534 replies to this topic

[Apoc1138]

I know where your 160 second limit comes from... my point is that it is neither desirable nor required for any weapon to sustain a trigger down for 160 seconds... and what happens at the end of the 160 seconds? the gauss is out of ammo, the PPC can keep on firing... in practice I get a second or two between shots with any weapon because I'm lining up the next shot... making my DPS with gauss more like 2.5-3... or I miss more with the gauss, also dropping my DPS further than a miss with PPC

your mathematical model is based upon flawed assumptions... luckily PGI don't follow your model, they follow theirs
I am enjoying playing their game, I don't like the sound of your game, whatever it is

your reference to skill levels of gauss vs. ppc users is irrelevant... *I* get better scores / kills / whatever metric you want to use when *I* use PPC's over gauss... last time I checked, my skill level was equal with mine, so we can remove that as a variable in the comparison

I would say I am average skill in game, I optimise my builds based on the feedback the game gives me when I play... I build I do better in I keep, a build I suck in I discard... I have discarded all Gauss based builds due to negative feedback... I have kept a PPC build and a UAC5 build due to positive feedback... these builds give me an edge when skill levels are equal or even in the opponents favour

[Vapor Trail]

Thanks Mustrum. Needed someone to post so I could finish.
Dang class... always when I need to post.

Apoc1138, on 14 November 2012 - 01:56 AM, said:

lets look at this another way... if I do 600 damage over 10 minutes and I get the most kills and XP at the end of the match, and close to the most damage... that means my average DPS in the round was 1DPS... so by your math I have what you are arbitrarily calling combat effective DPS of 4-5... I actually only need a DPS of 1 to win the round

Which would apply if you were firing, or affecting your ability to fire (not damage an opponent, but fire), for that entire ten minutes. For the purposes of weapon balance, what you do other than fire and cool off doesn't matter. You can stand there, shut down and go have a sandwich, whatever.

If you extract each indivdual shot, recycle time, and cooling time from those ten minutes, you get the important bits for weapon balance...

2 PPCs (only)
600 damage, 60 shots, 30 salvos, 540 heat, 3.68 heat per second dissipation.

Average rate of fire (salvo) is
540 heat / 30 salvos = 18 heat per salvo
18 / 3.68 = 4.89 seconds/salvo.

4.89 * 30 = 146.7 seconds.

The remaining 453.3 seconds doesn't matter to weapon balance.

Apoc1138, on 14 November 2012 - 01:56 AM, said:

obviously this isn't true either but I'm just using this as an example to highlight how silly your arbitrary 160 seconds is... no single engagement lasts for 160 seconds, so it's a pointless benchmark to use

No engagement lasts forever so the whining about heat neutral energy weapons is pointless too? But it's not just twenty seconds of sustained fire... it's twenty seconds of sustained fire... backed by the cooldown time necessary afterward.


Mustrum's done some work with "Target Engagement Time" or TET figures that is right up this alley, and shows a similar trend. Perhaps you'd find his analysis works for you better.

Apoc1138, on 14 November 2012 - 01:56 AM, said:

my 10 minutes is just as arbitrary as your 160 seconds... I know I can kill most things in 20 seconds of sustained fire... so which one of these times would you like to keep using? I evaluate my weapon choices to a different set of criteria to you, I respect your right to evaluate your choices to your own criteria, but please don't force your criteria upon me

If we were to take TT proportions (not values) as the target, if a single Gauss Rifle makes "a kill" (or simply 'outputs a certain amount of damage') in 20 seconds, and is ready to go again.

Then a single PPC with a roughly similar tonnage investment should take ~thirty seconds to do the same or better. A TT PPC maxes its fire rate (ie, heat neutral) with 10 single heat sinks (17 tons invested). A TT Gauss does it with 15 + 1 + ammo. So unless you got nuts with the ammo the tonnage comparison would be close, and in TT the Gauss fire rate was four times lower, so you rarely saw more than two tons of ammo taken per weapon.

Which would mean a PPC (not ER) with about 15 heat sinks should do that or better right? Heat cap would be 45.

At Max RoF the PPC PPC would need to fire 7.5 times to equal the damage output, and would do so in 19.5 seconds. Cooling off from all that heat would take a total of 42 seconds.

