19 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

we have tried to do a convoluted energy draw system to keep alphas in check and that failed miserably. gh in principal is actually a great idea for keeping the alphas in check, its just not implemented in a way that is simple, all inclusive or intuitive. the arbitrary gh groups are to blame. all it does is enforce high alpha configurations that get around the existing gh groups and really destroys any other options in the process, like i dont see why i can stack huge alpha with hlls and ermls but not ersls and mpls/hmls.

instead we get rid of the groups all together and use an algorithm to determine the heat penalties based on the current heat state of the mech. ive suggested dh/dt based penalties in other posts but any heuristic system that tracks the heat output over the past several seconds and uses that data to determine an appropriate heat penalty would work.

one feature would be that the penalties stack up as heat is applied and the penalties also decay over time. so a high alpha might take many seconds recovery time in addition to the weapon cooldown. an alpha might become an opening attack but wouldnt be sustainable for subsequent attacks because the heat penalties would become very restrictive very fast rendering you unable to defend yourself should the enemy push back.

they also dont really care what weapons you are using, fire any absurdly high alpha and dont expect to fire another any time soon. though you could weight certain weapons so that the heat penalty is more or less severe. like a strongly weighted penalty against gauss rifle would make it produce high heat when fired hot but be heatless when fired cold. this would force gauss ppc/laser builds to alternate between systems to reduce penalty rather than alpha.

[Y E O N N E]

I dunno, I find this overly complex as well.

What we really need is two dynamic systems: one which provides limits to what you can do in the moment and another to what you can do in the near term. Right now, we have heat trying to do both, but it can't do it well because heat-caps are static based on the number of DHS.

Instead, really, I think we should tap cooldown. Fire an alpha over a certain limit and your cool-down takes a scaling penalty to its length proportional in some way to how far over the limit you went.

Let's say the limit is 15. Let's also say the base cool-down on the Medium Laser is now 1.1 seconds. If I fire six Medium lasers, I have doubled my limit; we could set the penalty to an exponential scale such that my resulting cool-down is 3.5 seconds or so. The result? Our common 6x MedLas builds perform exactly as we expect them to today, which is in a decent enough spot: not OP, not UP. At the same time, it lets a 'Mech that has very few hardpoints still have decent enough DPS with just the three lasers. Presto, no quirks involved.

Let's say I throw in a pair of Large Lasers and a pair of Gauss. My alpha is going to be 68, which is more than four times. Our penalty at this point could scale our limiting cool-down to, I dunno, 12 seconds. Now I have a tactical decision to make: do I want to fire a volley this large at the risk of giving the enemy a window to exploit, or do I just fire small bundles and always have a salvo ready to go?

Questions you might have:

1. Don't I already have to wait 12 seconds or so when firing a big hot alpha to cool off? Yes, but you have the option to fire only some of your weapons near the heat-cap to keep some DPS up. Under this system, that option is removed; if you fired a full alpha, all of those weapons are on penalized cool-down.

2. What stops me from just rapidly stagger-firing my lasers for great justice? Heat build-up. I could do this, but I will quickly overwhelm my heatsinks and that will limit my output. If that's not enough, simply preventing the limit from re-setting until the fired bundle has completed cool-down should rectify the problem.

3. That still seems like an awful lot of short-term DPS, won't that become a problem? While a set of MedLas fired 3+3 would have a maximum DPS of 15, it would also generate heat at a rate of 10.2 heat per second and to get one full alpha's worth of damage would require 2.9 seconds of face-time. Even if I take something like a Warhammer and boat SHS for a ridiculous cooling rate relative to what you can achieve using DHS, I'm only going to get 4.4-5 shots of 15 out due to this mechanic. I would hardly consider 75 damage over 13 seconds to be an issue. At the same time, that does give you a reason to take SHS if you want to play a burst-DPS-oriented laser build, though you'd get better sustained DPS from ballistics or missiles.

4. Isn't this also complex? Not really, the rules are straight-forward and universal. Slap a gauge on the UI showing how much of the limit got used when you fired (i.e. the Energy Draw bar), and it's plenty intuitive; players won't even need to know the values since they can see the effects visualized. Add a MechLab warning and maybe a tool-tip or two for the load screen and you're set.

