322 replies to this topic

[Monky]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 12:09 PM, said:

SHS are viable at a certain point on Assaults. Really any mech that has more weight than space could consider SHS over DHs.

EDIT: As an example build here's a 4 LL Atlas that most definitely benefits from SHS

Spoiler

Chassis Name: Atlas
Model Name: AS7-RS
Variant Name: SHS 4x LL

Engine Cost: 1,440,000 C-Bills
Heat Sink Cost: 56,000 C-Bills
Armor Cost: 190,304 C-Bills
Weapons Cost: 800,000 C-Bills
Equipment Cost: 0 C-Bills
Ammo Cost: 0 C-Bills

Engine: 360 XL Engine
Internal Type: Std Internals
Armor Type: Std Armor
Heat Sinks: 38 (14) Standard Heat Sinks

Tonnage: 100.00
Speed: 58.3 kph
Armor Total: 592
Alpha Strike Damage: 36.00
Alpha Strike Heat: 28.00
Firepower: 8.47 dps
Heat Efficiency: 57.68%
Effective Range of Loadout: 450m

Head: 18/18
Right Torso: 64/84
Right Rear Torso: 20/84
Center Torso: 94/124
Center Rear Torso: 28/124
Left Torso: 64/84
Left Rear Torso: 20/84
Right Arm: 68/68
Left Arm: 68/68
Right Leg: 74/84
Left Leg: 74/84

Weapons Locations
Right Arm:
(2) Large Laser
Left Arm:
(2) Large Laser

Heat Sink Locations
Right Torso: 9

Left Torso: 9

Center Torso: 2

Right Leg: 2

Left Leg: 2

I agree, but I feel this needs to be expanded. At the least, each weight class should be able to make a case for single heatsinks on at least some viable builds. Partly, this will mean FF needs a buff (so that it actually is more useful and you are willing to trade those crits away) but partly it will have to involve a nerf of the engine heatsinks.

Edited by Monky, 30 November 2012 - 12:29 PM.

[TruePoindexter]

Joseph Mallan, on 30 November 2012 - 12:18 PM, said:

Gausszilla! No? The the Thunderhawk. 45 hard hitting ballistic points, give it double sinks and it is one deadly heat neutral monster. Able to kill most, if not all heat neutral energy boats.

The Thunder Hawk can only do this 16 times in TT. In the same space you can make an energy based mech that deals the same damage and can fire forever without worrying about ammo or Gauss Rifle explosions.

Deadoon, on 30 November 2012 - 12:19 PM, said:

They are broken, arguing otherwise is foolhardy, there should be no reason not to mount dhs until clan stuff arrives and people need less space consuming stuff, due to all that weight savings, which is why the compact heat sink was invented.

Please see the following for examples:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1522041

[Skyfaller]

How about making two versions of the DHS?

Large DHS and Small DHS.

Small would be 1.3 heat dissipation, take 2 crit slots, weigh 1 tons, available on light and medium mechs. 30% bonus paid for 1 crit slot cost.

Large DHS is 2 heat dissipation, take 3 crit slots, weigh 1 tons. double bonus paid for 2 crit slot cost. Available on heavy and assault mechs.

problem solved.

[Lee Ving]

ITT: People who don't use dual heatsinks on their ballistic boats argue with people who do use dual heatsinks on their energy boats about who needs more halps.

Just so I don't feel left out, I do feel that PPCs need a rework on heat, and DHS need a slight buff. I play ballistic, missile, and energy, FYI.

[MustrumRidcully]

Woodpeckr, on 29 November 2012 - 10:09 AM, said:

No

DHS are already pretty much mandatory on every mech, there's pretty much no configuration that isn't improved by upgrading to them. Making them better would just widen the gap, particularly against trial mechs which most of the time don't have them.

My advice- just double the heat dissipation of single heat sinks as well. That means a single heat sink gives you +1 capacity and +0.2 dissipation, and a double heat sink gives you +2 capacity and +0.2 dissipation.

You'd fix most of the current imbalance issues between ballistics and energy weapons, and you would have SHS and DHS balanced against each other.

And still not one 3-second-to-core-Atlas Jenners more than before.

[Lefty Lucy]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

Challenge Accepted.

Behold the 6 ML Jenner that is now almost perfectly heat neutral. Every Atlas/Cataphract 4X pilot in the world wants to run into these.

