84 replies to this topic

[cleghorn6]

I like it, but I have a couple of questions.

First, how do you recover Energy Draw? Would it go down like heat but faster? Or is it purely for simultaneous firing i.e. instant recovery? Just thinking of an exploit where you macro a very short delay between shots.

Second, what of the contention that FLD is the IS advantage over clans and essentially what you're trying to do is balance the only advantage IS mechs have out of the game.

Discuss.

[YueFei]

cleghorn6, on 26 June 2014 - 08:41 PM, said:

I like it, but I have a couple of questions.

First, how do you recover Energy Draw? Would it go down like heat but faster? Or is it purely for simultaneous firing i.e. instant recovery? Just thinking of an exploit where you macro a very short delay between shots.

Second, what of the contention that FLD is the IS advantage over clans and essentially what you're trying to do is balance the only advantage IS mechs have out of the game.

Discuss.

The energy draw can be tuned as needed for balance purposes, with different weapons generating different levels of +energy. Lasers would be very friendly to the energy draw, since they use energy over time.

FLD isn't supposed to be the primary IS advantage over the Clans. It's supposed to be combined arms, strategy, and numerical superiority. =/

In the end, this is about the *pacing* of the effective damage being dealt, vs the durability of the mechs. At the moment, "meta-builds" push out enough short-term damage output to hold against a push, or to make hard pushes themselves. Good jump snipers play very aggressively.

Worse players, or average players, might not have the kind of positioning and movement to make a jump sniper work for them. For that matter, many players probably don't have the necessary level of accuracy to make it work. Wasting shots into thin air builds heat in exchange for no work done. But at a certain skill level, pilots are accurate enough to start dropping enemy mechs dead by the time they start redlining on their heat cap.

The question is, how do we want the game to be balanced? Do we want Jump Snipers to be capable of that kind of short-term burst damage?

Or do we want them to run hot, and be forced to fall back in the face of a brawl rush, to have to kite, to reposition.... in order to buy time to cool off to shoot some more? And potentially giving up a strong position on the map as a result?

[Homeless Bill]

BigBadVlad, on 25 June 2014 - 07:51 AM, said:

I'm reading this and I'm wondering about how simple this would be really. It comes across to me as another set of values in the game for engines and all weapons, jump jets and whatever else is decided upon as drawing energy from the engine.

So you could just have all engines create the same amount of energy, 100 for example. Or seems to me bigger engines should get a higher energy value perhaps?

Now all weapons are going to get a new set of numbers "energy draw". So when you are building a mech you are going to have keep in mind a whole new set of numbers. Well if I build this 2PPC 4 med laser mech how much energy is it going to have while using the PPC's? How quickly will it recover energy if i only use the medium lasers? 1 PPC at a time? etc...

Don't get me wrong, it does sound interesting but it sounds somewhat like what a proper heat system should work like.

I would like to see a gradual heat penalty system like tabletop had. 110% heat? 25% reduced speed. 120% heat? Targeting reticule is glitching, disappearing, heck make the whole hud start glitching! etc.

As for the reign of the jump snipers, I suggested the idea of more risk for jump snipers by creating a system where there is a variable chance of mechs falling down when jumping in another thread in this sub-forum.

Ultimately, it is another number in the Mechlab, but one that's not nearly as important as heat until you get in-game. I firmly believe that a scale for alphas separate from the heat scale is needed to solve the problem, particularly when ballistics don't generate much heat.

I don't like random chances for falling down, I don't like excessive leg damage, and I don't like killing them off entirely - I just want to balance ground-based snipers against poptarts. By capping the alpha of airborne players to a low amount, this would strike a balance between still-works-too-good and poptarts-are-dead.

Though some of the extra number business may seem complicated, it won't be in practice. It's meant to be a by-feel system that encourages you to stagger shots. Think about Ghost Heat currently - if you want to fire 4xPPC, you just instincitvely space them out properly. Same for the 12xERSL on the Nova. This would be the same way, but you'd do it regardless of weapon combination. There wouldn't be many instances in an assault where it was a good idea to fire everything at once.

