56 replies to this topic

[Jack Shayu Walker]

Seariously, I think this is comical. Everything about the DHS feels almost right now. Just come on, make that last nudge PGI, take the plunge, give us them true dubs!

[ScarecrowES]

I don't know that I agree that everything about DHS feels right aside from dissipation. I genuinely hate pretty much everything they've done with sinks in the PTS... but dissipation could use another boost.

[MechaBattler]

More dissipation for more fun. That's how I see it. Lower cap makes it harder for alphas. That's fine by me. But a high dissipation keeps the action flowing.

Edited by MechaBattler, 16 September 2016 - 05:37 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

They become better than true DHS once Skill Tree is factored in. Others are just PO that they cannot have true dubs + Skill Tree, with a heat scale that does not matter til 100+ is hit, nothing to make a player reconsider firing that next weapon set that might cause his mech to cross a threshold that would slow down his mech and make it less agile.

Everyone wants the positive effects but most do not want the negative, the balancing side of it, just like the old MW4 servers with NHUA, fraking disguising. And this is just PTS 5. How many more will PGI run, and with what other changes?

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 16 September 2016 - 06:07 PM.

[cazidin]

It's a 0.01 point difference, and that makes all the difference.

[ScarecrowES]

Tarl Cabot, on 16 September 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

They become better than true DHS once Skill Tree is factored in. Others are just PO that they cannot have true dubs + Skill Tree, with a heat scale that does not matter til 100+ is hit, nothing to make a player reconsider firing that next weapon set that might cause his mech to cross a threshold that would slow down his mech and make it less agile.

Everyone wants the positive effects but most do not want the negative, the balancing side of it, just like the old MW4 servers with NHUA, fraking disguising. And this is just PTS 5. How many more will PGI run, and with what other changes?

The thing is... if you actually look at what players are advocating for... specifically things like much lower heat cap and much higher dissipation, the way they want alphas handled, they way they want burst damage handled... how much damage they feel is ok to do in a given amount of time... everything players say they want, deep down, when you really ASK them, the TT system provides.

Just putting in the system as it was originally intended does ALL of this. THESE players get their higher caps and low dissipation. THESE players get their low cap and high dissipation. THESE players watch alphas get curbed. THESE players still get to alpha if they pay for it properly. These players get to watch TTK expanded, but THESE players get a system where skill makes a difference. Everyone wins. Nobody gets screwed.

And all we have to do is follow the ORIGINAL design.

[cazidin]

ScarecrowES, on 16 September 2016 - 06:25 PM, said:

The thing is... if you actually look at what players are advocating for... specifically things like much lower heat cap and much higher dissipation, the way they want alphas handled, they way they want burst damage handled... how much damage they feel is ok to do in a given amount of time... everything players say they want, deep down, when you really ASK them, the TT system provides.

Just putting in the system as it was originally intended does ALL of this. THESE players get their higher caps and low dissipation. THESE players get their low cap and high dissipation. THESE players watch alphas get curbed. THESE players still get to alpha if they pay for it properly. These players get to watch TTK expanded, but THESE players get a system where skill makes a difference. Everyone wins. Nobody gets screwed.

And all we have to do is follow the ORIGINAL design.

I would like to add that Russ tweeted a few months ago that whatever technical issue they had which prevented them from implementing heat scale penalties was overcome... and nobody retweeted this. I think it was actually buried under by some event being held at the time.

[ScarecrowES]

cazidin, on 16 September 2016 - 07:26 PM, said:

I would like to add that Russ tweeted a few months ago that whatever technical issue they had which prevented them from implementing heat scale penalties was overcome... and nobody retweeted this. I think it was actually buried under by some event being held at the time.

I believe many of the technical issues they have with such simple systems comes from their insistence that core gameplay systems be handled on the servers rather than the client as "anti-cheat" measures. This is a concept they expanded on quite a bit when that article about predictive weapons coding came out.

A lot of the discussion was that there were a lot of things that would be easy to do from the client perspective, including stuff related to hit reg, but that PGI insisted on doing things through the servers to prevent the possibility of cheating and corrupted clients.

