348 replies to this topic

[kapusta11]

Why not THIS to resolve pinpoint alpha problem http://mwomercs.com/...61#entry3784861

[Eglar]

KuroNyra, on 03 October 2014 - 01:19 PM, said:

When you face a BoomJaegger, or a AC/10 boat. You do.
Same goes for Laser boats.

usually he's got a problem when that happens. But then again you'd have to be a light or get headshot to get one-shot from a boom-jaeger, what's the big deal?

Mcgral18, on 03 October 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

It's the root of every balancing nightmare in MWO, bar the splash damage of 15+ damage per SRM.
It's lead to gauss charge, ghost heat, small and med lasers getting their heat boosted. HoverJets™ are a direct result of it, although it had its own share of issues.

tbh, except for ghost heat maybe, I found all the other changes reasonable. And they don't all stem from Pin-point damage. JJs the way they used to be were simply over-powered for one ton investment on an assault flying that high. W/O pin-point people would just jump-laser. While the solution provided by PGI might not have been the best I am not against it either.
And Gauss Charge... c'mon dude, really?

[Mcgral18]

Eglar, on 07 October 2014 - 12:10 PM, said:

tbh, except for ghost heat maybe, I found all the other changes reasonable. And they don't all stem from Pin-point damage. JJs the way they used to be were simply over-powered for one ton investment on an assault flying that high. W/O pin-point people would just jump-laser. While the solution provided by PGI might not have been the best I am not against it either.
And Gauss Charge... c'mon dude, really?

Does 200% SL heat still make sense? We don't only have SHS anymore, I think we can do away with that, the ML, MPL and cMPL heat nerfs pretty safely.

As for Jump laser...how would that work effectively without pinpoint, let's assume parallel? Nova might get a nice enough grouping, but that would still hit two hitboxes on most mechs. HGN 732 could probably still get good groupings.

Besides, the HoverJet™ issue/nerf came about because of too much control over JJs, didn't it? MWLL doesn't have nearly as much control over the height of your jumps, and you are also open to return fire when you pause at the apex. I feel that's a half decent system (which also generates a fair bit of heat) that has a fairly high risk, and the potential of high rewards if you surprised them.

Gauss charge hasn't affected dual gauss all that much, just a 0.75 delay. A 5-6 second cooldown, the ability to fire one at a time, no charge (with a .5 delay between additional gauss?) seems like a decent alternative. Single mounts aren't always worth the hassle with the current method, while this doesn't hurt them in that regard. Also slower recycle and lower damage than the AC20, so it's not obsolete either.
The 30 damage 2km/s alpha is what caused that nerf, no? That is attributed to Pinpoint, no? Not a hard thing to workaround, but different alternatives were available.

Edited by Mcgral18, 07 October 2014 - 12:27 PM.

[Alek Ituin]

CompproB237, on 07 October 2014 - 11:57 AM, said:

We did some basic calculations on a 30 hard cap for heat. We determined that the 'Dragon Slayer meta-build' from a while back (2x PPC, 2x AC/5 3t ammo, max Jump Jets, Standard 275, 14 'total' DHS). Lets assume DHS does 0.2 HPS giving 2.8 HPS sinking.
First Alpha: 22 Heat (73 1/3%)
Cooldown on AC/5s of 1.66s
Next 2xAC/5 shot you're at 17.352 heat, adds 2 heat, 19.352 heat (64.51%)
The pilot could fire one PPC but probably want to wait especially if any other factors in this (dissipation rate modifiers like location temperature)
At this point the Dragon Slayer pilot could fire the 2xAC/5s indefinitely and slowly cool off.
It would take roughly 5 shots of both AC/5s from the initial alpha before the heat has been reduced enough to where the 2x PPC could be fired again.
That's roughly 8.3 seconds using current values.

