281 replies to this topic

[Varent]

Kaeb Odellas, on 28 February 2014 - 09:56 PM, said:

Your new account experiment proves nothing. You are not a new player. You actually know what to expect and how to do well in the game. New players do not have that knowledge.

I suppose they could put out a DHS tutorial, but what would it say? "This mech we gave you is useless! You need to spend over 1.5 million more CBills to allow it to even approach a level of competence. Almost every mech you buy will be this way. Even some of the expensive Hero mechs need this upgrade! Buy Premium time to reduce this grind and achieve basic competence faster!"

Read the other DHS thread, It answers this better, The last post there. They really need two things... .They need a better tutorial yes... And they need to answer this question yes. They don't have to beat it down a players throat but they should emphasize things and actually make what I would say is a tutorial video really.

[wanderer]

Hauser, on 28 February 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

Double heatsinks are bad because they're pure power creep. Granted it is powercreep inherited from Battletech which needed to sell new models (clans) to keep going, but it shouldn't be left to stand.

Calling DHS power creep is like calling ER LL's power creep.

It was, honest and true the developers of the tabletop's attempt to improve TTK. Note- not MWO's devs. FASA.

That is, oldschool 3025 games really could grind on. Try killing a 'Mech in MWO with 3025-only gear. Then strap on some DHS and 3050 era gear and watch that 'Mech vaporize by comparison.

Multiple long-range headcappers, the Gauss being the biggie. A base cooling of 20 with the 10 DHS freebies in engines rather than 10, meaning a simple changeover was enough to let most 'Mechs unleash their full 3025-era firepower without trouble.

Take, oh, the Rifleman. It's main guns on the run pushed out 20 heat (2 AC/5 + 2 LL's + run heat = 20 in TT).

With SHS ,firing it's guns all at once would slow it down, screw up targeting, and a second turn would force an overheat override and risk the ammo cooking off.

With DHS, it doesn't even overheat. Ditto most of the classic big guys- even notorious heat hogs like the Griffin didn't give a flying fig anymore! They built an entirely new, high-powered tech tree around them that massively increased firepower without significantly increasing armor protection.

Suddenly, it wasn't odd to see a 'Mech nearly dead or gone in a single exchange of firepower and 'Mechs were being one-shotted at ranges that would have amazed a pre-3050 player. The number of turns from start to finish on a game dropped significantly, making Battletech a faster paced game, and one where overheating was a much rarer bird than older designs that often had just enough cooling to dance wih disaster on alpha strikes.

What MWO has done is warped the cooling system horribly in an effort to balance it's own TTK, and that's rendered what should have been a mediocre choice into a virtually unusable one. If anything in MWO, sinks should be flat out 40% or so -better- than they are in TT given the higher fire rate. If you wanted better SHS, you'd have to have better DHS first as right now, SHS are actually -better- relative to DHS than they are in TT.

Say I had 15 sinks and a 250-rated engine. A SHS gets it's 15 cooling. DHS get 27 when they should get 30 (2.0 for the 10 engine sinks, 1.4 x5 for the externals.).

I'd support buffing SHS- but only if they buffed DHS first. With MWO's overtaxing heat system, DHS should at least be a flat 2.8 and SHS 1.4 instead of the dimwit dance of "some DHS are better than others, but all SHS are the same". If they leave DHS as-is? There's no fair way to improve them that doesn't actually make the two as comparative as they should be.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Varent, on 28 February 2014 - 10:26 PM, said:

Read the other DHS thread, It answers this better, The last post there. They really need two things... .They need a better tutorial yes... And they need to answer this question yes. They don't have to beat it down a players throat but they should emphasize things and actually make what I would say is a tutorial video really.

