65 replies to this topic

[Summon3r]

should a stock mech in the game not be able to alpha once from zero heat and not shut down?

for example a WHK-PRIME minus its lrm10 cannot alpha its 4 erppc, does that not seem wrong?

[Juodas Varnas]

Well, even in TT some mechs were unable to alpha strike without exploding.
Black Hawk (Nova) being a prime example. Get it? PRIME? Because its Prime variant has 12 ER medium lasers?

Now, when it comes to Masakari (Warhawk), its 4 ERPPCs generate 60 heat (in TT, with no Ghost Heat). It has 20 Double Heatsinks, so 40 heat dissipation. So it does get +20 heat, which might lead to shut downs, or even ammo explosions.

Edited by Juodas Varnas, 13 July 2015 - 10:12 PM.

[One Medic Army]

Summon3r, on 13 July 2015 - 10:07 PM, said:

should a stock mech in the game not be able to alpha once from zero heat and not shut down?

for example a WHK-PRIME minus its lrm10 cannot alpha its 4 erppc, does that not seem wrong?

In TT you alpha'd in a stock war hawk and had a good chance of blowing up your LRM ammo.

Also in TT "alpha striking" was firing all weapons over a period of 10 seconds, not all at once.

[bad arcade kitty]

also tt has twice as less armor levels..

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Summon3r, on 13 July 2015 - 10:07 PM, said:

should a stock mech in the game not be able to alpha once from zero heat and not shut down?

I'd say no. Alpha Strikes should have a degree of desperation, and be highly situational.

So they should be high risk / high reward. Right now the risk is way too low anyway.

Quote

for example a WHK-PRIME minus its lrm10 cannot alpha its 4 erppc, does that not seem wrong?

Actually the one mech that could Alpha four C-ER PPCs with little to no concern is the HellStar and it would still have to make four separate rolls to hit, not hitting the same components.

The Warhawk needs to fire it's ER PPCs in groups.

But, IMHO the base problem is that Heat Capacity is too high and Dissipation is too low for the Heat Generation we have, with most weapons being about 2.5x boosted from their original stats and then Dissipation only getting one Mech Tree Efficiency and some Heat Gen quirks on various separate cases.

[Juodas Varnas]

bad arcade kitty, on 13 July 2015 - 10:16 PM, said:

also tt has twice as less armor levels..

But every single weapon has a separate chance of missing and also the chance of hitting different locations of the mech, instead of a pin-point, perfectly converged 60 damage to the CT.
Also, in MW:O, weapon fire up to 10 times faster than those in TT.

[Summon3r]

good points jsut seems to me even the quirked WHK should be able to run its erppc's far better

[627]

Never played TT but afaik you could alpha at least once in a warhawk.

Nova I don't know, but what's the point of bringing 12 ML when you can't fire them all? If you fire six in this turn and the other 6 in the next turn, you would only need 6 ML. So was that possible, to alpha all 12 and get away with some pilot rolls?

Ok, 12 ER-ML with 5 Heat makes 60 Heat, 18 DHS take away 36 Heat, so in the end you have 24 Heat. No ammo to explode so only shutdown risk. Is that right?

Edited by 627, 13 July 2015 - 10:29 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Summon3r, on 13 July 2015 - 10:25 PM, said:

good points jsut seems to me even the quirked WHK should be able to run its erppc's far better

I agree.

And for me the problem is between Heat Generation and Dissipation, as I mentioned earlier.

So an adjustment to Heat Dissipation and Heat Capacity can go a long way to adjust how much damage is allowed and Quirks can help iron out any problems through testing such changes. And we still have Heat Scale Penalties to adjust as necessary too.

For example, maybe we simply keep all DHS to 0.230, which is what the first 10 true engine Dubs in the engine currently are, which allows for a mech with 24 DHS to dissipate 5.52 heat a second. from the current 4.55 Dissipation with Poor Dubs at their reduced value currently.

So then simply increase the Heat Gen Quirk to a cap of 25%, which in the case of the Warhawk's C-ERPPCs is 11.25 heat each and 2.81 HPS so with a Heat Cap at 28 to 35 could allow for three C-ER PPCs to be fired for 33.75 heat and 8.4375 HPS and have a risk associated with going above that cap value to mimic any heat effects from the original.

Or simply have Heat Scale Penalties eat up a good chunk of current capacity, which sits at ~83.52 according to smurfy's site.

And four ER PPCs would than be potentially fatal to the Warhawk a kin to original effects depending on Cap.

I'd love to do some live testing with some adjusted values!

[Quicksilver Aberration]

627, on 13 July 2015 - 10:26 PM, said:

Nova I don't know, but what's the point of bringing 12 ML when you can't fire them all?

Because it made the design unoptimized. Battletech was much like Magic The Gathering and that not all mechs (cards) had to be equal and in some cases were terrible in all but a few situations (Scornful Egotist is one that comes to mind, it is like the Urbie for MTG).
Though redundancy can be useful, if you played BV limited battles, the Nova Prime was terrible outside Zellbriggen.

