If the game were overall balanced better, there would definitely be trade-offs. Right now, however, there are certain clear-cut "better" paths to take (this is a general statement about the game as a whole, not just the heat system).
Oh my dear good sir, you are very wrong.
There are plenty of tradeoffs right now, every time you build a mech there are tradeoffs to consider from the very start. The main one most people sacrafice for heavys and assults is speed, less speed (thus smaller eng) to get more HS or Firepower. You sacrafice some armor points to get some more ammo or more HS on again. Its all there, and thats the beautry and balance of the game.
You really need to watch this vid to understand, at least somewhat, how to "balance" or in in this case "not balance" the game.
If you have seen that vid, then you must have not understood it based on your posts and how wrong you are at every turn.
DHS, especially compared to SHS in MW:O are "have it all"s. There is no tradeoff. Its PURE benefit.
DHS use three critical slots and "in Battletech" are needed for mechs like the AWS-9M or any primary energy configuration. Now PGI has never been able to wrap their heads around working Heatsinks and working Energy weapons and have left them severely nerfed. Single heatsinks should be suitable for any primary Ballistic or Missile or mix with a few medium lasers. This allows them to use Endo and sometimes FF because they have left over critical slots which the AWS-9M would not be able to use with DHS, if 3xERPPCs had ever worked in MWO, which it never did.
The result is MWO is GunWarrior with 10 Engine DHS at 2.0 providing all the cooling, since Singles are useless. But the Singles are useless because the DHS are doubly useless, but this only affects primary energy mechs.
You all are going to have to accept that 3x ERPPCs on a mech like the AWS-9M is a working and dangerous config before you can get working Single heatsinks. That's Canon Battletech. Instead MWO is in denial of Energy mechs with eveyone running around the forums screaming, "I bin cored by the PPC Meta!!"
Like I said you can't have it all and the side effect of all the non Battletech heat nerfs is heatsinks that don't work like they should. See Single Heatsinks.
DHS use three critical slots and "in Battletech" are needed for mechs like the AWS-9M or any primary energy configuration. Now PGI has never been able to wrap their heads around working Heatsinks and working Energy weapons and have left them severely nerfed. Single heatsinks should be suitable for any primary Ballistic or Missile or mix with a few medium lasers. This allows them to use Endo and sometimes FF because they have left over critical slots which the AWS-9M would not be able to use with DHS, if 3xERPPCs had ever worked in MWO, which it never did.
The result is MWO is GunWarrior with 10 Engine DHS at 2.0 providing all the cooling, since Singles are useless. But the Singles are useless because the DHS are doubly useless, but this only affects primary energy mechs.
You all are going to have to accept that 3x ERPPCs on a mech like the AWS-9M is a working and dangerous config before you can get working Single heatsinks. That's Canon Battletech. Instead MWO is in denial of Energy mechs with eveyone running around the forums screaming, "I bin cored by the PPC Meta!!"
Like I said you can't have it all and the side effect of all the non Battletech heat nerfs is heatsinks that don't work like they should. See Single Heatsinks.
The problem is that the 10 DHS in the engine don't take up any more space than 10 engine SHS would, which actually saves you 10 tons and 10 critical slots. This is because those 10 engine DHS provide the same cooling as 20 SHS, meaning that the weight and slots taken up by 10 external SHS is freed up by switching to DHS and removing 10 external sinks.
I don't remember the exact cutoff point, but I believe it was somewhere in the upper 30s (like 38 or 39?) where SHS finally catch up to DHS in MWO...but you have to take a small engine and less armaments than most other mechs.
There are plenty of tradeoffs right now, every time you build a mech there are tradeoffs to consider from the very start. The main one most people sacrafice for heavys and assults is speed, less speed (thus smaller eng) to get more HS or Firepower. You sacrafice some armor points to get some more ammo or more HS on again. Its all there, and thats the beautry and balance of the game.
You really need to watch this vid to understand, at least somewhat, how to "balance" or in in this case "not balance" the game.
If you have seen that vid, then you must have not understood it based on your posts and how wrong you are at every turn.
Is it just me, or do you seen to hate me with a burning passion all of a sudden? Did I murder your family? Did I steal your GF? Am I the reason your poop was watery last night? Do I just smell bad?
Back to business: yes, I have seen that Extra Credits video (and many others, they're cool people), but a number of MWO's mechanics don't quite fit the "perfect imbalance" idea presented in said video. One of the main points in that vid is basically a sort of "counter wheel" where champion A > champion B, but champion C > champion B, and so on until it comes full swing. Basically, nobody can counter everything, but everybody can counter at least something. The problem is that certain weapons and play styles are just plain better at the present moment.
One example (perhaps the most prominent one at that) of a "better" playstyle is pinpoint damage versus DPS. Due to the multiple-component system of Battletech (as well as things like convergence and specific weapon attributes), this game has an emphasis on dealing damage to a very specific body part, as opposed to simply dealing damage anywhere on the target (as with more traditional FPS games). This is what causes certain weapons like the LB 10-X and SRMs to lag behind the pinpoint power of PPCs and ballistics. Related to this issue is the peek-and-shoot strategy, which is facilitated by using instant-damage weapons such as those mentioned in the previous sentence. In a more general sense, there are also many pieces of equipment that require too high of risks for their relatively tiny rewards. This includes things like Flamers, the aforementioned LB-10X, Pulse Lasers, the Narc Beacon, the topic of this very thread, and maybe even Ferro Fibrous (Endo is always better unless you have a lot of free space to hold both).
To address your example of engines/firepower/sinks/armor/etc, not all sacrifices are created equal. On paper it might seem "balanced" for a light mech to downgrade its engine a bit for some more guns or whatever, but in actual battle the reduced speed is too great of a downside for an extra weapon or two to justify. For heavies and assaults, their reduced speeds aren't usually much of an issue due to the way the game is currently configured. Heavies going ~upper 70s-80 kph is plenty, and assaults going 60-upper 70s is also plenty. They don't really need to give up much firepower, heat sinks, etc. to reach those speeds. For armor, there aren't very many tradeoff situations for it. You pretty much always should have your torsos maxed out, and most mechs should also max out their arms (excludes mechs with tiny arms or weaponless arms). Mechs above 40 tons almost always shave off a bit of leg armor, because having max protection down there is rarely worth it on mechs that don't get legged in most battles.
There are certain points of "diminishing returns" where trying to go further down a certain path simply isn't worth it. For instance, there is a cutoff point with how much ammo you're carrying (I won't go through each and every weapon here), a point where mounting a bigger engine is wasteful (especially if that bigger engine isn't rated at an increment of 25), a point where carrying more sinks would be redundant, and so on and on. You can't always just translate 1 ton of equipment A into 1 ton of equipment B and expect the exchange to be worth it.
I don't have enough time to go through every possible example here, but the point is that not all built sacrifices are created equal. Some sacrifices inherently have greater or lesser impact than others (i.e. taking off torso armor is never worth it, whether you use that weight on ammo or heatsinks or anything else).
Developers of the game, I had a thought today while I was wondering if this thread was still active ... what if when you unlock DHS you can still use SHS too? I think this would be good as you can still take advantage of the legs, CT and head in some cases as well as resolve the annoying build dilemma of being left over with 1 ton and 1 slot somewhere but no hardpoints. SHS and DHS would still work exactly how they do individually if with-in the same build out.
I think that lights wouldn't get helped or hindered as they run out of weight even with endo and ferro so they probably wouldn't mix and match ... and heavier classes would have something to incrementally help heat ... a tactical decision for either more cooling or more ammo, etc.
This wouldn't be a huge game play mechanics change but offer lots of new decision making. Plus, once map selection starts to be introduced you can tactically build leg HS variants for high surface water planets.
(Sorry if this was mentioned ... don't feel like reading the drama)
GeneralGrievous, on 30 December 2013 - 04:23 AM, said:
Right, externals 2.0 .. not 1.4.
Why even have singles in the game if they have no use? That is my main gripe. And why make me drop an additional 1.5mil per mech ... just start everything with doubles .. there's never a reason to say 'hey, maybe these singles are a better idea' ... makes no sense.
Agreed with the OP. Doubling the heat sinks in the engine might be connon, but it's a deal breaker when balancing SHS vs DHS.
Instead, to be fair to the lights, engine heat sinks should be be 150% (1.5 EHS) regardless of SHS or DHS. SHS should be 100% and DHS should be 200%.
If the engine heat sinks aren't upgraded, then SHS and DHS are in near perfect balance. Both weight 1.0 tons. SHS are 1 EHS and 1 slot while DHS would be 2 EHS and 3 slots.
Hell if the engine heat sinks weren't upgraded, you could even allow SHS and DHS to be mixed on the same loadout.
Nope, everything would be fine if Heatsinks in MWO worked like they do in Battletech, but MWO is balanced on two oppressive heat nerfs and that Single heatsinks never worked quite well enough as well. A Ballistic and Missile primary mech should not need DHS and would benefit more from the extra criticals.
PGI has just never been able to handle adding actual Battletech heat dissapation heatsink values to MWO because it allows Energy heavy mechs to function well as well as mechs that carry mixed loadouts. All that would add alot of DPS to a game that already is bursting from too much DPS. But PGI and MWO is doomed to flounder for eternity if it can't just make the mechs tougher and restore normal Heatsink functionality. What they are doing now is making half the mechs they want to sell useless on the competitive field of play. And a competitive field of play is what CW will unleash.
I have been playing MWO to win recently and only taking Mechs that work in MWO (like no Awesomes, Battlemasters, Thunderbolts, etc.) and guess what? I just went on a 12 game win streak and have won 25 of 35 games. The reason those Mechs I just mentioned and other Energy primary Mechs don't compete is the lack of Battletech rated Heatsink heat dissapation.
I have seen this all before in MW3-MW4 and CW and max dropweights will see the shelving and discarding of any mech that doesn't cut the Cheeeze. And the lack of Battletech heatsink functionality is what creates the largest imbalances in the Battletech sourced Mechs.
So, the balance you seek is that Single heatsinks should be all a Ballistic or Missile primary Mech should need, but when you start adding in Energy and certain other low critical use weapons is when you start to need DHS. This balance keeps Mechs from becoming OP'd, but MWO can't support Battletech normal so this balancing is non-functional.
Just make the internal heatsink be as if u have DHS always. In this case the difference between shs and dhs will be only in the additional HSs. This will open up possibilities for shs builds without changing the DHS builds at all.
Yes, it would make cooling a lot more difficult, but it is also true that single heats sinks are completely worthless.
The benefits from this change would outweigh the downsides... but would have to be accompanied with a major nerf of ballistics, since these weapons generate the least amount of heat. Like, for instance, halving the ammo per ton as a starting suggestion.
I would welcome the change because it would likely reduce general firepower of Mech loadouts. Right now, people double or triple the stock firepower, providing the ability to kill an enemy way too quickly.
Edited by GoldenFleece, 04 January 2014 - 09:44 AM.
anyway
I like the ideas about all engines having dhs
and the ones saying about mixing an matching heat sinks
(dunno if cannon or not but you'd think it would make sense if your trying to squeeze as much out as possible someone in the mwo universe would of least thought about it lol let alone the game here like we have)
2
FupDup, on 31 December 2013 - 09:49 AM, said:
