534 replies to this topic

[Yokaiko]

StaggerCheck, on 03 November 2012 - 11:55 AM, said:

Continue fighting the good fight, Abrahms. Even though the weapon cycle rates are 3x what they are in TT play, when you get right down to it, the game is still a 10 second turn game with furious weapon fire moderated by cooldown periods. It just has the illusion of being a fast paced shooter.

Until you mount a Gauss or SSRM. Issue. No?

Edited by Yokaiko, 03 November 2012 - 12:07 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

Man, this "Tonnage required for heat neutrality" figure is the absolute worst thing to happen to wannabe science grads since Scientific American magazine.

[XTRMNTR2K]

Abrahms, on 03 November 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

If regular Heatsinks were 1.5 and double were like, 2.4, all the weapons would be a lot more balanced. The only other route is ditching TT

WHY CAN'T I LIKE THIS POST MORE THAN ONCE?!


But on a serious note, these values are pretty damn close to what I have in mind. 50% more efficiency for our current SHS and 1.6 times that for DHS... Should make for an interesting change to balance and general gameplay.

Edited by XTRMNTR2K, 03 November 2012 - 12:02 PM.

[Yokaiko]

Vlad Ward, on 03 November 2012 - 11:58 AM, said:

Man, this "Tonnage required for heat neutrality" figure is the absolute worst thing to happen to wannabe science grads since Scientific American magazine.

No its perfectly valid.


Example if you have 8 weapons on a mech you have a main weapon. THIS weapon you need to have available on cooldown, that means it needs to be heat neautral.

It takes 2.5 heatsinks to cool a Gauss for 10 seconds. It takes 16 to cool a large laser for the same period, since the Gauss + 3 tons of ammo and three heatsinks is 21 tons and the Large Laser plus heat sinks weighs the same that is a PERFECTLY valid comparison in relation to heat.

Issue here is that the Gauss has a 152% damage advantage which weapon do you use?

[Abrahms]

XTRMNTR2K, on 03 November 2012 - 12:01 PM, said:

WHY CAN'T I LIKE THIS POST MORE THAN ONCE?!


But on a serious note, these values are pretty damn close to what I have in mind. 50% more efficiency for our current SHS and 1.6 times that for DHS... Should make for an interesting change to balance and general gameplay.

Reality is that to really hold to TT values, single heatsinks would need to be 2-3x as efficient, however, due to the nature of a FPS, 1.5 would be a pretty solid place to bring the values closer together while still distinguishing the benefit of unlimited ammo versus ballistic ammo/firing delay/etc.

Tripling HSs power for SHS would return us to the 40 tons to 40 tons for heat neutral PPC v Gauss for 30 damage, but again, I dont think we have to go that far. But also 40 tons versus 100 tons for the same effect in MWO is pretty dumb. 1.5 would close that gap to some degree. At a minimum its a good start.

[VictimEN]

Well, this is not actually a new problem. A lot of previous mechwarrior games have also had similar heat problems, with mech designs that would be heat neutral or even negative under wargame rules instead running hot, or even shutting down instantly on alpha strike.

And, to be blunt, the mechwarrior series of games basically play totally differently compared to TT. Double armor with only a slight boost ammo, or even triple heat is an incredibly tiny change compared to simply being able to aim your shoots at desired locations essentially for free - because it's possible to target important or damaged locations, it likely that in many cases you'll need to do less damage to kill a mech than in TT even with the bonus armor. Or the fact that weapon accuracy barely degrades. The lack of critical hits changes how weapons are used too.

I mean, in TT, there's a huge difference in accuracy between shooting your small laser at its max range, and using a medium laser at the same range - 4 points on a 2d6 roll - with the same difference between using that small laser at 90m versus <30m. And turn based movement meant you could often pick an extra range that gave your weapons a much better accuracy profile than your opponents, or totally keep them out of range - even if the enemy mech had a similar or greater speed. Even if the heat for all the weapons tripled, medium lasers could still wreck more heat efficient small lasers with careful maneuver.

