426 replies to this topic

[Grus]

Dee Eight, on 25 January 2017 - 11:20 AM, said:

no i am explaining how engine crits led to more heat issues.

I should have been more specific. I was referring to the slots that it takes up in the side torso "critical slots"

[Dee Eight]

Grus, on 25 January 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

I should have been more specific. I was referring to the slots that it takes up in the side torso "critical slots"

The number of slots an engine occupies doesn't alter how the crit rules work. Three crits = effective mech death because the fusion reactor shuts down completely. That XL engines take more spaces (because the shielding is bulkier) doesn't give them more crits to survive. The bulkier shielding weighs less but its more fragile so the effect is the same. Its the first two crits though that's the important bit for this discussion. +10 heat per 10 second turn, that cannot be prevented, is effectively 1 heat per second. Only the base ten heatsinks included with the engine for free and located inside its crit spaces/tonnage of all engines 250 rating or higher, give maximum benefit to capacity and cooling (so DHS's being TRUE double heat sinks, at 2.0 capacity and .2 dissapation each). +1 heat per second thus represents the dissipation of five of the 5 engine mounted double heat sinks (so a 50% loss).

Thus Clan Players should consider themselves fortunate that PGI only made it cost 40% of the dissipation from the engine mounted heat sinks for a side torso loss on a clan XL engine. They could have just as easily REALLY balanced it by making it an automatic +1 heat per second, left the dissipation rates alone, and then clan XL engine users would have been worse off, especially for light mechs with engine ratings of 250 or less, who's engines cannot hold any extra double heat sinks. Think about it...a kit fox with a 180XL holds 7 DHS inside it. That's minus 1.4 heat per second. +1 heat per second for a side torso loss would thus cost you 71.4% of your heat dissipation from your engine heat sinks. A Nova or Huntsman with its 250 rating only holds ten (so its loss would be 50%). A Kodiak with a 400XL could hold 16, so it would only loss be 31.25% effectively.

So which would you prefer...40% for EVERYONE... or 1.0 heat per second for everyone ?

Edited by Dee Eight, 26 January 2017 - 12:30 AM.

[Uncle Totty]

Can we get a hotfix? You seem to have missed something.

[Grus]

Dee Eight, on 26 January 2017 - 12:10 AM, said:

The number of slots an engine occupies doesn't alter how the crit rules work. Three crits = effective mech death because the fusion reactor shuts down completely. That XL engines take more spaces (because the shielding is bulkier) doesn't give them more crits to survive. The bulkier shielding weighs less but its more fragile so the effect is the same. Its the first two crits though that's the important bit for this discussion. +10 heat per 10 second turn, that cannot be prevented, is effectively 1 heat per second. Only the base ten heatsinks included with the engine for free and located inside its crit spaces/tonnage of all engines 250 rating or higher, give maximum benefit to capacity and cooling (so DHS's being TRUE double heat sinks, at 2.0 capacity and .2 dissapation each). +1 heat per second thus represents the dissipation of five of the 5 engine mounted double heat sinks (so a 50% loss).

Thus Clan Players should consider themselves fortunate that PGI only made it cost 40% of the dissipation from the engine mounted heat sinks for a side torso loss on a clan XL engine. They could have just as easily REALLY balanced it by making it an automatic +1 heat per second, left the dissipation rates alone, and then clan XL engine users would have been worse off, especially for light mechs with engine ratings of 250 or less, who's engines cannot hold any extra double heat sinks. Think about it...a kit fox with a 180XL holds 7 DHS inside it. That's minus 1.4 heat per second. +1 heat per second for a side torso loss would thus cost you 71.4% of your heat dissipation from your engine heat sinks. A Nova or Huntsman with its 250 rating only holds ten (so its loss would be 50%). A Kodiak with a 400XL could hold 16, so it would only loss be 31.25% effectively.

So which would you prefer...40% for EVERYONE... or 1.0 heat per second for everyone ?

That explains things well. So if I have a mech with say 18 hs 10 in the engine and 8 spread evenly across the Mech (none in legs and CT for Arguments's sake.) So lost my RT and now my 10 hs are running at a 40% loss. Meaning the remaining 4 are not. So with 10 hs running at 1.6 with a 40% draw mean they will be running at .96. If they were true dubble meaning 2 it would be running at 1.2 per hs. Now I'm not too deep on TT to understand the +1 heat thing. Please go into that more so I can understand.

If they were true dubble yes we would be losing more of a number value but we would also start at a better cooling possition. However, having a "dubble" hs go from 1.6 cooling to less than 1 isn't in this sense a 40% loss. Clan has one and a half heat sinks, not dubble.

[Grus]

I guess the big hang up I have is the term of "dubble" heatsinks. We don't have any dubble heat sinks we have "enhanced" single heatsinks.

Grus, on 26 January 2017 - 08:32 AM, said:

I guess the big hang up I have is the term of "dubble" heatsinks. We don't have any dubble heat sinks we have "enhanced" single heatsinks.

Put another way if I give you a dubble cheese burger and one patty is standard size and the other is 60% the size of the other, well yes you have two patties but is it really what you ordered?

[Dee Eight]

Grus, on 26 January 2017 - 08:23 AM, said:

Now I'm not too deep on TT to understand the +1 heat thing. Please go into that more so I can understand.

The heat scale system in battletech worked...for a balance perspective...regardless of inner sphere or clan tech because all heat was applied in the heat effects phase of a game turn that represented 10 seconds of time in the game. That it took TWO players perhaps ten minutes or more to play out ONE turn with all its seperate phases is why a lot of folks are looking forwards to the new Battletech online game. They WANT that "chess with robots" experience, with all the strategy of the original on their computer screen.

The heat scale system tracked the NET heat left in a mech at the end of the heat phase, and penalties were then applied afterwards and that carried forwards into subsequent turns since the scale was cumulative. It went from zero to thirty. Anything above thirty wasn't tracked because thirty meant automatic shutdown. The heat from firing weapons, heat from movement, heat from weapon damage, and the cooling of heat sinks, was all applied simultaneously. Thus if you had two engine critical hits, your mech received +10 heat (the same as firing a standard PPC) each turn, during the heat phase.

The weapons firing and movement of mechs in MWO, largely derived from the heat scale in Battletech (which is why a PPC generated 10 heat when it fires, an SRM6 is 4 heat, etc), but the game doesn't use "turns". It does it all in real time, second to second, thus PGI has had to invent ways to allow players to fire weapons faster than once every ten seconds. Thus we have cooldown times, burn durations, and total heat capacity along with heat dissipation.

So +10 heat every ten second battletech turn would be +1 heat per second in MWO gameplay time. That might not seem like much, per second, but added to all the other heat a mech can generate and it will put a serious damper on your play style. Say you had a Nova-prime which lost its right side torso and right arm. It would still have the six ERML in the other arm, and 2 extra DHS left external to the engine. The total heat capacity of a nova is 30 (automatic base all mechs start with) + 20 (for the core 10 engine heat sinks) + 1.5 for each additional DHS. With only 2 extra DHS now you get 53 as the total (3 capacity was lost when the right torso/arm were lost). From zero heat... one shot of all six lasers would produce 36 heat. Under the new 40% loss penalty system, the engine DHS would cool 1.2 per second and the external another 0.3 per second for a total of 1.5 per second. If you waited 4 seconds you'd cool to 30 heat. If you fired the lasers again you'd jump to 66 total heat which is 13 past the total capacity and presto... shutdown your mech and likely internal heat damage also. If you hit over-ride to force a restart sooner, and then chain fired the lasers, you'd only be able to shoot ONE laser, every five seconds, if you actually wanted your total heat to decrease and avoid internal heat damage. Under a heat penalty system where the cooling wasn't penalized (like in battletech) but you suffered an additional 1 heat per second continuously, you'd only cool a net 1.3 per second, which is less than under the 40% penalty system.

Under the battletech system, that same nova from 0 heat, would generate 30 heat for the six lasers firing (Clan ERML in BT were 5 heat for 7 damage) + 10 for the engine crit damage for a total of 40. The heat sinks would eliminate 24 heat leaving you a net 16. If you fired them all again the next turn, you'd add another net 16 and shutdown (as you'd be past 30 total). Even at 16 heat you'd suffer penalties to your weapon attack accuracy and movement rate the following turn as well as have to roll to avoid an auto-shutdown at the end of the current turn.

