106 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

ScarecrowES, on 21 September 2016 - 12:15 PM, said:

Giving you a very good reason NOT to keep firing, even though you COULD squeeze one more alpha out.

My point is, is that eventually penalties do become a hard cap, at some point there is a decision that says "this is never worth the reward" and it becomes bad practice, just like shutting down. While sure it would be nice if it were more situational to where the penalty wasn't universal, I don't really see that happening, it is either a penalty that you can deal with or it isn't.

ScarecrowES, on 21 September 2016 - 12:15 PM, said:

Because of the mechanics of the penalty system, it takes much longer to shed penalties if you continue to fire.

This isn't necessarily a good thing, instead of chain-firing or volley-firing while hot, I'm now going to just wait until I cooldown and shed penalties and then go back to just an alpha. Basically the one time not alphaing is actually ok would no longer be ok because it keeps you in a penalty zone.

ScarecrowES, on 21 September 2016 - 12:15 PM, said:

It means using those last 30 points of heat is a more considered choice, not merely a given like the current system.

Not really, at best, you are doing nothing to the choice because the penalties don't matter, at worst, you are lowering the effective heat capacity because the penalties are harsh enough that firing beyond them is close enough to a shutdown penalty that it isn't worth it. If it helps immersion then fine, but understand that if we want gameplay to be similar with harsh penalties, then heat capacity would need to increase for the smaller "effective" heat capacity.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 September 2016 - 12:41 PM.

[Kaptain]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

My point is, is that eventually penalties do become a hard cap, at some point there is a decision that says "this is never worth the reward" and it becomes bad practice, just like shutting down. While sure it would be nice if it were more situational to where the penalty wasn't universal, I don't really see that happening, it is either a penalty that you can deal with or it isn't.

That is a valid concern but also one that is easily addressed. The penalties could be anything we choose and as such there is a need to make them situational. Penalties that are "never worth the reward" sound like boogie men to me... That is that they are a valid concern but one that is also easily addressed. I believe we are all on the same page that forced shut down/internal damage should be the ultimate penalty.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

This isn't necessarily a good thing, instead of chain-firing or volley-firing while hot, I'm now going to just wait until I cooldown and shed penalties and then go back to just an alpha. Basically the one time not alphaing is actually ok would no longer be ok because it keeps you in a penalty zone.

I don't see that as the case at all. So long as you produce less heat than you dissipate you could continue to fight, should you choose to do so, albeit with less weapons. That't no different than in TT or even MWO Live. At any point one can choose to fire less weapons and in doing so reduce their heat.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

Not really, at best, you are doing nothing to the choice because the penalties don't matter, at worst, you are lowering the effective heat capacity because the penalties are harsh enough that firing beyond them is close enough to a shutdown penalty that it isn't worth it. If it helps immersion then fine, but understand that if we want gameplay to be similar with harsh penalties, then heat capacity would need to increase for the smaller "effective" heat capacity.

No... "at best" the penalties balance risk/reward in specific/different situations. If I have a UAV or Seismic and I am in a fight where penalties have forced my mini-map to freak out I may become less aggressive temporarily to restore that functionality. If I am poking at long range and my cross-hair or target info freak out I may become less aggressive to restore that functionality. If I am making use of shooting from cover I will pay great attention to acceleration/deceleration penalties. If I need to make a run from one area to another under fire I may choose to keep my mech cool to avoid top speed penalties. And finally if I am being over run or surrounded I may say "Screw Speed, Screw Maneuverability, Screw Information systems and !@#$ it I am totally willing to risk internal damage because I NEED to keep shooting." This is very much so like table top and I absolutely love the idea, personally.

Edited by Kaptain, 21 September 2016 - 01:11 PM.

[ScarecrowES]

Quicksilver does bring up concerns which absolutely MUST be considered when tuning the system. At what point do penalties become so much that they're not worth risking? Is there a point where penalties are so low they don't hinder overuse at all?

