116 replies to this topic

[Duke Nedo]

Black Arachne, on 05 August 2015 - 12:25 PM, said:

Are you normally this dense? or just close minded?

Not born to be a teacher, but he was right in this case.

[Knight Magus]

Duke Nedo, on 05 August 2015 - 01:54 PM, said:

Not born to be a teacher, but he was right in this case.

Yeah..fraid not

[Duke Nedo]

Last attempt to get this discussion back on topic... which is:

Duke Nedo, on 05 August 2015 - 01:35 AM, said:

This thread is a suggestion of how we could try to turn broken ghost heat into functional ghost heat. That is a change we could realistically hope for... and if we could do that, that does not exclude further redesign of the heat system down the road.

The point is that unless you put a hard heat cap of 30 or below, you will always need some kind of stacking penalty of you don't want people to fire 4+ PPC or LPLs, or 8+ MPL/MLs or whatever. For 2+ AC20's you need some sort of stacking penalty already at 12 heat!

This is something that is common in computer games, no big problem. Usually it's referred to as diminishing returns och stacking penalty. Ghost heat is the same thing, but the implementation is just horrible. With that I don't mean that it's existance is horrible, but that 3 cLPL (39 damage/30 heat) will create ghost heat while 2xcLPL+6cMPLs (74 damage and 56 heat) will not. That is the part that is broken, and this suggestion would fix that.

There are two really good points here that I think is being missed:

• By introducing a new variable that describes how high energy flows the mech can channel, call it energy bandwidth or whatever you'd like, you give PGI a great balancing tool. That will allow them to assign different "ghost heat thresholds" to different mechs by changing one value (no fancy exception rules). For example allowing Awesomes to fire 3x PPC without ghostheat while a Shadowhawk may only still fire 2x PPC without ghost heat.
  
• A generic system like this will heal the big holes in the current ghost heat tables. You will no longer be able to add run for example 6x ML+2x MPL without ghost heat, while 8x ML will give you ghost heat even though these generate less heat. The current implementation is completely illogic. A uniform system does not have these obvious loopholes and can be presented in a way that makes sense to players.

Any thoughts on this?

[Veev]

Duke Nedo, on 06 August 2015 - 12:50 AM, said:

Last attempt to get this discussion back on topic... which is:



There are two really good points here that I think is being missed:

• By introducing a new variable that describes how high energy flows the mech can channel, call it energy bandwidth or whatever you'd like, you give PGI a great balancing tool. That will allow them to assign different "ghost heat thresholds" to different mechs by changing one value (no fancy exception rules). For example allowing Awesomes to fire 3x PPC without ghostheat while a Shadowhawk may only still fire 2x PPC without ghost heat.
  
• A generic system like this will heal the big holes in the current ghost heat tables. You will no longer be able to add run for example 6x ML+2x MPL without ghost heat, while 8x ML will give you ghost heat even though these generate less heat. The current implementation is completely illogic. A uniform system does not have these obvious loopholes and can be presented in a way that makes sense to players.

Any thoughts on this?

Ghost heat is a bad band aid. The problem is not ghost heat. It is super accurate weapons no matter what you do it wont change this fact.

The game is about role warfare, why not a system that is based on the premise? You want a brawler, your weapons are set to properly converge at 90-200 meters. You want a sniper your weapons converge at 800 meters. You set the range in the Mechlab.

If you want it to work at multiple ranges than give them an auto convergence system that has a penalty in tons and chassis slots like artemis. Plus make it take a little time to adjust down.

Have a nice day.

[Joseph Mallan]

Duke Nedo, on 05 August 2015 - 10:33 AM, said:

Erm, not sure how that came out in english, I didn't mean anything in particular with it. Just letting it go sort of.

The most similar to TT would be to use a much lower capacity and much higher dissipation like lots suggested earlier in this thread. Then you'll be in the steady-state regime all the time. The high capacity/low dissipation we have now allows us to have higher burst dps for some time before we need to calm down in a lower dps steady-state. I actually think I prefer the latter, that burst gives some extra depth to game play imo.

That said...

Changing the dissipation:capacity ratio doesn't really have anything to do with ghost heat... you'd have to turn it down to rock bottom before preventing people from alphaing... but it seems like noone want to discuss this part....

I see. I wasn't even factoring in Ghost Heat so that may be where the disconnect occurred. I am for the continued use of Alpha Strikes cause I have always been a All or nothing style player/fighter.

[darkchylde]

PGI needs to remove the countless band **** and follow the K.I.S.S principle. The time is now to fix the the problems instead of trying to cover them up only to create more problems down the line.

[Duke Nedo]

Veev, on 07 August 2015 - 07:16 AM, said:

Ghost heat is a bad band aid. The problem is not ghost heat. It is super accurate weapons no matter what you do it wont change this fact.

The game is about role warfare, why not a system that is based on the premise? You want a brawler, your weapons are set to properly converge at 90-200 meters. You want a sniper your weapons converge at 800 meters. You set the range in the Mechlab.

If you want it to work at multiple ranges than give them an auto convergence system that has a penalty in tons and chassis slots like artemis. Plus make it take a little time to adjust down.

Have a nice day.

Ghost heat is not necessarily a band-aid, it's an extremely poorly implemented stacking penalty. Quite common in various games really that have some kind of mechanism for diminished returns when stacking/boating. Delayed convergence could perhaps be ok to have if it's not too pronounced, but they gave up on it and never looked back.

Fixed convergence at a certain range or parallel barrels is a worse band-aid imo... instead of pin-point accuracy you get auto-miss, I'd really, really hate that.