Or they could make SHS usable. Your continued opposition to usable SHS just boggles the mind. We have repeatedly shown you why DHS doesn't constitute a progression system, and that there are multiple actual progression systems in this game. We've explained to you why PGI doesn't need to rely on the mandatory DHS tax to make money, if they do at all, and I'm sure they don't. We've explained to you why fixing this issue wouldn't cause the game to feel "unrewarding", as there are many, many, other things you can spend your CBills on instead. What is the reason for your continued opposition?

[Varent]

Pie. Since we are literally both saying the same things back and forth I thought id change it up. Hows the weather where your at, its rainy here.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Varent, on 28 February 2014 - 10:45 PM, said:

Pie. Since we are literally both saying the same things back and forth I thought id change it up. Hows the weather where your at, its rainy here.

Is this an admission of defeat? You haven't once defended your arguments or given any meaningful answers to my questions. So far the only argument you seem to have left is "SHS should be bad because the is a F2P game, and F2P games are supposed to have a shitty grind". I shouldn't have to explain to you why that's a dumb argument.

EDIT: Here, I'll make it easier.

I don't want Single Heat Sinks to be useful because _______________________.

Now fill in the blank.

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 28 February 2014 - 11:00 PM.

[Varent]

Admiting defeat would mean we were in a competition. I am drinking a beer while playing minecraft and now and then looking over at the tab to see where this forum is going. I lost interest after the argument became circular. If you want to declare yourself the winner, go ahead. Im simply done arguing something that wont change because frankly it doesn't make any sense for them to change it from a business standpoint, a lore stand point or realistically a game standpoint since its barely a hurdle. Your arguing a mountain over a mole hill. To put this in perspective, having a 'competitive' argument over the internet is a lot like the special Olympics. Even if you win, your still ********. That said, Im going to finish my beer and this trap im working on. o7

[0rionsbane]

yesh please up the heat cap for shs to be somewhat comeptitive, they already have 40% less dissipation and the upgrade is already hugely over priced compared to what should be more expensive upgrades like endosteel (massive investment in cannon) in fact if we take other mech warrior games, we will see that commonly the shs are easy to replace even before the first drop. why is it that this game wants to make it impossible to customize your first mech with out playing about 30 extra games. lower thier cost to 200k while were at it.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Varent, on 28 February 2014 - 11:04 PM, said:

Admiting defeat would mean we were in a competition. I am drinking a beer while playing minecraft and now and then looking over at the tab to see where this forum is going. I lost interest after the argument became circular. If you want to declare yourself the winner, go ahead. Im simply done arguing something that wont change because frankly it doesn't make any sense for them to change it from a business standpoint, a lore stand point or realistically a game standpoint since its barely a hurdle. Your arguing a mountain over a mole hill. To put this in perspective, having a 'competitive' argument over the internet is a lot like the special Olympics. Even if you win, your still ********. That said, Im going to finish my beer and this trap im working on. o7

Discussions are not pointless. If no one is talking about an issue, the devs will not know there is an issue, and there is no possibility for improvement. That's how SRMs were nerfed to oblivion and jump jet shake was rendered toothless, after all. That said, you're probably right that this discussion is likely going to go nowhere, because PGI does what PGI does and they rarely seem to take the viewpoints of their customers into account. After all, ghost heat still exists. 3PV still exists. Pinpoint poptart meta still dominates. SRMs are still broken. Pulse lasers are still crap. LRMs are still a total crapshoot.

I'm sorry that you think I'm an ******* because you can't formulate a coherent argument and then defend it against strangers on the internet.

[Pjwned]

Varent, on 28 February 2014 - 09:33 PM, said:

sigh. Ive explained.... You do understand that the point of a free to play game is to MAKE it harder on new players unwilling to spend money right, so that they can see how much easier it can be with money?

If your game is complete garbage then yeah I guess that would be the point.