How much do those mechanics matter in MWO (or most other mechwarrior PC games)? Barely at all. A Medium laser is no more accurate than a small at 90m, and in many cases there's simply little difference in accuracy over the entire range of the weapon unless its a specific weak point. And good luck keeping an enemy out of small laser range but in medium laser range. Same thing with say a Large Laser or AC 10.

Even setting the heat issues aside, with the very different range and movement models compared to the wargame, is it any surprise that weapon balance is quite skewed? It's hard to pick an intermediate range and stay there, so short ranged weapons like small lasers or SSRMs or long ranged weapons like Gauss or LRMs wreck people.

Sticking closely to tabletop weapon values when nothing else works the same and then expecting weapon balance to be similar is kind of crazy. It's not just heat.

[Vlad Ward]

Yokaiko, on 03 November 2012 - 12:06 PM, said:

No its perfectly valid.


Example if you have 8 weapons on a mech you have a main weapon. THIS weapon you need to have available on cooldown, that means it needs to be heat neautral.

It takes 2.5 heatsinks to cool a Gauss for 10 seconds. It takes 16 to cool a large laser for the same period, since the Gauss + 3 tons of ammo and three heatsinks is 21 tons and the Large Laser plus heat sinks weighs the same that is a PERFECTLY valid comparison in relation to heat.

Issue here is that the Gauss has a 152% damage advantage which weapon do you use?

Except, no.

There are three main figures which actually matter when it comes to damage and heat dissipation; Maximum DPS, Sustainability of Maximum DPS, and Heat Neutral DPS.

These can't just be thrown out for each weapon. They're functions of weapon type, number, and # of real, available heat sinks.

Example problem:

CPLT-K2 Gaussapult, 2 Gauss rifles, 10 single heat sinks
Maximum DPS: 11.25
Sustainability of Maximum DPS: Infinite
Heat Neutral DPS: 11.25

AWS-9M MPLAS-boat, 6MPLAS, 23 double (2.0) heat sinks
Maximum DPS: 18.00
Sustainability of Maximum DPS: 3 volleys, 6 seconds, 108 damage
Heat Neutral DPS: 6.35

AWS-9M Stock, 3 ER PPC, 20 double (2.0) heat sinks
Maximum DPS: 20.00
Sustainability of Maximum DPS: 2 volleys, 3 seconds, 60 damage
Heat Neutral DPS: 3.08

A Mech's Maximum DPS is significantly more important than its Heat Neutral DPS in a good number of combat situations, especially for faster Mechs. This "Heat Neutral Tonnage" number is absolutely worthless. No one runs perfectly heat neutral builds aside from Gauss and no one needs to because you're not engaged in combat firing all your weapons for the entire 15 minutes you're in a game.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 November 2012 - 12:31 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

And yet... it remains a useful benchmark. It's not the only one, of course. If you have a mech configuration that will overheat in 30 seconds and you think this is just the right amount of time,b ut you notice that you can get a few spare tons by removing some armour, upgrading to endo steel or some such... Then you can add the heat neutral config of a weapon to your mech and increase your damage output without increasing your time to overheat.

But here are the two main approaches I see:

Illustrating the Balance with Math and Charts
There is one general approach to measure weapon strength - this is generally trying to figure out "how much does it cost me to run this weapon in weight" vs "how much damage does it let me deal this way. Theoretically, one could also use such a system for crit requirements, but this is more rarely done. Though with Inner Sphere heat sinks, it may be an interesting addition.

There are two major ways to figure out the weight, and mostly it is the question - how do we calculate the number of heat sinks for a weapon?

1) Heat Neutrality
We try to put in enough heat sinks so that the weapons heat is perfectly negated.
This is a simple, useful approach, though some thing it's too simple.
Generally, heat neutrality is very useful to know if you are working at modifiying your mech and adding or switching out some weapons. If you have already found a mech configuration that you think is "reasonably hot" or "reasonably cool" (ranging from overcooled to heat neutral to gaining heat slowly up to overheats in the blink of an eye), when you made free some weight, you can simply add the "heat neutral" configuration to the mech and nothing will change about its time to last.
If you replace weapons, you may realize that for the weight of 2 Medium Lasers and their heat sinks, you could also, say, fit another Large Laser - maybe that would give you something you found lacking so far.

