50 replies to this topic

[Wolfways]

Sybreed, on 04 November 2013 - 07:19 PM, said:

I don't think it would be so simple to implement BT's heat scale for several reasons:

- in BT Heat scale is calculated after every turn, which represents 10 seconds of fighting. It's calculated by substracting the heat produced from the heat you can cool.
- You will rarely reach the full heat penalties until several turns in BT. In MWO, a single dual ER PPC salvo will make you reach 30. By that alone, it doesn't make sense to use BT's heat scale in MWO
- You would need to divide the heat produced by your weapons in MWO by their increased ROF. I.E. PPCs fire 3 times as often as BT, you divide its heat by 3 per shot.
- To compensate for such low heat produced, you would have to also reduce the damage produced, which would result in much longer fights.

It could be done, but it would require an entire rework of how heat is produced and how it's managed by your heatsinks. A single ER PPC shouldn't produce 15 heat upfront, but a smaller number that takes into account your number of heatsinks.

Well, that's my take on this anyway.

That's how i've been saying it should have been done since closed beta.

[Warge]

Wolfways, on 04 November 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

It was about how do you translate not generating any heat/turn into MWO?

TT heat thershold + better heat dissipation. No?

Wolfways, on 04 November 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

I suppose you could make mechs never generate heat until they break the heat sink dissipation limit...

...and? What's next?

Edited by Warge, 04 November 2013 - 07:39 PM.

[Wolfways]

Warge, on 04 November 2013 - 07:37 PM, said:

...and? What's next?

You tell me

[Umbra8]

If they put in the TT heat cap of 30 and included the original heat penalties and scaled weapon heat with ROF it would probably slow down combat, move the metagame from high-alpha builds to more heat neutral mechs, put a damper on heavy PPC sniping loadouts and force mech builds away from energy into ammunition builds, putting a greater emphasis on ammo location and management.

...

I want to play THAT game.

[Warge]

Wolfways, on 04 November 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

You tell me

Em-m-m... couple ideas:

• Dynamic structure slots should have fixed to 7 Mechs "bones": 4 for each. This will reduce the amount of big weapons and DHSs stored in Mech.
  
• heat thershold 30.
  
• penalties for high heat: blurred vision or/and blurred HUD.
  
• damage to internals for overheat in case of Alpha boating: 120% - small damage, 150% - big damage, 180% - Mech destroyed.
  
• Slower recharge rate for all energy weapons.
  
• Dissipation rate: 30 heat for 10 seconds.

Edited by Warge, 04 November 2013 - 08:00 PM.

[Thunder Lips Express]

a neat side effect caused from too much heat could be burred vision and eventual blacking out. it would be a pain but it would add immersion imo. i'm sure there are better ideas and i'm game for them all

[Davers]

Snipers don't care if they are slowed down by heat penalties. Players didn't care that their mechs shut down every 2 alpha strikes, why would they care about getting a slower torso twist or some other minor penalty?

Wolfways, on 04 November 2013 - 07:16 PM, said:

I think it adds an extra element of fun.

Making every energy based mech completely non-competitive is fun?

[Umbra8]

Davers, on 04 November 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

Bad snipers don't care if they are slowed down by heat penalties. Bad players didn't care that their mechs shut down every 2 alpha strikes, why would they care about getting a slower torso twist or some other minor penalty?

Fixed it for you.

[Roland]

That's not a fix.

The reality is, back when PPC's could be easily boated, good players realized that in many cases it really didn't matter AT ALL if you shut down, especially when it meant that you just killed your target.

I'd shut down a dozen times in a match, but it didn't matter, because I'd have 6-8 kills. The enemy couldn't hurt me when they were dead, even if I was shut down from heat.

[Umbra8]

Part of the reason why heavy PPC builds worked so well was because you could alpha 3 or four times without shutting down. That's a direct result of having heat sinks raise your heat ceiling in addition to speeding dissipation. If you can do enough damage in several alphas to cripple or destroy your opponent, no, it doesn't matter if you subsequently shut down for ten minutes. Your opponents dead, you've got all the time in the world.

But if you lower the heat ceiling, at some point your going to risk shutdown when you're still in the middle of a fight. At that point combat starts to favour heat efficient builds that focus more on damage over time. The trick is to find the correct balance between them so one meta does not dominate the other, and adjusting the heat ceiling is critical to that. Unfortunately it's also something that's been ignored by PGI since closed beta.

Edited by Umbra8, 04 November 2013 - 08:47 PM.

[YueFei]

Heat capacity is the "resource" used to alpha-strike in great gobs of burst damage. Reducing it will also reduce burst damage. That's more straight-forward than ghost heat.

