322 replies to this topic

[Alex Wolfe]

PropagandaWar, on 30 November 2012 - 09:21 AM, said:

when clan tech comes out and you can get two slotted DHS assaults will never ever shutdown. Look to the future not the now.

Meanwhile, in MWO that exists now and not in the future, fun is being had and new users are having a jolly old time.



What's this? With the current heat scale, this 80-ton mech takes TEN seconds to cool down on Frozen City after firing HALF of its weapons?

Looks good to me! Time for a break!

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 30 November 2012 - 09:34 AM.

[Deadoon]

Alex Wolfe, on 30 November 2012 - 09:33 AM, said:

Meanwhile, in MWO, fun is being had and new users are having a jolly old time.

What's this? With the current heat scale, this 80-ton mech takes TEN seconds to cool down on Frozen City after firing HALF of its weapons?

Looks good to me! Time for a break!

Yeah, just another example of broken dhs logic for heavier canon designs that are already implemented.

[Wolfways]

Lord Jay, on 30 November 2012 - 09:11 AM, said:

If they set all DHS to a base of 1.74, they would become true 2.0 DHS with pilot skills when you Elite a chassis.

Sounds good to me

[PropagandaWar]

Lefty Lucy, on 30 November 2012 - 09:24 AM, said:

I think that increasing DHS to 2.0 would help light v heavy/assault balance a bit. I don't think lights should be useless, but I think that heavy/assault mechs with big energy weapons should be the "consistent firepower" builds. Right now the only builds that can really offer a non-stop wall of ferrous-nickel-alloy use gauss rifles, because those are the only weapons that are really efficient under MWO's heat system.

The only real fix for stock v. custom balance is an overall tweak to the heat system.



You are also probably getting the most benefit of DHS, as you have mostly engine-mounted heat sinks.

Nope I run 15-18 DHS. My heat eff ranges from 1.2 to 1.3. I have a total of 6 weapons on my build and only one of them takes 2 slots and that SRM6 is currently removed for dual SRM4s to get the 1.3 Heat Eff which is more than enough. Again wait for clan DHS 2 crit slots youll have tons of room. I may not shut down then but assaults wont either.

[TruePoindexter]

Wolfways, on 30 November 2012 - 02:11 AM, said:

Fine as in you rely on the mechs other weapons or hiding until your heat drops?

Fine as in I deal heavy damage and can even brawl as long as I fire responsibly. I don't understand why this concept is difficult.

[Alex Wolfe]

Deadoon, on 30 November 2012 - 09:36 AM, said:

Yeah, just another example of broken dhs logic for heavier canon designs that are already implemented.

Thing is, this is a trial. I think it runs SHS? Not be sure.

Even if dubs are fixed, trials are left unplayable. Even more unplayable, although x times 0 is still 0, doubt it can get into negatives. Maybe playerbase satisfaction can.

Would somebody please think of the newbies.

[Deadoon]

Alex Wolfe, on 30 November 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

Thing is, this is a trial. I think it runs SHS? Not be sure.

Even if dubs are fixed, trials are left unplayable. Even more unplayable, although x times 0 is still 0, doubt it can get into negatives. Maybe playerbase satisfaction can.

Would somebody please think of the newbies.

Nope, it is a tech 2 mech,it uses doubles, if the erppc and an xl engine weren't enough of a hint.

Also on the newbies thing, they are free running it currently, they do not need to worry as much about winning, they practically are playing an entirely different game than us currently due to the way the game changes when you get your first mech.

Edited by Deadoon, 30 November 2012 - 09:43 AM.

[Alex Wolfe]

Deadoon, on 30 November 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

Nope, it is a tech 2 mech,it uses doubles, if the erppc and an xl engine weren't enough of a hint.

Oh wow.

It's worse than I thought then? Good to know (and by good I meant "bad fix please seriously what the hell").

Also, there are "tech 2 mechs" with singles, like Cent D.

