Oh look, another pretentious ******* on MWO forums. Yes, I started my post with an insult. Sorry I'm not sorry.
Ghost heat was introduced to curb boating, which is a technique directly intended to frontload a high alpha. In doing so it completely homogenizes builds and leads to abusive builds such as the 6 PPC Stalker.
This fix has been the solution the entire time. Requiring the damage to be applied over several salvos also inherently decreases high pinpoint damage and increases TTK. Reduced heat cap with increased heat dissipation addresses boating and TTK. That means the suggested fix would solve two of the biggest complaints people have with the game...oh, and it would also allow DHS to be true DHS, which would (wait for it) make some of the trial "competitive" enough to be used in a PUG.
It's not a comprehensive fix, but it's a step in the right direction. Next up would be reducing motion blur/impulse on everything smaller than an AC10, and changing all AC's into burst fire weapon to further reduce pinpoint damage. Get rid of the ******** charge up on the Gauss (Make it so when you fire a Gauss that it's the ONLY thing that can be fired because of the energy drain) and you almost have a decent MechWarrior game.
The bolded part of the last paragraph above is an absolute gem!!! That's a much better way of trying to give the GR a drawback than the crappy charge up mechanic we have now.
As to the rest of the post, I like most of it as well although I am not keen on the idea of making AC's burst weapons.
Solis Obscuri, on 17 February 2014 - 05:00 PM, said:
Force everyone to chain-fire.
All high-alpha problems solved.
No one needs to worry about Ghost Heat ever again.
MGs might need to be changed to some sort of burst-fire weapon.
Essentially lower heat caps would reduce the high-alpha issues.
But to keep the current system...
Flamers and MGs would have to be changed to a burst-fire mechanic.
MGs pumping "10 shots" per burst (the game would register it as one shot but tell you it cost you ten), every 0.52 seconds could allow it to be closer on par with the AC/2. Basically in TT the MG is a typically 20mm weapon pointed downward towards the ground (hence the 90 meter limit according to one author. Another author however explained it as beyond 90 meters the MGs no longer had the firepower to penetrate armor. Just book fluff). Even so the AC/2 is pumping 2 damage every 0.52 seconds, the MG will be pumping 1 damage every 0.52 seconds.
Flamers of the "HotShot" variant variety sound particularly akin to what MWO needs. Description: "Introduced in 2025, the standard Flamer taps into a BattleMech's reactor to produce heat in the form of a plasma release. Unlike the standard which fires a continuous spray of superheated gas, the Hotshot Flamer fires one fireball that ignites the target it strikes, causing minor damage and significantly raises the heat on the target. When used on an overheated target, the Flamer stresses out the heatsinks further, causing the enemy mech to take longer to go through its emergency heat shutdown sequence. "
Basically it shoots a fireball that catches you, you catch fire. It does minor real damage but it keeps burning at you until the flamer is ready to fire again (in MWO's typical stuff, 2 to 4 seconds).
Alternatively it could spray non-ignited plasma that instead catches fire some seconds after being exposed to the air (so instead of catching fire right away it waits a few seconds, preferably after you've been soaked in some sort of liquid). Either way, same concept just slightly different visual effect and damage spread.
Then, for lasers to keep up with MWO's current system, regular laser beam times could be cut in half or nearly so and pulse lasers (depending on preference) can either fire continuously until we overheat (dealing their DPS rather than their actual instant delivery as a form of laser MG -- just something someone wanted and told me about) or just cut their times down too.
"Q" activates it. Change "Q" to a key you prefer. "1" is the firing group for Gauss Rifles. Change it to a key you prefer. Save. Close that. Switch back to Autohotkey. Reload script (under file). Switch to MWO. Press the Activate button (Q by default) and Gauss charges and fires right away.
The hotshot flamer idea is nice. Increased heat dissipation would make the continuous firing version we have now that much harder to use. I do miss the ability to light mechs on fire like in MechWarrior 4 Mercs (mek paks included). Combination of SRMS and flamers was so good in that game. Still, when throwing the idea around we have to keep in mind that people will try to bring back the hunchback with 9 flamers mounted on it. Scary thought, but a glorious sight to behold I would imagine.
shouldn't your signature have UI2.0 checked off now?
Except not everyone agrees with there being an imbalance.
Since UI 2.0 has been out, I've adjusted 1 mech, 1 mech. I usually continuously spend C-bills buying new mechs and customizing. I haven't spent any C-Bills since UI 2.0 has come out and I've quadroupled my C-Bills. UI 2.0 is an insult. The only thing that UI 2.0 improved upon was it gives you the ability to create your weapon groups out of a game. UI 2.0 has added at least 3 clicks to add or remove a weapon to the previous system. Anyone in GUI design would be extremely irate at what the developers have done to the mech building capabilities.
