271 replies to this topic

[Tarl Cabot]

Wil McCullough, on 20 March 2019 - 11:13 PM, said:

@tesunie

The problem with following bt too strictly is that its rules are meant to imitate real life. When grognards go all "but in bt", a lot of the time what they're asking for is a real life imitation of a system that imitates real life. Basically a knock-off of a knock-off. That's dumb af because it's a recipe for failure.

Even BT:TT rules do not imitate BT real life second by second, it is done in 10 second intervals (Solaris 2.5sec intervals), simulating what happens in a 10 sec span.

PGI either is using or being inspired/flavored by BT:TT/Solaris Rules/settings. There will those who will not agree how PGI went about it. Even MPBT EGA/Solaris/3025 had issues, even when using 3025 STOCK IS mechs. The MW series themselves may have provided multiplayer ability but at their core they were PVE games.

As for PGI's MWO, players conception of a heat spike is incorrect, in how they believe it is happening. It is the loss of the capacity but a Heat Bar rating that does not reflect that loss of capacity. The moving indicator will always at 100%. It is showing the current capacity, it does not show the original/starting capacity then followed by the loss of said capacity when a ST and/or HS are lost, it does not show a new, major mark down on the Heat Bar to show the new, reduced capacity, ie 75%. In fact the Heat Bar only shows the moving heat marking in percentage, and that still pegs at 100%.




As for percentage lost for 10 HS (integrated, no slotted) vs 15 HS (integrated + slotted)

*****WIth a cXL/LFE engine with 10 teHS + 5 slotted HS, 6 out of 10 HS lost with 40% penalty. The loss HS capacity is removed from the integrated HS, not the slotted
Base 30 + 2*4 eHS + 0.5*5 eslotHS = 30 + 2*4 + 2.50 = 40.5 capacity (prior to loss 52.5 capacity)

40.5/52.5 = 0.7714 or 77.14% of original Heat scale/bar left, losing 22.86% of the heat scale/bar for a mech with total 15 HS contained in the engine.

*****WIth a cXL/LFE engine with only 10 teHS in it, 4 out of 10 HS lost with 40% penalty
Base 30 + 2*6 eHS = 30 + 12 = 42 capacity (prior to loss 50 capacity - DHS/SHS same)

42/50 = 0.84 or 84% if the heat scale/bar actually scaled this max %. Technically the mech lost 16% of its heat scale bar when it lost 40% of the heat sinks in the engine.

******With a cXL/LFE 390 rated engine using SHS
Base 30 + 2*10 eHS + 0.25*5 = 30+20+1.25 = 51.25 capacity
Base 30 + 2*4 eHS + 0.25*5 = 39.25 capacity after ST loss

39.25 / 51.25 = 0.7658 or 76.58% capacity, or 23.42% loss capacity, the difference is in the capacity of the non-integrated HS, whether engine slotted or elsewhere. 0.50 to 0.25

Just as a reminder, the lost capacity originally was coming off the bottom instead of the top. Also none of the previous games, both MW games nor even BT:TT itself accounted, damage-wise, for those extra HS slotted into a 275+ rated engine. It was free, and FASA never altered nor changed their engine crit rules. LFE/cXL/isXL with their extra side slots simply increased the likelihood, the chance, of an engine crit. This is PGI inspiration.

Now doing this with a 20% capacity loss penalty instead of the 40% from the HS equipped in the engine (Percentage penalties are calculated based off HS in the engine, bott slotted/integrated), and using the largest rated engine 400. It can slot 6 HS.
16*0.20 = 3.2. Would this be truncated or rounded up since it could still affect a HS? Rounding up
Base 30 + 2*10 eHS +0.5*6 = 53 capacity
Base 30 + 2*6 eHS + 0.5*6 = 45 capacity after ST loss

45 / 53 = 0.8490 or 84.90%, or only a loss of 15.20% capacity using 20% penalty instead of 26.42% loss capacity using 40% penalty

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 21 March 2019 - 03:11 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

Tarl Cabot, on 21 March 2019 - 01:15 PM, said:

Too much maths.

