54 replies to this topic

[wanderer]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 June 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

The only time Btech was ever balanced, was the old pre-Clan Tier 1 Tech era, with no DHS, XL Engines, Endo, Gauss, etc, OR the FedCom Civil War era where EVERYTHING was upgraded to DHS and such. Trying to Balance the two against each other is like trying to balance a Korean or Vietnam War era MilSim vs a Modern One. It just doesn't work. But you play Korean War v Korean War, or Modern v Modern, and it's a ton of fun.

Your nostalgia glasses are on. Tier 1, it was PPC/ML or bust. You just shot at each other longer and couldn't develop obscene target modifiers as easily. But the real, honest and true and only real game-changing tech advance was the DHS. Period. End of line.

If you want entertainment, imagine what Clantech would feel like with SHS instead of DHS in tabletop.

[Bishop Steiner]

wanderer, on 06 June 2014 - 11:27 AM, said:

Your nostalgia glasses are on. Tier 1, it was PPC/ML or bust. You just shot at each other longer and couldn't develop obscene target modifiers as easily. But the real, honest and true and only real game-changing tech advance was the DHS. Period. End of line.

If you want entertainment, imagine what Clantech would feel like with SHS instead of DHS in tabletop.

Odd. Tier 1 I remember using a lot of AC20, ac5, Large Lasers and LRMs. And in lighter faster units, SRMs, because per ton, their punch was awesome. And seeing a lot of the same.

Medium lasers were common for sure, but PPCs, were hot and miss, being very hot and heavy. Few mechs with a pair of them could pack any decent secondary armament. Or if they did, like the WHM and MAD, were under armored and ran hot as heck.

But hey, what do I know, I only played the convention tournament circuit since 1988.

But I do agree, that DHS was the deal breaker...which is what I have said from the get go.

(Though even with SHS, gaining 8 tons back from an XL engine on a Warhammer? Pretty huge what just being able to add 3 tons more armor, 3 more SHS could do. and still 2 tons left over, to upgrade your infighting weapons, like trade the small lasers in , and now have 5 Medium Lasers, an SRM6 and 2 MG for CQB..... which you could fire in it's entirety and NOT overheat with SHS.)

Call me crazy, but a WHM packing 160 pts armor, 18 SHS, that put on 2 heat every time it fired both PPC or kick out 32 damage at PBR
vs
A WHM with 208 armor, 21 SHS, that can walk and fire both PPC non stop with no heat, AND in CQB kick out 41 damage, also for no heat?

Gonna say it made an impact.

But no, nowhere near the impact of the same WHM with just adding DHS, which could now alpha strike it's entire arsenal (52) damage, non stop, no heat accrued.

(of course, you seldom had DHS without OTHER tech to exacerbate it, but the commonality was and is DHS)

[Pappus]

my vote goes for removal aswell. I was or still am a beginner and I never understood why it was in the game in the first place and due to some errors (e.g. equipping dhs, then shs again thinking, that you could just revert back without a problem)... just doesnt make sense.

[Vassago Rain]

Yes, they have been an issue for close to two years now.
No, it's unfortunately not going to be fixed, or rebalanced.

Pretend all gundams have a 1.5 million space dollar tax.

[Prezimonto]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 June 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

the issue is, I have yet to see a good way to buff SHS added. If you want the real truth, I feel ALL DHS should be nerfed to 1.4, and then have the Cooldowns extended throughout the weapons, in particular for PP-FLD weapons. And probably still need to have the heat cap reduced, so that DHS sole advantage is dissipation. (although despite the advocates to the contrary that is NOT how it worked in TT)

I didn't actually realize how ridiculously out of sync DHS were with the core Btech game, until playing SMM, and it made me sit back and do some real thinking.

The only time Btech was ever balanced, was the old pre-Clan Tier 1 Tech era, with no DHS, XL Engines, Endo, Gauss, etc, OR the FedCom Civil War era where EVERYTHING was upgraded to DHS and such. Trying to Balance the two against each other is like trying to balance a Korean or Vietnam War era MilSim vs a Modern One. It just doesn't work. But you play Korean War v Korean War, or Modern v Modern, and it's a ton of fun.

