322 replies to this topic

[Wolfways]

QuantumButler, on 29 November 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

WRONG.

You're literally better off dropping those mgs for more heatsinks, each MG has 0.04 damage per bullet, it takes a solid 10 seconds of shooting to deal TWO DAMAGE.

you'd get more DPS out of two extra heatsink that let you fire your real guns marginally faster.

Can't fit any more DHS.

[TruePoindexter]

Thuzel, on 29 November 2012 - 11:18 AM, said:

Absolutely agree. We need true 2.0 DHS.

Without that, energy-centric builds are significantly weakened.

I'm going to have to ask the devils advocate question here - but do they need to be stronger?

Most of my mechs I run currently are either energy weapons only or a specific weapon system combined with energy weapons. I'm doing quite well for someone who the vast majority of the time PUGs (yes yes I know...) and aside from ER PPC's being too much and PPC's probably needing a slight boost in projectile velocity/effect they're quite effective.

[QuantumButler]

Wolfways, on 29 November 2012 - 11:23 AM, said:

Can't fit any more DHS.

Then upgrade your SLs to MLs., or get a better engine, or mount a BAP, or take more armor.

Anything but waste 2 tons of completely useless MGs.

Edited by QuantumButler, 29 November 2012 - 11:29 AM.

[Zylo]

Did this thread just come up due to issues fighting ballistic based mechs?

Energy weapons already have the advantage of no ammo. The cost for this is more heat.

I'm not against an increase in the effectiveness of DHS but this would probably lead to ballistics not being used much which would later lead to a buff of the ballistic weapons in some way.

[Mr Steik]

If you have issues with PPC's/LL ( ER or not ) Try not to alpha everything that moves.... DHS are fine as is.

[SpiralRazor]

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.

Trial mechs arent viable against any custom mech...your point is completely moot.

[ReD3y3]

Light mechs have their heat dissipation built into thier engines. Which are 2.0 anyway. The extra DHS that you drop into your mechs being 1.4 only affects mechs that have the crit space to utilize them. I.E. assaults heavies.

The jenner is at an advantage because he can utilize 2.0 more so than heavy/assaults can.

[o0Marduk0o]

TruePoindexter, on 29 November 2012 - 11:13 AM, said:

I run DHS in all my Cataphract's I'd say I get lots of use from DHS there.

Assault's are really the only ones that have a valid claim of preferring SHS over DHS but this makes sense given that the entire point of DHS is to loose space for saving weight and an Assault is short on space but has lots of free weight.

This man has a clue.

[TruePoindexter]

ReD3y3, on 29 November 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

The jenner is at an advantage because he can utilize 2.0 more so than heavy/assaults can.

Jenner engines tend to be the same size as assault engines.... so how does that work? They have the same engines with the same potential for heatsinks so how does a Jenner "utilize engine heatsinks more" than a Heavy or Assault?

[ReD3y3]

TruePoindexter, on 29 November 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

Jenner engines tend to be the same size as assault engines.... so how does that work? They have the same engines with the same potential for heatsinks so how does a Jenner "utilize engine heatsinks more" than a Heavy or Assault?

Will a 4 med laser asault mech be viable ?

Anything you drop into your mech past the 2.0 engine heat sinks puts you at a disadvantage. The more you can run off of just the engine heat sinks the better.

Jenners can run almost entirely off of the heat sinks from your engine. Almost*

[Thuzel]

TruePoindexter, on 29 November 2012 - 11:24 AM, said:

I'm going to have to ask the devils advocate question here - but do they need to be stronger?

Most of my mechs I run currently are either energy weapons only or a specific weapon system combined with energy weapons. I'm doing quite well for someone who the vast majority of the time PUGs (yes yes I know...) and aside from ER PPC's being too much and PPC's probably needing a slight boost in projectile velocity/effect they're quite effective.

It's always great to have a reasoned discussion!

I think they do need to be better. Especially so when you start considering sustained dps versus ballistics. If (and that's a big IF) energy weapons have any significant advantages over missiles or ballistics right now, 90% of that is only due to the current state of the game and will disappear with time.