That said, if you want to introduce some more depth to even this, you exempt missiles and non-Gauss ballistics from the limiter to encourage mixed builds to maximize DPS or provide weapons that can keep going through an alpha at the expense of having a lower and less sustainable alpha since you put your weight toward those guns and their ammo rather than to the DHS needed to field big alphas. Then it gets more complicated.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 13 June 2018 - 08:34 PM.

[LordNothing]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 June 2018 - 08:32 PM, said:

I dunno, I find this overly complex as well.

What we really need is two dynamic systems: one which provides limits to what you can do in the moment and another to what you can do in the near term. Right now, we have heat trying to do both, but it can't do it well because heat-caps are static based on the number of DHS.

Instead, really, I think we should tap cooldown. Fire an alpha over a certain limit and your cool-down takes a scaling penalty to its length proportional in some way to how far over the limit you went.

Let's say the limit is 15. Let's also say the base cool-down on the Medium Laser is now 1.1 seconds. If I fire six Medium lasers, I have doubled my limit; we could set the penalty to an exponential scale such that my resulting cool-down is 3.5 seconds or so. The result? Our common 6x MedLas builds perform exactly as we expect them to today, which is in a decent enough spot: not OP, not UP. At the same time, it lets a 'Mech that has very few hardpoints still have decent enough DPS with just the three lasers. Presto, no quirks involved.

Let's say I throw in a pair of Large Lasers and a pair of Gauss. My alpha is going to be 68, which is more than four times. Our penalty at this point could scale our limiting cool-down to, I dunno, 12 seconds. Now I have a tactical decision to make: do I want to fire a volley this large at the risk of giving the enemy a window to exploit, or do I just fire small bundles and always have a salvo ready to go?

Questions you might have:

1. Don't I already have to wait 12 seconds or so when firing a big hot alpha to cool off? Yes, but you have the option to fire only some of your weapons near the heat-cap to keep some DPS up. Under this system, that option is removed; if you fired a full alpha, all of those weapons are on penalized cool-down.

2. What stops me from just rapidly stagger-firing my lasers for great justice? Heat build-up. I could do this, but I will quickly overwhelm my heatsinks and that will limit my output. If that's not enough, simply preventing the limit from re-setting until the fired bundle has completed cool-down should rectify the problem.

3. That still seems like an awful lot of short-term DPS, won't that become a problem? While a set of MedLas fired 3+3 would have a maximum DPS of 15, it would also generate heat at a rate of 10.2 heat per second and to get one full alpha's worth of damage would require 2.9 seconds of face-time. Even if I take something like a Warhammer and boat SHS for a ridiculous cooling rate relative to what you can achieve using DHS, I'm only going to get 4.4-5 shots of 15 out due to this mechanic. I would hardly consider 75 damage over 13 seconds to be an issue. At the same time, that does give you a reason to take SHS if you want to play a burst-DPS-oriented laser build, though you'd get better sustained DPS from ballistics or missiles.

4. Isn't this also complex? Not really, the rules are straight-forward and universal. Slap a gauge on the UI showing how much of the limit got used when you fired (i.e. the Energy Draw bar), and it's plenty intuitive; players won't even need to know the values since they can see the effects visualized. Add a MechLab warning and maybe a tool-tip or two for the load screen and you're set.

That said, if you want to introduce some more depth to even this, you exempt missiles and non-Gauss ballistics from the limiter to encourage mixed builds to maximize DPS or provide weapons that can keep going through an alpha at the expense of having a lower and less sustainable alpha since you put your weight toward those guns and their ammo rather than to the DHS needed to field big alphas. Then it gets more complicated.

seems the only real difference between that and my system is that with mine you would be strongly discouraged from firing, but in yours you would be prohibited from firing. thats not a bad thing either, sort of like the choice of double tapping or not. you are still going to need to derermine if you are in a state that should be penalized some how. and thats still under the scope of algorithmic penalty systems, so you arent really going to far off the rails. main thing i want is to get rid of the gh groups and any algorithm based system will do that. my goal here is to stir up discussion for alternatives to ghost heat and energy draw that are better than those ever were.

i also think alternate mechanics for different weapons types (like recoil for ballistics and ghost spread/reduced tracking for missiles) would also be interesting and promote mixed builds, boating stacks up effects on one system but by spreading it 3 ways by mixing weapons you can increase alpha with fewer penalties at the expense of having to deal with multiple weapons groups and non synergized weapons. one catch all system might not be all its cracked up to be.

