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first: Thank you for listening to the community and trying to implement a more sane version of "Ghost Heat".
I've tested a few games in the lobby, build some mechs and tried them out in the testing ground for sanity checks and want to give my feedback in the hopes, that someone who is responsible will read and act on it.
First:
The effect of ED is limiting the overall alpha for "one button" strikes. All other mechs which do not exceed this magical line will not be affected by it - which will be the majority of mechs.
Mechs that will get limited in their capabilities will be:
- Dual-Gauss/Dual-PPC
- Laservomit
- High-Alpha Brawlers
In consequence, those builds will either fire in brackets or will not be used at all.
- Dual-Gauss/Dual-PPC: Possibly the only variant of those three which will get completely replaced by something else.
- Laservomit: Can still be played in brackets for the trade-off of longer face-time
- High-Alpha Brawlers: Are valid in live and will die out (Atlas-S)
Other configurations are not affected by ED at all:
- Dakka
- Longe-range sniping for exactly 30 energy
- Mechs that do not reach 30 energy at all
In general, esp. Assaults rely on the ability to be a threat as there is right now no other reason to use them. Assaults, which are equipped with pure energy hardpoints have no other choice to boat weapons to be even remotely competitive. Those mechs will stop working and thus will not be played.
Other variant of assaults, like full-dakka will not be affected by ED and is as deadly as before.
Solution:
ED-pool= Tonnage/2 beginning at 30. So a 100-ton mech can draw 50 energy.
Second:
You weapon balancing with damage and recycle values is... broken. Pulse-Lasers on the live-server are used to either counter Ghost-Heat (LPL+Medlaser) or to have a more energy efficient alternative to ER-Lasers.
You took the values from the TT-ruleset which are heavily biased towards:
- accuracy
- damage
In TT, any hit with a laser is pinpoint as a gauss, not in MWO. A PPC is more accurate than a LPL in MWO. You tried to solve this by making the Pulse-lasers more heat efficient than the normal lasers for their damage, but are lost in the scale. The balance on live is pretty much okay. On the PTS, there is no need to use Pulse-lasers anymore.
Pulse-lasers in MWO on the live-server are useful, as they have a good damage/heat value, which is somewhat outbalancing the extra tonnage. The reduced range is somewhat outbalanced with the shorter duration. In general, any weapon, that has a duration of about 0.5s - 1s feels pretty much the same. You spread the damage a little more, but thats it. A value of >1s begins to feel silly and a duration of <0.5s begins to make the weapon feel a little more accurate.
Solution:
So, here is the deal: Change the be pulse-lasers to "dakka" weapons. Think about a permanently firing weapon similar to mechwarrior 3. A LPL will deal only 3 damage, but does it in 0.5s and after it has fired the cooldown is not more than 0.2s and it begins anew. For that, it will generate 2 heat. Something like that
Play with the numbers a bit to give it a dps of around 3-4 and a HPS of 2/3 of that.
Do the same with the Medpulse and Small Pulse and scale the dps accordingly.
A Medpulse should have around 1 - 1.5 dps and a small-pulse 0.5 - 0.75. All of them with about 2/3 heat per damage.
Now, the ED will change the use of those Pulse-Lasers of how many you can use "on the long run". You should be able to use 5-6 LPL simultaneously, but after a certain period of time, you energy runs out. If you use 3 instead, you can fire them all day, but you have to stop once your heat reaches a critical level.
In general, you try to balance the C-LPL out with the C-Ultra-AC-5. The DPS should be similar, but instead of using ammo, you generate more heat. (Here it is your task to find a reasonable balance)
The range of the C-LPL shall be very similar. Now, from this point you can balance left and right towards the MPL and SPL.
The inner-sphere variants have a shorter range, but the same DPS for a little bit better damage/heat ratio (instead of 0.66 heat per damage maybe 0.6 or 0.55 heat/damage - this will be fine-tuning) IS-mechs carry less DHS than Clan-mechs, so the advantage shall go in a useful synergy with the disadvantage of IS-mechs.
At the end of the day, pulse-lasers will deal damage depending on the face-time you invest, similar to dakka but can be used on mechs that only have energy-hardpoints. It also goes well in synergy with the ED-system, as you can fine-tune the pool, recharge-rate and tweak certain weapons and/or mechs to have a better profile/character.
SRMs: Brawling-weapons are a high-risk weapon. While it may be true, that certain SRM-boats may have felt disruptive in terms of TTK, most maps/engagements right now are longer-ranged. Brawling-weapons are a high-risk and should be rewarded. I think, 4ASRM6 w/o heat penalty is okay, but the spread right now makes them useless. I think, that even on the live-server right now, they fall a little bit short. On the PTS, they simply have no stopping power to either prevent a push and they have no reasonable advantage over other shorter-range weapon to justify them to be used in flanking/backstabbing maneuvers.
Solution:
Reduce the spread to live-levels and increase their projectile speed by about 100 m/s.
C-Ultra-ACs: A cooldown for anything >6s means, that the enemy will have 2+ salvos to hit you with pure DPS, which is in a higher tier match: Death. If an Ultra-AC/20 jams for 8s + 4s reload, this time is enough to kill you twice. This has nothing to do with balance anymore, its a broken mechanic.
If you want to introduce a jam, make it not more than 4s. Again, an >4s jam is not an option. You could play with the duration of each salvo to make it feel a little more "throughfire" and at a certain point, it jams. Maybe even a rising curve. The first 2 salvos after the first have next to no jam-chance (like 5%) but any salvo fired after it will increase the chance by 5%. Any Ultra-Autocannon will have a cooldown that makes it a throughfire weapon, so no breaks between.
Quirks on Autocannons (like faster cool-down) will also directly translate in shorter bursts, to make it possible.
AC/20:
The IS-AC/20 is still pretty underwhelming. 20 points of damage are just 20 points of damage - even if pinpoint. This is because in TT, damage had an exponential cost because everything was pinpoint, from laser to ballistic.
Solution:
+1 on every ammo-package (also half tons), reduce the heat to 4, increase the dps from 5 to 6.
Autocannons in general: The CUAC/20 and IS-AC/20 dont feel like an autocannon. Their speed is... nope. Change all autocannons to start with at least 1.000 ms/s and end with 2.000 m/s.
Heatsink-change:
I don't really know in which direction those changes are really going. I think, the version 5 of the PTS is... not bad? Lights are a little hotter (which is good I think) while mechs with a lot of DHs finally feel like they have a good dissipation. I quite like it.
In the end:
Don't use odd numbers for the ED per weapon. People WILL use weapon combinations to get the 30 and disregard anything that does not hit it. So if you want to allow a certain combination of weapons, make the draw to be 2/3/4/5/6 part of 30 and not 7.43862.
If you want to allow 5-ER-Meds to be fired simultaneously, make it 6 ED/shot. If you want to allow 6 to be fired simultaneously, make it 5/shot. Done.
Edited by Túatha Dé Danann, 22 September 2016 - 10:14 AM.
