286 replies to this topic

[Widowmaker1981]

As long as bigger mechs have more power to draw on.. should be ok.

Limiting big mechs to the same alpha as small mechs makes big mechs pointless, unless they run dakka.

[The Great Unwashed]

Reducing recharge time if you exceed your current reactor output is nice and could be implemented, however, a powerdraw explanation does not explain why you cannot charge your weapons slowly and then discharge them all at the same time without a penalty and keep the high alpha. Even if weapons cannot be charged slowly (because, reasons) why not recharge one weapon at the a time? You'd think mech designers would take this into account and not charge weapons that would overload the reactor is an option to the ohterwise-fried user.

It would make more sense to me when next to your overload button you can delay weapon recharging until a time you think is fine to manage heat. You fire your weapon with a bit of heat but incur additional heat penalties only when you start recharging. So, no recharge, group recharge and chain recharge in additional to fire groups? Would make for more interesting game play and obfuscate the game mechanics more cleverly than ghost heat.

Edited by The Great Unwashed, 02 March 2016 - 01:31 AM.

[Blue Boutique]

Still think there will be some high alphas being thrown around unless there is an additional movement penalty for high heat. Isn't this the crux of the problem when a Direwolf can snipe with 3/3 C ERPPCs and back off to cool down easily and recharge?

[TheCharlatan]

This is going to be intresting.
I just hope they keep low range weapons to a low power draw: if this mechanic works as we expect, DPS mechs will need to be kept in check by brawlers that can spread their damage and punish their face-tanking.
A simple damage=power draw mechanic will not work if they don't put range in the equation.

[El Bandito]

Blue Boutique, on 02 March 2016 - 01:57 AM, said:

Still think there will be some high alphas being thrown around unless there is an additional movement penalty for high heat. Isn't this the crux of the problem when a Direwolf can snipe with 3/3 C ERPPCs and back off to cool down easily and recharge?

TBF Dire Wolf is in a bad spot right now due to its even sluggish movements after skill tree nerf. Doubt it can be a game changer. And all those CERPPC will run very hot, even chain fired.

[Bobzilla]

Heat penalty. Should be a drawback for high heat, not more heat. They aren't changing GH at all, just triggered easier in a more complicated way. Sustained dps will still lose out to peeking/pinpoint. Face tanking in a brawl is way worse than alpha twist, even if the alpha is reduced.

[The Great Unwashed]

A 3/3 ERPPC DWF is a build that a good heat system should shield us from. The Awesome is built around 3 PPCs; the Warhawk around 4 ERPPCs; the Supernova around 6 large lasers. That should give us a feel for the upper limit. I'd love to see sized hardpoints return or add power restrictions to hardpoints. Now you can throw 4 ERPPCs in a Jenner IIc...

Edited by The Great Unwashed, 02 March 2016 - 03:55 AM.

[oldradagast]

Lol.... no.

This is failed design out of the box. First, it still trades one goofy, behind the scenes mechanic for another that is almost a second heat system layered over the first, and one which I assume will be poorly explained and not visible in the HUD because PGI. It is a tacked on mechanic with limited grounding in reality or common sense - and no grounding in lore.

More importantly, "heat penalties" only affect weapons that care about heat. For example, this will hurt the PPC (which nobody uses on non-hyper quirked mechs) more than boated lasers (that everyone uses) because PPC's run hotter. It also will have zero effect on Gauss, just like every heat-based penalty system. It will hurt missiles more than auto-cannons, which is funny since nobody uses missiles, while auto-cannons are at least somewhat viable when boated currently.

Best case result: boating of autocannons and Gauss becomes the new meta. Somebody with better memory than I have can tell me about when in MWO's past we had that meta, since we've done that before.

Worst case result: same as above, but thanks to stupid applications of penalties for firing lots of weapons, Light mechs vanish entirely because firing a handful of small or medium lasers buries them under huge heat penalties, and energy heavy mechs are removed from the game for similar reasons.

The problem is pinpoint damage at along range. Any slap-together mechanic that still skates around that issue will never really fix anything.

Edited by oldradagast, 02 March 2016 - 04:23 AM.

[DiGCliff]

It will be interesting to see what happens if it makes mixed loadouts more viable then cool.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

I do hope that ballistics will get a tiny power draw rating. After all, it doesn't really take all that much power to trigger the primer in a shell cartridge...

Missiles should have a similar case. The only one that I would see having large power draw would be Gauss (you need a LOT of electricity to accelerate a projectile using an EM field), and obviously all lasers.

Then again, this becomes interesting. With two limiting factors (heat and power draw), this will throw a new dynamic into building a good mech. What runs cold, but also doesn't chew up a lot of power? How much heat/power do you want to sacrifice for infinite ammunition? The questions are endless.

[Wolfways]

Gas Guzzler, on 01 March 2016 - 10:33 PM, said:

How many seconds does it take 3 JM6-DDs and 3 Dakka Dires to destroy all 3 torsos of an Atlas-S?

Don't know about since quirks came, but before that it took a JM6-S with stock weapons about 12 seconds to destroy an Atlas if the target is torso twisting, and the JM6-S overheated in about 15 seconds (while only using the AC's with non-stop alphas).

I haven't played it much lately but while the Jager feels a little squishy compared to other IS heavies the damage output is still there.

