196 replies to this topic

[Alistair Winter]

Yeah, I'm starting a new thread. Why not?

I'd like to get your input on a more theoretical question rather than discussing the specifics and minutiae of ghost heat vs energy draw.

Using tabletop Battletech as a foundation, and sticking to the mech building rules of TT like MWO does, is boating inevitable unless you create arbitrary game mechanics to prevent it (e.g. ghost heat)? And is it natural to always balance min-max builds around alpha strikes?

Some people argue that boating is inevitable, simply because it allows you to use all your offense optimally at the same time. Simply put, you won't get stuck at a given range with half your weapons either useless or inefficient at that range.

Some people also argue that alpha striking is inevitable, because it's dumb to carry more weapons than you can use at the same time. For example, if you can't keep firing 5 PPCs over any reasonable length of time, then it's more efficient to just equip 4 PPCs and extra heatsinks. If ghost heat or energy draw makes 4 PPCs too hot, then people will just switch to 3 PPCs. But people will always build their mechs around alpha strikes.

I would argue that this is simply a matter of balance. There are variables that could be manipulated to get the desired effect, which is basically to reward mixed builds for most mechs in the game (opposite of boating) and reward firing only some weapons at a time (opposite of alpha striking).

Spoiler

The best illustration, in my mind, is the Dire Wolf. For those of you who don't own a Dire Wolf, it's actually kind of hard to come up with a number of good Dire Wolf builds that rely on alpha striking and boating. Because the Dire Wolf has sooo much free tonnage to use. Even with max armour, you have over 50 tons to play with. This means you may not want to just equip 3 cERPPCs and lots of heatsinks, because you'll still have more than 15 tons unused. Not enough crits. And you may not want to equip 5cERPPCs just to spend all the free tonnage, because it's too hot. You have enough hardpoints to equip 10 medium lasers, but Clan lasers are so damn hot and you run out of crit space for heat sinks. There are ways to create properly min-maxed Dire Wolves, of course. But a lot of Dire Wolf builds are naturally diverse (i.e. they are layered to have different weapon types firing at different ranges as opposed to constantly alpha striking), just because the mech can carry so many guns!

I think one has to consider the really extreme examples to understand that the status quo is not unavoidable. It's easy to look at the status quo and feel that changes wouldn't do anything, because most of the balancing is done by adding 0.5 seconds to cooldown here or increasing heat by 2 there. In MWO history, it's fairly rare to see huge game changers, like doubling armour or universally doubling heat efficiency or reducing cooldown by half.

But what if you did do some of those things? What if you effectively put all mechs in the same situation as the Dire Wolf, where they simply had waay more free tonnage than you could hope to use? We can't change the actual tonnage values, of course. But we can change heat and cooldown. What if all weapons were either radically hotter or had radically increased cooldown, or both? I mean, by orders of magnitude.

What if all energy weapons were several times hotter than they are right now? You could put multiple PPCs on a Black Knight, but you'd never be able to use them efficiently. You could put 9 different lasers on it, but you'd never be able to fire them all over time, or even do a single alpha strike. And if all energy weapons were extremely hot, the best solution would perhaps not be to only bring 1 PPC and 30 heatsinks and just alphastrike all the time like a RVN-3L. But perhaps the best solution would be to bring a PPC, some medium lasers and some small lasers, because bringing too few weapons means you have unused tonnage and boating means you'd never be able to use all your weapons at any given range. So you bring 2-4 different types of weapons for different ranges. Long range? Use your PPC. Mid range? Medium lasers. Short range? Maybe a combination of medium lasers and small lasers.

What if all ballistics had a cooldown of 5-15 seconds? Their DPS would be really low, so they would be at a disadvantage in many situations. You wouldn't just bring 2 AC5's, have a heat neutral mech and call it a day, because the DPS would be terrible. But if energy weapons were super hot relative to ballistics, then you might want to combine some 1 ton medium lasers with those AC5's to increase your DPS.

