38 replies to this topic

[Obelus]

Ghost heat infuriates players. It's a poor way to balance things. It needs to go.

Thoughts on balance:

PPCs and ERPPCs should be splash damage and have their heat adjusted back to what they started with. How tight their aoe damage is should be open to adjustment. Could depend on range.

Un-nerf AC 10s and 20s and make ammo more volatile and likely to explode but dont go crazy. Make ammo just compustible enough to make CASE worth getting.

Change gauss back to its original firing mechanic. Gauss canons can still be made of glass but should not explode. You crit a gauss it stops working. That's it. No explosion. To balance increase ammo weight.

LRMs are basically okay.

Streaks are okay.

SRMs are okay but should be lower heat given their damage. Again, dont go crazy. Just a tiny bit less heat.

Nobody is crying about 4 large laser builds or 8 med laser builds. With the removal of ghost heat no nerf is necessary.

[Hexenhammer]

I'm ready!

Edited by Hexenhammer, 10 January 2014 - 08:46 PM.

[FupDup]

Hexenhammer, on 10 January 2014 - 08:45 PM, said:

I'm ready!

Not a very effective build...

[SirLANsalot]

Ghost Heat dose need to go, but it should stay on the "problem" weapons that were the cause of why it was made. Mainly PPC and Large Lasers, it did not need to be applied to any other system.

[Obelus]

There are so many mechs that can run large lasers its difficult for me to understand why they are a problem. Everyone can and does use them

[Sandpit]

Sorry, ghost heat is already on my comprehensive remove this from the game list

[SirLANsalot]

Obelus, on 10 January 2014 - 09:01 PM, said:

There are so many mechs that can run large lasers its difficult for me to understand why they are a problem. Everyone can and does use them

they become an issue when used in greater numbers then 3. Chain-firing them is horrid since they are a duration weapon, PPC you can get around the system with chain-fire (hence is why its so poorly written as the original system I wrote for them was air tight).

The Ghost Heat system was intended and aimed at stopping PPC boating primarily, that was the original purpose of the system. PGI however did not do it justice, and instead applied it to ALL guns, all of which were fine as-is since those that could be boated (ML) were INTENDED to be boated and alphad.
LRMs suffer the most from this horrid and broken system that was never designed for them. LRM mechs sacrifice so much already just to run LRM's, Speed/armor/min range and weak defensive guns (compared to if it wasn't an LRM boat) are all things that those mechs must choose what to sacrifice the most. Heat is one that shouldn't of ever been something for them to consider, since they are an AMMO based weapon.



This system however, would be good for applying to CLAN weapons. Retroactively adding CLAN guns that get out of hand when boated but starting out with the obvious ones (PPC/LL's) and adding ones to the system as time moves on.



This also brings up another issue that PGI is doing (yes I am blaming the right people here) which is not actively going back and changing things to this system. Like removing SRM's (except the SRM6) and LRMs from the system, and Auto-cannons. Guns that NATURALLY balance themselves should of NEVER BEEN ADDED TO THE SYSTEM. Naturally balanced weapons are ones that cause the pilot to think about how to deal with the shortcomings of said weapon. Example would be the AC20, its natural balance is the fact its so massively large in crit size. This restricts the AC20 to being Torso only or very rarely in an arm of a mech. The AC10 has its own balance of being only 2 tons lighter then the 20, ya it can fit in more places, but its heavy. Ballistics alone are naturally balanced unto themselves throughout all of BT due to lack of hard-points.

[Goose]

Hexenhammer, on 10 January 2014 - 08:45 PM, said:

I'm ready!

[Santos Villalobos]

I'm glad to see that the furor over the Heat Scale has not died down. Unfortunately, the outcry seems to have garnered even less attention from PGI than the pushback from ECM did, which is puzzling. The community has layed out precise critiques of this mechanic yet it has remained virtually unchanged since its introduction in July, whereas ECM underwent enough changes to mitigate its excessive advantage.

Repeal the Scale.

[Varent]

Obelus, on 10 January 2014 - 08:42 PM, said:

Nobody is crying about 4 large laser builds or 8 med laser builds. With the removal of ghost heat no nerf is necessary.

Actually people ARE complaining about multiple large laser builds, like 6+ ish. as well as 4-6 PPC. That's why it was put in.

[Hexenhammer]

Goose, on 10 January 2014 - 09:51 PM, said:

. My job here is done.

[Imperius]

I'd rather increase armor again .5 across the board and .5 incremental increase to CT armor ranging from Medium to Assault no CT increase past the initial .5 for lights because they are supposed to have speed for defense.

Increase ammo per ton and remove ghost heat, and boom games last longer are more fun and don't rely on ghost heat. shooting off arms and weapons becomes more important than just the common CT meta that we have had for over a year now.

