170 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

ocular tb, on 29 October 2017 - 02:58 PM, said:

I just went to metamechs and saw something disturbing....why does the Gauss PPC Kodiak have 2 MGs and no ammo?

It was to prop the Gauss up to the highest mounts, but it wasn't ever really worth doing because you needed to expose your PPCs in the first place and the bottom row Gauss were already cockpit level.

That said, Sjorpha is right. After the UAC40 build died, Gauss/PPC replaced it. 2 UAC10/2 UAC5 was never really the meta build, it was just a very solid build.

Keep in mind metamechs while a good guideline is not quite 100% accurate, especially since GMan kinda disappeared after the WC16, so it has been really inaccurate the past year.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 29 October 2017 - 03:21 PM.

[ocular tb]

Deathlike, on 29 October 2017 - 03:18 PM, said:

The MGs prop the Gauss in the ballistic/dakka hardpoints to an even higher location.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 29 October 2017 - 03:19 PM, said:

It was to prop the Gauss up to the highest mounts, but it wasn't ever really worth doing because you needed to expose your PPCs in the first place and the bottom row Gauss were already cockpit level.

That said, Sjorpha is right. After the UAC40 build died, Gauss/PPC replaced it. 2 UAC10/2 UAC5 was never really the meta build, it was just a very solid build.

Keep in mind metamechs while a good guideline is not quite 100% accurate, especially since GMan kinda disappeared after the WC16, so it has been really inaccurate the past year.

Ahh that makes sense. Thanks for the responses.

[Trissila]

ocular tb, on 29 October 2017 - 03:28 PM, said:

Ahh that makes sense. Thanks for the responses.

Yeah. The first ballistic weapons on the KDK-3 STs go into the bottom mounts, while the second weapons go into the high mounts. So you spent half a ton throwing empty MGs in there to get the gauss rifles up top for better hill-humping.

It's very silly that the order in which you add weapons in the mechlab has a meaningful effect on the 'mech's geometry, yet there is no indication of this other than trial-and-error.

[Tarl Cabot]

And for others who may not have been around at the time when the Kodiak went live, UAC10 had a ghost heat bug that had previously been reported but which that PGI had not corrected. The Kodiak 3 brought that bug to the forefront but it still took some months for PGI to fix it (Kodiak released May 17th 2016. The patch to start correcting that was late July 2016, changing HS multiplier from 1.0 to 15.0 for the Ghost Heat.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 29 October 2017 - 04:52 PM.

[Insanity09]

The (very) short version. Lower maximum heat capacity to lower alphas.

Longer version.
Once upon a time, in early versions of TT, heat sinks did not add to your overall heat capacity.
You got a max of 30 heat. Done.
You also got 10 engine heat sinks regardless of engine size. You could add more externals, of course. At that time, there was also no such thing as engine heat sinks beyond the 10 just because you had a big engine, but I digress.
Each round, your weapons and movement generated heat, then your HS cooled you off. Leftover heat from round to round would start generating penalties (movement speed, ammo cook, etc. other have mentioned all this elsewhere).

This did a few things.

It sharply limited alphas, being able to generate only 30 heat in a round was very restrictive.

An odd side effect of that was twofold.
First, larger mechs (heavies and assaults) were much more readily able to use large heat-efficient, but tonnage inefficient weapons effectively. I.e. ballistics.
Second, since you could readily afford more weapons that you could effective cool, you tended to have multiple range brackets of weapons, you only used the weapons for the current range bracket (&/or as many as you could cool effectively). This was more true for high tonnage mechs.

So, my point? All that suggests that severely restricting the maximum heat capacity would be a better tool than ghost heat for limiting alphas.
It might make dakka a bit more attractive. Maybe missiles too.

Please note I'm not saying that the max heat capacity should be 30. I'm saying that it is way too high at the present time.
If it did get lowered, I'm also saying that we'd need to be able to see our max capacity in the builder.

Ghost heat doesn't fully do the job. It is better than nothing at preventing continuous alphas, but when you have 50-60 point alphas on numerous mechs, especially clans, it just isn't up to the task. Two 60 point alphas will simply kill most mechs, if delivered with good aim, so that means a TTK in single digit seconds. Even if the aim isn't perfect, you are likely crippled or on the verge of death. Most mechs seem to be able to handle delivering two alphas.
Which sucks. Walk for a minute, die in seconds. Is it any wonder people hide so much?

Also, if light mechs were not forced to buy HS to make up a mythical 10, they could possibly have more weapons, or a wider variety.
That's more of a counterpoint to those who want to multiply armor/structure again. Every time that happens, light and medium mechs suffer, because they don't get as much benefit as larger mechs. They become even more fragile by comparison. Without stupid quirks, there would need to be some way to balance that up. 10 built in engine HS would help the lights. Many mediums would still be screwed (they already have 250+ rated engines). Not sure what to do there.