Spoiler

Chassis Name: Jenner
Model Name: JR7-F
Variant Name: Jenner God

Engine Cost: 1,200,000 C-Bills
Heat Sink Cost: 8,000 C-Bills
Armor Cost: 70,112 C-Bills
Weapons Cost: 480,000 C-Bills
Equipment Cost: 0 C-Bills
Ammo Cost: 0 C-Bills

Engine: 300 XL Engine
Internal Type: Endo Steel
Armor Type: Std Armor
Heat Sinks: 14 (12) Double Heat Sinks

Tonnage: 35.00
Speed: 138.9 kph
Armor Total: 224
Alpha Strike Damage: 30.00
Alpha Strike Heat: 24.00
Firepower: 7.50 dps
Heat Efficiency: 48.67% (32.67% @ 1.4 DHS)
Effective Range of Loadout: 270m

Head: 14/18
Right Torso: 22/32
Right Rear Torso: 10/32
Center Torso: 30/44
Center Rear Torso: 12/44
Left Torso: 22/32
Left Rear Torso: 10/32
Right Arm: 22/24
Left Arm: 22/24
Right Leg: 30/32
Left Leg: 30/32

Weapons Locations
Right Arm:
(3) Medium Laser
Left Arm:
(3) Medium Laser

Heat Sink Locations
Right Torso: 1

Left Torso: 1


Jump Jet Locations
Center Torso: 1

How about we go hog wild? Remember the medium pulse laser 9M Awesome? Yeah now it's almost heat neutral. We all want constant 51 point damage Alphas to the face from an assault that can run 85kph don't we!

Spoiler

Chassis Name: Awesome
Model Name: AWS-9M
Variant Name: Awesome God

Engine Cost: 1,540,000 C-Bills
Heat Sink Cost: 24,000 C-Bills
Armor Cost: 150,240 C-Bills
Weapons Cost: 880,000 C-Bills
Equipment Cost: 0 C-Bills
Ammo Cost: 27,000 C-Bills

Engine: 385 XL Engine
Internal Type: Std Internals
Armor Type: Std Armor
Heat Sinks: 22 (15) Double Heat Sinks

Tonnage: 80.00
Speed: 78.0 kph
Armor Total: 480
Alpha Strike Damage: 51.00
Alpha Strike Heat: 34.00
Firepower: 13.35 dps
Heat Efficiency: 48.89% (34.22% @ 1.4 DHS)
Effective Range of Loadout: 180m

Head: 18/18
Right Torso: 52/68
Right Rear Torso: 16/68
Center Torso: 74/100
Center Rear Torso: 26/100
Left Torso: 52/68
Left Rear Torso: 16/68
Right Arm: 52/52
Left Arm: 52/52
Right Leg: 61/68
Left Leg: 61/68

Weapons Locations
Right Arm:
Medium Pulse Laser
Left Arm:
SRM6
Right Torso:
Medium Pulse Laser
Left Torso:
Medium Pulse Laser
Center Torso:
(2) Medium Pulse Laser
Head:
Medium Pulse Laser

Heat Sink Locations
Right Arm: 2

Left Arm: 1

Right Torso: 2

Left Torso: 2


Equipment Locations

Ammo Locations
Left Arm:
SRM Ammo

Modifying DHS because a couple of the high end energy weapons are hard(er) to use is not the solution.

Neither of those mechs is "heat neutral."

The jenner sinks 2.8 HPS with a cap of 54 heat and generates 6 HPS, so it shuts down in 16 seconds of fire.

The awesome sinks 4.4 HPS with a cap of 74 heat and generates 8.98 HPS, so it shuts down in about 16 seconds of fire as well.

Sure, both of them are capable mechs, but I don't think they're any more "game breaking" than what you could do with other mechs and other weapon systems. The Awesome, in particular, *should* be scary: don't you think that an assault mech whose weapons have an 180 meter effective range should be damned frightening within that limited range? Especially considering an XL significantly reduces its durability?

[Angel of Annihilation]

Really glad this topic still ongoing and hopefully eventually conviences the Devs they need to actually implement DHS correctly.

Soon as they do, they get a player willing to contribute money to the game again rather than a dissatisfied customer that hasn't played since the 1.4 DHS were announed and feels he wasted money on he Elite Founders pack.

Really would like to play but not investing another dime or minute on it until I can run heavy energy builds and be competitive against AC/Gauss build just like in real Battletech/Mechwarrior games.

