83 replies to this topic

[Smark]

MaddMaxx, on 05 November 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

.... I will take a 40% increase in Heat dissipation if that is all that is offered. If someone offered you $140.00, but your heart was set on $200.00, just because, would you send them on their way empty handed?

Nice Try, but No.

You 'Forgot' the 1.5mil investment for the advertised 2.0 rated DHS.

To correct what you are saying is that you spent 1.5 mil for 200 meals at your wedding, but only got 140. So I should just be happy I got the 140 ?!

I want a refund.

[Ceribus]

I would be fine with this if they lowered the critical slots of external heat sinks to 2.... Also shouldn't the complaints wait till everyone has had a chance to try it out?

Edited by Ceribus, 06 November 2012 - 07:40 AM.

[Game_Overture]

Dreadp1r4te, on 05 November 2012 - 08:56 PM, said:

You can cite simulation vs emulation theory all you want, but here's the harsh reality...
The Gauss was translated pretty much 1:1 from TT, even in this simulation environment, and now its stupidly overpowered because you don't have to roll to see if/where you hit.

So you're agreeing with me then? I'm a strong advocate to NOT translate TT rules 1:1, just use them as a starting point.

Dreadp1r4te, on 05 November 2012 - 08:56 PM, said:

Here's a sample of some math I ran last night; PGI promptly closed and locked the thread when I also pointed out their flaw in the Laser and Pulse Laser heat generation mechanics...

1: (Prepatch) 10 EHS (Single Engine Heat Sinks) + 5 DHS in 'Mech = (10 * .1) + (5 * .2) = 2 Heat Sunk Per Second
2: (Prepatch) 10 EHS + 10 DHS in 'Mech = (10 * .1) + (10 * .2) = 3 Heat Sunk Per Second
3: (Post 1.4 Patch) 10 EDHS (Double Engine Heat Sinks) + 5 DHS in 'Mech = 15 * .14 = 2.1 Heat Sunk Per Second
4: (Post 1.4 Patch) 10 EDHS + 10 DHS in 'Mech = 20 * .14 = 2.8 Heat Sunk Per Second
5: (If 2.0 Patch) 10 EDHS + 5 DHS in 'Mech = 15 * .2 = 3 Heat Sunk Per Second
6: (If 2.0 Patch) 10 EDHS + 10 DHS in 'Mech = 20 * .2 = 4 Heat Sunk Per Second

...

Your calculations and comparisons make sense when trying to balance PPC's alone, but you're not taking any consideration to all the other energy weapons. You say that:

Dreadp1r4te, on 05 November 2012 - 08:56 PM, said:

Thanks for the Nerf, PGI... as if energy weapons NEEDED any more of a nerf.

...as a competitive player who uses only the most efficient loadouts, energy weapons are a staple to majority of these builds. They're not under-powered by any means, and PGI's reasoning behind the DHS "nerf" is to keep the effectiveness of these energy boating builds in check. Honestly allowing DHS to cool at a rate of 2.0 would make energy based weapons even more the only choice in competitive play, besides the 2x gauss cat.

In order to balance ballistics in line with energy they would need to make Endo-Steel and Ferro-Fiberious more effective in reducing weight, since that is the limiting factor in useful ballistic builds. Making DHS's worth 2.0 would only further emphasize using energy weapons over ballistics.

[Dreadp1r4te]

Crescent Fresh, on 06 November 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

So you're agreeing with me then? I'm a strong advocate to NOT translate TT rules 1:1, just use them as a starting point.


Your calculations and comparisons make sense when trying to balance PPC's alone, but you're not taking any consideration to all the other energy weapons. You say that:

...as a competitive player who uses only the most efficient loadouts, energy weapons are a staple to majority of these builds. They're not under-powered by any means, and PGI's reasoning behind the DHS "nerf" is to keep the effectiveness of these energy boating builds in check. Honestly allowing DHS to cool at a rate of 2.0 would make energy based weapons even more the only choice in competitive play, besides the 2x gauss cat.

In order to balance ballistics in line with energy they would need to make Endo-Steel and Ferro-Fiberious more effective in reducing weight, since that is the limiting factor in useful ballistic builds. Making DHS's worth 2.0 would only further emphasize using energy weapons over ballistics.

I use the term energy weapon a bit too loosely; in reality I'm mostly referring to high-heat energy weapons like LPLAS, PPC, and ERPPC. In their current implementation, the ERPPC generates too much heat to be viable in numbers greater than 1 on nearly everything except an Atlas and Awesome, and implementing them on those two 'Mechs requires devoting nearly your entire loadout to cooling them. While this does seem fair, a Gaussapult is able to effectively mount MORE firepower with infinitely less heat, in a 65 ton 'Mech versus a 100 ton Atlas.