Thanks. That helps explain things but all the maths needs streamlining to make things clearer. It's going to go over a few heads.

Edit: Spotted a rounding error...

Edited by VonBruinwald, 21 March 2019 - 02:27 PM.

[HammerMaster]

justcallme A S H, on 21 March 2019 - 01:08 PM, said:

Yes he does. Many of us do.

This is how it goes, for the most part.

1. You cite "lore" regularly. You claim you want more "lore" in the game. However in your "citations" about "lore" you are usually wrong and swiftly proven to be so by varying people who actually understand the lore far better than you think you do.

2. You deflect and attempt to change discussion any time fact is brought into a discussion. Usually a discussion that is started by your wildly absurd claims.

3. You essentially make all commentary as if you want PvE - Good news, MW5 is not far away for you.

4. Worst of all - when proven wrong, a regular occurence, you do a Khobai and just disappear from a discussion. Or sometimes you double down and then end up looking pretty silly. What you should do is just say 'yep, I was wrong, i'll think before I post inaccuracies' and exit the discussion with some dignity.

No need for you're chance to jump on my case bandwagon.
I'll reiterate.
GET OFF MY CASE.
Now If I direct a statement to you (Half are ignored) then jump on me.
As far as dignity.
Please.
Text wars.
Now stuff it up your down under.

But lets go down the numbers
1. Swiftly. Ok. Cite them
2. Deflect? Absurd? Ya called by you. I have supporters too.
3. Ok. Probably correct.
4 Not true. YOU believe me to be wrong is different than me actually being wrong. When wrong I have accepted it. You probably didn't read that thread. But whatever.
I have tried meeting in the middle multiple times but you are not on board. I'll bury the hatchet if you want or we can go round and round again.
We done here?

Edited by HammerMaster, 21 March 2019 - 04:53 PM.

[Wil McCullough]

Tarl Cabot, on 21 March 2019 - 01:15 PM, said:

Snip

I know the heat spike reflects a drop in capacity. Issue with the logic is the strange phenomenon of the heat somehow remaining at the same amount with the loss of a st. Logically, the heat will remain in the weapons/jjs or get transferred to the remaining heat sinks and stored there.

On the occasion where you have a hot weapon in your left side (as an example) and lose your left st, you're actually immediately losing a lot of heat. You shouldn't encounter a heat spike at all.

Re:bt, i've always viewed the 10sec turn as just a way to measure a unit of time. Design-wise, it was.made to simulate real time movement for the mechs on the board. That's why i called it an imitation of real life, among other tt mechanics like the increased difficulty of a dice roll when shooting and moving as well as the phase priority for weight classes. The problem of dice based mechanics is that it causes the game to be based on luck rather than skill. That's not good for a "thinking man's shooter".

[Variant1]

Looking at both sides and seeing myself some mechs that have lost a side toros. Id have to say the penalty for losing a side for fusion and cxl should stay BUT pgi should tune the heat penalty down a bit, mech surviving should still be hot but not at a crazy level.

It should still be a penalty for having the ability to survive a blow that would destroy a regular xl mech but the penalty needs to be tonned down a bit.

Also heatsink system needs to be reworked in general.

[Tarl Cabot]

Wil McCullough, on 21 March 2019 - 05:00 PM, said:

I know the heat spike reflects a drop in capacity. Issue with the logic is the strange phenomenon of the heat somehow remaining at the same amount with the loss of a st. Logically, the heat will remain in the weapons/jjs or get transferred to the remaining heat sinks and stored there.

snip

Shielding, which acts in a similar manner to actual HS and their control components is what is being disabled/destroyed with an engine crit, and that heat which is located in the engine does not instantly disappear. Many are taking that when the ST is lost those two engine slots are lost/removed but they really aren't,, ie engine crits. For BT:TT it does not matter if the engine crit happens in a CT with any engine or a combination of crits in the CT and a ST for the bulkier engines.

