150 replies to this topic

[Asatruer]

All the extra quotes in one place just to make the thread of conversation obvious

RAM, on 31 October 2012 - 12:24 AM, said:

False – Battletech has always had rate of fire. PGI did not ‘invent’ anything.

Asatruer, on 31 October 2012 - 12:29 AM, said:

You have made that claim before, but were not able to back it up then either. Please, demonstrate where in core BattleTech rules can a weapon other than an UAC be fired more than once per turn. If you can, I would love to be able to cite it and use it next time I play BattleTech.

Though I know for a fact that last time I played back in the early 90s, no such thing was possible, thus easily disproving your, "always had" claim.

RAM, on 01 November 2012 - 11:55 PM, said:

Solaris – learn it, live it, love it. But then, ignorance is bliss I suppose.

Did Solaris VII: The Game World come before BattleTech? No, therefore BattleTech has not always had RoF rules.
Is Solaris VII: The Game World part of the main BattleTech rules set? No, Solaris VII was a stand-alone game that used similar rules to BattleTech.
Are these mech dueling rules in Total Warfare, or Tactical Operations? If not, how can you consider them to be part of "core BattleTech" or "Classic BattleTech"?
So, BattleTech has in-fact not always had these RoF rules you claim it has always had, and BattleTech does not currently have these RoF rules you claim it has always had.

Solaris IV has these RoF rules, not BattleTech, and I suspect that Solaris VII's arena mech dueling rules have not been in-print since the `90s. Technical Readout: 3055 Upgrade has the old Solaris VII mechs, but as far as I can tell with a limited internet search, lacks the Solaris VII rules.

Since I have no desire to re-invent the wheel, I will just use this quote to help explain what is wrong with Solaris rules.

MustrumRidcully, on 31 October 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

Solaris VIII rules are not classic Battletech, they present their ruleset. They also have nothing to do with the MW:O stats. And they are also breaking balance assumptions from the original Battletech Board Game. Unfortunately, most of the threads and posts discussing this have been gone to the Closed Beta Archives. But they present similar problems as M:WO did.
For example, the table top suggests that in one turn, PPC can deal 10 damage and causes 10 heat over 10 seconds, and Medium Lasers deal 5 damage and 3 heat over 10 seconds. Solaris rules effectively double the output of a Medium Laser over 10 seconds. So suddenly, the Medium Laser becomes even better. The PPC only advantage is that it deals more single-shot damage to one target location, but damn it, it's 7 times heavier and produces twices the heat of the medium laser over 10 seconds. Is that really worth the advantage range and target-location damage? What's so different about Solaris that these two advantages are worth enough that you can cut away the weapon's damage per turn advantage?

Sounds just like the same sort of weapon imbalances we are seeing here in MW:O


When it comes down to it here is the most important question:
Is MechWarrior: Online a mech arena dueling game, or is it a mech tactical warfare game?
The answer to that question should lead us in the direction of which rules-set should be the one we are looking at for how to get some balance in this game.

[Volthorne]

MustrumRidcully, on 01 November 2012 - 11:52 PM, said:

We have no idea yet what the Artemis system will do to [LRMs]...

Uh, yeah, we do know. It buffs their hit chance (or clustering, in the case of MW:O) when direct fired.

Also - I'm not sure if you were around in early June - LRMs that deal less than 1.8 damage per missile are damn near useless, you might as well be firing Nerf darts.

[Netzilla]

Volthorne, on 02 November 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

Also - I'm not sure if you were around in early June - LRMs that deal less than 1.8 damage per missile are damn near useless, you might as well be firing Nerf darts.

Actually, when they dealt 1.75 dmg per missile, they did okay. I say that as someone who ran a lot of missile boats then. Part of the problem with their current effectiveness is that they bumped the missile damage to 2 per missile at the same time as they added in TAG and NARC. They should have added in TAG & NARC, gathered some new metrics, then started fooling around with the damage per missile. Of course, we're wandering a bit off topic from the heat system.

[Asatruer]

Volthorne, on 02 November 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

Uh, yeah, we do know. [Artemis] buffs [LRMs] hit chance (or clustering, in the case of MW:O) when direct fired.