2.0 DHS would also make other high-heat weapons more effective; AC/20s, while still taxed by the hitbox and convergence issues, would at least be more heat friendly, allowing skilled players to more effectively use them instead of just defaulting to Gauss since it generates no heat.

Also, keep in mind in the same threat, PGI stated they were increasing the heat generated by LAS weapons, as they had made a mistake in calculating total heat generated for those weapons, so even WITH DHS working at 2.0, I think we'd see more variation in builds instead of solid laserboating as even with the increased efficiency, stacking large numbers of lasers would still be limited by tonnage, the reduced number of criticals available FOR the 3x crit DHS, AND the increased heat for Lasers.

And no, I don't agree; I think the game should be implemented as close to TT as possible and THEN tweaked for balance, not balanced without any public testing. Just because a handful of people say something is overpowered doesn't mean that when put under a real stress test in actual competitive play, their own drawbacks (massive crit usage, cost to employ) won't shine through and be their own limiting factor.

[Game_Overture]

Dreadp1r4te, on 06 November 2012 - 09:38 AM, said:

I use the term energy weapon a bit too loosely; in reality I'm mostly referring to high-heat energy weapons like LPLAS, PPC, and ERPPC. In their current implementation, the ERPPC generates too much heat to be viable in numbers greater than 1 on nearly everything except an Atlas and Awesome, and implementing them on those two 'Mechs requires devoting nearly your entire loadout to cooling them. While this does seem fair, a Gaussapult is able to effectively mount MORE firepower with infinitely less heat, in a 65 ton 'Mech versus a 100 ton Atlas.

2.0 DHS would also make other high-heat weapons more effective; AC/20s, while still taxed by the hitbox and convergence issues, would at least be more heat friendly, allowing skilled players to more effectively use them instead of just defaulting to Gauss since it generates no heat.

Also, keep in mind in the same threat, PGI stated they were increasing the heat generated by LAS weapons, as they had made a mistake in calculating total heat generated for those weapons, so even WITH DHS working at 2.0, I think we'd see more variation in builds instead of solid laserboating as even with the increased efficiency, stacking large numbers of lasers would still be limited by tonnage, the reduced number of criticals available FOR the 3x crit DHS, AND the increased heat for Lasers.

And no, I don't agree; I think the game should be implemented as close to TT as possible and THEN tweaked for balance, not balanced without any public testing. Just because a handful of people say something is overpowered doesn't mean that when put under a real stress test in actual competitive play, their own drawbacks (massive crit usage, cost to employ) won't shine through and be their own limiting factor.

You and I are almost on the same page then. I'm just more willing to bastardize the TT ruleset in favor of implementing new balance changes that don't affect things in MWO that already work.

I would suggest that in order to make these high-heat energy weapons useful would be to be reducing the heat they generate, (or some other factor) rather than make DHS more effective. While this further deviates from TT rules, looking at balance changes this way allows current energy loadouts to work as they are, and bring energy weapons that don't work more onto their level, without globally needing to balance everything else again.

Also note that cost should never be a factor when considering game balance. All mechs, weapons, items and upgrades need to balanced and serve some purpose assuming all players have infinite money.

[somerandom18]

Definition of double: being twice as great or as many

single heat sinks provide 1 dissipation

Double heatsinks provide 1.4 dissipation
1 x 2 = 1.4 now?
PGI logic does not compute

Edited by somerandom18, 06 November 2012 - 10:22 AM.

[Lee Ving]

We should call them triple heatsinks since they take 3x the space. Just saiyn.

[darknothing]

Im confused, SHS do 1.0 and are 1 slot, right? so why bother with DHS?
they are 3 slots and only do 1.4 right?
3 shs would do 3 ?
someone please set me straight.

[Ceribus]

darknothing, on 13 November 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

Im confused, SHS do 1.0 and are 1 slot, right? so why bother with DHS?
they are 3 slots and only do 1.4 right?
3 shs would do 3 ?
someone please set me straight.

It's a matter of weight, which people tend to run out of a lot faster than critical space. Both SHS and DHS only weigh 1 ton.

[Sennin]

darknothing, on 13 November 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

Im confused, SHS do 1.0 and are 1 slot, right? so why bother with DHS?
they are 3 slots and only do 1.4 right?
3 shs would do 3 ?
someone please set me straight.

