23 replies to this topic

[Greyhart]

Well heat is becoming a hot topic again (see what I did there; did you see?)

Suggestions have arisen in relation to energy drain again.

rather than outline what I think might help I rather want to identify the problems we want to address.

so as far as i can see we want to address the following:

1. high damage concentrated on one spot.
2. Boating of a single type of weapon
3. High damage output in a short period.
4. High damage/ heat Alphaing and running.

I get these by what people want to promote; mixed builds, less alpha warriors, PPFLD or PPD.

what issues do you think we should be addressing?

[P10k56]

Clan tactics at its best.

[El Bandito]

Currently PPFLD is indeed an issue, especially after the engine decoupling, and there are many solutions for it.

For example: Just limit Gauss alpha to ONE, as it is the chief culprit right now. Other Gauss must fire 0.5 second later. Reduce Gauss cooldown to compensate.
PPCs are heavily limited by heat so they are currently fine with GH of two max. Should HPPC or CERPPC still prove problematic then limit their GH to one max, and give a very small GH penalty to two max. That way any single CERPPC/HPPC build will not be affected.

Edited by El Bandito, 04 July 2017 - 07:03 AM.

[P10k56]

Most problems are with lazors and mech with gazilion lazor point.
So in most cases Clan mechs as always.

[Greyhart]

are you all not just identifying the effects of the problems.

Would you not have the same problem with 12 machine guns? if not why not.

What problems are there to fix?

[Major Tomm]

MWO's mechs are too weak. It's not the weapons, although they recycle faster than BattleTech specs suggest. I'd say make the mechs 30-40% tougher and players would have more time to learn from mistakes. Feel better about their skill progress.

[Vincent DIFrancesco]

Major Tomm, on 03 July 2017 - 06:17 AM, said:

MWO's mechs are too weak. It's not the weapons, although they recycle faster than BattleTech specs suggest. I'd say make the mechs 30-40% tougher and players would have more time to learn from mistakes. Feel better about their skill progress.

Um, you do know that MWO mechs are already roughly double the armor and structure of their TT counterparts, while the weapons are still doing TT damage, right? Sheesh, how much tougher do you need them to be?

[Kyrie]

This topic gives me deja vu, all over again. And again. And again. And again...

[MustrumRidcully]

Vincent DIFrancesco, on 03 July 2017 - 06:23 AM, said:

Um, you do know that MWO mechs are already roughly double the armor and structure of their TT counterparts, while the weapons are still doing TT damage, right? Sheesh, how much tougher do you need them to be?

Actually, very few weapons deal TT damage, since TT damage is the value they deal over 10 seconds. We deal this damage over about 4 seconds (sometimes less, very rarely more).

And called shots in TT are difficult to perform, so we have a much higher precision. Imagine firing 8 lasers and no more than 2 hitting the same location. Or firing 2 Gauss Rifles and hitting the left leg and the right torso.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 03 July 2017 - 06:48 AM.

[Greyhart]

Kyrie, on 03 July 2017 - 06:24 AM, said:

This topic gives me deja vu, all over again. And again. And again. And again...

yea isn't it fun!

I ask the question what problems is it that people want to solve and they all come up with solutions but don't identify the problems. Human nature is interesting isn't it

[kapusta11]

Greyhart, on 03 July 2017 - 05:12 AM, said:

so as far as i can see we want to address the following:

Who are those "we" you're talking about?

[Nesutizale]

To me the problems are:

High pressision
In TT you hardly hit something, in MWO its much easier

Pinpoint accuracy
In TT langing two shots in the same location is rare, in MWO we just need to fire the weapons at the same time and they all hit the same location.

Weapons fire faster
In TT the duration of a turn was 30sec IIRC. MWO seams to go the route of Solaris rules so each round is just ~10sec.

Heatscale missing
TT has a heatscale that reduces your effectiveness the hotter you get, MWO only has an on / off mechanic
While they cut the duration of a "turn" to 10sec, as with Solaris rules, they also increased the heatscales capacity.
Also heatsinks seam to work faster.
Original Solaris rules where 4times the heat per weapon but the HS stayed the same.
Overall Heat in the TT forced people to fire far less weapons then we do in MWO.

Finaly it boils down to we are hitting to often with pinpoint accuracy while we don't get early penaltys for building up heat.

Edited by Nesutizale, 03 July 2017 - 07:01 AM.

[Kyrie]

The entire approach that was taken, to transform the TT into a more action-oriented FPS is the root of all evil here. There are opposing camps that cannot be reconciled together: the ones who want a slow paced, 10 second turn emphasizing strategy and thought, vs the fps-sports crowd... oil and water, they will not come together.

[Nesutizale]

I think you can pretty much keep the things as they are, except for the heatscale.
Let people keep their pinpoint accuracy and such but add penelties for going to high in heat.

Currently everyone is riding the red line and why not? There isn't anything bad about beeing at 90% heat all the time.

