322 replies to this topic

[shabowie]

Xenois Shalashaska, on 03 December 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

Your over heating right. well welcome to the innersphere tech. enjoy and manage your heat

There is nothing really to manage is the sad part. Just a bar that shuts you down for a second if you let it fill all the way up.

Better would be a system like TT where carrying low levels of waste heat is a calculate risk in accuracy and speed loss, medium is dangerous and high suicidal.

Then they should flatten your heat capacity to flat 30 and double SHS and double DHS from there. Full circle to near TT and a nearly working system.

Edited by shabowie, 03 December 2012 - 06:16 AM.

[ArmandTulsen]

wanderer, on 03 December 2012 - 05:55 AM, said:

The funny thing here is this: Battletech itself renders the single heat sink an artifact of the Succession Wars as soon as the DHS becomes commonly produced. That is, the SHS is never meant to "balance" with DHS, the DHS is not only meant to replace SHS, it's the literal core of the entire post-3039 technical revolution.

It's one of the few cases where there really isn't any way to broadly make the SHS vs. DHS a "sidegrade" issue. DHS are better, period- and have to be or else they end up crippling large parts of the game.

Oh, and for the guy wanting 2-crit DHS? That's the Clan-tech ones that show up later on. IS DHS have that 3-crit drawback.

Just stop fluffing around, PGI and just like SHS are .1 heat per second, all DHS are .2 heat per second- as they not only should be, but have to be unless you feel like jerking one weight class or another around.

The proverbial nail in the coffin against the SHS.

[wanderer]

shabowie, on 03 December 2012 - 06:14 AM, said:

There is nothing really to manage is the sad part. Just a bar that shuts you down for a second if you let it fill all the way up.

Better would be a system like TT where carrying low levels of waste heat is a calculate risk in accuracy and speed loss, medium is dangerous and high suicidal.

Then they should flatten your heat capacity to flat 30 and double SHS and double DHS from there. Full circle to near TT and a nearly working system.

Actually, making the heat scale have negative effects would be a blessing- and if SHS gave you a wider "maximum", there might actually be a reason for it AND allowing 2.0 DHS to function normally.

Look at it this way. Say each HS, SHS OR DHS expands the gap between 0% overheat and 100% by the same amount. Like in TT, various points on the overheat bar create negative effects- movement slowdown, targeting issues (HUD flicker? sluggish twist/arm motion?), and so on.

It'd mean something with 20 SHS would have the same cooling per second as 10 DHS, but the SHS 'Mech would gain the benefit of being able to push more heat into the system before negative effects occur.

This would allow canonical DHS with a side benefit to SHS that works "outside the tabletop rules" to give them a reason to be.


SHS in large quantities means more tonnage but better overheat tolerance.

[Scryed]

Honestly make the heat sinks 2.0 for assaults

[TruePoindexter]

14 Pages and this thread has just skipped past everything everyone had said and gone off the deep end again. Here we go to recap the earlier 8 pages for the TLDR crowd:

The reason DHS cannot be a flat 2.0 is that this would unilaterally make energy weapons the supreme weapons of the game just like they were in MW2/MW3/MW4 eliminating Ballistics and Missiles for competitive play. Garth says as much here:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1521366

Quote

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.

For those that hadn't played MW3 at the competitive level and as a educational point I listed the tiny subset of weapons that were viable in MW3:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1521343

Quote

Older MW games were not balanced. Not even close. MW3 I can list all the weapons used in competitive play right now:

Flamer
ER Small Laser
ER Medium Laser
LRM 5
Streak SRM 4
Streak SRM 6
Ultra AC20

That was all. If you used anything else you were wrong. And even then out of all of these the lasers were ahead of the others. MW4's list was even shorter. MWO is amazing by comparison since almost all the weapons are actually viable.

I agree that ER PPC's are not worth running right now but the rest are most definitely viable.

The problem with DHS @ 2.0 is that you get to effectively ignore heat. You get to ignore a full game mechanic just by building your custom mech. This favors energy weapons and further widens the gap between trials and custom mechs.

To illustrate my point here are some builds I did that show just how powerful 2.0 DHS would be.

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

Quote

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.

[wanderer]

TruePoindexter, on 03 December 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

The problem with DHS @ 2.0 is that you get to effectively ignore heat. You get to ignore a full game mechanic just by building your custom mech. This favors energy weapons and further widens the gap between trials and custom mechs.

Except right now, energy weapons aren't even close to "favored".

It's the 'Mechs that ignore the heat mechanic anyway.