I absolutely share these concerns. There has to be a good balance in there between penalties that ramp up in a fair fashion, are oppressive enough to cause players to think about their heat strategy (an actual thing players will have to have once this system is used), but not SO oppressive that they give up entirely and completely avoid penalties all together. Unfortunately, a lot of that comes down to feel, which is not something I can test for running raw numbers. And I suspect that most players will feel differently about how punishing, or not, the system will be. Some players may want significant penalties and to see most fights come down to chain-firing brawl-fests. Some players may want lower penalties, to slightly reign in alphas and burst damage. Some players may want a free-for-all where penalties only come in if you've been going nuts for awhile.

There will be a bit of artistry in satisfying the majority of the player base in this regard, as you'd expect. Luckily, the system provides quite a few avenues for dialing this all in, so some level of satisfaction should be achievable for pretty much everybody.

I don't necessarily share many of the fears Quicksilver sees. Some would likely see the things he fears as positives. I see potential for things to go either way, based on how well the system is tuned and what players do with it.

Edited by ScarecrowES, 21 September 2016 - 02:52 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Kaptain, on 21 September 2016 - 01:09 PM, said:

Penalties that are "never worth the reward" sound like boogie men to me...

There will always be a point at which a penalty becomes bad enough that you shouldn't ever do it. Shutting or overriding shutdown is one of them, for 90-95% of situations it is something you should never do because it can switch the direction of the match in an instant. There will always be penalties like these, and these are what hard cap heat. Sure in casual play you can get away with either of these, but that also doesn't tell you anything because you can get away with running LRMs just fine in casual and do decent.

Kaptain, on 21 September 2016 - 01:09 PM, said:

I don't see that as the case at all. So long as you produce less heat than you dissipate you could continue to fight

The problem is this is also tied to your timer/level of your penalties, if I'm constantly bumping up to max heat capacity then any penalties I incurred 30 seconds ago deplete at a very slow rate. Which is honestly why I almost prefer this not be separate systems. Consider this, you have a heat bar just like MW4, when you pass your heat capacity determined by HS or whatever and enter the penalty threshold, you get penalties. Think RPG terms, that penalty is like a debuff that has a natural timer, it expires independent of your heat level that way you if you really want to make penalties stick on mechs with high dissipation you can do it, without relying on two separate system.
I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, just one to consider over this because it seems like the desired outcome is penalties that stay longer than they did in MW4 where if you had good enough dissipation the penalties didn't stick very long.

Kaptain, on 21 September 2016 - 01:09 PM, said:

No... "at best" the penalties balance risk/reward in specific/different situations. If I have a UAV or Seismic and I am in a fight where penalties have forced my mini-map to freak out I may become less aggressive temporarily to restore that functionality.

Mini-map matters, and at the same time it doesn't. For the style of play that everyone is trying to target with these sorts of changes (long range PPFLD/poke fights), it doesn't matter as much. I rely more on target callouts ("Kodiak moving to noob corner") than I do mini-map or radar. Seismic is important, but you are generally using that when you aren't in a pitched fire fight, and you can often rely on lights to be your eyes (and they have a lot of "cooldown" time). In a coordinated scenario it matters about as much as the HUD screw up from heat did in MW4, in that it really didn't stop long range poking (just ask the 7 ERLL Nova Cats from those days).

Kaptain, on 21 September 2016 - 01:09 PM, said:

If I am poking at long range and my cross-hair or target info freak out I may become less aggressive to restore that functionality. If I am making use of shooting from cover I will pay great attention to acceleration/deceleration penalties.

Not as much as you might think, you often shoot at the apex or when you start to backstep on pokes, much like you do with poptarting (apex or on the fall of the jump) which means that heat penalty unless it causes you to basically be shutdown with movement penalties, it won't make that big of a difference.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 September 2016 - 03:56 PM.