[Samziel]

The gauss rifle accelerates a projectile into a dremendous speed (if I recall right, with magnets). If the Gauss doesn't have a charge it would be charged all the time and that's why it would explode when destroyed: the heavy slug would break free and it's force would destroy the component/whole mech.

However because it has the charge mechanic, the gauss rifle shouldn't explode when not charged because the projectile would be still inside the gun. This is what they should change.

Edited by Samziel, 10 January 2014 - 11:43 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

my quad erppc stalker says no.

my quad ppc stalker thinks you are crazy

[Sandpit]

Obelus, on 10 January 2014 - 08:42 PM, said:

Nobody is crying about 4 large laser builds or 8 med laser builds. With the removal of ghost heat no nerf is necessary.

pssst
they aren't crying about it because of ghost heat.....

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

If PGI were to implement damage arcing for PPCs (initial 50% damage to struck location, arcing to 30% damage to adjacent location, arcing to 20% damage to final adjacent location) then they could probably drop the heat tax from that weapon system, and LL builds are not too dangerous so removing it from LLs would probably not be that big of a deal, and most any other weapon system doesn't have a real problem that the heat tax even fixes (aside maybe from chain-fired AC2s, but then group fire is better dps anyway).

[kapusta11]

You guys are awesome, you whine about how OP ballistics are yet so opposed to buff energy weapons.

Low heat cap (30-35) would solve high alphas (2xERPPC or 3xPPC max) while high dissipation would make energy weapons competitive against ACs. And no 3x heat neutral PPCs are not OP, they are equal to 2xGauss (almost the same tonnage 31 (21 +10 heatsinks) vs 30+ammo, but less range, min range, slower projectile speed).

Edited by kapusta11, 11 January 2014 - 12:43 AM.

[Hauser]

kapusta11, on 11 January 2014 - 12:42 AM, said:

You guys are awesome, you whine about how OP ballistics are yet so opposed to buff energy weapons.

That makes no sense.

1) You can balance things two ways. Buff the underpowered weapons, nerf the op weapons. Both are equally valid. Given that the time to kill is still too short buffing weapons wouldn't help much there.

2) You're making a false generalisation. You guys are different people making different arguments. There is no hive-mind.

[theta123]

Obelus, on 10 January 2014 - 08:42 PM, said:

PPCs and ERPPCs should be splash damage and have their heat adjusted back to what they started with. How tight their aoe damage is should be open to adjustment. Could depend on range.


Nobody is crying about 4 large laser builds or 8 med laser builds. With the removal of ghost heat no nerf is necessary.

No just NO. PPC and ERPPC will become instant OP again and they are still the most used

I dont want this game to go back to pre-ghost heat.. All builds were the same. 4PPC, 4LL, AC40 jagermechs. There was NO more fun in this game. He who had the most alpha, won the match.

[Nihtgenga]

Ghost heat was introduced to counter high alphastrikers, like the famous PPC-Hexastalker. However, ghost heat adresses only the SYMPTOMS, not the ROOT CAUSE (that's why there are still complaints about such things).
The root cause is that PGI did neither stick to the BT balancing relations of weapons, armour and heat system, nor did an own completely new balancing. The partly-this-partly-that half-bred approach is just not fitting together in the underlying basics, so there will be no possibility to cover up the problematic spots with a few splats of paint (i.e. nerf/buff weapon adjustments).

If you look at the heat system, then you will notice that PGI did increase heat buildup in comparison to TT values a lot, at least by the increased possible firing rate - which will limit the CONTINOUS use of weapons, but can do nothing against builds with a high alphastrike value. On the contrary, increasing weapon heat hampers builds intended for a more continous firing pattern of few weapons, but rewards a pattern of alphastriking to kill quick and cool down in cover afterwards. Ghost heat SHOULD counter that, but CAN'T, and this is system-inherent! Ghost heat penalizes combined firing of some weapons - so there is always a "sweet spot" below. For example: If the penalties start at 3, group the weapons together in 2, and makro chain-firing the groups every 0.51 seconds = no ghost heat, optimum efficiency. These "sweet spots" in consequence can be used to create a partly "workaround" for every ghost heat setting, e.g. the currently common 2xPPC+2xUAC/5-configuration. And last, but not least, the harder = more effective these penalties are set, the more uneven different mech types are affected. Since the penalties are not calculated by the damage of the weapons fired together, but their type, heavier mechs can get around the problem by distributing more into different weapon systems (missile+laser+ballistic), while smaller chassis can not.

Bottom line: Ghost heat is only a quick-and-dirty fix, which can merely partly dampen system-inherent problems. However, dumping ghost heat would require extensive new balancing of heat scale system AND weapon values together and at the same time. Something I neither see PGI capable of atm, nor willing.