Vlad Ward, on 03 November 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:
Yes. Except that people like the OP reference it as if it's impossible to use weapons without running heat neutral. They replace weapon tonnage with "Effective tonnage" that makes a boatload of gameplay assumptions that are nowhere close to sound.
If we were to ask the OP, PPCs would weigh 37 tons.
MWO values used hereafter.
For all weapons:
The Devs set 'max Rate of Fire'
Your 'average Rate of Fire' is how fast you can fire those weapons.
For a given number of heat sinks:
Weapon heat limits 'average Rate of Fire'.
The more heat sinks you have, the higher your 'average Rate of Fire' can, and will, be.
ERPPC's 'max RoF' is once every 3 seconds.
An ERPPC system with 1 heat sink fires once every 130 seconds or it builds up heat.
If you fire @ max RoF it till just before shutdown (2 shots, heat cap is at 31):
You will be sitting at 25.4 heat as the weapon cycles ready.
If you wait to cool enough so you can fire a third time, you will be waiting 74 seconds more.
After that, you can only fire once every 130 seconds, or shut down.
An ERPPC system with 2 heat sinks fires every 65 seconds or it builds up heat.
If you fire @ max RoF till just before shutdown (2 shots, heat cap is at 32)
You will be sitting at 24.8 heat as the weapon cycles ready.
If you wait to cool enough so you can fire at third time, you will be waiting 29 seconds more.
After that, you can fire once every 65 seconds, or shut down.
An ERPPC with 3 heat sinks fires every fires every 43.333 seconds or it builds up heat.
If you fire @ max RoF till just before shutdown (2 shots, heat cap is at 33)
You will be sitting at 24.2 heat as the weapon cycles ready.
If you wait to cool enough so you can fire at third time, you will be waiting 14 seconds more.
After that, you can fire once every 43.333 seconds, or shut down.
{This pattern continues... eventually the heat cap rises enough to fire more than 2 shots at max RoF before having to wait to cool.}
An ERPPC with 13 heat sinks fires every 10 seconds or it builds up heat.
This is TT RoF.
If you fire @ max RoF till just before shutdown (4 shots, heat cap is at 43)
You will be sitting at 36.4 heat as the weapon cycles ready.
If you wait to cool enough so you can fire at third time, you will be waiting 4.9 seconds more.
After that, you can fire once every 10 seconds, or shut down. (Remember this, there's a test later.)
An ERPPC with 14 heat sinks fires every 9.2857 seconds or it builds up heat...
{and so on... until...}
An ERPPC with 44 heat sinks fires every 3 seconds. Heat dissipation is now higher than heat generation.
Average RoF cannot exceed max RoF.
The weapons system is heat neutral. It can fire @ max RoF without shutting down.
Gauss is a lot shorter.
Gauss' 'max RoF' is one shot every 4 seconds.
A Gauss with 1 heat sink fires every ten seconds or it builds up heat.
This is TT RoF.
If you fire @ max RoF till just before shutdown (50 shots, heat cap is at 31)
You will be sitting at 30 heat as the weapon cycles ready.
If you wait to cool enough so you can fire at third time, you will be waiting a tiny fraction of a second more.
After that, you can fire once every 10 seconds, or shut down.
A Gauss with 2 heat sinks fires every 5 seconds or it builds up heat.
If you fire @ max RoF till just before shutdown (150 shots, heat cap is at 32)
You will be sitting at 30 heat as the weapon cycles ready.
If you wait to cool enough so that you can fire a third time, you will be waiting a tiny fraction of a second more.
After that, you can fire once every 5 seconds, or shut down.
A Gauss with 3 heat sinks fires every 4 seconds. Heat dissipation is higher than heat generation.
Average RoF cannot exceed max RoF.
The weapon system is heat neutral. It can fire @ max RoF without shutting down.
The points where 'average RoF' equals TT RoF is where the Gauss rifle and the ERPPC were balanced in TT.
Basically the Gauss' TT DPS was 1.5x the ERPPC's TT DPS at a somewhat equivalent tonnage.
IE.
Gauss massing 15 tons, + 1 ton in sinks + a minimum of 1 ton of ammo = 17 tons.