[Asatruer]

Garth Erlam, on 30 November 2012 - 09:55 AM, said:

We're getting much closer. I will say there isn't a single previous MW game that had as many weapons viable as MWO does. People often forget, in their fond memories, that many games had extremely small lists of usable weapons. I liked MW4 a lot, as it had a pretty good balance on weapons. That said though, Lights were almost universally worse than Assault/Heavys, I barely touched half the weapons due to them being categorically worse than the rest, and the game wasn't in beta and barely a year into development.

So, I say this as objectively as possible, but I think if you look at the previous games, then back here, you'll notice a shockingly good balance of chassis/weapons/etc.

Just try and remember that the reason that boating lots of small and medium weapons in this game is so much better than one large weapon, (4MLs vs 1AC/20) is due to how you guys implemented weapon convergence, and not due to the heat inefficiencies of weapons and heatsinks. Trying to mess around with how heat is managed to mitigate the damage caused by weapon convergence to the original designed balance of weapons (and thus the stock and trial mechs using them) causes an even greater imbalance in high heat vs low heat weapons... anyway, I have a much more lengthy and detailed look at this earlier in this thread so will not re-hash it here.

Asatruer, on 29 November 2012 - 01:04 PM, said:

^-- this arror up there... click it, click the arrow...

Also consider that tweaking the heat of individual weapons like the Medium Laser to try and combat boating many Medium Lasers, just makes it harder on the people who are using one or two as well as those trying to leverage the convergence system for all it is worth by mounting many.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

+1

[MustrumRidcully]

One fundamental problem of the current implementation is that it encourages people to grab the engine double heat sinks and put in a few high heat weapon - enough for the engine heat sinks to handle - and then add a low heat weapon.

Now, some may say. "That#S great, it discourages boating of weapons! It forces you to also use ballistics and missile weapons".
All true.
Except...

Not everyone mech can do that. HBK-4P or AWS-8Q don't have missile or ballistic hardpoints. They are energy boats by current design. They can't add a Gauss Rifle, AC/5, Streaks, SRMs or LRMs. They must use heat-based weapons.

[shabowie]

Just to satisfy my perverse curiosity I took a trial 9m awesome out for a few pub rounds last night. For the first 10 seconds it felt well...Awesome. The rest of the match it felt Horrible. Suggest a name change for next patch unless something radical is done to the heat scale.

Maybe something in the middle like Mediocre.

[TruePoindexter]

Lefty Lucy, on 30 November 2012 - 12:43 PM, said:

Neither of those mechs is "heat neutral."

The jenner sinks 2.8 HPS with a cap of 54 heat and generates 6 HPS, so it shuts down in 16 seconds of fire.

The awesome sinks 4.4 HPS with a cap of 74 heat and generates 8.98 HPS, so it shuts down in about 16 seconds of fire as well.

Sure, both of them are capable mechs, but I don't think they're any more "game breaking" than what you could do with other mechs and other weapon systems. The Awesome, in particular, *should* be scary: don't you think that an assault mech whose weapons have an 180 meter effective range should be damned frightening within that limited range? Especially considering an XL significantly reduces its durability?

They are very close to heat neutral - anything that approaches the 45+% efficiency point can fire for a very long time without remorse. Given that right now the same mechs with 1.4 DHS are down well below 40% makes the change that much more dramatic.

Your calculations are a bit skewed from reality. They reflect what happens when someone holds down their trigger and fires on cooldown. In real play you must maneuver and aim giving some time between shots. Plus if you're overheating simply waiting a couple of seconds dissipates additional heat to resume fire.

They are also very game breaking. Notice how people loathe Jenner's right now? Now let them hit for 30 point alphas constantly. You would be able to rip the back armor off most mechs in a single shot. As for the Awesome you are agreeing that it is over powered then?

I think the fundamental flaw here is that many people are working under the assumption that true heat neutrality should be possible. That if you equip 3 SHS and a weapon that generates 3 heat you should not generate any heat at all. The problem with this thinking is that it immediately skews everything towards energy weapons as I have been explaining in prior posts. This fundamentally breaks the other weapons in the game to being used for lore reasons over real world performance. MWO's time based cooling system makes it so that true heat neutrality is almost (if not) impossible. This keeps energy weapons from being the obvious choice over other weapons.

Viktor Drake, on 30 November 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

Really glad this topic still ongoing and hopefully eventually conviences the Devs they need to actually implement DHS correctly.