Tabletop, not lore. Tabletop has been refined over 20 years for an expedited, simplified experience (otherwise a "campaign" would take months instead of hours or days. Imagine keeping a table set for months.)
A turn in tabletop is also 10 seconds of time compressed. It is a summary and nothing more. Tabletop would become over 300 pages more complicated if weapon variants were taken into account, for example there are 44 Unique Standard Medium Laser Variants. That's out of a list of over 60 ML. Not counting any type of ER or Clan versions.
There are more than 14 variants of Gauss Rifle. At least 30 brand names of engines each with lore-rooted traits that don't make it into tabletop.
"An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts. It is, basically, a giant "machine gun" that fires predominantly cased explosive shells though models firing saboted high velocity kinetic energy penetrators or caseless ordnance do exist. Among the earliest tank/BattleMech scale weaponry produced, autocannons produce far less heat than energy weapons, but are considerably bulkier and are dependent upon limited stores of ammunition.
Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage versus armor.
The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors. Autocannon are grouped into the following loose damage classes:
Beyond the "standard" models, variants include the shotgun-like LBX, quick-firing Ultra and the gatling-type Rotary. Light-weight variants and capital ship scale models also exist. The experimental Hypervelocity Autocannon has also entered limited production." Tech Manual Page 207, Tactical Operations, Experimental Readout: Mercs Page 8.
"Different manufacturers and models of autocannons have different calibers (25mm-203mm) and rates of fire. Due to this, autocannons are grouped into generic "classes" of autocannons with common damage ratings, with Autocannon/20s doing massive damage while having very short range.
An example of the rating system: the Crusher Super Heavy Cannon is a 150mm weapon firing ten shells per "round" while the Chemjet Gun is a 185mm weapon firing much slower, and causing higher damage per shell. Despite their differences, both are classified as Autocannon/20s due to their damage output."
Technical Readout: 3025
Technical Readout: 3025 Revised
Technical Readout: 3050
BattleTech Master Rules
Field Manual: Federated Suns
Total Warfare
TechManual
Tabletop doesn't take into account variants.
Meanwhile.
"The Heavy Rifle is the largest Rifle in the family. The precursor to the modern Autocannon, the Rifle was based on the main guns used by tanks on pre-spaceflight Terra. The Heavy Rifle used heavier rounds and larger propellant loads to fire its shells. The Rifle was phased out of service with most major powers because it lacked stopping power against most battlefield units. Though it has excellent range and (unlike the Light Rifle) the Heavy Rifle can actually damage a BattleMech, its weight and ammunition capacity are no match for standard autocannon. Another drawback is the Heavy Rifle's inability to use the special munitions available to autocannon.
There are reports of some Periphery powers introducing units equipped with Rifles, but these reports were unconfirmed until the introduction of theArbiter."
↑ Tactical Operations, p. 410
↑ Tactical Operations, p. 382
↑ Tactical Operations, p. 337. "All rifles subtract 3 from their damage points when attacking any battlefield unit except conventional infantry, battle armor, 'Mechs with commercial armor, and support vehicles with a BAR less than 8. This can mean that the rifle inflicts no damage."
↑ Technical Readout: Prototypes, p. 100
↑ Experimental Technical Readout: Corporations, p. 8
↑ Era Digest: Age of War, p. 24
Tabletop is basically simplified for the simple minded.
Now, in any way, shape or form, do you fire once every 10 seconds? Nobody does, not even a battletech mechwarrior. Missiles do, sure. They take forever to reload and are huge. PPCs and Gauss? Supposedly. The PPCs mainly due to the heat. The Gauss because of a charge up (yes, lore has had one for them long before MWO did). Autocannons; these things span for roughly around 5 seconds and spend the next 5 reloading or some close approximation to that. The original creators have never, ever depicted autocannons as single shot weapons. That's what Rifles were. And rifles are obsolete.
Correct or closer to correct depictions of autocannons can be found here.
A tabletop turn is 10 seconds. When you fire an AC/20 it does 20 pts of damage to a single target. Buy the the Boxed set and learn the rule set.
What you are quoting are authors writing prose, which is cute. I'm sure the developers made it a point to read every novel, novella and fanboi article that had Theodore Kurita dating Hanse Davion in Battletech High. Guess what, they didn't, they based the game off the current Battletech rule set. Deal with it.