The constant dissipation would also make it feel a lot more fair than a half-second window that you either hit or miss.

Overall, I feel it's less complicated and arbitrary than the numerous bandaids they've thrown (and will have to continue to throw) at the problem. Gauss charge, Gauss limit, Ghost Heat, hard minimum range, incoming jumpjet changes, plenty of stat changes on the way... so much effort for so little gain. A comprehensive approach was worth it this time last year, and it's still worth it now.

YueFei, on 26 June 2014 - 08:22 PM, said:

Back to the top with ye.

<3

[stjobe]

Homeless Bill, on 27 June 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

Gauss charge, Gauss limit, Ghost Heat, hard minimum range, incoming jumpjet changes, plenty of stat changes on the way... so much effort for so little gain. A comprehensive approach was worth it this time last year, and it's still worth it now.

Sometimes I despair and think the only way they're going to get us out of this mess is if they go back and re-do some crucial parts of the game from the ground up, starting with the heat system.

So much effort has been wasted because nobody at PGI was smart enough to see that if you triple rate of fire you need to triple dissipation as well...

That one fix would go such a long way towards solving the issues MWO has, and if it was combined with properly implemented heat penalties like in TT (all the bits are already there, they just need to put them together: slowing down, accuracy penalties by cross-hair flutter, override-able shutdowns, and ammo explosions) that start at somewhere around 37-70% heat depending on your amount of heat sinks, it would go even further towards lowering the TTK and stopping people from all-alpha, all the time.

Sure, fire your alpha, but your next one is going to have to be taken after hitting the override button, with a jumping reticule and your torso twist and movement being worse than a Dire Wolf's.

[Damocles69]

Something, anything needs to happen. The introduction of the clans show just good FLD really is

Edited by Damocles69, 27 June 2014 - 11:18 AM.

[Khobai]

Better solution: remove FLPP damage.

[Homeless Bill]

cleghorn6, on 26 June 2014 - 08:41 PM, said:

I like it, but I have a couple of questions.

First, how do you recover Energy Draw? Would it go down like heat but faster? Or is it purely for simultaneous firing i.e. instant recovery? Just thinking of an exploit where you macro a very short delay between shots.

Second, what of the contention that FLD is the IS advantage over clans and essentially what you're trying to do is balance the only advantage IS mechs have out of the game.

Discuss.

Energy Draw would dissipate at a constant rate (default 100 units per second), so it would dissipate a full load in just a second. This will not limit sustained DPS - only burst DPS. The reason for the constant dissipation is twofold:

• To avoid macros. The current implementation encourages macros by making it a hit-or-miss, half-second window. A constant dissipation would punish you based on how long you waited, rather than punishing you if you didn't wait long enough (regardless of how close you were).
  
• To have the system be less antagonizing and unfair to new players. Right now, if you fire 4xERPPC in two groups of two, your life or death is decided based on a fraction of a second. 0.51 seconds means you're alive and toasty; 0.49 seconds means you're on fire and dead. It's very unfair. A constant dissipation would allow for the linear scaling of the penalty based on wait time, so there would hardly be any difference between those two scenarios.

The case could be made either way. I would say that the IS has better autocannons due to the front-loaded damage, but Clans have Gauss and PPCs, so it's really a moot point. I ultimately think several aspects of Clans need balancing against the IS, but protecting overpowered aspects of IS weaponry isn't one of them. Even with my limit on burst damage, the IS autocannons will still have pinpoint damage (including the only 20-point, pinpoint weapon), meaning they'll still have that advantage.

If you really wanted to balance Clans using this system, you could just force Clans to have a lower Energy Threshold. That way, an IS 'mech with a cap of 100 can fire 2xPPC with no problems, but a Clanner with a Threshold of 80 would take a heat penalty for doing so. It would make Clans more about bracket builds and sustained DPS, where the IS would be more hit-and-run.

