8 replies to this topic

[Gentleman Reaper]

First lets look at the strengths and weaknesses of a few different potential heat systems:

Unrestricted current heat cap:

Strengths:
?

Weaknesses:
Crippling alphas without shutting down.

Ballistic boats are dominant in DPS and fire-and-shield.

Mixed builds are inefficient because of de-synced weapons compared to large-alpha boats.

Lighter mechs are punished because of power-creep.


Ghost Heat with current heat cap:

Strengths:
Boats are punished with heat penalties

Mixed builds are encouraged because GH affects certain weapon groups

Weaknesses:
Mixed builds are capable of large alphas due to avoiding grouping too many of one weapon

System is complex because different groups are affected differently

Gauss rifles are completely unaffected


Energy Draw with current heat cap:

Strengths:
All alphas are punished without exploitable loopholes

Provides extra values for weapon balance

System is very customizable

Provides visual queues for the most efficient alphas

More linear heat penalty rate

Gauss rifle is affected if alpha'd with other weapons

Weaknesses:
Variable draw rates requires calculations (can be fixed by showing draw elements in weapon groups tab)

Mixed builds fare worse than boats due to the large heat pool

System seems overly restricting for the heat cap

Gauss boats are not heavily affected due to large heat pool, this can't change without affecting every other weapon.


Unrestricted fixed 30 heat cap:

Strengths:
Most large alphas are harshly punished with potential shutdown

Heavily increases TTK

Mixed builds are encouraged because of reduced power-creep

Makes weapon heat a more powerful balancing tool (looking at you 15 damage C-ERPPC)

Weaknesses:

Gauss' non-existent heat is a big issue, bigger than with current cap

Autocannons aren't heavily affected, furthering performance gap with energy and missile weapons.

Makes ballistic PPFLD alphas devastating


Energy Draw with fixed 30 heat cap:

Strengths:
All large alphas are harshly punished with potential shutdown

Heavily increases TTK

Mixed builds thrive as mechs are forced to carefully choose what weapons to fire

Lighter mechs fare better

Makes weapon heat a more powerful balancing tool

Provides extra values for weapon balance

ED is very customizable

Provides visual queues for the most efficient alphas

More linear heat penalty rate

Penalties are far less restricting, mostly punishing those who try to alpha and quick-shutdown/override (2 C-ERPPC at 30 heat)

Autocannon boats can't alpha without shutting down

The heat from 2 Gauss alphas is more punishing, would call for the 2 gauss limit to be removed

Better fits with TT rules and lore

Weaknesses:
Might make me look at the current PTS in a more negative light and hate PGI if they ignore this

Edited by Gentleman Reaper, 03 September 2016 - 08:16 PM.

[kapusta11]

No

[Sable]

I kinda like having the two different bars. Energy limits your alphas while heat is a general thing you need to keep an eye on if you're still firing too often and aren't managing it well.

[ScarecrowES]

If you change damage to heat and have your ED bar based on the heat capacity of the build, this IS the TT system you're proposing.

And yes, really that's what we should have.

I've done a full write up for how that works. I haven't quite got the numbers tuned where I like them, but yes... that's what I want.

Though, realize that the 30pt heat scale must have real punishments associated with it. And capacity (ED) values must fit the mech to work.

Just to point out, if you use heat capacity for each build, the Kodiak-3 inevitably ends up with a low heat cap because you don't mount many sinks on those builds. But a ppc warhawk has a high (but not high enough) cap because it mounts a lot of sinks. Still balanced.

But in the process we have to dump pretty much everything to come out of PTS except the dual-bar mechanic.

Using damage to balance heat is beyond dumb. And you can't have a pure 30pt heat cap because of everything it breaks. I'd argue that many of OP's conclusions couldn't exist with the proposed options.

Edited by ScarecrowES, 04 September 2016 - 12:15 AM.

[Spleenslitta]

I'm more for 30 heat cap and tossing both ED and GH out the window to be replaced by a gyro bar.
Whenever you fire a ballistic weapon the gyro counters the recoil. Overload the gyro and bad things happen.

The bad things could be various things. Your imagination is the limit.
- Screenshake like when you use JJ's till gyro recovers.
- Heat spike as the gyro desperatly counters recoil.
- Gyro receives damaged and gets a lower recoil cap and/or lower recoil recovery rate that lasts the entire match.

- Internal structure or ballistic weapons damaged by massive recoils. The more overloaded the gyro gets the more damage applied.
- Recoil shakes all the ammo feeds so badly they jam. Even AMS and missile weapons are affected and the more overloaded the gyro is the longer the jam lasts.

I want ammo explosions at high heat levels and hot mechs becoming sluggish too.
Carefull management of heat and recoil would be essential to stay alive.
I want many more things but i'll stop there.

[Gentleman Reaper]

ScarecrowES, on 03 September 2016 - 11:57 PM, said:

If you change damage to heat and have your ED bar based on the heat capacity of the build, this IS the TT system you're proposing.

And yes, really that's what we should have.

But that's not quite what I'm proposing. Use the 30 heat cap to balance energy and missile weapons, with ED used to mostly counter ballistic boat alphas, and punish people trying to cut it close with energy alphas, this way ED is kept completely intact with maybe a few minor value changes. This is the only way PGI would be willing to implement a 30 heat cap, but they WILL NOT (nor do I want them to) scrap ED.