By shot:
You gain 4.5 heat per shot, at end of cooldown and spike by 9.
So, t=0, 0->9 heat; 3 seconds 4.5 -> 13.5; 6 seconds, 9->18; and so on. 7 shots means 18 seconds elapsed, 27->36 heat. A half shot means 2.25 heat decrease, and 4.5 heat increase @ 19.5 seconds for a top heat spike of 33.75 heat.

Then you have to cool. 33.75 heat to a baseline of 0 with a Dissipation rate of 1.5 (15 tons of singles) is 22.5 seconds.

By this comparision the PPC is twelve seconds late to the party By that I mean it's twenty-two seconds behind the Gauss. Doesn't seem like much... but remember, it's supposed to be ten seconds behind the Gauss (at twenty seconds) to start with, so it's a decrease in effectiveness of thirty percent, despite the fact that it's got 50% more heat sinks than the TT comparison, and the fact that's the post heat-tweak MWO version of the PPC being fired.

If you throw enough true double heat sinks at it (.2 HdR per sink) you can actually get it to perform. It takes 11.25 Double heat sinks (instead of ten singles or five doubles) to get the PPC to the point where it emulates the performance of a TT PPC with respect to the Gauss rifle.

Based on the damage level of the Gauss, and the proportions set in TT, a single PPC is supposed to be a beast.

At best it's ho-hum.

I'm not actually advocating the buffing of the PPC remember. The Gauss (and anything re-balanced towards it) should be changed IMO.

Edited by Vapor Trail, 14 November 2012 - 04:54 PM.

[Stabbitha]

Indoorsman, on 13 November 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

You guys are anazlying a situation which is Gasscat vs PPC cat. That means 1v1. In 1v1 either opponent disengaging reduces BOTH opponents' "average" RoF. Not just the guy who disengaged. Say the Gausscat continues to fire at some random other person. Good for the gausscat, now the ppc cat pops him a couple times and hides again. But even then, the shots fired by the gausscat weren't hitting the ppc cat so for the comparison don't really matter. What matters is which one kills the other first, in your comparison anyways.

Situation A, both mechs stand there and shoot till other mech dies. Outcome: Gausscat wins due to higher DPS.

Situation B, Gausscat has no cover while PPC cat has cover. Both fire simultaneously. 3 seconds later PPC cat fires again. Between seconds 3 and 4 PPC cat takes cover. PPC cat reappears whenever it feels like it. PPC cat wins due to higher RoF.

Situation C, Gausscat has cover, PPC cat does not. Both fire simultaneously and Gausscat immediately takes cover. 4 seconds later a wild Gausscat appears! Gausscat wins due to burst.

Situation D, both have cover. Both fire simultaneously and Gausscat hides, PPC cat is sad. Gausscat reappears! Both fire. Gausscat wins due to burst.

The above situations assume EQUAL skill, they both know how to use cover to take advantage of RoF. A Gausscat would win 3 out of 4 situations. And that's w/o the heat system being involved at all. The heat generated by PPC would only matter in situation A(no cover) and it is a losing battle from the start... not just when it generates too much heat.

/sigh

All examples other than your first are entirely irrelevant to weapon balance, even if you were talking about weapon balance (you're actually describing build balance)...

Apoc1138, on 14 November 2012 - 01:56 AM, said:

Wall of text

Your ability to use the weapon notwithstanding is irrelevant, the weapon is still not balanced...

Your skill with using the weapon is irrelevant, the weapon is still not balanced.

Your wall of text not withstanding, the weapon is still not balanced.

Your complete and deliberate ignorance of the basic math that shows the PPC (let alone the ER) cannot keep up with a similarly equipped gauss rifle + ammo is irrelevant, the weapon is still not balanced...

[Indoorsman]

Stabbitha, on 14 November 2012 - 09:01 PM, said:

All examples other than your first are entirely irrelevant to weapon balance, even if you were talking about weapon balance (you're actually describing build balance)...