A tabletop turn is 10 seconds. When you fire an AC/20 it does 20 pts of damage to a single target. Buy the the Boxed set and learn the rule set.
What you are quoting are authors writing prose, which is cute. I'm sure the developers made it a point to read every novel, novella and fanboi article that had Theodore Kurita dating Hanse Davion in Battletech High. Guess what, they didn't, they based the game off the current Battletech rule set. Deal with it.
An AC/20 used in tabletop is a single "use" not a single shot. The damage is placed in one location because who the heck wants to roll 4 to 100 times to see whether or not each shot hits and what damage they do. Tabletop is also limited to even numbers because decimals don't work well with it. Tabletop however is also not a video game with pinpoint issues.
I know the rule set. I also know that this is not a tabletop game. You should know that as well and that every other tabletop rule is broken on a whim. An Ac/20 is 20 damage in 10 seconds. NOT 40 damage in 4 seconds (Fire at 0, fire at 4 = 2 shots = 40 damage).
In order to make the game follow the tabletop ruleset, you'd have to either fire once every ten seconds OR split the damage over multiple shots and with 10 seconds of fire you can do 20 damage, with auto-locking mechanisms to keep the shots hitting the same body part.
Take your pick. PGI sure as **** didn't follow the ruleset at all. An Ac/2 does 38 damage in 10 seconds. Tabletop? 2 damage in 10 seconds. PPC? 10 damage in 10 seconds. Here? 30 damage in 10 seconds.
MG? 2 damage in 10 seconds. Wait a minute. MG does 10 damage in 10 seconds and is completely useless compared to the other powerful weapons. When it did follow the rules it was so inferior to every other weapon that no one wanted it. That's how overpowered the current weapons are.
And no, they are not following the tabletop rule set. If they were, we'd have a threshold of 30 heat. Not beyond 100 with the upcoming clan mechs. Heatsinks would not rise the threshold. Weapons would fire one at a time across ten seconds. And mechs would take between 10 seconds and 2 minutes to kill. All mechs could equip all weapons and have a set, universal range of engines for each weight class.
All of the above were taken out, and in so doing they screwed with tabletop's balance. Double armor was needed because they screwed up so bad. Now. If you still think this goes by tabletop try running 4 large lasers with the ability to fire once every 4.25 seconds (twice per turn and every second turn fire 3 times) and you tell me which game shuts you down faster. Because mathematically, tabletop shuts you down faster than MWO.
In what other battletech or MW game can you fire 30 PPCs in 18 seconds? The answer is none. This isn't tabletop. It's the one mechwarrior game that's so far from tabletop it's no longer even battletech.
The other mechwarrior games at least had the sense to slow pinpoint weapons down to 8-10 second cooldowns. No other mechwarrior game let you fire AC20s/PPCs/Gauss every 4 seconds. Cooldowns for weapons should be directly proportional to how much pinpoint damage the weapon can do.
Current Heat System needs a re-work (Cap and Dissipation) and ghost heat needs to be removed or changed so that it does not IMPACT any stock Mechs. Double Heat sinks needs to dissipate 2.0 outside the engine - until this is done energy heavy builds will not be as viable as ballistic builds due to the low heat output. Currently, the so called mechanics that are supposed to balance ballistics in TT's have no real impact here.
I'm getting tired of AC Warrior Online. I understand it, but it blows. AC's do not need to be nerfed, the blasted heat system needs to be fixed to allow Energy Weapons to be more useful.
And how does a 30 cap affect ballistics without them being adjusted dramatically or having GH added to the remainder of those that do not have already have it?
You want to change Heat, but that system does SFA to the Ballistic you gripe about ffs.
Tabletop, not lore. Tabletop has been refined over 20 years for an expedited, simplified experience (otherwise a "campaign" would take months instead of hours or days. Imagine keeping a table set for months.)
A mission takes hours a Campaign does take months to play out. Depending on the scope of the campaign. Could you play the entire Clan Invasion (the campaign) in one night from start to finish? I know I couldn't
Joseph Mallan, on 18 February 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:
A mission takes hours a Campaign does take months to play out. Depending on the scope of the campaign. Could you play the entire Clan Invasion (the campaign) in one night from start to finish? I know I couldn't
I don't know if there are scenario books covering Operation Revival, but if so I guess they only contain small scale scenarios for every battle/planet. So yes, using this it would be possible. Or just use Mechforce 2.
Edited by Thorn Hallis, 18 February 2014 - 11:57 AM.
Except not everyone agrees with there being an imbalance.