Given the current ammo allotments, taking 3 tons of ammo for any ballistic weapon will for all intents give you a ballistic weapon that requires no real firing discipline, and can sustain it's maximum dps for the duration of contact. Trying to achieve the same thing with any main energy weapon (large laser, PPC, ER, etc...) is much much harder to do, if not impossible. That means that, regardless of your stance on firing discipline, ballistics currently have a major advantage over energy weapons in any engagement lasting more than 5 to 10 seconds.

Also, considering that lasers have a much greater damage spread across multiple hit locations, and they tend to fall flat against ballistics as well even during shorter engagements.

Missile weapons have extremely very high dps values on their own, aside from the ability to lock on to a target. Plain SRM's lack any kind of homing ability, but that is offset against an extremely high alpha value (multiple SRM6 at close range is effectively an IWIN button) combined with an extremely low weight cost.

All in all, energy weapons are still very weak compared to non-energy weapons, and gimped DHS aren't doing us any favors.

[SteelPaladin]

TruePoindexter, on 29 November 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

I kinda disagree though. MWO is the first Mechwarrior game where lasers weren't the obvious weapon of choice. Other weapons are viable and in some cases preferred. Lets face it but TT rules were more or less broken since they never tried to make weapons viable or keep things balanced. Believe it or not most of the balance we appreciated in TT was from the lore dictating what was acceptable not the game's mechanics.

Lasers are still the weapon of choice for any energy hardpoints you have.

Medium lasers are the most common weapon of any type on the field (which is not surprising since they have always existed as a sort of "baseline" weapon) and large lasers are by far the most common heavy energy weapon I see. PPCs are restricted to specialized cases (and generally paired w/gauss), when it is supposed to be the other way around. PPCs are supposed to be to the heavy energy weapon of choice unless you can't spare the tonnage or want long range punch but still expect to brawl a fair amount (THEN you take an LL instead).

[TruePoindexter]

ReD3y3, on 29 November 2012 - 11:44 AM, said:

Will a 4 med laser asault mech be viable ?

Anything you drop into your mech past the 2.0 engine heat sinks puts you at a disadvantage. The more you can run off of just the engine heat sinks the better.

Jenners can run almost entirely off of the heat sinks from your engine. Almost*

That's not what you said. You said that Jenner utilizes the same set of heat sinks better than Assaults not that a Jenner only needs to load 4 medium lasers to be effective.

Additional heat sinks most definitely do not put you at a disadvantage. They are not as good as the engine heat sinks yes but saying that they put you at a disadvantage is like arguing you are better off not equipping any heat sinks and just using the engine ones which is just silly. Obviously an Assault/Heavy equips additional heat sinks - they equip additional weaponry as well.

[wanderer]

Zylo, on 29 November 2012 - 11:28 AM, said:

Did this thread just come up due to issues fighting ballistic based mechs?

Energy weapons already have the advantage of no ammo. The cost for this is more heat.

I'm not against an increase in the effectiveness of DHS but this would probably lead to ballistics not being used much which would later lead to a buff of the ballistic weapons in some way.

I'd actually say that proper DHS would lead to more ballistics use.

I don't know if you've ever used a -4X 'Phract mounting quad AC/2's or the like, but those things heat up like mad. Getting DHS up and running properly would do wonders for extending their time of fire.

[Orkhepaj]

Dakkath, on 29 November 2012 - 10:16 AM, said:

With weapon recycle times being what they are, double heat sinks will lead to crazy abnormal DPS numbers.

I think at this time, with the netcode re-work coming, and weapon balancing still under review, that DHS should stay where they are.

Weapon recycle times are the biggest reason why (imo) DHS are not 2.0.

why not lower weapon recycle times then?

[Squid von Torgar]

Quote

If you have issues with PPC's/LL ( ER or not ) Try not to alpha everything that moves.... DHS are fine as is.

Show me the 9M that can actually fire its ER PPCs more than once without shutting down.

[Asyres]

I feel like the 1.4sinks are at (or near to) an ideal point. Smaller energy weapons feel about right, even in large concentrations. What doesn't work is big energy weapons. Buffing DHS to 2.0 would make the big energy weapons more usable, but would also buff the little ones (which don't need a buff).