Lets say this Dragon Slayer pilot was jump jet sniping instead of standing still.
Jump jetting: 3.41 HPS * 3.5 seconds = 11.955 Heat - 2.8 HPS sinking = 0.616 HPS generated by JJ = 2.155 heat at peak of jump
Initial Alpha: 10x2 + 1x2 = 22 heat + 2.155 from JJ = 24.155 heat (80.52%)
They fall to the ground.
It would take them 8.63 seconds after firing before they've sinked off the heat they generated and be able to fire again.

That's a hell of a lot better than it is now:
66.72 Threshold on temperate map on same 'Mech
This allows the 'poptart' to jump and fall, rinse and repeat 5 times before overheating on the 5th time. This is over the span of 35 seconds. Obviously I'm kind of guessing on JJ heat generation and burn time/cooldown time numbers (I just assumed 3.5 seconds). I've watched a video of this build and it's pretty close. During that 35 seconds they've dished out 150 Damage or 4.286 DPS.

Compare that to the 30 Hard Cap same build. It is only able to do this just under 3 times in that same duration. 36.4 seconds is 3 times it can Alpha. We'll use this for our 'DPS' calculation and we get: 90 Damage in 36.4 seconds or 2.473 DPS. This is roughly a 42.3% reduction in DPS. Without changing any damage values on weapons.

Add in Heat Penalties and that Dragon Slayer meta-build wouldn't want to push their heat to the limit at all. You're talking maybe 2 jumps if they're feeling lucky, 1 if they want to avoid the penalties. Even your first scenario would be further cut down by the pilot's own willingness to push their Mech to Heat levels that high.

30 Heat cap with Heat Penalties would solve a disproportionately large amount of problems for its simplicity.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 07 October 2014 - 12:35 PM.

[Eglar]

Mcgral18, on 07 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

Does 200% SL heat still make sense? We don't only have SHS anymore, I think we can do away with that, the ML, MPL and cMPL heat nerfs pretty safely.

As for Jump laser...how would that work effectively without pinpoint, let's assume parallel? Nova might get a nice enough grouping, but that would still hit two hitboxes on most mechs. HGN 732 could probably still get good groupings.

Besides, the HoverJet™ issue/nerf came about because of too much control over JJs, didn't it? MWLL doesn't have nearly as much control over the height of your jumps, and you are also open to return fire when you pause at the apex. I feel that's a half decent system (which also generates a fair bit of heat) that has a fairly high risk, and the potential of high rewards if you surprised them.

Gauss charge hasn't affected dual gauss all that much, just a 0.75 delay. A 5-6 second cooldown, the ability to fire one at a time, no charge (with a .5 delay between additional gauss?) seems like a decent alternative. Single mounts aren't always worth the hassle with the current method, while this doesn't hurt them in that regard. Also slower recycle and lower damage than the AC20, so it's not obsolete either.
The 30 damage 2km/s alpha is what caused that nerf, no? That is attributed to Pinpoint, no? Not a hard thing to workaround, but different alternatives were available.

I never played MWLL but I've always been playing a JJ Bj with 2erll and 4erml or Bj1 with 1ac20 and 3mlas or Jenner with 6mlas, jump-shooting Lasers. And yes, they were good. So good that it absolutely made no sense to pick the bj1x, oxide in fact any non-jj mechs if there was a JJ variant available (ctf-3d being a prime example).

While I am not saying that the JJ solution PGI provided is the perfect one, I didn't find them bad either in terms of general game-balance.

[Mcgral18]

Eglar, on 07 October 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

I never played MWLL but I've always been playing a JJ Bj with 2erll and 4erml or Bj1 with 1ac20 and 3mlas or Jenner with 6mlas, jump-shooting Lasers. And yes, they were good. So good that it absolutely made no sense to pick the bj1x, oxide in fact any non-jj mechs if there was a JJ variant available (ctf-3d being a prime example).

While I am not saying that the JJ solution PGI provided is the perfect one, I didn't find them bad either in terms of general game-balance.

