9 replies to this topic

[AngrySpartan]

I have already suggested some tweaks to Energy Draw (hereinafter ED) in a separate topic. I am making it a different topic because this suggestion does not influence ED directly, but works on top of that to address “Boating”. This topic inspired by Fantastic Tuesday’s Ghost Heat 2.0 predictions video.

What I suggest is in no way lore friendly or make sense from a realism point of view, but gameplay comes before those to me. Please make yourself an explanation how it works if you like.

Summary:

• Energy Draw does not address boating. It never meant to do this and it’s unlikely that it may be adjusted that way. Therefore, complementary system is required.
  
• Boating is bad because it prevents gameplay diversity
  
• Boating would be acceptable if there is a valid alternative. So far, mixed builds are not competitive with boating weapons.

Suggestions:

• Aim of the suggested system is to make mixed (or bracket) builds competitive, while keeping “boats” viable.
  
• In a nutshell I suggest to add cooldown penalty for continuous use of single weapon type to make boating less effective. Using 2^nd or 3^rd weapon type will relief those penalties to encourage using different weapon types.
  
• Therefore, boating will became a burst fire gameplay style, whereas mixed build will keep sustainable DPS:

• This system only adds additional cooldown after continuous fire of the same weapons. It does not change any cooldown, heat or other weapon attributes, but takes them as a given data. Therefore, it is completely independent from any other balancing mechanism; it will not affect weapon balance.

What is boating and why does it matter?

Spoiler

“Boating” under my definition is a use of massed similar weapons to simplify firing patterns and make your mech specialized in a certain area. Boating is not limited to weapon classes (energy, missile, ballistic), but rather to separate weapon systems – SPL is quite different to ERLL and boating any of those obviously offer different gameplay.

Boating is not necessarily bad, there is nothing wrong with 3PPC Awesome or SRM Griffin or another mech build with a specific role in mind. Boating, however, squeezes build variety to a small group of meta builds and leaves any deviations from this meta in the ditch, being non-competitive. Main problem with boating is that it is naturally better than mixed builds, thus making them obsolete. Boating does not provide any variety, whereas mixed builds do that, and more variety offers more interesting gameplay situations.

For those who care about lore, many mechs in tabletop use bracket builds – they exploit weaknesses of specialized mechs to gain an upper hand. This is a gameplay, which is relatively non-existent in MWO, hopefully this suggestion will make it slightly more viable.

Aim of the suggested system is to make mixed (or bracket) builds competitive, while keeping “boats” viable for specific roles.

To address boating one can either play with existing cooldown, heat or other values and risk ruining the balance in different areas, either implement something entirely different. I am proponent of the latter - separate independent system make sense: it is easier to solve two separate equations, than solving an equation with two variables. Ideally, system should not/should minimally interfere with Energy draw and other weapon balancing measures.

What I suggest:

Spoiler

To make mixed builds viable it’s necessary to make a clear difference between mixed builds and boating. The system below has it’s flaws, but it makes that difference - mixed builds can make a sustainable DPS through the time, boating is all about burst damage:


1. Core of the system is something I call “weapon overload”. This is a bar attached to cooldown meter of all weapons of the same type. Weapon types could share overload, e.g. ML and LL can share same overload bar.

When you fire multiple copies of the same weapon, this bar slowly fills depending on how many weapons you have fired. Overload has a maximum capacity = number of weapons you can theoretically fire before cooldown bar filled (you can go beyond maximum capacity though).

When overload is exceeded, you cannot fire that weapon type before it will go down again. Therefore, you can fire same weapon type for some time and eventually suffer cooldown penalty (your DPS will suffer), or you can switch to different weapon group.

This bar recharges slowly, at the rate of 1,5x-4x (needs some testing) weapon cooldown for full recharge. E.g for PPC overload recharge should be (4s cooldown* 1,5 or 4) = 6 to 16 seconds.

2. Most important: If you fire with different weapon type (let it be SRM), you generate for that weapon type “weapon overload #2”. System takes WO#2 (SRM) and subtracts it from WO#1 (PPC). By firing second weapon type, you amplify damage potential of your primary guns. Therefore, there is some sort of pendulum – in order to make you DPS sustainable, you should alternate between at least two different weapon types. More weapon types – shorter cooldown penalties.

