1 reply to this topic

[Malcolm Vordermark]

The energy draw system is successful in breaking up large alphas, however with the same overall heat capacity and dissipation our total damage output is not much changed. Given the 30 damage limitation a few play styles seem to present themselves:

1) Do 30 damage with high quality weapons (that is, weapons with long range, PPFLD, etc.)
2) Do multiple ~30 damage strikes over the course of weapon cool down
3) Exceed the limit and pay extra heat

My primary concern is that doing multiple ~30 damage strikes will overtake the other two. My issue with this is timing. Most builds using this method will be laser builds due to the weight required to get that much damage. The shortest burn time will be somewhere around 0.7s, and the cool down of such weapons averages somewhere around 3.5 seconds. So between the end of the first burn and the refill of the energy bar we will have a fraction of a second to fit defensive twisting in. At the end of the second burn we will have around 1 second.

TL;DR my concern is that the game will become a staring match. Aside from my own enjoyment of torso twisting because it puts a not insignificant portion of mech durability into the players hands, mechs that stare are way easier to kill. If other builds can't compete with mechs that stare, everyone will stare and TTK will suffer. Is this self defeating?

So tell me what you think. Am I way off about the build archetypes? Do you think less than 1 second is enough time to attempt torso twisting? Would you rather that type of game play?

Edited by Rouken Vordermark, 24 August 2016 - 12:41 PM.

[Kael Posavatz]

It depends on the mech. The mechs that twist fast enough to take advantage of this are mostly those that shouldn't be in stare-and-twist matches (lights of all sorts and some mediums). The ones that would benefit from torso twisting, generally the heavy/assault mechs but also the weightier mediums aren't able to twist fast enough to matter and get back to bring their weapon back into battery in time to fire again.

I suppose you could just eat the lost time in getting your next shot off. This might be preferable under the proposed changes.