Edited by Dee Eight, 27 January 2017 - 10:30 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

The number of slots an engine occupies doesn't alter how the crit rules work. Three crits = effective mech death because the fusion reactor shuts down completely. That XL engines take more spaces (because the shielding is bulkier) doesn't give them more crits to survive. The bulkier shielding weighs less but its more fragile so the effect is the same.

Just to note though for the others new to TT setting, those engine crits were generated using dice, the probability of hit/miss, then if a hit the hit location for EACH weapon. And for a boardgame, there was no reason for FASA to change or alter than rule set once isXL (Star League), cXL, LFE, etc were added, it was simply increased the ability for engine crit as it was no longer restricted to just the CT once the armor has been scrubbed off, though it was possible to get a crit roll through armor with Snake Eyes.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 26 January 2017 - 07:42 PM.

[Grus]

From what I read Dee if we have true dubble heatsinks the +1 would actually be better. Could be wrong but it sounds like we just went from a cold map to a normal temperature map. The real issue is on a already hot map or thermal. You would definitely need to have trigger control to stay in the fight.

[Dee Eight]

Grus, on 27 January 2017 - 11:47 AM, said:

From what I read Dee if we have true dubble heatsinks the +1 would actually be better. Could be wrong but it sounds like we just went from a cold map to a normal temperature map. The real issue is on a already hot map or thermal. You would definitely need to have trigger control to stay in the fight.

Only the core heatsinks contained automatically inside an engine can be true doubles. All heatsinks external to the engine and beyond the first ten inside the engine are only doubles in name. In effect they're One Point Five heatsinks. A kit fox with 7 heat sinks inside its engine only has 7 true doubles. The other 3 that come external in its fixed slots of its omni pods are 1.5ers. A summoner with 14 engine mounted heatsinks has 10 true doubles and 4 that are 1.5ers.

[Edward Hazen]

Dee Eight, on 27 January 2017 - 10:28 PM, said:

Only the core heatsinks contained automatically inside an engine can be true doubles. All heatsinks external to the engine and beyond the first ten inside the engine are only doubles in name. In effect they're One Point Five heatsinks. A kit fox with 7 heat sinks inside its engine only has 7 true doubles. The other 3 that come external in its fixed slots of its omni pods are 1.5ers. A summoner with 14 engine mounted heatsinks has 10 true doubles and 4 that are 1.5ers.

Yes, this is how it works with MWO math where double (2x) = 1.5x, I guess they round up, or does double have a different meaning in Canada?

Edited by S0ulReapr, 27 January 2017 - 10:44 PM.

[Knighthawk26]

Money Grab? Nah. None of the new mechs since the Kodiak has been OP. So buying a new mechpack is very unlikely to get you an advantage on the battlefield. The mechs that were nerfed have been around a while, and most of the latest new releases have landed in tier 3 or at best tier 2. PGI's "balancing act" keeps more variety and more challenge in the game. If one mech becomes really op, then everyone gets that mech and quick play becomes two teams full of only one mech type battling it out. Boring.

[Edward Hazen]

Knighthawk26, on 28 January 2017 - 12:18 AM, said:

Money Grab? Nah. None of the new mechs since the Kodiak has been OP. So buying a new mechpack is very unlikely to get you an advantage on the battlefield. The mechs that were nerfed have been around a while, and most of the latest new releases have landed in tier 3 or at best tier 2. PGI's "balancing act" keeps more variety and more challenge in the game. If one mech becomes really op, then everyone gets that mech and quick play becomes two teams full of only one mech type battling it out. Boring.

Actually, the Kodiak is a huge walking CT and is only dangerous if you stay in one place. The only mechs that are truly OP are the lights that have been buffed to ridiculous levels just so people will play lights.

[Zergling]

S0ulReapr, on 28 January 2017 - 01:44 AM, said:

Actually, the Kodiak is a huge walking CT and is only dangerous if you stay in one place. The only mechs that are truly OP are the lights that have been buffed to ridiculous levels just so people will play lights.

lol, just lol

[Edward Hazen]

Zergling, on 28 January 2017 - 01:56 AM, said:

lol, just lol

Maybe in high tier games where Kodiaks are able to be supported by the rest of the team so they live long enough to do damage are they actually dangerous.

[Zergling]

S0ulReapr, on 28 January 2017 - 01:58 AM, said:

Maybe in high tier games where Kodiaks are able to be supported by the rest of the team so they live long enough to do damage are they actually dangerous.