I'm not positive, but I feel like the meta of MWO could be changed radically by drastically manipulating the variables. It seems doable to have a game where your Shadow Hawk actually does carry an AC5, a single laser, a single LRM launcher and a single SRM launcher, because it's a good idea to combine AC's and LRMs at long range for maximum DPS and heat efficiency, and it's a good idea to combine lasers and SRMs at close range.

Keep in mind, this is just a thought experiment. It's too late to make radical changes to MWO by now. The whole game is like a house of cards and you can't really change the foundation without everything crashing down. But in theory, I feel like this game could be radically different if you made major changes like:

• Radically increasing cooldown (A turn in TT was 10 seconds, right?)
  
• Bringing armour values back to normal instead of double
  
• Radically increasing heat values for most weapons except ballistics
  
• Radically reducing DPS for long range weapons, to create a stronger divide between long range and short range. A gauss rifle should not have anywhere near as short cooldown as an AC20, by this logic.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. It may be tempting to insult my intelligence at this point, but please keep in mind that I'm in a very fragile emotional state after all these years on the forum. Be nice



TL;DR - I think it's possible to stop boating and alpha striking from being the norm by making really radical changes to balance, manipulating certain values by orders of magnitude. This is a theoretical discussion, not intended as constructive problem solving for how to fix MWO.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 21 August 2016 - 11:47 PM.

[El Bandito]

Sized Hardpoints will make sure only select few mechs can boat larger weapons. And those select few can be brought in line with negative quirks, if need be. No more quad PPC Stalker.

Sized hardpoints will also create additional balancing mechanism when combined with hardpoint inflation, to bring underperforming mech in line with the others.

Some think such a system will still be prone to exploits, but I counter that under SHP balancing becomes easier when compared to unlimited sizes per hardpoint that we have now.

Edited by El Bandito, 21 August 2016 - 11:52 PM.

[Hit the Deck]

It seems that you have got the gist by this one -> make it so that boating certain amount of weapons past certain point becomes wasteful because you can only effectively fire a number of them. Lowering the Heat Cap (or making weapons far hotter like in your case) could serve this purpose. Gauss is a pain in the @ss to balance in this system because it has 1 heat and giving it high Battle Value serves no purpose here. Giving it high CD like you said could work but the weapon still needs to be fun.

Two, introduce non perfect convergence because it naturally lessens the effect of firing a number of weapons at a time, which makes "alpha-ing" direct fire weapons to be not that great. Implementing this would be messy and difficult. I don't know if it would look and feel good in MWO.

I believe that those two could theoretically limit the desire to boat weapons past certain point.

[jss78]

A couple of thoughts.

First, you discuss boating without mentioning convergence, but aren't the two inextricably linked? Here you can boat a sh*t-ton of weapons, all over the different parts of your 'mech, and they magically hit a single pixel at all ranges. In TT you'll suffer of the sandblast effect because each weapon hits a random component. This makes "big weapons" devastating in TT, but in MWO it's all about how many of your favourite weapons you can boat.

Second, are mixed builds ever really that good, or do they happen in TT because people mostly play with stock 'mechs?

To expand on this -- my experience with TT is with stock loadouts only, but when modifications ARE allowed, isn't there a tendency towards more focused and less mixed builds in TT as well? When mods are discussed, "remove X, add ML" seems a common theme. Does anyone really view that AC/laser/SRM/LRM Shadow Hawk as the optimal fighting machine, but that's what they use because they're thrown in it, and against other stock 'mechs it works fine anyway?

Edited by jss78, 22 August 2016 - 12:14 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Its been discussed hundreds of times already. The problem is not boating and/or alpha-striking. The problem is instant perfect convergence that allows you to hit the same location with all your weapons. THAT is the biggest difference compared to TT. We also need to thank PGI for pinpoint laservomit (fkn quirks) that made matters worse tenfold and the idiocy of players crying about alpha-strikes when all they do is play peek-a-boo with those alpha-mechs instead of loading up on DPS and smashing their face.

However, PGI had clearly stated that they are too dumb to fix the real issue their servers won't be able to additionally calculate convergence with the HSR algorithms, i.e. don't hope we'll ever have a balanced game.
Bandaids^TM. Soon^TM.