Soon as they do, they get a player willing to contribute money to the game again rather than a dissatisfied customer that hasn't played since the 1.4 DHS were announed and feels he wasted money on he Elite Founders pack.

Really would like to play but not investing another dime or minute on it until I can run heavy energy builds and be competitive against AC/Gauss build just like in real Battletech/Mechwarrior games.

You feel like you wasted your founders pack because of something added to the game after you purchased your founders pack and totally not related to your founders pack. That's an interesting leap of logic.

If you played prior MW games you would have seen it was the other way around. Energy builds reigned supreme.

[Lefty Lucy]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 01:05 PM, said:

They are very close to heat neutral - anything that approaches the 45+% efficiency point can fire for a very long time without remorse. Given that right now the same mechs with 1.4 DHS are down well below 40% makes the change that much more dramatic.

Your calculations are a bit skewed from reality. They reflect what happens when someone holds down their trigger and fires on cooldown. In real play you must maneuver and aim giving some time between shots. Plus if you're overheating simply waiting a couple of seconds dissipates additional heat to resume fire.

They are also very game breaking. Notice how people loathe Jenner's right now? Now let them hit for 30 point alphas constantly. You would be able to rip the back armor off most mechs in a single shot. As for the Awesome you are agreeing that it is over powered then?

I think the fundamental flaw here is that many people are working under the assumption that true heat neutrality should be possible. That if you equip 3 SHS and a weapon that generates 3 heat you should not generate any heat at all. The problem with this thinking is that it immediately skews everything towards energy weapons as I have been explaining in prior posts. This fundamentally breaks the other weapons in the game to being used for lore reasons over real world performance. MWO's time based cooling system makes it so that true heat neutrality is almost (if not) impossible. This keeps energy weapons from being the obvious choice over other weapons.



You feel like you wasted your founders pack because of something added to the game after you purchased your founders pack and totally not related to your founders pack. That's an interesting leap of logic.

If you played prior MW games you would have seen it was the other way around. Energy builds reigned supreme.

The same jenner under the current heat system isn't that much worse off, as it only sinks .24 HPS less. And no, it's not game breaking. People hate jenners because of the lousy netcode. If they actually slow down long enough to put all their shots on the same location, they die fast.

Edited by Lefty Lucy, 30 November 2012 - 01:10 PM.

[Locan Ravok]

Heat management was only implemented in paper in the other mechwarrior games. DHS could drain the heat of all except the most absurd builds and ACs, Gauss, SRMs, etc... were almost not used.

The heat management, as it is in this game, makes all weapons usefull (more or less) and makes you think. You need to take combat breaks to cool and shutdown is just 1 shot away. This makes this game better.

Leave DHS at 1.4 and fix the PPCs.

[MustrumRidcully]

This is the current state of weapon efficiency with the current implementations of single heat sinks and double heat sinks:

http://i883.photobuc...RangeSorted.png



As you can see, the non-energy weapons already beat the long range energy weapons - even with DHS. And they don't effectively gain much from DHS, at least not for the targeted engagement time of 20 seconds. (There are more charts for different benchmarks, but they are not that fundamentally different: http://mwomercs.com/...dhs-with-graphs)

The outliers are the Small and Medium Lasers. They can compete with or outperform the Ballistics. With a small problem perhaps:
1) Unlike as in Mechwarrior 3, we have hard points in MW:O. That means even if they could be superior to alternatives if you'd boat them, you can not actually boat enough small or medium lasers now to exceed the damage output of heaver weapons.
3) The range these energy efficient lasers appear, there are no more ballistics to directly compare. The AC/20 is however outperformed by the Medium Laser.

If Medium and Small Lasers prove a problem, there are ways to balance them as well - simply reduce their damage and heat output. Without changing the heat sink rules; I've got stats for energy and ballistic weapons that would likely be better balanced than what we have now (and if anyone is worried about it raising the pace of the game - the stat changes lead to a longer sustained damage, but a lower burst potential): http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1499602

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 November 2012 - 01:19 PM.

[Asatruer]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

They are also very game breaking. Notice how people loathe Jenner's right now? Now let them hit for 30 point alphas constantly. You would be able to rip the back armor off most mechs in a single shot. As for the Awesome you are agreeing that it is over powered then?

Both of your examples are leveraging the convergence of weapons feature to make what were balanced weapons in BattleTech, unbalanced weapons in MWO.