A better solution is to lower the heat on big energy weapons (especially (ER)PPCs and ERLLs), possibly tweaking other values in the process.

[TruePoindexter]

Thuzel, on 29 November 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:

It's always great to have a reasoned discussion!

I think they do need to be better. Especially so when you start considering sustained dps versus ballistics. If (and that's a big IF) energy weapons have any significant advantages over missiles or ballistics right now, 90% of that is only due to the current state of the game and will disappear with time.

Given the current ammo allotments, taking 3 tons of ammo for any ballistic weapon will for all intents give you a ballistic weapon that requires no real firing discipline, and can sustain it's maximum dps for the duration of contact. Trying to achieve the same thing with any main energy weapon (large laser, PPC, ER, etc...) is much much harder to do, if not impossible. That means that, regardless of your stance on firing discipline, ballistics currently have a major advantage over energy weapons in any engagement lasting more than 5 to 10 seconds.

Also, considering that lasers have a much greater damage spread across multiple hit locations, and they tend to fall flat against ballistics as well even during shorter engagements.

Missile weapons have extremely very high dps values on their own, aside from the ability to lock on to a target. Plain SRM's lack any kind of homing ability, but that is offset against an extremely high alpha value (multiple SRM6 at close range is effectively an IWIN button) combined with an extremely low weight cost.

All in all, energy weapons are still very weak compared to non-energy weapons, and gimped DHS aren't doing us any favors.

Indeed - discussion is much better than flaming! Plus we all learn a little something. That's my inner geek talking.

Ballistics do hold the advantage in being able to output their fire for a longer duration within the same heat dissipation than energy weapons but I always viewed that as the main advantage of ballistics. Energy weapons can be fired without concern for ammo but are limited by engagement time since they will need to cool for a period. Ammo demands also vary by weapon. 3 Tons is definitely sufficient for an AC5 but 3 tons of UAC5 ammo disappears very quickly without exercising a lot of restraint. I don't know that it's possible to really evaluate one as stronger than the other without a huge sample set of games played with various weapons. I'm sure PGI has this data though I doubt we'll ever see it.

Laser spread is a new mechanic and it has weakened them a lot. I've enjoyed this mechanic though - it's made lasers require more discipline in usage as opposed to the spam weapons we saw in MW2/MW3/MW4. I don't know that they're weaker than Ballistics in this regard though as they also are much easier to use for precision shots. I regularly slice the ears of Catapults, the legs off Jenners, or the Hunch's off Hunchbacks with Lasers where doing the same with AC's is substantially more difficult.

Missiles are missiles and I like them where they're at. I'm just glad we're past the MW4 nonsense with missiles acting like direct fire weapons. I do kinda miss the MW3 ability to vector my missile launches around obstructions to hit targets under cover more deliberately but I get the feeling if I could do that they would be very overpowered.

All that said I don't think energy weapons are very weak though. Many of the most popular mech builds feature them heavily or exclusively. I think the only real losers are the PPC's not being able to quite match the Gauss which they are supposed to be analogous to and that's with the current 1.4 DHS model. I'm not saying that DHS don't need to be adjusted but it does seem like they're actually very close to where they need to be and that 2.0 is probably too much.

[LionZoo]

1.4/1.7/2.0 isn't the big deal for DHS for me. I just can't figure out why the 10 engine DHS are 2.0, but the outside DHS are 1.4. The original rationale for having extra sinks be 1.4 doesn't seem to apply. Therefore, why not standardize all DHS to a set number and just leave it at that? Whether that's 1.4/1.7/2.0 or something else I don't know, but have some consistency.

[Odanan]

Dakkath, on 29 November 2012 - 10:16 AM, said:

With weapon recycle times being what they are, double heat sinks will lead to crazy abnormal DPS numbers.

I think at this time, with the netcode re-work coming, and weapon balancing still under review, that DHS should stay where they are.

Weapon recycle times are the biggest reason why (imo) DHS are not 2.0.

"With weapon recycle times being what they are" - you said it right. So nerf the rate of fire! (and make DHS 2.0)

It's absurd that mechs that have zero problem with heat in Battletech should overheat in this game.