I am probably on an island when it comes to convergence because I don't think it's a big problem. The only two weapon systems that cause me pain is 1. pulse lasers with really short burn and 2. gauss in some cases. Except for these two, when a target plays well he will spread the incoming damage from all longer burn lasers or cUACs by twisting. All FLD weapons that have a flight time will not converge on target if you have a transversal speed up because the shooter has to lead and converge on the background. Gauss is borderline because of the high velocity, but there is also charge-up so often you can choose which body-part to present to the shooter...

I don't know... I think that we deserve at least a consistent stacking penalty system now that one is needed. If there are good ways to remove the need for it I wouldn't complain... but people have been loud about it for years and PGI has stated that they want shots to land where you aim. Perhaps time to refresh our arguments if we want to get anywhere at all?

darkchylde, on 07 August 2015 - 08:12 AM, said:

PGI needs to remove the countless band **** and follow the K.I.S.S principle. The time is now to fix the the problems instead of trying to cover them up only to create more problems down the line.

More or less the same as above, but I guess you want to make the heat system restrict big alphas?

[Veev]

Duke Nedo, on 07 August 2015 - 08:49 AM, said:

Fixed convergence at a certain range or parallel barrels is a worse band-aid imo... instead of pin-point accuracy you get auto-miss, I'd really, really hate that.

Yea, cuz its more skill based than you are used too. I get it, I really do.

[darkchylde]

Duke Nedo, on 07 August 2015 - 08:49 AM, said:

More or less the same as above, but I guess you want to make the heat system restrict big alphas?

What I want is not to have a made up band aid in Battletech. A band aid that failed in it's purpose and for the longest time punished mechs that didn't have ballistic slots. Which led to PGI adding -heat quirks to fix the problems this mechanic created in the first place.

Edited by darkchylde, 07 August 2015 - 12:24 PM.

[Serpieri]

darkchylde, on 07 August 2015 - 12:16 PM, said:

What I want is not to have a made up band aid in Battletech. A band aid that failed in it's purpose and for the longest time punished mechs that didn't have ballistic slots. Which led to PGI adding -heat quirks to fix the problems this mechanic created in the first place.

This is how PGI balances

[Duke Nedo]

Veev, on 07 August 2015 - 11:51 AM, said:

Yea, cuz its more skill based than you are used too. I get it, I really do.

We already have the LBX's if you like to sandblast... same ****.

darkchylde, on 07 August 2015 - 12:16 PM, said:

What I want is not to have a made up band aid in Battletech. A band aid that failed in it's purpose and for the longest time punished mechs that didn't have ballistic slots. Which led to PGI adding -heat quirks to fix the problems this mechanic created in the first place.

I'd argue that ghost heat is better than no ghost heat, even now. Nothing in this game would be better without it if everything else remained the same, so in a way it did half of the job it was supposed to do. It's just full of holes....

[Almeras]

pin point damage cap simples
be it hard or soft
It'll will fix all the time to die problems with out some mathematical puzzle or horrid xbox cone
bonus it's concept many gamers are familiar with.
Easily tweaked.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

El Bandito, on 03 August 2015 - 03:56 AM, said:

I personally want a "power draw" system, where each weapon has certain power requirements, along with their heat and ammo requirements. And if the alpha exceeds the max power amount set by PGI, then the rest of the alpha is forced to chain-fire automatically. That way, it is easy to understand and use by the newbies.

Unlike the current convoluted mess that is GH.

make ecm draw power as well lol

[Veev]

Duke Nedo, on 07 August 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

We already have the LBX's if you like to sandblast... same ****.



I'd argue that ghost heat is better than no ghost heat, even now. Nothing in this game would be better without it if everything else remained the same, so in a way it did half of the job it was supposed to do. It's just full of holes....

Can I kindly recommend some reading comprehension and logic classes?

[Duke Nedo]

Veev, on 07 August 2015 - 05:49 PM, said:

Can I kindly recommend some reading comprehension and logic classes?

So why don't sherlock veev explain to the peasant what he means by:

Quote

Yea, cuz its more skill based than you are used too. I get it, I really do.

in response to:

Quote

Duke Nedo, on 07 August 2015 - 09:49 AM, said:

Fixed convergence at a certain range or parallel barrels is a worse band-aid imo... instead of pin-point accuracy you get auto-miss, I'd really, really hate that.

Your point is that one should chain fire every weapon? Then you won't get auto-miss, sure... then you only get offset aim for every shot. Fine, that's also horrible.

Edited by Duke Nedo, 07 August 2015 - 10:22 PM.

[El Bandito]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 07 August 2015 - 03:03 PM, said:

make ecm draw power as well lol

Good idea. Perhaps smaller power draw for personal cloaking and prohibitively large draw (for combat) for team cloaking.

[Reno Blade]

I also think that Ghost Heat (Heat Scale) needs to consider all weapons used, or at least all of one type of weapons.

Paul once asked the community about the PPC/Gauss combo, but instead of the combo limit the people wanted less projectile speed because it's easier.

People still cry about GH because it's "artificial" or "difficult".

Add a new bar for Heatscale to the UI and make the mulitplier dependent on the level instead of hard-reset after 0.5 seconds.
Easy to see where your Ghost heat level is and even Mechwarrior 2 had a similar bar (dH/dT), but it had no effect on gameplay other than showing how fast you gained/lost your heat.

The bar could look like this:

Also adding negative effects to the heat bar like in Table Top, or to the Ghost heat bar the further you go is a pretty good way to balance dps, but it doesn't fix the alpha of your first shot.

Edited by Reno Blade, 24 September 2015 - 04:40 AM.