That's the thing, without the pinpoint convergence, your Jenner is doing 15 damage to each ST, instead of 30 to the CT (ignore spread) if you alpha them. Convergence has a large effect on the Jump Lasing(?), just as much as it would on FLD weapons (SRMs aside, already spread)

The JJs work fairly differently, but no mechlab made tweaking easier in MWLL. Tapping it brought you a fair bit or height, or distance, at a fair bit of heat. Jumpsniping would quickly overheat you with PPCs or lasers.

No reticule shake made it easy to do, but you were completely open to return fire, unlike in MWO where you could precisely control how high you jump (and as you say, on very few JJs) which made it fairly low risk.


HoverJets simply made them not worth taking on anything heavy, other than bunnyhopping. HGN is a sad example at 90 tons, and 2 tons per JJ.

Edited by Mcgral18, 07 October 2014 - 12:45 PM.

[Xanquil]

I use to be for reducing heat cap ad increasing dissipation, but then I figured out it would make heat penalties last for a much shorter time.(when they get added) And as a result would be counter productive to adding a penalty based heat scale.
It also doesn't get rid of the perfect instant convergent alpha problem, which is the base of the issues we have anyway.
Get rid of the "magic alpha" and you can lower the heat every weapon generates,(some more than others). And when we get a penalty based heat system, the accuracy penalty will have a point to it.

Heat isn't a viable way to restrict alpha damage, as ghost heat has proven.

[Alek Ituin]

Xanquil, on 07 October 2014 - 01:47 PM, said:

I use to be for reducing heat cap ad increasing dissipation, but then I figured out it would make heat penalties last for a much shorter time.(when they get added) And as a result would be counter productive to adding a penalty based heat scale.
It also doesn't get rid of the perfect instant convergent alpha problem, which is the base of the issues we have anyway.
Get rid of the "magic alpha" and you can lower the heat every weapon generates,(some more than others). And when we get a penalty based heat system, the accuracy penalty will have a point to it.

Heat isn't a viable way to restrict alpha damage, as ghost heat has proven.

Having a cap that prevents you from firing enough weapons to actually perform a "magic alpha" does actually restrict alpha damage.

Even with true doubles and the resultant increase in dissipation, Heat Penalties can still be a significant reason to keep your Mech cooler than normal. You can even have penalties last longer than the actual heat, due to "secondary damage" or something.


Restricting weaponry and firing mechanics does nothing but add more unnecessary and arbitrary BS to a game already inundated with unnecessary and arbitrary BS. So TL;DR - How about no?

[Xanquil]

Alek Ituin, on 07 October 2014 - 01:56 PM, said:

Having a cap that prevents you from firing enough weapons to actually perform a "magic alpha" does actually restrict alpha damage.

Even with true doubles and the resultant increase in dissipation, Heat Penalties can still be a significant reason to keep your Mech cooler than normal. You can even have penalties last longer than the actual heat, due to "secondary damage" or something.


Restricting weaponry and firing mechanics does nothing but add more unnecessary and arbitrary BS to a game already inundated with unnecessary and arbitrary BS. So TL;DR - How about no?

Even if you reduce the cap to 20 you would still have the "magic alpha" but with ballistic weapons. The problem would just be shifted to different weapons. with no real change to the system except removing the option to have a penalty based heat system.

Lowering the heat cap would only really effects energy based weapons. Sadly ghost heat works better than lowering the heat cap would ever in restricting alpha strikes. And it still does a lousy job of that.

In order to get rid of ghost heat and put in a penalty based heat scale the underlining problem needs to be fixed first. And that is and has been that every weapon fired at the same time hits and hits the same location. This is the core problem tat needs to be addressed. Once it is Ghost heat can be removed and heat scale penalties can be added.
But until the"magic alpha" is changed every other "additional system" added will only be avoiding of the problem. Also known as "putting a band-aid on the problem".