88 replies to this topic

[Darian DelFord]

OK, I think its safe to say that Ghost heat is an epic fail. The problem is multiform but it all boils down to being able to fire your pin point weapons at once for massive damage to a single location.

So Ghost Heat was suppose to prevent this but no so much, enter in the Gauss Mechanic

Gauss has to charge in order to fire, stupid idea I admit but it gave me this idea

(Numbers purely arbitrary)


An alpha is part of battletech and mechwarrior you can not prevent it. However it was never meant to be used the way it is being used and abused in MWO. So I suggest a charging mechanic for Battle Mechs.

You start your drop fully charged. As you do damage you will gain points say 50 is the maximum. So you drop and you immediately use your Alpha charge on a scout locust that you see, BAM its gone and now you have to recharge and CAN NOT use an alpha (Or equivalent) until you are charged up again.

Now you can recharge several ways, mainly by single fireing your weapons and causing damage or whatnot. The more damage you do (Based on Weight Class, Weapons whatever) the quicker you are able to do another alpha.

So in essence you get a free alpha to use as you want it, however if you do not use it immediately and still damage using chain fire or single weapons you can build up a charge and maybe have enough for 2 alphas.

I know its a bit off, but it beats Ghost Heat and actually puts a purpose to firing your weapons singlely instead of hiding and letting your heat go down just for another alpha. It would perhaps also change the meta and pop tarts and boating in general I think.

Does it make sense??

Thoughts?

[Dock Steward]

Or lower heat cap and increase dissipation.

[Roland]

Remove ghost heat and add... Fun?

It's moot though. Paul will never, under any circumstance, admit that ghost heat was a mistake. Seriously. That will never, ever, ever happen.

[Dock Steward]

Roland, on 03 April 2014 - 04:41 PM, said:

Remove ghost heat and add... Fun?

It's moot though. Paul will never, under any circumstance, admit that ghost heat was a mistake. Seriously. That will never, ever, ever happen.

He doesn't need to admit it was a mistake. He can just say that they've made enough progress in other areas, balance-wise, that Ghost Heat is no longer necessary, and that it was only ever meant to be a place-holder in the first place. None of that would really be true, but I'd pretend to buy it if it meant no more Ghost Heat.

[Davers]

GH is working as intended and all you people who want to boat Large Lasers had just better deal with it.

[El Bandito]

Personally, I advocate adding convergence but there are other ways to do it.

Another way to implement would be adding power limitation for big alphas. This is straight from a BT novel I read. For example, any projectile alpha (ACs and PPCs) exceeding 30 damage will be forced to chain fire any excess damage. For example, if one fires 2 PPC+Gauss, that's over the 30 damage limit so either one of the PPCs or the Gauss is forced to chain fire after the other two instead of all 3 firing at once.

Same thing with laser and missile alphas, but perhaps with different value. At least, power limitation makes more sense than some "Ghost Heat" and the mechanic will be much easier to understand.

Another plus is that such mechanic will not punish those who didn't read about it, as heavily as ghost heat. Which is more frustrating--some of your weapons chain firing automatically, or you mech shutting down in 2 volleys?
Finally, since the chain firing is done automatically, it does not add burden to newbies.

Edited by El Bandito, 03 April 2014 - 05:42 PM.

[Eddrick]

El Bandito, on 03 April 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

Personally, I advocate adding convergence but there are other ways to do it.

Another way to implement would be adding power limitation for big alphas. This is straight from a BT novel I read. For example, any projectile alpha (ACs and PPCs) exceeding 30 damage will be forced to chain fire any excess damage. For example, if one fires 2 PPC+Gauss, that's over the 30 damage limit so either one of the PPCs or the Gauss is forced to chain fire after the other two instead of all 3 firing at once.

Same thing with laser and missile alphas, but perhaps with different value. At least, power limitation makes more sense than some "Ghost Heat" and the mechanic will be much easier to understand.