We do not know how PGI will implement Artemis IV Fire Control Systems in MW:O.
What we do know is how Artemis works in TT CBT, and we suspect strongly that PGI will try and implement it in a similar fashion, but for one reason or another they may intentionally or unintentionally change it. Anyway they do it, I am really not sure how it will compete with just equipping a TAG, though maybe being able to TAG out to the full range of the LRM will be worth the added ton per launcher.

Netzilla, on 02 November 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

Of course, we're wandering a bit off topic from the heat system.

Just a bit... but since LRMs are an outlier on damage compared to heat trends, and that the OP brought them up again, it is close enough to topical.

Edited by Asatruer, 02 November 2012 - 10:03 AM.

[Draco Argentum]

!.4 DHS. PGI just hates large energy weapons. Its like they want them to be worse than gauss and are doing this on purpose.

[Vapor Trail]

Draco Argentum, on 02 November 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

!.4 DHS. PGI just hates large energy weapons. Its like they want them to be worse than gauss and are doing this on purpose.

Not just worse than the Gauss on a per-weapon basis. That's just how TT balance was.
1 Gauss = 1.5 PPC or thereabouts for a roughly equivalent tonnage/crit investment..

TT PPC
7 tons 3 crits, + 10 tons 10 crits (heatsinks)

17 tons 13 crits
Delivering 10 points of damage every 10 seconds.

TT Gauss
15 tons 7 crits, + 1 ton 1 crit (heat sink) + 4 tons 4 crits (ammo)

20 tons 12 crits
Delivering 15 damage every 10 seconds.

MWO Gauss
15 tons 7 crits, + 3 tons 3 crits (heat sinks) + 4 tons 4 crits (ammo)

22 tons 14 crits.
delivering 15 damage every 4 seconds, or 37.5 damage every 10 seconds.

To equal the performance of the MWO Gauss, you'd have to have 3.75 TT PPCs.
Which would equal 63.75 tons 48.75 crits.

To get the MWO PPC into the same balance with the MWO Gauss as the TT gauss is with the TT PPC, you'd have to tweak something.
Hard.

My opinion: RoF on the Gauss shouldn't have been touched to begin with.

Edited by Vapor Trail, 02 November 2012 - 05:51 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Oops, wrong thread... This was intended for another thread:

Spoiler

Let's say you have a mech that can fire his weapons every 10 seconds and not overheat.

Let's say he has equipped a single PPC and a single AC/10.
Now, what happens if he decides to utilize one o these two weapons at its full rate of fire.
To be heat neutral with 1 single PPC and 1 AC/10 firing every 10 seconds, you need 12 single heat sinks.
His DPS would be 2.

Let's say he wants to fire the PPC every 5 seconds, allowing him to reach a DPS of 3.

That means that he now produces 9 more heat over the course of 10 seconds. To negate that, he would need 9 more heat sinks, but he doesn't have them, he still has 12.
13 heat sinks give you a heat capacity of 42.
1 single AC/10 shot per 10 seconds produce 0.3 Heat per Second on average, and two PPC shots over 10 seconds produce 1.8 heat per second. 13 heat sinks dissipate 1.2 heat per second.
So he has a total heat production of 2.1 heat per second, dissipating 1.2 per second. So he accumulates net heat of 0.9 per second. So he will now shutdown after ~47 seconds.

Let's say he fires the AC/10 every 5 seconds, allowing him to reach a DPS of 3.
He now produces 1.5 heat per second, dissipates still 1.2, so a net of 0.3 heat per second, so he'll shutdown after about 140 seconds.

So the AC/10 is much more efficient in firing faster.

Now, you may ask - "but we haven't considered ammo yet!". True. He would, of course, run through ammo also twice as fast. But this doesn't change the total damage output he has with the AC/10 - it just allows him to inflict the damage more quickly.


Let's say you transfer the config to a mech with more tonnage, so we can buy more ammo.
We could either decide to acquire 9 heat sinks to let the PPC fire twice as often. For the same weight, we can get 3 heat sinks and 6 tons of ammo.