That would be Gauss and missile launchers.

Energy boats haven't been "favored" anything, and DHS at 2.0 will do diddly-squat to change the "favored" builds at this point. It'll make big energy weapons less painful. Boo hoo. It'll let rapid fire AC's fire longer. Waaah. It'll give you the pulse-Awesome back? Watch me quiver in fear.

A 6 ML Jenner is only scary because of the netcode and no collisions, not the firepower. They already HAVE effectively the same thing with engine + 1.4 in that build- they lose .24 heat sinkage. OOOOOOH. The overheat!

Edited by wanderer, 03 December 2012 - 05:14 PM.

[TruePoindexter]

wanderer, on 03 December 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

Except right now, energy weapons aren't even close to "favored".

It's the 'Mechs that ignore the heat mechanic anyway.

That would be Gauss and missile launchers.

Energy boats haven't been "favored" anything, and DHS at 2.0 will do diddly-squat to change the "favored" builds at this point. It'll make big energy weapons less painful. Boo hoo. It'll let rapid fire AC's fire longer. Waaah. It'll give you the pulse-Awesome back? Watch me quiver in fear.

A 6 ML Jenner is only scary because of the netcode and no collisions, not the firepower. They already HAVE effectively the same thing with engine + 1.4 in that build- they lose .24 heat sinkage. OOOOOOH. The overheat!

Many of the best players are already running energy heavy builds. That's the beauty of it though - that's not all of them. Many others are running other weaponry and as a whole all of the weapon set is viable with few clear winners (and they are being addressed). We're at a fine balance point right now where moving too far in either direction will skew things.

We don't want this to be like MW4 which could have been renamed ER Large Laser Warrior or MW3 which could have been called ER Small Laser Warrior.

Right now the only legitimate complaint is that ER PPCs are too unwieldly due to their high heat and low return. PPC/LPL/ER Large Lasers are weaker than they probably should be but not to the degree that you would be outright wrong in taking them.

[Lefty Lucy]

TruePoindexter, on 03 December 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

14 Pages and this thread has just skipped past everything everyone had said and gone off the deep end again. Here we go to recap the earlier 8 pages for the TLDR crowd:

The reason DHS cannot be a flat 2.0 is that this would unilaterally make energy weapons the supreme weapons of the game just like they were in MW2/MW3/MW4 eliminating Ballistics and Missiles for competitive play. Garth says as much here:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1521366


For those that hadn't played MW3 at the competitive level and as a educational point I listed the tiny subset of weapons that were viable in MW3:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1521343


The problem with DHS @ 2.0 is that you get to effectively ignore heat. You get to ignore a full game mechanic just by building your custom mech. This favors energy weapons and further widens the gap between trials and custom mechs.

To illustrate my point here are some builds I did that show just how powerful 2.0 DHS would be.

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

Neither of those builds are particularly more powerful when out-of-engine heat sinks are 2.0 rather than 1.4. The Awesome gains more than the Jenner though.

[Onyx Rain]

MrPenguin, on 29 November 2012 - 10:11 AM, said:

An increase from 1.4? Sure.
Return to 2.0? Nope.

1.7-1.8 sounds like it would be fine.

This is my opinion also, because large energy weapons still need a buff in general.

[Like a Sir]

TruePoindexter, on 03 December 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

14 Pages and this thread has just skipped past everything everyone had said and gone off the deep end again. Here we go to recap the earlier 8 pages for the TLDR crowd:

The reason DHS cannot be a flat 2.0 is that this would unilaterally make energy weapons the supreme weapons of the game just like they were in MW2/MW3/MW4 eliminating Ballistics and Missiles for competitive play. Garth says as much here:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1521366


For those that hadn't played MW3 at the competitive level and as a educational point I listed the tiny subset of weapons that were viable in MW3:

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1521343


The problem with DHS @ 2.0 is that you get to effectively ignore heat. You get to ignore a full game mechanic just by building your custom mech. This favors energy weapons and further widens the gap between trials and custom mechs.

To illustrate my point here are some builds I did that show just how powerful 2.0 DHS would be.

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

It seems like Garth is grasping at straws, first it was the jenner that cored out atlases, now it is just "crazy powerful energy weapon mech boats"... Like many of us pointed out we just want the even increase across the board...

Your "Jenner God" mech, with 2 out of engine heat sinks, will pick up the equivalent of 1.2 single heat sink with the change to 2.0 across the board, which I dare say, won't make it any more overpowered, then it already is, I think even the people who fear math would understand that 1.2 extra single heat sinks, won't make your 6 medium laser jenner heat neutral, or make it shoot for extra 5 min...