[Quizzical Coconut]

So... missiles and autocannons don't require energy to fire...

[Yokaiko]

Khobai, on 27 June 2014 - 11:22 AM, said:

Better solution: remove FLPP damage.

What a novel idea.

.......

[xXBagheeraXx]

Blue Shadow, on 24 June 2014 - 08:54 PM, said:

@Homless Bill, I like your idea and agree it would be a much bertter alternitive to gohst heat! If PP weapons are still an issue even with you idea, they (PPCs + ACs) could be given the Clan treatment. Say 8 pinpoint damage for all PPCs and the rest splash damage, multi shot ACs with the IS ones having fewer shots.....

THIS all of this.

I do NOT see any clan mechs using ppcs ac5 combos for this very reason. They would also have to buff the shell velocity of the ac10 and ac20 to compensate, and this is BADLY needed as the ac10 is a joke. No so sure about 8 damage on is ppcs tho...buff them to 12 and have 10 direct and 1 splash perhaps? All ppcs are supposed to have splash damage anyway.

Edited by xXBagheeraXx, 28 June 2014 - 03:18 PM.

[YueFei]

Quizzical Coconut, on 28 June 2014 - 12:50 PM, said:

So... missiles and autocannons don't require energy to fire...

They do require energy. Just not substantial amounts of it. Same as running in a mech requires power from the reactor to move the mech's muscles.

However, missiles are not PP FLD. They are spread FLD.

For Autocannons I'd love to see Wanderer's idea implemented for caliber size depending on chassis hardpoint. For example, an Atlas or Hunchback's AC20 could fire in a single slug. While a Catapult or Jagermech's ballistic mount, if you shove an AC20 into it, will fire in a hail of slugs in a burst, like the Clan autocannons do.

[YueFei]

The elegance of Homeless Bill's solution is that it doesn't nerf individual weapons while addressing the core of the problem.

Nobody thinks the single UAC5 Shawk is overpowered. Nobody wants to nerf the single-AC20 Hunchback. Nobody complains about the 1 PPC sniper. Nobody thinks that a single Gauss rifle by itself is game breaking.

You want the burst damage that comes with combining a stack of weaponry into essentially a single gun that punches big gaping holes in a single section of enemy armor? That's OK, you can do it, but you'll pay the price by sacrificing ability to sustain your damage output because it'll spike your heat.

There are also no "loopholes" to circumvent Homeless Bill's system with certain weapon combos. That alone makes it a superior alternative to Ghost Heat, *and* simpler to implement than Ghost Heat, which I can only imagine is a ghoulish table of arbitrary weapon combinations and heat penalty values.

Homeless Bill's system may start with flaws initially with the starting set of values, but the system is imminently tuneable, and can have small adjustments made in gradual increments to achieve balance.

If only we could call the Ghost Busters!

Edited by YueFei, 30 June 2014 - 01:51 PM.

[Khobai]

Adding an energy meter in addition to a heat meter makes for a pretty unintuitive system though. Having to worry about heat is bad enough, but having to worry about energy too would be ridiculous.

Plus i dont remember battletech or any other mechwarrior ever telling me how many weapons or what combination of weapons I could or couldnt fire at one time. Any kindve artificial limiter is a bad idea... IMO its better to balance weapons individually by reducing/removing pinpoint damage and adding mechanics which spread damage around.

That gets us closer to battletech without adding contrived hard-to-explain mechanics to the game.

[YueFei]

Khobai, on 30 June 2014 - 02:54 PM, said:

Adding an energy meter in addition to a heat meter makes for a pretty unintuitive system though. Having to worry about heat is bad enough, but having to worry about energy too would be ridiculous.

Plus i dont remember battletech or any other mechwarrior ever telling me how many weapons or what combination of weapons I could or couldnt fire at one time. Any kindve artificial limiter is a bad idea... IMO its better to balance weapons individually by reducing/removing pinpoint damage and adding mechanics which spread damage around.

That gets us closer to battletech without adding contrived hard-to-explain mechanics to the game.