I really can't see anything in energy draw that would have required the sort of technical wizardry PGI claimed it would have required, unless it's featuring more of the same "server prediction" crap.

In any case, Energy Draw works mechanically. And the same mechanics that make Energy Draw work are the same mechanics that make the TT heat system work. All you have to do is have the ED bar look at heat instead of damage. Then, swap the functionality of the ED bar and heat scale - ED bar gets the heat cap (defined by the number of sinks times their value) and dissipation rate (1/10th of the heat cap per sec), and the heat scale gets a fixed 30 pts and a dissipation rate equal to 1/10th of the unused portion of the ED scale.

Boom, you just created the TT heat system. Less than a day's work.

We already have coding for variable movement in the game... MASC, getting legged, losing a torso on the Clan side. You just need some coding for the bar to change states at certain levels on the bar. That's super easy. And now you have scaled movement penalties.

The other penalties take work. Players have recommended HUD fade and fizzle... that takes the same state-change coding as movement penalties AND some UI artwork to add the effect. Some players have suggested losing sensor data and targeting info... those systems already exist, so it's just a matter of turning them off completely at certain heat levels, or changing their function, depending on exactly what we want to see. Some immersion-increasing pilot heat effects would be cool... heat distortion in the air around the pilot would be awesome, but a heavy burdon on the engine.

Other things like pilot damage might be nice... expand on the "damage for overheat" concept on live. In addition to taking damage when you overheat, maybe make the pilot take damage for spending too much time at high heat - not enough to kill you quickly, but enough that if you spend a lot of the match running hot, it could eventually kill you. The hotter it is, the more ticks of damage accumulated over the match. Maybe represented by damage done to the heat of the mech?

It's really NOT that hard. And even without the penalties online right away, just putting the TT system in should curb SOME of the problems with TTK and high output just from pure mechanics alone.

[Arkroma]

Personally I think heat dissipation on live is good enough, I just don't see the reason behind giving us true dub(or "better than true dub"). Well if it's "we want TT values" PGI should remove the skills related to heat as well because these things didn't exist in TT.

Having an large enough heat cap though is kinda of important as in PTS4 an Energy brawler just couldn't take out a mech on its own without standing there pounding the meaning of the universe while waiting for the heat metre to come down.

Anyway I think heat management on Live is fine/fun as it is, why all these changes? Getting rid of ED? I thought that was already out of question as goose waffle exists.

[ScarecrowES]

Arkroma, on 16 September 2016 - 08:05 PM, said:

Personally I think heat dissipation on live is good enough, I just don't see the reason behind giving us true dub(or "better than true dub"). Well if it's "we want TT values" PGI should remove the skills related to heat as well because these things didn't exist in TT.

Having an large enough heat cap though is kinda of important as in PTS4 an Energy brawler just couldn't take out a mech on its own without standing there pounding the meaning of the universe while waiting for the heat metre to come down.

Anyway I think heat management on Live is fine/fun as it is, why all these changes? Getting rid of ED? I thought that was already out of question as goose waffle exists.

The values for heat cap and dissipation rates that you see on the Live servers - even though the math used to get there is more convoluted, and it's not even across all mechs - is more or less the same values you'd get in TT. After you account for skills, and if you average across all builds, MWO Live and TT produce the same results.

The problem is... how MWO uses all of that is different from TT, and is what causes all these problems. MWO gives you 30pts of free heat, with no penalties, that dissipates at the normal rate no matter what. This makes a huge difference. It allows for higher alphas, higher bursts, and more DoT. It also provides no incentive whatsoever not to throw out as much damage as you can and then ride the heat cap.

In effect, while TT ultimately gives you access to the same number of heat points to work with, 30 of those are locked away behind penalties that make you think twice about using them. And if you DO run into those penalties and try to redline it, the penalties will keep hurting you, and you'll always be in danger of worse ones. However, the lower practical heat cap comes with a bonus of higher effective heat dissipation when you stop firing and let your mech completely cool off. You're both punished for too much output, and rewarded for controlling yourself.

The numbers, ultimately, are the same. But the mechanics make all the difference. No matter how much you change the numbers, the results will always be messed up if you keep the mechanics the same.

