33 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

There seems to be some misconception on what heat neutrality actually is and means and what it is for.

At its core, a "heat neutral" mech is a build that does not overheat if it fires all its weapons at their full rate of fire. Their can also be heat neutral "firing configurations" - for example, the table top K2 Catapult has 20 heat sinks, 2 PPCs, 2 Medum Lasers and 2 MGs. It is not heat neutral itself, but if it fires only its 2 PPCs, it has a heat neutral firing configuration.
There can also be a heat neutral weapon configuration. If a weapon produces x heat per 10 seconds, you equip x heat sinks.

If you had, for example, a mech that would with its current weapon setup not be heat neutral and overheat in say, 40 seconds firing all weapons, but you through some genius managed to get some spare weight, then adding a heat neutral weapon configuration to the mech would not alter the time it would take for him to shutdown.



But, do you actually want to pilot a heat neutral mech?

The answer is usually - no, you don't. A mech that is heat neutral is spending tonnage on heat sinks not weaponry.

If you were ever forced into a situation where you would need to fire for minutes or hours without pausing - then yes, you would need to be heat neutral.

But realistically, a combat engagement is much shorter than that. The only thing you want to do is - not overheat before the combat is over and your enemy is dead.

For example:
So,if you have a mech that has, say 2 PPCs, and an enemy has, say 90 points of armour on his CT and 30 points of intern armour, then you wouldn't want to overheat before you dealt 120 points of damage to it. But you could afford to do afterwards, because either the enemy would have killed you before you could kill him, or the enemy is dead and you're now alone.
To deal 120 damage with 2 PPCs, you would need to give off at least 6 (double) shots - quite possibly more, since you will not hit every time. You want to deal this damage as fast as possible.

In MW:O, 6 shots means that you need 15 seconds (the first shot is at 0 seconds). Let's say you expect to hit his CT only 50 % of the time, so let's say you plan for 12 shots. That's 33 seconds.
In this time, you would produce 216 heat. So 216 minus whatever heat capacity you have is what you need to dissipate. Let's say you take 50 heat sinks. Then you have a capacity of 80, and would dissipate 5 heat per second, so 165 dissipated, plus 80 capacity, is 245. That's actually a bit more than you'd need. But to be heat neutral with this PPC build, you would need 90 heat sinks. No mech can actually equip 80 heat sinks, much less 90, but this is merely illustrative. A heat neutral mech would need to find a way to get these 10 heat into his mech. Assuming that is not possible - you couldn't even reach the desired damage output and he would need to go with a weapon setup that needed only 80 heat sinks, which would lower his damageoutput.*

Or let's say you're not actually trying to destroy a mech in one combat - but it's just that he's briefly out of cover. Then you want not to overheat in the time he's out of cover and dela the most damage you can in that time. But afterwards you have time to cool off.
Now you may be able to afford going to heat capacity within merely 10 seconds!


So, basically, when you have an actually heat neutral build, you're probably doing it wrong and should add some weaponry, because you very likely don't need to fire indefinitely - just long enough. And that means - even if double heat sinks would sink 0.4 heat per second, at least the real optimizers will never have to stop worrying about managing their heat - because if they didn't, t here is pretty much guaranteed to be a build out there that can outdamage them and kill them before they can kill their target.

*) Well... Due to how weapons are imbalanced in MW:O - which isn't the actual topic here, but just another marker, there ar eplenty of weapons where he could deal even more damage than that. For example, a Gauss Rifle. With 2 Gauss Rifles, he would deal 50 % damage more, and he'd need only 5 heat sinks to be heat neutral, giving him 75 tons to cover with the weight difference between a PPC and a Gauss Rifle and ammo... I leave it to the reader to find all the other weapons that would als do better here...

[Sandpit]

The only problem with what I've seen is that you don't take into account that when you add a weapon your heat capacity slips further down the "slide" without adding more heatsinks simply because you've taken that much heat out of the equation without adding any more HS. The same applies to taking out one HS and adding in a weapon. you've now decreased your heat neutrality. It gets complicated but in essence I see what you're getting at. You don't want a mech that fires constantly as fast as possible at the cost of firepower. You need to find the balance between heat management and firepower to be truly effective

[Vapor Trail]

Sandpit, on 03 November 2012 - 11:32 AM, said:

You need to find the balance between heat management and firepower to be truly effective

And in this sentence does true mastery of the Mechlab lie.

[MustrumRidcully]

Vapor Trail, on 03 November 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

And in this sentence does true mastery of the Mechlab lie.

Indeed. And I may add, also the true mastery of knowing oneself - how good is your aim, how good is your firing discipline, how much margin of error do you need to allow for yourself? And it can remind you of your limitations and a pointer to where you need to improve ...

