BDU Havoc, on 05 November 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:
People are aware that just because a weapon has reloaded, doesn't mean it needs to be instantly fired again, right?
Did you know that was true in Battletech as well? You didn't have to fire every 10 seconds. You could fire once in 20 seconds, 30 seconds, or more. But if you do that the weapon isn't doing X damage. It's doing X/2 or X/3. You can't have a weapon fire slower than its maximum rate and still consider it as doing its maximum damage. If a Gauss Rifle fires every other cooldown, it's doing an average of 7.5 damage per cooldown, not 15. Don't try to tell someone a weapon firing at a lower RoF is just as good as that weapon firing at its max RoF but generates less heat.
It's true the PPC only needs to weigh 37 tons if you fire it constantly. It's true it only weighs 17 tons if you choose to fire it once every 10 seconds. It is also true, however, that the 37-ton PPC has 3.33 DPS while the 17-ton PPC only has 1.0 DPS. Firing slower isn't cost free. The cost is actually enormous.
Take a look at DPS/Ton. The 37-ton PPC's is 0.09. The 17-ton PPC's is 0.06. Why is firing slower a good idea again? Are you sure you couldn't do something better with that 17 tons? For instance, a Gauss Rifle and 2 tons of ammo?
That goes for pretty much everything else detractors like to bring against heat analyses. "But the Gauss needs ammo!" It needed ammo in TT. "But the Gauss can explode!" It could explode in TT. That's all the same between Battletech and Mechwarrior Online. What's changed is heat.
Weapon weight is tonnage. Ammunition is tonnage. Heat is tonnage. It's all tonnage, because all of it is handled by equipment which takes up tonnage in the mech. A weapon can invest in any of those currencies in different proportions. MWO skewed the exchange rate with predictable results. Weapons with big weapon weight portfolios made out like bandits while high heat investors are jumping out of windows.
Imagine two weapons. One is the Mazer. It weighs 9 tons, generates 1 heat, and does 10 damage. You will first notice this weapon is crazy overpowered, but that's the privilege of hypotheticals. So, with single heat sinks, this weapon weighs 10 tons and does 10 damage. It could also weigh 9 tons, but it would do less damage (though probably not in the timeframe of a normal Battletech match).
The other is the Spazer. It weighs 1 ton, generates 9 heat, and does 10 damage. So, with single heat sinks, this weapon weighs 10 tons and does 10 damage. Notice this is exactly the same as the Mazer. However, this weapon has more flexibility to ditch some tonnage. It will do less damage (for instance, it could weigh 6 tons and fire every other turn without building heat for an average of 5 damage), but sometimes that could work out. So we would say the Mazer and Spazer are nearly identical, with the Spazer being more desirable in a way that won't make a difference most of the time.
Now let's convert these weapons to MWO. They can now fire once every 3.33 seconds for a maximum DPS of 3. The Mazer can weigh 10 tons for 1.0 DPS or add three times as many heat sinks as it needed to reach its potential in TT, bringing it to 12 tons for 3.0 DPS. The Spazer can add three times as many heat sinks to achieve its maximum DPS, meaning 28 tons for 3.0 DPS. Is that balanced? But you can fire it slower, the peanut gallery says. All right, you can stick with 10 tons for 1.0 DPS with the Spazer, or opt for 12 tons for 3.0 DPS with the Mazer. Which is better?
Two weapons which are nearly identical in Battletech diverge so wildly in Mechwarrior Online's heat system so as not even to be in the same galaxy of effectiveness. Firing slower isn't a solution. Bumping the Spazer's damage by 1 isn't a solution. The solution is fixing the broken heat system which systematically produces these kinds of results. There isn't anything strange or unexpected about MWO's weapon balance. There isn't any special feature of the Gauss Rifle that makes it able to benefit more from the system than other weapons. It's a straightforward calculation: The more a Battletech weapon's tonnage came from heat sinks, the worse it did in the conversion. That's it.
"But fights don't make you fire all the time!" That's true, too. They don't usually make you fire exactly once every 10 seconds, either. But suppose they did sometimes. You wouldn't be any worse off with a weight-heavy weapon than you were in Battletech, but if you got into a situation where you were able to fire at a high rate of fire, you'd be able to. With a heat-heavy weapon, you wouldn't be any worse off in the 10-second situation, but you wouldn't be able to maximize your rate of fire in a more intense firefight. So what about those possibilities restores the balance the heat conversion destroyed?
That's another refrain. In addition to clamoring about factors that were already present and accounted for in Battletech, the no-math detractors like to bring up factors that affect all weapons as if they were somehow weight-heavy weapon specific. "Gauss can miss!" PPC can miss. "Light mechs can kill Gauss mechs!" Not any easier than they can kill PPC mechs, Large Laser mechs, AC/20 mechs . . . "Gauss needs tonnage for ammo!" AC/20 needs more tonnage for ammo plus more tonnage for heat sinks. PPC needs far more tonnage for heat than Gauss needs for ammo.
You can't just throw out a weakness of the Gauss or AC/5 or whatever and say it's balanced unless you can prove it affects them in a way it doesn't affect weapons which are seemingly weaker. You can't just spout any kind of drawback without accounting for how much it actually affects the weapon, whether it affected it in Battletech, and what the discrepancy is. You can't just tear down indepth analyses by saying "You didn't account for Z!" and folding your arms. You have to present your own analysis showing why Z is important and how the matter stands with Z included.
Or rather you can, and people keep doing it, but you can't do that and have a good argument. You don't look smarter by objecting alone. You don't get taken seriously if all you do is say "Nuh uh."
Edited by Jennest, 06 November 2012 - 01:28 AM.
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