6 tons of ammo for an AC/10 represents 90 shots. 90 shots equals 900 points of potential damage. That is enough to kill about 4 Atlai with center torso kills. So even if you miss center torso with 75 % of the shots, it's a full extra Atlas that you could destroy.
Of course, t would take you about 450 seconds to fire all those shots if you limit yourself to a rate of fire of 1 shot in 5 seconds. That's 7.5 minutes. Or half the match.

So in short, it would be overkill to actually spend 6 tons on ammo.
The question may be -how much more do youactually need? And I guess here the couter-question is - how many mechs could you kill typically before you doubled your rate of fire with the AC/10? If that was already one or two mechs - you technically don'T add to add a single ton of ammo. You'll just be killing your enemies 50 % faster than before. So your choice is to either spend 9 tons of ammo to kill enemies 50 % faster (boosting the PPC), or 3 tons to kill your enemies 50 % faster.

Think these weapons are balanced?

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 03 November 2012 - 04:37 AM.

[pesco]

Thanks for this writeup Mustrum, I agree fully. I would really like to hear PGI's game designer on the issue.

I have stated it elsewhere before, but I will repeat it here: IMVHO, heat is not an appropriate vehicle for limiting damage output. The heat scale needs to incur meaningful penalties starting in the low values so that building up 90% heat should be an absolute and suicidal exception. Then heat generation should be scaled back across the board so generally speaking, firing rate is the limiting factor to DPS (as in the boardgame). Suddenly there will be a choice again, between running heat-neutral (good all-around no worries builds) or squeezing some more burst DPS out of it at the cost of heat management (advanced builds for skilled pilots). Risk vs. reward. Oh and double heat sinks will be fine at 2x efficiency because they are not for managing heat but for saving weight.

Let me elaborate a little on DHS. What happened and prompted the nerf to 1.4 is this: Currently, there are designs that are DPS-limited by their heat generation. DHS lift the heat ceiling and give these designs a direct increase in damage output. This is just another case in point supporting my above proposition that heat should not be used to limit damage.

[Squidhead Jax]

pesco, on 03 November 2012 - 07:27 AM, said:

heat is not an appropriate vehicle for limiting damage output.

Absolutely.

The actual damage output capacity of a weapon should be what limits its damage output - heat should be a brother to mass and ammo, dictacting what can be used and for how long.

Heat is still different from mass in that it's the factor that allows layered envelopes of full-strength fire from a single platform. Ammo is for ballistics the tradeoff between longetivity and extra heat-stable capacity; for missiles (especially LRMs) a cap on high-efficiency damage.

[MustrumRidcully]

Oh, and if people are concerned that heat management will not matter if you raise heat dissipation or lower heat generation...

There are ways to make even heat neutral mechs sweat, and they should make the game pretty interesting:
Lowering the Heat Capacity and Introducing Heat Penalties

[Windies]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 12:39 PM, said:

Oh, and if people are concerned that heat management will not matter if you raise heat dissipation or lower heat generation...

There are ways to make even heat neutral mechs sweat, and they should make the game pretty interesting:
Lowering the Heat Capacity and Introducing Heat Penalties

I would much prefer a debilitating penalty that still leaves me functional versus a total shutdown and the inability to do anything. IF I choose to fire my PPC and go above a certain heat threshold. That coupled with actual usable high heat weapons might make them viable compared to now where it's medium/small laser spam and gaussrape.

[Draco Argentum]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 12:39 PM, said:

Oh, and if people are concerned that heat management will not matter if you raise heat dissipation or lower heat generation...

There are ways to make even heat neutral mechs sweat, and they should make the game pretty interesting:
Lowering the Heat Capacity and Introducing Heat Penalties

I agree. Heat is not difficult to manage in MWO. Its barely tougher than Hawken and only because Hawken doesn't shut you down. MWO does shut you down, but only if you're dumb enough to hire with too much heat. Protip, don't do that, you now know 90% of heat management in MWO.

[RAM]

Asatruer, on 02 November 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

Did Solaris VII: The Game World come before BattleTech? No, therefore BattleTech has not always had RoF rules.

Ignoring that new trumps old, even the original Battledriods specifically states that although all weapon fire is simulated once every ten seconds, that does not represent the maximum RoF of the weapons – as demonstrated by Solaris.