The only balancer that Btech/ MW had for the tech difference was using RnR and Battle Value (which was never very effective either, TBH) to balance number and weigh of the advanced unit vs the obsolete one. And for a myriad of reasons, PGI will not/cannot allow the numeric disparity to help balance things, and that only would work with Clan v IS anyhow, not tier 1 IS vs Tier 2 IS.

And TBH, as a selfish SMM guy, I like the pace where it's at. If I want speeded up , I will play titanfall or hawken. (Though this is a matter of opinion, and not being used to recommend balancing)

The best solution I've seen is to consider ALL engine heat sinks something just a little better than base SHS (1.2 to 1.4) (just not enough room to change them out), and only external heat sinks get changed out. This makes DHS a very situational upgrade where your short on tonnage and rich on slots (mostly middle weight mechs), it also would make a number of mech builds think much more carefully about which upgrades to take as DHS might well not be worth it if you don't have enough slots to pack 4 or 5 on to the mech.

All told it lowers the viability of all DHS mechs without external HS, and buffs the vast majority of SHS mechs.

All around it normalizes the issues to a middle ground.

Edited by Prezimonto, 06 June 2014 - 02:55 PM.

[Scratx]

Prezimonto, on 06 June 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

The best solution I've seen is to consider ALL engine heat sinks something just a little better than base SHS (1.2 to 1.4) (just not enough room to change them out), and only external heat sinks get changed out. This makes DHS a very situational upgrade where your short on tonnage and rich on slots (mostly middle weight mechs), it also would make a number of mech builds think much more carefully about which upgrades to take as DHS might well not be worth it if you don't have enough slots to pack 4 or 5 on to the mech.

All told it lowers the viability of all DHS mechs without external HS, and buffs the vast majority of SHS mechs.

All around it normalizes the issues to a middle ground.

This also means, oddly enough, the SMALLER the engine is, the more heat dissipation your (light/medium) mech has. Because you are forced to have more sinks outside the engine.

LOLWUT?

[John1352]

Scratx, on 06 June 2014 - 03:06 PM, said:

This also means, oddly enough, the SMALLER the engine is, the more heat dissipation your (light/medium) mech has. Because you are forced to have more sinks outside the engine.

LOLWUT?

This is a game where the choice between medium lasers and large lasers is a trade off, the choice between light and assault is a trade off, the choice between streaks and SRMs is a trade off. XL is less weight/higher speed, for more vulnerability. Wouldn't it make sense that you can get more firepower out of a slower mech (smaller engine)?

Also more generally, imagine if you dropped into COD multiplayer for the first time, and your gun only had 40% the rate of fire (and hence DPS) of everyone elses. Many people would go buy battlefield.

It is nicer now with 12 trial mechs, including 3~5 that are actually built like a player would configure them. (who runs around with 5 different weapon groups?)

[Scratx]

John1352, on 06 June 2014 - 07:34 PM, said:

This is a game where the choice between medium lasers and large lasers is a trade off, the choice between light and assault is a trade off, the choice between streaks and SRMs is a trade off. XL is less weight/higher speed, for more vulnerability. Wouldn't it make sense that you can get more firepower out of a slower mech (smaller engine)?

Also more generally, imagine if you dropped into COD multiplayer for the first time, and your gun only had 40% the rate of fire (and hence DPS) of everyone elses. Many people would go buy battlefield.

It is nicer now with 12 trial mechs, including 3~5 that are actually built like a player would configure them. (who runs around with 5 different weapon groups?)

Very bad argument you're making. In particular, you're talking apples while I'm talking oranges.

I also need to clarify that now that I read my post and the post I was quoting, I misunderstood it. In particular, I thought the proposal was going to make external heat sinks _better_ than engine heatsinks. Which I do remember one person once suggested, so maybe I just confused things. I disagree on nerfing engine heatsinks, though, because that disproportionately hits light mechs. Anyway...

(snips ranty on how screwed up that gets when external sinks are better than internal)

Now, your trade off example... Yes, you CAN get more firepower with a smaller engine. Because you can fit more heatsinks and weapons due to the lighter engine. This isn't in question, it never was. And yes, trial mechs are generally usable, and 5 weapon groups suck. I know, I have a founder's Atlas which for a good chunk of the time was stock. 4 weapon groups is the most I go for these days.