Edited by WM Quicksilver, 13 July 2015 - 11:29 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

One Medic Army, on 13 July 2015 - 10:10 PM, said:

In TT you alpha'd in a stock war hawk and had a good chance of blowing up your LRM ammo.

Also in TT "alpha striking" was firing all weapons over a period of 10 seconds, not all at once.

No. The whole turn was 10 seconds One. You and your enemy had 10 seconds to Run, find a target, shoot, AND cool down. Also don't tell me how I fired my Weapons. I distinctly said I am firing all "this". Then threw the dice. I didn't say, I will fire this, then this, then this. everything on one trigger.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 14 July 2015 - 01:11 AM.

[Aim64C]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 July 2015 - 01:08 AM, said:

No. The whole turn was 10 seconds One. You and your enemy had 10 seconds to Run, find a target, shoot, AND cool down. Also don't tell me how I fired my Weapons. I distinctly said I am firing all "this". Then threw the dice. I didn't say, I will fire this, then this, then this. everything on one trigger.

This.

The turn is an abstraction of everything within the turn.

On my turn, I could move a lumbering Atlas up behind a Locust and then let loose on the poor thing with a barrage of weapons fire as if it were standing still, despite the fact that such a maneuver would only be technically possible within a brief span of less than a second if the environment were real-time.

The idea that the alpha strike represents firing over all ten seconds of time is a quaint one.

It's like suggesting that a swordsman takes all 6 seconds of a D&D turn to swing his sword through something. It's all an abstraction and is generally why seemingly simple tasks in such games are given relatively high potentials for failure. Not only is it to make the game challenging, but it's also because the environment is not supposed to be nearly as static as the turns make it appear.

[Joseph Mallan]

6 seconds... I was swinging a Machete much faster than that last week trimming dead branches from a fallen tree! More like 6 swings in 6 seconds!

If I was swinging this(which my lovely wife bought me one year for Father's Day ):

Maybe 2-3 per 6 seconds.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 14 July 2015 - 01:45 AM.

[CDLord HHGD]

Juodas Varnas, on 13 July 2015 - 10:09 PM, said:

Well, even in TT some mechs were unable to alpha strike without exploding.
Black Hawk (Nova) being a prime example. Get it? PRIME? Because its Prime variant has 12 ER medium lasers?

Now, when it comes to Masakari (Warhawk), its 4 ERPPCs generate 60 heat (in TT, with no Ghost Heat). It has 20 Double Heatsinks, so 40 heat dissipation. So it does get +20 heat, which might lead to shut downs, or even ammo explosions.

Hey, where did you find that table? I think it's from my D20 conversion site....
http://d20battletech.wikidot.com/heat

So fun to see it still floating around out here but it's not canon (tailored for the D20 conversion). Use the one from Sarna instead.

[Paigan]

I'm pretty sure some loadouts (especially Direwolf Prime, Warhawk Prime, Nova Prime) are not meant to be alphaed but rather to be redundant: One arm is the "normal" weaponry and is case you lose one arm, you still have the whole weaponry again in the other arm.

Honestly, I don't see any other sane reason for that DWF Prime loadout. Anything else would be just crazy.

[Juodas Varnas]

cdlord, on 14 July 2015 - 04:20 AM, said:

Hey, where did you find that table? I think it's from my D20 conversion site....
http://d20battletech.wikidot.com/heat

So fun to see it still floating around out here but it's not canon (tailored for the D20 conversion). Use the one from Sarna instead.

Oh, i know that. I just picked it up, as opposed to the official Sarna one, it shows the effects in a more accumulative way, if that makes sense.
I usually don't make sense.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Juodas Varnas, on 13 July 2015 - 10:18 PM, said:

But every single weapon has a separate chance of missing and also the chance of hitting different locations of the mech...

We kinda have that now. It's MWO's spotty hit registration and lag shield

[pyrocomp]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 July 2015 - 01:45 AM, said:

6 seconds... I was swinging a Machete much faster than that last week trimming dead branches from a fallen tree! More like 6 swings in 6 seconds!

If I was swinging this(which my lovely wife bought me one year for Father's Day ):

Maybe 2-3 per 6 seconds.

This looks to be one half to one third of weidht of what it should have been in properly crude steel of it's time. plus, no frenzy hits, some evasion and bloking also included. You didn't actualy fence with that log, did you?

[Sir Wulfrick]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 July 2015 - 01:45 AM, said:

6 seconds... I was swinging a Machete much faster than that last week trimming dead branches from a fallen tree! More like 6 swings in 6 seconds!

If I was swinging this(which my lovely wife bought me one year for Father's Day ):

Maybe 2-3 per 6 seconds.

Totally off topic but... That's one damned fine piece of steel you have there!

[CDLord HHGD]

Juodas Varnas, on 14 July 2015 - 04:27 AM, said:

Oh, i know that. I just picked it up, as opposed to the official Sarna one, it shows the effects in a more accumulative way, if that makes sense.
I usually don't make sense.

Fair enough and thank you. I really need to get back to work on it. I have notes somewhere that'll simplify many of the mechanics.