46 replies to this topic

[VeeOt Dragon]

you do get an indicator in the mechlab when you have enough weapons in the same group to trigger Ghost heat just wish it told you what weapons were doing it (more something for new players since i have been playing long enough to know what weapon i put to many of). to tell the truth i don't mind Ghost heat. oh there are some that i wonder why (namely MRM-40 having a limit of 1 but then again there are only a few mechs that can realistically carry two with enough ammo to run it) but for the most part they all make enough sense that it doesn't bother me. hell some like the binaries (after HSL fix) are not really that good at the max. i find 2 BLC seem to be the best balance of damage and heat, 3 just gets to toasty to quick.

so yeah for me it feels like Ghost heat is there to keep obnoxious weapon bloat in check. combining some weapons makes sense as well *** the whole ER PPC/Gauss was worse than the blue laser fest we have right now.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

VeeOt Dragon, on 24 October 2023 - 03:25 PM, said:

you do get an indicator in the mechlab when you have enough weapons in the same group to trigger Ghost heat

I know but imo that is below the minimum of what should have happened when they refreshed the UI (because I believe ghost heat was introduced with the old UI but I could be misremembering).

[VeeOt Dragon]

oh i agree with you. i think you should be able to click on that indicator and it tell you not only what weapons are triggering the ghost heat but also how much extra heat you would incur by firing them all together.

[Widowmaker1981]

The point of ghost heat is a way to nerf stacks of identical weapons while leaving smaller numbers of the weapons still viable.

6xPPC would be more dangerous than any currently possible PPFLD setup - i run a 2xAC10 + 2xHPPC Corsair for 50 PPFLD and its decent. 6 PPCs is ~6 tons lighter, 4 slots smaller and 10 more dmg.

You could do it in other ways (energy draw, lower heat cap) but they have their own downsides.

[Curccu]

Widowmaker1981, on 25 October 2023 - 01:33 AM, said:

6xPPC would be more dangerous than any currently possible PPFLD setup - i run a 2xAC10 + 2xHPPC Corsair for 50 PPFLD and its decent. 6 PPCs is ~6 tons lighter, 4 slots smaller and 10 more dmg.

Sustained DPS is abysmal and max DPS isn't anything special, your corsair (I'm assuming Broadside) has twice better sustained DPS and about same max DPS as Meanbaby which I'm using as example because it has pretty good PPC quirks and max tonnage, If you go for stalker sustained DPS is going to be even lower around 3rd what your corsair has.

[Widowmaker1981]

Curccu, on 25 October 2023 - 03:53 AM, said:

Sustained DPS is abysmal and max DPS isn't anything special, your corsair (I'm assuming Broadside) has twice better sustained DPS and about same max DPS as Meanbaby which I'm using as example because it has pretty good PPC quirks and max tonnage, If you go for stalker sustained DPS is going to be even lower around 3rd what your corsair has.

No, 7A (the one with the good mounts..)

Its the 60 in one place thats the issue being prevented, sustained DPS isnt the point of the build.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Widowmaker1981, on 25 October 2023 - 05:10 AM, said:

No, 7A (the one with the good mounts..)

Its the 60 in one place thats the issue being prevented, sustained DPS isnt the point of the build.

It might not be the point, but you need some sustained DPS to beat fast brawl pushes, something Gauss/PPC builds had plenty of. 4 HPPCs is probably the better option just because they are slightly more heat efficient and you don't really need the fast cooldown. Plus on a Stalker, all of them can be high mounted at that point. That said 2 Gauss/2 HPPC blows it out of the water as a small trade off for not being able snap fire with half your weapons. Same alpha more than twice the DPS.

The 6 PPC was a troll build, it might be less so now because of all the dissipation increases and quirks over the years (plus LFE), but back then 4 PPCs was the more realistic build. Which kind of hints at just how much power creep we've had but also how much heat can actually reign in these builds. Remember when we only had single heat sinks and the only range builds we ever saw were the Gaussapult?

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 25 October 2023 - 07:58 AM.