Spleenslitta, on 04 September 2016 - 12:03 AM, said:

I'm more for 30 heat cap and tossing both ED and GH out the window to be replaced by a gyro bar.
Whenever you fire a ballistic weapon the gyro counters the recoil. Overload the gyro and bad things happen.

The bad things could be various things. Your imagination is the limit.
- Screenshake like when you use JJ's till gyro recovers.
- Heat spike as the gyro desperatly counters recoil.
- Gyro receives damaged and gets a lower recoil cap and/or lower recoil recovery rate that lasts the entire match.

You're asking for an overly complex system that so far I've only seen you propose. The 30 heat cap would make ED look like far less an artificial balancing measure, since keeping the same 30 alpha buffer is about what you would get anyway before you shut down, with the ballistic boats (which have almost always been OP in MW games) getting the most punished.

[ScarecrowES]

Gentleman Reaper, on 04 September 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

But that's not quite what I'm proposing. Use the 30 heat cap to balance energy and missile weapons, with ED used to mostly counter ballistic boat alphas, and punish people trying to cut it close with energy alphas, this way ED is kept completely intact with maybe a few minor value changes. This is the only way PGI would be willing to implement a 30 heat cap, but they WILL NOT (nor do I want them to) scrap ED.

I vote no on a pure 30 heat cap. I breaks half the mechs in the game, pure and simple. Moreover, it gives yet another buff to mechs that already run cool.

The system that was actually DESIGNED to balance battletech does not have a fixed cap.

ED is already a massive failure. It wouldn't do you well to hang your hat on this one. Better to look on to whatever we can try next instead.

[Gentleman Reaper]

ScarecrowES, on 04 September 2016 - 10:41 AM, said:

Moreover, it gives yet another buff to mechs that already run cool.

Again, Energy Draw...

Quote

The system that was actually DESIGNED to balance battletech does not have a fixed cap.

The system designed to balance battletech was an arbitrary number assigned to everything. Battle Value aside, nothing was balanced when compared to eachother, Clan-tech was superior, and higher-tech equipment was superior to lower-tech equipment.

Quote

ED is already a massive failure. It wouldn't do you well to hang your hat on this one. Better to look on to whatever we can try next instead.

You're delusional if you think these issues are with ED, and you've proven time and time again why you hold no credibility in your criticism of energy draw. Things are as they are in the Live server simply because Ghost Heat was a system with countless exploitable holes. What we have now isn't balanced, people have simply taken to incorporating every meta or otherwise overpowered build into common play. Light mechs and hardpoint-starved mechs suffer because everything used now is just power-creep, you can argue that it's good enough, sure, but I want to see every possible build be viable, and capping heatscale in the PTS would lay the groundwork for this.

[ScarecrowES]

Gentleman Reaper, on 04 September 2016 - 04:26 PM, said:

Again, Energy Draw...



The system designed to balance battletech was an arbitrary number assigned to everything. Battle Value aside, nothing was balanced when compared to eachother, Clan-tech was superior, and higher-tech equipment was superior to lower-tech equipment.



You're delusional if you think these issues are with ED, and you've proven time and time again why you hold no credibility in your criticism of energy draw. Things are as they are in the Live server simply because Ghost Heat was a system with countless exploitable holes. What we have now isn't balanced, people have simply taken to incorporating every meta or otherwise overpowered build into common play. Light mechs and hardpoint-starved mechs suffer because everything used now is just power-creep, you can argue that it's good enough, sure, but I want to see every possible build be viable, and capping heatscale in the PTS would lay the groundwork for this.

I have no idea why you're bringing up BV. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

If you REALLY want to see every possible build viable AND you want to see proper overarching and FAIR limitations, then what you want is the TT heat system.

Plain and simple. THAT system already does everything ED is trying to do, and does it better across the board.

ED is a failure because it tries, unsuccessfully, to address symptoms caused by a malfunctioning base heat system.

It's a bit like having an immune system-induced disease. You say, "hell, we can't have these symptoms," so you prescribe a drug to address that symptom. And fortunately, what you prescribed DOES address the one symptom you were looking at. Unfortunately, that drug doesn't work the same all the time. Sometimes it works fine, other times it makes things worse. Sometimes it just doesn't work at all. And, most often, that drug has all kinds of negative side effects. Maybe you fixed this guy's flaky skin, but now he has erectile dysfunction and an irritible bowel.

As long as you only address symptoms, and not the disease, these problems will keep coming back.

In terms of credibility... please tell me how I have none in this debate. I'm not the one advocating for a system which demonstrates, repeatedly, that it simply doesn't do ANYTHING that the system was designed to do? High alphas? Still there? Less complexity? Nope. Closing loopholes? Nope. Encouraging build variety? Nope. And yet, for reasons noone can seem to explain, some people actually support the system, even while almost none of them seems to want more time wasted on it.

You CANNOT cap heat at 30. Pure and simple. You don't even have to test this on the PTS. Just break your calculator out and crunch the numbers yourself. It takes a minute or two per mech. And it won't take more than a few mechs to show you exactly WHY you can't do this.

Edited by ScarecrowES, 05 September 2016 - 02:45 PM.