30 replies to this topic

[nanashi0110]

Not sure if this topic is in the right section, but here are my thoughts and opinions.
(JP to EN machine translation)

How I feel about playing SIGMA
・I think it's strong. But not fun.
・War horns with multiple sounds are great. I want more of them.
・The bolt-ons are simple and cool. But I want more of them...

What I want
∙ Distribute 30~35% of duration bonus to both side torsos, so that the So8 bonus will be the current number.

∙ I would like to see JJ related skills and stability.

[1453 R]

Significant burn time reduction in the torsos, rather than the So8, is basically never going to happen. People aren't generally aware of it because the 'Mech's hardpoints are all low, but the Mad Dog can stack up a silly number of energy hardpoints if you have the right ones. Revenant CT has two EN hardpoints, each arm gets three more - with Sigma side torsos you could be applying those burntime reductions to 10 lasers. Sure, they're all crotch height or lower and that sucks, but if people think 36 damage at ~.15s burntime is uncool, a 100+ laser damage fusilade with even just ~30% reduced burn time would necessitate swift nerfing. Even a semi-saner 72 damage burn would be megaborked with 30% reduced burn time.

I imagine this is why Sigma has jump jets, actually. So that the Legend pods/'Mech are worth owning even for players who don't want the Meme Beams - you can spend the money to get jump capability for your Mad Doge, though the 1E/2JJ torsos won't be terribly popular for non-Meme Beam builds, I imagine.

[Ttly]

0.1s 36 damage burn from 2HLL real money only vehicle that is Sigma? Totally fine!
0.6s 36 damage burn from 2BLC from the likes of Trebuchet-5J or Kintaro-20? Well that should be nerfed to 0.7s!
I mean there was some sort of acknowledgement on how much damage such short of a laser burn should be months ago there, but it just went missing here.

Anyway, it's just really annoying having Sigmas running around (especially when played by people that can actually aim that 0.1s burn) if you're playing a light or medium. Enjoy getting legged like never before.

Edited by Ttly, 23 March 2025 - 01:45 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Cooldown quirk or possibly a damage quirk are being considered. I think a damage quirk would be the best since the duration quirk is forcing it to do jj pokes so why not make the poke meaningful instead of requiring even more exposure via cooldown.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Ttly, on 23 March 2025 - 01:23 PM, said:

0.1s 36 damage burn from 2HLL real money only vehicle that is Sigma? Totally fine!
0.6s 36 damage burn from 2BLC from the likes of Trebuchet-5J or Kintaro-20? Well that should be nerfed to 0.7s!
I mean there was some sort of acknowledgement on how much damage such short of a laser burn should be months ago there, but it just went missing here.

Anyway, it's just really annoying having Sigmas running around (especially when played by people that can actually aim that 0.1s burn) if you're playing a light or medium. Enjoy getting legged like never before.

I mean the difference between them is still significant. 0.5s is very different from 0.1s, still, the cHLL cooldown and lack of ERMLs support definitely keeps the dangers of the Sigma at bay compared to the Treb/Kintaro.

I don't think the Sigma is OP, it's definitely potent but that lack of DPS really holds it back in QP where burst DPS is pretty essential.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 23 March 2025 - 02:41 PM.

[Lincoln Cross]

I still think the jump jets would have been better in the legs so that the other variants can keep its same setup, but with the added bonus of being jump capable.

[GreyNovember]

The ones I've come across have all been terrifying to approach 1v1 in a fair fight. Unless you ambush it up close, it's going to pick you apart fairly consistently.

Haven't fought one in a much heavier chassis, but I imagine it'd still be unpleasant to be plinked with hitscan 30~ damage over and over in a precise location, while you have similar damage with projectiles or slightly more with much longer burn times, while moving slower.

Treating them with the same level of caution I give APGauss Adders.

[Ttly]

GreyNovember, on 23 March 2025 - 07:22 PM, said:

The ones I've come across have all been terrifying to approach 1v1 in a fair fight. Unless you ambush it up close, it's going to pick you apart fairly consistently.

Haven't fought one in a much heavier chassis, but I imagine it'd still be unpleasant to be plinked with hitscan 30~ damage over and over in a precise location, while you have similar damage with projectiles or slightly more with much longer burn times, while moving slower.

Treating them with the same level of caution I give APGauss Adders.

