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First off, this is not purely about DHS/SHS, although it is part of the debate. The main point of this debate is to see what weapon configurations are viable currently, which configurations are significantly above the curve and which configurations are significantly below the curve.
Now for my values I'm using Ohm's quick reference sheet or values that you can easily find in the Mechlab such as distribution of critical slots.
Now, let's see what the advantages and disadvantages of the current weapons are:
- Ballistics: The advantage is generally the low heat of weapons (AC/2, (U)AC/5, Gauss Rifle and Machine Gun are all 1 heat or lower, LB 10-X AC 2 heat, only the AC/20 is significantly above it with 7 heat) as well as the fact that most ballistics weapons tend to rock the view of the mech being hit. However, if we consider the heat generation, we'll see that it is between 0 and 2 heat, the AC/2 and UAC/5 generating the most heat per second with AC/20 a close second. The DPS of those weapons is also relatively high with the exception of Machine Guns: AC/5 being almost 3DPS and other ballistics going as high as 5 DPS (5.4 if risking jamming an UAC/5). However, the disadvantage is that there is an ammo requirement, high tonnage requirements and significant number of critical slots consumed, both of the latter being increased by the ammo requirements. With the exception of the AC/20 and Machine Gun all ballistics are able to effectively hit targets at ranges in excess of 450m, with the maximum range frequently going above 1500m, meaning that the majority of the ballistics have very decent DPS at the 1KM range.
- Energy: The advantage is no ammo consumption, low critical slots and tonnage consumption for the weapons itself as well as instantaneous travel time for beams meaning they're easier to hit with. However the disadvantages are relatively mediocre DPS per weapon combined with a high heat generation, some weapons going as high as 4.33HPS, as well as with exception from PPC's the damage tends to be spread over the chassis of the hostile mech meaning more damage dealt is required to take out a hostile mech. To achieve competitive damage there needs to be enough capacity to generate a high amount of heat to spike your damage temporarily beyond what ballistics can normally produce, giving you an early lead in combat. Another issue is that due to the nature of laser beams, non-laser weapons can disrupt your aim due to the impact of their shells meaning your DPS drops even further since it is harder to correct for the movement of both your and the hostile mech. Finally the range on most beam lasers is poor, effective range is below 450M for non-ER beam lasers which means that they tend to deal barely any damage beyond 500m and the weapons with effective ranges beyond 500m have the high heat generation of beyond 2.35HPS.
- Short Range Missiles, both Streak and Standard: The advantage is the lowest heat per second generated, not going beyond 1HPS which allows the mech to effectively use very few heatsinks, while being very light and using very few critical slots. This leaves plenty room for ammunition which with 100 per ton is plenty, allowing you with the SRM6 16 salvo's per ton, going up to 50 salvo's for a (S)SRM2. The DPS is decent with 1.43 DPS for the lightest to 3.75dps for the heaviest. The disadvantages are that the range is very limited at 270m, effectively limiting primary usage of SRMs to brawlers and scouts, the relatively inaccuracy of missiles spreading the damage meaning more damage is required to effectively take out a target and staggered fire if there are not enough missile tubes to fire everything simultaneously, meaning you can't alpha the missile weapons.
- Long Range Missiles: The advantage is a decently low heat per second generated, between 0.57 and 1.26, with missile being able to lock on a target either directly or indirectly. This allows them to sit back without exposing themselves to their targets. The DPS is quite high at 3.08 to 8.42 DPS but this is not accounting for average % of missiles actually hitting, as well as the fact that the damage tends to be really spread around the targeted mech. They also have a very decent range of 1km in which they do full damage, but beyond 1km and within 180m the missiles won't hit or deal any damage meaning that the weapon is exclusively for support purposes.
Ballistics: The Gauss rifle is the weapon of choice for most users, due to effectively requiring very few heatsinks. We need enough tonnage though for ammunition and with 3 Gauss Rifles we only have 5 tons of ammunition. If that is plenty enough, our DPS is as high as 11.25 on a range of up to 660m, at 1km we suffer a 340/(1980-660) = 25.8% damage reduction, which puts our DPS at 8.35, very decent. We don't need any extra heatsinks to cope with the 1 heat per shot generated as the HPS is 0.25 * 3 = 0.75 and the 10 heatsinks in the engine by default dissipate at least 1 heat per second. This build is physically impossible as there is currently no mech available where you can fit 3 Gauss Rifles due to the hardpoint limitations but the GaussCat, a Catapult with 2 Gauss Rifles, is possible.
Let's try a different weapon though, to see if it is just the gauss rifle or other ballistics too.
