81 replies to this topic

[Dirus Nigh]

Mecharrior sense day one has always been about the alpha.

Even in Battletech players want to maneuver their mechs into position so they can fire all their weapons at a target for the most effect.

[KraftySOT]

Dirus Nigh, on 09 December 2014 - 12:11 PM, said:

Mecharrior sense day one has always been about the alpha.

Even in Battletech players want to maneuver their mechs into position so they can fire all their weapons at a target for the most effect.

Which unless the target is immobile, wont all hit, let alone, the same location.

Theres two kinds of "alpha strikes" theres, firing all your weapons, IE The TT Alpha...and, firing like weapons into a single hit location, IE, the PC Alpha.

Whereas in the TT, an alpha of 6 ERLL or 1 AC20, 3 SRM6, 4 Medium lasers, is the same thing....here in PC land...6 ERLL would be a great alpha, and splat, cannon, and lasers, is a bad alpha. You can get some 90 point alphas on some mechs...Battlemasters...Banshees...but theyre no where near as good as the 60 point alpha you get from all pulse lasers.

In the TT, moar is better, generally.

Here, more of the same is better, generally. If accuracy was more TT like, the diverse build with higher total damage and DPS would be the better bet, over the accurate pin point nature of a bunch of ACs, or PPCs, or Lasers, or a cubic asston of Splat, with artemis.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 December 2014 - 12:19 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

KraftySOT, on 09 December 2014 - 12:17 PM, said:

BLA BLA BLA "correction" were it was not needed at all.

No **** Sherlock.

[KraftySOT]

The point is that the game should emulate TT results...not the rest of it, I get that...but the results...need to be the same.

That they arent, means something is amiss.

Ive never cared if a medium laser does 3 damage or 5 damage or 400 damage...so long as the end results are accurately translated from the TT, to here.

If you have a situation where, the AC2 is useless in the TT, but a premier weapon here, or its better to take an LRM5 rather than an LRM10...or theres pop tarting...etc...things need to shift to be in line with the results of the TT.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 December 2014 - 12:26 PM.

[Abivard]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 December 2014 - 07:30 AM, said:

I'm sorry have I ever lobbied against LRMs? I love Alpha Striking and support strong LRMs.

Oh wow, since you haven't done it, no one else has ever done it?

Apologists and enablers are just as bad as the perpetrators themselves.

[Molossian Dog]

Dirus Nigh, on 09 December 2014 - 12:11 PM, said:

Mecharrior sense day one has always been about the alpha.

Even in Battletech players want to maneuver their mechs into position so they can fire all their weapons at a target for the most effect.

Party true. EDIT Partly, of course. But I couldn´t make myself delete a sentence that goes like "party true!"

But in a usual BT TT game you shoot alot, but you don´t alpha all the time. You maneuver alot and try to gain the upper hand in something like a skirmish. You take potshots until you get reasonable to-hit numbers or got lucky and damaged something seriously. Then you close in and alpha. And hope the 1-2 rounds which you can alpha without blowing up are enough to take out your target.

As a rule of thumb alphas are made in one of three situations:
1.) You are going to die anyways.
2.) You are sure you cannot be seriously threatend next turn.
3.) You outmaneuvered the enemy and your shots are easy. See above.

This is considerably different from the gameplay we see online, where it is "Oh, there is a target ALPHA, ALPHA, ALPHA!" Mainly due to pin-point. And while I understand MWO is not BT-Online, if you think about it, from a tactical perspective it kind of sounds fun, doesn´t it?

There are Mechs that can alpha each round without drawbacks, but those are few and far in between. As they can´t ramp up their damage output when the opportunity presents itself, they are often refered to as "oversinked".

Edited by Molossian Dog, 09 December 2014 - 03:17 PM.

[Krivvan]

DaFurryFury, on 08 December 2014 - 10:57 PM, said:

I get that but should it really be so easy? It should at least put you at risk of overheating unless you have forgone additional firepower for heatsinks.

Because if you're mildly decent you'll avoid overheating easily. You just need to memorize a few numbers and you'll never overheat. So it's not as if sustained fire reduces your chance for overheating.

Chain-firing and playing for sustained fire doesn't reduce the amount of heat you make, it just spreads it out and is a crutch. Unless you absolutely need to make a shot immediately, why spread it out?

[Wolf Ender]

Roland, on 09 December 2014 - 09:29 AM, said:

Back in MW4, our fights generally lasted between 30 and 60 minutes in league matches. They were much more drawn out affairs on much larger maps.

those were the best games ever. MWO is such crap in comparison to the adrenaline we got from those games. much more frustration from losing, much more celebration when you win.

