259 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

davoodoo, on 21 October 2017 - 12:31 PM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...608303d5fade46e
2 heat per turn

I find it rather interesting.
8 minutes you say??

even assuming minimal of 10 engine dhs or 2 heat/s

so to bring it from nothing to 8 minutes shutdown it would require you to fire 480+14=494 heat or 33 erppcs, not that it would result in meltdown.

I know this conversation is ancient but do note PGI ghost heat multiplies the heat generated.

Fire 11 er ppcs and you get (with current values) 1,086.89 heat.

So my estimation of 8 minutes is extremely generous and understated about an mwo build.

[-Spectre]

First, did you write all those lore explanations yourself? If so, I am impressed. I really like your system, and the explanations make sense. I particularly like the increase in shell count for all autocannons, as it brings it more in line with lore specifications for autocannons.


That said, I do have a few suggestions to improve on this system:


I would add the ability to shoot the C-Gauss at any point during the charge, with damage scaled accordingly, similar to the bombast laser. Maybe give it Light Gauss damage with no extra charge (given the tonnages), and full damage with full charge, with the damage increase frontloaded, to correspond to the charging characteristics of capacitors (see graph in the link below). C-Gauss would automatically fire at full charge (think Spartan Laser), to dissipate energy from the capacitors without damaging them.
http://www.learninga...rging-graph.png

At first, I thought the Clan and IS ERMLs were improperly balanced (Clan ERML is indisputably better than IS ERML), but after giving it thought, I agree with your values. IS should have inferior ER technology, because they are new to that, so their focus should be on the non-ER lasers. If they want to try to mimic the Clans’ strengths, they won’t do it as well.

I really like that PPCs have a charge time, as that does line up with lore behavior.

I think the best way to balance heat sinks is to buff IS single heat sinks a bit. With Clan double heat sink technology as good as it was, they saw no need to invest time into improving the single heat sink, while the Inner Sphere had only the single heat sink for a long time, resulting in a more efficient (say, maybe 25% as a starting value) single heat sink for the Inner Sphere, as compared to the Clans. Double heat sinks are equally efficient, but IS DHS are bulkier, due to the fact that it is a new, unrefined technology for the Inner Sphere. Set all DHS values to be 2 dissipation after fully skilled (i.e. proper maintenance to maintain full functionality).


Final comment, on the energy draw system. I would make the Gauss and PPC affect the energy draw where they would actually be drawing the energy. The PPC would draw energy while it is charging up to fire, and the Gauss would draw energy as it recharges its capacitors. The Clan gauss would draw energy as it charges up to fire and as it recharges its capacitors.


Overall, I really, really like your balance changes, and I would LOVE to see them in a public test server, hopefully getting rolled into the game eventually. My only fear is that PGI would destroy this system, too, with endless tweaks to eliminate the distinction between IS and Clan.

[Nightbird]

I tried to keep suggestions to what is easy for PGI to implement. For example I don't know if dynamic damage based on charge up is possible, but if it is then I think your suggestion is balanced: auto firing when charged means losing the ability to precharge.around corners as you waste ammo and cooldown if no one is there.

I don't use single heatsinks much, so on paper maybe DHS has 50% more dissipation, and SHS 50% more heat capacity.

I did make up the tech axplanations, but I'm no rocket scientist. If anyone is, cough Gas cough, they're welcome to improve them

[Nightbird]

The energy draw system you describe makes sense, it's one I would prefer, the reason I suggested what I did is to make it easy to explain and limits alphas easily.

For example fire 32 dmg lasers + .5s later 30dmg gauss. A 2HLL+4ERML+2Gauss alpha would be split into 3 groups.

[Nightbird]

I see a lot of PTS comments on 5.25 damage C-ERML on PTS sucking. What really sucks are IS and Clan large lasers. Take 4 or 5 tons of medium lasers and you have 2-3 times the power of 1 large laser. Ridiculous.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MischiefSC, on 12 July 2018 - 01:48 PM, said:

I don't consider myself enough of an expert to make a qualified statement. I would say anything over 1.4 starts to feel crappy. I would point you more toward Yeonne or Quicksilver (if he still posted). 2 seconds is... yeah, it's not that the concept is bad - it just comes back to 'fun to play'.

1.5 is probably the line with how PGI does things. Really though it all comes down to the cost of that long beam. If I can spam lightsabers and deal good enough damage with a 2s beam then I don't really care, but that's rarely the case.

That said, this just makes me wish this game allowed you to do controlled beams (lasers are hold the trigger to fire, and the duration is just the maximum you can fire them in one go).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 18 July 2018 - 01:53 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 18 July 2018 - 01:53 PM, said:

1.5 is probably the line with how PGI does things. Really though it all comes down to the cost of that long beam. If I can spam lightsabers and deal good enough damage with a 2s beam then I don't really care, but that's rarely the case.

That said, this just makes me wish this game allowed you to do controlled beams (lasers are hold the trigger to fire, and the duration is just the maximum you can fire them in one go).

I was thinking about that before. There was an anime from years ago where the hero had a laser with x seconds of burn per battery pack. I liked the concept.