Ummm no? The only variable between the 2 mechs in my examples is their ONE unique weapon, which they each have 2 of. This makes it a comparison of 2 PPC vs 2 Gauss. Build balance would be discussing 2 PPC on a C1 vs 2 PPC in the arms on a K2.

edit:
you had an "even if" so here's my even if. Even if you want to call my comparisons "build balance", doesn't really matter if you do IMO, my point is that the examples are entirely RELEVANT to "weapon balance". So call it build balance if you like, it's NOT irrelevant to this discussion on weapons balance though.

Edited by Indoorsman, 14 November 2012 - 10:05 PM.

[Vapor Trail]

Indoorsman, on 14 November 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

Ummm no? The only variable between the 2 mechs in my examples is their ONE unique weapon, which they each have 2 of. This makes it a comparison of 2 PPC vs 2 Gauss. Build balance would be discussing 2 PPC on a C1 vs 2 PPC in the arms on a K2.

edit:
you had an "even if" so here's my even if. Even if you want to call my comparisons "build balance", doesn't really matter if you do IMO, my point is that the examples are entirely RELEVANT to "weapon balance". So call it build balance if you like, it's NOT irrelevant to this discussion on weapons balance though.

The issue Stabbitha has with your examples (cover/no cover, or both cover) is that the options described aren't relevant to weapon balance.

They're not relevant to weapon balance because they are TACTICAL options. You can't fundamentally balance a weapon for the tactical decisions or blunders the pilot may or may not make.

It's like claiming LRMs are unbalanced because they kill you when you stand in the open. The answer is to not stand in the open, not nerf LRMs.

Weapons balance drives tactics, not the reverse.

[Stingray Productions]

Really does require a lot of skill to use those PPC's.

[Terror Teddy]

Let's put things in a different perspective.

The gauss would (in the TT rules) have a minimum range. It does not have a drawback of any kind in MWO.

Would ANYONE use SRM's if LRM's had no minimum range? Would they use STREAK if LRM's was designed like the GAUSS?

Would people claim the LRM's were balanced compared to the SRM in that case?

Now we replace the SRM with AC20 and the LRM with Gauss.

[Kmieciu]

The bottom line is, the Devs should adjust the heat of PPC to the Large Laser:

as is now:
LargeLaser 5 tons 9 damage 7 heat
ER LargeLaser 5 tons 9 damage 10 heat

proposed changes:
PPC: 7 tons 10 damage 6 Heat (down from 9)
ERPPC: 7 tons 10 damage 9 Heat (down from 13)

Edited by Kmieciu, 15 November 2012 - 12:38 AM.

[Apoc1138]

Vapor Trail, on 14 November 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

The issue Stabbitha has with your examples (cover/no cover, or both cover) is that the options described aren't relevant to weapon balance.

They're not relevant to weapon balance because they are TACTICAL options. You can't fundamentally balance a weapon for the tactical decisions or blunders the pilot may or may not make.

It's like claiming LRMs are unbalanced because they kill you when you stand in the open. The answer is to not stand in the open, not nerf LRMs.

Weapons balance drives tactics, not the reverse.

this is where I completely disagree with you
you are the guy arguing that the barret is OP because not only can he one shot another player but he gets 2 chances to do that in the same time it takes x other weapon to kill him

yes it does, but he needs to land with either of those shots and he's in a better situation if he keeps you at long range where it's more difficult for you to return fire

skill and tactics are key to weapon balance, as is inter-mech balance... you have to consider the whole system when talking about balance, you simply cannot take all weapons and say "ok, I want them all to have the same DPS / ton"... that would be crap and boring and take all the fun and skill out of the game

if gauss were as great as you make out then everyone would have discovered this, trained with it, become proficient with it and everyone would be using it... the fact that it *does* have downsides and tradeoffs is the reason we don't

the fact that if you miss even 1 shot with a gauss, it causes your effective DPS to plummet, where as missing with faster firing weapons affects your average alot less is absolutely key to weapon balance, and it's something you are completely ignoring in your overly simplistic model

even building a mech in the first place is a series of tactical choices

the whole world is trying to drive towards more realistic modelling and data, yet here you are a driving force for drastic over simplification

Vapor Trail, on 14 November 2012 - 04:40 PM, said:

Mustrum's done some work with "Target Engagement Time" or TET figures that is right up this alley, and shows a similar trend. Perhaps you'd find his analysis works for you better.

his work is more detailed than yours yes, it also shows that gauss is not the "best" weapon when considering DPS/ton
I think his shows that small lasers are massively OP... but again, his model does not consider all the variables, it is incomplete and so just like yours should not be used to balance the actual MWO game

Edited by Apoc1138, 15 November 2012 - 02:07 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

Apoc1138, on 15 November 2012 - 02:00 AM, said:

it also shows that gauss is not the "best" weapon when considering DPS/ton

True, but the Gauss is highly unbalanced among it's own category of weapons - ballistics.