Wolfways, on 30 November 2012 - 02:11 AM, said:

Fine as in you rely on the mechs other weapons or hiding until your heat drops?

Brb, hiding for ten seconds every other salvo, as my whole team is being disassembled by a neverending missile rain.

Oh, wait, we LOST? Man, how did that happen?

Serves me right for playing inferior mechs and not picking a gauss/LRM/streakapult instead so that I can fire all day long! Aaaall daaaay loooong~~!

[SteelPaladin]

Alex Wolfe, on 30 November 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

Thing is, this is a trial. I think it runs SHS? Not be sure.

Even if dubs are fixed, trials are left unplayable. Even more unplayable, although x times 0 is still 0, doubt it can get into negatives. Maybe playerbase satisfaction can.

Would somebody please think of the newbies.

It's an AWS-9M. It has DHS stock. All of the trial mechs use stock configs. So what you're seeing there is the result of using the BEST cooling tech available in the game.

Thing probably would have just exploded w/SHS.

EDIT: Ninja'ed.

Edited by SteelPaladin, 30 November 2012 - 09:45 AM.

[TruePoindexter]

Jeff K Notagoon, on 30 November 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

Besides, you know, tweaking the PPC itself instead of something that affects literally every weapon in the game.

This - give me 2.0 DHS and I will make more broken OP builds than you can ever begin to appreciate.

Garth Erlam, on 30 November 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

Those games also had (not all, but some) PPC's that did 30 damage, lights no-one used, and 'coolant flushing.' Also, in every previous game DHS > SHS in every situation, and we want to avoid that.

This - for the love of all that is holy THIS.

Alex Wolfe, on 30 November 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

And yet they had PPCs and ER PPCs that were usable, stock configs that weren't getting a heatstroke heart attack by the second salvo, and Catapults that couldn't turn their heads around like contortionist space owls.

Any chance to maybe meet somewhere in the middle?

PPCs and ER PPCs were not usable in MW3 - the most faithful TT interpretation out of the previous games. The primary mech of choice in competitive game play was a Strider with 16 ER Small Lasers or 12 ER Medium Lasers. PPC's were the joke weapon of novice's or were hacked for cheaters.

Mister Blastman, on 30 November 2012 - 09:11 AM, said:

No Garth, they weren't!

In Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries I routinely used single heatsinks in my Inner Sphere mech builds... all the time! Sure, they were heavy/assault mechs when I used them (not nearly as often as clan mechs) but most of the time I used singles because I knew how to make a properly balanced mech while maximizing critical space. If I had switched to doubles I would have ended up with less cooling capacity.

MW2 PPC's were slow flying balls of why bother? Lasers and LRMs were the tools of choice there.

Seriously this is the first Mechwarrior where PPC's are not the red headed step child to lasers. They need to be buffed a little more but messing with DHS is not the way to do it.

[Alex Wolfe]

SteelPaladin, on 30 November 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

It's an AWS-9M. It has DHS stock. All of the trial mechs use stock configs. So what you're seeing there is the result of using the BEST cooling tech available in the game.

So, there we have it.

In this game, low tech SHS builds can't handle the output of their own low tech weapons, as evidenced by every single trial ever.

Hi-tech DHS builds can't handle the output of their own hi-tech weapons, as evidenced by this AWS, amongst others.

You need hi-tech DHS to maybe handle low-tech weapons, and for hi-tech setups you need hypothetical future heat sinks from spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace. To run Clan tech, I assume you're going to need to borrow Eldar tech from WH40k.

What's even worse is that those are stock configs, so lorewise they're supposed to work. They don't. They completely don't.

This heat system is an untenable disgrace, and handling those walking coffins/pressure cookers to newbies only compounds it.

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

PPCs and ER PPCs were not usable in MW3 - the most faithful TT interpretation out of the previous games.