[Widowmaker1981]

I think in order for builds like you describe in the OP (LRM+AC+LASER+SRM) to actually be an optimal way to build a mech, it would have to be forced by mechanics to such an extent that there would no longer be any meaningful customisation, which would kill most of what i like about the game.

I think you understand it wont happen, but i think you fail to understand that the game you want is NOT what many others want.

Boating is always going to be the most optimal thing to do, in the absence of mechanisms to prevent it - due to ranges, firing profiles etc. Ghost heat prevents boating because the penalties are stiff, and as such it encourages what people call 'avoidance builds' but i can sensible, synergistic, mixed builds (2xPPC + 2xAC5, etc). But people don't like it, because it is arbitrary. Well, guess what? You cannot prevent boating without arbitrary mechanics.

Edited by Widowmaker1981, 22 August 2016 - 01:08 AM.

[Hit the Deck]

Widowmaker1981, on 22 August 2016 - 12:44 AM, said:

I think in order for builds like you describe in the OP (LRM+AC+LASER+SRM) to actually be an optimal way to build a mech, it would have to be forced by mechanics to such an extent that there would no longer be any meaningful customisation, which would kill most of what i like about the game.

I think you understand it wont happen, but i think you fail to understand that the game you want is NOT what many others want.

I personally aiming that Heavy 'Mechs and above roughly want to bring 2 groups of different purpose weapons, think 3x PPC and 4x SRMs. Boating either would be wasteful because the system doesn't allow you to have the capacity to fire that many weapons in a span of time.

If needed, the non-pinpoint convergence could theoretically be introduced to lessen the effect of alpha-ing even more.

Edited by Hit the Deck, 22 August 2016 - 01:00 AM.

[Kanil]

Talking about massively increasing the heat of energy weapons makes me think back to when the 6-8 small laser hunchback was popular. I'm not sure I'd want to go back to those days.

Edited by Kanil, 22 August 2016 - 01:18 AM.

[H I A S]

I like boating.
I like Alphas.
For me both is fine.

[627]

It is not so much the boating... I mean people scream "boat" when someone field 2 of a given weapon.

I think the problem is that ourr weapons are to weak to bring them only once. Look at the Shadowhawk. One ML(!), one SRM2, one LRM5 and one AC5. It is literally all possible weapon classes we have on that thing. but not a single one can do more than 5 Damage and half of the armament spreads its damage all over the place.
On top of this is that you have to bring 3 types of ammo so 3 tons (before we had 1/2t ammo) you'll likely won't need.

Or another example, the Grasshopper with its single SSRM2 and 2! tons of ammo for it. That is simply a waste of tonnage.

A singe AC10 is always something you can work with, and so is a single PPC (on the edge of course). But the smaller weapons and especially the missile weapons just don't work if you don't boat them.

I'd so like to see diverse builds that bring a single LRM10 to the fight like the Centurion so people have to actually manage more than 2 weapon groups. But I have no idea how you could do that; buff all weapons and introduce sized hardpoints could work on paper but I doubt it'll work in game. And everything else leads to more boating.

As long as you don't play stock mode, you can't stop boating. And even in stock mode people will bring the best boats as seen with the K2 and Awesome.

[Otto Cannon]

Vastly increased heat and cooldowns could have made the game slower paced with longer ttk, but it would have put off a lot of players. I like the idea of a lower heat cap and some increasing heat penalties, but then you encourage ballistic boating and without a convergence fix there's not much you can do about that.

The best thing would have been increased spread when firing multiple weapons, to make chainfire more accurate but alphas still possible. Sadly we'll never get that, so there's no point discussing it at length.

I can see why sized hardpoints are a popular idea too, but I can't help feeling that if it ever happens then everyone will quickly work out a handful of 'best' meta mechs for the same builds they use now and you'd see even less variety in the game afterwards with the same gameplay problems remaining.

As long as there's pinpoint, people will always just find the best way to put as many damage points as possible into a single click. You can use whatever convoluted methods you like to reduce the damage per click, but it will never change the basic gameplay because the pinpoint convergence root cause will never change.

[C E Dwyer]

Alistair Winter, on 21 August 2016 - 11:37 PM, said:

Stuff from Alistair I mostly agree with.