[davoodoo]

Dissipation in tt is the same regardless of how much heat you have

All you would need to do in mwo for lets say 100 heat cap is that you throw some engine penatlies at 75 some Cooldown or smth at 80 and so on

Edited by davoodoo, 17 September 2016 - 12:24 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

I want true dubs, and for them to put the skill tree nerf back in place, one of the most essential skills being less essential sounds like a bonus to me (it also helps kinda hurt some of the heftier ballistic boats which kinda need a nerf).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 17 September 2016 - 12:31 AM.

[Kuaron]

ScarecrowES, on 16 September 2016 - 07:43 PM, said:

In any case, Energy Draw works mechanically. And the same mechanics that make Energy Draw work are the same mechanics that make the TT heat system work. All you have to do is have the ED bar look at heat instead of damage. Then, swap the functionality of the ED bar and heat scale - ED bar gets the heat cap (defined by the number of sinks times their value) and dissipation rate (1/10th of the heat cap per sec), and the heat scale gets a fixed 30 pts and a dissipation rate equal to 1/10th of the unused portion of the ED scale.

Boom, you just created the TT heat system. Less than a day's work.

I have to admit, this does sound interesting.
And avoids nonsense, like heating up for using energy, and then damage using energy again and heating up even more... or whatever.
So, how fast would this new ED bar (the HS-dependent one, not the fixed 30 heat reserve one) regenerate? 0.2 for DHS, as you wrote? And the capacity being 2 per DHS? Don't we get about the same alpha problem as we have not, this way? Wouldn't we still have to at least halve the cap increase per DHS?

Also, what about the soft penalties for part-filled heat bar you mentioned in the other thread?
They would affect the second (fix 30) heat bar, right? Do you consider them essential for the proposed system or just an immersion gimmick?

[ScarecrowES]

Kuaron, on 17 September 2016 - 08:27 AM, said:

I have to admit, this does sound interesting.
And avoids nonsense, like heating up for using energy, and then damage using energy again and heating up even more... or whatever.
So, how fast would this new ED bar (the HS-dependent one, not the fixed 30 heat reserve one) regenerate? 0.2 for DHS, as you wrote? And the capacity being 2 per DHS? Don't we get about the same alpha problem as we have not, this way? Wouldn't we still have to at least halve the cap increase per DHS?

Also, what about the soft penalties for part-filled heat bar you mentioned in the other thread?
They would affect the second (fix 30) heat bar, right? Do you consider them essential for the proposed system or just an immersion gimmick?

You have to remember that in MWO currently, your total heat scale is whatever your heat cap is (defined by your sinks) PLUS 30 points. The fact that you have an extra 30 points to work with is what causes the alpha problem. TT has these two values split up into two separate "bars" that both work differently, one of which you get penalized for using.

Example... Timberwolf with 2xLPL and 5xERML has 24 DHS, which is a 48-pt heat cap in TT (+30 penalty scale = 78 total), but an 84-pt heat cap in MWO (due to skills and convoluted math). In MWO, you can use the entire cap freely... no penalties. In TT, you take penalties for using any of that last 30 points. If I alpha once in TT (50 heat), I've used up every bit of my mech's heat cap and incur a 2-pt penalty. If I do the same in MWO, my heat merely goes to 60%

That "soft cap" with penalties is largely essential into curbing output, yes. The penalties alone are enough to make players think twice about using any of those last 30 heat points. But it's not just the penalties, it's the mechanics of how they dissipate. Without the penalties, the mechanics alone still provide some level of regulation, but the penalties themselves provide the most pressing incentives.

Normally, in both MWO and TT, your heat capacity dissipation is about 1/10th of your heat cap per second (0.2pts/sec per DHS). MWO's math is a little more complex here too, but it's not much different. So the TBR above gets a dissipation rate of 4.8pts/sec. Since MWO has one large bar, the whole thing dissipates at the same rate. If you get close to shut down, and wait a few seconds, you're not in danger of shutting down any more. In TT it works a little different.