Edited by LordNothing, 13 June 2018 - 09:33 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

The state determining penalty is whether or not you have points left in your limiter. If you fire and you don't have any left, you get a penalty scaled according to how much over you just went. If you fire yet again, the penalty will stack and your global cooldown modifier will get worse and worse until you let it finish.

So if I fire my three MedLas, let it it finish cooling down, and fire the next set, I don't get a penalty. If I fire the second set before it finishes, I trigger penalty. You could say this makes it pointless to run more than three MedLas and then 45 SHS on a Warhammer or something, but consider that 15 damage is not a lot and that's a lot of face-time required to burn through the CT of another 'Mech even if the total base cycle time for MedLas is only 2 seconds.

So what I'm doing here is providing a dichotomy of choice. If I need to be able to keep pressure on a 'Mech, I will fire a small bundle on the cooldown cycle because the DPS will be higher. If I can't afford that face-time, then I can still alpha...but with more of an opportunity cost than we currently experience.

If I'm being honest, though, what I described above is a cruder, easier-to-digest-and-implement version of what I'd really rather have, which is a proper power mechanic. What that means is that my engine produces X power based on its size, and my weapons consume Y power when they recharge (meaning when you hold the trigger down to charge your gauss or when any energy weapon is cooling down). If the sum of all Y exceeds X, then the cool-downs have to slow-down such that the sum of Y is equal to X. As weapons come off of cool-down, more of X is available and the remaining cool-downs can speed up. To prevent the Big Engine Stomp Meta from running away with this, you also set accelerating and maintaining speed to consume some of X, with a modifier that makes more massive 'Mechs less efficient at it per kph and per delta of kph than lighter ones. Call it a drawback to myomer scalability or whatever.

That's the real version.

[IIXxXII]

Good ideas.

I wouldn't mind if ghost heat were reworked in a way which encouraged lower alphas and greater utilization of weapons which were less optimized over a single range of distance to increase TTK. It could enhance gameplay in terms of battles being longer and mistakes being more forgiving. It might also help with light mechs not being able to kill assault mechs so quickly and reduce fustration factor.

Maybe it wouldn't fall as much under ghost heat as energy draw or hardpoint functionality changes.

Implementing a harder "stock mech mode" could also boost TTK and achieve some effects which gamers here have requested for years(if not in the form they asked for, but beggars can't be choosers, am I right).

[process]

Instead of another gauge or bar to monitor, how about a simple reduction to heat capacity that decays over time?

For example, a mech with a 60 heat cap. An alpha that exceeds the allowed limit reduces the heat cap to 30, visually registered on the heat gauge, that decays at a rate of N heat/sec back to up 60.

[Korz]

What we need are heat penalties. Your x hot for x time then you start to suffer this or that effect.

Effects: Slower recycle times, Slower speed, Vision starts to get choppy, Slower time to torso twist, Less jump ability, etc...

[LordNothing]

process, on 14 June 2018 - 06:27 AM, said:

Instead of another gauge or bar to monitor, how about a simple reduction to heat capacity that decays over time?

For example, a mech with a 60 heat cap. An alpha that exceeds the allowed limit reduces the heat cap to 30, visually registered on the heat gauge, that decays at a rate of N heat/sec back to up 60.

i like decaying mechanics, things that linger for a bit after an alpha and take a certain amount of time to recover. be it heat penalties extra duration or cd.

single gauge solutions are nice but sometimes it can be confusing, nothing to indicate when its safe to fire. 2 gauges can be just as bad though. dh/dt is also kind of confusing, its literally labled with math, you actually have to play mechwarrior 2 and watch the gauge to understand what its for.

i could imagine a gauge with a forground and background element within a single gauge where the background element can indicate a penalty with the actual mech heat in the foreground. it kind of indicates how much penalty you will gain if you fire an alpha now, and my stacking it on top of the heat makes it easy to determine how much empty space you actually have in the heat bar when penalty is accounted for. still technically 2 gauges but its really intuitive at a glance.

code wise gauges arent hard to add so its not something id worry too much about.