2) TET - Targeted Engagement Time
This approach is a bit different from heat neutrality is that you try to figure out - how long do I expect an individual combat/skirmish/brawl (e.g. not the entire match, but one fight in that match) too last, and then find a build that optimizes the damage output in this time frame.
This approach has some very practical applications to a mech or weapon configurations. For example, if you have 2 long range weapons, you may decide that these are mnostly used for sniping, where engagement times are usually low (unless the enemy is not trying to get into cover), but also a few short range weapons which you intend to use in a brawl. So you may try to go for a high TET for the brawling weapons and a low TET for the long range weapons. As long as you don'T use them together, you should get what you want. (Whether it's always the best choice to mix roles like this is another question).

The important aspect of the TET approach is that it has to account for a mech's inherent heat capacity - since that allows you to gain heat without needing to immediately/completely dissipate it. This creates some artefacts - if you really always only calculate the TET for a single weapon, you get unrealistic figures - a single medium laser currently can produce 10 heat over 10 seconds on average, so that the time to overheat is at least 30 (in practice, it's even higher - your heat capacity in MW:O is 30 + heat sinks, not just 30 - and you need to have 10 heat sinks now... So basically, with a single medium laser and 10 sinks, you never overheat.)

So for my calculations, I always used 4 weapons.That can be unrealistic for large weapons, but it's close enough - the real error beings at the low heat levels, not the high ones.

How to Calculate Damage
THere are basically two major damage figures people are interested in:
- Damage Per Shot (or "burst" or in Battletech terms "alpha" damage)
- Damage over Time (or "DPS")
Damage per Shot is an important asset to have - you want to nail weak spots at the enemy mech and a high damage per shot means you can destroy them without firing again.
Damage over Time - You can't one-shot everything and everyone, so you will need to take multiple shots - how much damage over time you can inflict on average gives a hint on how long it will take you.

How to put Damage and Weight together
I have basically chosen 3 approaches in total.

For using heat neutrality, I have used two damage figures.
1) Damage Over Time
2) Damage Over Time + Damage per Shot, weighted against each other. (More precisely, I calculated it as (Damage per SHot + 10 x Damage over Time)/10.

For TET, I just used the damage that a mech would inflict continously firing.

Whatever model I used, I then used the calculated weight against the calculate damage.

What we would like to see when we compare damage efficiency stats of weapons

Generally:
Range has not appeared yet in any of the calculations, but is a major factor in balancing weapons. What we want to see ideally is that weapons with similar range have similar damage efficiency stats, and the longer the range, the lower the damage efficiency. This means there is a meaningful trade-off between damage and range. If you use a short range weapon, you must get close to the enemy first, but if you do, you can outdamage the enemy that relies on long range weapons. This introduces also an interesting tactical element, as each participant will try to fight in his "turf" or range category.

Heat Neutrality + Weighted Damage Values
Here, Range should suffice. We already made burst potential an advantage in the efficiency chart.

Heat Neutrality + Damage Over Time:
Here, Range is one factor, but we don't account for burst yet. As a general guideline - the higher the damage per shot is for a weapon, the lower we want the efficiency to be.

TET
For TET, we have similar concerns as for Heat Neutrality and Damage Over Time - more range and more burst should mean a lower efficiency.

This is the chart you may find useless, because it's based on heat neutrality:



This is the chart you may find useful, because it's based on the idea of how long you want your mech too last in practice to kill your targets before they kill you:

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 03 November 2012 - 12:35 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

And yet... it remains a useful benchmark. It's not the only one, of course.

A benchmark that assumes a player is holding down their mouse button for 15 minutes and never cooling off is not a useful benchmark.

[MustrumRidcully]

Vlad Ward, on 03 November 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

A benchmark that assumes a player is holding down their mouse button for 15 minutes and never cooling off is not a useful benchmark.

Not sure if you read my entire post, I added a bit shortly after I wrote it. I can give you a scenario that shows when it can be directly useful, and I can give you a different benchmark that is more into what you're looking for. Neither benchmark changes the fundamental fact that high heat weapons in MW:O suck.

