322 replies to this topic

[Deadoon]

RobinSage, on 01 December 2012 - 07:09 PM, said:

I wonder how they will treat clans then.

Sifright, on 01 December 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

They are meant to be used in favor of SHS.

Double heat sinks replace all SHS mechs in battle tech around this time period.

I say this every time, and people don't seem to get it. DHS are meant to be a mostly straight upgrade.

Edited by Deadoon, 01 December 2012 - 07:13 PM.

[ArmandTulsen]

Deadoon, on 01 December 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

I say this every time, and people don't seem to get it. DHS are meant to be a mostly straight upgrade.

PGI needs to get it, too.

WHY oh WHY does the idea of "balance" mean continued "viability" of older tech when clearly there are upgrades designed to be exactly that: an upgrade?

This means, BY DEFINITION, that the previous version (SHS in this case) is a DOWNGRADE and therefore, does not compete with it. Therefore, the idea of SHS viability in the face of DHS is fundamentally FLAWED.

For goodness' sake, PGI, use some common sense here. lol..

Edited by ArmandTulsen, 01 December 2012 - 07:35 PM.

[Budor]

No. Just help the PPCs, ER PPCs, LLASs and LPLAs with less heatgen and faster travel speed/shorter beam duration. Balance is good atm.

[SteelPaladin]

ArmandTulsen, on 01 December 2012 - 07:34 PM, said:

PGI needs to get it, too.

WHY oh WHY does the idea of "balance" mean continued "viability" of older tech when clearly there are upgrades designed to be exactly that: an upgrade?

This means, BY DEFINITION, that the previous version (SHS in this case) is a DOWNGRADE and therefore, does not compete with it. Therefore, the idea of SHS viability in the face of DHS is fundamentally FLAWED.

For goodness' sake, PGI, use some common sense here. lol..

I see exactly why PGI are trying to keep tech 1 items viable. It's the same reason I come down on people who say MGs shouldn't be useful because they're for infantry. Having non-viable items in a game is bad design. If there is an item that never has a decent niche where it is a good choice, it needs to either be changed or pulled.

Unfortunately, that's not really the way BattleTech was designed (at least not until they started trying the same thing by adding stuff like specialized AC ammo only for tech 1 ACs). Trying to redesign the items so that tech 1 remains a viable choice puts PGI in a very thorny place.

• The majority of tech 2 gear coming after this is geared for DHS. They put out ridiculous amounts of heat compared to tech 1 items. They are all going to require major tweaking to keep tech 1 gear viable around them, yet keep them in turn viable enough for use w/the seriously reduced cooling MWO has versus TT.
  
• Clan gear is an even bigger strict upgrade over tech 2. Trying to keep tech 1 viable in a world w/Clan tech is going to be an outright nightmare.

[ArmandTulsen]

SteelPaladin, on 01 December 2012 - 09:19 PM, said:

I see exactly why PGI are trying to keep tech 1 items viable. It's the same reason I come down on people who say MGs shouldn't be useful because they're for infantry. Having non-viable items in a game is bad design. If there is an item that never has a decent niche where it is a good choice, it needs to either be changed or pulled.

Unfortunately, that's not really the way BattleTech was designed (at least not until they started trying the same thing by adding stuff like specialized AC ammo only for tech 1 ACs). Trying to redesign the items so that tech 1 remains a viable choice puts PGI in a very thorny place.

• The majority of tech 2 gear coming after this is geared for DHS. They put out ridiculous amounts of heat compared to tech 1 items. They are all going to require major tweaking to keep tech 1 gear viable around them, yet keep them in turn viable enough for use w/the seriously reduced cooling MWO has versus TT.
  
• Clan gear is an even bigger strict upgrade over tech 2. Trying to keep tech 1 viable in a world w/Clan tech is going to be an outright nightmare.

Let me be as clear as possible: Designing any thing so that an upgrade to the item makes the previous version of said item just as effective and efficient as the upgraded version is bad design. Take any thing designed in existence. It follows this basic, logical principle of improvement within the concept of design.

That's the whole freaking point of an upgrade, and the reason why we're not still using floppy disks and coal powered engines.

Forget viability, promote sensibility.