As for heat being generated, the heat is not simply from the weapon itself but from the power being released, an increase in output from the fusion engine. That is partially why walking/running also generates heat, increased in energy output to operate the myomer bundles, which themselves generate their own heat but also develop higher resistance rate when a mech starts running hot, affecting both walking/running speed and gunnery abilities, to move said weapons onto target.

With this being space magic, at this time this is how PGI is representing what happens with their version of engine crits which represents not just dissipation rate but also capacity. There is no right or wrong in that, unless one wants to discussion the actual percentage itself and how PGI displays the actual visual UI component of it.

https://mwomercs.com...y-an-education/

With the swap from bottom to top appropriate? PGI believes it was, both as an attempt to counter a display bug but to also provide more risk for those riding that red line at the wrong time (about to loss a ST). What is sorta funny is after Oct 2018 with the increased dissipation rate, top/competitive posting players were noting they were dropping HS, replacing the component with other items, weapons primarily....Do not forget all of the players who hit that override and got to town when they think they are about to die, with or without the loss of that ST for the engines affected by that.

What can be argued now though, especially if PGI has no intention on swapping it back, is the penalty percentages. For some, attaching a rider to the penalty percentage change to convert isXL into the current LFE/cXL format when a ST is loss, doing away with the instant ST death penalty while reducing the penalties for the LFE/cXL.

Again, most of the posts are players attempts to rationalize it one way or another, whether or not they are on the same side of the fence. It is still space magic.

[Prototelis]

Tarl Cabot, on 21 March 2019 - 08:02 PM, said:

Shielding, which acts in a similar manner to actual HS and their control components is what is being disabled/destroyed with an engine crit,

Source.

[Wil McCullough]

Yeah i gotta say space magic helps to rationalize everything haha. I did think of some kind of containment breach being the reason for a heat spike. But the thing is if you're kinda cold, the heat spike evwntually dissipates. That doesn't seem possible with destroyed shieding.

[Tesunie]

Prototelis, on 21 March 2019 - 08:16 PM, said:

Source.

Look up BT reactors.

By BT:TT rules, your mech produces extra heat for every critical of damage the engine suffers. Once it's lost three criticals of damage, then the engine turns on automatic safeties and shuts down until repaired. For a single critical, 5 heat is produced from the engine every turn (effectively nullifying 5 single heat sinks). Once two crits are applied to the engine, it produces 10 heat every turn (countering 10 single heat sinks worth of cooling). This is due to the reactor having less shielding, and permitting additional heat into the mech directly (which then the heat sinks have to work at dissipating).

As this is a Battletech related game, it should attempt to follow TT rules, if and when it can. (It's what kinda makes BT what it is.) Of course, with consideration or balance, etc. With that being mentioned, instead of "producing heat", PGI has decided to approach applying the same penalty for engine crits (once a side torso is destroyed, the engine crits in that section are considered "damaged") not as heat being eternally generated (which could stun lock 10 heat standard sink only mechs in lore) but instead as being a reduction in cooling capacity and dropping total allotted heat thresholds. AKA: It's basically doing the same thing, but it's got the potential of being a lot nicer than actually producing 10 heat a turn, which could be even more crippling.

I do not have much issue with how PGI has chosen to implement this feature, and I think it makes for a reasonable mechanic. The exact value of this penalty may be more up for debate in my opinion. I, personally, would rather just see cooling rates take the hit, or if threshold has to take the hit I think I'd like to see it take a little less of one. Basically, I'd rather threshold take a lower hit while cooling takes more of a hit (possibly), or more precisely, I'd rather test the potential of if this might be better. (This would prevent overheat's from side torso unless you really are redlining, while still making it a viable concern. I'm not going to say if it would be better or not, but I wouldn't mind seeing how it worked.)

In the end, I do like the engine damage penalty. I do like incorperating BT:TT rules whenever possible as reasonably as possible, with the realization that not everything can directly translate and some things will have to change for the difference in gaming format.


EX of "when reasonably possible":
Clan UACs are not suppose to have a jam chance. If they didn't, than every IS AC becomes nearly useless. So, Clan UACs need to have a jam chance to balance vs their IS counterparts, as this is a PvP game.
IS UACs are suppose to have a jam chance. If they do jam, they remain jammed for the remainder of the battle until unjammed by a mechanic, and this is presuming that the jam didn't destroy the weapon (I believe that was a chance?). With this game, being a first person shooter PvP, having your IS UACs jam once and be useless for the rest of the match would be insane... and I'm happy that they can unjam during the match. This is a TT mechanic that can not practically fit within a game of this type, so it changed for balance.

[Y E O N N E]

The loss of dissipation is already capturing that engine crit effect, my dude. Don't need a spike, too.

[Wil McCullough]

@tesunie

You can't use being true to lore as the reason for something being in the game the say to exclude another true-to-lore feature because it would be inconvenient. Using lore as a reason.means both should be implemented.

If engine heat spike upon loss of st has to stay in the game because that was how it was in bt, then the uac jam "feature" has to be in the game as well. Together with clan mechs that perform 3x as well as IS mechs, mgs that deal the same damage as ac2s, enforcers always dealing with ac ammo jams and a whole lot of other gobbledygook.

Imagine if mech agility was so bad that you could only twist a maximum of 180 degrees every ten seconds (you can't spread damage in tt because you can only face one side of your mech to the enemy every turn) or the complete removal of poptarting (since you can't perform that tactic in tt) or every weapon has the same 10 sec cooldown.

Imagine a flea walking up and face to face with an atlas before it can fire, shooting a single small laser and destroying it because of a through-armor ct crit.

Lore should.remain in history where it belongs.

[HammerMaster]

Wil McCullough, on 21 March 2019 - 11:43 PM, said:

@tesunie

You can't use being true to lore as the reason for something being in the game the say to exclude another true-to-lore feature because it would be inconvenient. Using lore as a reason.means both should be implemented.

If engine heat spike upon loss of st has to stay in the game because that was how it was in bt, then the uac jam "feature" has to be in the game as well. Together with clan mechs that perform 3x as well as IS mechs, mgs that deal the same damage as ac2s, enforcers always dealing with ac ammo jams and a whole lot of other gobbledygook.

Imagine if mech agility was so bad that you could only twist a maximum of 180 degrees every ten seconds (you can't spread damage in tt because you can only face one side of your mech to the enemy every turn) or the complete removal of poptarting (since you can't perform that tactic in tt) or every weapon has the same 10 sec cooldown.

Imagine a flea walking up and face to face with an atlas before it can fire, shooting a single small laser and destroying it because of a through-armor ct crit.

Lore should.remain in history where it belongs.

I don't know.
Everything you said sounded GREAT until you said history.
I for one. And many others have asked for it to return to what you said.

[Lily from animove]

the thing is, heatsinks get heat transported to them by the fliud and the heat is stored in the heatsinks which then transfer it off the mech. Thats also some logic we can apply, why the heattreshold increases with the heatsinks numbers.

However if a heatsink blows off the heat in it goes away as well, so the current heatlevel would stay. At least, "destroy" would mean it goes so out of function it gets cut off by the heatsystem, doesn't necessarily need to fall off.

So when we have 90% heatlevel and the ST blows up the game should adjust the new heattreshold and fill it with 90% heat again.

[Prototelis]

Tesunie, on 21 March 2019 - 09:02 PM, said:

Look up BT reactors.

lol. So in other words, no source. Nothing in any of the articles describes loss of engine crits/heatsinks as a loss of just "shielding."

[Tesunie]

Prototelis, on 22 March 2019 - 07:49 AM, said:

lol. So in other words, no source. Nothing in any of the articles describes loss of engine crits/heatsinks as a loss of just "shielding."