That's because there isn't an imbalance. Just a bunch of repetitive threads arguing for energy boats to be given massive alpha strikes with no heat management issues, ammo explosion risks, or weight encumbrance.
Which is why all the supposed "math" involves magic happening and heat sinks making heat disappear before it's generated.
JohnnyWayne, on 17 February 2014 - 12:51 PM, said:
Personally I would set the heatcap to 35. So you don't overheat when you fire 2 ER PPCs.
Either way, I like heat penaltys. I don't like the way the heat dissipation is handled.
Again its the average undissipated heat that is above 30 for a 10 second interval. not an instantaneous heat spike that causes the shut down. This is where PGI got it completely wrong for some reason. worst design choice made before closed beta.
A mech should be able to fire 3 er ppcs at the same time and not shut down. nothing wrong with having 45 heat.... just dont have 45 heat continuously for 10 seconds cause the reactor will auto shut down. It's how TT works. its how mechs are supposed to work. its how the mech design rules work, that's why you add more heat sinks.
Heat dissipation is still set to one ten second turn but fire rates are decoupled but dissipation rate where not. so yes the games ****** up.
OK, we have for like the one millionth time all agreed that the heat system is all fubar. The thing is that PGI wanted the game to be fast and fun. They could have either gone with just a 30 point cap like TT and cut the weapon damage down to nothing to make it work. But, then people would be on the boards bitching about how nobody does any damage and the AC20 doesn't actually do 20 damage like in the TT game. So, PGI went in the other direction and sped the recycle rates up so that you paid a heat penalty if you didn't play conservatively. Furthermore, they wanted players to be as creative as possible when it came to mech design instead of being locked into the TT designs. The only problem is that there are no penalties for the avenue that they chose. And, as many people have said, instead of having all manners of weapon combinations, there are only a few energy boats due to people combining energy and the heat friendly AC class weapons. In TT, if you ran hot, you ran the risk of cooking off your ammo. We don't have that in this game, though. The only way to die by way of overheating is to actually shut down a bunch of times and to build up enough heat to core yourself.
So, instead of arguing about which system is right, how about we accept the system that we have and try to come up with means to curb the current game play. I'd say adding ACs to the PPC GH line is a good start. That and making adjustments to JJs and fixing hit detection on missiles would go a long way to helping. Thoughts?
Trauglodyte, on 18 February 2014 - 02:25 PM, said:
OK, we have for like the one millionth time all agreed that the heat system is all fubar. The thing is that PGI wanted the game to be fast and fun. They could have either gone with just a 30 point cap like TT and cut the weapon damage down to nothing to make it work. But, then people would be on the boards bitching about how nobody does any damage and the AC20 doesn't actually do 20 damage like in the TT game. So, PGI went in the other direction and sped the recycle rates up so that you paid a heat penalty if you didn't play conservatively. Furthermore, they wanted players to be as creative as possible when it came to mech design instead of being locked into the TT designs. The only problem is that there are no penalties for the avenue that they chose. And, as many people have said, instead of having all manners of weapon combinations, there are only a few energy boats due to people combining energy and the heat friendly AC class weapons. In TT, if you ran hot, you ran the risk of cooking off your ammo. We don't have that in this game, though. The only way to die by way of overheating is to actually shut down a bunch of times and to build up enough heat to core yourself.
So, instead of arguing about which system is right, how about we accept the system that we have and try to come up with means to curb the current game play. I'd say adding ACs to the PPC GH line is a good start. That and making adjustments to JJs and fixing hit detection on missiles would go a long way to helping. Thoughts?
The current system favors AC's over all other weapons systems and leads to build homogeneity. A 30 pt cap with high heat dissipation would lead to a larger variety of builds with a significantly faster gameplay than what currently exists. If you want action you load your mech up with AC's and then you can fire non-stop, or you can run energy weapons, fire one volley, then wait for the next continental drift to move Australia to Africa and then you can fire again.
LocationStomping around in a giant robot, of course.
Posted 18 February 2014 - 03:23 PM
Solis Obscuri, on 18 February 2014 - 01:28 PM, said:
That's because there isn't an imbalance. Just a bunch of repetitive threads arguing for energy boats to be given massive alpha strikes with no heat management issues, ammo explosion risks, or weight encumbrance.
Which is why all the supposed "math" involves magic happening and heat sinks making heat disappear before it's generated.
Hahahahaha NO.
"Balance" would imply that the fire rate would be even remotely comparable between ballistic and energy.
Seriously. Go get two Jagers, put two PPC's on one, two AC/10's on the other. I bet with the tonnage you can give them enough ammo to be firing long after the PPC Jager with the "saved" tonnage in heat sinks shuts down repeatedly. Afterwards, we can see who did more damage.
