532 replies to this topic

[Diablobo]

Alexa Steel, on 19 November 2012 - 04:31 AM, said:

What a bunch of nonesense, of course heat needs tweaking, nobody is denying that but not to the degree many want it to be. TRIPLE the heat dissipation? Are you mad? I could hold the trigger in ALL of my mechs and I would NEVER overheat.

Yes, that's right, you would never overheat. As surprising as it may sound to you, it is possible to design and build a mech that can never overheat as long as it is fully functional. In this game, you can stick as many heatsinks as you can on a hunchback or a centurion, and two medium lasers will make it overheat.
Cmon, man....it is BROKEN, WEAK, and LAME.

Edited by Diablobo, 19 November 2012 - 04:39 AM.

[Alexa Steel]

Diablobo, on 19 November 2012 - 04:36 AM, said:

Yes, that's right, you would never overheat. As surprising as it may sound to you, it is possible to design and build a mech that can never overheat as long as it is fully functional. In this game, you can stick as many heatsinks as you can on a hunchback or a centurion, and two medium lasers will make it overheat.
Cmon, man....it is BROKEN, WEAK, and LAME.

I run Centurions, I NEVER overheat, UNLESS I get trigger happy.

Fielding 2 Large Lasers, 2 Medium Lasers and 2 SRM6s... you must be doing something wrong sir.

Edited by Alexa Steel, 19 November 2012 - 04:41 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Alexa Steel, on 19 November 2012 - 04:31 AM, said:

What a bunch of nonesense, of course heat needs tweaking, nobody is denying that but not to the degree many want it to be. TRIPLE the heat dissipation? Are you mad? I could hold the trigger in ALL of my mechs and I would NEVER overheat.

The ROF was changed while the heat stayed the same, so what? Stop comparing the TT with the video game, they cant be compared. The game is BASED on the TT not modeled AFTER the TT.

Example of why whether it'S a video game or a table top game doesn't always matter:

Heat Sinks that dissipate 1 heat per 10 seconds.
Weapon A: 500m range, 10 damage per shot, produces 10 damage and 5 heat, weighs 5 tons.
Weapon B: 500m range, 10 damage per shot, produces 10 damage and 1 heat, weighs 9 tons.

Weapon A and B start out with a rate of fire of every 10 seconds.
Result: to compensate the full heat of Weapon A, you'd need to spend 20 tons. The same weight you get for Weapon B. Both weapons ahve the same range and the same damage, so they are roughly balanced - maybe with an advantage for A, since you can equip it with less heat sinks and go for burst and less time to fire the weapons. So that's about a potential 5 ton difference in favor of Weapon A.

On the other hand - if you want to equip a lot of A Weapons, so you will necessarily add more and more heat sinks per weapon, otherwise your mech will overheat way too fast (as the heat gain per weapon stacks, of course).


Now let's decide we change the rate of fire to every 2.5 seconds.

Now, Weapon A would need 3 times the tonnage to become "heat neutral" - and more than 3 times the tonnage to last as long as it did in a non-heat neutral build.
Weapon B also needs 3 times the tonnage - but in this case, it only needs to add 3 tons, rather than 15 tons. That's a 12 ton difference suddenly in favor of Weapon B.

At no point did we use TT here - the weapons are clearly not TT, the damage, heat and range and weight values just don't match any TT weapons. We just used a mathematical relation ship between these fictional weapons.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 19 November 2012 - 04:43 AM.

[Alexa Steel]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 November 2012 - 04:42 AM, said:

Example of why whether it'S a video game or a table top game doesn't always matter:

Heat Sinks that dissipate 1 heat per 10 seconds.
Weapon A: 500m range, 10 damage per shot, produces 10 damage and 5 heat, weighs 5 tons.
Weapon B: 500m range, 10 damage per shot, produces 10 damage and 1 heat, weighs 9 tons.