More like when they are driven by people that are at least average or above average. Any mech will do terrible when driven by a potato, so don't judge them from how they perform when driven by potatoes.

As for lights, just no. Lights have been underpowered since the rescale.

[Edward Hazen]

Zergling, on 28 January 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

More like when they are driven by people that are at least average or above average. Any mech will do terrible when driven by a potato, so don't judge them from how they perform when driven by potatoes.

As for lights, just no. Lights have been underpowered since the rescale.

Yes, I am aware that pilot skill makes a difference regardless of which mech is being piloted (it did in TT too). In my opinion, lights are far more durable than they should be, especially with the messed up hit detection that this game sometimes has, but lights seem to be fine as far as firepower is concerned (Oxide, Jenner IIC, Arctic Cheetah...).

[Zergling]

S0ulReapr, on 28 January 2017 - 01:38 PM, said:

Yes, I am aware that pilot skill makes a difference regardless of which mech is being piloted (it did in TT too). In my opinion, lights are far more durable than they should be, especially with the messed up hit detection that this game sometimes has, but lights seem to be fine as far as firepower is concerned (Oxide, Jenner IIC, Arctic Cheetah...).

Lights took a massive nerf to durability with the rescale, with the Firestarter, Panther and Wolfhound being practically killed off. Others like Mist Lynx, Commando, Urbanmech, Kit Fox and Adder have always been trash.

As for Oxide, Jenner IIC and Arctic Cheetah, you just named the three of the four viable lights in the current meta (the other being Locust).
And even those lights still can't pull off scores anything like what mediums, heavies or assaults can do.

A good player certainly can score good in a light mech, but they will definitely score even better in a heavier mech.

[MovinTarget]

Zergling, on 28 January 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

Lights took a massive nerf to durability with the rescale, with the Firestarter, Panther and Wolfhound being practically killed off. Others like Mist Lynx, Commando, Urbanmech, Kit Fox and Adder have always been trash.

As for Oxide, Jenner IIC and Arctic Cheetah, you just named the three of the four viable lights in the current meta (the other being Locust).
And even those lights still can't pull off scores anything like what mediums, heavies or assaults can do.

A good player certainly can score good in a light mech, but they will definitely score even better in a heavier mech.

On paper, yes... just don't discount the light experts... as far as i am concerned they are some of the best dang pilots b/c of what they can do...

[Edward Hazen]

Zergling, on 28 January 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

And even those lights still can't pull off scores anything like what mediums, heavies or assaults can do.

That is a problem with having a scoring system that gives the greatest rewards for high raw damage. Light Mechs are not intended to do huge amounts of damage, they are intended to be scouts, spotters and opportunistic killers. Really MWO needs to tailor the rewards to the "role" of the mech. Light mechs should get greater rewards for spotting assists, tagging and narc'ing and kill assists, instead of being constantly buffed to make them better brawlers.

MovinTarget, on 28 January 2017 - 05:35 PM, said:

On paper, yes... just don't discount the light experts... as far as i am concerned they are some of the best dang pilots b/c of what they can do...

Maybe the light Mech pilots who did well in closed beta when light mechs had no quirks and there were knockdowns and actual collision damage.

Edited by S0ulReapr, 28 January 2017 - 09:33 PM.

[Zergling]

S0ulReapr, on 28 January 2017 - 09:34 PM, said:

That is a problem with having a scoring system that gives the greatest rewards for high raw damage. Light Mechs are not intended to do huge amounts of damage, they are intended to be scouts, spotters and opportunistic killers. Really MWO needs to tailor the rewards to the "role" of the mech. Light mechs should get greater rewards for spotting assists, tagging and narc'ing and kill assists, instead of being constantly buffed to make them better brawlers.

Lights don't just do badly in damage and score, but in winning battles.

See these QP leaderboard stats. While there are a couple exceptions, almost all the time lights are the worst in W/L.

MovinTarget, on 28 January 2017 - 05:35 PM, said:

On paper, yes... just don't discount the light experts... as far as i am concerned they are some of the best dang pilots b/c of what they can do...

There are also medium/heavy/assault experts. The majority of players (who don't have specific weight class expertise), perform worse in light mechs, as shown by leaderboard statistics.

Edited by Zergling, 29 January 2017 - 10:17 AM.