[ScarecrowES]

I certainly understand the concerns you're leveling, Quicksilver. And I certainly see it from your point of view. I can't be dismissive because it's impossible to predict exactly how things will go because so much of your concern has to do with the specific implementation of penalties, which is probably the part of this proposal that will need the most dialing in.

I can propose penalty types and effects, and we can reasonable guess WHAT those penalties will do, but we can't predict to what degree. It's something we have to throw out there at a baseline that we think is fair and test it. There aren't analogs for most of the HUD issues in the game. Movement penalties are more straight forward but we only have situational on/off mechanics.

And moreover, how players themselves adapt to the new paradigm isn't easy to predict. In the face of heat penalties, will they change their builds to run cooler? Will the adopt mixed builds over more optimized synergistic ones to deal more burst damage. Will players change their play styles? Or will they find new ways to continue playing the old way. No way to know until we try.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

I'm not saying we shouldn't do have penalties, I'm just saying they aren't magical, they won't cure the ails of alphas being too large, they are just a way to limit heat further and add a bit of immersion. I feel like any math formula is nice for a baseline, but the actual numbers both with dissipation and capacity should vary from mech to mech, both for flavor and balance.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 September 2016 - 08:03 PM.

[Greyhart]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2016 - 08:02 PM, said:

I'm not saying we shouldn't do have penalties, I'm just saying they aren't magical, they won't cure the ails of alphas being too large, they are just a way to limit heat further and add a bit of immersion. I feel like any math formula is nice for a baseline, but the actual numbers both with dissipation and capacity should vary from mech to mech, both for flavor and balance.

I am inclined to agree. the forums get too caught up in the numbers, which are always subject to change.

Penalties are a game mechanic like speed.

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

no offence... But as much as I love the TT battletech system...

Mechwarrior is actually more closelly based off the "Solaris VII: The Game World" mech dueling rules.

Thats why weapons have different recycle times.

Turns in dueling rules are every 2.5 seconds and weapons generated 4 times the amount of heat, but heat sinks would disipate the heat every turn and you were on a 120 heat scale to shut down.

So you would spike high heat and then disipate your heat over the course of your turns.

To give you an example, the IS ER LL would cause 48 heat with a recycle rate of 3 turns after the turn being fired (10 seconds).
If your mech had only the internal 10 DHS (20) heatsinks.

You would generate 48-20= 28 heat. Then the next turn (2.5s), your mech would disipate another 20 heat bringing you to 8 heat. The third turn, you would be completelly cooled down to zero heat. And then after that, you could fire that again.

So now lets imagine a 3x LPL 5x ML black knight with 19 dhs (38).
LPL has a heat Gen of 40 with a recycle rate of 3 turns (7.5s)
MLas has a heat Gen of 16 with a recycle rate of 1 turns (2.5s)

3x40 = 70
5x16 = 80

70+80-38= 114 heat on turn 1. (Thats 114 of 140).
114-38= 76 heat on turn 2 (if the pilot so wished, he could now fire his Mlas again, but lets not for this equation).
76-38=38 heat on turn 3
And 0 heat on turn 4. (After 1 alpha, it took 10 seconds to cool to zero heat off 1 alpha). This is the turn the LPLs can be fired again.


------------------

As much as I love this system, 1 major problem with this system was ac/2 had a recycle rate of 0 (the could be fired every turn at long range) with a low heat value of 4, and gauss had a recycle rate of 2 (also with a heat value of 4) which is the same speed as a Mpl... So of course more balancing tweeks would need to be made...

------------------
IS weapon sheet

Weapons on 0 recycle rate:
Ams
MG
Ac2

Weapons on 1 recycle rate:
Flamer
SLas
SPL
Mlas
Ac5
Ac10
Lb10
Uac5
Narc
Srm2/4/6
Ssrm2

Weapons on 2 recycle rate:
Llas
MPL
Ac20
Guass
Lrm 5/10/15/20

Weapons on a 3 recycle rate:
Er LL
LPL
PPC
Er PPC

Edited by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky, 22 September 2016 - 01:57 AM.

[Greyhart]

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky:

Does the solaris system have heat penalties?

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

Greyhart, on 22 September 2016 - 01:45 AM, said:

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky:

Does the solaris system have heat penalties?

Yes they did, standard heat penalties like ammo explosions and movement speed penalties. All the heat penalties are their from TT except that they are at x4 on the chart... So basically the first -1MP is at 20 heat.

Edit: by the way, I just wanted to point out the difference between BT TT rules, and S7 dueling rules... Since a lot of people think the mechwarrior video game series is based of BT TT.

But lets be honest, 10 seconds to fire an ac2 once is silly... 10 seconds to fire a MG is also silly...

Also... For the record:

I personally dont like the new Energy Draw system, and I am okish with the current ghost heat system.

Edited by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky, 22 September 2016 - 02:03 AM.

[BallSabre]

Can we just try this?

Lets use the BETA server for some testing for once ok?

[ScarecrowES]

I liked Solaris rules, but they could get tedious. The basic gist of the system is in dividing the standard 10-second vanilla BT turn into 4 2.5-second turns. Mechanically, the system worked the same, it just took place over smaller chunks of time.

The advantage, of course was in balancing weapons. Effectively you went from a standard 10-second cooldown to ones that varied by weapon... something MWO does anyway.

I tend to ignore Solaris rules in this discussion for a few reasons... the most important being that MWO has chosen the standard rule set 's 10-second turn as the pacing metric for the game. Also, MWO has already incorporated the best differences in the Solaris model.

[ScarecrowES]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2016 - 08:02 PM, said:

I'm not saying we shouldn't do have penalties, I'm just saying they aren't magical, they won't cure the ails of alphas being too large, they are just a way to limit heat further and add a bit of immersion. I feel like any math formula is nice for a baseline, but the actual numbers both with dissipation and capacity should vary from mech to mech, both for flavor and balance.

No, absolutely not magical. But, I tend to think that, in terms of influencing the player down a given path, penalties would be both more effective at pushing players where we want them to go than something like ED, and less restrictive. It offers a risk/reward choice that doesn't exist in any version of the MWO heat system to date.

I think merely having a warning notification pop up that you're taking penalties, even if those penalties are minor at that stage, will be enough on a psychological level to change player decision-making. I'm pretty confident in this. Certainly, I think we can agree... that even if the penalties prove weak and not influential, that the system itself will still produce more consistent and even results with slight reductions in overall output just from mechanics alone.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

ScarecrowES, on 22 September 2016 - 05:16 AM, said:

that the system itself will still produce more consistent and even results with slight reductions in overall output just from mechanics alone.

It will probably make bads or new players worse because the heat penalties are more unknowns that have to be learned, but to the comp players it will really just end up being a lower heat capacity because at some point the risk is never worth the reward.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 22 September 2016 - 06:36 AM.

[ScarecrowES]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 September 2016 - 06:35 AM, said:

It will probably make bads or new players worse because the heat penalties are more unknowns that have to be learned, but to the comp players it will really just end up being a lower heat capacity because at some point the risk is never worth the reward.

Perhaps... but we can also think of it this way...

For new players, heat penalties will be a tangible and visceral experience whose presence and effect will be clearly demonstrated from play alone. They use up all of one bar and put some red in the other, and they'll get a penalty warning. They'll feel their mech move slower. They'll see this reflected on the throttle. They'll see their HUD start to fizzle. They'll see that the little red in the second bar makes their mech worse. The more red, the worse it is. Within a few seconds of play time, we've instilled dozens of lessons on controlling their heat, pacing their fire, adjusting their play style... even optimizing their builds in the mech lab.

In terms of ease-of-understanding, I've told the player more, and with greater clarity, in those few seconds than an hour spent patrolling the forums for answers on just HOW GH or ED is designed to work. "Wait... how many of this kind of laser can I mount? Does this kind of laser count too?" "So for THIS weapon, it's my damage x0.94, but for this one it's x0.88? But they're the same kind of weapon?"

