Mystere, on 02 December 2015 - 08:12 AM, said:
Instead of increasing the burn time, I'd rather that cooldown be increased significantly.
Alternatively, include all energy weapons in the Ghost Heat limit and/or calculation.
I think that would be horrible. Here's why,
On the surface that sounds like a simple straightforward thing to do with lasers. Here's the issue with an increase in cooldown for them. Something everyone seems to completely forget about is that a laser does damage over time in a continuous beam. This is significant and can't be downplayed because it is fundamental to being able to help balance a weapon like lasers.
Ballistics, shoot, hit or miss, do full damage every time you hit regardless of how accurate your shot actually was. You aimed for CT, hit leg instead. You still do all your damage, reload, and fire again.
Lasers dont' work like that though. You fire a laser and you must continue that process for the entire beam duration. Yes an LL might do 9 damage, but a good % of those shots do not do 9 damage to a single location. They actually work more like missiles in this case in that they spread damage more often than not.
The beam duration can't be interrupted or stopped once it is fired off. It spreads damage and takes xx seconds to burn off its entire damage payload.
That's a HUGE mechanic to take into consideration. The dynamic of using a laser is unique in this game. There's no other system that works like that. Increasing the cooldown is really just going to increase their cooling effectiveness (unless you want to go back through and completely redo the heat, beam duration, etc. to adjust for a lengthier cooldown) becaue the longer you have to wait to fire off that laser, the cooler you're going to get, which means you can actually comfortable boat MORE lasers.
Beam duration...
I dunno, those beam durations are pretty lengthy as it is. An IS LL has a beam duration of 1 second. That doesn't sound like much, but realistically in this game that's an extremely long time. 9 damage = .11 damage per second.
Think about that number.
That means if you are lucky enough to get a glancing shot as a mech passes between cover for .3 seconds at an optimal range you'll do a whopping .33 damage.
.33 damage
from a large laser
that still generates 7 heat
Lets break that down a little further
Since it was a run and gun situation (which is usually more common than being lucky enough to find a silly mech pilot who stands still in a fight) you're more than likely going to have that spread to a MINIMUM of 2 areas
That great big old .33 damage now becomes .165 damage to two separate locations.
Before anyone calls lasers "op" they really need to start breaking stuff like this down.
The math for damage, heat, duration, cooldown, etc. does not take into account the practical application of the weapon. If you're basing your opinion of lasers based on base stats, your'e doing it wrong.
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