"Awesome God" would pick up the equivalent of 4.6 single heat sinks with the change, again, 6 medium pulses build heat like crazy, how exactly extra 4.6 single heat sinks will make a game breaking difference?

Thank you though, those 2 builds you showed, demonstrate that lights are already using doubles to nearly full potential, in comparison Assaults get shafted, since PGI won't just admit that they were flat out wrong and didn't test stuff for more then 5 min.

And yes I am aware that this math does not include the perks, those however don't add enough to drastically change the picture. Thing is, I'll play this game either way, it's just annoying to see all these "thinking man shooter" adds in my browser, and then to come here and see, that PGI expects us to eat up whatever crazy unreasonable explanation they come up with.

P.S. sorry meant to say Jenner that cored out atlai in 3 seconds =D

[Bubba Wilkins]

I'm fine with 1.8's across the board as it will nerf the smaller mechs back down maintaining parity.

Right now the current implementation still favors those more than assaults.

[PapaKilo]

Devs, please, for the love of all that is BattleTech/MechWarrior...

LET US TEST OUT FULL-STRENGTH DOUBLE HEAT SINKS instead of these p!ss-poor "Improved" Heat Sinks you have foisted on us.

Once you get the mass data, you will realize that your fears of heat-neutral 'Mechs are unfounded. Why, you ask? Okay, I'll tell you.

Us MechWarriors don't want heat-neutral 'Mechs. Give us one, and we'll put more, bigger, hotter, weapons on it until it's riding the fine line. If a 'Mech is heat-neutral, it's got too many heat sinks. I run Jenners, and I can tell you that even my 13 DHS builds with four mediums and two Streak-2s are nowhere near heat-neutral. Full-strength doubles wouldn't make them heat-neutral, but they would give me a few more precious seconds of pew-pew before I shut down. Those same builds in TT would be WAY over-cooled (19 heat generated, 26 heat dissipated per round).

[The Bad Charlie]

Devs stated NUMEROUS TIMES that you are not supposed to be able to fire all weapons continously. If you want that, just downgrade your weapons...

[Lefty Lucy]

The Bad Charlie, on 03 December 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

Devs stated NUMEROUS TIMES that you are not supposed to be able to fire all weapons continously. If you want that, just downgrade your weapons...

And making out-of-engine DHS 2.0 would not allow most reasonable builds to fire all weapons continuously anyways.

It would be about a 10% increase for a mech with 15 DHS, assuming a 250+ rated engine.

[shabowie]

TruePoindexter, on 03 December 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

The problem with DHS @ 2.0 is that you get to effectively ignore heat.

This statement is a lie, and the fact you provided builds that dissipate less than or a bit more than HALF of the heat being generated every second shows you know you aren't being honest.

Your 6 mlas Jenner generates 6 heat per second and can only dissipate 2.8. Your 6 mplas Awesome generates ~8 heat per second and can dissipate 4.4 per second. Those are hypotheticals if they were all true doubles.

Furthermore, everyone who wants lots more heat dissipation also wants a flatter heat capacity with greater penalties for carrying waste heat.

Stop telling lies and engage in honest debate or what's the point? You just look like a yes man for a system that makes stock mechs completely unusable.

Edited by shabowie, 04 December 2012 - 01:49 AM.

[Polojilarious]

Let's look at this from a different perspective.

DHS is an upgrade, like endo or FF.

Both endo and FF always have drawbacks when equipped (14 crit slots/repair costs), and benefit certain mechs/builds more than others. Namely, heavier mechs might end up running out of crit slots before they fill out their tonnage if they have one or both upgrades.

DHS, on the other hand, does not always have a drawback. If you are running a low-meduim heat build, and the engine heatsinks are sufficient for cooling, you do not lose anything. No critical slots, no extra tonnage, nothing. There is no reason to not take them. This is a part of the problem.

The other part is the role the upgrade plays.

To me, it seems fairly obvious that high heat mechs should probably benefit the most from DHS. And yet, they don't. They benefit the least. Beyond the engine heatsinks, they get garbage 1.4 heatsinks that take up 3 slots each. Which means they can only be placed in engine slots, the side torsos, or the arms. With 4 in each side and 3 in each arm, you can cram in 14 external heatsinks. But on most mechs, these are the same areas your guns are occupying. If you take up a few slots with guns in a few different places, you're down to like, 10 external tops.

