Rhent, on 17 February 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:
Ghost heat was directly implemented to deal with the 4PPC and 6PPC mech issue. The very first weapon system this was implemented on was the PPC. The game was getting killed by 40 and 60 pinpoint alphas at range.
To be realistic it was the 3D and Highlander that got people crying about PPC builds. By the time ghost heat, which was preceded by JJ shake, was announced the 4PPC stalker was weak compared to a 3PPC CFT-3D, Gauss/PPC builds were what were ruling the day. Jaggers were already greatly overshadowing the PPC stalker. What really got the "PPC meta" cry train hitting a fever pitch were PPC/Gauss builds with JJs, but PPCs got the majority of the blame. The 6 PPC mech was an oddity and never a game breaking build because it was so easily dealt with by experienced players, much the same as the splatcat and other builds everyone moaned about that had some fatal flaw that was easily exploited.
Anyway.
(I'm typing these out so there might be a couple of spelling mistakes in my copying of the text)
Quote
More than 30 Heat Points:
It is possible for a Mechs heat level to rise above 30. Heat in excess of 30 has no additional effect on the Mech beyond the power plant shutdown at 30 points of heat. It does, however increase the time it takes to restart the reactor mech, as the heat level must drop below 30 before the mech's reactor can be started. Mark any heat generated beyond 30 in the Heat Overflow box on the record sheet.
There's a little more but, that's the gist of it. Here's another quote from the same TT introductory book.
Quote
A classic example of using the lower limit of the Heat Scale effectively is the Awesome, which is armed with 3 PPCs and 28 heat sinks. Firing all three PPCs generates 30 Heat Points. Assuming the Mech stands still, this brings the Awesome's heat level to 2. This means that the Awesome can fire all three PPCs for two consecutive phases before the player must consider the affects of heat. In the third turn, if it fires only two PPC's the heat will drop back down to 0, even if the Mech runs. Using this knowledge, an Awesome pilot can maintain a steady barrage of 3-3-2 shots without any loss of performance due to overheating.
In pretty much all the older MW titles, SHS were OK, sometimes even desirable on specific builds, and builds comparable to the 8Q were viable mechs. In MWO it falls flat on its face in around 10 seconds. 14 if mastered.
Hell with 20DHS and 3PPCs an 8Q should be able to run full speed through lava, have a light with flamers on his back and still be able to hold the trigger down all day long. Instead it stalls out in 13 to 18 seconds in MWO. In both cases if the mech is moving at all, or on a hot map, you can cut seconds of their times to stall out.
Anyway getting to a solution. Outright getting rid of the threshold, putting in a hard cap (say 30 STD and low 30's mastered) and increasing dissipation to a baseline to reflect the wildly varying ROF changes would be a start. BTW, if you look at the TT quote, hitting 30 heat =/=shutdown. Going over 30 heat =shutdown. Being a live action game, just make it so that if you can only fire 2 consecutive alhpas bringing you to your heat threshold before getting penalized either by damage or shutting down. At some point there should be a hard cap for heat however, where a mech begins to take damage and an increasing amount based on how far over the hard cap it goes. Some upper cap say 40 before the mech starts taking damage, 50 running a very high risk of destruction.
Were the heat system addressed, with whole weapon types no longer being strangled by heat, it would greatly increase TTK and turn a lot of things upside down. Everything is interconnected, balance doesn't boil down to the simplistic thinking like the gibberish I often see coming from the pinpoint/convergence crowd, or even here when it comes to fixing the heat scale.
Keeping that in mind, the logical things to look at (while attempting to keep range/damage/heat of weapons close to TT) ROF slowed down for many weapons, heat dissipation increases, heat cap, possibly increased armor values and of course phasing out the heat threshold value entirely.
Being a live game, something so ambitious can't be done without serious shock to the community. The only way to implement such changes are incrementally.
Of course another thing PGI could do is simply throw TT heat values right out the window....
EDIT:
All that said, I forgot to mention Clans. If PGI does nothing about the heat scale before the Clans arrive, knowing that clan weapons typically run hotter, PGI will either have to wildly deviate from TT values or some stock clan builds will make the Awesome 8Q look downright heat efficient.
Either way, if the heat system isn't addressed, I strongly suspect we're going to see some massive nerd rage when the Clans arrive and Billy's favorite clan mech melts in 5 seconds flat.
Edited by TB Freelancer, 17 February 2014 - 06:07 PM.
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