Edited by LordNothing, 14 June 2018 - 07:05 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

process, on 14 June 2018 - 06:27 AM, said:

Instead of another gauge or bar to monitor, how about a simple reduction to heat capacity that decays over time?

For example, a mech with a 60 heat cap. An alpha that exceeds the allowed limit reduces the heat cap to 30, visually registered on the heat gauge, that decays at a rate of N heat/sec back to up 60.

That's still using a second gauge, you just haven't displayed it. Because it's applied to all weapons in the same pool, and becayse you necessarily want to plug the loophole of simply allowing us to bypass the alpha by left-right clicking 0.1 seconds apart, you need a gauge or blip somewhere that lets me know if it is safe to fire.

That said, you can get avoid needing any second indicator at all by simply having heat dissipation rate diminish the closer your heat gauge gets to zero. So you fire your alpha, which takes you to 80%. That takes two seconds to cool down to 65%, four more seconds to get to 50%, and eight additional seconds to get to 35%. This limits the rate at which you can make an alpha that requires 80% of your cap while allowing smaller, cooler bundles to keep up the fire.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 14 June 2018 - 12:09 PM.

[LordNothing]

Yeonne Greene, on 14 June 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

That's still using a second gauge, you just haven't displayed it. Because it's applied to all weapons in the same pool, and becayse you necessarily want to plug the loophole of simply allowing us to bypass the alpha by left-right clicking 0.1 seconds apart, you need a gauge or blip somewhere that lets me know if it is safe to fire.

That said, you can get avoid needing any second indicator at all by simply having heat dissipation rate diminish the closer your heat gauge gets to zero. So you fire your alpha, which takes you to 80%. That takes two seconds to cool down to 65%, four seconds to get to 50%, and eight seconds to get to 35%. This limits the rate at which you can make an alpha that requires 80% of your cap while allowing smaller, cooler bundles to keep up the fire.

so map the heat gauge to a reverse biased heat disapation curve? fuller gauge = slower disipation rate.

[Y E O N N E]

LordNothing, on 14 June 2018 - 09:09 AM, said:

so map the heat gauge to a reverse biased heat disapation curve? fuller gauge = slower disipation rate.

Other way around: fuller gauge = faster dissipation.

[process]

Yeonne Greene, on 14 June 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

That's still using a second gauge, you just haven't displayed it. Because it's applied to all weapons in the same pool, and becayse you necessarily want to plug the loophole of simply allowing us to bypass the alpha by left-right clicking 0.1 seconds apart, you need a gauge or blip somewhere that lets me know if it is safe to fire.

That said, you can get avoid needing any second indicator at all by simply having heat dissipation rate diminish the closer your heat gauge gets to zero. So you fire your alpha, which takes you to 80%. That takes two seconds to cool down to 65%, four seconds to get to 50%, and eight seconds to get to 35%. This limits the rate at which you can make an alpha that requires 80% of your cap while allowing smaller, cooler bundles to keep up the fire.

I like that idea a lot. Question -- why would the rate of cooling be slower at lower heat? Shouldn't the penalty be worse closer to capacity?

[Y E O N N E]

process, on 14 June 2018 - 10:36 AM, said:

I like that idea a lot. Question -- why would the rate of cooling be slower at lower heat? Shouldn't the penalty be worse closer to capacity?

1. Physics; a larger differential between two bodies will result in a greater rate of transfer from high to low between them

2. If I make it faster when cold, I can fire a bunch of small bundles and then a high heat one, but then I can't fire anything at all for awhile; this hurts lighter 'Mechs that are high heat even from small bundles but lets heavier 'Mechs abuse those small bundles and not have to worry about heat too much.

3. Flipping it the other way ensures that even small bundles heat up adequately on larger 'Mechs and prevents a large bundle that requires the portion of the bar stuck behind slow dissipation from being used in rapid-follow-up, all without destroying the ability of Lights to still output meaningful damage while heat-capped.

4. It creates an organic limit to the effectiveness of flamers.

TL;DR: chain firing and partial salvos becomes useful when hot, given a homogeneous gun boat.

[LordNothing]

the physics argument is one thing but this game has massive guns that operate at pistol ranges and pea shooters that go over a km and shotguns that go further. to be fair guns around the caliber of an ac2 have several times that effective range irl. real life weapons op. i do like the hard sci-fi aspects of dropship operations, then they drop vehicles that completely neglect ground pressure. space is somehow cold rather than insulative. reverse bias penalty is totally anti-physics, if we had heat sources that stack multiplicatively then electricity would be practically free.

this is just a side tangent and has nothing to do with the topic.