Let's say we try to fit as many UAC/5's as possible with at least 5 tons of ammunition and we don't double-tap it. We have then 45 tons left, we want 9 single heat sinks per UAC/5 to stay roughly heat neutral meaning every UAC/5 costs us 18 tons. However since we already have 10 heat sinks, we can add 10 tons to our starting amount for a fair calculation. This allows us only 3 UAC/5's while staying heat neutral. With 3 UAC/5's we use 27 tons and 18 extra heatsinks, bringing our total number of heatsinks to 28 or a heat dissipation of 2.8 per second with a heat generation of 2.73. So we have a DPS of 3*4.54=13.62 at an effective range of 600, at 1km it is 400/(1820-600)=33% less effective, meaning we deal 9.15DPS at 1km, even better than a gauss rifle. This is using 15 extra tons of SHSs, while with DHS you can either cram in a 4th UAC/5 and run reasonably hot (16*1.4=22.4 heatsinks while you'd want 36 to run heat neutral, but is manageable). This would increase your DPS by a further 33%.
Energy: First we'll compare against ballistics with the ER PPC's which are at least a bit competitive at 1km and also fire projectiles so a fair comparison can be made. Now an ER PPC generates 4.33HPS or in other words, needs 44 heatsinks to run heat neutral. Of course this is unreasonable to actually achieve, with 1.4DHS you still need 31 to run almost heat neutral which you just can't fit. So when it is about sustained DPS, an ER PPC simply loses from most ballistics builds (even a normal PPC would lose). So now we'll use a different tactic: The max heat capacity for your mech is 30 + number of heatsinks you have (regardless of type heatsinks). We'll try to maximize the damage dealt without hitting that heat capacity.
First off, we'll install 3 DHS in both side torso's and 1 in both arms, as well as 2 in the engine, giving us a total of 20 DHS, the equivalent of 28 SHS and a capacity of 50 heat. Now we'll add ER PPCs until we overheat within 30 seconds of constant firing. For that we'll use the following equation:
30 * HPS generated by 1 ER PPC * Number of ER PPCs < 50 + 30 * Heat per second dissipated.
We know we dissipate 2.8 HPS and 1 ER PPC generates 4.33 HPS which gives us the equation
30 * 4.33 * X < 50 + 30 * 2.8
129.9 * X < 134
X < 134 / 129.9
As you can see, even within 30 seconds, we'll overheat if using more than 1 ER PPC constantly. This means we need to change how we use the ER PPC: We aren't firing both every 3 seconds but every 4 seconds, lowering the DPS from 3.33 to 2.5 but also the HPS from 4.33 to 3.25. Solving the adapted equation gives us:
X < 134 / 97.5 < 2... So we still can't fire 2 ER PPCs constantly but 2 PPC's is almost possible, being X<1.985 in the equation. So if we'd fire 2 PPCs constantly with a cooldown of 4 seconds within 540m, that gives us a DPS of 5. As you can see, PPC's and ER PPC's aren't in any way competitive with two of the major ballistic weapons.
Now let's go hypothetical and set DHS to 2.0. That gives our build 4.0 HPS dissipated, which gives us:
X < 170 / (30 * HPS) --> X < 5.66 / HPS or in other weapons, your HPS multiplied by the number of weapons you need to sport to avoid shutting down within 30 seconds needs to be lower than 5.66. If we look at Ohm's cheat sheet, to sport 2 beam lasers you need a HPS of at most 2.33, which is currently any pulse laser or non-ER normal laser. For 3 beam lasers you need a HPS of at most 1.89 HPS, which excludes the large pulse laser as well. For 4 beam lasers the maximum is 1.42 which means only small and medium normal and pulse lasers are eligible. For 5 beam lasers it is 1.14 which excludes the medium pulse laser. 6 beam lasers excludes the small pulse laser and medium laser and you can sport at most 8 small lasers. The highest DPS possible in 30 seconds of sustained fire with 20 DHS is 8DPS at a range of 90m with small lasers, gradually dropping as the range gets increased. Considering the fact that with DHS the absolute maximum of DHS sinks with a 360 engine is 4 in the engine, 4 per side torso and 2 per arm totalling 26 DHS sinks or the equivalent of 36.4 SHS for 1.4 DHS and 52 SHS for 2.0 DHS, however capping it at 6x 1 crit slot weapons or 3x 2 crit slot weapons meaning the DPS can't grow beyond 7.5 in such extreme cases when not taking in account heat generation.