And for the comp players, yeah... build optimization is a thing. For those who want to maximize their output and create the perfect build, here is a predictable system with many options for optimization. Do you want to throw up as much cap as possible to spend as much time bursting as possible? Want to create that perfect timed synergy build? Want to develop a firing pattern that keeps your output-to-penalty ration JUST SO? I fully expect comp players to figure out exactly what their gulf between output and penalties is, and have it figured out down to the teeniest percent just what range of penalties is not worth taking on.

ANd I'd have to ask here... isn't THIS preferable to comp players merely looking at which mechs and builds exploit the heat system the best? I think it is.

[ScarecrowES]

Ok folks... made some adjustments to the base post. Added options for single heat sinks, and replacing the "anti-boating" mechanic of GH. Also incorporated changes to the skill system to improve how those interact with the heat system for better balance.

Cleaned up some language and improved descriptions here and there.

Biggest change was replacing the initial proposed penalty dissipation rate (1/10th of your unused heat cap per second) with the alternative proposed one (the percentage of unused cap times the base rate of 3pts/sec). After more extensive testing, I feel that this rate, which like the 30pts of the penalty scale is the same for all mechs, is simply a more fair and balanced method. High-cap mechs will not get a bonus that allows them to spend less time being penalized than low-cap mechs. While being able to incentivize working more cap space into your builds at the expense of firepower was a desirable goal, I don't think it would ever be possible to increase cap enough for a given build for this benefit to override the cost of less-punished high-cap builds.

It makes the penalty dissipation rate more predictable - like the rate of the standard heat cap, the rate at which the penalty bar drops will be the same for all mechs. This also means that your heat cap will always drop from max to min in 10 seconds, while the penalty bar will drop from max to min in an additional 5 seconds (while not firing over the duration). This makes it much easier to transition direcly from mech to mech, and get a real visceral feel for the pacing of the system.

[Kuaron]

I think I should list my problems with your system in it's proper thread.
As told in other threads, I like the general idea and would test it.
But:

0) OP too long! Write an abstract of how it works, not a tome of argumentation with the actual mechanics hidden somewhere inside. No wonder I only noticed your suggestion in another thread where you happened to make it right by chance.
If you already have this abstract in your OP: sry, tl, dr.

Staying short does not contradict to being precise!

1) I am not sure whether splitting the bar and including some penalties is the TTK increase and alpha nerf the designers are aiming for, at least with the proposed DHS buff. I'd choose different numbers for DHS, I guess, for a first test iteration.

2) As soon as it actually starts becoming the nerf it should be,... well... you know... the cold weapon thing from the other threads. I won't repeat it a third time.

3) The penalty bar dissipation.
I fear another "red line" hidden there, being somewhere in the lower end of the penalty bar. The thing is: If you stay in the safe bar you dissipate only your normal amount of heat. If you hit your penalty bar (the penalties at the lower end would be something like speed, which is acceptable for heavier Mechs) and, say, are down to half your safe bar, you dissipate 1,5 times this amount.
This means: You waste dissipation and lose DPM if you stay safe.

One could try fixing it by putting a dpm penalty on the lower end, but I'd prefer to start the reserve bar dissipation not on top but on, maybe, half of the safe bar. And than, ofc, double as fast down to 0 % safe bar heat and 100 % penalty bar dissipation. A more extreme approach would be to dissipate only when the safe bar is entirely clear to avoid increased dissipation due to penalty bar usage at any point. (The other option merely moving the x1.5 dissipation to 1/4 from 1/2 safe bar heat.)

On the other hand, playing around with cooldown penalties increases the value of duplicate weapon groups, which can also be an interesting instrument if they happen to be considered underpowered.
The interpretation then would have to be that the weapons are the first thing to heat up, which... I am not sure if is true by lore.