I was thinking that instead of doing pulse lasers like MGs pulse lasers would work like they do now and lasers would have a mechanic similar to the RAC jam bar. They have X seconds of beam in their capacitor. It burns until you let go of the trigger or until its expended. If you let it expand completely you have to wait for full charge or if you stop early it slowly refills.

So much more you can do with that mechanic for balance. Damage/tic, how fast it recharges, how much beam duration per charge, heat/tic. Instead of GH it can increase rate of charge depletion - or even have a single charge mechanic for all energy weapons you can adjust on a mech by mech basis, etc.

I think that would create a far more interesting, skill based and balanceable laser mechanic. Could add more use to skill free as you have nodes to tweak each of those factors potentially.

So much more you could do with it.

[Nightbird]

My concern with MG-like hold mechanic is that DPS can only be too high or too low with no sweet spot.

Suppose a ML has 5 damage over a 1 sec burn (5dmg/s) and 4 second cooldown (1DPS average). If a MPL did 2.5dmg/s sec, you would lose every trade against a weapon half your weight, but in a brawl you would have 2.5x the DPS. Make the brawl difference less crazy and trading becomes unbearably bad. Make the trading less ineffective and brawling DPS becomes insane.

Am I missing something in my theory-crafting?

[MischiefSC]

Nightbird, on 18 July 2018 - 03:10 PM, said:

My concern with MG-like hold mechanic is that DPS can only be too high or too low with no sweet spot.

Suppose a ML has 5 damage over a 1 sec burn (5dmg/s) and 4 second cooldown (1DPS average). If a MPL did 2.5dmg/s sec, you would lose every trade against a weapon half your weight, but in a brawl you would have 2.5x the DPS. Make the brawl difference less crazy and trading becomes unbearably bad. Make the trading less ineffective and brawling DPS becomes insane.

Am I missing something in my theory-crafting?

The point being you can dial a lot of metrics - damage/tic, heat/tic, how fast it replenishes because you dont have a full cooldown cycle, etc to try and get a good balance.

[Nightbird]

MischiefSC, on 18 July 2018 - 03:28 PM, said:

The point being you can dial a lot of metrics - damage/tic, heat/tic, how fast it replenishes because you dont have a full cooldown cycle, etc to try and get a good balance.

Replenish? You mean like a RAC mechanic?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 18 July 2018 - 03:10 PM, said:

My concern with MG-like hold mechanic is that DPS can only be too high or too low with no sweet spot.

What do you mean?

For example, let's take the cERML.
You have a "pool" of energy that allows the current duration's worth of firing at once before having to recharge. So you can fire for at most 1.25s. To recharge all of that "pool" of energy it takes 4.5s. In other words, all this really lets you do is on lasers which have a long duration, is to cancel them before the full duration is used and have a bit faster recharge and not waste heat on targets that only give you glancing shots. In other words bypass some of the unwieldiness of long duration lasers (which may not be a good thing either).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 18 July 2018 - 05:02 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Nightbird, on 18 July 2018 - 04:03 PM, said:

Replenish? You mean like a RAC mechanic?

Exactly. Maybe visually reversed to represent the idea of a capacitor replenishing but have it just be X seconds of burn time that works like the jam bar. You run it dry, have to wait until Y amount refills. Stop early, just replenishes. You could have a single per-mech capacitor that drains faster with more lasers/energy weapons shooting, or a per-weapon bar. This pushes lasers into a different behavior category and a different balancing leg from ballistics and missiles. At least in concept it could be very cool and aid in. Balance and differentiating IS/Clan and weapon types in general.

You could have LPLs not work off the mech central capacitor but assume each has it's own internally which is why it just has set duration and cooldown. Regular lasers fire while the trigger is pulled up to empty storage. You take the lasers at lore concept - that's their average damage over 10 seconds.

In practice? Obviously I dunno. In concept? I think the concept could be good.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 18 July 2018 - 05:00 PM, said:

What do you mean?

For example, let's take the cERML.
You have a "pool" of energy that allows the current duration's worth of firing at once before having to recharge. So you can fire for at most 1.25s. To recharge all of that "pool" of energy it takes 4.5s. In other words, all this really lets you do is on lasers which have a long duration, is to cancel them before the full duration is used and have a bit faster recharge and not waste heat on targets that only give you glancing shots. In other words bypass some of the unwieldiness of long duration lasers (which may not be a good thing either).

It also let's you do things like give lasers a 2.5 second burn duration and a 4.5 second cooldown without making it a terrible weapon. Just that having multiple capacitors, one per laser, seems like it would be fussy. Maybe not. I mean RAC and gauss charge aren't much better.

[Y E O N N E]

Nightbird, on 18 July 2018 - 03:10 PM, said:

Am I missing something in my theory-crafting?

Heat.

The heat prevents it from being obnoxiously strong in a brawl.

[Nightbird]

MischiefSC, on 18 July 2018 - 05:20 PM, said:

It also let's you do things like give lasers a 2.5 second burn duration and a 4.5 second cooldown without making it a terrible weapon. Just that having multiple capacitors, one per laser, seems like it would be fussy. Maybe not. I mean RAC and gauss charge aren't much better.

