439 replies to this topic

[Chronojam]

Naduk, on 02 October 2014 - 06:48 PM, said:

Ghost heat does exactly what it intended to do

40 LRMs: 21 Heat
50 LRMs: 16 Heat
60 LRMs: 32 Heat

This is intentional, you say..? Tell me more, I'd love to hear the reasoning. If you have a link to a dev post, that could help.

Edited by Chronojam, 02 October 2014 - 07:16 PM.

[Mothykins]

At this point, I'm just posting things that are generally on topic.

New Meta: DWF-PRIME

Ignore the Ghost heat. Kill the targets.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Shar Wolf, on 02 October 2014 - 07:17 PM, said:

Quite possibly.

On the other hand - making a suggestion to do what very few developers ever do without killing off their game completely - only invites mockery.

Chrono should probably be grateful we are not outright calling him a moron.


Oh.
Wait.

Guess I just did.
Guess the cat is out of the bag.

Good luck Chrono.

It is a stupid suggestion, and you were stupid for making it.
Glad that is taken care of.


And the solution is TOTALLY to remove a chassis.


Good luck with that.

And again, you missed the point, look up Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, it might sink in then.

[Chronojam]

Shar Wolf, on 02 October 2014 - 07:10 PM, said:

Part of the problem you are having here, Chrono, is Sarcasm.

It does not translate reliably through SPEAKING IT.
It translates even worse through text.

Helps to be more blunt and less subtle.

Because like I (and others!) "missed your point" supposedly

You have missed all ours.

You of all people tend to get mad when I'm less subtle and more blunt. I thought "A modest proposal" was giving away the whole game, here, and even left it out at first.

However, it's not actually sarcastic to point out that, in July 2013, removing the Stalker from the game is actually easier and has fewer complications than implementing Ghost Heat to "solve" the 6PPC Stalker. That is a glimpse of just how bad Ghost Heat is. It is so bad, removing the Stalker is quite arguably a superior alternative.

Obviously, removing the Stalker (a superior alternative to Ghost Heat in terms of player agency, programmer assets, and developer time) is a poor choice for balancing the game. Ghost Heat just happens to be an even worse choice because 6PPCs or Stalkers were not the issue at all.

Doesn't stop people from trotting out "But Ghost Heat stops the 6PPC Stalker!" with regularity, and people just accept it. If Russ is going to talk about Ghost Heat solving the 6PPC Stalker as if that was the pressing issue, then I feel it's perfectly fair to point out that removing the Stalker would have solved the problem with less effort and fewer negative side-effects.

[WarZ]

Quote

Killing the 6PPC Stalker

Happened a LONG time ago.

[Chronojam]

Cavale, on 02 October 2014 - 07:09 PM, said:

We all know that the real issue is Dual Gauss Setups though. Or Dual Gauss, Dual ERPPC Dires? Even at 36 threshold, that's well in tolerance, and a really really not fun thing to walk in front of.

Wait a moment. You're kidding. You're telling me that Ghost Heat does absolutely nothing to address 2ERPPC2Gauss Dire Wolf setups from trashing dps-focused builds before they even get in range of their own weaponry?

That's so weird. According to my figures here, a mech sporting a bunch of AC/2s would quickly chainfire itself to death, despite only applying a sandpapering effect to mechs at a closer range.

[Mcgral18]

Magical
Instantaneous
Perfectly
Pinpoint
Convergence

[jaxjace]

Chronojam, on 02 October 2014 - 06:27 PM, said:

But maybe, we should all realize that the 6PPC Stalker is a red herring used to justify an opaque, poorly-communicated mechanic that punishes a number of stock builds, paid Hero Mechs, and hard/soft counters for the dominant competitive builds to which Ghost Heat did absolutely nothing.

you had me going you cheeky ****** you.

[Koniving]

Chronojam, on 02 October 2014 - 06:50 PM, said:

That's suspicious, isn't it? Doesn't that make you suddenly wonder, "Hey, what happened there?" It's not coincidence that the Awesome was very popular as a brawler during the early periods. It's not coincidence that the Stalker, not any other chassis, became the popular 6PPC platform.

I can give you 3 reasons as to why:
Pre-skill tree the 20% bonus to threshold and 15% bonus to cooling didn't exist, and giant head hitbox meant instant death.

When the skill trees started it was 2.5% bonuses. Then 5... then 8...then 10... and now 15 and 20 while most other aspects are up to 55%.

Then, there was delayed convergence. Where the attempt to fire a weapon required around 1 second of "aiming" at the target to calibrate the convergence and if you fired early your shot could go around the target or X criss cross in front of it without ever hitting it.

6 PPC Awesomes started as early as September, but repair and rearm prevented them from being remotely viable as did delayed convergence. With R&R's removal they became more popular just before the arrival of the Stalker. It was worth noting however that a 6 PPC Awesome, while powerful, was a joke build that people laughed at. It shut down immediately after firing, and until the overheat rewrite of January 2013, hitting above 103% heat was instant suicide. To even fire 6 PPCs with an Awesome you had to stop for if you fired while moving more than 20 kph chances are you'd self-destruct...unless your armor went more into your heatsinks and even then you weren't likely to be practical.

Come January 2013, the "override" system began to actually override rather than be the old MWO method of "avoiding the RNG" shutdown of 90%+ heat, where heat containment originally increased that RNG shutdown now HC increased maximum firing threshold before shutdown.

The 6 PPC Stalker became possible, but delayed convergence made it a joke mech even still.

Then host state rewind was introduced some two or three months later. It absolutely required the removal of delayed convergence.

Ever since, the 6 PPC became quite popular with instant pinpoint.

Mcgral18, on 02 October 2014 - 07:31 PM, said:

Magical
Instantaneous
Perfectly
Pinpoint
Convergence

Is exactly what I'm referring to. Because even with the heat system we have or gained, it was a joke. Until HSR and the removal of delayed convergence.
Here. The lasers that try to fire at me are converged on the distance (bottom of the screen) and as they adjust, they try to tighten to a specific point but end up creating several different streaks of scorched dirt (instead of just one like we get now).

Spoiler

Meanwhile this is what we have now.



This is taken about 1 shot apart with a very minor adjustment. At one point during the same shot in the second picture, the above happened repeatedly. Instantly converged to the sky, instantly converged on the foot, back and forth despite the blatant defilement of physics here (the beams are shooting out of the sides of the emitters with no regard for the lenses).

Edited by Koniving, 02 October 2014 - 08:22 PM.

[jaxjace]

Kiiyor, on 02 October 2014 - 06:49 PM, said:

With gentle finesse, Stalkerdude coaxed his crosshairs until they pointed just over the heart of his target. Muttering a final prayer to the gods of convergence, he squeezed the trigger. Half a heartbeat later, 6 recently buffed azure blobs of death screamed out over the landscape and impacted spectacularly in the general area he was aiming at. With a comically large hole in its chest, the enemy Hunchback toppled slowly to the ground.

Stalkerdude cheered jubilantly as the sudden heatspike caused the paint to peel from his mech. A heartbeat later, the crippling heat overwhelmed the piteous attempt at containment made by his not-quite-double heat sinks, and his giant walking phallus offered one final whining groan before it shut down... as Stalkerdude knew it would.

You can't be a member of the hexa club without being prepared.

First things first; extinguisher. Most hexa pilots panicked the first time they caught fire, but for Stalker dude it was old-hat.

With a resigned sigh, Stalkerdude then flipped the catch on his harness and reached for the duffel he had packed earlier. Passport, spare clothes, three days of food and water were all as he left them, but he checked them again anyway out of habit.

Stepping to the rear of his cockpit, he threw the internal locks on his boarding hatch, and stepped out into outside air that was still oppressively warm despite the near freezing ambient temperatures. Careful to avoid direct contact with any still glowing surfaces, he gingerly made his way down the boarding ladder on his mech and stepped off, his boots crunching through sand that had been blast heated to glass, or 'Alpha glass' as his fellow hexa pilots referred to it.

Any other pilot in the same situation would likely have run sprinting for cover at that stage, as the battle still raged fiercely around him, but Stalkerdude was more than familiar with this kind of danger. Familiar enough to have bred contempt for it. Whistling a jaunty tune he had picked up after his last alpha strike, he set off in a bee line towards the spaceport his lance had arrived at only hours before.

The return trip took three days, but he wasn't in a hurry. He passed the time on his trek using his ancient six shooter to fill the local wildlife with holes, fantasising that the almost-squirrels he was dispatching were goons, and cheering in particular delight whenever he managed to bring down any of the local bird life. "EAT LEAD, LOWTAX!" he would cheer, then chuckle at his own cleverness.

Eventually, he walked into the spaceport, bypassing the front desk, as he had purchased his ticket in advance. He was excited; it was a long time since he'd last been to Solaris.

Months passed, and turned into years. Eventually though, his chrono beeped at him, telling him it was time. So he returned.

He traced a return path that almost exactly traced his boot prints from before. He was mildly surprised to see that some of the bird carcasses remained. Big suckers, he thought, but seeing their bones still made him chuckle.

All too soon, he was back at the foot of his mech, with the original battle still bizarrely raging around him. He tucked a picture into his pocket, and as he began to climb, the faces of his new children and beautiful wife warmed him almost as much as the still hot armor plating on his mech.

Settling into his command couch, he fastened his harness just as ol' Betty informed him that heat was back below shutdown levels, and settled his mind back into war mode as his displays flickered to life around him.

An instant after his HUD appeared a priority target was designated; there was a Centurion less than four hundred meters from him, STANDING STILL. Mentally chastising himself for using capital letters (even in his own head), he nonetheless coaxed his crosshairs into place, a familiar excitement building in him as he took half a breath and held it before he gently squeezed the trigger...

And missed.

With a dramatic sigh, he rolled his eyes (which is difficult to do when their moisture has been flash-evaporated) and reached for his duffel again. He had heard that Luthien was lovely this time of year.

That is the funniest thing ive ever seen on here.

[Chronojam]

Koniving, on 02 October 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

I can give you 3 reasons as to why:
Pre-skill tree the 20% bonus to threshold and 15% bonus to cooling didn't exist, and giant head hitbox meant instant death.

When the skill trees started it was 2.5% bonuses. Then 5... then 8...then 10... and now 15 and 20 while most other aspects are up to 55%.

Then, there was delayed convergence. Where the attempt to fire a weapon required around 1 second of "aiming" at the target to calibrate the convergence and if you fired early your shot could go around the target or X criss cross in front of it without ever hitting it.

6 PPC Awesomes started as early as September, but repair and rearm prevented them from being remotely viable as did delayed convergence. With R&R's removal they became more popular just before the arrival of the Stalker. It was worth noting however that a 6 PPC Awesome, while powerful, was a joke build that people laughed at. It shut down immediately after firing, and until the overheat rewrite of January 2013, hitting above 103% heat was instant suicide. To even fire 6 PPCs with an Awesome you had to stop for if you fired while moving more than 20 kph chances are you'd self-destruct...unless your armor went more into your heatsinks and even then you weren't likely to be practical.

Come January 2013, the "override" system began to actually override rather than be the old MWO method of "avoiding the RNG" shutdown of 90%+ heat, where heat containment originally increased that RNG shutdown now HC increased maximum firing threshold before shutdown.

The 6 PPC Stalker became possible, but delayed convergence made it a joke mech even still.

Then host state rewind was introduced some two or three months later. It absolutely required the removal of delayed convergence.

Ever since, the 6 PPC became quite popular with instant pinpoint.

Wow, that's quite the history. That means that the supposed terror of the 6PPC Stalker was not a foregone conclusion, and in fact, its moderate utility was the result of happenstance. This leads me to believe that there was clearly no need to introduce such convoluted new mechanics when we can clearly trace the hexastalker's lineage down through a particular series of buffs, tweaks, fixes.

[Quick n Fast]

Chronojam, on 02 October 2014 - 06:54 PM, said:

system that is poorly explained and requires third party sites to understand.

when did www.mwomercs.com become a 3rd party site..? Ima sure they explained it pretty well when they posted this...
http://mwomercs.com/...cale-the-maths/
they even added pics to make the math easier for u to understand...

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

What about the 9 ERPPC Direwhale? lol

[Chronojam]

Kahnawake MechMaster Prime, on 02 October 2014 - 08:11 PM, said:

when did www.mwomercs.com become a 3rd party site..? Ima sure they explained it pretty well when they posted this...
http://mwomercs.com/...cale-the-maths/
they even added pics to make the math easier for u to understand...

"Shar Wolf likes this" but I sure don't. At the time Ghost Heat was rolled out, the PPC and ERPPC had independent max alpha thresholds. That is to say, you could fire 2xPPC 2xERPPC without penalty.

Those tables you see in that thread, "The numbers you really want?" Those weren't posted until the next month, but the thread was not actually bumped, and it's not stickied.

Of course, it was last updated in August 2013. We're talking, a full year before Clan weapons come into play. What's the heat penalty for firing four SSRM4s? Better check with Smurfy's mech lab. In fact, what's the heat penalty for firing four IS SRM4s? Better check with Smurfy again, because the original post you've linked to would answer "Nothing" -- it's a year out of date and wasn't updated over that time to account for max-alpha adjustments.

And, of course, you would have had to dig up IGP Daemur's thread from September (the following month)from the General Discussion archive to understand how the AC/2 chainfire penalty came into play. Then, you have the impact that the Fast Fire perk might cause.

But of course, that thread is a little misleading unless you read through the entire thread, because the OP was never updated. The contents of the pages that follow have information that was never posted elsewhere, the thread was never stickied, never bumped, etc.

[Chronojam]

Wait a second, Kahnawake MechMaster Prime, were you trying to help me by giving a Prime example of how the MWOMercs site is an unreliable resource that actively combines with Ghost Heat to mislead players about their heat efficiency if they don't rely on third party sources...? If so, bravo.

[Xanquil]

Mcgral18, on 02 October 2014 - 07:31 PM, said:

Magical
Instantaneous
Perfectly
Pinpoint
Convergence

100% the problem, as so many people have pointed out over the years. One that needs to be addressed, but in all likely hood never will. sadly

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I'm on board for reducing Heat Capacity to 30. I have more as to how I'd go about doing that for implementation, but the basic idea is 30 heat for all and I won't go into more details about that for this post.


So to add to this idea of a universal cap at 30, have an automatic shutdown when above that value; until heat drops back below 30 no ifs, ands or buts.



So going with the idea of the PPC boat with existing Heat Scale (Ghost Heat) we'd see this:

An 8 PPC BLR-3M would gain 320.10 heat on an Alpha. It would take 2 minutes and 10 seconds to get below 30 heat.

A 9 ERPPC DWF would gain 467.78 heat on an Alpha an would take 2 minutes and 20 seconds to get below 30 heat.

So then also add Internal Structure damage for each second above 30 heat. At one point of damage a second that can lead to 130 damage to the PPC boating Battlemaster and 140 damage to the ERPPC boating Direwolf.

Edited by Praetor Knight, 03 October 2014 - 09:44 AM.

[Deathlike]

Here's some math.

At the height of the PPC meta, PPC heat was @ 8 heat. Currently, it is @ 10 heat.

6 PPCs * 8 heat each = 48 pts of heat generated per shot.

Having a 250+ engine or greater...

30 heat (base engine capacity) + 20 heat (additional heat capacity from DHS) = 50 heat

This is before we add in all the DHS you can think of... and before efficiencies are added in.

Let this settle in before we talking about the disaster known as the stock Masakari-Prime...

[Vassago Rain]

10/10 OP.

[Ultimax]

My understanding of Heat Scale was not that it was implemented to curb "big alphas" in a broad sense.

But that it was implemented to curb the simplest version of one-click, one weapon type (or similar enough to be almost the same) boated alphas.

So you would be allowed to combine different weapons, with different cooldowns, potentially different ranges and potentially different delivery mechanics, and instead forces different build directions as opposed to the ease of a 4x PPC stalker that doesn't need anything but heatsinks, and engine, and 1 mouse button.


Even now the Dual Gauss + Laser Spam DWF does not hit the same way that a quad or hexa PPC strike would.

The different beams have different ranges, often different burn times - is damage that can be spread and are being combined with Gauss which is on a different recycle with a different firing mechanic.



I don't think Heat Scale was the perfect solution, but I also don't think it was as big a deal as everyone goes on and on about.



Isn't a round of fire in TT 10s?

You can have, and stagger fire, quad PPCs right now, in less than 1/3rd that time.

10s is plenty of time, to use even 6 PPCs and suffer 0 heat scale.


So that doesn't punish "stock builds". They can still fire all of their weapons in well under 10s compared to stock TT firing times.

You can't ALPHA your entire loadout 4x in the space of 10s, but that's not what the Stock build was designed to do in the first place.