15 replies to this topic

[Taxxian]

Imagine a Stalker with 6 Large Lasers:

Firing all at once, takes 1s: Overheat --> Death

Firing 2 at a time every 0.5s, takes 2s: No Heat penalty --> Win

Firing 1 at a time every 0.25s, takes 2s: Overheat --> Death


Why does Option 3 get Ghost Heat? This isnt explained in any Patch-notes!

So basically of you make 2 chainfired groups auf 3 LLs, you have to press both firebuttons simmultaneously to get no ghostheat, if you press the second button a quarter of a second to late, you get shutdown-->death in the span of 2 seconds!

What kind of game mechanic is this?

Same goes for AC2 and probably any other Ghost-Heat-Weapon...

[Ironwithin]

As you mentioned it's the same "problem" the ac2 has.

Every time you fire a weapon the 0.5sec-counter resets.

So: Firing 1 LL, waiting .25 sec to fire the second laser and then firing the third another .25 secs later is the same as firing 3LL at the same time.

You might think the timer for the first laser is done by now and you're ok but the system works with ONE timer for ALL weapons, not one timer for each weapon.

This is even more noticable in the ac2 with it's fast firing rate, chainfiring any more than 2 of those will kill you.

The devs pointed out that this is intended behaviour.

[Taxxian]

Thank you! That explains it!

Yet it is bad since no one would guess it from the Devs explanation of the Heat Penalty System... which is difficult enough to understand...

They should at least explain it better and implement chain firing of weapon groups... Im sure a lot of people will put there Weapons in 2 chain fired groups and die unexpectedly from this strange behavior...

[Reno Blade]

Think about it like this: If you shoot more than 2 shots of the same weapon (here LLaser) in 0.5 seconds, you will get heat penalty.

Instead of thinking: If you shoot your 3rd LL 0.5 seconds after your first LL.

So, no matter if you shot 3 LL together instantly (groupfire) or just pressed multiple weapon groups with 3 LL in a timeframe below 0.5sec, you will get the same penalty.

[Modo44]

This is why we really need chain fire to be configurable for firing more than 1 weapon in each chain. There would be no issue if you could split lasers into chained groups of 2.

[Reno Blade]

If its so important for you, set up two groups in chainfire.
Group 1 with LL1 and LL2 and group2 with LL3 and LL4 and then press 1+2 at the same time and hold it.
You will shoot LL1 and LL3 and then chain to LL2 and LL4.
Hope that helps as a workaround

[Modo44]

It is not much a workaround, because you need to hit the 2 buttons at precisely the same time to not generate ghost heat. And no, "deal with it" is not a solution. We have already lost Fast Fire to this stupid issue, and it still persists.

[Reno Blade]

Nope, with Lasers your chainfire will wait for the full duration of the laser before shooting the next one, so its actually 1.0 sec before you shoot your next lasers.
If you do shot the two groups (LL1 and then LL3) even 0.49 sec after another, you won't get heat penalties, as the chainfire (LL2) would still be after 0.51 sec of your last group (LL3) shot.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

This is theoretically true, Reno.

However, it assumes that you hit the two buttons absolutely simultaneously. If there is even a .01 (possibly even smaller) difference between when you depress the two buttons for the firing groups, then you will generate ghost heat, because you are firing one large laser at 0.00 seconds, one at 0.01 seconds, the second laser from the first group at 0.50 seconds (0.49 seconds after the first laser of the second group) and generating ghost heat, and then the second laser from the second group at 0.51 seconds (0.01 seconds after the second laser from the first group) and generating the fourth-laser quantity of ghost heat. It continues to escalate from there.

While I am not by any means declaring it impossible for a human being to trigger both button presses absolutely simultaneously, it would be unreasonable to expect the vast majority of people operating with their hands to do so on anything remotely resembling a regular basis, nevermind a frequent one. Thus, your solution is, while feasible, impractical and virtually impracticable.

[Reno Blade]

No no, thats what I try to say,
Any weapons fired inside the 0.5sec window will be counted towards any limit, but laser chainfire is 1.0 second apart, because of the beam duration.
So if you really want to shoot 2 groups of 2 LLasers in chainfire, then it doesnt't matter if you press the two groups instantly, or in 0.49sec window, as the chainfire will prevent the overlapping by 0.5 sec (full 1sec beam duration).

[MasterC]

PGI should just ditch the heat scale entirely. With the greatly increased heat values of PPCs (from 7 to 10 as I recall) and ERPPCs (now a staggering 15!), heat scale is unnecessary. Ditching heat scale would help balance energy based weapons which at present are at a disadvantage in the current ballistic dominated meta.

Edited by MasterC, 18 November 2013 - 06:39 AM.

[John MatriX82]

Everything would be solved by restricting the hardpoint's dimensions. Better variant/chassis differentiation, avoid of 2/3+ PPC builds, dual AC 20s, avoid of 36 SRM boats or 70-80-90 LRM boats.. ghost heat could get scrapped, DHSs could work @ 2.0, we'd have a better game than we have now.

[ShinVector]

Why do I get the feeling they increased the overheat damage recently ?
1-2 secs of overheat seriously kills mechs in high temp areas.

[Autobot9000]

That's what happens when a group of students quit study, open up a game stupio and start coding!

[Nihtgenga]

Ghost heat NEEDS to be ditched, now or later. It is not clever to have a "thinking mans shooter" with a mechbay allowing to customize and tweak your mech - just to find out that outside of the regular weapon tables some weird mechanics apply that just F-up your carefully calculated build... That's to me the message "Think again, Sucker!"
And it is also not clever if I just interpolate what Ghost Heat would mean to the clan builds in some future.

Looking at all 2013, it is rather tragic to see, that the changes that imho turned out to work best were not originating from PGI, but coming from the community (e.g. the targeting reticle shake during JJ activation against Poptarters) long before PGI did even was considering a problem to exist.

[SniperCon]

You could also have 6 LL in chain fire and shoot like this:
DblClick (2 lasers)
0.5 seconds
DblClick (2 lasers)
0.5 seconds
DblClick (2 lasers)