Currently
SHS = 1 Ton, 1 Critical Slot, .1 Heat Dissapation Per Second
DHS= 1 Ton, 3 Critical Slots, .14 Heat Dissapation Per Second

For TT rules purposes SHS are still singles and function as they should in MWO. The big stink in the argument your reading is caused by the fact that per TT rules DHS should dissapate 2 heat per round (Per Heatsink) or an MWO value of 0.2 Heat Per Second but this is not what is currently implemented.

What can be even more confusing for players is to understand that internal engine DHS function at the full double rate of 0.2 Heat Per Second while external DHS function at the rate of .14 Heat Per Second.

[sycocys]

I love me some laser builds - and personally .14 might be a touch low but it really is in the ballpark for making it fair when matching up against some other builds. Being able to shoot 7-8 med (or a combo of med/large) lasers non-stop would make lasers look like LRMs after the initial artemis patch only worse.

.15 might be a better number because it would be simpler to calculate, would give a slight boost without any drastic offset.

Just like everyone else I simply had to learn to control my fire when it was dropped, and it's actually gone a long way towards making the game more fun and skill based than just holding laser until everything or myself were out of commission. TT rules other than as a general guideline are all I ask for - a live game is an entire different beast than taking turns rolling dice.

[WintermuteOmega]

As i see it, the DHS broke the back of my Awesome, after having spend 1,5 Mil Credits that i could used to save for a better engine and put even more SHS in that baddie. An Awesome with DHS is unplayable. Either with LL's or with the PPC's, the awesome runs hot in seconds. With ML's it's giving just a little more punch than a Jenner at a runningspeed that is just sad.
That's all after i paid roughly 6,5 Mil. for the Awesome-8Q mind you. So 10 Mil out of the window. And i even can't turn back to SHS without additional loss, so i keep my awesome rust in the hangar until something is done with the DHS.

I like running cool and therefore throw a little bit firepower away. But right now, the only way to do this, is by using ammobased weapons. The Awesome was the cooling-tower of TT with his 3-3-2 PPC shooting, it never caught a sweat. PPC's and LL are too weak already, and with the heatproblems they are (sadly) worthless.

I can see, that there is a problem with cool running Jenners with 4 ML's, as small mechs are gaining in popularity, as they are hard to hit, deal a good punch and can take some beating. But these builds won't have heat problemes most of the time anyway. And LL's are the best way to deal with in a bulky heavy or assault mech.

Lez me have play an awesome plz?!

[Flit Asuno]

ExAstris, on 02 November 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Going with a full 2.0 dissipation is a terrible idea. Its taken a very long time to get the weapon balance to where it is now (and its still has a few problems), but drastically changing the heat efficiency of mechs would require a complete rebalance around those numbers. Not just a weapons rebalance, but a chassis rebalance as some mechs will end up needing more hardpoints to be competative.

Furthermore, the 2.0 level dissipation just further magnifies the distance between new and old players, making those starting steps ever so rough.

Even at 1.4 the vast majority of mechs will be getting a massive boost to sustained firepower, only some assault mechs will be facing a lack of boost, hardly a big price to pay for a game that already has more assaults on average than other classes.




PGI does not have a perfect track record when it comes to design balancing decisions. But this gentlemen, is not a case error.

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.

[MustrumRidcully]

I ran "the math" a while back. With the current rate of fires, to balance ballistics and energy weapons under single heat sinks, SHS would need to act already as "double" heat sinks, e.g. provide 0.2 Heat Dissipation per second. That's not perfect balance just yet, but it's close enough for most purposes. The imbalances only really shows after engagements time greater than 20 seconds (that means more than 20 seconds of uninterrupted fire), and such scenarios are rare.

Since Engine Double Heat Sinks operate like "real" Double Heat Sinks right now, providing 0.2 heat dissipation, at least if you stick to no more than 2 PPCs, you can get performance similar to that of a Gauss RIfle out of PPCs! The problem is going beyond -you run not only ouf of crits fast, you only get 0.14 dissipation then and so the gap widens again.

Provided you can utilize arm mounted ballistics/PPCs, an Atlas with 1 Gauss Rifle and 2 PPCs with DHS can now make a good direct fire support mech.

[KBob]

ExAstris, on 02 November 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Going with a full 2.0 dissipation is a terrible idea.

