44 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Quote

Of course even with 2.0 DHS, the heat system creates large mathematical imbalances between Gauss Rifles and all other direct fire weapons. DHS was never going to solve that problem, people just convinced themselves that it might.

DHS wouldve made the problem less pronounced though. Right now a PPC is completely terrible compared to a Gauss Rifle even though in the tabletop theyre very similar power level.

[MustrumRidcully]

Lefty Lucy, on 05 November 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

Of course even with 2.0 DHS, the heat system creates large mathematical imbalances between Gauss Rifles and all other direct fire weapons. DHS was never going to solve that problem, people just convinced themselves that it might.

And if we remove the Gauss Rifle from the equation, we will find that AC/5, AC/10, LBX AC 10 and Ultra AC/5 are also better than comparable energy weapons. (But the LBX AC 10 is hampered by its shotgun ammo and the UAC/5 by the need to macro the unjam process).

Spoiler

What do these charts mean?
http://mwomercs.com/...state-20121030/

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 05 November 2012 - 07:45 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

And if we remove the Gauss Rifle from the equation, we will find that AC/5, AC/10, LBX AC 10 and Ultra AC/5 are also better than comparable energy weapons. (But the LBX AC 10 is hampered by its shotgun ammo and the UAC/5 by the need to macro the unjam process).

Not necessarily. Lasers are generally considered easier to aim with than any of those ballistic weapons. Its just in the case of the Gauss, the difficulty of aiming ballistics is completely overlooked, in favor of having practically no heat generation.

The only energy weapons that are really a problem are the large energy weapons like the er large laser, large pulse laser, ppc, and erppc. Because they generate so much heat that theyre just not practical weapons. The small pulse laser is also pretty inefficient although I see it used surprisingly often on swaybacks.

Edited by Khobai, 05 November 2012 - 07:51 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Squid von Torgar, on 05 November 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

I actually would prefer if ROF was lowered across all weapons. However I think that apart from individual tweaks the overall increase is here to stay.

That said we are talking about what the changes will be tomorrow. I too was disappointed that DHS aren't making it in fully untouched (as the majority is). I also understand that if they were left alone as doubles they could make some builds very OP.

Provided they do what they should (Double cooling rate) I am not too fussed at the reduction in their ability to enable me to generate more heat before shutting down. That actually balances them somewhat and stops people from using them to ignore heat altogether.

There is basically no energy weapon based build that could have been made better than an equally heavy build with Gauss Rifles. If we remove Gauss rifles, you can replace it, in order, probably with
Ultra AC/5
AC/10
AC/5
AC/2
LBX-10 AC

And I am not even talking about LRMs.

[Lefty Lucy]

I think LRMs are really the weapon that breaks the equation though. Since they do double TT damage, they are also double TT heat-efficiency.

[Kaldor]

Joseph Mallan, on 05 November 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

I don't like the change. It is stupid in my opinion. But 1.4 is still better than 1.0. Now is it really worth 1.5 Mil...
...
...
I don't think so but I will have to see.

Brian, Paul this is a mistake. Not game breaking but a mistake all the same.

Exactly. A 1.5 mil "side grade" if you will.

Will it be useful on anything but lights? Not in my opinion. It could be argued it will work OK for some mediums or heavies though. Myself, I will avoid it on my Hunchback SP. Assaults are getting the shaft with this patch as the "doubles" are near worthless for them.

[Vermaxx]

Heatsinks raise your heat cap by 1 or 2 each. They also dissipate 1 or 2 heat per turn.

The 20 heat cap shutdown check is already lower than tabletop, as tabletop is heatsinks + 14. That is a minimum of 24 heat in the system before you have a check, and the check is only 4+ on your piloting check of two dice.

Unless someone has significantly modified the way heatsinks work in this game, the quoted figure is what it does. It does 1.4, period. That means it does 1.4 heat and 1.4 'sink bubbles.' Every additional DHS will add 1.4 to your shutdown tracker.

Neither adding 2 to the shutdown tracker nor adding 2 to the heat flush was overpowered. Yeah, it made heat a lot less of an issue, because this is 3049 and not 3025. Heat was the major egg dance in 3025. In 3049, it was avoiding the psychotic clanner trying to stove your head in with a UAC20.

DHS are still better for almost any light or medium, many heavies, and some assaults. That is the horrible slap in the face with this modification to their numbers. They are still better than singles. Yeah, we can argue about the cost (too high) and the critslots (too big), but neither number is changing. Unfortunately, they are still 'better' mathematically than their counterparts and lead to either a redution of weight or a cooling bonus of 40%. You can refuse to use them, like I wanted to; but you will be at a min/max disadvantage to the spray-n-pray player who takes them.

Unless you are in one of the few builds that really gets skrewwed by DHS, they are still better. They are now almost a mandatory sidegrade for most mechs.

Edited by Vermaxx, 05 November 2012 - 08:22 AM.

[Orkimedes]

I've heard something similar to this in another thread, but why not 0.2 dissapation rate and +0,5 heatcap instead of 1.4-2.0? The argument against 2.0 was that the high dissipation was too much of a dps increase on, presumably, laserboats. But reducing having less heatcap relative to SHS would mean that they could only work properly using staggered fire. This both rewards the skilled player using high-heat weapons while hampering boaters/alpha-builds, as part of their deadlyness comes from the focussed fire, which would be significantly more spread out if staggered - which in this scenario would be a forced action because you're effectively at a quarter of your bonus heatcap.

Edited by Orkimedes, 05 November 2012 - 08:41 AM.

[Urza Mechwalker]

Well, I will just keep my fully focused into LRM boats, now that the ERPPCS,t he only weaposn theoretically capable of punishign LRM boats at over 1 km will still stay unusable..

[John Norad]

Khobai, on 05 November 2012 - 07:32 AM, said:

To keep ratios the same as tabletop, what we should have is this:
-Weapon rate of fire tripled
-Damage reduced by 2/3rds (triple rate of fire means you should do 1/3rd the damage per shot)
-Heat reduced by 2/3rds (so high-heat weapons are still worth using)

So the current system is only really flawed with regard to heat and dps. Dps is a bit too high, I'd say around 40-50%, and heat dissipation is at least 40-50% too low.
Furthermore not all RoF's should be doubled/tripled. Long range high damage weapons like the Gauss and PPC should have long cooldowns, around 5-7s.

Then there's map design and game modes which also play into balancing. Due to ultra low diversity this factor isn't even halfway where it should be.

[WardenWolf]

Keep in mind that not all ROFs were tripled: many ACs got *far* more than tripled (AC2, AC5, UAC5) to the point that they put out many times the damage they could in TT. Add in the damage changes to missiles (they do more damage per warhead than TT, plus firing ~3 times faster) and the lack of added cooling really does punish laserboats.

I had a conversation on Twitter with Russ over the weekend about this, and the more I think about it the more something occurs to me. He specifically called out a concern with laserboats:

https://twitter.com/...750489445482496

But what about Gauss boats (Cats), AC boats, LRM boats, and SRM boats? All of those are effective options right now, but the Devs don't seem bothered by that. Now I'm not a huge fan of laser boats or anything, but it is interested that they really seem to have a distaste for one type of weapon over the others... and it has led to what we will be getting tomorrow.

Edited by WardenWolf, 05 November 2012 - 09:37 AM.

[Vlad Ward]

Squid von Torgar, on 05 November 2012 - 07:13 AM, said:

But they never mentioned heat dissipation on the increase in heat threshold (Thats the 1.4 figure) it makes a lot of difference if they keep the 0,2 dissipation.

I asked Bryan about it yesterday and he said he would check with David.

It could end a lot of the flaming if we find out the 0.2 is being kept. (no pun intended)

One of us can't read. Your vehemence in this stance makes me question whether it's me or not.

I'm pretty darn sure that 1.4 is the heat dissipation figure, not the heat capacity figure. I have no idea where you're drawing this certainty about it being heat capacity from (outside of sheer wishful thinking). Considering they haven't mentioned it at all, I'd be willing to bet that heat capacity will stay at +2 for DHS while the dissipation is dropped to 1.4.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 05 November 2012 - 09:22 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Kaldor, on 05 November 2012 - 08:13 AM, said:

Exactly. A 1.5 mil "side grade" if you will.

Will it be useful on anything but lights? Not in my opinion. It could be argued it will work OK for some mediums or heavies though. Myself, I will avoid it on my Hunchback SP. Assaults are getting the shaft with this patch as the "doubles" are near worthless for them.