[XTRMNTR2K]

Vapor Trail, on 03 November 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

And in this sentence does true mastery of the Mechlab lie.

That's fine and dandy, but referring to "mechlab skills" isn't going to turn bad game design and skewed balancing into good ones.

Ideally, the maximum rates of fire and the time base for heat sinks should meet somehwere in the middle. Let's say the maximum rate of fire of all weapons would equal to 3 shots per 10 seconds (which is close to what we have right now). TT rounds and heat sinks in MWO are based on a value of 1 per 10 seconds. So in this case, given an adequate ("heat neutral") amount of HS as per TT, you could only fire your weapons at a THIRD of their maximum rate of fire. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that this "adequate as per TT" amount of HS is what we should aim for when designing a mech (sensible, since most values for tonnage and criticals stick to it).

Now let's have a look at the same situation if heatsinks would instead be tuned to work on a 6-second base. You could either fire all your weapons as fast as possible for a longer time than before until overheat occurs, or you could fire all weapons at only 50% of their maximum rate of fire in order to remain cool (so effectively "wait a turn" in TT without firing anything). THIS is IMHO the amount of efficiency we should be aiming for... And if these values work well for SHS, we can balance DHS from there (at a, say, 1.5 to 1.6 rate).

I get it that the devs want heat to matter. But right now it's ridiculous to mount energy weapons as backup if you have to refrain from using even 2 medium lasers inbetween your ACs and SRMs because your heat sinks simply can't handle the truth, err, heat. Yes, heat should matter (and it does), but it must not be the only thing that matters and defines a particular weapons efficiency.

Edited by XTRMNTR2K, 03 November 2012 - 11:54 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Ah, this thread is not primarily about game balance. I just had the impression people misunderstood what heat neutrality meant. There are always people that seem to believe that someone arguing for heat neutral builds or talking about heat neutrality wants heat to not matter. My point was to show that heat neutrality is primarily a benchmark, and does not necessarily lead to optimized builds - in fact, that an optimized build will be designed to "ride" the heat scale, in utilizing your heat capacity more and finding the right balance between burst and DPS.

And especially it seems as if PGI has based its recent "Double Heat Sinks = 1.4 Heat Sinks" decision is thinking like that. It seems as if they took an existing single heat sink build, and added double heat sinks, and thought "that's too easy", without realizing that this new build was actually not optimized yet, and if they could handle the previous builds heat, then they should have added more weapons to the build. Yes, the build would have been more powerful, but heat management would not have gone away.



There is no excuse at all for a PPC needing 30 heat sinks to run at its full ROF, and the Gauss Rifle needing 3 heat sinks.

But I figure maybe we need to start our argumentation on a much lower level, because we don't all share the same basic understanding on this matter. I've just hurt to many people saying things like "You just want to dumb down heat" or "don't fire everytime your weapon is off cooldown".

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 03 November 2012 - 12:01 PM.

[Ghosth]

No, your not going to convince them Mustrum.

Not this way, not that I can see.

I made a totally heat neutral founders cat, but as you noted, adding more weapons lets you do more damage faster.

So the balance point is being able to fire your guns long enough to kill that bad guy before you shut down.

That currently is in no way possible with a PPC/ER PPC or an ER Large laser.
It was possible with large lasers and DHS that did 2 heat dissipation, and they are nerfing the DHS as a result.
A major, huge nerf, not some minor change.

I don't know why PGI can't find an acceptable solution to keep boating possible, but reined in.
But they seem to be running totally scared on that issue.

The alternative solution would be to make any heat sink that is in the same torso part as the heat source more effective. So it becomes a 1.5 if it is located next to a PPC. But moving that heat to a different body part would be less efficient. So heatsinks located in a leg for example would be .75.

This has the result of controlling boating, after all just how many heatsinks fit in the Hunchback P right torso after its full of lasers?

While encouraging large energy weapons. A single large weapon in an arm would leave room for enough heat sinks to keep it running cool.

But PGI seems to want no part of anything like that. Is the dev team lead a huge K2 Dual Gauss fan or what?

Edited by Ghosth, 03 November 2012 - 12:12 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

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

No, your not going to convince them Mustrum.

But




Mustrum "But I don't think the XKCD guy paid the guy on the Internet 120 $" Ridcully

[BarHaid]

Another thing to consider is weapon persistence after damage. If I'm firing at max heat load with my arm lasers, but have a load more in my torso, then I can continue to fire at the same rate if my arm is removed.

[Draco Argentum]

Agree completely. This is what the heat system does. You don't design mech to be heat neutral you make it overheat. Slowly for a brawler and fast for an assassin.

Heat neutral is still worth knowing for discussion, it makes a good general measuring stick.