[Apoc1138]

Terror Teddy, on 15 November 2012 - 02:09 AM, said:

True, but the Gauss is highly unbalanced among it's own category of weapons - ballistics.

you say that, but for a similar tonnage investment as a single gauss I can fit 2 UAC5's and totally pulverise a gausscat e.g. he gets one shot on me maybe 2 if he's lucky, probably not on the same location unless he's very lucky, I core him out and wear him like a hat, with heat never being an issue

yes I possibly have to contend with jamming - that's called a balancing factor... it's a gameplay one and not one you can factor out with VT's model

don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all weapons are 100% balanced even when considering all the factors... there should continue to be some minor tweaks being done

but some of the maths I see getting thrown about on the forums is calling for changes of 5 heat or increase in rate of fire from 4 to 7 seconds... which are massive, ridiculous changes that would render that weapon either massively over powered or utterly pointlessly nerfed

I don't want to see any changes to PPC's or gauss until EMP effects are added (and please tell me how you are going to add that to your mathematical model!)

Edited by Apoc1138, 15 November 2012 - 02:32 AM.

[Indoorsman]

Vapor Trail, on 14 November 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

The issue Stabbitha has with your examples (cover/no cover, or both cover) is that the options described aren't relevant to weapon balance.

They're not relevant to weapon balance because they are TACTICAL options. You can't fundamentally balance a weapon for the tactical decisions or blunders the pilot may or may not make.

It's like claiming LRMs are unbalanced because they kill you when you stand in the open. The answer is to not stand in the open, not nerf LRMs.

Weapons balance drives tactics, not the reverse.

Tactics are how you engage your enemy. Cover in a game is in between a mechanic and a tactic. It can still be used to execute tactics, flanking or concealing movements. But "taking cover" is not a tactic, for a game it's a mechanic. Allows you to maximize RoF differences as in my example. It allows heat to dissipate, let's you break targetting locks and avoid incoming missiles.

You can't worry about cover TACTICS, but you can talk about cover MECHANICS when discussing weapons balance.

My example of a PPC cat being able to fire 2 times in 3 seconds and then take cover to prevent a gauss cats' second salvo is perfectly valid to this thread. The four scenarios I laid out are ignoring tactics like high ground, flanking etc... They compare 2 weapons systems, assuming equal skill and giving equal cover opportunity.

As for LRMs and standing in the open. LRM were removing the option of flanking, and were ignoring cover... when they were OP. It was suicide to put the enemy between you and your team last patch. They ignored cover, if your cover wasn't vertical, and did a bajillion(literally) damage. They could have just nerfed the damage and/or the spread, but the arc needed a nerf in order for cover to be useful again. All 3 might have been over kill, but at least it's not Missile Warrior Online anymore.

Oh and I know someone will say that missiles are indirect fire weapons. So lemme clarify that "cover" does not mean concealment/LoS, it means protection.

[Slanski]

Ballistic weapons come with extra tonnage to compensate for their lower heat output.

Energy weapons draw on your common pool of heatsinks to determine their duration of sustained fire. The idea of flexibility here is, that the 16 heatsinks that your Warhammer draws on in long range combat can at the same time sustain your battery of medium and small lasers for infighting.

MWO's issue is that map design affords so much cover that on most maps you can just leave the long range weaponry at home and take extra medium lasers. This is exacerbated by being able to refire them faster than in TT, while still maintaining 10s cycle heat sink efficiencies. Suddenly the heat sinks are my limitation for DPS in infight, not the weapon cycle times.

Minmaxing kicks in and the Warhammer mounts Medium Lasers and additional heat sinks in the arms to enter the urban battlefield. Competativeness and the fact that your opponent can and will do it, means everyone has to do it.