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

I think the fundamental flaw here is that many people are working under the assumption that true heat neutrality should be possible.

Why?
If weapons had the same hierarchical scale of balance that they do in TT (where most mechs are nearly heat neutral), then there would be no need to worry about nearly heat neutral builds here.

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

MWO's time based cooling system makes it so that true heat neutrality is almost (if not) impossible. This keeps energy weapons from being the obvious choice over other weapons.

No, it keeps high heat weapons from being the obvious choice over low heat weapons. A pair of Gauss Rifles is more heat efficient than a pair of AC/20s, you can shoot a pair of Gauss Rifles twice in 10 seconds and run for negligable heat with only Single Engine Heatsinks, where the AC/20s with only SEHS cannot fire more than once each in 10 seconds without noticable heat rise. The Gauss also has a longer range, a faster projectile speed and its ammo does not explode (instead the weapon might, but for a lot less damage) so you can stick it in the head, or torsos without worry or need for CASE.
See how is this not just an issue of Energy vs Ballistic?

[Solis Obscuri]

DHS 1.4 are already a ridiculous advantage over SHS. They don't need more buffs.

[Lefty Lucy]

MustrumRidcully, on 30 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

This is the current state of weapon efficiency with the current implementations of single heat sinks and double heat sinks:

http://i883.photobuc...RangeSorted.png



As you can see, the non-energy weapons already beat the long range energy weapons - even with DHS. And they don't effectively gain much from DHS, at least not for the targeted engagement time of 20 seconds. (There are more charts for different benchmarks, but they are not that fundamentally different: http://mwomercs.com/...dhs-with-graphs)

The outliers are the Small and Medium Lasers. They can compete with or outperform the Ballistics. With a small problem perhaps:
1) Unlike as in Mechwarrior 3, we have hard points in MW:O. That means even if they could be superior to alternatives if you'd boat them, you can not actually boat enough small or medium lasers now to exceed the damage output of heaver weapons.
3) The range these energy efficient lasers appear, there are no more ballistics to directly compare. The AC/20 is however outperformed by the Medium Laser.

If Medium and Small Lasers prove a problem, there are ways to balance them as well - simply reduce their damage and heat output. Without changing the heat sink rules; I've got stats for energy and ballistic weapons that would likely be better balanced than what we have now (and if anyone is worried about it raising the pace of the game - the stat changes lead to a longer sustained damage, but a lower burst potential): http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1499602

Does this take into account the diminishing returns as you exceed the capacity of your 10 free DHS?

[Monky]

After reading through a lot of the arguments here, I'm still sticking with my analysis - DHS are currently superior to SHS even with triple the critical slots on everything but assaults - largely because there is no viable 'consumer' of those critical slots from other sources. Most medium and light mechs and even heavier mechs other than the catapult can't mount more than one heavy ballistic weapon without being a joke build, meaning Ferro Fibrous and Endo steel are the only thing left to consume space. Endosteel is often beneficial, but still leaves room for plenty of DHS and max armor on most mechs, and no one really uses FF except in some fringe builds that have enough crit space -after- becoming heat efficient and are still under armored, so they recieve some benefit.

My analysis is that all DHS (in engine and out) need to be 1.5 efficiency to increase the usefulness of SHS by comparison.

[MustrumRidcully]

Lefty Lucy, on 30 November 2012 - 01:32 PM, said:

Does this take into account the diminishing returns as you exceed the capacity of your 10 free DHS?

Yes, it does. The weight figures are calculated by discounting the cost for the "free" engine rates. The underlying spreadsheet does assume a 250-rated engine, and those 10 engine heat sinks don't count against the weapon's weight calculations (but in benefit of its heat dissipation and heat capacity). I think that best represents how in-engine heat sinks alter builds.
But the spreadsheet is flexible - you can alter the heat sink rules, the engine rating,you can alter the targeted engagement time, the number of engagements, the targeted damage value (so you could try to figure out what a Jenner is capable of doing with weapons and what an Atlas is, buy fiddling with targeted damage values and see what fits within their weight limitations. And you can get it on Google Docs if you'd like to tinker with it yourself! (Note that the link is view only, but you can download or copy it via the Google Docs File Menu.)

Anyway, the engine heat sinks have the interesting effect that for many of my benchmarks, ACs (and the Gauss) basically don't need any extra heat sinks. The AC/2 and the AC/20 are the outliers currently. The more damage you require and the longer the weapons are too last, the more HS will be required, of course.