[Hectortek]

you should be more worried about balistic weapons being used as long range weapons when they shouldnt ( ac20 for example ) , making other weapons useless ( gauss ? ) , an ac20 hitting you in 700m would be a nice CLAN Weapon in Lore

[Almond Brown]

Hectortek, on 01 March 2014 - 02:02 PM, said:

you should be more worried about balistic weapons being used as long range weapons when they shouldnt ( ac20 for example ) , making other weapons useless ( gauss ? ) , an ac20 hitting you in 700m would be a nice CLAN Weapon in Lore

If anyone uses an AC20 at 700m and thinks they are using it well, given 7 shots per ton, one can only laugh and hope they keep doing it. At 700m the AC20 does =/<5 damage ffs. LOL

[Strum Wealh]

Almond Brown, on 01 March 2014 - 04:04 PM, said:

If anyone uses an AC20 at 700m and thinks they are using it well, given 7 shots per ton, one can only laugh and hope they keep doing it. At 700m the AC20 does =/<5 damage ffs. LOL

And with the reduction in projectile velocity, it becomes that much more difficult for most players to actually hit anything that isn't charging directly at them at 700 meters with an AC/20...

Also, for maths:

• The AC/20 has an optimal range of 270 meters, with a linear drop-off afterward that eventually falls to 0 at 810 meters.
  
• The AC/20 loses 1.00 units of damage for each 27 meters that the projectile travels beyond its optimal range.
  
• At 700 meters (430 meters beyond its optimal range), an AC/20 shell would be delivering 4.07 units of damage.
  
• At 720 meters (the optimal range for the AC/2), the AC/20 shell would deliver 3.33 units of damage (versus 2.00 units of damage for the AC/2 shell, 4.59 units of damage for the AC/2 shell, or 7.22 units of damage for the AC/10 shell at the same range).

[GMAK]

Single heatsink are balanced. I use them a lot in assault mech. I have like 40 on my awsome and it's for sure better than a build with double heatsink.

[Satan n stuff]

wanderer, on 26 February 2014 - 01:54 PM, said:

Actually, this is part of setting MWO at the equivalent of the space between WWI and WWII.

Most of what MWO put in early were "WWI" designs. Lower tech weapons, SHS, no endo/ferro/XL engines. Pre-3039-era designs. The top-tech stuff is "WWII" gear- which is just seriously getting out there after 3039 and into the Clan Invasion.

This is like trying to say that a WWI tank should be an even match for a WWII tank. DHS become the standard over the next few years of game time as "WWI" older 'Mechs get wrecked by the score and the Houses went into a crash-mode production program for "WWII" upteched new designs and refits on what older designs remained.

Battletech has obsolescence in technology. We happen to be "historically" right at that point, and it'll happen again as LB-X and Ultra AC's become more widespread and in all calibers with the standard AC. Roll with it.

At the risk of going off topic, many weapons used in WWII were designed and produced before WWI and performed as well as the more recently designed ones.

[Squirtbox]

I would just like to point out, for those of you that have forgotten, that PGI has gutted Clans because they are outright better than IS and forgone mixing tech because it would make IS tech obsolete. If they want to keep using that line of reasoning then they need to make SHS usable. If they aren't going to do that then give Clans their full tech advantages. Of course they would also need to make external DHS 2.0 instead of just 1.4 but they won't admit that heat is broken.

[Antonio]

So I think all DHS should be 2.0, the heat cap should be fixed at a lower value, and heat dissipation should be increased on SHS to make SHS vs. DHS a tradeoff between weight or critical space.

[General Taskeen]

Mak54291, on 01 March 2014 - 10:20 PM, said:

Single heatsink are balanced. I use them a lot in assault mech. I have like 40 on my awsome and it's for sure better than a build with double heatsink.

Did you know the 28 SHS is close to heat neutral for the default Awesome-8Q with 3 PPC's in TT?

Yeah, you don't need 40 SHS in TT for whatever the heck it is you were building, except with 4 PPC's like the Annihilator. The fact that a Mech actually does need a crapload of SHS to even be somewhat useful is pretty hilarious in MWO.

If SHS were balanced, along with dissipation and fire rates, then most (but not all) of the Stock Mechs available in this game would not overheat like crazy.