Edited by ArmandTulsen, 01 December 2012 - 09:51 PM.

[SteelPaladin]

ArmandTulsen, on 01 December 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

Let me be as clear as possible: Designing any thing so that an upgrade to the item makes the previous version of said item just as effective and efficient as the upgraded version is bad design. Take any thing designed in existence. It follows this basic, logical principle of improvement within the design.

That's the whole freaking point of an upgrade, and the reason why we're not still using floppy disks and coal powered engines.

Forget viability, promote sensibility.

Reality as an argument for game design is silly. I mean, this is a game about military combat and yet PGI is tying itself in knots trying to build a better "fair fight." In actual combat, a fair fight means somebody screwed up, but nobody is going to argue that the game should support one-sided battles just because a real military commander is doing everything possible to ensure the deck is stacked in his favor as much as possible.

Effective game design is about meaningful choices. There is 0 sense in having an item that exists purely to serve as a "trap" to see if players know how to optimize and to punish them if they don't. If an item is never a viable choice then it is a waste of space and time. The ideal state is where there is no such thing as an "upgrade," just a choice w/benefits and penalties to consider and match against your playstyle and the situation.

The only exception to this is games where there is a linear progression mechanic like level-based RPGs. Characters/gear further along the progression chain can be strictly better than their previous incarnations. The caveat to that is it doesn't work unless opposition is appropriately scaled as well (tougher enemies in the later stages of an SP game, or the way MMO PvP is segmented into level brackets).

Tabletop BT handled strict upgrades via the BattleValue mechanic to keep fights roughly fair, even w/gear that was just outright better than other gear. If you used weaker gear, you were allowed a lot more of it than an opponent who relied heavily on the best toys. MWO has nothing like that in place and really nothing planned for it either (the ELO system they're building for Phase 3 is focused on players and not the gear they're bringing). A linear progression system for gear would be disastrous w/o appropriately segmenting the competition and balancing the scales in a fight (no matter how "sensible" it might seem).

Edited by SteelPaladin, 01 December 2012 - 10:06 PM.

[Hatachi]

I would like throw in that the mechs they were saying would be completely broken, the 3 second Jenner are currently in the game. This makes it a diminishing return for upper weights with the lighter weights not suffering any penalties as they can largely run off the 2.0s in the engine. It will also skew tier 2 canon variants even worse than the current tier 1s as they have weaponry chosen on the assumption of full strength double heatsinks.

[Thirdrail]

I think the game's economic model is actually the root of this problem. In theory, you're supposed have higher tech equipment that's just flat-out better, and thus costs a lot more.

Except, the way everything is set up here in MWO, that doesn't really work. You'd have to balance teams by not just tonnage, but the cost of the mech builds. You'd end up with 6v8 matches because one side had cheaper mechs, which would begin a whole new game balancing nightmare for PGI and players both.

Plus, people (like me) with tons of free time would have much better mech builds than people who have to work and/or raise families. This, in turn, would cause the premium c-bill bonus to start having very real effects, which would push things directly into the pay-to-win zone everyone is so terrified to enter.

In order for any of the high tech gear to actually be high tech - DHS, Artemis, clan mechs, etc - MechWarrior Online is going to need a drastic overhaul on the way money and resources are handled. Either that or everything will just continue being HTINO - high tech in name only.

[LionZoo]

If they want to incentivize players to go with SHS occasionally, I think this is how to do it:

Keep DHS at around 1.4 capacity of SHS. However, make that apply for ALL DHS, including the engine mounted ones. This move weakens DHS, making them less of an upgrade on SHS. Then, increase the heat dissipation per second of SHS, making them more powerful. This makes running 10 SHS viable for certain builds.

Let's face it, if you really want to make it so that SHS makes sense at times, you're looking at one of two situations (or a combination of the two): 1) The Mech is so critical starved that internal space has become a problem; or 2) 10 SHS is adequate.

In situation 1), it wouldn't make sense to add a lot of SHS currently as additional SHS will probably take much critical space and tonnage. In that case, the player might as well upgrade his engine to get higher speed, and then use the extra engine heat sink space to swallow DHS. This then really becomes an offset of 2). 2) does exist to an extent currently, but that extent is mostly Gauss builds. Boosting the baseline SHS dissipation rate will increase the situations where 2) happens means that more players will take the SHS route. (Note: heavy energy weapon heat and/or damage and/or cooldown might need to be adjusted correspondingly.)

