67 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

Snowbluff, on 04 July 2017 - 10:34 PM, said:

Well except ED didn't determine draw by damage alone (IIRC spread weapons had there value reduced, this would be trivially easy to alter), and I fail to see in any way how not giving people the option to eat the heat makes the system better.

Of course FCF is better. FCF shuts down big alphas such as 8xCMPLs without anyway to work around it. Not to mention it can neatly address the low heat Gauss issue--something GH had failed to address for years. Far easier to restrict the alphas rather than wasting time fiddling with GH values.

TTK will benefit, without any loopholes to go around it.

Edited by El Bandito, 04 July 2017 - 10:54 PM.

[Greyhart]

Ok random thought here.

If each weapon drew a set amount of energy during cooldown (power back up / reload) and your reactor produced a set amount of energy.

So say it produced 10 energy.

A ML uses 2 energy to power back up (cooldown)

If you fired 6 ML 5 would recharge and the 6th wouldn't recharge until after the first 5.

add into the weapon panel a button to take the weapon offline to allow for each one to be managed.

So a gauss rifle might take 10 energy to recharge. nothing else recharges until the gauss is fully recharged.

Could be interesting.

But I think the solution is in adjoining armour taking some of the damage not just one component.

Edited by Greyhart, 05 July 2017 - 04:08 AM.

[Twinkleblade]

As interesting as it is to see this thread go down on a full ED discussion, people are outright ignoring the missile and ballisitc ideas I had in combination with ED. I am speechless. How many jimmies were rustled when ED PTS happened?

[Reno Blade]

The issue with GH and linking weapons is the way it works.
Reaching the lowest number of each linked weapon will trigger the ghost heat for the highest used weapon.

e.g.
Linking LRM 10s and LRM20s currently for max of 2 launchers would mean you get GH by the biggest weapons heat value no matter the combination after 3 launcher combinations.
2x LRM10 + 1x LRM20 gets same penalty as 2x LRM20 +1x LRM10. Only 3x LRM10 get LRM10 heat level penalty.

So if PGI would decide to link 2x LP and 6x ML, you would get a penalty already using 3 lasers of the combination.
1x LP and 2x ML would generate same GH as 3x LP.

So... if PGI can't fix GH and we just want to link weapons, here is how we could go:

Link all lasers together in one group with max of 3 before penalty.
-> You can use 3 lasers of different sizes together
-> Would not affect the existing 6 ERLL boats (they use 2x 3 Laser groups) but reduce alpha size of Laser vomit (combination of 3x Large + 3/6x Medium)
-> Even a 6x ML Jenner / 6x SPL Cheetah would need to split the weapon groups in 3/3 to avoid heat penalties
---> maybe SL/ML can be further improved by lowering heat

Link PPCs and Gauss/ACs (5, 10 and 20s) together with max of 2 before penalty.
-> You can use 2x PPC or 2x Gauss together, but any 2x +1x or higher would have the PPC heat penalty for 3+ PPCs.
-> You can use PPC+ AC10/20, but any 2x + 1x or higher would have the heat penalty for 3+ PPCs
-> You can use 2x AC20s together without penalty (this might be a problem)
-> You can use 2x AC10/5s, but any 2x + 1x or higher would have the heat of the highest AC for 3+

Otherwise, if you are interested in a easy Cooldown penalty system for each weapon class, check the balancing suggestion post in my sig.

[Valhallan]

Honestly except for gauss its pretty easy to fix ridiculous alphas without ghost heat and without ED, since we don't follow the TT heat table effects there is 0 reason to also use the heat values as is. So, since we only have 1 effect, reduce base heatcap to the first available effect, In tt that's at 9 heat, so reduce base heatcap to 9, this means a "valid" chasis has at worst base 21 heatcap (9+12 from SHS) instead of the current 42, you want higher heatcap? stuff in more heatsinks, hexappc stalker? instaboom cuz u go overlimit, the more sane 4xppc stalker? 10 engine DHS, 10 outengine (9+20+15), 4x9.5, 86% heat in one shot, no erppc for those cuz that's insta pain. Even a Dwf/mad2c stuffed to the gills with DHS can only barely afford to fire 4-erppcs, it could afford to fire 6-erll alpha and almost overheat, if those sound too much? then nerf the DHS heat capacity back down to 1, heck that might even give SHS a new lease on life as the go to sink for Alphaing (for IS anyway).

[Magnus Santini]

This is how my team gets rid of ghost heat:

[El Bandito]

slide, on 04 July 2017 - 09:33 PM, said:

This game doesn't need ghost heat or energy draw or any other contrived idea to reduce the PPFLD alpha meta that favors winning.

The solution has been in table top since the beginning. Put in a proper heat scale that brings in penalties for running your mech hot. Slows your speed, make the reticule wobble, makes ammo explode, makes it harder to twist, limits jump jets etc.