APG Warthogs don't have 500m worth of range and JJs.
Speaking of which, I still think it sucked that they nerfed its armor just because of APGs as it also nerfed (H)MG Warthogs.
That's what running out of relevant (to its supposed "best" build) quirks to nerf on a variant gets you I guess.

Edited by Ttly, 24 March 2025 - 02:51 AM.

[GreyNovember]

I was referring more to do with how they have similar alpha and precision, and thus, threat to a light mech.

I do not typically run the slower chassis very often, so they're usually more distracted trying to ping people while zoomed in, and can be snuck up on easier from behind.

[1453 R]

People really are discounting how much the cooldown on the HLL limits the 'Mech. You've got a ~5.7s cycle time on the guns unless you invest in Cooldown nodes, which don't do a lot to patch it. That super low cycle time means most targets get lots of time to use their vastly superior DPS to pound Sigma into a heap of slag before it can finish picking components off. yes, much smaller/lighter 'Mechs can have trouble matching up against the thing, but that's no different than any other 'Mech having a nemesis. the existence of the APG Warthog didn't eliminate light 'Mechs from the game, any more than the Piranha eliminated assault 'Mechs.

A Sigma able to poke and shoot fairly freely while its aggressive teammates hold enemy focus and attention, and/or a Sigma able to pop its shots off and then peel away to turn over the engagement to a friendly? Super dangerous. A Sigma forced to contend with a 'Mech with three times its DPS without any aid or assistance? Super dead unless the Sigma gets lucky or the OpFor flinches and panics.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 24 March 2025 - 06:51 AM, said:

People really are discounting how much the cooldown on the HLL limits the 'Mech. You've got a ~5.7s cycle time on the guns unless you invest in Cooldown nodes, which don't do a lot to patch it.

It's also worth noting that the Sigma is a little extra punished because of how the game calculates heat for lasers. Apparently if the duration of a laser is less than the time span of a tick, you still get heat as though the laser fired that entire tick. For most lasers this isn't a problem because it results in like 0.xxxx heat which is negligible, but with x-pulse and Sigma, this is way more pronounced and the amount of heat depends on how many duration nodes you run. For example without duration nodes, cHLLs generate 8% more heat than they should, but with full duration nodes you get 31% more heat. Or fun ones like cLPL which generates 17% more heat without duration nodes, 5% more with 3 duration nodes, and a massive 43% more with full duration nodes.

Keep in mind training grounds has the tick rate/fps of your own machine so you won't see this behavior unless you limit your FPS to what the servers use which is 30.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 24 March 2025 - 07:01 AM.

[1453 R]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 24 March 2025 - 06:59 AM, said:

It's also worth noting that the Sigma is a little extra punished because of how the game calculates heat. Apparently if the duration of a laser is less than the time span of a tick, you still get heat as though the laser fired that entire tick. For most lasers this isn't a problem because it results in like 0.xxxx heat which is negligible, but with x-pulse and Sigma, this is way more pronounced and the amount of heat depends on how many duration nodes you run. For example without duration nodes, cHLLs generate 8% more heat than they should, but with full duration nodes you get 31% more heat. Or fun ones like cLPL which generates 17% more heat without duration nodes, 5% more with 3 duration nodes, and a massive 43% more with full duration nodes.

I was unaware of that. Huh. That explains some stuff. I ended up configuring my Sigma with enough heat sinks and Heat Gen nodes to run largely-ish heat neutral, but I had to work way harder for it than it felt like I should with two HLL. Sounds like maybe I should knock off the cooldown nodes on my Sigma, since this sounds like the sort of baked-into-the-engine thing that stands no chance of being fixed. Is there any way of knowing/calculating this issue if one doesn't have access to the source code or a convenient Cauldron member?

[Ttly]

1453 R, on 24 March 2025 - 07:04 AM, said:

I was unaware of that. Huh. That explains some stuff. I ended up configuring my Sigma with enough heat sinks and Heat Gen nodes to run largely-ish heat neutral, but I had to work way harder for it than it felt like I should with two HLL. Sounds like maybe I should knock off the cooldown nodes on my Sigma, since this sounds like the sort of baked-into-the-engine thing that stands no chance of being fixed. Is there any way of knowing/calculating this issue if one doesn't have access to the source code or a convenient Cauldron member?

Well they can just work around it with heat quirks if they really wanted to, I mean it's only really a bug of "more heat than intended".