No, it's not. But heat accumulation etc. has to be evaluated at the same time. All "current" balance was done with buggy heat accumulation that currently being fixed ( I believe they nailed most of it last patch ). The thing that guys who object double HS don't understand in general is - there is SPACE capacity in the mech as well. For instance on of my balanced SHS atlases is running 30 heatsinks ( 12 in engine, 18 outside ). I only spend 18 slots to do it, and I have _no_ free slots left. Now if I just switch to DHS I'm going to run 18 heatsinks ( because of SLOT limitation - 12 in engine and 6 outside ). And this would give me a "whopping" heat efficiency - with current bugs of 20 + 8 *1.4 = 31.2 single heatsinks, and after 2x in engine will be fixed - of
18*1.4 = 25 heatsinks, so effectively - I need to pay some amount of cbills, and got huge and expensive heatsinks to LOWER my heat efficiency. Bleah.

Short (and easy to reproduce tables) shows that ( normalized by 250 engine )

43 heatsinks = 33 slots + engine for SHS and to make DHS on par with them you need to ensure that 21 DHS get same heat dissipation as 43 SHS ... which means MORE than 2.0

For anyone insterested in what mech I talk about - it's laserboat awesome. Meanwhile it means that EVEN with 2.0 DHS efficiency laserboat ML awesome CAN NOT be more efficient than it is now ( MPL one could be slightly more efficient )

On atlas value could be a bit lower. I'd say 34 heatsink is ~ normal, so DHS efficiency has to be 34/18 ~ 1.9 ... and value could decrease more and more as we go for lighter mechs.

For instance for "fast" jenner - we talk about 13 heatsinks overall and parity could be achieved even with 1.3 , as heatsinks outside of engine are compensated by heatsinks within the engine.

Now the funny part - ALL of those values were calculated in the assumption that we KEEP same efficiency as before, but guess what - people want to INCREASE efficiency ... so values have to be a bit higher . That's why personnaly I would suggest something like "progressing" efficiency of DHS

1) lights - 1.4
2) mediums - 1.6
3) heavies - 1.8
4) assaults - 2.0

[Asmosis]

It should be the same regardless of the mech, and it should *not* always be the better choice when compared to SHS, otherwise you might as well remove SHS from the game (like MW4 did). Light mechs generally have a lot of spare crit slots, so DHS makes sense there. Assults generally have a lot of tonnage spare, so SHS makes sense there.

An Awesome not getting better heat dissipation from DHS compared to SHS is perfectly fine, it shows that they are balanced. Much the same way as although you can fit heavy caliber weapons (gauss, ac20) on scout mechs, they dont normally perform as well as smaller caliber weapons. My main complaint about Awesome in relation to heat is the rediculous engine size limitations. Why can a Jenner fit a bigger engine than (most) Awesome configs? thats a pretty big handy cap right there.

Ceribus, on 06 November 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

I would be fine with this if they lowered the critical slots of external heat sinks to 2.... Also shouldn't the complaints wait till everyone has had a chance to try it out?

That would be clan DHS, which we get later. who knows if they'll let us put clan tech on IS mechs.

Edited by Asmosis, 17 November 2012 - 07:19 AM.

[KBob]

Asmosis, on 17 November 2012 - 07:13 AM, said:

An Awesome not getting better heat dissipation from DHS compared to SHS is perfectly fine, it shows that they are balanced.

with 2.0 - they are. With 1.4 - Awesome is getting MUCH LESS heat efficiency,

and your point is exactly correct - DHSes are MORE heat efficient by definition and their usage is restricted by space limitation. Now I'd like to hear the reason - why you think their heat efficiency shall be the same for all mechs ? ( nb. I run jenners, cats and all assaults, so I'm unbiased here )

Edited by KBob, 17 November 2012 - 07:25 AM.

[ExAstris]

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.

[DivineEvil]

Then why the hell do they needed to nerf HD level of DHS, if they just need to balanse out all weapons to work properly on SHS/DHS difference? HD system might became closer to TT, but DHS, that are not really a DHS is against everything, inluding logic. If DHS are too strong for the heat, that heavy energy weapons generate, then it's obvious that they just need to make them generate more heat, so that SHS would work perfectly with Small/Medium lasers and DHS would be required to effectively use Large lasers and PPC.

When DHS in engine will also get 1.4 HD rating, they will become obsolete since they just worth more and take more space, while giving inadequately low amount of bonus HD. I've bought an AWS with missile racks but even so cannot build a heat-efficient setup, since SHS are not strong enough and DHS just take too much space. Personally I think that Developers are looking on a wrong issues from the wrong angles, making wrong assumptions and ending up with wrong actions.

Edited by DivineEvil, 17 November 2012 - 02:36 PM.

[Deadoon]

Until the dhs are as effective as claimed, the catapult K3 will remain a fantasy.