Doesn't work on dual Gauss. Which is why instead of Ghost Heat, there should be Forced Chainfire, under the ED system.

Edited by El Bandito, 05 July 2017 - 09:31 PM.

[Greyhart]

El Bandito, on 05 July 2017 - 09:29 PM, said:

Doesn't work on dual Gauss. Which is why instead of Ghost Heat, there should be Forced Chainfire, under the ED system.

It could work with gauss you'd just have to increase gauss's cooldown time and get rid of pin point accuracy when firing more than one weapon (or simulate it by having the damage spread)

[El Bandito]

Greyhart, on 06 July 2017 - 12:46 AM, said:

It could work with gauss you'd just have to increase gauss's cooldown time and get rid of pin point accuracy when firing more than one weapon (or simulate it by having the damage spread)

Those could work as well. The cooldown penalty must be real harsh to deter liberal use of dual Gauss, though. Something like 15 seconds.

Edited by El Bandito, 06 July 2017 - 12:57 AM.

[Greyhart]

El Bandito, on 06 July 2017 - 12:56 AM, said:

Those could work as well. The cooldown penalty must be real harsh to deter liberal use of dual Gauss, though. Something like 15 seconds.

I am drawn the conclusion that people are looking at the damage problem from the wrong end.

The problem isn't that a mech can put out a high alpha. the problem is the damage is applied to one section.

Now you could change this with cone of fire etc, but those have been ruled out due to technical issues. If you can't change where the weapons hit then you need to change how the damage is applied.

Lets (for this) change the way we think of armour. rather than one big lump but into sheets or layers.

Now if you were to armour a mech you would put an additional sheet onto the CT. But you would also integrate those with the sheets in the side torso, head and legs. I mean we all know this is how armour works in real life. Body armour spreads the energy from the bullet over a wider area, when a car crashes the energy is directed around the occupants not through them.

So the game idea that hitting the CT and the CT takes all the damage is not based in the real world, it's based on making a TT game easier. the game I think calls armour ablative i.e. it falls off or is vapourised.

Now if a layer of armour had a set hit point limit, lets say 60. If the damage on that sheet reaches 60 then it will fall off / vapourise. Now for gameplay purposes you can say that the sheet will disappear after 1 second once it hits 60 damage.

If further damage is applied within that 1 second timeframe it is not applied to the CT or target area but is distributed to the surrounding armour sheets.

So you and your team mates can do 100 points of damage to the CT in 0.5 secs but only 60 pts are counted to the CT and the remaining 40 points spread to the ST, head and legs.

The attacker doesn't lose the damage but that damage is less effective. therefore encouraging more controlled fire rather than vomiting everything at the enemy in one go.

The defender is given time to react and more of the armour is used.

A 1v1 fight is not effected because the ability to focus all the damage is not changed. So no change to TTK in 1v1.

What this system does is increase time to kill if focused by a single stupidly high alpha (like 6 PPCs) or by a group.

The system doesn't need to calculate all the trajectories as they don't change from the current system it just adds a calculation (which I think already exists for lost arms and PPCs to the application of that damage).

Edited by Greyhart, 06 July 2017 - 01:25 AM.

[Shifty McSwift]

Magnus Santini, on 05 July 2017 - 09:28 PM, said:

This is how my team gets rid of ghost heat:

I like Tangina's explanation of ghost heat;


"Strong enough to punch a hole in this world and take your daughter away from you"

Yup, that's ghost heat.

[slide]

El Bandito, on 05 July 2017 - 09:29 PM, said:

Doesn't work on dual Gauss. Which is why instead of Ghost Heat, there should be Forced Chainfire, under the ED system.

Agreed, the GR has been an outlier in every mechwarrior game to date. It's heat/weight/damage ratio is just to high in comparison to other weapons. It really needs a cone of fire (RNjesus) to accurately simulate what happens in TT.

As others have said since your post, the Damage/Armor interpretation it this game is all wrong. Greyharts idea above would work but a simpler version would be to simply pool all hit points on a mech and then have damage translate to underlying component's once the armor is used up, to disable the mech. The problem with that though is it would make armor act more like a shield from star trek.

I have posted about this before, but TT uses a distributed damage/distributed armor model. This works because even in an alpha strike, the damage is spread all over the mech. This is why high caliber weapons like the AC20 in TT were considered to be so dangerous, as opposed to 4 ML which have the same damage potential but will spread it all over the place. Basically it makes mechs seem a hell of a lot tougher than they really are and why lucky critical hits could be so important to the out come of a match.

