241 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 09 September 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

I'm sure if someone like Mcgral looked into the data, we could find out.

I don't care to search at this point.

Yeah, hence my question. I wasn't interested in the effort required to try and find out; was hoping someone else did the leg work or that there was a post somewhere I'd missed.

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

I was about to call all of you guys lazy, but I don't even know how Mcgral finds the stats. I just know it has something to do with XML files, and I'm too lazy to search my installation for them.

[Sereglach]

Deathlike, on 09 September 2016 - 11:27 AM, said:

Not sure if this is new, but there is another ninja PTS patch available.

Wintersdark, on 09 September 2016 - 12:28 PM, said:

Know what changed?

Probably something to do with this announcement that was recently made (seemingly ninja'd in). I guess we'll see something about what they're doing soon enough:

http://mwomercs.com/...w-pts-09sep2016

Quote

Greetings MechWarriors,

The Energy Draw PTS has been taken down momentarily while we conduct some internal testing of a few experimental changes to the Energy Draw system present on PTS. With the experimental nature of these changes we need to run an internal testing pass to ensure that they are functioning as intended according to their design before re-opening the PTS for general access.

Barring any issues discovered from internal testing, when the testing is complete and the changes have been confirmed we will likely re-open the PTS for general access and update this post with a full list of all new changes. If we encounter any issues during testing that may prevent the release of these new changes, we will similarly update this post as needed.

Thank you for your patience!

Edited by Sereglach, 09 September 2016 - 07:32 PM.

[Navid A1]

Missiles, Ballistics and energy weapons still draw from the same pool.
So nothing is fixed yet!


Can't wait for this ED to hit live servers!... not
It will be fun asking PGI for another 2 years to band aid another broken mechanic.

[Wintersdark]

Sereglach, on 09 September 2016 - 07:29 PM, said:

Probably something to do with this announcement that was recently made (seemingly ninja'd in). I guess we'll see something about what they're doing soon enough:

http://mwomercs.com/...w-pts-09sep2016

oh, thank-you sir! I missed that completely!

[Gas Guzzler]

Yeah, still think linking all weapons to a penalty system is a bad design. Much happier with live server gameplay.

[Sereglach]

Wintersdark, on 09 September 2016 - 08:01 PM, said:

oh, thank-you sir! I missed that completely!

Don't worry, I missed it, too. I think most people probably missed it because it was only on the front page and nowhere to be found on the forums. Seeing as it was made over 8 hours ago, now (since the post is listed in UTC), I'm guessing they ran into complications or something. When I realized the timestamp was UTC and not CST (where I'm located) I was surprised that it's gone this long without an update.

[Deathlike]

Keshav Murali, on 09 September 2016 - 07:02 PM, said:

I was about to call all of you guys lazy, but I don't even know how Mcgral finds the stats. I just know it has something to do with XML files, and I'm too lazy to search my installation for them.

If you have something like 7-Zip or WinRAR (decompression app), you can open the .pak files and see the contents.

It's all about finding the text files of what is being stored (hardpoints, weapon stats, etc.).

[AnTi90d]

Deathlike, on 09 September 2016 - 10:50 PM, said:

If you have something like 7-Zip or WinRAR (decompression app), you can open the .pak files and see the contents.

It's all about finding the text files of what is being stored (hardpoints, weapon stats, etc.).

I poked around to try and replace the annoying-as-hell introduction videos (CryEngine and Nvidia) with blank files of the same size and then repack them.. It didn't work, but I found a lot of interesting things in there.

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 09 September 2016 - 10:50 PM, said:

If you have something like 7-Zip or WinRAR (decompression app), you can open the .pak files and see the contents.

It's all about finding the text files of what is being stored (hardpoints, weapon stats, etc.).

Then you open them with notepad++ which auto formats XML to be easy to read, and run its compare function and it'll highlight differences.

But for that to work, you'd need to have the pts3 .xml's and the updated xml's to compare. Without the old one, you'd be guessing what was different, and that's too much of a pita.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

Gas Guzzler, on 09 September 2016 - 08:09 PM, said:

Yeah, still think linking all weapons to a penalty system is a bad design. Much happier with live server gameplay.

So am I >.<

[Miles McQuiston]

It is imperative that they only use heat scale to regulate the use of alpha strike and hence the overall game play. Tweak weapon stats only. I.E. an alpha strike becomes a risky endeavor. It is far easier to balance weapons based off heat generation than it is to have a silly convoluted mechanic to deal with.

Potential Complaints:
AC will be too strong because of low heat (increase their cool down/reload time)! Continue to increase reload time until it is best to bring a combination of LRMs and lasers with your ballistics instead of boating.