Now we'll assume a final build for small lasers, trying to get as many heatsinks and small lasers in as possible. as 1 DHS is the equivalent of 3 small lasers in terms of crit slots, we'll only need to drop 3 DHS to allow an extra 9 small lasers. This gives us 23 total DHS, with the hypothetical 2.0 DHS totalling 46 SHS and a heat capacity of 53. We tweak the equation above to find the maximum that HPS * number of weapons is allowed to be and that results into:
30 * HPS * X < 53 + 30 * 4.6
X * HPS < 6.37, still not allowing us to fire more than 9 small lasers constantly for 30 seconds without overheating.
After calculations, with 50 SHS we can fire at most 11 small lasers without overheating within 30 seconds. But with only 47 critical slots total, that's impossible to fit 40 SHSs outside the engine plus 11 small lasers. So the maximum sustained DPS in 30 seconds is about 10 for small lasers. See the charts below for a comparison on heat efficiency:
And the DPS with that, ignoring the engagement ranges and assuming 100% accuracy:
P.S. UAC/5 damage is skewed as it is listed as 2 heat per second while it is 1 heat per second, so it is about double the DPS, more in line with the AC/10.
As you can see, a laser build never outperforms ballistic weapons. However, you can also see that Gauss Rifle has never to worry about overheating as you can easily boat more than 10 as long as you have the space. However, lasers on the other hand are almost all outperformed by an AC/5 when comparing at 30 SHS or 20 DHS 1.4 or 15 DHS 2.0, never mind other weapon types, by a large number, sometimes being even a multiple, as well as missiles being consistently significantly better. And if we start comparing at certain engagement ranges, the chart will get even more in favor of non-laser weapons.
Now of course lasers have the advantage of consuming no ammunition and being quite light compared to other weapon types, however this does not mean that they're competitive as a form of primary weaponry because they have a significantly lower DPS as well as a significantly lower effective ranges. In fact, due to heat-efficient and range-efficient the Gauss Rifle is, lasers are taken as a light and 'cheap' backup weapon for when they do run out of ammo or lose the Gauss Rifle, as well as extra DPS when their heat is low or while brawling. I assume that the Gauss Rifle is due to that often part of the builds whose DPS massively increased due to the 2.0 efficiency of DHS as it meant they had a free double heat dissipation without adding extra heatsinks while they were already running too cool without extra weapons...
In the same chart you can see that from 30 SHS to 26 DHS 1.4 the DPS for laser weapons is almost the same while for 26 DHS 2.0 it'd have increased the DPS to competitive levels, still being outperformed by the majority of non-laser weapons as well as being constrained to the available critical slots anyway which means that you can't mount the required numbers anyway for the DPS. Even 20 DHS at 2.0 efficiency in a standard Atlas would mean that lasers wouldn't get above 8 DPS with continuous fire and in every situation the 30 SHS solution would be more efficient and easier to place, at the cost of 20 tons which still leaves you 30 tons for the weapons, perhaps with a Gauss Rifle included.
Now if we were to introduce projectiles being able to knockdown a mech, there is no reason anymore to use a primarily laser focused build.
So lasers clearly are being outperformed by every other major weaponry. Ballistics can be used to deal the damage in one area if the pilot is accurate enough while lasers tend to spread the damage or not reach the maximum DPS as easily. Missiles can lock on the target or have a decent DPS and don't require you to aim the whole time at your opponent and are quite light and small in case of SRMs, which makes them compete with lasers for similar slots. The only real advantage is the fact that almost all mechs have energy hardpoints and no ammunition requirements, which makes them ideal as backup weapons. Considering the fact we should try to achieve diversity, how can we make lasers at least competitive?
One option is to completely ignore TT values and start balancing the game properly. 15 damage, 1 heat, 7 slots for 15 ton and an efficient range of 660m just means that the Gauss Rifle has very few drawbacks, especially when the AC/20 requires more crit slots, generates more heat, has a reduced range and gets less ammo per ton.
Why would we do that? The issue is that TT is based on the assumptions of the board, where the 'skill' of the player didn't matter as much as the die. The die always decided whether something hit, the mech would be knocked down and so onwards. It often had assumptions based on the lore as well, the fact that an Atlas was rare while lights and mediums were in mass production, as well as the availability of weapons was not infinite meaning that mass produced weapons tended to be mostly used. This means that if there was a boat at all, it'd be medium laser weapons. You rarely saw a Gauss Rifle, AC/20 or PPC's. So if there was a mech wielding a Gauss Rifle, he'd be designated the prime target by the enemy in order to destroy or even salvage that Gauss Rifle. This doesn't happen here because everyone can get a Gauss Rifle and a significant portion of the playerbase runs a heavy or assault mech. TT values just aren't balanced at all for the MWO implementation and yet the values aren't significantly tweaked to correct the TT assumptions.
Are there other options available according to you guys?
Edited by Kutagh, 03 November 2012 - 01:57 PM.