MWO primarily uses a concentrated damage/distributed armor model which is why it plays so differently. It encourages the boating of weapons to effectively make pin point super weapons that can core out the CT on most mechs in 1 or 2 shots whilst simultaneously rendering half the weapons in the the game useless. Some of the weapons in MWO actually work like they should in TT. LBX , SRM, LRM and to a lesser degree ClanAC and lasers in general spread their damage around or over time, which is why twisting can be effective against lasers. The only reason some of these weapons, like srms work at all is because on some mechs they can be boated sufficiently to over come their spread. A single SRM6 is largely useless in MWO but would be considered a bonus in TT. This is also why most of the new weapons coming shortly are going to be largely useless too.

In TT any damage would be considered good damage, here in MWO any damage that isn't directed where aimed is considered wasted. Forced chain fire would increase TTK, no doubt, but it would also push people into running builds that can run big weapons whilst simultaneously rendering whole classes of mechs which can't mount big weapons useless. Lights and mediums which primarily rely on boating lots of small weapons, like the Nova or Firestarter just won't work anymore. They would be forced to run with PPC or LPL or maybe a GR and probably become poptarts.

PGI doubled or more the fire rate of most weapons in the game from TT values, they allow us to create pin point super weapons with no real heat penalty for running hot. I would say some weapons or combinations of weapons are at least 4-6 times more potent than in TT. As compensation they doubled armor and gave a few mechs increased structure. It is not enough to convey the feeling of a mech being a big bad king of the battlefield.

Proper heat scale and a cone of fire would allow the game to be played the way it is now and would solve a great deal of the issues with MWO, particularly if the CoF expands when running, jumping and over heating. Forced chain fire, whilst it wouldn't bother me, would require too much of a change from the player base (and hence too much resistance) for it to ever be considered seriously.

[Necro Ash]

El Bandito, on 04 July 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

PGI's energy draw was a glorified Ghost Heat MKII. I want the penalty to be switched to Forced Chainfire, so there will be no ways to get around it, especially with Gauss. Adjust power draw value not by damage alone, but by overall attributes of the weapon.

Such a solution will be relatively simple to implement--simple even for PGI.

Removing sync fire, allowing Chainfire only would change the game quite a bit.

Macros would be on the rise though, would be interesting to see in PTS 8v8 matches to allow for firing lines to occur and better see what time to kill becomes

Has it ever occurred to anyone else that the RNG from Tabletop already is in MWO ?

That TT RNG is reflected in game by the rolling of armor or jump / drop to evade. Once I wrapped my head around that, the shooting system made more sense to me.

[Insanity09]

Ok, I get that people don't like ghost heat. I agree that it is a bit of a kludge method, with several inherent problems.

However, I also see that it was an effort by PGI to improve (read: increase) TTK by limiting, or at least punishing massive weapon boating alphas. A worthy cause.

(puts on fire retardant suit)

I was not around for the ED fiasco (or so it seems to have been), but I gather it was an effort to do the same thing in a slightly different way. Instead of punishing boaters with extra heat, you simply don't allow massive alphas by inserting a system where each weapon requires a certain amount of power, and a mech, with a given power plant (engine), can only supply so much at a time, thus limiting the number of weapons that could be used (fired) simultaneously. People would need to use multiple weapon groups, and possibly just not be able to alpha with every single weapon they are carrying.


That was the basic idea, yes?

So, if I've got the essence of the method correct, I would be happy if somebody with direct knowledge of why and how the ED system was DoA could enlighten me. I am curious, but minimal invective would be preferred.

I can see a number of ways to implement such a system that would be easily understood and sensible and, yes, limit alpha style damage. I could also see a way that a few extra pieces of gear could be used (capacitors) to boost short term firing capabilities (allowing an alpha from time to time). In fact, weren't there PPC capacitors actually in the game? (BTech, not MWO).

Edited by Insanity09, 06 July 2017 - 08:43 PM.

[Shifty McSwift]

I wasn't here for the energy draw test, so I am unsure.

Someone mentioned in another post, or perhaps it was this one, the idea of gyros, while firing ballistics an missiles your gyros go berserk once you pass a threshold, which could be interesting. But to go further with that idea, have a power pool for energy weapons that drains whenever an evergy weapon is fired and restores itself over time, the idea being that it forcefully limits alpha firing.

But really, this is just another ghost heat system under a different name or style. At the end of the day the ghost heat numbers may be off, but it stops people doing certain things dead in their tracks.

[Morderian]

Did not see energy draw too as i did take a break but after all i read about it i can see why it failed.

Instead of energy draw it was a complex ghostheat thing while they could have done it easier understand and simple to use, for example:

Every mech has 100 points of energy and they regenerate all 0,5 seconds.

Every weapon draws from the energy when fired if you dont have enough you cant fire the weapon.