[Yokaiko]

Vlad Ward, on 03 November 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

A benchmark that assumes a player is holding down their mouse button for 15 minutes and never cooling off is not a useful benchmark.

None of this is in a vacuum.

You are neglecting that the mech (except gauss cat) HAVE other weapons, if you can only fit half of the heatsinks you need to run your MAIN weapon, what do you do with the rest of them?

[Vlad Ward]

It seems you copy-pasted a novel on me in an edit, so I'll respond to that as well.

Straight up? You're working backwards. You're taking either an expectation of heat neutrality or an expected engagement time and back-tracking until you come up with a weapons config that will work for you.

I'm working forwards. I'm taking a weapon and Mech config and determining how long it can stay in a fight and how much damage it can do at heat neutral levels.

How do these differ? Why is it important that they differ?

Simple. In starting with heat neutrality, you take an expectation of perfect performance (that you're firing your weapons on cooldown for the entire match and are always dealing damage) and scale it back until you find weapons that can perform better than any human being could possibly hope to.

In starting with TET, you make the same assumption in a more condensed form. You backtrack to find weapons that are capable of sustaining accurate fire for 1, 2, 5 straight minutes when those scenarios almost never occur in real combat situations outside of LRM boating.

Working forward allows you to determine both the minimum and maximum performance of your loadout, in addition to the sustainability of your maximum performance, and then make a judgment call as to whether or not said loadout is worth using.

[MustrumRidcully]

Vlad Ward, on 03 November 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

It seems you copy-pasted a novel on me in an edit, so I'll respond to that as well.

Straight up? You're working backwards. You're taking either an expectation of heat neutrality or an expected engagement time and back-tracking until you come up with a weapons config that will work for you.

I'm working forwards. I'm taking a weapon and Mech config and determining how long it can stay in a fight and how much damage it can do at heat neutral levels.

How do these differ? Why is it important that they differ?

Simple. In starting with heat neutrality, you take an expectation of perfect performance (that you're firing your weapons on cooldown for the entire match and are always dealing damage) and scale it back until you find weapons that can perform better than any human being could possibly hope to.

In starting with TET, you make the same assumption in a more condensed form. You backtrack to find weapons that are capable of sustaining accurate fire for 1, 2, 5 straight minutes when those scenarios almost never occur in real combat situations outside of LRM boating.

Working forward allows you to determine both the minimum and maximum performance of your loadout, in addition to the sustainability of your maximum performance, and then make a judgment call as to whether or not said loadout is worth using.

So you are arguing you would come to different conclusions than I would? Are you certain about this?

By your method, which loadout would be better or more desirable? The Catapult K2 in its stock config, or one of those Gauss Kitty configurations? A Jenner with 4 Medium Lasers or a Jenner with 6 Small Lasers? Work me through it, I may not be getting your approach.

(BTW, I am not assuming 1, 2 or 5 minutes of uninterrpted firing. I am actually using 20 seconds and 90 seconds in my graphs.)

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 03 November 2012 - 12:55 PM.

[Abrahms]

Vlad Ward, on 03 November 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

A benchmark that assumes a player is holding down their mouse button for 15 minutes and never cooling off is not a useful benchmark.

Its a very useful benchmark. Most of the time, especially for slower mechs, you need to be able to keep firing until something is dead. For snipers or fast light mechs heat neutrality is less of an issue, but DPS is critical in a game with doubled armor.

Also, as a benchmark, you can see the raw difference in power. If the PPCs still weighed 20 more tons, it might be worth it, noting that you dont fire all the time. But 60 extra tons? Dude, it aint happening. You are doing 1/3 the DPS with the same alpha strike.... just take the gauss, match the alpha, and triple the DPS when you have an open window to do so.

You are being illogical. In no shape or form can the PPC > Gauss right now, strictly due to the heat system. THe gauss for 4-5 of ammo tons easily lasts all game. Read my math on the first page if you already forgot.

Livewyr, on 03 November 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

Something to think about with all your math.. the Meta-Math complexities.

ERPPC has unlimited ammo.. so comparing it to the Gauss Rifle in terms of sustainability of fire.. is flawed.

Here's why.