In order to dissipate heat from your penalty bar, you have to have unused heat cap (that first 48 points). The rate of dissipation for penalties is 1/10th of that unused cap per second. So if you're at a full 48 cap, you dissipate 0 heat from the penalty bar, but if you're at 0 of 48 cap, you dissipate at a full 4.8pts/sec. So technically, with the TT version, you have both lower dissipation and higher dissipation than on Live right now, depending on what the state of the mech.

In MWO, players tend to put out as much damage as fast as they can, and when they get near shut down, they reduce their fire to cool off just enough to fire again, and repeat. We'd call this "redlining," where you hold your mech at redline heat indefinitely, putting out small amounts of damage. If you do this under the TT system, you cannot shed your penalties, because your penalty dissipation rate stays very low (ie, at 40 of 48 heat cap, your penalty dissipation rate is only 0.8pts/sec).

You want to get rid of those penalties, you've got to cool off for quite a bit. It's not good enough just to hop behind a rock for a few seconds to get yourself out of danger. If you DO back completely off firing, and you do so for a bit, you'll find your penalty bar dissipates faster and faster. In this way, you're both discouraged from continuing to fire, and encouraged to NOT fire for longer.

The penalties themselves affect just the 30-pt bar, yeah. Movement penalties are a no-brainer here. The hotter you are, the lower your top speed, accel, decel, and turning. TT has other penalties that won't translate well to MWO... nobody would want random ammo explosions, and those don't hurt energy mechs. Chance-to-hit modifiers don't really make sense, etc. However, we can simulate the effects that some of this would have through HUD and sensor problems that make it hard for players to fight. If you get to high heat, and your HUD becomes unreliable... have your reticle fade in/out, lose target info, target lock, whatever... it becomes VERY hard to engage other mechs.

So, for all intents and purposes, we don't put a hard cap on alphas. You CAN still alpha... and you SHOULD be able to alpha. But if you do that, you run the risk of taking on penalties, which will make it harder for you to fight moving forward. You're going to have to spend a longer time with low damage output from there on in order to "pay down" that alpha than you would have if you hadn't done it. It's a harder choice to make under TT rules, while in MWO there's no choice at all. You alpha because you can - because even if you do, you still have 40% of your heat cap to play with.

[Kaptain]

ScarecrowES, on 17 September 2016 - 12:41 PM, said:

You have to remember that in MWO currently, your total heat scale is whatever your heat cap is (defined by your sinks) PLUS 30 points. The fact that you have an extra 30 points to work with is what causes the alpha problem. TT has these two values split up into two separate "bars" that both work differently, one of which you get penalized for using.

Example... Timberwolf with 2xLPL and 5xERML has 24 DHS, which is a 48-pt heat cap in TT (+30 penalty scale = 78 total), but an 84-pt heat cap in MWO (due to skills and convoluted math). In MWO, you can use the entire cap freely... no penalties. In TT, you take penalties for using any of that last 30 points. If I alpha once in TT (50 heat), I've used up every bit of my mech's heat cap and incur a 2-pt penalty. If I do the same in MWO, my heat merely goes to 60%

That "soft cap" with penalties is largely essential into curbing output, yes. The penalties alone are enough to make players think twice about using any of those last 30 heat points. But it's not just the penalties, it's the mechanics of how they dissipate. Without the penalties, the mechanics alone still provide some level of regulation, but the penalties themselves provide the most pressing incentives.

Normally, in both MWO and TT, your heat capacity dissipation is about 1/10th of your heat cap per second (0.2pts/sec per DHS). MWO's math is a little more complex here too, but it's not much different. So the TBR above gets a dissipation rate of 4.8pts/sec. Since MWO has one large bar, the whole thing dissipates at the same rate. If you get close to shut down, and wait a few seconds, you're not in danger of shutting down any more. In TT it works a little different.

In order to dissipate heat from your penalty bar, you have to have unused heat cap (that first 48 points). The rate of dissipation for penalties is 1/10th of that unused cap per second. So if you're at a full 48 cap, you dissipate 0 heat from the penalty bar, but if you're at 0 of 48 cap, you dissipate at a full 4.8pts/sec. So technically, with the TT version, you have both lower dissipation and higher dissipation than on Live right now, depending on what the state of the mech.