[MustrumRidcully]

Draco Argentum, on 03 November 2012 - 04:52 PM, said:

Agree completely. This is what the heat system does. You don't design mech to be heat neutral you make it overheat. Slowly for a brawler and fast for an assassin.

Heat neutral is still worth knowing for discussion, it makes a good general measuring stick.

Exactly.

But it seems I am preaching to the choir again...

[Shalune]

Vapor Trail, on 03 November 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

And in this sentence does true mastery of the Mechlab lie.

Amen. I run a very hot mech build but have found great success with it so far because I play it in a jousting style where I have time to cool off between brief engagements. In cases where I cannot break contact or need to stay on a target it's just a matter of disciplining yourself with spacing firing.

[Vapor Trail]

BarHaid, on 03 November 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:

Another thing to consider is weapon persistence after damage. If I'm firing at max heat load with my arm lasers, but have a load more in my torso, then I can continue to fire at the same rate if my arm is removed.

Just to make sure I understand here:

You're talking weapon redundancy.

You have a set of weapons in your arms (Say 4 med. Lasers) That you can fire at max heat load for the mech. Whatever your average RoF is for that set of weapons and the heat sinks in your mech.

You also have a completely seperate set of weapons (but not of heat sinks, so 4 more medium lasers) in your torsos. This gives you eight MLs, but the playstyle you've selected for the mech is to only fire four MLs at a certain average RoF.

So you fire the arm lasers only, and if, and only if, you lose the arms do you switch to the torso set, to maintain the same RoF even when damaged.

Nice thought, but you're probably wasting potential. Depending on the weapons, you might be better off with losing half of the "arm" weapons for heat sinks, and lowering the average RoF of the mech's weapons for an increase in per-salvo damage.

For the example above, instead of 8 MLs, use 6, with two extra HS. If you're firing heat neutral with four MLs, (12 HS in TT, 14 if you're running and gunning heat neutral) then stripping those two arm weapons and replacing them with 2 heat sinks gives you a +4 heat per turn.

This is three turns of fire before having to think about changing up the fire pattern for extended operation.
So 6, 6, 6, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4... That's almost three minutes of engagement, with a heavy loading right at the beginning, when it can count most.

Not saying this is the optimum way to run it. But is one way.

Doesn't have too much to do with MWO right now. Volley fire patterning isn't nearly as easy.

[MCXL]

Cough, cough.

I go pretty deep on heat there. Munstrum is also a beast.

Edited by MCXL, 04 November 2012 - 12:46 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

MCXL, on 04 November 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

Cough, cough.

I go pretty deep on heat there. Munstrum is also a beast.

You're suffering the curse that all of us "balance" guys suffer - to illustrate the actual balance of the game, we get exhaustive an detailed, and few people like reading such long posts. I fear we cannot win this one.

Mustrum "My other hobby is fighting wind mills" Ridcully

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 04 November 2012 - 12:47 PM.

[Sandpit]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 11:49 AM, said:

Indeed. And I may add, also the true mastery of knowing oneself - how good is your aim, how good is your firing discipline, how much margin of error do you need to allow for yourself? And it can remind you of your limitations and a pointer to where you need to improve ...

I get a lot of flack from some players because chain fire is my preferred method of firing options. I am not the most accurate of pilots and chain firing allows me to actually get more shots on target as opposed to firing 3 lasers at once and missing with all 3 then having to wait for them all to recycle. I also use chain firing to help control heat. A little self-discipline on chain firing means more weapons for me firing at a steadier rate.

[Squidhead Jax]

MustrumRidcully, on 03 November 2012 - 12:19 PM, said:

Mustrum "But I don't think the XKCD guy paid the guy on the Internet 120 $" Ridcully

Best self-nickname thread yet.

Oh, and good thread is good.

[Draco Argentum]

MustrumRidcully, on 04 November 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

Exactly.

But it seems I am preaching to the choir again...

Sorry, I'd like to be more people but it doesn't work like that. Well, its a f2p game so technically it does but thats not cool.

None of my friends want to play or I'd direct them here to get some more opinions.

[Krivvan]

You also have to personally realize how often you will actually fire a weapon.

Saying that one weapon is better than another because you can fire it more often is fine and dandy, but when you don't actually fire it constantly then it doesn't matter anymore and you can save the heat sinks.

[Ghosth]

Better example, I ran a single large laser on a Hunchback P, along with 8 small lasers.

I could

A Snipe long range shots with the large laser for a LONG time

B Get in close and rip stuff up with the small lasers.

If I tried to use both I'd overheat quickly.

The advantage was it gave me a long range sniping weapon. It let me be shooting and hitting a mech as I closed the distance.

And if I was really sure that one more combined salvo would core him I could bet the farm and try it.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

But to my opinion it was a much more flexible build than just 9 small lasers.
Call it a Yacht instead of a boat.