[RickySpanish]

If ghost heat limits got removed, the amount of crying would dwarf any other powercreep we have seen to date. All those ERLL / BL / HAG snipers would immediately switch to 'lower' damage PPFLD and utterly decimate the poor situational awareness 'Let's rush everything' ' / 'hide in the hole' extreme play styles we see now. Alphas are theoretically high at the moment, but the damage is still distributed over time. It's perfectly possible to avoid the 'alpha' of a HAG or BL build landing in one place, or at all. Removing ghost heat would allow chunks of damage to hit exactly the intended location, which would be on most players because they simply don't use cover effectively.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Ghost heat was a crutch solution to high alphas. They picked a certain threshold to limit weapons to. What they should have done is either limited heat capacity so you'd blow up from high alphas or shutdown or made heat scalable depending on how many weapons you fired at once (e.g., 1 laser, 5 heat; 2 lasers, 11 heat; 3 lasers 19 heat), instead of after only x of a kind which is never exposed in the UI. At least an increasing scale is a consistent behavior. But the better approach is probably lower heat threshold, high dissipation for DPS over alpha. Adjust heat and cooldown times as well (and don't be afraid to break from lore more). For a long time, there was absolutely no mention or warning of ghost heat in the UI. Main problem now is the people balancing the game want high alphas so they can rip their opponents to shreds in short order, because that's more fun than slowly chipping away at enemies. Non-coincidently, they mostly pilot assault mechs. But they are probably also the ones left spending money on the game so what can you do.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

TheCaptainJZ, on 26 October 2023 - 09:22 AM, said:

Main problem now is the people balancing the game want high alphas so they can rip their opponents to shreds in short order, because that's more fun than slowly chipping away at enemies.

My main quibble with that is this. Chipping away at enemies is how you open the door for just noob rushing at people because brawling has the best DPS and if high damage (whether it be through alpha, dakka, burst, whatever) is not a threat well that's all that will be played. This is exactly what played out in closed beta when small laser hunchbacks and small laser jenners were the meta. The only saving grace was Gauss was a low heat long range weapon so people actually used it.

I'm not saying where we are it is better because it isn't. The contrast in armor/structure quirks but also the high dissipation and slightly high capacity has created an arms race of sorts that probably should've been peeled back. Part of the problem is that's also really the only two levers that are available to pull as well. The game doesn't really have much in the way of utility that matters or doesn't just increase c-bill upkeep (strikes, cool shots, and UAVs) which is where on of the problems lie. We don't have legitimate artillery that can be used for area denial or creating openings for approach like grenades can in other games (there is artillery, but it doesn't allow you to necessarily get around cover which is one of the advantages of grenades in other games). The only wallhack radar that can make ground bound lights more functional for scouting is seismic and is pretty limited. We don't have weapons that can make targets vulnerable for a period outside of NARC which lacks any sort of good counter-play and only works for missiles, not to mention it isn't really limited to select mechs.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 26 October 2023 - 09:39 AM.

[LordNothing]

Widowmaker1981, on 25 October 2023 - 01:33 AM, said:

The point of ghost heat is a way to nerf stacks of identical weapons while leaving smaller numbers of the weapons still viable.

6xPPC would be more dangerous than any currently possible PPFLD setup - i run a 2xAC10 + 2xHPPC Corsair for 50 PPFLD and its decent. 6 PPCs is ~6 tons lighter, 4 slots smaller and 10 more dmg.

You could do it in other ways (energy draw, lower heat cap) but they have their own downsides.

now people just have stacks of range/velocity compatible weapons for huge alpha and no penalty. the gh groups are arbitrary dont make sense and still let you do higher alphas from mixed weapons without penalty than you would have been able to do just boating the big weapons.

i wouldn't mind doing away with the arbitrary gh groups and do a damage output over time computation to determine penalties. just borrow the dh/dt gauge from mw2 and apply penalties based on how full that gauge is when you pull the trigger. then every weapon can have a penalty multiplier. gauss would have an aggressive multiplier so you have to limit how many energy weapons you fire with it. the other thing i don't like about gh is the 0.5 second cutoff that's easy to macro around (or multiple groups in chain fire). penalty reset instead happens when the gauge zeroes out.

or a better way to get rid of boating meta is to actively buff mixed builds. essentially have different ghost mechanics for each weapon system. ghost spread for missiles, ghost heat for energy weapons, recoil for ballistics. you can boat for a penalty or you can mix for lesser penalties for the same alpha. then it would pay off to be able to manage 3 or more different weapon groups rather than the easy mode one click adventure game crowd. doing things the hard way should pay off.

energy draw was stupid for every weapon with one exception, it does kind of make sense for gauss rifles (ghost charge).

Edited by LordNothing, 26 October 2023 - 10:21 PM.

[LordNothing]

the check engine light, on 24 October 2023 - 02:35 PM, said:

"No HSL limits" would not result in ballistic dominance, unless you count Gauss Charge limit.