In MWO, players tend to put out as much damage as fast as they can, and when they get near shut down, they reduce their fire to cool off just enough to fire again, and repeat. We'd call this "redlining," where you hold your mech at redline heat indefinitely, putting out small amounts of damage. If you do this under the TT system, you cannot shed your penalties, because your penalty dissipation rate stays very low (ie, at 40 of 48 heat cap, your penalty dissipation rate is only 0.8pts/sec).

You want to get rid of those penalties, you've got to cool off for quite a bit. It's not good enough just to hop behind a rock for a few seconds to get yourself out of danger. If you DO back completely off firing, and you do so for a bit, you'll find your penalty bar dissipates faster and faster. In this way, you're both discouraged from continuing to fire, and encouraged to NOT fire for longer.

The penalties themselves affect just the 30-pt bar, yeah. Movement penalties are a no-brainer here. The hotter you are, the lower your top speed, accel, decel, and turning. TT has other penalties that won't translate well to MWO... nobody would want random ammo explosions, and those don't hurt energy mechs. Chance-to-hit modifiers don't really make sense, etc. However, we can simulate the effects that some of this would have through HUD and sensor problems that make it hard for players to fight. If you get to high heat, and your HUD becomes unreliable... have your reticle fade in/out, lose target info, target lock, whatever... it becomes VERY hard to engage other mechs.

So, for all intents and purposes, we don't put a hard cap on alphas. You CAN still alpha... and you SHOULD be able to alpha. But if you do that, you run the risk of taking on penalties, which will make it harder for you to fight moving forward. You're going to have to spend a longer time with low damage output from there on in order to "pay down" that alpha than you would have if you hadn't done it. It's a harder choice to make under TT rules, while in MWO there's no choice at all. You alpha because you can - because even if you do, you still have 40% of your heat cap to play with.

The more I hear you talk about this the more I like it. Its very well thought out. If you were to make a visual representation of your idea I think you would garner even more support, though you have gotten better at explaining it.

[ScarecrowES]

Kaptain, on 17 September 2016 - 01:02 PM, said:

The more I hear you talk about this the more I like it. Its very well thought out. If you were to make a visual representation of your idea I think you would garner even more support, though you have gotten better at explaining it.

I find the numbers and mechanics are super easy to explain... but explaining what that all actually MEANS gets kinda difficult. It requires that I explain in excruciating detail how every minute thing plays off each other and what the practical result is. At first, I thought maybe the mechanics alone would speak for themselves, and I could avoid such lengthy explainations... but alas, it hasn't worked out that way.

Yes... I would love to do a graphic comparison, but it'd have to be animated to really show it in action. I have the skill to do basic static images, but you really have to see it in action to get the full effect. I think that's beyond my knowledge, sadly. I wouldn't know how to begin. It's been years since I did any animation from scratch, and this would require more than I've previously done.

[Kuaron]

You can do several static images on the basis of screenshots to start with.

But it's not about the explaining, I'd like to speak about the system itself a bit more.
My main concerns about ED were (1) boating and (2) lack of interpretation.
Your proposed system solves (2) just buy letting it use the weapon's heat only, and only once.
For the same reason it doesn't encourage boating as much as ED did, by not equalizing all weapons taking their damage value.
But now remember why it was the dmg and not the heat ED was using:
Balance between the weapon types; it already encourages DPS by making the players optimizing around 30 dmg volleys maximally often. Which is better achieved by the cold ballistics than by the hot lasers anyway.

Now, do you think your proposed system makes Mechs put out less heat and dmg?
It should do so, if we want to increase TTK and stuff, and staying with heat instead of dmg (as ED does) to take on the weapons.
But if yes, it is inevitably a nerf to hot weapons.

We hat a disagreement in another thread on the purpose of heat. You were, IIRC, saying, it has nothing to do with balancing. Do you still of this opinion?
To me it seems very obvious: Weapons are mostly either heavy (incl. ammo) but cold, or hot but light. Making being hot either more or less severe is a balancing parameter for hot weapons and is independent of cold ones, it lets you balance both weapon classes against each other.
In MWO the heat cap is very high, it would make hot weapons more effective than heavy/cold ones. That's why in return ballistics have a DPS advantage.