[Lily from animove]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 December 2014 - 11:11 AM, said:

Ok Valid, However Sinks are much more efficient on TT than they are here. However Both sides go in that abstract 10 seconds which isn't really true in this medium. Both sides are finished with the dancing part in 5 seconds and should have 3-5 seconds to vent the heat tops. SO if I am a laser boat I will run hotter than if I am a Ballistic Mech, and if I mix the weapons right, I should be able to be heat neutral. Like The Thug a Dual PPC dual SRM6 Mech that actually has an Excess of sinks to heat. I made a Thug out of a Pretty Baby... It did not work at all as intended... a cool running zombie beast

yes you cna as said be heat neutral, yet that does not mean you alph, because basically you could fire weapons for 30 heat, cooldown 5 seconds, fire antother weapons for 30 heat. if you have enough DHS. so heat neutral emans, after those 10 secs your heat is where it was before and you fired all the weapons, yet translated into RL sequential fighting Heatneutral is not alph-able. basically 4 ERPPC would be heat neutral with 30DHS, yet you can not fire them at the same tiem since this would exceed your max allowed heat treshold. you would probably fire 2 at time 0 and another 2 at 5 seconds. ending at 10 seconds with 0 heat.

Krivvan, on 09 December 2014 - 03:16 PM, said:

Because if you're mildly decent you'll avoid overheating easily. You just need to memorize a few numbers and you'll never overheat. So it's not as if sustained fire reduces your chance for overheating.

Chain-firing and playing for sustained fire doesn't reduce the amount of heat you make, it just spreads it out and is a crutch. Unless you absolutely need to make a shot immediately, why spread it out?

spreading out is not only bad by placing conentrated fire, spreading also means less time in cover, or better said, more time in a open fireline to eat damage yourself, thats why constant fire is a bad thing in MWO that is to be avoided. Not eating those 2 AC 5's flying in your direction is more important than landing a single ML more on the opponent.

Edited by Lily from animove, 09 December 2014 - 03:43 PM.

[zagibu]

Mcgral18, on 09 December 2014 - 08:57 AM, said:

Not with lasers.

Fire a single laser, take out 5. Fire another, 15 gone. That cERLL with the 1.5s burn would excel at this.

Then deathstar at the next convenient time for 50 damage.

Except when they were in cover, like trenches or buildings. For that, you'd need missiles or flamers.

But yeah, you have a point, a laserboat would probably be the best allrounder, good against mechs, good against AI units. But at least you can torso twist against a laser vomit build (I know it doesn't help THAT much, but still better than facing a 2PPC 2Gauss or other front-loaded builds).

[Bulvar Jorgensson]

Why can there not be a system in place where If you fire all your weapons in an Alpha, you shut down PERIOD, for say 3 secs (give or take up to 5) no matter where you are in the utter crap Ghost heat system we have....it is as if you have over cooked your mechs circuit boards, computer system or some other reason.

if you do this when your heat scale is high enough, you shut down and damage your CT internals.

Making the weapons reticle dance about the more weapons you fire would be a good idea, yes you can fire those 5 er small lasers but the reticle is going to dance about like your jump jetting on the up stream.

this can then get built into mech quirks, 3 lasers fired no shake on a NOVA, 4,5 or 6 lasers fired Slight shake possible hitting 2/3 areas, fire more your and your reticle is all over the shop, your effectively firing blind.

heat then becomes a non issue as it is more about less weapon vomit, more accuracy.

Edited by Bulvar Jorgensson, 09 December 2014 - 04:12 PM.

[zagibu]

Would be easy to circumvent, add 1 small laser that you don't fire with the others together.

[terrycloth]

It's all about the alpha because mice only have two to three buttons that are convenient to use. Mine has a fourth that's annoying to use and technically a fifth that's essentially impossible (the mouse wheel).

Because people move and use cover, instead of moving and then standing still for you to move and shoot them like in TT, you need to be able to dump as much firepower as possible in the second or two that they're visible. So if you have a chain-fire weapon group, it's because you only have one or two actual weapon groups and can spare one for the edge case where it's both possible and makes sense.

Or your mech is an overheating piece of crap and after an alpha or two needs to switch to chain fire to get any damage out and hopefully finish off or discourage an attacker. I'm looking at you Atlas-S.

(oh, and the Huggin isn't heat-neutral anymore -- when you triple the rate of fire on a pair of SRM4s they start actually generating noticeable heat)

Edited by terrycloth, 09 December 2014 - 04:26 PM.

[TexAce]

Quote

Paul, in ATD #43 said

Answer from Paul: There are no current plans to change the heat threshold towards TT values. Are we hard set against it? No, just at the moment there’s no need to do this.

Playing with a higher rate of cooling makes a lot more builds become heat neutral. A lot of heat neutral builds results in mid-range damage applied at a constant rate over time. This mechanism would be highly exploited by those with knowledge of building efficient heat neutral Mechs.

reading this makes me angry. it shows whats wrong with Paul, I would have fired him for that.

