84 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Quote

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.

I know theres precedent for it. I just dont think its an intuitive system to have both heat and power draw. Theres better ways to balance weapons and add more depth to the game that arnt as contrived and overcomplicated as this.

[EvilCow]

"sensible" and "ghost heat" should not be in the same sentence.

[YueFei]

Khobai, on 09 July 2014 - 01:29 AM, said:

I know theres precedent for it. I just dont think its an intuitive system to have both heat and power draw. Theres better ways to balance weapons and add more depth to the game that arnt as contrived and overcomplicated as this.

I would be OK with hardpoint sizes as well, as wanderer proposed. The equivalent of the missile-tube limit, but for energy and ballistic weapons as well.

Hunchback's AC20 fires in a short sharp burst with only a few projectiles.

Jagermech's AC20 fires in a long burst with many projectiles.

Awesome's PPCs fire in a single projectile.

Stalker's PPCs fire in a long stream.

It'd be a nice way to balance on a per-chassis and per-variant basis without actually mucking with individual weapon stats.

[Yokaiko]

EvilCow, on 09 July 2014 - 04:48 AM, said:

"sensible" and "ghost heat" should not be in the same sentence.

Ever.

[WarZ]

I propose a mechanic called "power".

- Engine produce say 100 power / second.
- Gauss uses say 60 power to fire.
- PPC's use say 50 power to fire.

Now you can only fire one gauss and some other smaller weapons at the same time. You can only fire 2 ppc's at the same time.

Play with the values till the devs get the right balance of what they want to limit alpha'ing.

Ghost heat is no longer required. At all.

We see the effect of a high power draw weapon in the game now. The gauss rifle when it fires (at least in the atlas) causes the cockpit lights to dim. Because the power required to fire it is soo high.

In the novels / lore when the clans first invade, you could only fire the gauss rifle by itself. And even then you could not fire any other weapons for a couple seconds afterwards because it used soo much power.

The theory is already a part of the game and lore. Now just make a mechanic for it.

[DasSibby]

Love the idea. It logically makes sense too.

With mechs being powered by a reactor, and since the energy output of that reactor remains at a set value, it literally cannot put out more energy at a given time than it produces on a regular basis. As opposed to what many players are doing with a alpha strike, which is putting out more energy in a instant than is available.

Essentially the way I understand it, while you could maintain the same builds, you couldn't fire each weapon at the same time, as there is only so much energy output available. So say you're theoretically running a 4 PPC build with each PPC taking up... say.. 50% of the power, you could only shoot two at the same time before the power "resets". Resulting in a 2-2 shot pattern.

This mechanic increases the skill threshold while eliminating pop-tarts. As while you still could JJ up and shoot 2 PPC's at the height of your ascent, you'd have to wait until you were descending or on the ground to fire again because your available energy is still, "recharging".

Either way, I love the idea. Instead of a one click kill (like we have today), you'd have to fire, then line up future shots to connect with the damaged component.

In short, realism combined with increased skill!

[Almond Brown]

Just use the K.I.S.S. principle. Take the GH system of weapon numbers restrictions and apply that directly to the Weapons Grouping system.

Group1 - Load LL, then another LL. (group closed)
Group2 - Load PPC, then another PPC. (group closed)
Group3 - Load ML, ML, ML, ML, ML, ML. (group closed)

No 2 groups can be fired at the same time.

Those Weapons that are not currently on the "Heat Penalty List" can be easily added using the current Heat Penalty List as a base.

Simple.

P.S. Mixing weapons in Groups is restricted to 2 of any one kind btw.

Edited by Almond Brown, 06 August 2014 - 08:15 AM.

[Tombstoner]

engin power output must scale with size rateing since its used in determing movment rates. heavyer engins inherintly have higher power outputs.

Adding in a mechanic that didnt exist in TT is very problematic. how do you asign power consumption levels for weapons. what if the cannon configuration uses more power then the meta builds, making the new mechanic pointless.

I dont see power as a way to fix anything. Targeting computer load.... difrent story. chain fire for perfect accuracy but alphas take an accuracy hit...jump jets active with in 1 second take a further hit to accuracy..... problem solved. o wait add in a targeting computer and your TCL goes up, letting you run larger pinpint alphas or pop tart to your hearts extent or both even.

But PGI has perfect accuray as part of the design paradigm. stupid but thats the road we're on.

[jaxjace]

Want to get people back and new players to stay? do it PGI

[Homeless Bill]

[Prezimonto]

I think it makes WAY more sense to have one added mechanic that's universal, rather than Ghost heat.

Please, PGI adopt this!

[Jaeger Gonzo]

FupDup, on 24 June 2014 - 10:07 AM, said:

I still prefer your original TCL over heat penalties, but this is certainly far better than anything the Nerfinator™ Paul can think of.

Same here.

[Xarian]

Two separate issues: (1) changing the ghost heat system, and (2) removing convergence.
The first one is easier than the second, but both are great ideas.

Now go message Russ on Twitter so that he will actually pay attention to it. Messaging here is just preaching to the choir; we agree with you but we don't have any power. So let's get the devs to acknowledge it, at least.

Other suggestions:
Exceeding threshold by a multiplier amount causes issues (1.5x, 2.0x, etc) instead of flat numbers. This will let you dodge/inflict penalties by altering the energy thresholds via quirks or pilot skills.
Clan XL engines losing a single side torso suffer penalties to energy threshold
Awesome chassis have reduced energy draw on all of their weapons due to having overengineered systems

[jaxjace]

Why the hell is twitter the place the devs look and not the forums on their own damn site?

[Hoax415]

I hate ghost heat but adding some other complicated silly system with another invisible resource to manage is insane.

What is the point of ghost heat? To prevent people from firing too many things at once.

Now we all know that convergence, cone of fire, mixed-location hit boxes, xhair shake, heat scale tweaks to penalties.. Any of those things could create meaningful change to the pinpoint alpha problem.

But if we must have ghost heat instead of any of those changes because PGI is bad at everything except $500 skins why isn't it just a simple system that is universal instead of a hidden undocumented confusing system that punishes new players and exists to be gamed?

If nothing else even PGI should be able to change ghost heat to just kicking in if you fire over 20 heat of weapons in X time. Simple. Universal. No less effective.

20 heat is 2 ppc, which seems like the reasonable baseline.

You can fire 5 mlas this way with no penalty.

Ghost heat needs to be simplified, its awful and everyone but PGI knows it.

Edited by Hoax415, 19 August 2014 - 10:49 PM.

[Haitchpeasauce]

Jump sniping is a problem because they're more of a float-jet than a jump-jet. Fall speeds should be faster (mechs look very floaty right now), jump time reduced, more thrust to achieve the same height, and then a much longer recharge time. The end effect would be mechs that spend much less time in the air, and less time at the apex of the jump easily lining up shots.

I find the energy draw idea easy enough but too far removed from basic MW concepts. There are other ways of solving the problem using the ideas we already have. The problem isn't with the idea of heat, and we don't need Ghost Heat at all.

Pinpoint convergence is the Number 1 biggest problem. MWO is still based (loosely) on TT where damage is randomly assigned to locations. Randomized hit locations does not translate into a computer game, but pinpoint convergence exaggerates the effectiveness of a direct fire weapon the more it is stacked. No other tweak/nerf/rule change will fix this.

Simple changes would be:
* Torso-mounted weapons are set to a single direction, perhaps with a fixed convergence point that depends on chassis.
* Arms can "converge" on the reticle, arm mounted weapons are fixed relative to the arm.
* After a certain range, it's far too difficult for the mech to accurately converge shots and would fire straight forward.

For the last point this is a mathematical reality. As distance increases, the change of angle to be able to converge at the desired point becomes smaller. As a result, damage will be more spread out, especially at longer ranges, but at closer ranges it's still easy to concentrate damage on single locations. Mobility and flexible builds become assets. Boating a weapon becomes less of a danger, what now matters more is overall damage values and flexibility. LRDF and jump-sniping still has a place but won't do crippling damage at 1000m.

[Homeless Bill]

Hoax415, on 19 August 2014 - 10:48 PM, said:

Tie the heat penalty directly to heat.

No. That doesn't work right, just like tying it directly to damage wouldn't work right.

2xGauss would be almost completely unaffected by the heat penalty. Under your proposal, you'd get the same heat penalty for 8xML as you would for 2xGauss + 2xERPPC. That would affect the wrong weapons because ballistics (the front-loaded-damage weapons that need the highest penatly) have the lowest heat. Meanwhile, weapons that already spread their damage (lasers and SRMs) would get hit because they have relatively high heat.

In the same way, tying it directly to damage ignores how the damage is delivered - SRMs deserve less of a penalty because they spread damage and they're incredibly short-range, lasers need their penalty based on both range and beam duration, and ballistics need to get hit slightly harder simply because they're what deals front-loaded damage.

There's a reason I'm proposing a new number - it's because we need it. If I thought it could be done cleanly with **** that's already in-game, I wouldn't suggest this. But I think ending the whack-a-mole, increasing time-to-kill, and adding another layer of depth to the game are worth the hassle.

Edited by Homeless Bill, 20 August 2014 - 12:05 AM.

[Hagoromo Gitsune]

In the end... I think Clans and IS forces need to unite and whip some one "all known" arse.

Edited by Hagoromo Gitsune, 19 September 2014 - 12:22 PM.

[Trede]

I really don't understand why there has been as little attention paid to the OP here as there has...this is beautiful. Additionally, it brings up a question that I meant to ask forever ago...if convergence isn't a thing, what does the "pinpoint" 'Mech skill do, exactly...?

[Mawai]

Mercules, on 24 June 2014 - 10:11 AM, said:

Easier solution... Remove Pinpoint Instant Convergence. Boating becomes less of an issue when not all the shots hit the same tiny point of a mech.

It would be nice. I actually think this was their original plan or why else include an elite tier skill that affects convergence. However, I think there was a technical issue related to server side load, HSR, hacking, or similar that makes timed convergence difficult to implement. It may have to do with server authoritative requirements.

Consider the extra work required for the server to track the convergence of every weapon on every mech on the map at every moment in the game. So what happens if convergence is client side?

At the moment the client probably just sends the aim point along with the fire command. An aimbot hack can only affect the point of aim passed to the server ... however, if you used client side convergence then the hack could also indicate that the weapons are always perfectly converged. Aimbots may not work that well due to HSR and lag ... but if they also guaranteed full convergence I could see this type of abuse escalating.

Anyway, I would like to see an explanation sometime from PGI about convergence and alternatives (since I haven't seen one) ... but I can understand why it might be difficult to do even though it would appear to address some current game issues.