Another plus is that such mechanic will not punish those who didn't read about it, as heavily as ghost heat. Which is more frustrating--some of your weapons chain firing automatically, or you mech shutting down in 2 volleys?
Finally, since the chain firing is done automatically, it does not add burden to newbies.

Giving each weapon an energy drain value and add an energy guage would be easy to understand. But, lowering the heat cap and raising disipation would be safer. Because, it uses valuse that are already in the game. Instead, of adding a totaly new mechanic (Like the Ghost Heat we have now).

Edited by Eddrick, 03 April 2014 - 06:16 PM.

[El Bandito]

Eddrick, on 03 April 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

Giving each weapon an energy drain value and add an energy guage would be easy to understand. But, lowering the heat cap and raising disipation would be safer. Because, it uses valuse that are already in the game. Instead, of adding a totaly new mechanic (Like the Ghost Heat we have now).

Heat cap/dissipation changes will take only a few minutes in a spreadsheet to implement. But we know just how allergic PGI is to easy solutions.

Edited by El Bandito, 03 April 2014 - 07:12 PM.

[kapusta11]

Ghost heat was meant to stop PPC/LL boating not to address the reason why people boat them and the reason to that is MWO's heat system and EW's weight to damage ratio. High heat cap allows high energy alphas and low weight and crit space allows boating. Pinpoint is not the cause when the allowed amount of weapons that can be fired simultaneously is unreasonably high. Now as the ghost heat kicked in mechs with high amounts of EWs are non competitive against ballistics due to low dissipation and low sustained damage as the result.

To fix the problem you need to address the root of it, then you need to figure out what tools to deal with it you have (and not to invent new ones), lowering heat cap and increasing dissipation is the obvious solution, but that would not be enough as EW's low weight/crit space was left out of equation, so we need to deal with that as well, now back to the "tools" which in our case are heatsinks. Equiping them should be mandatory in order to use EWs effectively, "effectively" in low heat cap system would mean firing simultaneously which means that each heatsink should provide cap increase. The exact numbers should account many things such as internal heatsinks that are always equiped, heatsink crit space, constant heat level that mech have while active/moving, EWs heat per shot and weight across all types. Dissipation shoud be increased 2.5 times just as the rate of fire for all weapons was beacause it acts as cooldown for EWs.

Rough example: 7 heatsinks should provide enough heat cap to fire 1xPPC, 21 for 3xPPC which means each heatsink should give you 1.5 heat cap, 15 from the start due to internals.

Edited by kapusta11, 04 April 2014 - 01:12 AM.

[Khobai]

boating isnt the problem though. theres nothing wrong with an awesome with three ppcs in tabletop. because when it fires them they all hit different locations. what we need is damage spreading mechanisms for ppcs/ACs to help emulate the random hit locations from tabletop.

[WintermuteOmega]

I was not a Fan of GH.
BUT: It worked as intendet (no 7LL / 5 PPC Boats etc.)
And i do get the Point of PGI, that only lowering Heat Cap and increase Dissipation would NOT solve Boating Problems, especially when adding HS would increase Cap. I still see Armys of 4PPC-Stalkers legging Mechs in one shot. I've seen it. The Horror.... the Horror...

@Khobei: This is not TT, and it would be wrong tryingt be just like TT. I am in favor of a splash-damage Mechanic for the PPC, but basically, where you Point is the place where you should be doing damage. Otherwise the game wouldn't be about skill but to a far greater degree about lucky Rolls.

Wit GH we hve a mecanic that, since it is somewhat documented ingame (whic is was not for a looong time), is understandable and keeps boating in bay (to a certain degree).All other options i see would not fare as good (tough would make peace with Lore/Canon Players).

[TexAce]

Remove Ghost heat, double heat dissipation, half heat cap. BLODDY EFFIN DONE!

With a heat cap of 30 you cant fire more than 2 PPCs without shutting down. Huge alphas prevented, boating still allowed and not a problem anymore.

