Flit Asuno, on 17 November 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:
Actually the mechs getting a big boost to power right now are lights and mediums. What DHS and endo were also supposed to give the largest benefit to. This issue is magnified thanks to the netcode giving "lag armor" to faster mechs.
Overall the heat in the game is much more of an issue than even the DHS not being doubles outside of the engine. The rate of fire on average has been tripled. Therefore the heat accumulation has as well. However, heat sinks operate on a 10 second window to dissipate one heat. This is roughly a third of the efficiency they should have. I'm not saying triple the numbers. But SHS should be at 0.15 or 0.2 instead of the 0.1 they are now per second. With DHS being 0.25 to 0.3 per second.
This would make certain builds terrifyingly effective. However, I think if they also implemented a hardpoint size system you'd see a drastic shift in how "broken" various mechs builds are. A lot less boating.
That lights and mediums would benefit the most is precisely what I said. And it was needed. Now lights are overpowered, but its mostly due to there being no knockdown mechanic at work, once that is back in you'll see alot more dead light mechs and deployment numbers normalize. Also, lag-shields will (hopefully) become less effective as the netcode gets hammered out.
But more generally, and as I posted elsewhere, increasing the total heat-dissipation rates of mechs and/or lowering the heat cap, are both aweful ideas. PGI went out of their way to ensure that this game has a cap well above the alpha strike limit of mechs, and to ensure that dissipation takes a significant amount of time, and they did this for excellent reasons.
Very little to no dissipation time results in:
1. No tactical retreats to recover heat.
2. No burst damage, only constant dps from all mechs. (all mechs merely run at hard dps cap due to heat, not hard due to fire rate and soft due to heat)
3. No striker builds.
4. No laying off the trigger at the right moments due to heat considerations (fire discipline goes away as a skill).
5. Build strategy in the Mechlab takes a hit as all mechs simply sink up to their heat generation.
6. Engagement times in game shrink, thus the slower tactical gameplay slides towards (but doesn't end up entirely in) generic fps land.
7. Heat efficient weapons actually get amplified in usefulness because they do not contribute to your (now hard) dps cap.
So increasing the rate at which all mechs dissipate heat (or significantly lowering the maximum heat cap) are just absolutely abysmal ideas. We can't keep trying to make MWO fit slavish interpretations of TT, it has its own life now and we need to treat it that way.
This is why double heat sinks at full 2.0 is bad. This is why increasing the base heat dissipation of all mechs is bad. PGI is absolutely on the right track with making all sinks 1.4 dissipation (or to go with the way it was after the first DHS patch, which is how Living Legends did it, where engines always give you 10, then additional heat sinks work at 1 for SHS and 2 for DHS).
The increased dissipation is also part of the reason you see so many light/medium laser boats right now. They can't overheat. (also, they don't trip, pay ammo costs, or register all hits against them, heh)
Changing dissipation rates won't fix weapon balance, it will just introduce a whole new set of balance problems (albeit, perhaps with different weapons). Doing this doesn't solve any of our problems, it just creates new ones and ruins the flavor the gameplay.
What we should actually be doing is balancing our current weapons to our current heat generation/dissipation rates, which is also precisely one of PGI's stated goals with their weapon balance pass.
Edited by ExAstris, 17 November 2012 - 02:17 PM.