I agree with you, some of the mechanics I don't but the end result is the same.

If you remember this was all argued out in Closed beta, some of it rather nastily, slower rate of fire, convergence, sized hard points etc etc.

People that wanted a more drawn out game, more like the real franchise, were basically told your clueless, this is Mechwarrior not Battletech table top, if you want something more like it, F off and play it. or megamek.

Now a good sized chunk of those people don't support the game, a few play on a free, most have left, some lurk the boards and are P.G.I's most toxic critic's, this last part does show despite some vocal people claims, usually the same ones, that P.G.I and the mods are very tolerant of the behaviour on these boards.

These people got what they wanted a minmax alpa strike game, and then pointed the finger at I.G.P and P.G.I and acused them of ruining the franchise, when it was just P.G.I providing them with the game they wanted.

Oh they'll say this isn't what we wanted, but by saying that they clearly haven't any understanding of Cause and effect, because the whole custom design and the way critical slots work, was going to produce what we have now.

This is yet another example of P.G.I giving the minmax customers what they wanted, and then being blamed for listening.

[Ghogiel]

A lot of witchhunt going about against boating lately. Nothing wrong with boating and it should be as viable as any option if not more so due to how specialisation is better than mixed.

Edited by Ghogiel, 22 August 2016 - 03:20 AM.

[zagibu]

The real reason why BT mechs in the lore have a diverse arsenal of weapons and in MWO mostly boat 1 type of weapons, is because in BT lore, a mech is up against a lot of different units, so it simply makes sense to complement your main arsenal with a couple of MGs or maybe a flamer. Additionally, a mission is not over in 15 minutes, and a chance to reload might not come in hours, so it would be pretty risky to not bring a couple of energy weapons as well.

[Hit the Deck]

zagibu, on 22 August 2016 - 04:32 AM, said:

The real reason why BT mechs in the lore have a diverse arsenal of weapons and in MWO mostly boat 1 type of weapons, is because in BT lore, a mech is up against a lot of different units, so it simply makes sense to complement your main arsenal with a couple of MGs or maybe a flamer. Additionally, a mission is not over in 15 minutes, and a chance to reload might not come in hours, so it would be pretty risky to not bring a couple of energy weapons as well.

True, that. That's why I still believe that an FPS BT game is better served to be a PvE rather than PvP, with what you said being one of the many reasons.

Also imagine that in the new hypothetical MechWarrior game, your final state when you finished the last mission, carries on to the next (like in MW3 IIRC). Repair and rearm would be a major concern.

That system could actually be made into a PvP game, but one which has like continuous quasi-campaigns and is not an arena shooter like what we have.

[Yosharian]

Alistair Winter, on 21 August 2016 - 11:37 PM, said:

Yeah, I'm starting a new thread. Why not?

I'd like to get your input on a more theoretical question rather than discussing the specifics and minutiae of ghost heat vs energy draw.

Using tabletop Battletech as a foundation, and sticking to the mech building rules of TT like MWO does, is boating inevitable unless you create arbitrary game mechanics to prevent it (e.g. ghost heat)? And is it natural to always balance min-max builds around alpha strikes?

---snip---

TL;DR - I think it's possible to stop boating and alpha striking from being the norm by making really radical changes to balance, manipulating certain values by orders of magnitude. This is a theoretical discussion, not intended as constructive problem solving for how to fix MWO.

Alistair, stop, just stop.



It's PGI.

[Ibrandul Mike]

Depending on the definition of boating some mechs would not be able to function anymore. The Black Knight for example has only energy hardpoints. Therefore if you define boating as taking weapons of one type (energy for example) it is by definition unable to do anything but boating. There is no chance for diversity. Of course you can just say that boating is taking one specific weapon and only use that. But that would not change so much. ER Medium Laser and Large Pulse Laser would still be a viable combination. As would be PPCs and ER Large Lasers for example. Taking only the big groups (Lasers; Autocannons; Missiles, even if split in long range and short range) wouldn't help either.
As soon as you want to play competitive you have to min/max. If to players with equal skills (and under equal other conditions) face each other it comes down to exactly that. Luck and the min/max...
So at least in that scene it is not avoidable. Changing the numberas alone wouldn't change enough. You would at least have to change the system enough so that weapons of different kinds have to be used to be effective but that would disadvantage mechs that are boats by design too much.