Bet it'll be the AC/10 user by a landslide.
Thanks to high heat, the number of times a big energy weapon fires vs. an AC in a given space of time is considerably different. Especially if, heaven help us you mounted more than 2 of them.
Heck, an Ilya 'Phract is perfect. Strap three PPC's on it and heat sinks to flavor. Then put AC/5's or 10's on it. Who's gonna be able to keep up a constant barrage longer?
Almond Brown, on 18 February 2014 - 11:49 AM, said:
And how does a 30 cap affect ballistics without them being adjusted dramatically or having GH added to the remainder of those that do not have already have it?
You want to change Heat, but that system does SFA to the Ballistic you gripe about ffs.
In a word No. A 30 pt cap would not impact 2 PPC + 2 AC/5 builds, they can still fire, however they would be able to fire their PPC's faster. Mechs running 4 LL could also then fire all 4 lasers and be able to fire their LL faster as well. Jenners running ML would end up being about the same as they are now for refire rate, they simply would not have enough DHS to be able to fire 6 ML continuously wihtout building up the heat to 30.
The game right now is only fast for AC using mechs, for everyone else, the game has a glacial pace.
Joseph Mallan, on 18 February 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:
A mission takes hours a Campaign does take months to play out. Depending on the scope of the campaign. Could you play the entire Clan Invasion (the campaign) in one night from start to finish? I know I couldn't
Pretty much. Since those I play with are online, we use Megamek. Keeps it much easier and we just hit save whenever we need to stop. And like Thorn said we keep it to each battle scenario and set up repairs, rearm, etc. Gotta say, I feel sorry for the Clanners. They keep jamming and those guns are completely useless after just one jam.
Wouldn't be much fear of UACs if they worked like that here.
For fun I'm trying to figure out how to customize my own rule set for MWO's firing times while keeping the 30 threshold and cutting turns to 5 second periods to get a more "MWO" style experience in the virtual tabletop. Early tests pretty much entirely removed any ability to fire all weapons in a single turn. In fact my Awesome has had to resort to firing its PPCs in one turn and then waiting the second turn to cool off or firing 2 in the first five seconds and 1 in the second five seconds.
Before you ever complain about the Heat System, you need to understand MWO's design compared to BT's Design.
BT's Design is to have Heat be a form of temporary damage with Heatsinks reducing that damage. Get your Heat too high and bad things happen. As such BT designed itself so that Heat Neutral Builds worked and played differently than Mechs that ran Hot. Heat Neutral had less Per Round firepower than Hot Mechs but Heat Neutral could fire every round while Hot Mechs would have to use skirmish tactics to move away from fire lines to cool off (parking yourself in the open and doing nothing to get your heat down is eating a free salvo)
MWO's design for Heat from the earliest points that PGI was willing to talk about it has been that Heat Neutral Builds are an exploit of the system, not intended and a threat to overall game balance. As such the system has been designed to force players to build as if they were making a BT's Heat Neutral Mech and play as if they were in a BT Hot Mech. This is no more obvious than when Stock Mechs were trading weapons for Heatsinks in the CB or how now every mech requires Double Heat Sinks.
As far as systems go, the current heat system is doing exactly what it is designed to do. We won't see a rework of the Heat System as for that to happen PGI would have to admit the current heat system actually dramatically restricts build choices and robs the game of more depth. But PGI won't admit they were wrong, ever.
They won't do it for Double Heat Sinks (Closest we have gotten was that "Right now Double heat sinks are a tax on mechs" from a NGNG, their staff has still defended SHS being a better option in some cases to which I have had to Math Hammer out of existence) and they won't do so for 3rd Person View. They will take steps to further integrate Ghost Heat into the game and make it a more critical part of balance, causing far more collateral damage than they could imagine.
So lets see what sits in today's patch. I am finding it harder and harder to actually care at this point and if the game gets ground down into the dirt then there will be something else for me to play.
This.
I've understood since closed beta that, at it's root, the problem with heat management in this game has always had something to do with PGI's hate-on for heat neutral builds. As someone who has always tried to run heat neutral mechs (sustained dps versus burst dps), I've been frustrated with the lack of diversity in competitive builds but I've never really understood why they considered heat neutrality a problem, until now.
The pill is a little easier to swallow if you know why. It doesn't taste any better, though. Clan mechs are going to cook without full double heatsinks. They're all going to have to run mid size AC's too. More of the same...
4
Karyu, on 17 February 2014 - 12:52 PM, said:
