F4T 4L brings up an interesting point in that it's practically impossible to fully "port" the mechanics of a game designed for table top into a video game without sacrificing
some fidelity. Where I take issue with this is people taking that to the logical extreme and contending that "because it's impossible to get 100% fidelity of translation, let's throw everything out the window".
Whatever the case, it's clear that both Ghost Heat (to combat hugely bloated heatscale) and Quirks (to combat the consequences of massively bloated firing rate against unchanged TT dissipation) are bandaids upon a bandaid solution. Can we agree on this point at least? Hopefully yes.
Taking inspiration from TT mechanics as a basis upon which to attempt to shift the game into a different state (hopefully a better one) is no different from proposing an alternative mechanic. Arguing for a deflated heat capacity and increased dissipation is by no means "TT Purism"; it is an position that perhaps, maybe, that the baseline heat mechanics for MWO are just a
little inflated.
The current heat mechanics encourage boating. Alpha Strikes are an opening salvo, never a last resort. The current quirk mechanics, even more so. Indeed, having different weapons optimised for every range is highly discouraged in MWO, because it reduces efficiency of tonnage due to quirk benefits not being applied; and it reduces the potential of PPFLD due to disparate recharge times/flight times/aiming requirements. One only needs to compare stock builds against Champion builds; or heck, the metamechs builds against stock builds. I contend that the quirkening didn't really introduce chassis diversity; it merely shifted what was top dog around; and that all quirk adjustments will do is simply balkanise new FOTMs instead of encouraging true diversity.
This is also another good point. Zero convergence which is almost expected of shooters pose a problem in MWO, because the Mechwarrior games have always attempted to be more sim than straight FPS. Despite that, nearly all Mechwarrior games have featured zero convergence and in fact MWO has been the only game to date to really try to spread damage around by giving lasers burn time, Gauss travel time instead of hitscan and LRM/SRMs a good amount of scatter.
And yet it's still not enough. Despite all these measures, despite doubled armour and internal structure, it's still not enough. Because players can still put 30+ damage into that same spot, reliably.
A deflated heat cap will go some way towards pushing the energy component of that problem down; but as others have mentioned, dual AC20 and Gauss and massed lighter ACs like the triple AC5 Banshee can neatly sidestep these problems. People have mentioned needing to further nerf Ballistics in those circumstances, because massed Lasers will no longer have the heat efficiency to put that damage into one spot.
All this would be moot if dissipation were buffed, because all of a sudden those heat inefficient methods of damage become a lot more tenable. Firing 2 Large Lasers builds heat in all but the most quirked or undergunned mechs right now. With buffed dissipation, your heatscale would bounce up and down a lot more, but in the end, it may be that Lasers with sufficiently buffed dissipation rate would be flattened into the same kind of heat efficiency as Ballistics.
That being said, I'm a big believer in accommodating more playstyles. Having a hard cap of 30, no exceptions still leaves SHS out in the cold. It may be beneficial to therefore do the following:
Give SHS bonus heat capacity, but only slightly increased dissipation over current MWO baseline. Let's say, 0.5 bonus capacity per heatsink. Dissipation up to 0.15 from 0.1 HPS. In this new rubric, the SHS
HBK-4P now has a heat cap of 0.5 x 23 + 30 = 41.5 capacity, and dissipation of 3.45 (0.15 x 23 = 3.45). Already, the 4P looks like a formidable striker; but it may alpha only once; and from there requires a lot of heat discipline.
Under DHS, we could give it no bonus heat capacity but truedubs; or even higher than truedubs. We'll do both 0.2 HPS/DHS and 0.25 HPS/DHS calculations:
0.2 HPS/DHS yields 30 heat capacity and 3.4 Dissipation. In this case, the SHS is actually
superior to DHS, giving more dissipation (by 0.05 HPS) and ~30% higher heat capacity.
0.25 HPS/DHS yields 30 heat capacity and 4.25 Dissipation. This gives enough dissipation to group-fire 4ML, forever (4.08 HPS vs 4.25 HPS dissipated) and slowly build heat when firing 5ML (building 0.88 HPS per volley at 5.13HPS).
These are just some arbitrary numbers and in no way imply a balanced implementation; but it does pose some food for thought. What's interesting is that
under both rubrics of SHS and DHS the maximum viable alpha has decreased significantly; but the maximum sustained group fire has gone up by a lot.
Further tweaking is required but in my opinion if heat penalties like slowed mech movement/torso twist/arm slewing were put in at ~50-80% heat not even SHS "boats" could put out scary alphas because the effective heat range for which weapons can be safely group fired has been nerfed.
That "strikers" (strong group fire, weak sustain) and "brawlers" (weak group fire, strong sustain) can both be viable in different ways under this revised rubric as opposed to "everyone run DHS or shut down" hopefully demonstrates that even massed lasers can still have a role even if heat capacity were to go down. If anything, increasing dissipation would be
the biggest buff to Energy weapons outside of reducing their heat generation through quirks; which merely give "bonus tonnage" to specific weapons and encourage boating.
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Blue Boutique, on 16 January 2015 - 03:10 AM, said:
