30 replies to this topic

[Duke Nedo]

This has been beaten to death so sorry for not reading every post before answering.

I think the heart of the problem lies in that quite a few mechs have only E hard points, and therefore Energyboats have to be viable. To add complexity, they range in weight from Locusts to Awesomes. Now, all suggestions I have read and can remember that uses strongly reduced heat cap as mechanism of restricting big energy alphas fail to do this in a way that would not further reinforce the dominance of Gauss+Energy alpha game or variations of these with more or less Ballistics in the mix.

In my opinon Heat is a blunt tool for reducing alphas, because different weapons have very different Damage per Heat ratios, ranging from something like 0.67 for ERPPC to 15.0 for Gauss. That makes it difficult to keep find a level where Locusts, Black kniggets, Grasshoppers, Crabs and Awesomes are all still viable, while at the same time not allowing Direwolves, Maulers and King Crabs to do huge alphas.

Note that I am not against a tweaked heat scale, not against reducing the biggest alphas... but I just don't think that Heat alone is the answer. I don't think Convergence is the answer either, not alone at least, but it could play a part. I really believe another layer is needed. Call it energy draw or ghost heat or bandwidth or whatever. The important thing is if that layer can be implemented in such a way that it does the job without leaving the player confused or having to consult 3rd party websites to find out what you can put on your mech.... with a proper implementation including Lore explanation, UI and HUD integration, then I think that layer is the only proper way to address big alphas.

All that said, I don't particularly mind the alphas right now. You can mitigate everything quite effectively with defensive movements except for big SPL/MPL barfs, but they are short range so I can live with that.

[DivineEvil]

Since that thread seem to stuck, should I add a bit of spice?


Yeah yeah, I know what you think, Duke. But still, lets punch that corpse a little bit more! Maybe it's still alive.

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I think the heart of the problem lies in that quite a few mechs have only E hard points, and therefore Energyboats have to be viable. To add complexity, they range in weight from Locusts to Awesomes. Now, all suggestions I have read and can remember that uses strongly reduced heat cap as mechanism of restricting big energy alphas fail to do this in a way that would not further reinforce the dominance of Gauss+Energy alpha game or variations of these with more or less Ballistics in the mix.

It's not the question of being viable at this point. Energy boats right now can alpha-strike three to four times successively, eviscerating any combinations of ballistic or missiles with raw amount of insta-gib damage.

Gauss-Laser alpha games will not work with reduced heat cap. It is working now just because lasers themselves are unbound. Reduced heat cap will severely limit the number of alphas these lasers can do, if they even will be able to throw a second one without overheating. Gauss fits there just because it allows lasers to do it's work. But take a conventional Gauss+5 ER-ML Ebon Hawk, and cut his heat cap. 50 new heat cap vs 80 current heat cap. Now it cannot fire a second alpha in most scenarios without overheating, where it could've fire three in a row.

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In my opinon Heat is a blunt tool for reducing alphas, because different weapons have very different Damage per Heat ratios, ranging from something like 0.67 for ERPPC to 15.0 for Gauss. That makes it difficult to keep find a level where Locusts, Black kniggets, Grasshoppers, Crabs and Awesomes are all still viable, while at the same time not allowing Direwolves, Maulers and King Crabs to do huge alphas.

There is a reason for why damage/heat values are different. It's because all weapons are different and designed to have different limitations by heat, tonnage, critical slots and unique features.

Previously there were Splat-Cats with 6xSRM6, one that now considered an old joke - heat dependant, only viable with broken heat. Then there were 6xPPC Stalkers - heat dependant, only viable with broken heat. Now we have Ghost heat, and laser-vomit rules the party - heat dependant, only viable with broken heat. Now matter how you look at it, it's always were about heat-dependant weapons, and the more heat they required, the more broken they were.

Being capable of vomiting lasers is not what makes all those mechs viable - it's the unlimited damage potential and lower tonnage requirements, which can be derived into better heat management, larger variety of weapons for different situations or higher mobility. Alpha-strike by its original concept is a critical move for life-or-death situations. It is not a standard way of fighting with energy-based mechs.

Direwolves, King Crabs and Maulers, on the other hand, are specifically designed to unleash short bursts of high DPS, with heavy, fragile weapons and limited explosive ammunition. This is what they're feared for, and that's what they are supposed to be. Alpha-strikes are irrelevant. Until, unsurprisingly, you add the broken heat capacity again.

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but I just don't think that Heat alone is the answer.

Like I've said earlier, after all the math and examples of present overpowered loadouts, heat is what arises as the actual answer. Its the only thing, that keeps all the mechs to work as they're expected to, concerning weapon and combat dynamics. Unless you want to eliminate the notion of alpha-strike entirely out of the game, there's no point to put anything on top of heat. Misunderstanding of heat mechanics and their role in Mechwarrior have their roots way back to the Closed Beta, and became the reasons behind the unjustified DHS nerfs and widely despised Ghost Heat Scale system.

Of course we can agrue forever about all the different methods of adjusting stuff, but after, and only after the changes I've suggested on the previous page are fulfilled. PGI should not care about wasting their time implementing or even discussing convergence, overheat penalties or power management ideas before they fix the most basic values of Mechwarrior's cornerstone heat system. Perhaps then, if any issues would persist, we might argue if it were the answer or not.

Edited by DivineEvil, 12 November 2015 - 07:10 PM.

[Duke Nedo]

Ok, last time I'll respond to this.

First of all, you suggested in another thread to make IS DHS 2 slots. That will never happen. You have been around, you know that PGI wont change stats for slots or weight. That means that Clans in this system has a huge advantage as they can fit more DHS than IS can dream of, giving them much more dissipation and cap. Clans don't need any blanket buffs... At the very least you'd need to buff DHS dissipation/cap for IS instead, but that's workable.

Secondly, you can't nerf the base heat capacity too much. Especially all lights are very dependant on their internal truedubs (Edit: may be not what you meant, not sure how much you want to nerf base heat cap or exactly what is included in that nerf). All lights would have to sacrifice speed for heatsinks. Same with the energydependent heavier mechs really, looking at some of my laservomit builds on all E variants, they have a big engine, 3-5 non-engine DHS, and 0 free slots. My Gaussvomit TBR has 4 non-engine DHS. There is no significant difference in the nr of DHS, but the former rely completely on heat while the latter only depend partly on heat.

DivineEvil, on 12 November 2015 - 07:04 PM, said:

It's not the question of being viable at this point. Energy boats right now can alpha-strike three to four times successively, eviscerating any combinations of ballistic or missiles with raw amount of insta-gib damage.

Laser-boats are not the biggest offenders, Gauss+Lasers > Lasers. I cannot see how your suggestion does not make Gauss+Lasers relatively better than Lasers only, by nerfing Laservomit more than Gaussvomit (or insert other vomit flavor).

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Gauss-Laser alpha games will not work with reduced heat cap. It is working now just because lasers themselves are unbound. Reduced heat cap will severely limit the number of alphas these lasers can do, if they even will be able to throw a second one without overheating. Gauss fits there just because it allows lasers to do it's work. But take a conventional Gauss+5 ER-ML Ebon Hawk, and cut his heat cap. 50 new heat cap vs 80 current heat cap. Now it cannot fire a second alpha in most scenarios without overheating, where it could've fire three in a row.

This here is what it's all about. If you nerf Energy enough so that "Gauss-Laser alpha games will not work with reduced heat cap"... what happens? What happens is that all E hardpoint mechs certainly wont work, while Gauss+Laser vomit will still work reasonably ok. As a note though, you suggest increased dissipation, so in a at steady state situation you will alpha more frequently, but you lose the buffer that allows your first few burst dps alphas. That's the main impact of these kinds of suggestions, you lose the buffer.

In your example, the EBJ would alpha as often as it can, and plink away with the Gauss while cooling down, perhaps drop one ERML for heatsinks. Perhaps. Now, what about ALL lights except Huginn and Oxide, all CDA, most BJ, all VND, HBK-4P, all CRB, Sparky, Topdog, all GHR, all BL-KNT, AWS-8Q, Hellslinger, BNC-3M, Boars head? They're buried 6 feet down. Working as intended or collateral damage while the main target is still standing? In addition to these, there are many bots that have a high dependency on E that would be disproportionally hurt, like NVA, IFR, SHC and mr gargles. These guys need that buffer, even if they don't have huge alphas. And if you boost dissipation so high that these become viable, then so do the Gaussvomits and we're back where we started.

That's my point, heat is a blunt tool for getting the desired effect... and I didn't even mention ER-PPCs once.

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There is a reason for why damage/heat values are different. It's because all weapons are different and designed to have different limitations by heat, tonnage, critical slots and unique features.

Previously there were Splat-Cats with 6xSRM6, one that now considered an old joke - heat dependant, only viable with broken heat. Then there were 6xPPC Stalkers - heat dependant, only viable with broken heat. Now we have Ghost heat, and laser-vomit rules the party - heat dependant, only viable with broken heat. Now matter how you look at it, it's always were about heat-dependant weapons, and the more heat they required, the more broken they were.

Being capable of vomiting lasers is not what makes all those mechs viable - it's the unlimited damage potential and lower tonnage requirements, which can be derived into better heat management, larger variety of weapons for different situations or higher mobility. Alpha-strike by its original concept is a critical move for life-or-death situations. It is not a standard way of fighting with energy-based mechs.

Direwolves, King Crabs and Maulers, on the other hand, are specifically designed to unleash short bursts of high DPS, with heavy, fragile weapons and limited explosive ammunition. This is what they're feared for, and that's what they are supposed to be. Alpha-strikes are irrelevant. Until, unsurprisingly, you add the broken heat capacity again.

Like I've said earlier, after all the math and examples of present overpowered loadouts, heat is what arises as the actual answer. Its the only thing, that keeps all the mechs to work as they're expected to, concerning weapon and combat dynamics. Unless you want to eliminate the notion of alpha-strike entirely out of the game, there's no point to put anything on top of heat. Misunderstanding of heat mechanics and their role in Mechwarrior have their roots way back to the Closed Beta, and became the reasons behind the unjustified DHS nerfs and widely despised Ghost Heat Scale system.

Of course we can agrue forever about all the different methods of adjusting stuff, but after, and only after the changes I've suggested on the previous page are fulfilled. PGI should not care about wasting their time implementing or even discussing convergence, overheat penalties or power management ideas before they fix the most basic values of Mechwarrior's cornerstone heat system. Perhaps then, if any issues would persist, we might argue if it were the answer or not.

It's all about maximizing your damage output per face time using all means available. If only heat is used as delimiter, there will always be workarounds using weapons with better DPH. That's my point, IS variants with only E hardpoints can't do that.

Sure I understand that you want to make E weapons into DPS weapons... that's a fine notion, but most gamers don't want to expose themselves (they only want their targets to do it...) so my prediction is that they will just keep playing the alpha-game with the same or more ballistics in the mix, and therefore the main effect of this is to obsolete many all-E IS variants and quite possibly nerf all lights into the ground too that rely heavily on E because of weight effectiveness.

So, sorry, I see lots of collateral damage and little desired effect, that's why I keep saying that heat alone is a blunt tool.

Edit: not to sound too negative, the thing I like about adjustments to heat scale for limiting alphas is that it treats any combinations of heat generating weapons the same. The most glaring holes in Ghost heat like combining LPLs with MLs are not an issue. These holes are however not a feature of the principle of diminishing returns/stacking penalty, it's an effect of a really, really poor implementation of ghost heat. I guess because Paul couldn't figure out which exponential penalty to use when strange combinations were fired (I am guessing especially ones including AC20s)...

Edited by Duke Nedo, 13 November 2015 - 06:24 AM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

First off, Duke and Divine, you guys really go at it, don't you?!

I'd actually be fine with trying no base heat on the PTS and seeing what happens.

I'm strongly in favor of reduced cap and increased dissipation. That seems it would encourage chain fire and largely prevent laser alpha.

@Duke Nedo:
It's not necessarily true that all Energy based 'Mechs won't work.

Alpha with energy (laser or gauss + laser) creates a heat spike. If the cap is lower, when that spike goes over the threshold, insta-shutdown (maybe instadeath; I would implement a dual threshold system).

If proper normalized weapon stat ratios are applied, some lower heat (and lower damage; mostly IS) weapons would be able to alpha or group fire effectively. Higher heat (and damage) weapons would have to group or chain fire.

If Clans have superior range, that's not a bad thing.

[Duke Nedo]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 13 November 2015 - 08:43 PM, said:

First off, Duke and Divine, you guys really go at it, don't you?!

I'd actually be fine with trying no base heat on the PTS and seeing what happens.

I'm strongly in favor of reduced cap and increased dissipation. That seems it would encourage chain fire and largely prevent laser alpha.

@Duke Nedo:
It's not necessarily true that all Energy based 'Mechs won't work.

Alpha with energy (laser or gauss + laser) creates a heat spike. If the cap is lower, when that spike goes over the threshold, insta-shutdown (maybe instadeath; I would implement a dual threshold system).

If proper normalized weapon stat ratios are applied, some lower heat (and lower damage; mostly IS) weapons would be able to alpha or group fire effectively. Higher heat (and damage) weapons would have to group or chain fire.

If Clans have superior range, that's not a bad thing.

I don't mean to sound aggressive, hope it doesn't come out that way too much. English is not my native language, neither is it for Divine I think, so perhaps it sounds a bit more harsh than it is. No hard feelings here, just trying to be convincing.

The reason I have a rather strong opinion about using heat cap to replace ghost heat is that I have made my own attempts at designing a system based on heat to replace ghost heat and my conclusion was that only using heat is not enough. There is no straight correlation between heat and damage, and other factors do not prevent big alphas including heavy low heat weapons as long as there are chassi around that can fit them. It does for Lights, they don't have the weight to fit ballistics + lasers, but Heavies and Assaults can, so they do it.

I like the notion of including any different combinations of weapons into one mechanism for somehow limiting alphas. That's what I tried to do with heat as well, my suggestion at that time involved taking the heat from all weapons and make it scale exponentially above a certain heat threshold let all chassi be able to support a certain "bandwidth" of heat before it goes exponential. It's the same principle in many ways, restrict the total amount of heat that can be generated in one go.

The problems are the same, that's what I try to describe. Mixing in low heat high damage weapons allows one to work around it. No as badly as it is now when all you have to do is to mix LPLs with MLs, but anyways. Not a solution that can replace ghost heat. While I also would support a bit lower cap and higher dissipation, I don't believe in using it as a hard cap on what you can alpha, instead of ghost heat, because to get that effect it would have to be set really really low, and dissipation would have to be really high. The bottom line really is that if it's so restrictive that it nerfs Gaussvomit, it will nerf pure laservomit more, so if Gaussvomit is to go from OP to Viable, then Laservomit easily risks going from Viable to UP.

What I really do like with Divines suggestion is that there is an attempt to give Laservomit builds extra cap by saying that they have more heatsinks than gauss-vomit and therefore would get higher cap. The idea is sound, but I don't think it really holds true. Not universally for all builds at least, and most importantly it doesn't affect Clans and IS in the same way. For many reasons. Most importantly: 2 slot DHS for clans and that clans have safe XLs and larger locked engines -> more heatsinks in general, while IS often have to go for a STD with fewer internal heatsinks for durability reasons. In principle the same fature could be achieved in a more direct approach by increasing the heat of ballistics, but people would probably hate that even more (because it would do the job, but they would cite Lore/TT rules)...

That's why I think the best "solution" would be to introduce a new layer where you can for example assign a high power draw for charging a Gauss, and thereby have a metric that correlates better to alpha potential, and that is not locked down by Lore/TT rules. Such a Tool I believe could do the job, and also be used as a balance parameter. I.e. mechs with bad geometry, like for example the Awesome, could be given a higher "bandwidth" to allow it to fire say 3 PPCs, while ordinary chassi may only be able to fire 2 PPC due to bandwidth shortage.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

For the reason of eveything you just posted, I have time at every turn suggested that we need to have normalized ratios for weapon stats that apply to both Clans and IS.

That would create the direct relationship between damage:heat or range:heat or damage:duration (these for lasers). Not all have to be negative. Duration:heat could be positive; that is, as duration goes up, heat could go down.

The ratios could be different sets for different weapon types. For example, ballistics: rounds:heat, range:damage.

These are just examples. I would make a careful comparison of all weapon stats against each other and turn them into ratios.

In this way it would create a causal relationship between one stat and another. The intention of this is to make derived stats (DPS, DPS/ton, HPS) approximately the same while retaining difference in the way it functionally works on the battlefield.

Thus, Clans might have higher damage and longer range, but heat would be appropriately higher. IS would have shorter range and maybe less damage, but would be able to boat more; giving them the "alpha game" up close.

Coupled with a better heat cap (I like the idea of one coupled to the number of heatsinks a 'Mech is carrying) and better dissipation it would largely solve the energy meta we have now without making energy weapons useless or giving advantage to either side.

The values we have try to emulate this, somewhat. But they're not really normalized ratios, they're more arbitrary values decided upon with the intention of balance (can't be true balance because there is no causality).

I can't agree with the idea of a "power gauge" because I don't want to add burden to the game designers, systems or players. I prefer a simple solution within the mechanics we have now.

[Pjwned]

OP is basically just proposing ghost heat, which already exists.

sycocys, on 22 October 2015 - 07:39 AM, said:

What's the difference between an alpha strike and macro'd chain fire?

That's what people do already to avoid ghost heat by .01 second.

You mean if those weapon groups are fired greater than 0.5 seconds apart from each other, which is effectively chain fire with a slightly different method? Sure.

If you're implying that "alpha striking" by chain firing everything within 1/10 of a second works, that doesn't avoid ghost heat at all and it never did.

Edited by Pjwned, 15 November 2015 - 05:44 AM.

[DivineEvil]

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That would create the direct relationship between damage:heat or range:heat or damage:duration (these for lasers). Not all have to be negative. Duration:heat could be positive; that is, as duration goes up, heat could go down.

The ratios could be different sets for different weapon types. For example, ballistics: rounds:heat, range:damage.

These are just examples. I would make a careful comparison of all weapon stats against each other and turn them into ratios.

You should note, that this relation does already exists. It is what TT values were been about to begin with. The only thing missing from your suggestions is tonnage and size.

Energy weapons are centered around the battle of attrition - to outstrip your opponent over long periods of time. Taking a heavier laser is idea of increasing range by dramatically increasing tonnage, with everything else as compensation for it. PPCs are hybrid of Energy's attrition style combined with Ballistic pin-point, hence the dramatic increase of heat.

Mechs based on Energy weapons have several groups of different energy weapons for specific circumstances, but require increased tonnage used up for heatsinks. Most, if not all, energy based mechs do have such loadouts, such as Grasshoppers and Black Knights. Exclusion from that is Awesome, which was originally designed with enough heatsinks to fire 3xPPCs in continuous barrages as direct-assault mech, only given a single Small Laser as backup. Nowhere in theory it says that boating 10 items of the same Energy weapons is viable, not even speaking about alpha-striking them 24/7.

Missile weapons are designed around raw damage-per shot. More tonnage, less heat. Missiles do much more damage per weapon tonnage and per heat, but it is spread around the target. LRMs does full damage over extreme ranges, but wont work up-close, SRMs are exact opposite. Launcher size simply increases the damage burst.

Accordingly, mechs which do not enough free tonnage to provide for pure energy loadouts, uses Missiles as secondary armament, such as Thunderbolts, Vindicators, Stalkers and Battlemasters. Missiles are designed to give you that middle-ground between requirements, and allow you to keep doing respectable amount of damage when overheated. LRM boats are the separate kind of mechs, which is used as indirect support for other mechs. Unlike current habits, though, LRM boat mechs usually has something to protect themselves and don't put on an XL engine just to pack larger launchers and more ammunition, since even stripping 20-30% of max armor penalizes the mech' survivability in smaller degree.

Ballistic weapons are designed for pin-point damage. Enormous tonnage and crit-space requirements, very little heat. The larger the Autocannon, the more pin-point damage it does, sacrificing range. Aside from just being worth of several other weapons in tonnage and space combined, Ballistics makes the mech much more vulnerable. Any ammunition explosion almost always result in total destruction of the containing component, most autocannons are very easy to knock-out due to their size (AC/20 can be knocked out by single PPC shot as soon as crit passes), and Gauss itself almost always explodes.

Ballistic-based mechs spend much of their tonnage on these weapons alone, sacrifice armor and has very few heatsinks, like Blackjacks, Jagermechs, Maulers and King Crabs. Energy weapons are secondary, provided to be used in very few occasions. Ballistic weapons take up enormous portions of mech's tonnage and space and additional part of that for ammunition.

Finally, general-purpose mechs such as Dragons, Orions, Highlanders and Atlas are using a mix of all three weapon types for being able to respond to any situation, including when running hot.

So the outline for these weapons are well laid-down. If some weapons are too violently abused or ignored completely, then cooldown tweaking is the ultimate aswer, because it's the value, which were initially detuned from the original 10sec-round unevenly troughout the variety of weapons. Tweaking any other parameters such as heat and damage misfigures the original idea of a weapon.

So, my problems with weapons are not that much about values, but about how they're derived, and mechanics of the weapons themselves.

• Pulse lasers had increased range and total damage to keep up with regular variants. Rather than making that adjustments, I would just increase their cooldown values significantly. That would justify their role as close-combat weapons, rather than reducing that aspect to be closer with standard lasers. Increased fire-rate would justify increased tonnage, and since heat would remain the same, you'd be encouraged to take fewer for efficient brawling, rather than boating them to acquire that energy-based pin-point damage.
  
• PPCs are fine by themselves, but are suffering from current capacity-biased heat system. Low dissipation rates diven by heatsinks make any attempts to use two or three of these for continuous fighting futire, while allowed 6xPPC alpha-strikes before Ghost Heat, which in Mechwarrior 3 would result in your game freezing, and your mech instantly exploding afterwards. On top of that, PPC minimum range damage nullifying is uncalled for, and PPCs lacks temporary electronic disturbance effect, perhaps identical to what we now have when under the effect of hostile ECM.
  
• Flamers would be fine, as long as base heat capacity is reduced.
  
• SRMs has to have at least marginal homing ability to slighly adjust to the closest target and turn a couple of degrees, especially when fired around the maximum range. They are self-guided, not dumb-fire.
  
• LRMs has to be more reliable. Added to estimated cooldown nerf, they should be more susceptible to AMS and has their maximum range toned down to 630 range according to TT values, to prevent mindless spam all over the map currenly observed. On the other hand, LRMs fired into a directly-locked target must fly straight without obtaining ballistic trajectory, and should track the target independently as soon as they're armed either way. Again, they are also self-guided, not remotely guided.
  