If beeing at 90% heat would mean that you constantly had to hit the overwrite button and that your mechs slows down, lets say to 50% its speed while your weapons do less damage...well thats a point where you have to decide. Do I want to keep my heat that high or will I fire less weapons.

Only problem I see is that the Gauss needs a fix. The only thing in TT that keept it from becomeing to powerfull was that it was hard to hit anything.
We don't have that here so building up more heat with the Gauss could help.

Increasing the heat of the Gauss to 4 would remove the "heatneutrality" of some if not all Gauss-PPC builds.
Still the Gauss would be a good long range weapon.

Edited by Nesutizale, 03 July 2017 - 07:29 AM.

[TheMisled]

I certainly have noticed that on many occasions my mechs feel like they're using cardboard for armour, even when torso twisting and the problem is the pinpoint precision of large damage alphas. I was running my thunderbolt the other day and had my CT armour reduced from full to red armour in a single blast by a 12 or 13 laser nova who just peeked his head over the hill...

I think the time has come for either a large boost to mech durability (not my most favoured option but we're left with little other choice) or a hard limit the prevents you dealing to much damage, sort of like what the energy draw thing is going to do but instead of just heat, maybe have it so that lasers don't deal as much damage, ranges on guns decreases, convergence goes balls up and heat of course when too much damage is being outputted. It could be done by assigning all weapons an energy value and the engine on you mech determines how much energy you have available. when this limit is approached or overtaken, the above affects come into play.

[Y E O N N E]

If individual TTK goes up, more emphasis gets placed on group fire and raw DPS. The effort of the individual is diminished and 'Mechs and 'Mechs can tank too much damage and always close the gap.

Brawling is fun, but I'm not interested in a game becoming all brawl all the time just as I'm not interested in the game being all snipe all the time.

[Nesutizale]

To archive that you would need to lower accuracy for snipers while haveing a meaningfull heatscale for brawlers.

Snipers couldn't hit you from the other side of the map with their full damage while brawlers would have to keep in mind their heatlevels.

For snipers we have damage falloff, for brawlers we need the heatscale.

[RaptorRage]

Nesutizale, on 03 July 2017 - 07:00 AM, said:

In TT the duration of a turn was 30sec IIRC. MWO seams to go the route of Solaris rules so each round is just ~10sec.

Solaris rules quartered the turn durations and the hex sizes from 10 seconds and 30 meters to 2.5 seconds and 7.5 meters. As far as the issue of ghost heat and the things mentioned in the first post, ghost heat could be removed completely and the weapons balanced on the normal heat and cooldown values to get similar results for the most part. High damage concentrated in one spot would have to be addressed by removing pixel perfect convergence so the weapons hit different locations when fired, whether that be a random cone or spread of fire or just having the weapons fire boresighted from their hardpoint locations.

Boating of a single type of weapon can be addressed by a hardpoint size limitation similar to MW4 assigning weapons to a given class size rather than crits, or something more straightfarward would be just having an enforced limit imposed on every weapon that brings up an invalid loadout flag in the Mechlab, though that would be its own balance issue as who is to say how many of any particular weapon is too many? Not to mention stock loadouts for certain Mechs affected like the Black Hawk and Supernova with 12 ER Medium and 6 ER Large Lasers respectively.

High damage in a short period can be addressed just through normal damage and cooldown values, nothing fancy there. High damage/heat alphaing and running would presumably be a result of the previously stated boating and convergence issues, so would be covered with those addressed, but again more or less covered by just working with normal damage and heat values.

Edited by RaptorRage, 03 July 2017 - 07:58 AM.

[Nesutizale]

ok mixed meter and seconds values...just remembered quarter of something

[Obadiah333]

I don't want to discourage you guys, but I do want you to be aware that this will never be fixed with a heat scale. It is a frivolous waste of time. Let me explain.

I've been playing this game since May of 2012, closed beta. There have been countless threads about heat and adding a "TT like" heat scale with progressively worse modifiers. There have been charts and graphs and bullet lists and tons of great ideas about how to implement a penalty system with getting too hot. PGI hasn't even hinted at even acknowledging a system like that. The ONLY thing they did was lower the heat threshold to shut down. That's it. That is all they are ever going to do. They will never implement a heal scale system with penalties into this game.

I know, I know. It would be great! It would be awesome! It would make a ton of sense and help reel in some of the ridiculous boating and alpha meta that's happening. Well, here's the deal. Any suggestion that even remotely makes sense is automatically abolished by PGI. I won't subject you to the forum war that was incited over ECM when it came out, but I"ll use that as the example - there were so many great suggestions on how to fix ECM it was unfathomable. Yet, PGI stubbornly refused and refuted every single one and did their own thing. They are doing the same with the heat scale.

Please, don't feel like you can't post your suggestions. I just wouldn't expect much in the way of them even being answered or even looked at by PGI. You have a better chance of winning the lottery.