Examples for the energy cost of the guns:

Gauss 60
Med Laser 20
Med Pulse 25
PPC 33 (assuming we cant quirk the awesome)
ER PPC 40
LL 30
etc.

advantages:
- you can cut down alphas and PPFLD to a large decree and can kick out GH too
- rather easy to understand for a newbie
- enough value place for balance without a need to go into 0,X values
- no need to go into any kind of minus energy values

funnily that is stuff that was discussed years ago already

Edited by Morderian, 07 July 2017 - 12:35 AM.

[Greyhart]

And we are back to the core problems:

1. Pin point Damage to a single component

2. a none functioning heat system

those are the problems that need to be solved.

[hiddengecko]

El Bandito, on 04 July 2017 - 06:37 PM, said:

From the earliest TT inception Battletech was PaperCutWarrior. Pinpoint accuracy was basically non existent and mechs could fire their weapons every 10 seconds. My Power Draw Forced Chainfire idea was based on a Battletech novel. I want to combine both immersion and game play. Current instant convergence PPFLD is being detrimental to gameplay. More so, once MCII arrives--which I own the pack of. Gauss is completely immune to GH penalty so something else must be done.

I don't care. You shouldn't care.

The tabletop is a reputedly poorly-balanced mess from the 90s designed for play with pen, paper and dice and does not translate to real-time gameplay with people who can actually aim. The franchise is notable for its lore and art design, not gameplay, but even if it were they're incomparable game types, and that's okay. What action RPG would be fun with RAW tabletop rules? Don't be absurd. Are there many tabletop games where the strategies and builds set forward by the content creators aren't patently impractical and absurd?

High TTK is boring and turns combat into a tedious slog. It doesn't matter what PGI does: The meta will evolve to find a way to swiftly dispatch opponents, or people will stop playing. I fail to understand why successful strategies are viewed as a problem. There will always, always be optimal strategies and suboptimal strategies. It's inevitable, and it's how it should be besides - the whole point of optimizing builds and adapting them is to make them superior.

People boat because it works. People PPFLD because it works. This doesn't mean these strategies are a problem - it means they are optimal. Stop complaining and adopt the meta; a meta will always exist. All balance passes and mechanics alterations can do is shuffle the deck and force everyone to waste time and currency to adopt whatever new strategy becomes optimal.

I've been playing since beta and not a single balance pass has been in any way beneficial to the experience. I don't want to cram a hodgepodge mix of dissimilar weapons that no way compliment each other into a haphazardly designed mech with no meaningful strengths and continually be forced to update my arsenal and trash machines that I built and tuned and optimized and practiced because a vocal minority of forum complainers continually get every functional strategy nerfed. I want it all back from you bawling children. The good ECM, the murderous LRMs that I hated then and hate now, the brutal ballistic weapons that tore you apart in seconds, the laser boats that cut you in half like a lightsaber, those obnoxious little CSPL Arctic Cheetahs, the perverse thrill of playing an ECM RVN-3L back when they could brawl, or running into one of those unstoppable Chainsaw Cataphracts back when those were a thing. I want to able to core someone in seconds, but be constantly afraid of my opponents' brilliant arsenal - not walk around in circles spamming a sample pack of ineffectual weapons into each other for the actual minutes it takes to drop someone.

Ghost heat is bad and the game was better without it. Power draw is a bad idea and you should feel bad for championing it. I want to play a videogame that is actually fun, as does what I imagine is the majority of the players who are playing the game and not suggesting ideas to game designers on a public forum. Kindly stop lobbying to take away our toys, please and thank you, and let us play with our minmaxed death machines instead of having to constantly waste tons of time grinding everything together for a brand new set of minmaxed death machines every time a new set of nerfs rolls through and renders them completely ineffectual.

[El Bandito]

hiddengecko, on 07 July 2017 - 01:17 AM, said:

Bunch of stuff

And that's your opinion. And opinion I can understand, but heavily disagree with. Closed Beta was only fun because it was new and shiny. Then in 2013 we had out first mass exodus because of huge poptarting issue. Your idea of "fun" was heavily detrimental to many others' enjoyment of the game, and they left, as the result.

[Baba Yogi]

Any of these solutions seems too complicated thus would not be selected. It needs to be simple, easy to understand, and effective. Energy Draw system had all of that but it was wrong in 1 simple aspect. It tried to pass the extra heat as a penalty for exceeding the treshold which is silly.

Imo what Energy Draw should have done is that if you try to use more than your maximum energy capacity you shut down without firing as a catastrophic failure; as it would in real life. This is both realistic and effective, and there is no way around it. Best benefit of it is that you dont need to be mindful of it in the game, its just something you have to think about when you create your mech. Just sort your weapon groups so one group dont use more than your max capacity, or you have to chainfire them. Ofc mechlab UI has to be very obvious about warnings if you pass the treshold.