One more thought: Discouraging boating and encouraging mixing can work by having purely hot and purely heavy builds uneffective by wasting on of the two resources (weight or heat cap/recharge).

So, again, do you consider your system being a nerf on hot weapons?
How do you imagine to balance cold weapons?
Taking away their DPS would be an obvious way since we are moving towards the TT system anyway.
But then, what about Gauss which already was at 7 secs and 20 energy consumption and was still considered not balanced by PGI and they returned some nonsense mechanic for whining grognards?

[ScarecrowES]

Kuaron, on 17 September 2016 - 04:17 PM, said:

You can do several static images on the basis of screenshots to start with.

But it's not about the explaining, I'd like to speak about the system itself a bit more.
My main concerns about ED were (1) boating and (2) lack of interpretation.
Your proposed system solves (2) just buy letting it use the weapon's heat only, and only once.
For the same reason it doesn't encourage boating as much as ED did, by not equalizing all weapons taking their damage value.
But now remember why it was the dmg and not the heat ED was using:
Balance between the weapon types; it already encourages DPS by making the players optimizing around 30 dmg volleys maximally often. Which is better achieved by the cold ballistics than by the hot lasers anyway.

Now, do you think your proposed system makes Mechs put out less heat and dmg?
It should do so, if we want to increase TTK and stuff, and staying with heat instead of dmg (as ED does) to take on the weapons.
But if yes, it is inevitably a nerf to hot weapons.

We hat a disagreement in another thread on the purpose of heat. You were, IIRC, saying, it has nothing to do with balancing. Do you still of this opinion?
To me it seems very obvious: Weapons are mostly either heavy (incl. ammo) but cold, or hot but light. Making being hot either more or less severe is a balancing parameter for hot weapons and is independent of cold ones, it lets you balance both weapon classes against each other.
In MWO the heat cap is very high, it would make hot weapons more effective than heavy/cold ones. That's why in return ballistics have a DPS advantage.

One more thought: Discouraging boating and encouraging mixing can work by having purely hot and purely heavy builds uneffective by wasting on of the two resources (weight or heat cap/recharge).

So, again, do you consider your system being a nerf on hot weapons?
How do you imagine to balance cold weapons?
Taking away their DPS would be an obvious way since we are moving towards the TT system anyway.
But then, what about Gauss which already was at 7 secs and 20 energy consumption and was still considered not balanced by PGI and they returned some nonsense mechanic for whining grognards?

Difficult to explain without getting into too many mechanics. There's a LOT involved here.

The heat system is designed for combat pacing. The heat system is not designed specifically to balance weapons. It's designed to control combat.

Weapon balance has a lot of components, but it stands as a general rectification of output (damage and range) against investment (weight, crits, additional items like ammo, heat sinks, etc), and heat as the counterpoint... it's the net value there.

The build system in MWO/TT basically establishes a system of payment for output. If you have a weapon that has good damage, good range, and low heat, inevitably it will require an investment of weight and crits for the weapon alone, and likely things like ammo. Hence, ballistics. And if you want the same output, but you don't want the weight and crits, you pay for it with heat sinks instead. One way or another, you're paying for that output.

Notice that, for the most part, If you're anything like me, all of your mechs have very similar heat management ratings. Mine rarely stray below 1.2, and rarely above 1.3 except in special cases. Some folks may go a little more or less, but no matter what they run, there's a heat management rating that feels like "home" to them. There is a natural balance between your output and your heat.

Naturally, ballistic-heavy mechs don't NEED a big cap, so they don't mount a lot of sinks. Conversely, energy mechs DO need a high cap, so they mount more. In the end, you'll find that regardless of energy or ballistic, your build's heat requirements and heat capacity tend to fall into neat ratios. MWO has historically thrown these ratios off. Not only do you have a higher unpenalized cap, but on Live, low-cap mechs get bonus heat to work with. In the end, these both effectively buff their respective favored build types. Energy thrives a little more under the higher cap at the top end, and ballisic thrives with the higher cap at the low end.