Those two features combined will not just punish boating with extra cooldown time, but it will actually encourage using multiple weapon systems on the same mech, as they complement each other.

Examples:
That may look complicated, so let me bring you an example with numbers (sorry for the bad drawing). I spend some time playing with figures and here are the results:

Example 1:

Spoiler

-6 PPC Stalker.
-1st variable: capacity = number of weapons (PPCs here) mech can fire at the same time to fill weapon overload bar = 4
-2nd variable: recharge rate = how long it takes to recharge full weapon overload bar = 2x times weapon cooldown (4s for PPC) = 8 seconds

Step 1. No weapon fire, weapon overload bar is empty.

Step 2. Stalker fires 4 PPCs:
- Weapon overload” max capacity reached, no penalty yet

- PPCs recharge continues for the next 4 seconds
- Weapon overload bar recharges by 50% or by 2 units (4s PPC cooldown/8s) during PPC cooldown

Step 3. Stalker fires 4 PPCs for the 2nd time:
- PPCs generate 4 units of overload. Weapon overload bar goes from 2 to 6, above the threshold by 2 units.

- PPCs recharge continues for the next 4 seconds
- Weapon overload bar recharges by 2 units (4s PPC cooldown/8s), thus reaching upper threshold.

Step 4. Because system allows you to go beyond the threshold Stalker pilot now has some options:
1. Fire as soon as he can: overload bar will go beyond threshold by 4 units, thus Stalker will not be able to fire it’s PPCs for the next 8 seconds (+4s cooldown penalty)
2. Wait for some time now, so the overload bar can go down again.
3. Start firing only 2 PPCs, thus cutting it’s firepower by 50%. Overload bar allows firing 2 PPCs for indefinite amount of time with variables used in this example.

Example 2:

Spoiler

Stalker pilot fires 6 PPC right from the start, thus he triggers cooldown penalty at the second valley (see step 4).

This is the example of how overload make boats viable, but limits their DPS to extent (50% after 12 seconds in example 1, 67% after 4 seconds in example 2). I did not went into detailed number crunching so far, but by changing Overload capacity and recharge rate it is relatively easy to play with the balance: how long it would take to reach capacity, how long it would take to get back to the normal DPS, how many guns do not trigger the penalty. Setting smaller capacity and longer recharge rate will punish boating more, but will give more options for bracket builds and vice versa.
I will leave spreadsheet here if someone is interested

Example 3:

Spoiler

- 4 PPC+2SRM6A Stalker this time.
- Same values for capacity (4) and recharge rate (4s for PPC) = 8 seconds for PPCs
- For the sake of simplicity, SRM6A has exactly the same values as PPCs

Steps 1-3 are the same as in the first example – Stalker fires two volleys of 4PPCs.
Step 4. Overload bar for PPCs filled. Stalker pilot has the same options as before:
1. Fire as soon as he can and trigger 4s cooldown penalty
2. Wait for some time, so overload bar can go down again
3. Start firing only 2 PPCs, thus cutting it’s firepower by 50%
4. And finally: Start firing SRMs.
- SRMs will start building their own overload the same way as PPCs.
- Each volley of SRMs will reduce overload of PPCs and vice versa

Last option I would like to describe with some more details:
1. Overload decrease from different weapon types may be variable. E.g. ERLL will decrease overload of PPC by 0-10%, while SRM will decrease PPC overload by 50-100%. This will give an incentive to put different weapons on a mech, not just utilizing combo of PPC+Gauss
2.Which weapon types will share the same overload bar is debatable. I can see some benefit to share it for PPC and Gauss, but there are many combinations here: SL+SPL, ML+MPL+LL+LPL, ERLL+PPC, SRM+SSRM, etc.
3. I am measuring Overload capacity in “units”. Two SRMs will decrease Overload of PPC by 2 units, 3 will decrease by 3, etc. It’s scalable.
4. Overload decrease should be modified for the weapon cooldowns. E.g SPL can fire every 2,25s, PPC can fire every 4s, therefore single SPL will decrease overload of single PPC by 2,25/4 = 56%. This will prevent use of fast firing weapons to recharge your main guns

Please share your thoughts on that idea.