Might have something to do with MW3 and its "most faithful interpretation" of rules resulted in a barely playable mess, because it tried to adopt TT values to a real-time environment, fruitlessly. Disaster of a multiplayer aside (fun at the time and played because "there's nothing else MW", terrible in retrospect), even for single player they were forced to compensate with band-aid resolutions like instant repairs magical MFBs and coolant flush, because neither armor/damage, heat/shot, or ammo/ton ratios worked in a prolonged engagement vs. TT skirmish of pawns.

Square peg in a round hole, seems familar ?

Incidentally, PPCs worked in MW4, which decided to ditch/alter most TT values, resulting in a much healthier experience still played after a decade.

Bottom line: fire the spirit of the setting, not the letter of its rulebooks. They're supposed to work in lore. If they don't work in your game, then change the game.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 30 November 2012 - 10:41 AM.

[Wolfways]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

Fine as in I deal heavy damage and can even brawl as long as I fire responsibly. I don't understand why this concept is difficult.

Yes "fire responsibly", which means using your mechs other weapons or just not firing for a while, while mechs with more heat efficient weapons can pour endless shots into you.
A K2's other weapons are two ML's (and MG's if you use them...). Firing the ML's means slowing your heat dissipation to be able to fire your main weapons even more.

[TruePoindexter]

SteelPaladin, on 30 November 2012 - 09:25 AM, said:

In this game we have PPCs that do 10 damage and are only used as specialty weapons instead of as anchor weapons for a build (as they should be), lights that EVERYONE uses, and high heat weapons getting flushed because of lack of cooling. Your method of fixing the problems of previous MechWarrior games seems to be turning the wheel hard in the opposite direction and ending up w/the opposite problem. The result is most definitely not the same old mess, but it's still something of a mess.

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.

[Lefty Lucy]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

This - give me 2.0 DHS and I will make more broken OP builds than you can ever begin to appreciate.

Please, tell us your broken 2.0 build, and use math to explain why it would be broken. Most builds would gain at best 10% more heat efficiency out of 2.0 out-of-engine heat sinks. That's not going to break anything.

[TruePoindexter]

Wolfways, on 30 November 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

Yes "fire responsibly", which means using your mechs other weapons or just not firing for a while, while mechs with more heat efficient weapons can pour endless shots into you.
A K2's other weapons are two ML's (and MG's if you use them...). Firing the ML's means slowing your heat dissipation to be able to fire your main weapons even more.

No it means chain firing my PPC's and occasionally using my ML's. I do this on Caustic. Accuse me of lying all you want but I've had hate messages from my PPC usage.

[Garth Erlam]

Alex Wolfe, on 30 November 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

And yet they had PPCs and ER PPCs that were usable, stock configs that weren't getting a heatstroke heart attack by the second salvo, and Catapults that couldn't turn their heads around like contortionist space owls. Any chance to maybe meet somewhere in the middle?

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.

[SteelPaladin]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

This - give me 2.0 DHS and I will make more broken OP builds than you can ever begin to appreciate.

No, you really won't. Thanks to the 10 full DHS in the engine, the increase wouldn't even be all that dramatic. Do you know how much extra cooling my 16 DHS CTF-1X would get w/full true DHS? 3.4 heat per 10 seconds. That's a little under a 13% increase. It's not even enough to offset the HPS increase going from a PPC to an ER PPC (it gets you about 1/3 of the way there).

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

Seriously this is the first Mechwarrior where PPC's are not the red headed step child to lasers. They need to be buffed a little more but messing with DHS is not the way to do it.

PPCs are still lasers' b****. I'd take a Large Laser before a PPC and an ER Large Laser before an ER PPC any day of the week. Only 1 less damage and a bit less range in a game mostly brawler specced for a massively more manageable heat profile and 2 less tons? Don't have to worry about weird projectile behavior on top of it? Yes, please.

The only time I have ever seen PPCs used effectively is when paired w/a gauss rifle, because they have the same projectile speed and the PPC gets to have all of the mech's HS to itself (since the GR barely touches them).