Asatruer, on 02 November 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

Is Solaris VII: The Game World part of the main BattleTech rules set? No, Solaris VII was a stand-alone game that used similar rules to BattleTech.

Solaris is part of the entire Battletech Universe and a seamless integration in to the Battletech rules.

Asatruer, on 02 November 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

Are these mech dueling rules in Total Warfare, or Tactical Operations? If not, how can you consider them to be part of "core BattleTech" or "Classic BattleTech"?

Probably because some of us actually know what those terms encompass – not to mention that you are using neither correctly.

Asatruer, on 02 November 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

So, BattleTech has in-fact not always had these RoF rules you claim it has always had, and BattleTech does not currently have these RoF rules you claim it has always had.

Wrong again. But another try I guess. Pro-tip: look up RACs while you are at it. Cheers!


RAM
ELH

[Lycan]

Sayyid, on 31 October 2012 - 06:04 AM, said:

He asked for ROF. Which I provided the rules where that is discussed. It was put out by FASA for Battletech and thus was OFFICIAL RULES.

Except that Solaris rules are optional rules and I don't ever recall a Tournament happening that actually used them. (Not saying there never was one, I just haven't heard of it . . )

GeneralArmchair, on 31 October 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

Damage wise it is equal to the AC10.....except it generates over 3x the heat of an AC10....and is useless at close range due to its outdated min-range drawback that dates back to the TT days when PPCs and LRMs were the kings of long range weapons....

So yeah, PPCs are hot and that's pretty much it.

Might not care about it since it's just "fluff" but a PPC has that "ridiculously outdated mini-range drawback" due to the fact that if it fired closer than than the 3 hexes, there was a change that the charged particles that it was shooting would "blow-back" against the firing mech and cause damage.

There's an optional rule around somewhere that allows the Mechwarrior, in TT, to disable the Field-Inhibitors and thus remove the min-range penalty. And the cost of maybe doing damage and/or other "nasty things" to his mech. (Can't remember off hand what those nasty things were but it was either damage or a to-hit penalty for the rest of the game).

RAM, on 01 November 2012 - 11:55 PM, said:

Solaris – learn it, live it, love it. But then, ignorance is bliss I suppose.

RAM
ELH

You're correct that Solaris rules have RoF for the various weapons in it. But you seem to be ignoring the fact that the Solaris rules are optional and not used in everyday games.

If the Devs wanted to use them and/or are taking (modified) RoF from that then why don't they just say "Hey guys, in case your wondering, the RoF are based of Solaris" and that would settle it.

Quote

Wrong again. But another try I guess. Pro-tip: look up RACs while you are at it. Cheers!

You also forgot to mention UACs. But both UACS and RACs have their RoF's stated in the normal, everyday Battletech rules. No optional rule setting needed . . .

Edited by Lycan, 04 November 2012 - 02:05 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

And despite how often you bring Solaris up, RAM, you have yet to show how it doesn't alter the balance of weapons fundamentally by giving the Medium Laser the opportunity to fire twice per 10 seconds and the PPC only once, despite both dealing, per shot, the same damage and heat as before.

Give me some mathematical model to explain how this is balanced. Until you do, I will ignore any more comments regarding the Solaris ruleset, unless I deem it necessary to point out the flaws again so that people do not end up being misinformed.

[REDACTED]

Edited by RAM, 05 November 2012 - 01:55 AM.
inflamatory

[Slanski]

Well thought out.

Going from damage per turn to damage per second and heat per turn to heat per refire cycle is the key transition. Then account for the aiming privilege that players in MWO have over TT. Your charts illustrate very well what my first glance at weapon stats told me: LRMs are incredible DPS for weight and heat in current implementation and a well aimed SRM4 is a 2 ton AC10 equivalent.

We have two issues at work here: The incomplete implementation of the heat system while maintaining mostly TT values and the increase in missile damage (LRM and SRM) compared to TT. LRM functionality is mirroring C3 capabilities from the TT (team members can spot for you) without requiring the infrastructure originally envisioned. This currently leads to premades with spotters completely wiping out enemy teams by LRM fire.
The heat system in MWO leads to a hard cap on refiring weapons according to your heat dissipation while in a sustained fight. Together with the high armor values of mechs it forces completely redesigned mech load outs on the players. Key focus is highest DPS/heat. For all non missile mechs DPS/heat will dictate your load out. The resuling player choices are known to the community and the devs and well illustrated in your graphs.