Weapon A and B start out with a rate of fire of every 10 seconds.
Result: to compensate the full heat of Weapon A, you'd need to spend 20 tons. The same weight you get for Weapon B. Both weapons ahve the same range and the same damage, so they are roughly balanced - maybe with an advantage for A, since you can equip it with less heat sinks and go for burst and less time to fire the weapons. So that's about a potential 5 ton difference in favor of Weapon A.

On the other hand - if you want to equip a lot of A Weapons, so you will necessarily add more and more heat sinks per weapon, otherwise your mech will overheat way too fast (as the heat gain per weapon stacks, of course).


Now let's decide we change the rate of fire to every 2.5 seconds.

Now, Weapon A would need 3 times the tonnage to become "heat neutral" - and more than 3 times the tonnage to last as long as it did in a non-heat neutral build.
Weapon B also needs 3 times the tonnage - but in this case, it only needs to add 3 tons, rather than 15 tons. That's a 12 ton difference suddenly in favor of Weapon B.

At no point did we use TT here - the weapons are clearly not TT, the damage, heat and range and weight values just don't match any TT weapons. We just used a mathematical relation ship between these fictional weapons.

What makes you think that "heat neutral" is the goal of the balance? Or do you mean in comparision? Also you might want to add that one of those weaopons or BOTH might use ammo.

Since if Weapon B would use ammo, it would be balanced. Because extra tonnage is needed and it also could run out of ammo, wich also can explode.

Edited by Alexa Steel, 19 November 2012 - 04:47 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Alexa Steel, on 19 November 2012 - 04:45 AM, said:

What makes you think that "heat neutral" is the goal of the balance? Or do you mean in comparision?

I use it as a benchmark, nothing more.

There are others. For example, if you have a given mech loadout and decide what's the best use for your tonnage, you may have a more complex calculation going. In the end, you don't want a heat neutral mech, because that means wasting damage potential on a scenario that never happens (being able to fire forever? Who needs that? The worst case in MW:O is 15 minutes, realistically 3 minutes of firefights, more realistically something like 10-30 seconds for a single engagement).

I did make such calculations as well, if you're not aware of it, you can check my signature, there is a thread where I made the calculations based on different metrics - heat neutrality, engagement times.

The end result still looks pretty similar each time - don't use ER Lasers or PPCs.
Only with Double Heat Sinks working exactly like Double Heat Sinks we can get some balance - but even there, t's not really good. Suddenly, the small laser and the medium laser exceed the auto-cannon and gauss efficiency vastly. But at least PPC and ER Lasers become competitive with auto-cannons.
And AC/20 are still very ineffecient compared to longer range weapons, so if you really want to deal 20 damage in one shot, you may be better off with 4 AC/5s than 1 AC20 and hope that your convergence system will work out. (Problem of course is that until the Catapract enters the scene, this isn't possible, we don't have mechs with enough ballistic slots for that. But eventually we'll get them for any now only theoretical idealized build)

In the end, the metrics show so similar results most of the time that I am not sure ther eis much point to even go for the more complicated ones - heat neutrality as benchmark already tells us most of the story, and only once we fixed the game on that level, it becomes really worth optimizing for Targeted Engagement Times and balance weapons around such ideals.

But here, if you want a more complex balance model:




Explanation Details for the chart:

Spoiler

Illustrating the Balance with Math and Charts
There is one general approach to measure weapon strength - this is generally trying to figure out "how much does it cost me to run this weapon in weight" vs "how much damage does it let me deal this way. Theoretically, one could also use such a system for crit requirements, but this is more rarely done. Though with Inner Sphere heat sinks, it may be an interesting addition.

There are two major ways to figure out the weight, and mostly it is the question - how do we calculate the number of heat sinks for a weapon?

1) Heat Neutrality
We try to put in enough heat sinks so that the weapons heat is perfectly negated.
This is a simple, useful approach, though some thing it's too simple.
Generally, heat neutrality is very useful to know if you are working at modifiying your mech and adding or switching out some weapons. If you have already found a mech configuration that you think is "reasonably hot" or "reasonably cool" (ranging from overcooled to heat neutral to gaining heat slowly up to overheats in the blink of an eye), when you made free some weight, you can simply add the "heat neutral" configuration to the mech and nothing will change about its time to last.
If you replace weapons, you may realize that for the weight of 2 Medium Lasers and their heat sinks, you could also, say, fit another Large Laser - maybe that would give you something you found lacking so far.

2) TET - Targeted Engagement Time
This approach is a bit different from heat neutrality is that you try to figure out - how long do I expect an individual combat/skirmish/brawl (e.g. not the entire match, but one fight in that match) too last, and then find a build that optimizes the damage output in this time frame.
This approach has some very practical applications to a mech or weapon configurations. For example, if you have 2 long range weapons, you may decide that these are mnostly used for sniping, where engagement times are usually low (unless the enemy is not trying to get into cover), but also a few short range weapons which you intend to use in a brawl. So you may try to go for a high TET for the brawling weapons and a low TET for the long range weapons. As long as you don'T use them together, you should get what you want. (Whether it's always the best choice to mix roles like this is another question).

The important aspect of the TET approach is that it has to account for a mech's inherent heat capacity - since that allows you to gain heat without needing to immediately/completely dissipate it. This creates some artefacts - if you really always only calculate the TET for a single weapon, you get unrealistic figures - a single medium laser currently can produce 10 heat over 10 seconds on average, so that the time to overheat is at least 30 (in practice, it's even higher - your heat capacity in MW:O is 30 + heat sinks, not just 30 - and you need to have 10 heat sinks now... So basically, with a single medium laser and 10 sinks, you never overheat.)

So for my calculations, I always used 4 weapons.That can be unrealistic for large weapons, but it's close enough - the real error beings at the low heat levels, not the high ones.

How to Calculate Damage
THere are basically two major damage figures people are interested in:
- Damage Per Shot (or "burst" or in Battletech terms "alpha" damage)
- Damage over Time (or "DPS")
Damage per Shot is an important asset to have - you want to nail weak spots at the enemy mech and a high damage per shot means you can destroy them without firing again.
Damage over Time - You can't one-shot everything and everyone, so you will need to take multiple shots - how much damage over time you can inflict on average gives a hint on how long it will take you.

How to put Damage and Weight together
I have basically chosen 3 approaches in total.

For using heat neutrality, I have used two damage figures.
1) Damage Over Time
2) Damage Over Time + Damage per Shot, weighted against each other. (More precisely, I calculated it as (Damage per SHot + 10 x Damage over Time)/10.

For TET, I just used the damage that a mech would inflict continously firing.

Whatever model I used, I then used the calculated weight against the calculate damage.

What we would like to see when we compare damage efficiency stats of weapons

Generally:
Range has not appeared yet in any of the calculations, but is a major factor in balancing weapons. What we want to see ideally is that weapons with similar range have similar damage efficiency stats, and the longer the range, the lower the damage efficiency. This means there is a meaningful trade-off between damage and range. If you use a short range weapon, you must get close to the enemy first, but if you do, you can outdamage the enemy that relies on long range weapons. This introduces also an interesting tactical element, as each participant will try to fight in his "turf" or range category.

Heat Neutrality + Weighted Damage Values
Here, Range should suffice. We already made burst potential an advantage in the efficiency chart.

Heat Neutrality + Damage Over Time:
Here, Range is one factor, but we don't account for burst yet. As a general guideline - the higher the damage per shot is for a weapon, the lower we want the efficiency to be.

TET
For TET, we have similar concerns as for Heat Neutrality and Damage Over Time - more range and more burst should mean a lower efficiency.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 19 November 2012 - 04:54 AM.

[Lightfoot]

Not a rant, just a list of things needing to comply with their Battletech descriptions and normal function.

PPCs: Battletech says damage type is comparable to large Autocannons, AC10 I guess. PPCs are more like big globs in MWO.