All the base TT system does is bring everything back to the middle. It's just undoing a lot of the convoluted math MWO uses to set up the same system. You only get the cap you need AND pay for.

Now, what it means the same thing for energy as it does for ballistics. You need to mount enough sinks for the heat you have. In this regard, from a system perspective, it doesn't favor any type of weapon.

Kodiak-3 with quad-UAC/10 has a heat requirement of 24. It can get away with mounting less than 15 total heat sinks. A 4xPPC Warhawk will never be able to mount enough sinks to keep cool, because it has a heat requirement of 60 - you run out of space and weight. Those are extremes. In the middle are normal mechs with normal heat requirements for their damage output.

The other side of the heat management coin is dissipation. Builds with low caps get low dissipation, and mechs with high caps get high dissipation. In the end, no matter how many sinks you mount, you purge their entire value in 10 seconds. If your mech needs 24 capacity, and you mount 12 DHS (24 cap), you'll vent all 24pts in 10 seconds. If you need 48 capacity, and you mount 24 DHS (48 cap), you'll vent all 48pts in 10 seconds. It takes just as long to cool down no matter which end of the spectrum you're on.

Whether or not the damage you get from that cap is FAIR has nothing to do with the heat system. That's all about weapon balance.

If you'll remember, from the previous discussion, I didn't say HEAT had nothing to do with balancing, I said the heat SYSTEM had no role there. We were discussing how COOLDOWNS are the way that MWO balances out the value of different types of damage, and this really has nothing to do with heat. For the most part, no matter what you do with the cooldown of a weapon, the mech's performance is already fixed from the moment you click save, because combat pacing only cares about your output, your cap, and your dissipation.

Weapon balance is not the domain of the heat system, nor should it be used for that effect. The heat value of a weapon should represent its output vs investment. COOLDOWNS are how we balance out the different mechanics for how that output is done... PPFLD vs spread vs duration, etc. That's all weapon balancing. And any system that looks at more than one specific aspect of a weapon will start to influence balance.

The problem of penalizing damage output through heat like ED does is that there is NO direct correlation between the two. 30-damage in AC/10s is only 9 heat, while in PPCs it's 28.5 heat. A penalty based on damage but penalizes in heat doesn't treat these two weapons fairly. This is why ED struggles to find balance. You have a base heat system that doesn't really treat different weapons fairly, then quirks, now ED, etc. It's a mess. It's just plain wrong-headed from the get go, and it's making balance worse. And for what practical result? Does it address anything of the actual problems with the heat system? Not really.

Does TT make you put out less damage? Short answer, yes. You CAN put out more in a shorter amount of time than intended - in line with Live - but you'll get punished for it. You effectively have the same amount of heat cap to work with as MWO does now. The march from zero heat to max heat allows for roughly the same amount of damage to be done all the way up to shut down. However...!

The penalties will make you WANT to put out less, AND will make it difficult to be effective with your output if you push too hard. If you're able to control yourself, you'll be rewarded for it. The TT soft heat cap is 30 points lower than in MWO. You'll probably want to stay within your normal heat cap as much as possible to maximize your output. But if you want to go higher upon occasion and take the penalties that come with it... for instance if your enemy is on his last legs and you want to try to finish him off... you can do that. Risk, reward.

Do I consider this a nerf on hot weapons? No. The Timberwolf I described earlier (2xLPL, 5xERML, 24xDHS) takes the same number of alphas in the same amount of time to shut down as Live. I think you get away with one without severe penalties (48 cap, 50 output). I can't remember if you can do a second, but I think you can... just. So more or less one alpha without penalties, maybe 2 without shutting down. Same output as live if you like getting shut down.

The 4xPPC Warhawk, since we're without Ghost Heat now, can actually alpha ALL of its PPCs once and then has to back off (56 heat cap, 60 output) which it cannot do on Live thanks to GH. It gets a 4-point penalty, but it can still do it. It can't do it a second time though, and it's going to have to be very careful with its heat from then on. It's 4xPPC shots every 10 seconds one way or another.