I'd like to end with: Incentives matter!

Mechs will reflect the incentives and they will look completely different from TT under current stats.

[trycksh0t]

RAM, on 04 November 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

Ignoring that new trumps old, even the original Battledriods specifically states that although all weapon fire is simulated once every ten seconds, that does not represent the maximum RoF of the weapons – as demonstrated by Solaris.

If memory serves, BattleDroids did not even differentiate between weapons for the purposes of the gameplay, you either hit or missed with everythinig. Armor was a single value for the entire chassis, and heat was non-existent, so I'm not sure how a 1984 ruleset has any bearing on much of anything. As for new trumps old, Solaris VII rules are from 1991, and so have been trumped repeatedly in the last 21 years. There has been additional fluff, outside of BattleDroids and in more recent printings, that indicate weapons from different manufacturers perform differently, but still worked out to equivalent damage in 10 seconds.

RAM, on 04 November 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

Solaris is part of the entire Battletech Universe and a seamless integration in to the Battletech rules.

I'll give you that Solaris rules are part of the universe, but seamless integration is a bit of a stretch, IMO. As optional rules, they're fine if that's what you're looking for. However, they are just that, optional, otherwise they would have been standardized into the core ruleset, currently represented by...I believe Total Warfare and Tactical Operations are the most current core rulesets, which is what I had assumed MWO would have been based off of.

If I had known that MWO was going to be working off of 21 year-old rules that were hardly used (in my experience) and drastically altered how the game was played, I would have greatly reconsidered an upfront purchase.

Edited by trycksh0t, 04 November 2012 - 02:49 AM.

[Mordhar]

In fact, BT core rules do not have ROF stat. They have DPS stat (more precisely DPSx10). For example, AC/5 deals 5 damage in 10 seconds. Then DPS (damage per second) value is 5/10=0.5.

Actual ROF values can be seen in descriptions for some models, for example GM Whirlwind AC/5 have 3 shots per burst (1 shot in 3.33 seconds).

[Asatruer]

All of your other "points" have either already been addressed by other respondents since your post, or long long before it.

Asatruer, on 02 November 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

Are these mech dueling rules in Total Warfare, or Tactical Operations? If not, how can you consider them to be part of "core BattleTech" or "Classic BattleTech"?

RAM, on 04 November 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

Probably because some of us actually know what those terms encompass – not to mention that you are using neither correctly.

Classic BattleTech, yeah, I actually was misusing this term. I have since making this post realized that Classic BattleTech is the title of the rules reprint during the WizKids era to help differentiate it from their Clix based Dark Ages crap stuff. Even though I did misuse e this term, thinking that the classic moniker would be understood to mean old-school, my statement is still valid as the Solaris VII rules were not included in WizKids' Classic BattleTech rules reprints.

Core BattleTech: Core is a noun that means "the central, innermost, or most essential part of anything." Core is a term used in gaming jargon to mean, "part of the main, or common rules" as opposed to the term optional, which means, "not part of the core or common rules." The Solaris VII mech dueling rules are notm and never have been, part of the core BattleTech rules by any valid definition or understanding of the word or term "core". At this time core BattleTech rules are contained within the book Total Warfare, but as I am sure there are some optional rules in Total Warefare not all rules within Total Warfare are core rules.


Let me ask some of the salient questions you dodged again, and a couple more in a more blunt fashion.

• Are these mech dueling rules in Total Warfare, or Tactical Operations?
  
• Are these mech dueling rules in Technical Readout: 3055 Upgrade (it has the re-printed the Solaris VII mechs)?
  
• Have these mech dueling rules been reprinted in the last decade?
  
• Is MechWarrior: Online a mech arena dueling game, or is it a mech tactical warfare game?

Edited by Asatruer, 04 November 2012 - 08:58 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

While I appreciate the interest in Solaris VII, I am really more interested in finding solutions for the imbalance issues we have. Or some data points / models that show me that there isn't actually any imbalance.