DHS: Needs to be double the cooling rate of SHS, adjust weapons that become over-powered.

Gauss Rifle: Gets destroyed too easily, this is before the 11-20 patch. If PPCs were fixed no one would take two Gauss Rifles because one PPC could take it's place with a loss of 5 damage for a huge weight savings.

LRMs: They could use their Battletech values if they could also be aimed into specific 'mech sections with a lock and Line-of-Sight to the aimed at section. Mechs targetted in this way could turn their mech to spread the damage across the mech. This creates a player active attack and defense for LRMs so indirectly fired LRMs no longer need to do double damage.

[Alexa Steel]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 November 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

I use it as a benchmark, nothing more.

There are others. For example, if you have a given mech loadout and decide what's the best use for your tonnage, you may have a more complex calculation going. In the end, you don't want a heat neutral mech, because that means wasting damage potential on a scenario that never happens (being able to fire forever? Who needs that? The worst case in MW:O is 15 minutes, realistically 3 minutes of firefights, more realistically something like 10-30 seconds for a single engagement).

I did make such calculations as well, if you're not aware of it, you can check my signature, there is a thread where I made the calculations based on different metrics - heat neutrality, engagement times.

The end result still looks pretty similar each time - don't use ER Lasers or PPCs.
Only with Double Heat Sinks working exactly like Double Heat Sinks we can get some balance - but even there, t's not really good. Suddenly, the small laser and the medium laser exceed the auto-cannon and gauss efficiency vastly. But at least PPC and ER Lasers become competitive with auto-cannons.
And AC/20 are still very ineffecient compared to longer range weapons, so if you really want to deal 20 damage in one shot, you may be better off with 4 AC/5s than 1 AC20 and hope that your convergence system will work out. (Problem of course is that until the Catapract enters the scene, this isn't possible, we don't have mechs with enough ballistic slots for that. But eventually we'll get them for any now only theoretical idealized build)

In the end, the metrics show so similar results most of the time that I am not sure ther eis much point to even go for the more complicated ones - heat neutrality as benchmark already tells us most of the story, and only once we fixed the game on that level, it becomes really worth optimizing for Targeted Engagement Times and balance weapons around such ideals.

But here, if you want a more complex balance model:




Explanation Details for the chart:

Spoiler

Illustrating the Balance with Math and Charts
There is one general approach to measure weapon strength - this is generally trying to figure out "how much does it cost me to run this weapon in weight" vs "how much damage does it let me deal this way. Theoretically, one could also use such a system for crit requirements, but this is more rarely done. Though with Inner Sphere heat sinks, it may be an interesting addition.

There are two major ways to figure out the weight, and mostly it is the question - how do we calculate the number of heat sinks for a weapon?

1) Heat Neutrality
We try to put in enough heat sinks so that the weapons heat is perfectly negated.
This is a simple, useful approach, though some thing it's too simple.
Generally, heat neutrality is very useful to know if you are working at modifiying your mech and adding or switching out some weapons. If you have already found a mech configuration that you think is "reasonably hot" or "reasonably cool" (ranging from overcooled to heat neutral to gaining heat slowly up to overheats in the blink of an eye), when you made free some weight, you can simply add the "heat neutral" configuration to the mech and nothing will change about its time to last.
If you replace weapons, you may realize that for the weight of 2 Medium Lasers and their heat sinks, you could also, say, fit another Large Laser - maybe that would give you something you found lacking so far.

2) TET - Targeted Engagement Time
This approach is a bit different from heat neutrality is that you try to figure out - how long do I expect an individual combat/skirmish/brawl (e.g. not the entire match, but one fight in that match) too last, and then find a build that optimizes the damage output in this time frame.
This approach has some very practical applications to a mech or weapon configurations. For example, if you have 2 long range weapons, you may decide that these are mnostly used for sniping, where engagement times are usually low (unless the enemy is not trying to get into cover), but also a few short range weapons which you intend to use in a brawl. So you may try to go for a high TET for the brawling weapons and a low TET for the long range weapons. As long as you don'T use them together, you should get what you want. (Whether it's always the best choice to mix roles like this is another question).