[EAP10]

*PPC Thunderbolt flashbacks*

[davoodoo]

Insanity09, on 30 October 2017 - 10:44 PM, said:

The (very) short version. Lower maximum heat capacity to lower alphas.

Longer version.
Once upon a time, in early versions of TT, heat sinks did not add to your overall heat capacity.
You got a max of 30 heat. Done.
You also got 10 engine heat sinks regardless of engine size. You could add more externals, of course. At that time, there was also no such thing as engine heat sinks beyond the 10 just because you had a big engine, but I digress.
Each round, your weapons and movement generated heat, then your HS cooled you off. Leftover heat from round to round would start generating penalties (movement speed, ammo cook, etc. other have mentioned all this elsewhere).

This did a few things.

It sharply limited alphas, being able to generate only 30 heat in a round was very restrictive.

An odd side effect of that was twofold.
First, larger mechs (heavies and assaults) were much more readily able to use large heat-efficient, but tonnage inefficient weapons effectively. I.e. ballistics.
Second, since you could readily afford more weapons that you could effective cool, you tended to have multiple range brackets of weapons, you only used the weapons for the current range bracket (&/or as many as you could cool effectively). This was more true for high tonnage mechs.

So, my point? All that suggests that severely restricting the maximum heat capacity would be a better tool than ghost heat for limiting alphas.
It might make dakka a bit more attractive. Maybe missiles too.

Please note I'm not saying that the max heat capacity should be 30. I'm saying that it is way too high at the present time.
If it did get lowered, I'm also saying that we'd need to be able to see our max capacity in the builder.

Ghost heat doesn't fully do the job. It is better than nothing at preventing continuous alphas, but when you have 50-60 point alphas on numerous mechs, especially clans, it just isn't up to the task. Two 60 point alphas will simply kill most mechs, if delivered with good aim, so that means a TTK in single digit seconds. Even if the aim isn't perfect, you are likely crippled or on the verge of death. Most mechs seem to be able to handle delivering two alphas.
Which sucks. Walk for a minute, die in seconds. Is it any wonder people hide so much?

Also, if light mechs were not forced to buy HS to make up a mythical 10, they could possibly have more weapons, or a wider variety.
That's more of a counterpoint to those who want to multiply armor/structure again. Every time that happens, light and medium mechs suffer, because they don't get as much benefit as larger mechs. They become even more fragile by comparison. Without stupid quirks, there would need to be some way to balance that up. 10 built in engine HS would help the lights. Many mediums would still be screwed (they already have 250+ rated engines). Not sure what to do there.

Um what?? i cant remember that ruleset so ill ask, how was cooling done in it??

Now
1)10 free heat sinks saved you 10 tons on cooling, dropping total weight of dual ac20 from 42 tons to 32 tons without ammo.
On the other hand getting same damage with energy still required you to put extra shs.
2)engines smaller than 250 in mwo have weight reduced by 1 ton for every heat sink below 10 for example std engine 60 weights -2.5ton

Also 60dmg very hot alphas on level 2 mechs are too much??
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...f7b10d39b03e1a8
this is stock hbk4p
40 dmg alpha on 50 ton mech for 24 heat total with 23 being cooled off.

Edited by davoodoo, 31 October 2017 - 08:44 AM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Hmmm.. What they mean is that the player adds up the heat points generated then subtract the heat points of the heat sinks. So an awesome could fire 4 ppcs (40heat) then subtract 20 for the heatsinks then record the mech ending that round at 10 on the heatscale. True that the heatscale had a cap of 30 and a player could not mark higher than 30 at the end of that round.

Basic Battledroids - initiative / movement / combat (heat did not play a factor hahaha) and damage was a set amount vs a set amount of general armor.

In our example the player commanding the Warhammer rolls an 11 and hits his opponent's Crusader. At medium range, the Warhammer has a Damage value of 15. The Crusader has an Armor Value of 13, but this is reduced to 12 because the Warhammer is firing at the Crusader's right rear hexside. The attacker checks the Armor Penetration Table, cross-indexing the Crusader Armor Value of 12 with this Damage Value of 15. he finds that the Damage Number 5, and so he must roll a 5 or over in order to damage the enemy battledroid. He rolls a 7, and so his shot penetrated the target's armor and damage resulted.

Whenever a target's armor is penetrated by an attack, the attacker makes a die roll. He consults the Damage Effect Table to find the damage effects from his shot. The damage is recorded on the player with the target droid.