Well, funny thing is I recall it being on the Wiki in the engine section.
https://www.sarna.ne...i/Fusion_Engine
"Fusion engines usually will only shut down if damaged or if heat is uncontrolled. Unlike popular belief, there is absolutely no risk of a fusion engine accidentally becoming a nuclear weapon. ^[17] There have been a number of cases of fusion engines being "over revved" and exploding with devastating force, but this is more akin to a boiler explosion than a true nuclear explosion. More often a destroyed engine will be punctured by weapons fire. Because the plasma is held in a vacuum chamber (to isolate the superheated plasma from the cold walls of the reactor; contact with the walls would super-chill the plasma below fusion temperatures), a punctured reactor can suck in air where the air is superheated. Normal thermal expansion of the air causes the air to burst out in a brilliant lightshow often mistaken for a "nuclear explosion". This thermal expansion damages anything within 90 meters of the destroyed 'Mech.
Such dramatic failures are rare, though. It is difficult to sustain the fusion reaction and very easy to shut down. Safety systems or damage to containment coils will almost always shut down the engine before such an explosion occurs. The massive shielding of the engine (in the case of standard fusion engines, this is a tungsten carbide shell that accounts for over 2/3 of the weight of the engine) usually buys the safety systems the milliseconds needed to shutdown the engine when severe damage is inflicted."

AKA: 2/3 of your engine's weight is "super cooled" shielding. To make something super cooled, that heat has to go somewhere, so it's directed to your heatsinks (which are built into your reactors shielding as well). As your reactor is used, it warms up and that heat is transferred to the shielding, which then transfers outs to the heatsinks. Don't know about you, but suddenly finding a thin spot in a heat shielding device (much like the heat shielding tiles on a shuttle, if you recall what happened there) will bleed more heat through that area, resulting in additional heat in the super structure of the mech.

MW:O has decided to interpret this damage to the engine's shielding as "heat sink damage", which essentially results in the same basic concept. Rather than have your engine producing heat, PGI just has a percentage of heat sinks "stop working". In actuality, those heat sinks are most likely committing themselves to containing the excess heat spilling out from your nearly breached reactor.

So, yes. There are sources (and some I can't so easily dig up, such as tech manuals for BT). Battletech Wiki is a nice site to explore.

[Tesunie]

Y E O N N E, on 21 March 2019 - 10:45 PM, said:

The loss of dissipation is already capturing that engine crit effect, my dude. Don't need a spike, too.

I'm going to agree that I'd rather not have a heat spike at all. With that said, considering source materials and the TT game... I wont tell you how many times I had planned my mech's heat production, just for an engine crit to sneak in and wreck my day, shutting down my mech from the unexpected spike.

So, even by lore and source materials, it's not too unusual to have the heat spike in addition to the dissipation loss. (Now, recall that I agree that I'd rather not have the sudden heat spike on a side torso loss in this game.) What if the "heat spike" happened over a period of time, rather than instantly? Say, over 3 seconds you'd lose the top threshold. Still would penalize people who have redlined, but you might still be able to slink into cover before your heat spike shuts you down? A possible middle ground?

[Lily from animove]

That description is strange? it's not the vacuum that keeps the plasma from touching the walls, it is a magnetic field that does that. And it's not really a vacuum, it's just superthin plasma in that container so it's nearly like a vacuum. otherwise that plasma would just collide with other stuff and cooldown as well or cause unwanted reactions.

heatspinking over 3 seconds? dunno sounds unbalanced. An mech with enough heatsinks will be able to just counter that with it's heatsinks. but all the poor lights will just get issues, as if they don't already have enough. Then a piranha with just MG's doesn't care as he never produced heat to begin with. So dunno if thats "fair" or "balanced".

[Tesunie]

Wil McCullough, on 21 March 2019 - 11:43 PM, said:

@tesunie

You can't use being true to lore as the reason for something being in the game the say to exclude another true-to-lore feature because it would be inconvenient. Using lore as a reason.means both should be implemented.

If engine heat spike upon loss of st has to stay in the game because that was how it was in bt, then the uac jam "feature" has to be in the game as well. Together with clan mechs that perform 3x as well as IS mechs, mgs that deal the same damage as ac2s, enforcers always dealing with ac ammo jams and a whole lot of other gobbledygook.

Imagine if mech agility was so bad that you could only twist a maximum of 180 degrees every ten seconds (you can't spread damage in tt because you can only face one side of your mech to the enemy every turn) or the complete removal of poptarting (since you can't perform that tactic in tt) or every weapon has the same 10 sec cooldown.