The important aspect of the TET approach is that it has to account for a mech's inherent heat capacity - since that allows you to gain heat without needing to immediately/completely dissipate it. This creates some artefacts - if you really always only calculate the TET for a single weapon, you get unrealistic figures - a single medium laser currently can produce 10 heat over 10 seconds on average, so that the time to overheat is at least 30 (in practice, it's even higher - your heat capacity in MW:O is 30 + heat sinks, not just 30 - and you need to have 10 heat sinks now... So basically, with a single medium laser and 10 sinks, you never overheat.)

So for my calculations, I always used 4 weapons.That can be unrealistic for large weapons, but it's close enough - the real error beings at the low heat levels, not the high ones.

How to Calculate Damage
THere are basically two major damage figures people are interested in:
- Damage Per Shot (or "burst" or in Battletech terms "alpha" damage)
- Damage over Time (or "DPS")
Damage per Shot is an important asset to have - you want to nail weak spots at the enemy mech and a high damage per shot means you can destroy them without firing again.
Damage over Time - You can't one-shot everything and everyone, so you will need to take multiple shots - how much damage over time you can inflict on average gives a hint on how long it will take you.

How to put Damage and Weight together
I have basically chosen 3 approaches in total.

For using heat neutrality, I have used two damage figures.
1) Damage Over Time
2) Damage Over Time + Damage per Shot, weighted against each other. (More precisely, I calculated it as (Damage per SHot + 10 x Damage over Time)/10.

For TET, I just used the damage that a mech would inflict continously firing.

Whatever model I used, I then used the calculated weight against the calculate damage.

What we would like to see when we compare damage efficiency stats of weapons

Generally:
Range has not appeared yet in any of the calculations, but is a major factor in balancing weapons. What we want to see ideally is that weapons with similar range have similar damage efficiency stats, and the longer the range, the lower the damage efficiency. This means there is a meaningful trade-off between damage and range. If you use a short range weapon, you must get close to the enemy first, but if you do, you can outdamage the enemy that relies on long range weapons. This introduces also an interesting tactical element, as each participant will try to fight in his "turf" or range category.

Heat Neutrality + Weighted Damage Values
Here, Range should suffice. We already made burst potential an advantage in the efficiency chart.

Heat Neutrality + Damage Over Time:
Here, Range is one factor, but we don't account for burst yet. As a general guideline - the higher the damage per shot is for a weapon, the lower we want the efficiency to be.

TET
For TET, we have similar concerns as for Heat Neutrality and Damage Over Time - more range and more burst should mean a lower efficiency.

You are stating problems that were present in the TT aswell, even WITH DHS. Medium Lasers were allways better than most weapons and Gauss guns were allways "unfair".

Regardless if we agree or not, I understand your position but I do not agree, but that might be due to the fact that I can work my weapons well and do not suffer heat problems at all. Might be because of my playstyle, might be because I dont care about the math in the way others do.

I pick a weapon I like and make it work. To be fair, I might be doing it wrong.

[PerfectTommy]

The TT heat sinks never made sense to me anyway.

If you generate heat in real life, a "heat sink" will take a little while to dissipate that heat. Heat transfer from the hot component to the coolant to the radiators/chillers takes time. That is just physics.



-PT

[Eiki]

One major thing to consider is that Tabletop rules do not translate 1:1 with a sim that well due to various gameplay aspects. You can't expect it to be exactly the same or you would never see large or medium lasers ever again.

[Diablobo]

I don't know how I can say it more clearly. The firing rates are tripled with almost the exact same heat values. The heat dissipation rates haven't been tripled though. This game is just TT with triple the heat.
RIDICULOUS.