2-3-4 and 10-11-12 Battledroid Destroyed / 5 Weapons destroyed - can only make physical attacks / 6-7-8 Battledroid cannot move or fire for 1 or 2 turns / 9 Battledroid MP reduced by half (rounding down) If rolled again, droid is immobilized and cannot move or change its facing.

Advanced Battledroids
initiative / movement / attack - weapons-physical / heat
Critical hits do not come into play
Heat - Add up heat points then subtract heat points given off by heat sinks and/or occupy water hex.

Expert Battledroid
Pilot Gunnery/Piloting skills come into play. Weapon attacks are resolved, including critical hits, before proceeding to the next attacking mech.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 31 October 2017 - 03:33 PM.

[Insanity09]

(this was from an early/mid 80's FASA battletech rulebook, 2nd ed I think, but I'm working from memory because I no longer own it)

For TT Cooling was done very simply.
Each round, you added up the heat you generated by firing weapons (var., ofc), moving (walking was 1, running 2, jumping 3), and any heat left over from previous rounds. Then you subtracted from that total the number of heat sinks your mech had (doubling any HS that happened to be submerged). If the number was 0 or less, you had no heat for the round. If you had more heat than cooling, you had an amount that might give you a penalty for the next round (<4 was no penalty iirc, then stuff started to happen).
Single heat sinks counted for 1 each, doubles for 2. I'm too fuzzy to remember how engine HS were handled, but I do recall you could have a mix of singles and doubles as externals (though that may have been a house rule we used, but there is no logical reason not to do so) (doubles, btw, didn't show up until the clans came on the seen, which was a little later than the original rules I had)
(oh, also flamers and inferno round could add to your heat that round, or enviro effects)

As far as engine heat sinks, that seems to have gotten muddled . Basically, in MWO terms, you treated every single mech/engine as if it were rated 250 (10 built-in sinks, also called internal heat sinks). So, a Locust with a 190 rated engine had 10 built in HS, as did a Victor with a 350.

The internal heat sinks with each engine were, effectively, weight free (just as they are in MWO, but always 10).

I recall two engine weights. A standard 300 weighed 19 tons (that was a rating that got used all the time). I've tried to reconcile the engine weights of old with MWO, but since they've rolled in the gyros and what-not, working from memory has made that difficult (gyros, btw, used to weigh engine rating div/100, round up, so a 200 rated engine had a 2 ton gyro, 205-300 3 tons, 305-400 4 tons, etc.) I think base sensors, life support, etc, also weighed 3 tons for every mech (so, 3 ton sensors/life, 3 ton gyro, plus a 300 rated std engine would be 25 tons, which is what it is in MWO, Hmm. Engines in mwo might just be gyro+sensor/life+engine.)
I think a std 400 weighed 52.5 tons? In MWO it is 59.5 (which would be the 3 tons sensor/life and 4 tons of gyro plus the engine).
Engine tonnage was NOT a linear table. Engines above 300 rating got much heavier much faster.

If I could remember a <250 rated engine weight I could confirm or deny the -1 ton per heat sink missing from the 10. Given the -2.5t weight for a 60 rated engine, that may be accurate though. So perhaps lights wouldn't get a boost from the 10 hs thing.

Btw, the rules I recall only allowed exact tonnage multiples for a mech's engine (so, for example, a 45 ton mech would never have an engine rating of 260 because it wasn't an even multiple of 45 tons: 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, etc.). That was just because of how hex based movement worked in TT though.

[davoodoo]

Insanity09, on 31 October 2017 - 06:57 PM, said:

(this was from an early/mid 80's FASA battletech rulebook, 2nd ed I think, but I'm working from memory because I no longer own it)

For TT Cooling was done very simply.
Each round, you added up the heat you generated by firing weapons (var., ofc), moving (walking was 1, running 2, jumping 3), and any heat left over from previous rounds. Then you subtracted from that total the number of heat sinks your mech had (doubling any HS that happened to be submerged). If the number was 0 or less, you had no heat for the round. If you had more heat than cooling, you had an amount that might give you a penalty for the next round (<4 was no penalty iirc, then stuff started to happen).

Thats standard battletech rules where every heat sinks effectively adds to heat cap as you can fire more heat and still stay below 30.
30 dhs firing 4 erppc would be heat neutral.

Im not sure what is now, but these were the rules from succession wars up to jihad.

Insanity09, on 31 October 2017 - 06:57 PM, said:

If I could remember a <250 rated engine weight I could confirm or deny the -1 ton per heat sink missing from the 10. Given the -2.5t weight for a 60 rated engine, that may be accurate though. So perhaps lights wouldn't get a boost from the 10 hs thing.

the standard contruction rules given you 1 built in heat sink for every 25 engine rating up to 250 and if engine was below 250 you added free heatsinks into crits up to 10.

Edited by davoodoo, 01 November 2017 - 03:18 AM.