Laser boats are just too hot now. Keep the high damage lasers with high heat and reduce the heat on smaller lasers/flamers etc. Hence you can still boat a few lasers, but you will need alternatives when the range closes. Hence you can get away firing 2 ERLL maybe even 3 ERLL (approaching heat issues because of your total heat dissipation). The I will just boat "smaller lasers" good idea, but if the lasers run cool they will also have a greater cool down as well. Lets not forget you can even change damage etc for all of these weapons.

SRMs and LRMs are the way to go then. Nope it is just as easy to tweak heat, reload/cooldown, and damage on these without some silly system besides heat. Heat is also the basis for all future tech like stealth armor, void signature, null signature, chameleon light polarization etc.

Heat scale is all that is needed. Quit complicating a system that already exists and just needs adjustments to the inputs (weapons).

[kapusta11]

Miles McQuiston, on 11 September 2016 - 05:58 PM, said:

It is imperative that they only use heat scale to regulate the use of alpha strike and hence the overall game play. Tweak weapon stats only. I.E. an alpha strike becomes a risky endeavor. It is far easier to balance weapons based off heat generation than it is to have a silly convoluted mechanic to deal with.

The thing is, if you balance heavies and assaults by nerfing the heat of their weapons then lights and mediums that were completely fine will have to cope with increased heat too. The performance gap will remain the same.

A mechanic that adds diminishing returns as you keep increasing your mech's firepower is necessary if you want keep 1:1 weight class balance and you pretty much have to cause in MWO everyone has only one mech and one life per match hence the mechs should be more or less equal.

[impar]

kapusta11, on 11 September 2016 - 10:30 PM, said:

The thing is, if you balance heavies and assaults by nerfing the heat of their weapons then lights and mediums that were completely fine will have to cope with increased heat too. The performance gap will remain the same.

Heat capacity had to be lower in all mechs.
To partially compensate that, remember all engines should have 10 heat sinks?
A 30t light mech equipped with a 210 engine is currently being robbed of 2 HS.

TTK is a problem because changes were also made to the DPS. Armour was doubled from 16points/ton to 32points/ton, yet DPS was more than doubled. An AC\10 should make 10 damage every 10 seconds, 1 DPS, its at 4 DPS. A PPC was bumped from 1DPS to 2,5DPS, a ML from 0,5DPS to 1,28DPS, and AC5 from 0,5DPS to 3DPS... And that with base values, without quirks or cooldown modules.

Changes were made to make the game more frenetic, of course TTK is lower. The more alterations are made to the game, the more convoluted systems need to be added for compensation.

[Widowmaker1981]

impar, on 12 September 2016 - 12:45 AM, said:

Heat capacity had to be lower in all mechs.
To partially compensate that, remember all engines should have 10 heat sinks?
A 30t light mech equipped with a 210 engine is currently being robbed of 2 HS.

Its not, actually. In TT small engines weigh more than in MWO and the heatsinks that dont fit in the engine are zero weight, they just take slots. Since they didnt want to code in special zero weight heatsinks in MWO, they just reduced the weight of the sub 250 engines by the correct number of tons.

Of course, all heatsinks are supposed to be equal, regardless of being 'inside' the engine or not..

[Quicksilver Aberration]

impar, on 12 September 2016 - 12:45 AM, said:

An AC\10 should make 10 damage every 10 seconds, 1 DPS

Your example is a little bad because of the weakness that is the AC/10 in TT. I mean it is solid, but compared to PPCs/Gauss/AC20s, it just isn't as awesome. Don't confuse necessary balance changes with some sort of change to TTK.
If you are gonna compare DPS from TT to DPS in this game, use the most powerful weapons from it, which mind you at best have 2.5x the DPS from TT (AC20) while the worst has less than double (Gauss/PPC).

[ButteryD]

I still want to see the energy threshold increase with the size of the engine. It just makes sense logically and for balance purposes.

[impar]

Widowmaker1981, on 12 September 2016 - 03:09 AM, said:

Of course, all heatsinks are supposed to be equal, regardless of being 'inside' the engine or not..

Yep. We have gimped ones.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 12 September 2016 - 06:51 AM, said:

Your example is a little bad because of the weakness that is the AC/10 in TT.

Gave others.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

impar, on 12 September 2016 - 11:56 AM, said:

Gave others.

The ML would've been a good example if hardpoints weren't a limiting factor.
AC5s aren't a good one either since they are worse in TT than AC10s (having the same DPS as the ML is pretty terrible for example).

The PPCs are a solid example, but like I said, since armor/internals are doubled, they are pretty close to being perfect. A 5 second cooldown would give them a DPS of 2.0 putting them right were the game should be balanced around.

[Tombs Clawtooth]

Just food for thought...

Why balance cUACs through jam chance? Why not balance them by applying a higher value of heat on the second salvo fired? RNG mechanics are annoying and allow luck to cause dramatic over-performance at times.