If my post somehow doesn't make sense then that's because I really need sleep, which I am going to grab now. Hope my post clarifies things.

(and finally on the CoD thing, I'd expect anyone gimped that badly to say "screw it", which is kind of why I defend that SHS need a bit of a buff)


(and yeah, I really need sleep, I had to edit this thing 3 times. nini )

Edited by Scratx, 06 June 2014 - 09:42 PM.

[Kassatsu]

oneproduct, on 06 June 2014 - 09:32 AM, said:

Yes, and he'd be right. Mandatory upgrades should not be presented as optional upgrades, and in a world where your enemies can equip DHS (i.e. not stock matches), the DHS upgrades is mandatory (and hush about the few builds like double gauss that don't use heat).

It's unfortunate for those people who already had to buy them, but for the health of the game every mech should start with double heat sinks unless they start giving single heat sinks some actual purpose to exist.

A long ass time ago I ran a catapult with nothing but two large lasers because I got sick of missiles while grinding it out (I've since sold it, I only own the K2 now). I used single heat sinks because it was actually more heat efficient (according to the math I did, which did not take into account the true doubles in the engine... It wasn't a huge deal of heat efficiency I missed out on, and wasn't 100% heat neutral either way) to spam SHS in every slot than it was to put DHS and run out of crits. So, they have one purpose to exist. Being lazy AND cheap while grinding out proficiencies in a mech you never intended to pilot EVER. In other news I actually scored a kill with it at one point and ended one or more matches with over 400 damage.

I'd be curious to see not a stock match, but a SHS-only match. Maybe enforce a cap on things like gauss rifles or something, if not just outright banning them.

Edited by Kassatsu, 06 June 2014 - 11:18 PM.

[Bromineberry]

With alle the trial mechs, it'S quite fair right now. Yes, leveling non upgraded mechs, because you want so save money and plan on selling them anyways can be a giant pain in the back. But still, I can remember the times when there was no cadet bonus and no champion mechs as trials. That was really, really, REALLY bad!

[Prezimonto]

Scratx, on 06 June 2014 - 03:06 PM, said:

This also means, oddly enough, the SMALLER the engine is, the more heat dissipation your (light/medium) mech has. Because you are forced to have more sinks outside the engine.

LOLWUT?

That's actually not totally counter intuitive, smaller engine ends up generating less heat overall and your mech runs a little more efficient.

Alternatively, normalize engine heat sinks to 10 for all engines, since nothing changes otherwise.

[Prezimonto]

Scratx, on 06 June 2014 - 09:39 PM, said:

Very bad argument you're making. In particular, you're talking apples while I'm talking oranges.

I also need to clarify that now that I read my post and the post I was quoting, I misunderstood it. In particular, I thought the proposal was going to make external heat sinks _better_ than engine heatsinks. Which I do remember one person once suggested, so maybe I just confused things. I disagree on nerfing engine heatsinks, though, because that disproportionately hits light mechs. Anyway...

(snips ranty on how screwed up that gets when external sinks are better than internal)

Now, your trade off example... Yes, you CAN get more firepower with a smaller engine. Because you can fit more heatsinks and weapons due to the lighter engine. This isn't in question, it never was. And yes, trial mechs are generally usable, and 5 weapon groups suck. I know, I have a founder's Atlas which for a good chunk of the time was stock. 4 weapon groups is the most I go for these days.

If my post somehow doesn't make sense then that's because I really need sleep, which I am going to grab now. Hope my post clarifies things.

(and finally on the CoD thing, I'd expect anyone gimped that badly to say "screw it", which is kind of why I defend that SHS need a bit of a buff)


(and yeah, I really need sleep, I had to edit this thing 3 times. nini )

You're also not quite correct: a smaller mech with a sub-250 engine AND DHS to bring them up to 10 would end up slightly better than one with 10 engine heat sinks. Alternatively, the same mech with SHS would be worse than a mech with 10 engine heat sinks.

