has a huge torso and is easy to kill BUT it can shoot 3 PPC's as well. You also would quit seeing 2 PPC 3L's running around.

Conversion:
Weapons mounted in the arms will converse on the same target on the enemy mech. Weapons mounted on the torsos would converse on the same target on the enemy mech. Firing weapons from different mount areas would not necessarily hit the same area.

I have no incentive now to buy another mech in the game. I have all the hard points in the mechs I'll ever need due to ghost heat.

This right here is the fix we need, hell you put this in and ill buy a phoenix order

[Rhent]

Wilhelm Fraek, on 09 October 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

This right here is the fix we need, hell you put this in and ill buy a phoenix order

If you want a change, quit buying mechs. Everyone has enough mechs now due to ghost heat and unlimited hard points. The best mechs are already in the game, they can't release anything else worth buying now. People are still buying mechs and Piranha isn't seeing a decrease in cash flow, if they were they'd change their weapons.

So far, the only thing Piranha has backtracked on was ECM and Seismic. They have done little on weapons other than playing with heat or weapon velocity. Velocity is meaningless, Heat is what stops DPS in the game now.

[FupDup]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:57 PM, said:

I'm used to 30 from my TT days, and endless mech sheets with that table on them. It kinda gets burned into your mind. Has anyone done any 'paper' playtesting in the system? Come up with some ingame scenarios right now for weapons, and do the math on a new heat scale conversion?

I have ALWAYS figured the hardest thing to convert from the tabletop to online play is the head system, since its live time and not the 'turn based' system if you will.

I'm too lazy to have done paper testing, sorry. I'm just a spokesperson spreading the gospel of high-dissipation/low-capacity.

And yeah, nailing down heat can be tricky. The thing about the TT system is that cooling was subtracted from your heat generated per turn before it was applied to your scale. For instance, you could design a Clan mech in BT with 30 DHS to fire 4 ERPPCs in one turn, and end the turn with zero heat generated (if standing still). That would obviously be utterly broken in many ways. With a hard cap of "x" (30 or whatever we want it to be) and no "frontloaded" cooling like TT, we can prevent those crazy alphas while simultaneously allowing energy builds to keep firing their weapons at a fast rate (right now they can alpha a few times and then have to wait a while to cool off).

[Zyllos]

John Wolf, on 09 October 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

@Rhent

We talking about the older game hardpoint locks? Like If it comes with a PPC standard, you can't strip it to add as many Mediums as you want? Sorry, not following you just yet.

That is one option but I think an invalid one. The old MechWarrior games limited weapons by slot numbers. Larger weapons took up more slot numbers while smaller ones took up smaller numbers. But there was no limit on the number of weapons that could be equipped.

What needs to happen, in my opinion, is to force a limit of # of weapons that can be equipped (like MWO does now) but limit those hardpoints with a size modifier.

Take the AWS-8Q. It's default loadout is 3 PPCs and 1 Small Laser. With modifications done by PGI, it can now equip not only those 3 PPCs, but also additional energy weapons in the same location.

Instead, what should be happening is that each of those locations has the 1 Large Energy hardpoint to allow the stock build to be created, but the additional hardpoints would be reduced in size.

So, for example, the LT of the AWS-8Q would be 1 Large, 1 Medium, and 1 Small Energy hardpoints.

To me, personally, this is my #2 biggest problem with MWO. With the open ended weapon hardpoints, there is no difference between an Awesome and a Stalker in terms of what can be equipped. And thus, the Stalker was played over the Awesome because it's silhouette was better. But giving the Awesome the only mech to equip 3 Large Energy hardpoints in the assault class, it makes it unique.

And to continue with this subject of odd weapon design, we have issues with pin point accuracy/convergence (#1 issue with MWO). This is leading to the "drilling" effect that we see today, with one section taken out and no other sections rarely hit. This is especially true with arms, which you only ever see damaged if someone torso twists into the fire. There needs to be some balancing changes to make arms important over torso weapons so that players may make the decision to destroy them before destroying side torsos.

This leads to the #3 problem, the weighted armor distribution armor system, based on random weapon damage, in an aiming system that allows for all weapons to hit exactly where you aim. It places too much emphasis on hitting torso sections because it will also destroy the arms along with it.

It would be hard for me to give you an exact answer on how to fix this, but there has been MANY suggestions offered on the forums on how to fix this. If more detail is wanted, I would suggest asking either myself directly, or some of the big names like Homeless Bill, HHR Insanity, and a few other names in which you can find their suggestions that dot the forums on why and how this should be fixed.

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