Edited by Kuaron, 24 September 2016 - 10:11 AM.

[ScarecrowES]

Kuaron, on 24 September 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

I think I should list my problems with your system in it's proper thread.
As told in other threads, I like the general idea and would test it.
But:

0) OP too long! Write an abstract of how it works, not a tome of argumentation with the actual mechanics hidden somewhere inside. No wonder I only noticed your suggestion in another thread where you happened to make it right by chance.
If you already have this abstract in your OP: sry, tl, dr.

Staying short does not contradict to being precise!

1) I am not sure whether splitting the bar and including some penalties is the TTK increase and alpha nerf the designers are aiming for, at least with the proposed DHS buff. I'd choose different numbers for DHS, I guess, for a first test iteration.

2) As soon as it actually starts becoming the nerf it should be,... well... you know... the cold weapon thing from the other threads. I won't repeat it a third time.

3) The penalty bar dissipation.
I fear another "red line" hidden there, being somewhere in the lower end of the penalty bar. The thing is: If you stay in the safe bar you dissipate only your normal amount of heat. If you hit your penalty bar (the penalties at the lower end would be something like speed, which is acceptable for heavier Mechs) and, say, are down to half your safe bar, you dissipate 1,5 times this amount.
This means: You waste dissipation and lose DPM if you stay safe.

One could try fixing it by putting a dpm penalty on the lower end, but I'd prefer to start the reserve bar dissipation not on top but on, maybe, half of the safe bar. And than, ofc, double as fast down to 0 % safe bar heat and 100 % penalty bar dissipation. A more extreme approach would be to dissipate only when the safe bar is entirely clear to avoid increased dissipation due to penalty bar usage at any point. (The other option merely moving the x1.5 dissipation to 1/4 from 1/2 safe bar heat.)

On the other hand, playing around with cooldown penalties increases the value of duplicate weapon groups, which can also be an interesting instrument if they happen to be considered underpowered.
The interpretation then would have to be that the weapons are the first thing to heat up, which... I am not sure if is true by lore.

0) There's a shorter TLDR section at the beginning of the post that explains basic mechanics in brief. I often struggle with keeping things short enough to stay within the attention span of most internet browsers but still actually explain things adequately. I can try to pare down the abstract sections a little more.

1) I think the TTK argument is built on a bit of fallacy anyway. TTK is extraordinarily high in MWO, but players still die fast... mostly because of combined fire from multiple enemies. You rarely die quickly one-on-one. The only way to address the aspect of TTK (if this is really a goal we have) is to put a long-term limit on damage output that essentially forces players to be more measured about how much damage they throw out and when. The mechanics of the penalty system do that in a way ED can't even aspire to.

Alpha potential is generally lower under the proposed system than on Live, and we remain true to PGI's intent to allow alphas but not make them repeatable. Even ED doesn't stay true to this edict. Burst and sustained damage potential are both lower under my system than Live or ED.

We aren't really getting a DHS buff under my system. Even though I've brought cap up to true-dubs at 2.0 value, the actual total cap produced is lower across the board, largely thanks to the simplicity of my math and the change in how skills work as compared to MWO.

2) Unfamiliar with the argument here, so I'd have to look it up.

3) Players should, wherever possible, be encouraged to stay within their heat caps, and use the reserve heat in the penalty bar sparingly and thoughtfully. The rate the penalty bar dissipates is related to how much unused heat cap you have - which means if you keep using your heat cap to fire weapons, your penalty bar will dissipate slowly or not at all. If you accumulate significant penalites, merely backing off enough to keep "redlining" your heat will mean your penalty bar will take a looooong time to dissipate, if at all. Backing off completely will see you recover both bars fastest.