I disagree. I only pilot Assaults and truth is 1.4 is better than 1.0. It isn't 2.0 (Hence the name DOUBLE sink) But it will be better and thus of use to an assault.

[Ghosth]

All I can see is that PGI for some reason does not want large energy weapons to be viable. Which eventually will turn this into Mechlights online if they continue to discriminate against the heavy and assault mechs.


They didn't even give us a taste, a chance to test it.

They refuse to touch heat in any way, why except to keep large energy weapons nerfed beyond usability?

If we are off the mark here fine, tell us, show us why. But I do not see it happening.

[WardenWolf]

Joseph Mallan, on 05 November 2012 - 09:25 AM, said:

I disagree. I only pilot Assaults and truth is 1.4 is better than 1.0. It isn't 2.0 (Hence the name DOUBLE sink) But it will be better and thus of use to an assault.

I also pilot assault mechs almost exclusively (Atlases at the moment, though I plan to flirt with the Cataphract as well). I have found that '1.4 heatsinks' are not effective: the amount of space I lose to them, and the fact they can't fit many places (head, legs, CT) actually means I get more dissipation with single heatsinks + XL engine than I can with 1.4 heatsinks + standard engine. I had really been looking forward to the true double heatsinks, as they would have matched or slightly exceeded what I could get with singles - while allowing me to go with a standard engine for better survivability.

Examples of my situation are here: http://mwomercs.com/...e-on-my-builds/

Could you give some of your reasoning or examples behind how 1.4 heatsinks are actually better (ie you can get more dissipation with them, even with the space they use) compared to singles?

[tenderloving]

Vapor Trail, on 05 November 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

I just wish we could get some kind of sense of where you (the devs) were trying to go with this, or what exactly you were preventing.

There are a bunch of highly analytical people on the forums that have tried to reverse engineer the reasoning on the .14 decision, and come up empty. Not just "there might be a reason we're not seeing," empty; but "what in heck are they thinking" empty.

There were people who were looking to DHS to make Large energy weapons truly viable for the first time.
There were people who were lookng to DHS to make their builds easier to manage, and lighter at the same time.
Lets just say 'There was lots of stuff...'

There's literally pages of math to that effect, so I'm not going to reproduce it here.

So basically that's what I'd like to see, the reasoning behind the .14 hps sink change.

Not "change it," not "fix it," just... "why?"

Please?

Based on some of the other decisions they have made; they probably don't have a really good answer themselves. A lot of things seem to get "missed" or "left off the drawing board" such as the massive Atlas head hitbox in beta, or the recent "accidental" removal of the population total.

[Purlana]

So....

When can we expect "real" double heat sinks?

[dubplate]

Ghosth, on 05 November 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

They didn't even give us a taste, a chance to test it.

If they can figure out that numbers are not working correctly in their internal testing there's no reason to have us test it. Remember how many people were upset when they took away the huge payouts after they reintroduced the repair system? Think of the complaints and whining if they gave us x2 heat sinks then put them to x1.5, they need to be a lot closer with their numbers for deployed builds now that there are no more resets.

[wanderer]

Lefty Lucy, on 05 November 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

Of course even with 2.0 DHS, the heat system creates large mathematical imbalances between Gauss Rifles and all other direct fire weapons. DHS was never going to solve that problem, people just convinced themselves that it might.

However, DHS at 2.0 does extend the firing time for bigger weapons- which although in theorycrafting may mean little, does mean something in actual matches.

If I don't hit critical overheat levels before my PPC's core that guy thanks to DHS, then it's worth it. Of course, what's happening now is that thanks to 1.4 DHS, SHS can generally reach higher levels of heat removal than DHS- since 3 SHS can fit in the same space as one DHS and produce double the cooling power with interest.

And that's just wrong.

[Buckminster]

I'm curious to know what this "heat glitch" was that they supposedly found:

http://mwomercs.com/...heat-sinks-dhs/

He mentions a "long-standing heat related bug" - I wonder if the patch will address that, and what it really means. I'd like to see energy weapons viable again, there was nothing quite like a Warhammer marching along with it's twin PPCs.

Edited by Buckminster, 05 November 2012 - 09:53 AM.