Imagine a flea walking up and face to face with an atlas before it can fire, shooting a single small laser and destroying it because of a through-armor ct crit.

Lore should.remain in history where it belongs.

As I stated before, lore and TT should be referenced to, not adhered to strictly. Some things need to adjust to match the game format on hand. In TT, if one mech's UAC jammed, than you typically still had 3+ other mechs to control. Here, you control one mech, and if something "magically stops working", it's a large impact. Thus, AC jam as by lore is not viable here.

Following lore is what gives us a general guideline to work with. It's why we don't have just a single HP pool, and instead have the different components of a mech, each with their own health. If we tossed all lore out the window, than this isn't going to be a BT game, but instead just another shooter game that involves mecha, with a BT skin for looks only.

I would also like to comment that currently, and in part for balance and game engine, there are components on your mech that can take crits, but the crits do not apply on them. Engines (with sole exception of side torso lose) are one of those pieces, as well as the Gyro, any actuator, hands... As I've mentioned before, we should reference lore but we also need to determine what TT game mechanics (multi-mechs controlled by a single player in a turn based, dice rolling strategy game) wont fairly work in a video game format (single mech controlled by a player in a faster paced, first person shooter styled game).

For more on the heat spike, read my comment above. There are many ways it can be interpreted from TT. Does it cause a heat spike in TT? Does it just vent heat? Is it "heat sink damage" only (guess what helps comprise the engine shielding)? I mean, between the systems, there are plenty of room to interpret what might exactly be going on. TT doesn't say "this is exactly how those events are transpiring". It's just a "these are the effects it has in game" and leaves the exact why of the mechanic up to several potential view points.

PS: On "rotating damage" in TT, I would also mention that in TT each weapon has a chance to hit any location (with exclusion to front or back) on a target, regardless of it's geometry, based upon by a dice roll. This could be considered many things, such as targeting computers, movement, "twisting to roll damage around", or just natural spread of weapons when fired from multiple locations on the mech.

[Tesunie]

Lily from animove, on 22 March 2019 - 08:44 AM, said:

That description is strange? it's not the vacuum that keeps the plasma from touching the walls, it is a magnetic field that does that. And it's not really a vacuum, it's just superthin plasma in that container so it's nearly like a vacuum. otherwise that plasma would just collide with other stuff and cooldown as well or cause unwanted reactions.

heatspinking over 3 seconds? dunno sounds unbalanced. An mech with enough heatsinks will be able to just counter that with it's heatsinks. but all the poor lights will just get issues, as if they don't already have enough. Then a piranha with just MG's doesn't care as he never produced heat to begin with. So dunno if thats "fair" or "balanced".

"Vacuum" can be viewed as still being contained in a magnetic bubble, with only plasma within the camber. Would still be a correct viewing. Then the super cooled sides of the reactor walls will dissipate the reaction if the magnetic bubble fails.

Was merely a possible suggestion. Rather than a single huge spike (as threshold is lost instantly), it could be a slow "bleed" of threshold instead just as a concept (with everything else remaining as is in game). Might give enough time to get into cover, or even hit Override, while still maybe remaining as an issue for those who run their heat on the line... ? Then again, I'm kinda in agreement that I'm not overly impressed with the heat spike and would rather see only cooling being hit. As mentioned above, there are many ways to interpret the rules of TT into this style of game format, with the aforementioned "not everything will be able to fit".

[Y E O N N E]

Tesunie, on 22 March 2019 - 08:19 AM, said:

I'm going to agree that I'd rather not have a heat spike at all. With that said, considering source materials and the TT game... I wont tell you how many times I had planned my mech's heat production, just for an engine crit to sneak in and wreck my day, shutting down my mech from the unexpected spike.

Heat is counted at the end of the turn; you lost an engine crit at some point before it was time to count the heat but still did all your heat producing actions. That's not a spike, that's equivalent to continuing to alpha strike after losing an LFE ST in MWO.