[Rifter]

Diablobo, on 19 November 2012 - 05:19 AM, said:

I don't know how I can say it more clearly. The firing rates are tripled with almost the exact same heat values. The heat dissipation rates haven't been tripled though. This game is just TT with triple the heat.
RIDICULOUS.

It is truly amazing how many people seem to fail to understand this simple point of math, its almosy like they stopped teaching math in school or something.

[Alexa Steel]

Rifter, on 19 November 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

It is truly amazing how many people seem to fail to understand this simple point of math, its almosy like they stopped teaching math in school or something.

Riiiight, you are forgetting one thing, people are still able to use the weapons to great effect. You and your ilk have one gripe with the system, you do not care about that you can make it work right now, you want it to be like it could be, regardless if it should be. Complaing about things like the gauss vs the erppc is pointless, you know why?
The gauss is an ammo dependant weapon wich means around 4-5 tons are needed for ammo, every time a gauss rifle fires it risks detonating its ammo, wich is not implemented yet. What more drawbacks do you need?
Dealing with managable heat isnt a big drawback in my opinion when compared to a chance to instantly lose your main weapon system or even instant death.

Edited by Alexa Steel, 19 November 2012 - 05:33 AM.

[Lanessar]

Rifter, on 19 November 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

It is truly amazing how many people seem to fail to understand this simple point of math, its almost like they stopped teaching math in school or something.

I'm an old table-topper, and no, I don't want to see the tabletop game in computer form, neccessarily. However, you've hit the nail on the head - triple heat, triple tonnage required to manage heat, and people claim "as long as it's fun, I don't care". Or my other favorite "it's balanced".

No. Just... no. It's not balanced. It's a house of cards, and one day, very soon, the cards are going to fall apart. We saw just a glimmer with the LRM issue, and that boiled down to adjusting a flight path.

[Alexa Steel]

Lanessar, on 19 November 2012 - 05:32 AM, said:

I'm an old table-topper, and no, I don't want to see the tabletop game in computer form, neccessarily. However, you've hit the nail on the head - triple heat, triple tonnage required to manage heat, and people claim "as long as it's fun, I don't care". Or my other favorite "it's balanced".

No. Just... no. It's not balanced. It's a house of cards, and one day, very soon, the cards are going to fall apart. We saw just a glimmer with the LRM issue, and that boiled down to adjusting a flight path.

Uhm so you want a balanced game that is not fun? Because thats basically what you say, Iam just checking. If the mechanics are fun and do not hinder people in enjoying the game, why change that?
People still rock weapons that are deemed "inefficient" by the math, they still kill with it, they still win with it, they still have fun with it.

Edited by Alexa Steel, 19 November 2012 - 05:40 AM.

[PerfectTommy]

Right now, many folks seem to be firing pretty often without overheating even without tripling the heatsinks to match the tripling of weapon speed.

My laserback will indeed boil itself alive if I keep alpha-striking, but if I am a little more careful, I can keep firing regularly through most of a match without heat shutdown. Not constantly, but regularly.

I can only imagine that if they did triple the heatsinks, you would see folks with a solid beam of laser fire emerging from their mechs from the start of a match to the finish.

Am I the only one who sees the heat management to be a play challenge, rather than a development problem?



-k

[Antagonist]

Alexa Steel, on 19 November 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

The gauss is an ammo dependant weapon wich means around 4-5 tons are needed for ammo, every time a gauss rifle fires it risks detonating its ammo, wich is not implemented yet.

Funny that. And here I was, thinking nickel-iron alloy was not an explosive material.

Are you sure you're not alluding to the Gauss capacitors having a 60% chance to cause damage if a critical occupied by it is hit? This is also why CASE for Gauss ammo bins is useless, instead it can mitigate damage caused by the weapon's explosion.

[Alexa Steel]

PerfectTommy, on 19 November 2012 - 05:39 AM, said:

Right now, many folks seem to be firing pretty often without overheating even without tripling the heatsinks to match the tripling of weapon speed.