Well there is precedent in the lore for power limitations of the reactor limiting the number of weapons that could be fired simultaneously. In Phelan's Trial of Position, his fight with Vlad, Vlad couldn't fire both Gauss and his ERLLs at the same time. His reactor had a limited power output, and I don't remember the exact firing sequence, but I think Vlad could only fire the Gauss one at a time, and then the lasers afterwards.

If we do go with burst-fire-style weaponry (like the Clan Autocannons), I would be OK with it if they also implemented Wanderer's caliber-size limit. Similar to the missile tube limitation which causes a missile salvo to be squeezed out over the span of multiple launches.

For example, the Awesome's PPCs would fire in a single projectile. But when you shove PPCs into a Victor, it would fire in a stream of projectiles.

[YueFei]

Come on, PGI.

This is an *easier* solution than Ghost Heat, simpler to understand, simpler to implement.

[Homeless Bill]

Quizzical Coconut, on 28 June 2014 - 12:50 PM, said:

So... missiles and autocannons don't require energy to fire...

Uhhh... wrong.

Missiles need some sort of impulse to fire, some energy dedicated to their targeting systems, and additional energy to feed the loading mechanism. It wouldn't be much, but then again, missiles are lightly penalized under my system because they spread their damage, so it fits the profile.

In regards to autocannons and guns in general, you're super wrong. What pulls back the hammer of a gun or reloads it? It's a person expending energy; there is no person expending that energy, so it must be the reactor that powers that. How about the Gauss Rifle (essentially a big railgun)? Do electrically powered guns not require energy in the future?

And what about recoil for every weapon? You think it's free to keep a 'mech upright? Every action creates a reaction. Whereas humans use their muscles to compensate for recoil, 'mechs use a gyro and synthetic muscles, which, as you may have guessed by now, need energy to operate.

Of all the things to dislike about this proposal, the fluff explanation is not one of them. It's not beyond imagination that a large, walking tank in the future (and its weapons) would require power, and that its reactor can only generate so much. Ever tried plugging too many things into the same outlet?

[Quizzical Coconut]

Yes, I should have been more specific.
- Missiles (digital firing signal, standard onboard targeting computer, autoloaders) would require the collective power output of a minivan to sustain. (see javelin, hellfire, or a number of other homing missiles)
- A gauss rifle isn't an autocannon
- Autocannons, much like semi-auto rifles, require cocking once and are self powering afterwards. This could be done by a small motor with significant gear reduction en route to the combat zone.
- compensation for recoil is miniscule compared to running.

I don't hate the proposition, but unless Autocannons are switched to Plasmacannons, it's just wrong to have a chemically powered shell magically consume electrical power.

[Lightfoot]

You know the old saying, "One man's meat is another man's poison". What you would change, many players like. Which is how we got Ghost Heat. It's kind of a compromise that keeps gameplay, in general, intact. I think that's why it was done.

Some folks like the spray attacks, some like the lower damage, but single burst attacks. So you keep both in working order. Variation.

Poptarts are a separate issue. You fix them by not allowing mechs to fire while airborne. Except you will never hear the end of it if they kill that sacred cow.

[YueFei]

Lightfoot, on 02 July 2014 - 03:07 PM, said:

You know the old saying, "One man's meat is another man's poison". What you would change, many players like. Which is how we got Ghost Heat. It's kind of a compromise that keeps gameplay, in general, intact. I think that's why it was done.

Some folks like the spray attacks, some like the lower damage, but single burst attacks. So you keep both in working order. Variation.

Poptarts are a separate issue. You fix them by not allowing mechs to fire while airborne. Except you will never hear the end of it if they kill that sacred cow.

Homeless Bill's Ghost Heat is more like Reactor Stress heat, transparent, loophole-free, and much easier to tune and maintain than the current arbitrary Ghost Heat Tables.

Back to the frakkin top with ye.

[kapusta11]

One Year Later(2015): A Sensible Update To Power Draw