Your penalty bar dissipation rate ramps up exponentially, so it takes a bit before you start really seeing those gains. For instance, if you completely stopped firing at shutdown, for the first 5 seconds afterward you barely recover any penalties. In the first 10 seconds (the time it takes your heat cap to recover completely) , you only recover an average of half your penalty points (15 of 30). You've got to stay cool for the full 15 seconds before you see the actual gains from this. You recover as many points in the last 5 seconds as you did in the first 10. Over the full 15 seconds, though, you recover much faster than on Live. I think a mech with 15 DHS on Live will recover 5 seconds faster under my system if you don't fire after shutdown. But you won't recover at all if you keep firing.

It's a bit disingenuous to say you'd be "wasting dissipation" by staying safe. Realistically, staying safe is your best bet at sustained damage output. However, some mechs might be rewarded by going full tilt on burst damage, taking your penalties, and then moving out of the fight to recover. There's a lot of strategy involved here.

[Kuaron]

First this one, it should address point 2 sufficiently.

ScarecrowES, on 24 September 2016 - 11:19 AM, said:

I'm confused about your distinction with "cold weapons" here. If one were to reduce heat cap willy-nilly, as PGI has done, it's absolutely a nerf on energy weapons. This has little to do with the actual nerf itself, and more to do with the fact that they only nerfed the part of the MWO heat cap that mechs earn through their build (sinks) and not the massive 30pts that PGI gives all mechs on top of that. So yes, doing it THIS way absolutely favors one type of weapon over another. However, that's not what happens under the system I propose. We've left the part of heat cap that the build determines (which is part of built/heat/weapon balance) fully intact, and locked those bonus 30 points behind a penalty wall. This methodology is fair to both hot and cold weapons, as it lets both use the full cap they need and have earned through their builds. Unlike the changes that have been made with heat cap and dissipation under ED, the proposed TT system doesn't interfere with weapon and build balance. It lets those systems handle what they're supposed to handle, and keeps squarely to the role it's suppose to play.

Imagine you are a laser. A large laser. And then, some incomprehensible outer force passes your perceptual horizon, and suddenly your effective heat cap becomes lower. It does not at all matter to you whether it happens by taking away some points gifted somewhen in history. It doesn't matter to west Ukrainians whether Crimea was gifted to the then-republic by Khrushchev somewhen in the 60s. You feel nerfed and that matters!

The AC5 in the Mech's other arm is much less so, and this is what upsets you.

More seriously: The effective heat cap is the one a player will reasonably use. In your system it becomes 30 points lower plus some adjustments for extreme situations (where taking the penalties is worth the effect) and then taking the average over all the situations possible. Since it was at shutdown boundary before, it necessarily is lower now. And there is nothing wrong here, I welcome a n (effective) heat cap reduction, even a larger one.

A hot weapon, on the other hand, is more worth if the effective heat cap is high than when it is low, because in the former case you can use it more often. A cold weapon is much less dependant, it's dmg/heat ratio is much higher and it has different limiting parameters (weight, mostly).

Conclusion:

Both types of weapons are not at all treated equally.

Implication:
To maintain balance (assumed it was given before) equality should be reestablished by other means.

[Kuaron]

Now to the previous post, the one from here:

1) Ah, the 15% by skills? Or, counted down, 13% reduced heat cap if one counts the skills as you suggest? I gives your DHS an effective 1,74 cap spoken in today's MWO numbers. And we are comparing with 1,2 DHS cap on PTS and 2,0 in your suggestion. Even if you take life server, IIRC we have 1,4 external and 2,0 internal DHS cap bonus there. Yours are not really below.

3) Are you explaining the system again on assumption I didn't understand it yet?
Maybe I shouldn't call it redlining, it's more like: 5-10 points into the red, and then down into the white. And repeat. But still an optimal behaviour.
Or let me put it like this (with randomly guessed numbers):
You fire 3 PPCs and are cooling down. When you are cold enough to fire again, you notice: If you had fired all 4 PPCs, gone into the red, and waited the same sime, you'd be equally cold due to the parallel cooling of the penalty bar, but wouldn't have waisted the dmg.