[jaxjace]

DaFurryFury, on 08 December 2014 - 10:40 PM, said:

It's probably just that I'm never a fan of insta-Gib strategies because in my experience with gaming those are usually the most overpowered builds. Currently the mechs I have the most success with are AC20 builds, Gauss builds, LPL builds, etc etc.... Will I ever be able to pull out my dusty Blackjack with AC/2s or cycled pulse lasers or my hunch4sp or anything similar again?

These mechs have been given quirks to bring them up to par,

DPS mechs are rarer yes, but can be potentially more deadly as these guys tend to have a couple of things going for them, (maneuverability, kill assists, cockpit shake, etc.)

Ac2s SRMS streaks machine guns, small pulse, small lasers,
These are viable weapons, but there is a time and a place,
namely, after the alpha mechs go in and poke holes.

you want to be a DPS mech? fine, just dont lead the charge. You are the Mr. Wolf of MWO,

the cleaner.

See just how OP that dire with 3 gauss is when your under his guns spraying him with six machine guns.

[Tarogato]

Alistair Winter, on 08 December 2014 - 11:04 PM, said:

Another important reason is the fact that your mech is basically as effective when operating at 90% heat capacity as 0% capacity. Unlike TT rules, the MWO game mechanics do not make your mech slower and harder to pilot when they're close to overheating.

Man, I would love to see some TT heatscale elements added to MWO. It would really making sustained fire builds more viable and increase TTK nicely.

[SCHLIMMER BESTIMMER XXX]

FupDup, on 08 December 2014 - 11:11 PM, said:

I appreciate the intentions of heat effects, but in the current gameplay it's extremely easy to climb up that heat scale, even with lots of DHS spam.

In TT, all you had to do to manage heat was to do a simple two variable subtraction of (Total Weapon Heat Per Turn - Total Cooling Ability) to determine how much heat you'd generate. Staying just under the first penalty (of 5 heat) was actually very very easy. I'd say the ideal amount of "heat per turn" would be somewhere around 1-4 points of net heat.

In TT, you could fire a PPC with 10 SHS and not have any penalties at all, you'd be at zero on the heat scale (if immobile). You could also design a cheese Clan assault mech to have 30 DHS and 4 ERPPCs, fire all of them in one turn, and end that turn with your heat scale still reading zero.


TL;DR: Making heat efficient mechs and managing heat in TT were very easy. But in MWO, we jump straight up the scale and cool off slowly over time instead of performing a math subtraction for what had the gameplay effect of "instant cooling".

The moral of the story is that we'd have to make it a lot harder to overheat if we wanted to make heat penalties work in MWO. Otherwise, heat-generating weaponry would be gimped fairly hard and maybe that fabled ballistic meta would come true for once.

Still too long.Dont read.

[Khobai]

Quote

I get that but should it really be so easy? It should at least put you at risk of overheating unless you have forgone additional firepower for heatsinks.

No it shouldnt be. We have a mechanic to limit alphastrikes: ghost heat. Ghost heat is an awful mechanic, I know, but for the time being its all we have. I wish that wasnt the case but sadly it is.

The only reason ghost heat isnt working is because PGI got lazy with upkeeping it. They allowed too many weapons to be fired in certain groups and they didnt link the right weapons together to prevent abuse.

Link all lasers together in the same ghost heat group and nerf the IS laser quirks and youll see this laser vomit crap stop real fast. Game would go back to mixed ballistics/lasers then, but at least thats preferable to laser vomit.

Edited by Khobai, 05 February 2016 - 09:05 AM.

[Catra Lanis]

I've not used an alpha for 6 months on any of my mechs and I still do decently. In fact I unbound the button to use for other purposes. They should make it so an alpha is instant shutdown. It's meant to be a coup de grace or a desperate last ditch measure, not the default firing mode.

[Cementi]

FupDup, on 08 December 2014 - 10:43 PM, said:

Nobody builds sustained fire mechs because PGI made them almost impossible to build in the first place. This is the reason why MWO's heat system is the way it is. From the Book of Paul, Chapter 10, Verse 3:
[color=#CCCCCC]
Paul, in ATD #43 said:[/color]
[color=#959595]

Answer from Paul: There are no current plans to change the heat threshold towards TT values. Are we hard set against it? No, just at the moment there’s no need to do this.

Playing with a higher rate of cooling makes a lot more builds become heat neutral. A lot of heat neutral builds results in mid-range damage applied at a constant rate over time. This mechanism would be highly exploited by those with knowledge of building efficient heat neutral Mechs.[/color]



Translation: Steady damage over time is "exploitative" but huge spikes of instant damage are not, apparently.

Wait.....wtf he actually said that.........

So basicly no hope of ever getting a proper heat scale.

*edit* ok it did not quote the quote.....forum warrior fail.

Edited by Cementi, 05 February 2016 - 12:14 PM.