Yes the Gauss generates (pretty much) no heat. However it does have limited ammo. This means that if the player takes all sorts of crazy/risky shots, they will run out of ammo. Thus.. a player with foresight doesn't shoot the crazy shots.. and the person without the foresights, shoots the crazy shots and then his Gauss Rifles become 15 tons of deadweight.

ERPPC: High heat generation- means that he can't spam-fire due to overheat, but he can fire all game long, and can fire at those targets that are very low %. So.. if one makes the ERPPC heat neutral (like TT..) then he has the most powerful heavy weapon in the game because the player can shoot all he likes, at whatever the heck he wants, and doesn't have to worry about foresight, his longevity is not at risk by shooting.

This is that thing the math doesn't take into account.. and why TT math arguments are a fallacy..ergo why Abrahms has posted his 11th thread on the same subject.. as if the masses are going to agree with him this time.

The amount of crazy risk shots you take with a PPC are inferior. Here is why... for 8 tons, you can literally have 80 shots. You wont ever run out of that. You can try shooting into the wall from second #1 and try to get rid of ammo, but ittl be hard before the match is over... COmpare that to an extra 20 tons per PPC for heat neutrality...

When I take the Gauss, I actually take MORE potshots, because I can just keep refiring and taking the extra ammo is only a few tons. I have to place my PPC shots better ebcause of excessive heat, I simply cannot afford to miss because Im literally 50 tons short in heatsinks. Its a lot easier to scrap up a few tons for extra ammo. Why? because the heat system is so excessively broken it negates your point. It weighs far too much to keep a PPC even viable to ever justify unlimited ammo being a bonus.

[Lyteros]

@unlimited ammo ppc vs gauss ammo:

since you need 3 heatsinks with 3 tons per every point of heat against 1 ton of ammo, its a very one sided comparison. What about unlimited ammo if you can instead take 5 tons of ammo for the entire match at a way lower tonnage? Lowering the heatsink count to compensate will kill you, because while you wait 'till you can fire again you're constantly eating rounds.

@max dps
so you have 20 dps max for 10 seconds? wohoo. You have sucessfully scratched the paint on the double armour amounts of MWO's mechs. The max dps is irrelevant the moment you can only sustain it for SECONDS. The general engagement does not go trough several minutes, true, but the repeatet fights over the course of a match last for sure 20-60 seconds each. So if your sutained DPS kicks in after 10 seconds per match and you creep with 3 dps instead of your 20, the gauss example above you used will overrun you after those 10 seconds.

So you can
a) stockpile heatsinks to keep going, which is hugely inefficient
run hot and die because you drop to a tiny fraction of your initial DPS after 3 salvos
c) use ballistics and LRM because they are a lot less gimped then energy weapons, especially high energy ones


Abrahms makes a very valid point with the "heat neutrality" there, its showing the full extend of how ****** up heat is right now, the TET from MustrumRidcully is way nearer at the relaity of our battles tough.

Both say mathematically high enery weapons suck.

Some people just have no intrest in balancing an competition at all, they just want their I-Win Buttons and FOTM stuff. Which right now clearly is gauss, LRM and to some degree streaks in high numbers. The numbers on this have been proven so often its rediculous. IMHO denying these facts means either trolling or disability of coherent logical thought. (I'm cointing "I-WIN Buttons over balancing" under the later one).

Edited by Lyteros, 03 November 2012 - 01:15 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 12:53 PM, said:

So you are arguing you would come to different conclusions than I would? Are you certain about this?

By your method, which loadout would be better or more desirable? The Catapult K2 in its stock config, or one of those Gauss Kitty configurations? A Jenner with 4 Medium Lasers or a Jenner with 6 Small Lasers? Work me through it, I may not be getting your approach.

The stock K2 is just awful, so I'll put that one aside.

As for Jenners, I can run through that.

A JR7-F with a 300XL engine and 4 Medium Lasers would have:
3.5 tons internals
238/32 = 7.43 tons of Standard armor
15.5 tons in the Engine
4 tons in weapons
0.5 tons in a JJ (most likely)
and 4 tons in SHS or DHS.
total: 34.43 tons

Will DHS fit on a JR7-F? Yes. So we'll go with DHS and convert all the sinks in the engine.