• Autocannons has to be tuned with respect to their pin-point advantage, and don't suffer the DPS penalty for carrying a lighter one. If all autocannon cooldown rates are adjusted to produce 5 DPS, any of them will be equally viable in a framework of range/PPD differences. Heat values for AC/2s are inapplicable to the present fire-rate and must be toned down in higher degree.
  
• Ulta-Autocannons then should be adjusted around 3/6 DPS, which is appropriate values given the very small, if any, tonnage differences between them and regular analogues. When jammed, player should be capable to use the cannon as inferior 3 DPS weapon, but the ammunition that cause the jam should be discarded in the process. Ultra AC/2 should fire double rates without double-tapping, as resulting fire rate is too high.
  
• Gauss already has enough drawbacks to keep it's cooldown reasonable around 4,75-5,0 seconds. Clan Gauss should have longer charge-up duration to compensate for lower tonnage and crit-space requirements. I dont think that 5,5 cooldown is appropriate.

This is as far as I would go with weapons at this point. The underlying problem for dynamic combat is still heat, no matter what weapons you'd apply it to. Other than that, most weapons relate to and are limited by heat just as much as they're supposed to be.

I think you're already aware of my opinion of normalizing Clan equipment. I haven't recieved any viable arguments against double internal structure for all Inner Sphere mechs, and thus my position stands firmly.

Edited by DivineEvil, 15 November 2015 - 09:22 AM.

[FaithBombCRNA]

Reading over all of this, I can't help but wonder what the GOAL here is?

- First, people want to nerf lasers into the ground.

- People then rightly point out that all of the laser "solutions" would simply make lasers non-viable and force everyone to ballistics.

- Then, of all things, the response to that argument is to then NERF ballistics too???? Huh????

The idea seems to be to nerf something, then nerf it's alternative. Is the end goal here for us to just stand in the open for 15 minutes pelting each other with the occasional ineffective fire? Because that's what it sounds like the lazor-haters are advocating.

[DivineEvil]

ValkyrieCRNA, on 15 November 2015 - 09:58 AM, said:

Reading over all of this, I can't help but wonder what the GOAL here is?

- First, people want to nerf lasers into the ground.

- People then rightly point out that all of the laser "solutions" would simply make lasers non-viable and force everyone to ballistics.

- Then, of all things, the response to that argument is to then NERF ballistics too???? Huh????

The idea seems to be to nerf something, then nerf it's alternative. Is the end goal here for us to just stand in the open for 15 minutes pelting each other with the occasional ineffective fire? Because that's what it sounds like the lazor-haters are advocating.

First of all, we're not a balancing comitee - everyone has their own goals and assumptions about the end result.

My Goal is:
- Proper heat management system values, that allows, but highly discourages alpha-striking, with severely lowered total heat capacity, increased heat dissipation, both values tied to the number of heatsinks completely. The changes, that would tone down the currently favored laser-vomit, but would also adress all other weapons in the degree that they are attached to heat initially. Removal of Ghost Heat.

- Easier to use Missiles, that are more reliable, but less exploitable. More efficient and convenient usage, but less blind spamming and unearned benefits.

- Equally viable Ballistics. AC/2s that are useful without extreme Quirks and AC/20 or Gauss, that are not nerfed into oblivion despite being the heaviest and largest weapons in the game.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

I'm on board with DivineEvil here. Those goals pretty much lay out what I'd like to see as far as weapons go.

The only thing I'd add is that I really don't care about the specific values. Rather, I care that the ratio of values is applied normally to IS and Clan weapons.

@Pjwned:

I have never said anything about creating ghost heat. I want to see it eliminated and replaced with a better heat system; i.e., one where heat is heat and if you get too hot... well, it sucks and you blow up!