Meanwhile increasing heat dissipation rates will make the game more frenetic and faster-paced in terms of more actions in a given time frame, *without* causing mechs to die faster.

Hard-capping heat at 30 capacity and making DHS true doubles would do it. If it feels too slow, increase heat dissipation to taste. Then you don't have mechs getting insta-gibbed, but you will still have fast-paced action because your DPS goes up with increased heat dissipation.

[Wolfways]

Davers, on 04 November 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

Making every energy based mech completely non-competitive is fun?

No, adding the heat scale would add something to the game. The problem with energy mechs is the heat system itself, which needs to be changed.

[stjobe]

Praetor Shepard, on 04 November 2013 - 05:18 PM, said:

Are capacities really that high in BT compared to MWO?

Umbra8, on 04 November 2013 - 05:51 PM, said:

I don't think the original game allowed your heat capacity to scale with heat sinks, I thought it was fixed at 30

Hellcat420, on 04 November 2013 - 06:17 PM, said:

heat capacity in bt is 30 irreguardless of how many heatsinks you have or what type you have. heatsinks do not increase heat capacity in battletech. they increase heat dissipation.

The residual heat scale is fixed at 30, but heat capacity of an individual 'mech depends on its number of SHSE, i.e. yes it scales with heat sinks, and yes, they are almost as high in BT as in MWO (the 20% extra cap the pilot skills give is the difference,).

Dissipation in BT is per turn. You subtract your heat sinks from heat generated before applying any residual heat to the heat scale: Heat Generated - # of SHSE = Residual Heat.

In MWO, that's Heat Generated - (# of SHSE/10) = Residual Heat, with the caveat that heat dissipation is an ongoing process, not something that happens every 10 seconds.

That Awesome that was used as an example, with three PPCs and 28 SHS (heat cap 58), would in BT generate 2 residual heat each turn: 30 heat generated minus 28 SHSE is two residual heat. After two turns of alphaing, the third would put it at 6 heat and above the first heat penalty (-1 MP). If he instead fired two PPCs the third turn he would only generate 20 heat and dissipate 28, so any residual heat would be removed. Hence the often cited 3-3-2 pattern of PPC firing from the Awesome.

In MWO, that Awesome would alpha his three PPCs for 42.6 heat (with Ghost Heat penalty) out of his 69.6 heat cap, and then dissipate 3.22 heat per second, so 12.9 heat dissipated during the cooldown of the PPCs, leaving 29.7 heat when his PPCs are ready to fire again. If he immediately fired again, another 42.6 heat would be added, putting him at 72.3 heat, or 103.8% and shut down.

A hard heat cap of 30 in MWO would make that Awesome unable to ever fire all three PPCs at once, since it would instantly shut down if it did - and it would be even further from the BT Universe than MWO currently is. Heat sinks can and should affect a 'mechs heat capacity as well as dissipation; that is not where MWO's heat system goes wrong. It goes wrong in not tripling dissipation when tripling rate of fire,

In the example with the Awesome above, if dissipation was tripled to 9.66 per second, the Awesome would dissipate 38.6 heat during the cooldown of its PPCs, leaving only 4 heat for when it fired its weapons again. That would mean the Awesome could continuously alpha 17 times before shutting down - quite close to the 15 times the BT Awesome could Alpha before hitting the 30 residual heat scale roof.

The big difference is that the BT Awesome would start taking heat penalties from the third alpha, whereas the MWO Awesome is at no disadvantage until it shuts down.

[MustrumRidcully]

Yes, I think we need a different heat system. Heat penalties are important to get the feel of steering Battlemechs right and important to balancing weapons.

The current heat system without penalties will always lead to "bursty" damage being favored. Before the PPC heat nerf, you could deal 120 damage with a Quad PPC Stalker in less than 10 seconds. Sure, it was hot as hell, but 120 damage is enough to kill any 65 ton mech or less. And if you have time to cool off by moving into cover, it becomes even more effective, and you can even deal with misses or "missed-the-CT-shots".

The trade-offs for burst damage vs sustained damage manifest faster in a game with heat penalties, and create more meaningful choices.

[MustrumRidcully]

Here are some takes on how heat penalties could work translated to MW:O, some focusing on fidelity to the original model, others just focusing on a way to implement it at all:
http://mwomercs.com/...tem-suggestions

I also describe possible ways to handle the penalties themselves. I know plenty of people will have problems with reticule shake and the like. (Though these specifics are not point of that thread)

Roland, on 04 November 2013 - 08:20 PM, said:

That's not a fix.

The reality is, back when PPC's could be easily boated, good players realized that in many cases it really didn't matter AT ALL if you shut down, especially when it meant that you just killed your target.

I'd shut down a dozen times in a match, but it didn't matter, because I'd have 6-8 kills. The enemy couldn't hurt me when they were dead, even if I was shut down from heat.

You correctly point out what the current problem with the heat system is - it's a race to heat threshold in which you try to score the most damage.
Heat penalties basically ensure that you have penalties you will matter about, without automatically crippling you. You will have to deal with meaningful trade-offs before you killed your enemy.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 05 November 2013 - 12:30 AM.

[stjobe]

An alternative to tripling heat dissipation is of course to cut heat generation on weapons to a third of their current values. The effect would be the same in most cases.

And I most definitely agree with MustrumRidcully above, on the importance of heat penalties; they are an integral part of combat in the BattleTech Universe and it's really sad to see them missing from MWO - it is a worse game for not having them.

[MustrumRidcully]

What's also important to understand is how the heat penalties affect weapon and build balance.

Without heat penalties, you always have to consider how much damage you can deal before you shut down, but there is no other consideration. That makes it very hard to balance weapons individually. A single PPC basically needs no heat sinks to run "efficient" - you can fire many shots before you overheat, and you will never have an engagement that actually lasts that long. But two? Suddenly the time to overheat is much shorter, and you might actually lose out. You always have to balance on a build level.

Without heat penalties, you worry about your heat level much sooner - you cannot ignore it, but you also are not automatically crippled, so you have to manage trade-offs. In this environment, the balace point can be described on a per weapon level, since just 5 extra hit points from a shot affect your mech's peformance - so you can say. "If this weapon needs 10 heat sinks to compensate all heat, then I generally need to equip them, and only on the final build level I can skimp on a few sinks and see how well I can manage the penalties arising from that.

The table top game is not real time, it's not mouse aimed, it is not a computer game. It's not well balanced in practice. But the way the heat system is designed makes balancing easier. An AC/10 weighs 12 tons and produces 3 heat, and needs about 2 tons of ammo to be enough for a typical fight. That's 17 tons. A PPC needs 7 tons on its own plus 10 tons for the heat sinks, so essentially, both are 17 ton weapon systems dealing 10 damage per turn, with roughly similar range (450 vs 540m, but the PPC has 90m minimum range. IN 3025 TT practice, the PPC is simply better because ammo explosions suck, but if it wasn't for that, the weapons might be equals...)

If you didn't have to worry about heat penalties, the heat generation of the PPC would be much less worrisome - you could easily alpha once or twice and run off at top speed with 2 PPCs where a ballistic mech could only equip one AC/10. but with the heat penalty, you are slowed down and suffer to-hit penalties that will make things a lot less easy. A single Alpha might be practical, but two are only reasonable if you can make sure this takes out your enemy, otherwise, you're stuck in the enemy line of fire and you give him 1-2 turns where he can fire at you without you being able to effectively fire back.

[kapusta11]

Managing heat does not require any skill at all, you just stand/run/hide like an ***** waiting for your mech to cool down, simple dps penalty, nothing more, and with natural inability to hold lasers 100% of the time on target, let alone on specific part, makes energy weapons that bad compared to ballistics. Problem is heat dissipation, it's way too slow.

[stjobe]

kapusta11, on 05 November 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

Managing heat does not require any skill at all, you just stand/run/hide like an ***** waiting for your mech to cool down, simple dps penalty, nothing more

In the current system yes, but with a BT-style heat penalty that started at say, 50% heat? With movement as well as aiming penalties? Suddenly it takes a bit mores skill to ride the redline effectively - and you would have to ride the redline to be effective.

kapusta11, on 05 November 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

Problem is heat dissipation, it's way too slow.

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is in no way the only problem with MWO's heat system.

[Davers]

I still fail to see why we should put in a system that punishes light and medium mechs that rely on speed and sustained firepower over alpha strikers and snipers. The proposed changes would do nothing to Gauss, (U)AC/5s, AC/10s, Streaks compared to what it would do to medium laser boats like Cicadas and Hunchbacks. Is the 6 ML Cicada so terrifying that it needs to be nerfed? An AC/10 + 2 PPC set-up runs cooler than it with better heat management and precision damage. Movement penalties will be a huge hit to light and medium mechs and won't even be noticed by assault mechs. What energy based chassis is so overpowered that we need to implement a whole new system of punishing mechanics?

*Meant to say has a cooler alpha strike.

Edited by Davers, 05 November 2013 - 04:25 AM.