Will Endo Steel fit with the DHS? Yes. So we'll add that, save 1.75 tons, and add 2 more Chassis DHS.

That'll put us at 34.68 tons with max armor, JJ, maxed engine, and 4 medium lasers. I'll leave that last .32 tons alone.

Total heat capacity in this build: 30 + 16(2) = 62
Heat Dissipation: 16 x (.2) x 1.15 = 3.68/s

Maximum DPS: 8.0
Sustainability of Maximum DPS (with 2.0 DHS): 11 volleys, 30 seconds, 220 Damage
Heat Neutral DPS: 4.60

Now, a JR7-F with the exact same config, but 6 Small Lasers replacing the 4 Meds (I'm assuming it'll be tough to fit the 7th chassis DHS with Endo on the frame)

Maximum DPS: 8.0
Sustainability of Maximum DPS (with 2.0 DHS): 47 volleys, 103.5 seconds, 828 total damage
Heat Neutral DPS: 7.35

Conclusions: The SL build is vastly more heat efficient, but if DHS were implemented properly then both builds would be excessively cool - no one needs to deal 220 damage to kill a target, let alone 828, especially when the Mech is capable of running 140~ kph and disengaging at will.

Personally, I'd run the ML setup for the increased per-hit damage and cooler-looking lasers. The SL Jenner is a perfect example of a build that runs way cooler than anyone will ever need it to.

Edit: Does the poster above me not realize that 20 DPS for 10 seconds is 200 damage? That's hardly scratching the paint off anything. More like completely obliterating an Atlas and change.

That is assuming the player is able to hit the broad side of a 30 meter tall, 100 ton, upright killing machine going slow enough to be pulled over on the highway.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 November 2012 - 01:22 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Please don't say "the TET from Mustrum Ridcully" - I didn't invent them, I just made some charts around the concept from another Closed Beta Tester. If I only remembered who he was to properly credit him.

[Yokaiko]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

Please don't say "the TET from Mustrum Ridcully" - I didn't invent them, I just made some charts around the concept from another Closed Beta Tester. If I only remembered who he was to properly credit him.

I remember that post, but its gone to the archives now.

[Lyteros]

You posted it above so I cited you

Quote

Edit: Does the poster above me not realize that 20 DPS for 10 seconds is 200 damage? That's hardly scratching the paint off anything. More like completely obliterating an Atlas and change.

On the 20 dps on 10 seconds: in most cases it will have quite a lot of shots missing, form imperfect aiming that most people have, shaking due to fire, moving, twisting torso and arms, obstacles while moving, etc.
And the rest will not be in one location but spread over 2-3 locations.
If, after everything, 50% of this damage hits the CT of a mech, you wouldnt kill an awesome or atlas with it. (atlas has 9x armor on the CT front alone... and some 30 or 40 internal structure after that)

Edited by Lyteros, 03 November 2012 - 01:41 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

Lyteros, on 03 November 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

You posted it above so I cited you



On the 20 dps on 10 seconds: in most cases it will have quite a lot of shots missing, form imperfect aiming that most people have, shaking due to fire, moving, twisting torso and arms, obstacles while moving, etc.
And the rest will not be in one location but spread over 2-3 locations.
If, after everything, 50% of this damage hits the CT of a mech, you wouldnt kill an awesome or atlas with it. (atlas has 9x armor on the CT front alone... and some 30 or 40 internal structure after that)

I suppose that's more a player issue than a Mech issue. I can't do much about that.

Personally, I prefer running laser-heavy builds for this very reason. I'm able to place my shots very precisely with them, so even when I miss my intended target I'll still do extreme damage to one component. It's rare that anything survives more than 2-3 Alphas from my Brawler, except the occasional Atlas which I can run circles around (85kph beats 48kph every time).

Anything that I totally wiff and can't kill, I just outrun. That's why speed and the ability to engage/disengage is also extremely important when looking at Mech heat dissipation. Slow Mechs need to be more heat-conscious than fast Mechs if for no other reason than their inability to extricate themselves from a fight and cool down.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 November 2012 - 01:48 PM.