125 replies to this topic

[Aramuside]

Kmieciu, on 12 September 2016 - 10:36 PM, said:

Why don't you compare the UAC20 to IS AC20 instead? The Clan version is 2 tonnes lighter, 2 tonnes smaller (fits into side torsos with XL engine), has 33% more range and roughly the same DPS. I checked my weapon stats and calculated average damage per trigger pull: IS AC20: 13,45 damage Clan UAC20: 12,9 damage With the single projectile, the IS version is marginally more accurate - but the difference is minute. If I could put UAC20s on my IS AC20 mechs, I would do that in a heartbeat.

That's so disingenuous its scary. 20 pinpoint vs the stream is huge against anything not large and slow moving. Playing both sides I'd take the IS version anytime. The new changes have just hammered that home as 10 second downtime kills you on PTS unless your group can protect you by rotating to take fire. At least with multiple UAC's's rather than putting everything into a single UAC your downtime is less and you're not utterly helpless as your enemy cant just take their time aiming as they're still taking some fire.

[Aramuside]

Wintersdark, on 13 September 2016 - 09:42 AM, said:

On PTS4, heat capacity = 40 + (1*total DHS count). So if you have 10 in engine and 3 out of your engine, 40+(1*13) = 53
With SHS, it's 40 + (1.2*total SHS count), so a 15 in engine/25 out of engine build (40 total) can have 40 + (1.2*40) = 88 (fun with SHS Kodiaks on PTS!)

Good info but .... I like how they're making it so simple and intuitive under this new system for those new players they kept mentioning ....

Surely they won't let us use SHS as clanners though on main I just presumed that was an error on PTS?

[impar]

Navid A1, on 13 September 2016 - 03:18 PM, said:

So PGI... one SERIOUS question:

Why did you nerfed total DISSIPATION on top of reduced heat cap?

IIRC, the community idea was reduced heat cap AND increased dissipation!

This!

Naaaaak, on 13 September 2016 - 04:21 PM, said:

Scrap energy draw and remove ghost heat. It was interesting to try energy draw, but it’s just ghost heat 2.0: an arbitrary layer on top of existing mechanics that are difficult to reason about when building a mech and difficult to explain to newcomers.

Balance the game around the existing weapon properties (cooldown, duration, heat, damage, charge mechanics, spreads, jam times, etc.). I’m fine with unique mechanics (C-ERPPC damage spread, Guass chargeup, etc.)

And this!

[Excalibaard]

All changes here are in the right direction. Very nice patch!

I especially like the heat sink CAPACITY changes, attention for big LRM launchers, global normalization of lasers and return of weapon originality (splash cERPPC, charging Gauss (yes it does add planning and skill, even with macro)), so basically everything.

The dissipation is too low. For SHS this is okay (old tech, high capacity), DHS should at least have a dissipation of 2.0 (or 2.4, double SHS) to solidify their position in sustained builds.

Though, ED is still a 'heat scale on top of a heat scale'. It has a threshold and a dissipation rate, just like the regular heat bar, except that it's dependent on damage dealt by weapons instead of heat. I'm skeptical if this is really necessary to 'limit alpha dominance' which was given as a main reason for this system in the first place.

Assuming that heat capacity is much more dependent on the amount of heatsinks: having many heatsinks would in itself then limit the tonnage available for alpha in smaller mechs, or space available in larger mechs. Since the main problem in a system which is purely heat-gated are the high dmg/heat ratio weapons (ballistics), having larger tonnage/space requirements for good capacity and dissipation is advised. These are the achilles heel of ballistic weapons, meaning that the smaller/lighter weapons will have space for heatsinks and ballistics will not, bringing the end result to a similar heat/alpha and alpha/capacity. This could severely restrict ballistic weapon dominance in the heat-based system.

I suggest internally playing with capacity per heat sink and base capacity a bit more to find a good dependence on heatsinks/alpha.

A few other things to try out:

- Equal Capacity per SHS as per DHS.
Larger mechs which equip SHS due to space restriction can usually run many more SHS than DHS anyway, meaning they'll still have more capacity overall but not gain as much of an advantage as they currently do with the SHS Kodiak.
- Only count external HS towards heat capacity.
This helps small sub-250 rating mechs such as the commando/locust to achieve decent capacity or their weapons.
- OR: Make Heat Capacity more dependent on the engine size (engine-linked HC increase or more HC/internal heat sinks + heat sink slots)
Helps mechs that focus a bit more on speed not to fall too far behind the heat-sink-loaded slower mechs, and small/light weapons such as SRMs which can be equipped with larger engines will catch up in capacity to the alphas/capacity that ballistics can pull off.

Edited by Excalibaard, 14 September 2016 - 02:06 AM.

[L3mming2]

after testing i have to say i don't like the HS changes, they are quite good for the heavyer mechs, but they hit lights way way to hard... a load of lights rely on those engine heat sinks, if those get a masive nerf they get a masive nerf, and lights just dont have the weight to compensate by adding more HS by droping maybe 1 heavy weapon...

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

L3mming2, on 14 September 2016 - 01:50 AM, said:

after testing i have to say i don't like the HS changes, they are quite good for the heavyer mechs, but they hit lights way way to hard... a load of lights rely on those engine heat sinks, if those get a masive nerf they get a masive nerf, and lights just dont have the weight to compensate by adding more HS by droping maybe 1 heavy weapon...

I think this is exactly the conclusion most of us have come to.

Mechs that can boat loads and loads of heatsinks aren't affected. But everything else, is.