[Purlana]

General Taskeen, on 03 March 2014 - 11:55 AM, said:

Did you know the 28 SHS is close to heat neutral for the default Awesome-8Q with 3 PPC's in TT?

Yeah, you don't need 40 SHS in TT for whatever the heck it is you were building, except with 4 PPC's like the Annihilator. The fact that a Mech actually does need a crapload of SHS to even be somewhat useful is pretty hilarious in MWO.

If SHS were balanced, along with dissipation and fire rates, then most (but not all) of the Stock Mechs available in this game would not overheat like crazy.

A bunch of stock builds will probably never work properly in MWO. The stock Kraken for example will not work because of ghost heat.

Edited by Purlana, 03 March 2014 - 12:06 PM.

[General Taskeen]

wanderer, on 28 February 2014 - 10:36 PM, said:

Take, oh, the Rifleman. It's main guns on the run pushed out 20 heat (2 AC/5 + 2 LL's + run heat = 20 in TT).

With SHS ,firing it's guns all at once would slow it down, screw up targeting, and a second turn would force an overheat override and risk the ammo cooking off.

I know you were making an example here. I would like to point out though that the Rifleman (the "prime") is one of those classic examples of a variant built specifically to be crap from a canon perspective - from a 'challenge' roleplaying perspective if one team rolled and had to choose it, they would simply have to skirt around its imperfections (firing only the large lasers in a turn, or only firing the ML or AC/5, etc.). Its the equivalent of a poor variant of a vehicle you could cite in the real world, where later variants try to perfect imperfections and the user/pilot/driver has to be wary of the imperfections.

2 early variants of the Rifleman were attempts as less heat intensive factory versions (the RFL-3C and RFL-4D, whereas the RFL-5M comes around that allows the original build to operate more efficiently) and the 'JagerMech' is another example that cites the "overheating" Rifleman-3N, but is way less hot with SHS.

[Hauser]

wanderer, on 28 February 2014 - 10:36 PM, said:

Calling DHS power creep is like calling ER LL's power creep.

It was, honest and true the developers of the tabletop's attempt to improve TTK. Note- not MWO's devs. FASA.

(...)

What MWO has done is warped the cooling system horribly in an effort to balance it's own TTK, and that's rendered what should have been a mediocre choice into a virtually unusable one. If anything in MWO, sinks should be flat out 40% or so -better- than they are in TT given the higher fire rate. If you wanted better SHS, you'd have to have better DHS first as right now, SHS are actually -better- relative to DHS than they are in TT.

Say I had 15 sinks and a 250-rated engine. A SHS gets it's 15 cooling. DHS get 27 when they should get 30 (2.0 for the 10 engine sinks, 1.4 x5 for the externals.).

I'd support buffing SHS- but only if they buffed DHS first. With MWO's overtaxing heat system, DHS should at least be a flat 2.8 and SHS 1.4 instead of the dimwit dance of "some DHS are better than others, but all SHS are the same". If they leave DHS as-is? There's no fair way to improve them that doesn't actually make the two as comparative as they should be.

I wasn't around for the table top so I love hearing that context.

Though you bring it as an improvement to the game, it is still power creep. As you explained a mech with 3025 would be obliterated by a mech with 3050 gear. Just because the latter would be able to utilize its full load out. Right now we have pretty much the same situation. A mech with double heat sinks will destroy a mech without.

Now you're talking about increasing the cooling from both double and single heatsinks, but that wouldn't be an improvement when it comes to gameplay. Not the one we should be looking for. Improving both would still allow a mech with double heatsinks to destroy one without.

Rather, for good gameplay, double heat sinks should be almost a side-grade, not a straight out upgrade.

Now I've read in other posts that this will be a problem when it comes to the much hotter clan mechs but they're another examples of the inherent power creep in BatteTech so they can stand to be normalized.

Edited by Hauser, 03 March 2014 - 04:20 PM.