[Wolfways]

TruePoindexter, on 30 November 2012 - 09:53 AM, said:

No it means chain firing my PPC's and occasionally using my ML's. I do this on Caustic. Accuse me of lying all you want but I've had hate messages from my PPC usage.

And i've been ignored until last because "We saw you had PPC's so were the lowest threat".
Oh, and you can chain fire ERPPC's 8 times before shutting down on caustic, i just tried it.
And being a direct fire support mech, if i have to use my ML's too often i'm not moving around enough to keep the enemy at optimal distance. Something which is only really achievable on caustic because of the lack of cover.
If i go i with the brawlers i can do a lot of damage, but i'm not doing my job of keeping the enemy snipers from hitting my teammates.
Maybe i'm just too much of a team player for PUG's.

[Alex Wolfe]

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.

Thanks for the concrete reply! I'm trying to keep nostalgia goggles off as much as possible (best proof: the game of my youth was MW3, I came back to it for a bit and now I'm ragging on its broken system constantly). That said:

Mechs of all classes are useable, compared to other games. I'll give you that. It's the first MW game where I didn't feel gimped for driving a medium, so that's nice too, lights way too survivable even with bad piloting, but that's the netcode and I believe you're sorting this out. Weapons... well, some are useless (mgs, small pulses, anything hot), some overly useful and easymode kills (INCOMING MISSILEs of all sorts), but I can see you're trying. The only complaint is why balance changes come in so slow, when it's just some number tweaks, that can be reversed if not working.

On chassis balance, I'm not sold. Catapult and Jenner reign supreme (why does Catapult have 40 degrees more twist than any other mech? It already has hardpoints and jet, why the brawler twist for a support mech? People are getting sick of the Catapult being THE mech), so the answer to people asking "hey guys how's Raven/Cataphract" is "ok but you'll give enemy a Jenner/Catapult". That's not good.

Bottom line: previous MW games were SP games with MP tacked on top. Since this one isn't, then weapon/mech balance becomes so much more of a big deal. Since the current balance is pretty much "Jenner Catapult Atlas only-no fun allowed", and INCOMING MISSILE everywhere, we have to keep repeating this until it's adressed in a concrete way, because it spoils our games and the game. Currently streak cat is the worst offender, but gausscat, AC20 K2 (with invisible side torsos - why aren't those fixed? You're changing head hitboxes, please change Catapults' side hitboxes already!) and artemis LRMboats 3-4 shotting medium/heavy mech do not lag far behind.

And what's going on with trials is a travesty, seriously. None of those can put up a fight vs. anything, because of the heat system. Canon-wise, mechs this heat-inefficient wouldn't even be created. Please fix it. It's terrible, and I'm sure you're bleeding out newbies like that.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 30 November 2012 - 10:23 AM.

[SteelPaladin]

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.

You know, Garth, I will totally give you that you all are getting closer. The balance IS better than it was 4 months ago when I started playing.

The AC/2 and UAC/5 are usable weapons now (though the AC/2 might be just a little hot if it's going to stop being the earthquake gun). Large Lasers are usable now. ER LLs and PPCs are usable as specialty weapons if you have DHS (so they're getting closer, but still not there). AC/20s can be specialty weapons too w/DHS.

ER PPCs and ACs besides the mentioned 3 are still garbage, though. We'll see if the AC changes to speed bring them back in from the cold. Flamers, MGs and NARC are still trash too. Trial mechs are just not built for the way MWO works so either they need to change or the way MWO works needs to change if they're not going to be a joke too.

The distinction that gets folks riled is the one between "closer" and "close." There have been posts where you all have declared yourselves "close" and implied that only minor further changes were needed and that gets folks freaked out because they don't want to play a game that has its final balance vision "close" to where we are. You all are undeniably closer than you ever have been before, but there is still a LONG way to go.