[Hoshi Toranaga]

Kmieciu, on 15 November 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

The bottom line is, the Devs should adjust the heat of PPC to the Large Laser:

as is now:
LargeLaser 5 tons 9 damage 7 heat
ER LargeLaser 5 tons 9 damage 10 heat

proposed changes:
PPC: 7 tons 10 damage 6 Heat (down from 9)
ERPPC: 7 tons 10 damage 9 Heat (down from 13)

This is actually one of the best suggestions I have seen so far and hugely better than the theorycrafting above... of course could be tweaked in ongoing balance +/- 1 heat

Sadly no PPC questions have been answered in the "ask the devs 24"... so no love for PPC as Garth drives Laserboats anyways... (and loves medium lasers, so it does not matter that large pulse is useless)

Edited by Terry Ward, 15 November 2012 - 04:41 AM.

[Allekatrase]

Slanski, on 15 November 2012 - 04:31 AM, said:

Ballistic weapons come with extra tonnage to compensate for their lower heat output.

Energy weapons draw on your common pool of heatsinks to determine their duration of sustained fire. The idea of flexibility here is, that the 16 heatsinks that your Warhammer draws on in long range combat can at the same time sustain your battery of medium and small lasers for infighting.

MWO's issue is that map design affords so much cover that on most maps you can just leave the long range weaponry at home and take extra medium lasers. This is exacerbated by being able to refire them faster than in TT, while still maintaining 10s cycle heat sink efficiencies. Suddenly the heat sinks are my limitation for DPS in infight, not the weapon cycle times.

Minmaxing kicks in and the Warhammer mounts Medium Lasers and additional heat sinks in the arms to enter the urban battlefield. Competativeness and the fact that your opponent can and will do it, means everyone has to do it.

This problem is made worse by the fact that the ranges in MW:O are off. Admittedly my knowledge of TT comes from these forums but what I've come to understand is that 270m was the MAX range of medium lasers and they wouldn't hit anything beyond that. The actual chance to hit very significantly reduced their effective damage at this range. In MW:O you get full damage out to this range and then a falloff in damage beyond it.

This applies to all the lasers weapons, and possibly all the weapons in the game. The ranges are longer. The maps are small and there is plenty of cover. This means that there are very few times when you actually need more range than a medium laser.

[Terror Teddy]

Apoc1138, on 15 November 2012 - 02:20 AM, said:

you say that, but for a similar tonnage investment as a single gauss I can fit 2 UAC5's and totally pulverise a gausscat e.g. he gets one shot on me maybe 2 if he's lucky, probably not on the same location unless he's very lucky, I core him out and wear him like a hat, with heat never being an issue

And here we are again with someone mentioning the Catapult K2. The chassis is IRRELEVANT. The WEAPON is broken as it overshadow all other HEAVY ballistic weapons.

And you are comparing the WRONG weapons.
Compare the AC20 to the Gauss instead.

30% less BULK (-3)
6% more WEIGHT (+1)
600% less HEAT (1 vs 7) ok, 500% with new patch.

Now we come to the part where the actual importance is.

Lets give an example.

Two Atlas with 1 gauss and 1 AC 20.

They start 660 meters away from each other and moves straight forward between each shot for 4 seconds before firing again at equal speed. Let's say 12 meters per second (43,2 km/H)

660m = Gauss 1
612m = Gauss 1
564m = Gauss 1
516m = Gauss 1
468m = Gauss 1
420m = Gauss 1
372m = Gauss 1
324m = Gauss 1
276m = Gauss 1
228m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
180m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
132m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
084m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
036m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1

So, 9 shots before even the AC20 toter gets in range. WHEN they both get in range the Gauss have no drawbacks, even though it should just as the AC20 is useless until he gets close.

Also, when the AC20 gets in range he racks up 35 heat (30 with new patch) as compared to the Gauss 5 in the same time.

The DPS at range is superior in the Gauss but it's effectiveness does not dim in close combat - which it should.

Compare them to the LRM - who would use Streak or SRM if the LRM did not have a drawback in close combat.

[Apoc1138]

yes, because the game should totally be balanced to account for a brawler running over open ground directly toward a sniper build /facepalm

the AC/20 atlas dies in your example because of gross stupidity, not because the gauss is inherently better as a brawler weapon

Edited by Apoc1138, 15 November 2012 - 05:30 AM.