I'm beginning to see the point of the one guy's tiff about Tiy0s livetesting a "no charge limit" thing and feewing vewy bad about it in light of HAGs lately. No-confidencing anything he had a hand in now.

would rather have a ghost charge mechanic. you can have the alpha but might be charging it for a good second and a half. then why not just make it a ghost cd instead and get rid of charge. one gauss rifle cycles pretty quick, two cycle slower hurting your dps.

of course id also have an arming mechanic where its really easy to crit out a charged gauss than a discharged one. you can keep your guns armed if you want but it makes them volatile when critted (perhaps even drawing crit so any crit on a section with a charged rifle goes straight to the gauss with a component damage multiplier). you can opt to charge your rifles manually or have it charge as part of cd. a visual effect would indicate what the state of the rifle is, so you can look for and shoot out pre-charged rifles.

Edited by LordNothing, 26 October 2023 - 10:46 PM.

[KursedVixen]

hag ghost heat is kinda dumb considering you can't shoot more than 2 at a time.

i tried 2 40's and it runs hot

now 30's are gonna be super hot.

Edited by KursedVixen, 27 October 2023 - 12:32 PM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

KursedVixen, on 26 October 2023 - 10:50 PM, said:

hag ghost heat is kinda dumb considering you can't shoot more than 2 at a time.

Do you really not know how this works, after all this time?

https://mwo.nav-alph...pment/ghostheat

[Curccu]

KursedVixen, on 26 October 2023 - 10:50 PM, said:

hag ghost heat is kinda dumb considering you can't shoot more than 2 at a time.

i tried 2 40's and it runs hot

now 30's are gonna be super hot.

Ghost heat and max gauss charge has nothing to with each others.
And it wouldn't be OP if you could shoot 3xHAG30 with gauzzilla, oh only 90 damage in one burst.

2xHAG40 is 30,8 heat which leads to ~2,6 Damage Per Heat which is better than any every weapon in the game excluding IS standard small laser.

30's are gonna be super hot why? How? 3 DPH value is not hot.

Edited by Curccu, 26 October 2023 - 11:51 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Curccu, on 26 October 2023 - 11:48 PM, said:

Ghost heat and max gauss charge has nothing to with each others.

Oh they do, one is a hard llmit, the other is a soft limit. My guess is the only reason gauss doesn't have ghost heat is because they didn't like the idea of giving a no heat weapon spooky heat originally (because the percentage would have to be crazy). Then they went and gave it spooky heat anyway when the Kodiak was the best assault.

Part of me wonders what the game would be like if they had just given Gauss heat (like somewhere between the HAG20 and HAG30) and maybe added ghost heat for past 2 what would have happened to the meta back in the day.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 October 2023 - 07:18 AM.

[pbiggz]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 27 October 2023 - 07:16 AM, said:

Oh they do, one is a hard llmit, the other is a soft limit. My guess is the only reason gauss doesn't have ghost heat is because they didn't like the idea of giving a no heat weapon spooky heat originally (because the percentage would have to be crazy). Then they went and gave it spooky heat anyway when the Kodiak was the best assault.

Part of me wonders what the game would be like if they had just given Gauss heat (like somewhere between the HAG20 and HAG30) and maybe added ghost heat for past 2 what would have happened to the meta back in the day.

Or if they just made gauss rifles more fragile to run/more prone to explode and nerfed their recycle rate instead of doing a dumb charge mechanic.

A lot of "fixes", ghost heat included, are manifestly bandaids over **** Paul either didnt understand how to fix, or didnt care to (most likely the latter, for all his faults Paul wasn't actually stupid, just, shall we say, not highly invested).

[Quicksilver Aberration]

pbiggz, on 27 October 2023 - 09:18 AM, said:

Or if they just made gauss rifles more fragile to run/more prone to explode and nerfed their recycle rate instead of doing a dumb charge mechanic.

The fragile stuff happened well before the charge mechanic. I think it happened before we even got HSR and it was always a dumb bandaid. They also tried the recycle rate piece and people just stopped using them.

TBF though, the charge mechanic wasn't actually a bad thing. I like interesting firing mechanics and that was one that changed how you could use the weapon in a somewhat intangible way without removing its usefulness.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 October 2023 - 09:37 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Ghost heat is a very gamey mechanic, but I think it does a lot for the game balance. For example the Blazers releasing with bugged ghost heat caused a big balance issue, and the old 4 cUAC10 builds were a menace that got fixed by a simple change to the GH limit. Increasing the IS LL GH group to 3 was a huge buff and so forth.

We don't have an alternative right now, and I think in general it's an acceptable tool for the job.

Edited by Sjorpha, 27 October 2023 - 09:49 AM.

[An6ryMan69]

Ghost heat is there to explode me when everything else is going right!