[Lostdragon]

FFS the last thing we need is another contrived arbitrary system on top of the contrived arbitrary systems we already have as bandaids.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

We already have mixed builds that are powerful, so long as the weapons have synergy.

Bracket builds comes down to the old specialize vs. generalize. This game's history shows that specialization is favored here. Bracket builds won't be able to compete unless you torture the game systems to make them better. Even the suggested system will be exploited, or create huge disparity between mechs.

You would have to completely break weapon synergy, and then we'd just have bracket builds. It would be like now, except I would find it boring by comparison.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

PPCs are getting the short end of the stick with the latest update, and it's due to their frequent boating during the previous version of this PTS. I think most of us can agree that Frontloaded, Long Ranged, Pinpoint alphas were a problem, but targeting the weapons DPS by reducing it's cooldown is the wrong solution IMO.

I suppose that PGI's line of thinking might be that the if the weapon cools to slow for a player's liking, the player should just mount more PPCs and or chainfire instead of alpha strike. The problem is that even when you're reducing the fire rate of the weapon, it's best chance for success is STILL usually to alpha strike.

To solve the boating issue PGI needs to target the PPCs alpha potential directly. IF they are still being boated, lay on more heat and energy draw penalties, don't reduce the weapon's fire rate. Single PPC mechs were what I got into MWO playing, and I really hate to see them suffering from a problem they didn't cause.

Edited by Jack Shayu Walker, 23 August 2016 - 04:57 PM.

[MechaBattler]

Cooldown nerfs are never very effective. They tried that during the PPC meta and it didn't work. Then they just hit it from every direction by implementing ghost heat, nerfing velocity, and raising the heat of PPcs to unwieldy levels. Turning it into a weapon only reliable on mechs with fat PPC quirks.


The simple choice is to implement ghost heat, but as Ghost Energy. So there's a penalty beyond a certain amount of the same weapon being used.

[Lostdragon]

MechaBattler, on 23 August 2016 - 05:12 PM, said:

Cooldown nerfs are never very effective. They tried that during the PPC meta and it didn't work. Then they just hit it from every direction by implementing ghost heat, nerfing velocity, and raising the heat of PPcs to unwieldy levels. Turning it into a weapon only reliable on mechs with fat PPC quirks.


The simple choice is to implement ghost heat, but as Ghost Energy. So there's a penalty beyond a certain amount of the same weapon being used.

That would negate the whole point of going to energy draw, if you are going to do that may as well just stick with ghost heat.

[MechaBattler]

Lostdragon, on 24 August 2016 - 05:05 AM, said:

That would negate the whole point of going to energy draw, if you are going to do that may as well just stick with ghost heat.

No. Because it doesn't address alphas in general. Just boating. But if we combine the two. We get both. Perhaps with less of a penalty than ghost heat had. So as to keep some flexibility.

[TankBadger42]

I'm a newbie, but for me this PTS removes all flavor of weapon choice from the game.
Mid-range laser boat is best on live (if we forget about the KDK for a bit) and mid-range laser boat will gain from the loss of ghost heat and longer cooldowns (heat being the limiting factor, not cooldowns). Everything else loses, bar guass, which is silly and tasteless now.

Edited by TankBadger42, 24 August 2016 - 04:20 PM.

[Lostdragon]

MechaBattler, on 24 August 2016 - 03:55 PM, said:

No. Because it doesn't address alphas in general. Just boating. But if we combine the two. We get both. Perhaps with less of a penalty than ghost heat had. So as to keep some flexibility.

Yes. Because boating is not really an issue, lots of mechs are boats in stock loadouts because it is efficient. Energy draw came about partially hecause PGI realized penalizing boating wasn't that effective or necessary. Boating is not mentioned once in the ED documentation, it is all about curbing alpha strikes, which impacts boating as much as anything elsem. TRying to create a bastardized hybrid of the two systems is an unnecessary complication on top of an unnecessary complication.

[Davers]

It would be far better for the game if people just accepted that stock builds/mixed builds were designed for a completely different system. But MWO is not at all like TT. Never once have I ever thought "I better use my PPCs to hit that Commando at 270m because I will probably miss with my medium lasers". The realities that made a varied load out work in TT (range brackets and range modifiers) do not exist here in MWO.