Where would the maximum damage with discharging the whole bar fall in? Still lore damage (i.e. more flexibility instead of discharging it all every time) or potentially more?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 18 July 2018 - 07:07 PM, said:

Where would the maximum damage with discharging the whole bar fall in? Still lore damage (i.e. more flexibility instead of discharging it all every time) or potentially more?

You could be flexible here, rather than give a weapon a really short cooldown you could just keep the cooldown stupidly long but allow for extended burns that equate to a few shots of lore damage. I'm not really a fan of that though because that just gives you the ability to melt mechs caught flat-footed. The goal is to allow burst damage to punish within reason. So I prefer to make the duration a hard-cap on burst damage a single laser can possibly do.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 18 July 2018 - 07:40 PM.

[Nightbird]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 18 July 2018 - 07:40 PM, said:

You could be flexible here, rather than give a weapon a really short cooldown you could just keep the cooldown stupidly long but allow for extended burns that equate to a few shots of lore damage. I'm not really a fan of that though because that just gives you the ability to melt mechs caught flat-footed. The goal is to allow burst damage to punish within reason. So I prefer to make the duration a hard-cap on burst damage a single laser can possibly do.

Currently in the proposal there is DPS/ton scaling so medium pulses have double the DPS of MLs, plus a shorter range is traded for a more intense burn. I'm not sure it's possible to give a larger total damage pool without cutting the intensity of the burn (dmg/tick) to below ML levels. But, for the shoot and twist players, that equates to a major downgrade to laser MGs even if they had more total DPS. Imagine RACs without spread, good DPS on paper but the facetime makes it easy to trade against.

Edited by Nightbird, 18 July 2018 - 08:09 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Nightbird, on 18 July 2018 - 08:07 PM, said:

Currently in the proposal there is DPS/ton scaling so medium pulses have double the DPS of MLs, plus a shorter range is traded for a more intense burn. I'm not sure it's possible to give a larger total damage pool without cutting the intensity of the burn (dmg/tick) to below ML levels. But, for the shoot and twist players, that equates to a major downgrade to laser MGs even if they had more total DPS. Imagine RACs without spread, good DPS on paper but the facetime makes it easy to trade against.

So you make them a bit better but give them some lore negatives - PPC hits pause recharge for 1 sec, if you discharge completely you lose 2 sec of cooldown, etc.

The idea being that pulse may be more consistent and better at brawling but lasers are more flexible and far more dangerous caught out. So lasers have more range to trade from and higher damage over more than 1 pulse burst but potentially way less heart efficient and lower DPS due to full bar cooldown.

So if we are trading your pulse vs my lasers I've got more range and if I can get the full burn (2 sec. 2.5, whatever) I'm doing more DPS - until my bar is full and I have to cool for 4 sec or 5 sec. If I stop early I have a faster cooldown but my DPS isn't better. Also my total damage/heat isn't as good as the pulse.

Just as general ideas. As I said, the concept is interesting. The mechanics may be problematic. However, as mentioned, it's got more balance legs to tweak than just dps/heat. Make lasers better burst, less long term heat efficient but with a really high skill ceiling. It is alright to have, say, pulse probably a bit better for most players but lasers a bit better for people with excellent situational awareness, positioning and heat management.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MischiefSC, on 18 July 2018 - 10:25 PM, said:

Just as general ideas. As I said, the concept is interesting. The mechanics may be problematic. However, as mentioned, it's got more balance legs to tweak than just dps/heat. Make lasers better burst, less long term heat efficient but with a really high skill ceiling. It is alright to have, say, pulse probably a bit better for most players but lasers a bit better for people with excellent situational awareness, positioning and heat management.

This.

[Nightbird]

Thus far, I've avoided missiles because I haven't thought of an idea that satisfied both lore and science and balance and got rid of ghost heat (or simplified it).

The sarna page on the Crusader dropped a lore hint (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Crusader) missile path can interfere with each other. This makes scientific sense, missiles need a minimum space to avoid collisions, avoid flying in the exhaust of another missiles, avoid damage when the missile next to it is destroyed by AMS. If the spread of a rack of missiles is to give missile minimum space, then shooting more racks shouldn't reduce that space or else mutual interference would happen.

The two game mechanics that would mimic this are:
1. Give every missile a radius (a ball if you will) that no other missiles can be in. If more missiles are alphaed, the missile swarm will expand to respect each missile's space. As missiles are shot down by AMS, guided missiles will reorganize themselves to occupy the vacated space. This would get rid of ghost heat for missiles, but probably not implementable by PGI.

2. A simpler approach is to give a minimum firing delay after all missile weapons for other missile weapons. For example, 0.05s for SRMs and 0.1s for LRMs. When alphaing missiles, launchers will fire one at a time quickly and no longer in a big missile clump. Clan missiles with duration can have that duration reduced but overall IS missiles can still alpha fast having no duration (except for MRMs). No ghost heat, not ideal but implementable.

Thoughts?

Edited by Nightbird, 19 July 2018 - 12:22 PM.