[Indoorsman]

Terror Teddy, on 15 November 2012 - 04:56 AM, said:

And here we are again with someone mentioning the Catapult K2. The chassis is IRRELEVANT. The WEAPON is broken as it overshadow all other HEAVY ballistic weapons.

And you are comparing the WRONG weapons.
Compare the AC20 to the Gauss instead.

30% less BULK (-3)
6% more WEIGHT (+1)
600% less HEAT (1 vs 7) ok, 500% with new patch.

Now we come to the part where the actual importance is.

Lets give an example.

Two Atlas with 1 gauss and 1 AC 20.

They start 660 meters away from each other and moves straight forward between each shot for 4 seconds before firing again at equal speed. Let's say 12 meters per second (43,2 km/H)

660m = Gauss 1
612m = Gauss 1
564m = Gauss 1
516m = Gauss 1
468m = Gauss 1
420m = Gauss 1
372m = Gauss 1
324m = Gauss 1
276m = Gauss 1
228m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
180m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
132m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
084m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1
036m = Gauss 1 / AC20 1

So, 9 shots before even the AC20 toter gets in range. WHEN they both get in range the Gauss have no drawbacks, even though it should just as the AC20 is useless until he gets close.

Also, when the AC20 gets in range he racks up 35 heat (30 with new patch) as compared to the Gauss 5 in the same time.

The DPS at range is superior in the Gauss but it's effectiveness does not dim in close combat - which it should.

Compare them to the LRM - who would use Streak or SRM if the LRM did not have a drawback in close combat.

An AC20 has the same DPS as a Gauss @ ~400m. Inside 400m it increases up to 5dps @ 270m. Also in your example the Gauss would get 8 hits outside of AC20 "optimal" range and the AC20 would get 6 total not 5.
276m Gauss 1
270m ------------AC20 1
228m Gauss 1
222m ------------AC20 1
180m Gauss 1
174m ------------AC20 1
132m Gauss 1
126m ------------AC20 1
084m Gauss 1
078m ------------AC20 1
036m Gauss 1
030m ------------AC20 1

If you did the total damage done for both weapons firing from 660m - 0m that would be a better comparison :-p.

edit: And what the post above says.
Inside 400m AC20 > Gauss, outside 400m Gauss > AC20.

Edited by Indoorsman, 15 November 2012 - 05:39 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

Apoc1138, on 15 November 2012 - 05:29 AM, said:

yes, because the game should totally be balanced to account for a brawler running over open ground directly toward a sniper build /facepalm

the AC/20 atlas dies in your example because of gross stupidity, not because the gauss is inherently better as a brawler weapon

No, what I did was compare simple weapon stats.

Within 100-200 meters the Gauss is supposed to have drawbacks.

What you completely miss is that ton for ton the gauss is better - even though the AC20 is designated as a brawler weapon it is outperformed by the Gauss both in tonnage and the space.

The AC20 should get the upper hand in close combat but it does not.

[Apoc1138]

Terror Teddy, on 15 November 2012 - 06:16 AM, said:

No, what I did was compare simple weapon stats.

Within 100-200 meters the Gauss is supposed to have drawbacks.

What you completely miss is that ton for ton the gauss is better - even though the AC20 is designated as a brawler weapon it is outperformed by the Gauss both in tonnage and the space.

The AC20 should get the upper hand in close combat but it does not.

AC/20 is 1 ton less than a gauss... it has 5 DPS instead of 3.75 and it delivers 20 points on a single location instead of 15

these are all advantages as far as I'm concerned... what I can tell you from direct experience is that in close combat an AC/20 will usually beat a Gauss Atlas... I know this from both winning as an AC/20-las and losing under the same circumstances as a Gauss-las

your math is flawed because it doesn't account for what actually happens in game... I've given up debating the maths involved because it's just getting painful watching you guys back pedal and come up with reasons for why what I see ingame must be wrong

the only thing that will get PGI to change the stats on a weapon is if everyone uses that weapon and consistently beats people who don't use that weapon

Edited by Apoc1138, 15 November 2012 - 06:23 AM.