My laserback will indeed boil itself alive if I keep alpha-striking, but if I am a little more careful, I can keep firing regularly through most of a match without heat shutdown. Not constantly, but regularly.

I can only imagine that if they did triple the heatsinks, you would see folks with a solid beam of laser fire emerging from their mechs from the start of a match to the finish.

Am I the only one who sees the heat management to be a play challenge, rather than a development problem?



-k

Nope I agree.
@Antagonist: the point is, the weapon can explode and destroy a section of the torso or destroy the mech if fitted there. At the very least a gauss rifle is allways risky.

Edited by Alexa Steel, 19 November 2012 - 05:45 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Alexa Steel, on 19 November 2012 - 04:58 AM, said:

You are stating problems that were present in the TT aswell, even WITH DHS. Medium Lasers were allways better than most weapons and Gauss guns were allways "unfair".

This is one of the things that I have no trouble throwing out in a video game. I don't think it's likely that the medium laser is displayed in the lore as overpowered - it's a workhorse weapon. At 1 ton weight and 1 crit, it's always easy to add to a mech.

Quote

Regardless if we agree or not, I understand your position but I do not agree, but that might be due to the fact that I can work my weapons well and do not suffer heat problems at all.

See, what does "problems with heat" mean to you? It's not really hard ,if you know that firing weapons causes heat, and too much heat shuts you down, to avoid overhaeting. Just don't shoot the weapon when it would overheat you. I think most players are capable of learning this, and it's not unique to a few select players.

But optimizing your build so that you can avoid overheating and still deal a lot of damage, and in fact, optimize your damage output, is something else. That requires a bit more - a lot of experimenting and for some players that want to know exactly what is happening, creating spreadsheets and definiding models that reasonably predict the outcome in game.

Weapon Balance isn't about teachnig you how to use your weapons without overheating all the time. It's about ensuring that once you're trying to optimize your build,y ou cannot find easy answers, that you have to weigh meaningful trade-offs and find the weapon best for your style - not just say "Okay, this weapon really sucks, and this doesn't, so I pick the latter".

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 19 November 2012 - 05:50 AM.

[Antagonist]

I don't disagree. I just think it's rather hypocritical to question one person's facts and come up with faulty analogues to reinforce one's own point of view.

Also, yes, in regards to small weapons, heat seems to be balanced. In regards to larger ones like ER LL and ER PPC...well, let's say my last experience with ER PPCs has taught me to stay the hell away from them, and that was several patches ago. I might give them a try again eventually, but that alone should be a good indicator something's not quite right balancing them.

[Alexa Steel]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 November 2012 - 05:48 AM, said:

This is one of the things that I have no trouble throwing out in a real game.


See, what does "problems with heat" mean to you? It's not really hard ,if you know that firing weapons causes heat, and too much heat shuts you down, to avoid overhaeting. Just don't shoot the weapon when it would overheat you. I think most players are capable of learning this, and it's not unique to a few select players.

But optimizing your build so that you can avoid overheating and still deal a lot of damage, and in fact, optimize your damage output, is something else. That requires a bit more - a lot of experimenting and for some players that want to know exactly what is happening, creating spreadsheets and definiding models that reasonably predict the outcome in game.

Weapon Balance isn't about teachnig you how to use your weapons without overheating all the time. It's about ensuring that once you're trying to optimize your build,y ou cannot find easy answers, that you have to weigh meaningful trade-offs and find the weapon best for your style - not just say "Okay, this weapon really sucks, and this doesn't, so I pick the latter".

Optimizing your build doesnt allways result in a better result than what you achieved before. You could try to optimize just to realize you already reached the best loadout possible. Besides that I agree that optimizing your builds can be quite challenging, but again I have no trouble optimizing my builds.
@Antagonist: I wasnt trying to question his facts, I just wanted to state that there are drawbacks.

Edited by Alexa Steel, 19 November 2012 - 05:54 AM.