El Bandito, on 21 August 2016 - 11:50 PM, said:

Sized Hardpoints will make sure only select few mechs can boat larger weapons. And those select few can be brought in line with negative quirks, if need be. No more quad PPC Stalker.

Sized hardpoints will also create additional balancing mechanism when combined with hardpoint inflation, to bring underperforming mech in line with the others.

Some think such a system will still be prone to exploits, but I counter that under SHP balancing becomes easier when compared to unlimited sizes per hardpoint that we have now.

Sized hardpoints as compared to the mech class or compared to the stock weapon? To mech size I wouldn't agree. But I would be totally ok to have a restriction like "there were MGs in the stock loadout so you can only use ballistic weapons up to X".

zagibu, on 22 August 2016 - 04:32 AM, said:

The real reason why BT mechs in the lore have a diverse arsenal of weapons and in MWO mostly boat 1 type of weapons, is because in BT lore, a mech is up against a lot of different units, so it simply makes sense to complement your main arsenal with a couple of MGs or maybe a flamer. Additionally, a mission is not over in 15 minutes, and a chance to reload might not come in hours, so it would be pretty risky to not bring a couple of energy weapons as well.

Good point... flamers and MGs are usually more often used against infantry than other mechs. Ammunition is a constant problem in campaigns. We don't have infantry. We don't have campaigns that work like campaigns. We have something like single scenarios. And even FP is not something like a real campaign. Changing the game from ground up might do the trick. Ballistic weapons and missiles as superior weapons to lasers but with the disadvantage of running out of ammo. At the moment it is more likely that you have done something wrong with your build or are a bad pilot, than running out of ammo, depending on the available space of course. AC/20 lights can run out of ammo quite quickly. But would you take one of those on a campaign if you knew the ammo situation will be dire and you have to restock or be useless?

[BigBenn]

I know the energy draw system is very much in its infancy stage and PGI will be adjusting things as the beta goes along, but part of me wonder if it would be been more simple to tinker with the ghost heat instead of creating an entirely new system. I wonder just how much time PGI has put in to this experiment when it could have been making more maps, remodeling certain mechs (Battlemaster!), etc.

Alpha striking is a part of the game, both in lore, TT, MW2-4, and today in MWO. It shouldn't be frowned upon. However, when it is so common that is takes away from the over all experience of MWO then that is where the alphas need to be managed. The issue is not the mech firing the 2LL, an AC10, and a LRM10 in an alpha, but rather a mech with 4 LL, 8 ML, or 12 SL. There are other examples as well. I believe any time a player wants to fire an alpha and they are sporting massed weapons that as the same, THAT should be the issue that is gravely penalized. Make shutdown or perhaps even an extended shutdown imminent if a player chooses to fire alphas of all the same weapon.

PGI should encourage mixed or combined arms mechs, not promote laser boats.

As much as I'm a "glass half full" kind of guy, I have a hunch this energy draw system is going to further complicate the game without one bit of relief from the crazy alphas by mechs armed with the same weapon. Anyone else notice all of the LPL mechs running around? That certainly cant be PGI's goal, can it???

[Novakaine]

The only real solution for this issue is increased cool down/reload for all weapons.
With the exception of mg's and flamers of course.
And serious physical penalties for alpha striking past your heat threshold.
Another convoluted heat scale is simple a waste of time resources.

[El Bandito]

Ibrandul Mike, on 22 August 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

Sized hardpoints as compared to the mech class or compared to the stock weapon? To mech size I wouldn't agree. But I would be totally ok to have a restriction like "there were MGs in the stock loadout so you can only use ballistic weapons up to X".

Compared to stock weapon of course. One simply should not be able to fit a pair of Gauss Rifles in a machine gun slot in CPLT-K2, for example. AC2 is fine, but Gauss? Nope.

Edited by El Bandito, 22 August 2016 - 06:53 AM.