Edited by TexAss, 04 April 2014 - 02:59 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

An actual Heat scale that degrades the Mechs performance the higher the heat rises. With a cap level that shuts down the Mech till it cools off a bit.

[Sadist Cain]

Remove Ghost Heat And Add....thoughts


Answer is right there, add anything that has actually been thought out...

[Blacksoul1987]

TexAss, on 04 April 2014 - 02:58 AM, said:

Remove Ghost heat, double heat dissipation, half heat cap. BLODDY EFFIN DONE!

With a heat cap of 30 you cant fire more than 2 PPCs without shutting down. Huge alphas prevented, boating still allowed and not a problem anymore.

this would allow me to remove all the extra heatsinks from my 2ppc ac mechs and add more jumpjets or bigger engines also dual ac20 jager can go back to constantly spamming 40 pt alphas while ensuring that when I pop up I will never be hit with 4 erlgl again unless they want to shut down.

[El Bandito]

Blacksoul1987, on 04 April 2014 - 03:40 AM, said:

this would allow me to remove all the extra heatsinks from my 2ppc ac mechs and add more jumpjets or bigger engines also dual ac20 jager can go back to constantly spamming 40 pt alphas while ensuring that when I pop up I will never be hit with 4 erlgl again unless they want to shut down.

Dual AC20 Jager is a sub-par build, only effective against clueless puggers. Snipers and LRM can strip the torsi long before optimal range.

Edited by El Bandito, 04 April 2014 - 03:45 AM.

[Blacksoul1987]

El Bandito, on 04 April 2014 - 03:43 AM, said:

Dual AC20 Jager is a sub-par build, only effective against clueless puggers. Snipers and LRM can strip the torsi long before optimal range.

lrm? what really? who gets hit by those? heat cap only limits energy alphas does not limit ballistic alphas and battletech has some mighty ballistic boats like thunderhawk and energy ballistic mechs will smash energy boats even worse than now because this game is about alpha striking and a build that cannot alpha strike is sub par you are not fixing anything unless you also curb ballistic boating. or I suppose you could tell me I can never have any of those fancy ballistic mechs in which case I would be quite sad.

[El Bandito]

Blacksoul1987, on 04 April 2014 - 04:00 AM, said:

lrm? what really? who gets hit by those? heat cap only limits energy alphas does not limit ballistic alphas and battletech has some mighty ballistic boats like thunderhawk and energy ballistic mechs will smash energy boats even worse than now because this game is about alpha striking and a build that cannot alpha strike is sub par you are not fixing anything unless you also curb ballistic boating. or I suppose you could tell me I can never have any of those fancy ballistic mechs in which case I would be quite sad.

If you read the forums, then you know there are plenty of single-celled scrubs and new players who die to LRMs and come to whine here. It is thanks to them, the LRM speed was nerfed.

As for the Thunder-Hawk and the Annihilator, I'll believe it when PGI announces it, not a moment sooner.

There is a very simple way to curb ballistic power. Just make the max range 2X like energy weapons instead of 3X we have now. It is a start anyway.

Edited by El Bandito, 04 April 2014 - 04:34 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

El Bandito, on 04 April 2014 - 03:43 AM, said:

Dual AC20 Jager is a sub-par build, only effective against clueless puggers. Snipers and LRM can strip the torsi long before optimal range.

Its not really a sub par build. More like it is a niche Mech. It does what it was built for excellently... outside that not so much.

[Blacksoul1987]

El Bandito, on 04 April 2014 - 04:25 AM, said:

If you read the forums, then you know there are plenty of single-celled scrubs who die to LRMs and come to whine here. It is thanks to those noobs, the LRM speed was nerfed.

As for the Thunder-Hawk, I'll believe it when PGI announces it, not a moment sooner.

I would be willing to test it again but this system has been used in previous games and I'm pretty sure the reasons that I stated are why the heat cap was increased in mw4 and I don't have to think very hard to find ways to exploit it. It however would work if you force missles to ripple fire and don't allow large caliber projectiles to be simultaneously fired.