The Kodiak-3 with quad UAC/10s, meanwhile, can only get 3 double taps off... On the second double-tap, it's already at 10 out of 30 on the penalty scale, and at the end of the 3rd double tap it's sitting at 26 out of 30 on the penalty scale. If it stops firing right then, it would take about 15 seconds for it to shed all of those penalties. One alpha without penalties, 3 to max out the penalty scale, 4 to shut down. Remember that THIS build still gets the low-cap boost on the live servers. It doesn't get that here.

And the little guys... a Jenner-F with 6xML gets just about 4 alphas out of both Live and TT... you have to delay a bit under TT because it lost its low-cap buff. Neither can do 5 without shutting down.

What you'll notice here, I think, is that we've kinda normalized these builds. The energy ones and the ballistic ones. In terms of heat, anyway. In terms of weapon balance? Hard to know... that's not what the heat system does. What I CAN tell you is that balance under the TT system is going to be basically the same as on the live servers, because we haven't fundamentally changed what matters to the heat system... heat cap and dissipation. Just the mechanics that surround those has changed.

The point, ultimately, is that the heat system itself, from that point on, is FAIR. It's not designed to promote any type of weapon, nor does it do it accidentally like under the current system. You're getting exactly the heat cap you pay for, and the system isn't playing any favorites by giving you any heat cap you didn't earn, or taking away any that you did. So this let's the build system and weapon balance do ITS job WITHOUT interference from the heat system.

The system can discourage alphas, limit overall DoT, make players meter out their damage, change the way people play by making different playstyles less effective in high-heat scenarios, etc etc. It can do all those things, but it can't balance the weapons. PGI has to do that. And it can't really replace ALL of GH. It makes ED completely unnecessary, and it already does a lot of what GH is designed to do, but it can't persuade people not to boat. We'd still need something specifically designed to take that on, if that's even considered something that NEEDS to happen after the TT system gets put in. I think that once the system is in and working, we probably won't even care which weapons a player mounts. But if we do, there are options for that.

For instance, variable cooldowns. Give all weapons slightly better cooldowns. If you mount more than whatever amount is determined "good", it dials those cooldowns back. The more you mount, the slower they fire. Doesn't mess with the heat system... you're still putting out the same amount of heat, and you still have to pay that heat back over the same amount of time... we just lowered your burst damage potential. This means players who want to mount a lot of the same weapons, or HAVE to because of their mech, aren't penalized in a reduction in total output like they currently are under GH. But the path to the best burst damage levels will be through mixing up your build.

And the gauss rifle is a challenge in and of itself. It is a weapon that was pulled faithfully from TT, where it had a pretty punishing risk/reward mechanic. The thing was prone to exploding because you had half the armor and half the internal health. PGI made mechs 4x harder to kill, so the gauss rifles don't explode as often as they normally would in TT. PGI didn't replace this risk with anything else. The secret to fixing the gauss is to ignore TT's means of balancing the weapon. The gauss will always be an outlier as long as we keep treating it like one.

I hope some of that helps. I tried to stay fairly coherent, but it's a LOT of different stuff that comes into play.

[davoodoo]

Your given example of tbr wouldnt ever overheat in tt
2x10, 5x5, 35 total, while 24 dhs vent 48, its horribly underarmed build

Meanwhile 4uac10 on double tap requires 12 for heat neutral, idk how many you pack but I packed 16dhs

Edited by davoodoo, 18 September 2016 - 01:37 AM.

[Robinson Crusher]

ScarecrowES, while it's an interesting system, I don't believe you've made a successful case that heat isn't part of balancing. In TT it certainly was since all weapons fired once per turn. Heat versus weight to get your damage was the primary balancing factor, with range and a consideration for ammo dependency also included.

If we truly want to go back to table top then all cooldowns should be equal, and then you could make the case that heat could be separate from balance. That would be boring, so let's not.

Meawhile I voted yes on the poll. Doubles should be double for Lore and to ease the learning curve of new players. Balance it out with the rest of the stuff.

Edited by Robinson Crusher, 18 September 2016 - 04:35 AM.