So. If we want DHS to be effective in high heat mechs without it being mandatory across the board, we can't just bring the number on the external heatsinks up and call it a day. Sure, it'd be better for the high heat mechs than it is now, but there still wouldn't be a reason to avoid it in low heat mechs.

Two possible solutions:

Swap the 1.4 and 2.0 values, such that the engine double heatsinks aren't so great, but the external ones are better. Mechs without any external DHS would see a nerf, but those with them would remain roughly the same. You could even go further with this, lowering the engine heatsinks to ~1.2 and buff the externals to 2.2-2.6 so mechs running only engine heatsinks would hardly see an improvement from SHS, while those actually filling up their crit slots with DHS would really benefit.

Alternatively, add a floating crit slot requirement to DHS, maybe one per engine heatsink, and make the external heatsinks take up two slots instead of three. This would add a penalty to low heat mechs running DHS on their engine heatsinks, while allowing high heat mechs to fit a similar number of DHS as they can now, but with a bit more freedom of placement. This would probably even work out with a flat 2.0 value for all DHS, so the heatsinks would actually be 'double' what they normally are.

And that is pretty much my entire line of thinking. I know both solutions I have proposed are pretty far removed from the tabletop values/rules, but this is a very different game, and there should be more to gameplay decisions than "how similar is this to tabletop rules?"

So, yeah. Comments, ideas or feedback?

[SpiralRazor]

TruePoindexter, on 03 December 2012 - 05:24 PM, said:

Many of the best players are already running energy heavy builds. That's the beauty of it though - that's not all of them. Many others are running other weaponry and as a whole all of the weapon set is viable with few clear winners (and they are being addressed). We're at a fine balance point right now where moving too far in either direction will skew things.

We don't want this to be like MW4 which could have been renamed ER Large Laser Warrior or MW3 which could have been called ER Small Laser Warrior.

Right now the only legitimate complaint is that ER PPCs are too unwieldly due to their high heat and low return. PPC/LPL/ER Large Lasers are weaker than they probably should be but not to the degree that you would be outright wrong in taking them.

Your math is off... Also, anyone boating ERSmalls in MW3 was dead long before they got in range to really use them.


Unless you were a laggy *** Shadowcat, and then we just banned you from the game.

Edited by SpiralRazor, 03 December 2012 - 09:31 PM.

[SD 47]

I have to say Polojilarious, those are some interesting suggestions. Especially the first one, I can easily see that one having a major impact. It won't stop everyone from using DHS on lower heat builds, but it might encourage careful evaluation of weapon to DHS ratios.

Unfortunately it is too late for me to do the math to figure out how things would change.

[Dreadp1r4te]

To all you "No, 2.0 DHS would make them mandatory on any 'Mech!" types, I challenge you to peruse Sarna and find for me at least 10 'Mechs introduced in or around 3049/3050 that did NOT have DHS. No, I don't mean older variants that were still in use in 3050, I mean 'Mechs that were built around or after our current era in game.

The reason for this is that DHS were a technological upgrade; they WERE mandatory on almost every newer chassis, and even older chassis that were refitted around this era. (i.e., Awesome 9M)

So yes, they should be mandatory! You think your measly 1.4DHS are going to help when the clans invade? The only reason DHS are mandatory at this point is because PGI's borked heat mechanic doesn't cool enough with SHS. They tripled the fire rate of all weapons, but not the heat cooled rates, so technically the DHS being mandatory is PGI's fault, not their 2.0 value. And even at 1.4, they're STILL mandatory, they just don't help an Atlas as much as they do the Jenner... but we already know PGI has a *expletive deleted* for the Jenner... and apparently a 3 second *expletive deleted*, at that...

(Self moderated, for your viewing pleasure)

Edit: And also, as an aside for my earlier challenge... here's what Sarna has to say about DHS, in case anyone "forgot" (coughPGIcough)
http://puu.sh/1wXMF

Edited by Dreadp1r4te, 03 December 2012 - 09:58 PM.

[Orzorn]

Like a Sir, on 03 December 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

Your "Jenner God" mech, with 2 out of engine heat sinks, will pick up the equivalent of 1.2 single heat sink with the change to 2.0 across the board, which I dare say, won't make it any more overpowered, then it already is, I think even the people who fear math would understand that 1.2 extra single heat sinks, won't make your 6 medium laser jenner heat neutral, or make it shoot for extra 5 min...

Its also important to note that Jenners currently gain several tons from the fact that they only need one jump jet.

Fix that and they'd get knocked down far more than true dubs would ever bring them back up.