(under PTS4, lights have to bring ~20 alpha instead of ~30 since they can't cool it)

Edited by Keshav Murali, 14 September 2016 - 02:17 AM.

[Ninjah]

Gauss charge is fine by me, maybe decrease charge time a bit. Also a gauss rifle should explode only when it's destroyed while charging.


UAC jam time is ridicilous, 10sec jam time for Uac20?!?!?! Do you have any idea how long a typical brawl between two good players takes? 1 Jam and you're dead, like D E A D. Why would anyone even consider putting such a liability on a mech??? The point is to have working weapons and I want my Uac20 to PERFORM ok?

The rest is fine. Maybe too tight LRM cooldowns, Lrm5 got nerfed hard.

[MWHawke]

To be honest, all those big words makes my head spin..

So..from what I understand so far..part of what made energy draw acceptable was the removal of the stupid gauss charge system. Now that we have "those players" who PGi keep telling us about happy with energy draw, they will reintroduce the gauss charge system? Am I reading this right? And now SHS are better than DHS? Or at least comparable to DHS?

Guess I will go play Pokemon Go for enjoyment now instead..

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

Mirage Jenius, on 14 September 2016 - 06:39 AM, said:

UAC jam time is ridicilous, 10sec jam time for Uac20?!?!?! Do you have any idea how long a typical brawl between two good players takes? 1 Jam and you're dead, like D E A D. Why would anyone even consider putting such a liability on a mech??? The point is to have working weapons and I want my Uac20 to PERFORM ok?

The rest is fine. Maybe too tight LRM cooldowns, Lrm5 got nerfed hard.

Jam time scales up. UAC2 - 2.3 seconds
UAC10 - 8
UAC20 - 10

[Ninjah]

Yes I've read it all, jam time scales up to 10sec but 8 sec was barely acceptable before, now no one will use uac20 which is a shame.

Edited by Mirage Jenius, 14 September 2016 - 09:04 AM.

[TheMundaneYesYes]

Well, I have had two accounts and played this game since closed beta. I feel the few thousand hours I put into the game has more then justified the amount of money I put into it and I have had some fun and still find a way to change with the game to still enjoy it. I have no problems with the energy draw system as a idea but these nerfs are just too broad for me to handle, basicly removing DHS is a bit much and would ruin my enjoyment of the game and if it goes through as it is I will be leaving the game, though I will have enjoyed my time on it.

[Kuaron]

I like that PGI is actually turning it's attention to heat and heatsinks.
As many people told, any restriction on this front hits hot (=energy) weapons more than the other ones. But instead of a proper and systemic solution for ballistics, PGI wants to return the nonsense Gauss charging... oh my...

If one wants to stick to the ED, one could try to use it for balancing: Cold weapons put more weight on this ominous ED bar than hot ones. One only would have to change the effect and interpretation to make it make sense, because "energy draw" is already represented by... well... heat produced by the engine to power the weapons. Also known as heat.

That cold weapons draw as much energy as the traditionally hot ones, while bringing their own chemical propellant (and being heavy an return), never had even a perspective to make sense in the first place. They need another kind of penalty, not heat again (with or without ED).

Edited by Kuaron, 15 September 2016 - 03:11 AM.

[Kaptain]

L3mming2, on 14 September 2016 - 01:50 AM, said:

after testing i have to say i don't like the HS changes, they are quite good for the heavyer mechs,

What? I agree they hit lights too hard but they completely destroy every mixed weapon heavy and assault in my stable. Even with 12-14 "D"HSs I can't even fall back onto a pair of ultra-5s. Its ridiculous.

[Kmieciu]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 September 2016 - 11:35 AM, said:

You mean like how the 3/3/3/3 tonnage rules broke the MM?........ohh wait, it didn't and the he players making the most noise quietly backed off till nobody remembered their threads

3/3/3/3 tonnage rules are no longer in effect. That's how you frequently see 1 or 0 light mechs in a match.

Edited by Kmieciu, 14 September 2016 - 10:03 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Kmieciu, on 14 September 2016 - 10:00 PM, said:

3/3/3/3 tonnage rules are no longer in effect. That's how you frequently see 1 or 0 light mechs in a match.

is their a source for that?

Also it could be the case that the MM can't pull enough light's into that match because the total number of games that are required their is an uneven number.

I know it doesn't apply to the group que.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 14 September 2016 - 10:11 PM.

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

I started playing the game a year ago. 3/3/3/3 was a thing of the past THEN.

[Aramuside]

Keshav Murali, on 15 September 2016 - 12:44 AM, said:

I started playing the game a year ago. 3/3/3/3 was a thing of the past THEN.

Is this getting confused by the fact PGI keep loosening the MM limits for events?

[Andrias]

Just get rid of the charge mechanic for Gauss rifles altogether. Utter waste of time and infuriating.

[Arguss10]

Gauss charge again. This is meant to be the 31st century weapons game right. How about you change the missile system where you have to light every missiles fuses as well. That will stop missile alphas. Hey auto canons can use a flint lock civil war rifle mechanism also. Why not put all that in , Alphas solved.

[Nightshade24]

Aramoro999, on 12 September 2016 - 10:13 AM, said:

They had to put the gauss charge back.

how could we ever live without such a great game mechanic...

To me it's a trade off to get other stats better...

however tbh I was actually going to be hyped to see a nerfed gauss without a cooldown and ER PPC's for clans doing 15 damage.... They said it did to much damage for the tonnage and stuff yet it is so much hotter and less fire rate then the large pulse laser at 12 damage....
Can't they just make it do 13 damage and 1 damage splash?