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MechaBattler, on 06 January 2017 - 10:28 AM, said:
Basically "git gud" post.
And you're going after the idea of raising durability of mechs. Which I said nothing about. Did you read my post?
I think PGI had the right idea with energy draw. Even if energy draw itself wasn't really enough alone. Combined with lower heat cap and higher dissipation. If they tighten the heat cap, it would actually make bringing more heatsinks over guns a viable strategy.
Though there was an issue with Clans being able to bring more dubs.
Energy Draw had negligible impact on ballistics. The core idea was good, and I believe there's ways to try and salvage ED, but an understanding must first be made about the difference between ballistics and energy weapons.
As was clarified during the initial ED tests, ballistics-focused 'Mechs are already, for the most part, DPS machines that do not frequently generate alphas in excess of 30 points. Instead, they do their thing by having standing DPS several times higher than most equivalent energy weapon-intensive 'Mechs. An AC/5 weighs several times what a medium laser does and is ammunition dependent while the laser is not, but while ammo lasts that AC/5 has nearly three times the DPS of the medium laser at over double the range, for effectively identical HPS numbers.
Because ballistics are so heavy and ballistic hardpoints are typically in short supply, they're not really limited by heat save in ridiculous over-the-top assault 'Mech cases. Any given gun has several times the DPS of an equivalent laser or PPC for the same overall heat load, if not a much lower heat load. They cannot be boated to nearly the extent of lasers, no, but they don't need to be because any given gun is usually worth three to four equivalent lasers. As such, ballistics-focused 'Mechs win by being buzz saws.
Energy-centric 'Mechs, however, are capable of achieving alpha levels the forum finds flatly ridiculous. That said, a three-AC/5 'Mech - considered fairly innocuous by typical forum standards these days, easily achievable by a large number of machines on both sides of the tech divide - has the same DPS as a machine with 7.2 medium lasers, which is not a commonly achievable loadout. Mixes of larger and smaller lasers help, but even then, unlike ballistics it is incredibly easy to heat-overload an energy armament, and there is not an energy-based armament in all the world that is going to even remotely compete with ballistics-based DPS given current heat management systems. You just cannot pack in enough heat sinks on anything that exists, on either side of the tech divide, to maintain DPS parity with a ballistics-focused 'Mech for anything but a few seconds.
As such, a clean delineation exists between the two. The energy-centric 'Mech has the advantage in the very early moments of an engagement, where her ability to carry a larger overall number of weapons at significantly reduced mass lets her hit harder, instantaneously, than the ballistics guy can compete with. A 50-point alpha is enormous for a ballistics guy but fairly achievable, if still sizable, for your average laser boat. Here's the thing, though - the longer an engagement goes on, the more the advantage swings the ballistics guys way, and 'longer' doesn't actually take very long at all. Again - 10 DPS sustainable is pretty simple for most competent ballistic guys, but the same 10 DPS sustainable is a huge strugle for a lot of energy-centric 'Mechs. In the long fight the autocannons guy just cuts the lasers guy to pieces because he has three times the DPS the energy guy does.
Energy Draw, as it was before the PTS was pulled down for review, eliminated a laser-centric 'Mech's ability to hit hard in one go. Their advantage at the very early fight, their hit-and-run capability, was eliminated. They no longer had any point in a fight where they had an edge against ballistic-centric 'Mechs - and no, 'ammunition independence' is not a realistic edge. It would be in a campaign setting, but MWO is not one of those. Ballistics get to sh!t on energy for free in Energy Draw as it stood in Septemberish.
Now, you mention reducing heat capacity and increasing dissipation, which is the Galactic Standard Kill-All-Alphas-Forever Plan that people have been trumpeting about since the Mesozoic Era. Here's why that doesn't work.
Currently, the energy/ballistics balance lever has its fulcrum on the idea that eventually a laser-focused 'Mech overloads its heat capacity and essentially loses its ability to deal damage, whilst a ballistic guy gets to keep on truckin'. Overall dissipation rates are a huge, one would even say critical, part of that balance solution. Heat dissipation is akin to ammo regeneration for energy weapons and is what controls the ability of ballistic weapons to pull ahead in the long game. Assume for the moment that you get your ED system in place, simple 30-point alpha cap - which, again, most ballistic fits pretty much just outright ignore - but you reduce heat cap to some arbitrarily dumbly low number and crank dissipation into the stratosphere to compensate, as a means of allowing energy to not be dominated by ballistics in a system where alpha strikes are effectively disallowed and DPS rules.
In this situation, you have accomplished two things.
1.) you have largely eliminated the stylistic difference between peak-and-valley energy weapons and constant-numbers ballistic weapons. Players who prefer a punch-and-run style and enjoy the big but costly damage surges produced by energy-centric armaments are left out in the cold, because energy weapons, much like ballistics, are now DPS systems that have a fairly steady rate of performance. Low cap means you get small alpha numbers - just like ballistics - while high dissipation means those alphas come back much faster and you can effectively fire constantly - also just like ballistics.
2.) you have rendered ballistic weapons effectively pointless, as an artefact of Point 1. An AC/5 has three times the DPS of a medium laser to twice the range for the same HPS...but that AC/5 still weighs eight times what the medium laser does in addition to mandatory required secondary tonnage for ammunition. Assuming one iAC/5 with two tons of ammo, you have allotted ten tons of loadout weight to this weapon. This is enough for ten medium lasers, which yields three times the AC/5's DPS. Or, more realistically, it is enough for six medium lasers and for heat sinks, allowing the medium lasers to deal double the AC/5's DPS. The lasers also generate six times the heat of the AC/5...but they get four extra heat sinks to help deal with this, and sharply increased dissipation rates means HPS numbers can be significantly higher than they currently are without losing sustainability.
When energy and ballistics both behave the exact same way, but energy weighs fractions of what ballistics do and are also easier to hit with because hitscan weapons...well.
Best get those beam boats ready.
This is why TTK is fine. Or rather, this is why all the knee-jerk "I can't survive getting shot at by the entire enemy team at maximum sustainable rates of fire for five minutes! THIS GAME IS NOT BATTLETECH!" tomfoolery is just exactly that - tomfoolery. Alphas do not need to be reduced. A more interactive heat system which still permits energy-centric loadouts their instantaneous-fire advantage would be beneficial; Energy Draw at final pre-cut implementation with the whole halved cap/doubled dissipation nonsense would simply result in smacking muttloads of laserboats with 30-point alphas firing without restraint because their heat's zeroed out again before the lasers are done cycling.
Try again, sir. This is not the fix you're looking for.