Edited by LordNothing, 14 June 2018 - 01:49 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Anti-physics? I don't know what you are talking about. When you generate heat, it has to get shunted somewhere and then radiated or conducted away. At any point where you are trying to move heat from point A to B, it will move faster if the difference in thermal energy between those two points is greater. The same applies to fluid pressure deltas, voltage deltas, etc. The heat isn't stacking multiplicatively, the difference between source and sink is just approaching equilibrium. That's what this is playing off of.

At any rate, that's why physics was not the only justification for the mechanic.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 14 June 2018 - 03:25 PM.

[LordNothing]

i was refering to my reverse curve rather than the one you wanted. anti physics = bass akwards from the way it is in the real world. though i thought it would be more intuitive gameplay wise.

anyway i think im starting to come around to your idea. if the higher penalty comes at the top end of the bar you dont stop initial alphas from happening, and the worst penalties are applied while the weapons are all in cooldown anyway, so it might be less effective in suppressing multiple alphas. though it does give the smaller groups and chain fire a little bit more sustainability provided you keep the bar in the bottom half.

however if you have the higher penalties at the bottom of the bar then an alpha becomes much harder to repeat, especially if the battle gets close and personal. you can still keep the dps up with small groups though it will saturate your bar above the 50% point and make alphas very unwise. alpha can be used in an opening volly but is not sustained more than that. anything that makes firing an alpha a high risk playstyle is good, id like to see it not be the default mode of operation for most vomit builds. its also a low hanging fruit option, no ui changes and just a bit of a math tweak.

Edited by LordNothing, 14 June 2018 - 04:23 PM.

[IIXxXII]

Yeonne Greene, on 14 June 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

That said, you can get avoid needing any second indicator at all by simply having heat dissipation rate diminish the closer your heat gauge gets to zero. So you fire your alpha, which takes you to 80%. That takes two seconds to cool down to 65%, four more seconds to get to 50%, and eight additional seconds to get to 35%. This limits the rate at which you can make an alpha that requires 80% of your cap while allowing smaller, cooler bundles to keep up the fire.

Cool. Nice ideas posted in this thread by a few of you. I didn't realize thermodynamics could have rough parallels to velocity in that way(see: above post).

A possibly unintended side effect of your proposal may be players utilizing builds which run hot to take advantage of higher heat dissipation rates found @ redline.

Maybe 10-20 years from now the speed of mechs in this game will be determined by a torque band and energy rating of engines factored by the aerodynamic resistance of mech chassis and actual mass with unallocated tonnage offering higher performance.

Edited by IIXxXII, 14 June 2018 - 04:36 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

IIXxXII, on 14 June 2018 - 04:34 PM, said:

Cool. Nice ideas posted in this thread by a few of you. I didn't realize thermodynamics could have rough parallels to velocity in that way(see: above post).

A possibly unintended side effect of your proposal may be players utilizing builds which run hot to take advantage of higher heat dissipation rates found @ redline.

Maybe 10-20 years from now the speed of mechs in this game will be determined by a torque band and energy rating of engines factored by the aerodynamic resistance of mech chassis and actual mass with unallocated tonnage offering higher performance.

I'm not sure what they would take advantage of at that line that they couldn't take advantage of below it; you don't gain more heat capacity just because you run hot and it's not like the dissipation will be at some insane level up there. More like, as you approach 100%, you actually get the rated dissipation for the number of heatsinks you brought (which, IMHO, should be changed to the full 0.2 per DHS under this system), and we reduce from there as we approach 0%. Done right, we should see maybe dakka boats being able to keep firing UACs on cooldown while near the line, but double taps should put them over.

In case there is any confusion, the dissipation would not be stepped at certain percentage points, it would be governed by an exponential curve. How deep that curve is will be a big discussion.

[LordNothing]

some of the power curves look nice

http://mathonweb.com...functions_4.htm

[Y E O N N E]

You only really need the y=ax^b curve; the physical limits to the number of heatsinks you can bring will cap it combined with the fact that you can't dissipate to below zero will form the end points.