ERPPC massing 7 tons + 13 tons in sinks (modified for MWO figures) = 20 tons.
You could even add three more tons of ammo to the Gauss system and the masses came out equal.
As long as both weapons keep roughly the same masses, and stick to 'average RoFs' equivalent to TT RoFs, then the balance is preserved.
A Gauss system with a single heat sink can operate at at its average RoF indefinitely (until it fires itself dry, with 4 tons of ammo that happens in 160 seconds) and deals 1.5 times the DPS of an ERPPC operated similarly.
An ERPPC system with an equivalent tonnage (20 tons) can operate at its average RoF indefinitely. It deals 75% of the damage that the Gauss system does when operated similarly.
It takes the ERPPC system 1.5 times as long to deal the same amount of damage as the Gauss system.
This disparity in damage output is part of the balancing. The Gauss does more damage per shot, because it
can run out of ammo. However, every ton of ammo you take is 40 seconds of continuous fire. This means if you build the system with enough ammo, it will not run out under normal operation. In TT it is much easier to take an extra ton of ammo for the Gauss than it is to increase damage output on the ERPPC.
Not quite so in MWO.
However.
The ERPPC's 'average RoF' is
heavily enforced by heat.
The Gauss' 'average RoF' is enforced by
nothing whatsoever until you hit 'max RoF' or empty your ammo bin.
A Gauss system with
a single heat sink can operate at
max RoF for
two minutes and twenty seconds before worrying about shutdown. In short, a Gauss system with
four tons of ammo fires itself dry at max RoF without ever having to look at the heat scale.
It deals
600 damage in
160 seconds while doing so.
System average DPS is 3.75.
(so much emphasis, so few ways to express it...)
An ERPPC system with 20 tons, equivalent to that of the above Gauss system's, dedicated to its operation can operate at max RoF for
twelve seconds before worrying about shutdown. It deals 40 damage while doing so.
To deal 600 damage that ERPPC system would have to fire continuously for 60 shots.
That's 180 seconds because the ERPPC shoots every three seconds.
So that's a DPS of 3.333.
And all is right with the world.
Right?
Answer:
Conclusion:
(for all you TL;DNR people... you really should read more, you might learn something).
TT had a certain weapon balance. It might not have been
perfect but it was what we had.
The Devs have said they want to make a fun game. They've also said they want to stick to TT as close as is feasible to do so.
The Gauss' increase in max RoF (
chosen by the Devs) has utterly
destroyed that balance in favor of the Gauss Rifle. Maybe not intentionally. But intentional or not
it happened. It is mathematically proveable that the Gauss enjoys a massive advantage over what are supposed to be it's closest competitors.
Anything "balanced" with regards to the Gauss Rifle just serves to throw the system farther out of whack. Example: AC/2. The worst performing AC is suddenly the best AC, and what's the comparison that springs to mind? "How does it stack up against the Gauss."
Gauss über alles! is not fun for anyone but people using the Gauss. And that's exactly where we're at.
And it's been that way for MONTHS!
"Comparing TT Gauss to MWO Gauss is like comparing apples to oranges."
No.
It's comparing one version of an artificial reproduction of
a certain fruit, to another version an artificial reproduction
of the same fruit, to see if they both have qualities that should be demonstrably similar.
To compare Gauss from either to ERPPC from the same IS comparing apples to oranges. But you're comparing them to see how they are alike, and how they are different. This is useful to see how one the interpretation changes in relation to each another as the different systems represent the individual items.
TT's fakeApple is red.
TT's fakeApple is round.
TT's fakeOrange is orange.
TT's fakeOrange is round.
MWO's fakeOrange is round.
MWO's fakeOrange is orange.
MWO's fakeApple should be red and round.
Or Carnelian and Spherical.
Or Cardinal and an oblate spheroid.
or #ec2a2a with a volume ~ 4/3 pi R^3.
MWO's fakeApple is
a green effing CUBE.
7
Put your 9M back to original spec (which was a monster on TT) and let us know how you go okay... X D And if you're not prepared to do so, please explain why. If I had to guess it would be something like: -too slow -too easy to focus -runs too hot -doesn't do enough damage -but heat neutrality as a method of balancing weapons still doesn't matter 
.