Larger engines would be benefit still from DHS as they'd be able to fit some number of them into the engine slots.... Alternatively, I wouldn't mind if those "free" slots were 1.4 like all engine heat sinks... meaning it would be better to install engine heat sinks first for large engines if you have SHS, but not if you have DHS.... unless you're at your slot limit to add DHS.

I think that's a much more balanced and fair trade off between the two cooling systems, where space is much more evenly emphasized as important.

[wanderer]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 June 2014 - 11:41 AM, said:

But hey, what do I know, I only played the convention tournament circuit since 1988.

Hi. Mid-atlantic Mechforce champion back in the 90's, when it was 3025/3050 TRO or bust.

I'm talking about custom designs, not stock play (which was tournaments).

Mind you, me and my lancemates deliberately trolled people at tournaments...but we saw a relentless repetition in our opponents. Awesomes. Hunchback-P's. Warhammer-D's. Fire Javelins. Lots and lots of ML or PPC or both, a smattering of AC/20 & SRMs, and virtually zero LRMs or most autocannons. Even into the 3050-era lance tournaments.

Meanwhile, we were doing stuff like running Charger-SB's and Archer-4M's in the same tournaments and winning, because apparently knowing how to focus fire even back then was an OP tactic. What was depressing was playing these same people in "fun" games with their custom builds...and seeing more PPC, ML, blah blah blah look at my creative supereffective custom build blah blah I win all the time blah blah what do you mean you just shot me with 42 MGs and I died?

Course, that was part of why I liked those tournaments. Stock builds are fun. Mindless minmax, less so.

[Bishop Steiner]

wanderer, on 07 June 2014 - 10:38 AM, said:

Hi. Mid-atlantic Mechforce champion back in the 90's, when it was 3025/3050 TRO or bust.

I'm talking about custom designs, not stock play (which was tournaments).

Mind you, me and my lancemates deliberately trolled people at tournaments...but we saw a relentless repetition in our opponents. Awesomes. Hunchback-P's. Warhammer-D's. Fire Javelins. Lots and lots of ML or PPC or both, a smattering of AC/20 & SRMs, and virtually zero LRMs or most autocannons. Even into the 3050-era lance tournaments.

Meanwhile, we were doing stuff like running Charger-SB's and Archer-4M's in the same tournaments and winning, because apparently knowing how to focus fire even back then was an OP tactic. What was depressing was playing these same people in "fun" games with their custom builds...and seeing more PPC, ML, blah blah blah look at my creative supereffective custom build blah blah I win all the time blah blah what do you mean you just shot me with 42 MGs and I died?

Course, that was part of why I liked those tournaments. Stock builds are fun. Mindless minmax, less so.

I also ran in the Custom Mech Solaris matches. DunDraCon 1991, took the Solaris Tourney (Modified Stock), in the Factory. My final opponent ran a custom Atlas, me a Custom Centy (Maxed armor, Endo, 200XL, 4 JJ, ac20 (10shots) Srm6/srm4 (15/25 shots) 2 Mlaser (1 rear)). Of course...I "cheated" and lured the dummy onto the upper deck of one of the parking structures. A few potshots, he charges up the ramp like a bull, and drops right through the floor. 1 DFA followed by an alpha strike, and the tourney title was mine.

I do think he did have PPCs on his arms... didn't run into too many but a few. Maybe West Coast was less meta biased?

[Pappus]

One idea I had, as far as I have seen: No Mech is capable of putting a DHS into the legs. So maybe instead of heatsinks just working better if they are submerged in the water you could make it per se.

So you could introduce a point where for example 4x shs is simply better because you can put those in the legs or put the breakpoint towards something like 4 shs = 6 dhs.

If you take out that internal heatsinks nonsense you could introduce such an approach. At the same time it would make it more valuable to e.g. shoot the legs of a bigger mech.

When I fight e.g. a stalker - why would I even try and go for the legs? 10 out of 10 times there will be ammo, that might or might not explode ( because it doesn't even matter if it does ) and the mech is already so slow, that it doesnt matter much if it goes slower.

Given that dynamic introducing strong leg SHS might offer more depth and add a way to decrease the enemies firepower with a cut off limb.

See going for side torso or arm decreases firepower, going for the leg is just not as viable. If mechs were to run into heat trouble, because you took a leg that is a different story and I believe that would be desireable