[Tom Sawyer]

If PGI could program it anytime you overheat your mech gains a wider cone of fire, negative penalties to hit and movement speed. Put it down to metal fatigue, weapon mounts getting warped, myomer getting overheated.

Add in pilot blackouts, what ever.

Add this to the ghost heat fix and make it a tactical game, not a run n gun shooter.

[Lily from animove]

Nightshade24, on 02 March 2016 - 01:12 AM, said:

system is a much more simplified BUT efficient ghost heat system. Best thing to happen to heat yet.

So in short you replace ghost heat with an altered but renamed ghostheat, which means either adjust heat or just adjust "ghost heat. Because then you get the SAME effect, yet you keep the system without an additional system of complexity.

Prof RJ Gumby, on 02 March 2016 - 01:21 AM, said:

This shouldn't and won't be a revolution, just an improvement (hopefully). Power draw value can be actually easily adjusted to balance all the weapons in a simple manner I.E. It could allow setting up the max no-ghost-heat alpha at any number you want. Set up the treshold at 40 draw and make every weapon have <power draw=dmg> and voila -> no alpha above 40dmg without ghost heat possible.

and PGI could simply do the SAME with the current heat. needs no extra system working exactly like heat ontop of heat.

Edited by Lily from animove, 02 March 2016 - 04:33 AM.

[Widowmaker1981]

TheCharlatan, on 02 March 2016 - 02:06 AM, said:

This is going to be intresting.
I just hope they keep low range weapons to a low power draw: if this mechanic works as we expect, DPS mechs will need to be kept in check by brawlers that can spread their damage and punish their face-tanking.
A simple damage=power draw mechanic will not work if they don't put range in the equation.

Well, you would have to be an absolute mouthbreather not to understand that a 30 point 3xERPPC alpha is a lot more dangerous than a 48 point SRM24 alpha.. so surely PGI will have worked that out..

uh oh.

[TheCharlatan]

oldradagast, on 02 March 2016 - 04:16 AM, said:

Lol.... no.

This is failed design out of the box. First, it still trades one goofy, behind the scenes mechanic for another that is almost a second heat system layered over the first, and one which I assume will be poorly explained and not visible in the HUD because PGI. It is a tacked on mechanic with limited grounding in reality or common sense - and no grounding in lore.

More importantly, "heat penalties" only affect weapons that care about heat. For example, this will hurt the PPC (which nobody uses on non-hyper quirked mechs) more than boated lasers (that everyone uses) because PPC's run hotter. It also will have zero effect on Gauss, just like every heat-based penalty system. It will hurt missiles more than auto-cannons, which is funny since nobody uses missiles, while auto-cannons are at least somewhat viable when boated currently.

Best case result: boating of autocannons and Gauss becomes the new meta. Somebody with better memory than I have can tell me about when in MWO's past we had that meta, since we've done that before.

Worst case result: same as above, but thanks to stupid applications of penalties for firing lots of weapons, Light mechs vanish entirely because firing a handful of small or medium lasers buries them under huge heat penalties, and energy heavy mechs are removed from the game for similar reasons.

The problem is pinpoint damage at along range. Any slap-together mechanic that still skates around that issue will never really fix anything.

This might be a problem, you are right.
Power draw needs to be shown on the UI, and it certainly needs to do more than just "add heat". Maybe increase cooldowns? Or reduce mech speed (which would be great to stop some "uber-alpha" builds)?

[Vashramire]

Russ did say all weapons use energy so ballistics and missiles will likely draw some power. Since they are basically unlinking weapon from ghost heat it will probably draw enough power so that you still can't alpha 4+ LRM15's or 2 AC20's without a heat penalty if that's the route they are going. Since we have no info it's hard to speculate how much power will be drawn. For all we know double tapping UAC's may really tax power and keep high alpha ballistics down.

Edited by Vashramire, 02 March 2016 - 04:34 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

It sounds like a good idea in theory.

I just hope it is fun. It needs to be a fun mechanic that is easy to understand, yet a challenging and rewarding to master. If it accomplishes that, I'm all for it.

[PhoenixFire55]

Oh great, another idiotic crutch instead of proper heat scale. This time extra ********. You already have heat, now you also have "energy"? Fkn whatever. 4 years of development and still clueless.

[Lily from animove]

The Great Unwashed, on 02 March 2016 - 03:55 AM, said:

A 3/3 ERPPC DWF is a build that a good heat system should shield us from. The Awesome is built around 3 PPCs; the Warhawk around 4 ERPPCs; the Supernova around 6 large lasers. That should give us a feel for the upper limit. I'd love to see sized hardpoints return or add power restrictions to hardpoints. Now you can throw 4 ERPPCs in a Jenner IIc...

and thats the problem, when you say 6 LL, or 4ERPPC's as a base, then you can guess dual gauss and all the high alpha stuff will still be possible. so this will never be the base, you cna guess it may be like 2 PPC or just one gauss + 1 PPC. oherwise this entire system just fails to do the job it is supposed to do. Noone usses the above systems you described because they are already by heat impossible. And if the energy system allows them it would allow anything thats already an issue.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

Blue Boutique, on 02 March 2016 - 01:57 AM, said:

Still think there will be some high alphas being thrown around unless there is an additional movement penalty for high heat. Isn't this the crux of the problem when a Direwolf can snipe with 3/3 C ERPPCs and back off to cool down easily and recharge?

myomers are supposed to lose effectiveness with heat - yes please