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Heatsinks are generally 1 heat dissipated over 10 seconds. Battletech had 10 second turns. MWO uses all of the damage and heat statistics from Battletech, except for a few changes.
LRM/SRM damage is doubled or more,
Large lasers got +1 dmg -1 heat (large pulse too)
PPC got -1 heat,
Medium and small laser got +1 heat.
May be a few other miscellaneous changes, or ninja buffs/nerfs, or additions of diminishing returns, but generally, these concepts hold. Generalizing is OK for now because Im going to illustrate an overall concept that shows why balance is off. Also, armor has been doubled.
MWO also roughly has tripled rate of fire. In Battletech, a PPC, Gauss, Small laser, and SRM all shot every 10 seconds.
Lets round rate of fire to 3.33 seconds. For example, the PPC is 3, and the Gauss is 4, but for simplicity I will use 3.33.
In Battletech, a PPC weighed 7 tons, and generated 10 heat. It also did 10 damage. So, 3x PPCs did 30 damage every 10 seconds, and weighed 21 tons + generated 30 heat. So, if a mech wanted to remain heat neutral, it needed 51 tons. Mechs dont have to be heat neutral, but its a good balance point because the more you stray from heat neutrality, the less efficient each PPC is, up to a point that is severely harms your DPS in a game with doubled armor.
Lets subtract 10 tons for engine heatsinks, its 41 tons for 3 heat neutral PPCs. You could then drop a few HSs to right slightly warm, and weight 37ish tons for 3 PPCs and fire very often.
In MWO, rate of fire has tripled. So, in each 10 second window, you can fire each PPC three times. So can basically every other weapon in the game. So, you now generate 90 heat in a 10 second window. MWO changed heat to 9, so now its 81 heat in MWO. + 21 tons = 102 tons for 3 heat neutral PPCs in MWO. Lets - 10 for the engine, thats roughly 90 tons for 3 heat neutral PPCs. Now of course you dont have to run heat neutral, but when you compare TT to MWO, the PPC weighs a little over DOUBLE what it did in TT for the same/similar proportions/effect.
The Gauss on the other hand only generates 1 heat. So, 2 gauss = 30 damage. Each gauss is 15 tons * 2 = 30 tons for weapons. Then add 4 tons of ammo for each gauss, so 8 tons + 30 = 38. Then 2 heatsinks is 40 tons for heat neutrality. -10 for the engine only brings it to 38 tons because heatsinks make of far less of the weapon platform's weight. In TT, 30 damage alpha from a PPC, or a Gauss with enough ammo to last all match, weighed about THE SAME. However, in MWO, with tripled rate of fire, the Gauss can fire 3 times in the 10 second window just like the PPC, but now it only generates 1 heat * 2xgauss * 3xshots = 6 heat. The gauss platform just gained 4 tons in required heatsinks. Meaning, 44 tons for heat neutrality, again brought back to 38 by the engine HSs.
As you can see, two weapon systems that were fairly balanced in TT are now COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. The PPC is terrible, running at around 50% of its TT power, but the Gauss is working with maybe a 5% loss, which can be totally negated by engine HSs.
THIS IS WHY WE CANT HAVE NICE THINGS. This is why there is no weapon diversity. This affects EVERY WEAPON in the game, however, by using a low heat vs high heat weapon, you can really see what tripling the ROF did to proportions. Heatsinks still weigh 1 ton, and still dissipate at 1 per 10 sec, just like tabletop, so for every point of heat a weapon generated it now weighs 2 more tons per point. When you only have limited weight for weapons, you want to maximize your damage for your respective role. You want to know a weapon's weight, its damage, its heat, so that you can make the most of that weight. TT was fairly balanced, MWO is not at all. The devs have known about this for months, as the Beta FORUMS were on fire about this. There were 20 page threads about it. They dont care, it keeps TRIAL mechs useless ovens so you buy a mech...
Farm to a mech as fast as you can, and exploit the low heat weapons. Gauss, and small lasers. Missiles are powerful too because they are medium to low heat and have had damage doubled with improved tracking. My Atlas DDC with 1xLRM20 and 2xLRM15 + 2k ammo and enough heatsinks to fire all day just melts mechs. Can 4 shot an assault mech if he doesnt have an AMS umbrella.
Edited by Abrahms, 09 December 2012 - 05:36 PM.