[Quicksilver Aberration]

(CEILING(tickRate x duration) * 100 /(tickRate x duration)) - 100 = percentage of extra heat you'll get.

So for example cHLL with full duration nodes on the Sigma has a duration of 0.1015s and the servers currently have a tick rate of 30 per second, so:

(CEILING(30 x 0.1015) * 100 / (30 x 0.1015)) - 100
 
(CEILING(3.045) * 100 / (3.045)) - 100
(4 * 100 / 3.045) - 100
131.36288998 - 100
31.36288998% more heat

Ttly, on 24 March 2025 - 07:32 AM, said:

Well they can just work around it with heat quirks if they really wanted to, I mean it's only really a bug of "more heat than intended".

Yeah, but the amount of heat depends on what skills and weapons you are using because not all lasers will have the heat issues. cERLL suffer only 8-12% heat with the variety of duration nodes vs the more varying cLPL (5-43%) and cHLL (8-31%).

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 24 March 2025 - 07:46 AM.

[1453 R]

Ttly, on 24 March 2025 - 07:32 AM, said:

Well they can just work around it with heat quirks if they really wanted to, I mean it's only really a bug of "more heat than intended".

This is one of those situations that honestly kinda proves why laser burn times this short has never been a thing in MWO's history. The system simply isn't designed for lasers to work this way, the same way the system has trouble with full-M.A.S.C. Fire Moth. Sigma is pushing boundaries that weren't meant to be pushed. Short of rebuilding the systems those boundaries work off of, there's no good way to fix it. "The Solution", such as it is, is to do what I did - the player invests in enough cooling to compensate for the increased heat burden and fixes the systemic problem in the MechLab. That's the price one pays for system-straining levels of burn reduction.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

It's a bit weird too considering partial frame damage is apparently respected, but heat and cooldown aren't. That said, discrete math is fun and like 1453R said, for MWO's lifespan this wasn't an issue so what amounts to a rounding error was probably never a big priority to fix. It wasn't until X-Pulse were added that it became more of an issue (it's just harder to tell with X-Pulse compared to the Sigma).

[1453 R]

I would honestly not be shocked to see Sigma's burn time reduction come down within the next few months. A 200ms or even 300ms burn is still a hell of a thing given the normal HLL thing of "You can watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in the time it takes for an HLL to finish burning." That would make the thing much less oppressive against smaller 'Mechs as well, though then it'd need something else to compensate for the fact that The Schtick it was designed to do is dramatically weaker. Not weak, but .3s burntime on HLL isn't the same level of Wow Factor that .1s burntime is. And the longer burn would likely eliminate much of this janky Rounding Error Heat issue without having to futz with the Black Box'd sections of the game code.

[Asylum Choir]

GreyNovember, on 23 March 2025 - 07:22 PM, said:

The ones I've come across have all been terrifying to approach 1v1 in a fair fight. Unless you ambush it up close, it's going to pick you apart fairly consistently.

Haven't fought one in a much heavier chassis, but I imagine it'd still be unpleasant to be plinked with hitscan 30~ damage over and over in a precise location, while you have similar damage with projectiles or slightly more with much longer burn times, while moving slower.

Treating them with the same level of caution I give APGauss Adders.

I've faced them 1v1, I ran a warhammer IIc with a 96pt alpha. Their 36pt is great but I'm not sure it can compete with nearly 100 alpha every 3 secs or so...I have a sigma, enjoy it a lot but limitations are glaring when pushed....

[GreyNovember]

Asylum Choir, on 24 March 2025 - 12:22 PM, said:

I've faced them 1v1, I ran a warhammer IIc with a 96pt alpha. Their 36pt is great but I'm not sure it can compete with nearly 100 alpha every 3 secs or so...I have a sigma, enjoy it a lot but limitations are glaring when pushed....

I'll take your word for the comparison.

Though those alpha numbers are always something I take with a grain of salt.

You're usually not doing all 96 instantly, in one location, with no spread.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

GreyNovember, on 24 March 2025 - 01:00 PM, said:

You're usually not doing all 96 instantly, in one location, with no spread.

No but it can definitely make you more cautious when instead of just a single torso being red, all your torso sections are red. Suddenly your ability to shield could be removed just from how much damage you took. Concentrated damage is powerful, but I think people sometimes also underestimate damage that is spread and view it as wasted damage.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 24 March 2025 - 01:39 PM.