[SpiralRazor]

LionZoo, on 01 December 2012 - 11:56 PM, said:

If they want to incentivize players to go with SHS occasionally, I think this is how to do it:

Keep DHS at around 1.4 capacity of SHS. However, make that apply for ALL DHS, including the engine mounted ones. This move weakens DHS, making them less of an upgrade on SHS. Then, increase the heat dissipation per second of SHS, making them more powerful. This makes running 10 SHS viable for certain builds.

Let's face it, if you really want to make it so that SHS makes sense at times, you're looking at one of two situations (or a combination of the two): 1) The Mech is so critical starved that internal space has become a problem; or 2) 10 SHS is adequate.

In situation 1), it wouldn't make sense to add a lot of SHS currently as additional SHS will probably take much critical space and tonnage. In that case, the player might as well upgrade his engine to get higher speed, and then use the extra engine heat sink space to swallow DHS. This then really becomes an offset of 2). 2) does exist to an extent currently, but that extent is mostly Gauss builds. Boosting the baseline SHS dissipation rate will increase the situations where 2) happens means that more players will take the SHS route. (Note: heavy energy weapon heat and/or damage and/or cooldown might need to be adjusted correspondingly.)

There is NO in game reason to offer an "incentive" to people to use SHS if and when they can afford to run DHS.

The only case that can be made is RPG elements, ie, that certain houses/units have better access to DHS technology.

Please stop trying to defend a r-tarded concept of Tech lvl 1 => Tech lvl 2.

Edited by SpiralRazor, 02 December 2012 - 12:07 AM.

[SpiralRazor]

Single heat sinks are quite viable until you can afford to run TL 2 gear. DHS, for some factions, could be QUITE a bit more expensive for them to equip and maintain, leading to further viability of SHS. However, thats purely an RPG element, and has nothing to do with how the game is set up now.

[SD 47]

I am not coming down on either side of this argument, but I would like to see more heavy energy builds than we have at the moment. Most mechs build around LMS, Steaks or Gausses (also Autoquakes) and I think we are really missing out on solid LPL and PPC builds at the moment.

That said PGIs only goal should be to create a balanced and fun game, and clearly they felt that DHS 2.0 impacted the game negatively. Without seeing the data that they saw (probably raw logs of hundreds of battles), it is hard to tell if the correct decision was made.

[Raidyr]

SD 47, on 02 December 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

I am not coming down on either side of this argument, but I would like to see more heavy energy builds than we have at the moment. Most mechs build around LMS, Steaks or Gausses (also Autoquakes) and I think we are really missing out on solid LPL and PPC builds at the moment.

Most of beta was people crying about lasers, go figure.

[Lefty Lucy]

RobinSage, on 01 December 2012 - 07:09 PM, said:

I personally will be the devils advocate here, sorry guys, but 2.0 DHS would be absolutely insane for virtually all of my Assault builds. I could probably mount 4 LPL's with true 2.0's and not overheat while chaining them CONSTANTLY. That's way out of balance and personally I don't have a problem with heat running just about any class mech with most configurations. BTW if you think that running 3 ERPPC's will ever be heat efficient you're out of your mind. PPC based weapons are SUPPOSED TO BE HEAT INEFFICIENT by design.

I think this thread seems to be more about people bashing PGI than it is a constructive thread about a realistic change. I would be willing to see up to 1.6 but that would be tops. All PPC weapons should have slight heat drops. But the other weapons are functioning pretty close to right on...."feel wise".

This game isn't going to mimic TT, it isn't and never will be canon, no digital version has ever been considered canon. So if you're trying to complain about how you could do such and such in TT and you can't in this game, you're missing the mark on the game. MWO stands alone.

If the devs feel that the DHS should go to 2.0 virtually all weapon systems would then have to be re-balanced. I know I could truly decimate even more people with 2.0 DHS....so go right ahead and wish for em. It would only benefit people like me, those pilots that are already very successful with heat management at the level that the DHS's are at currently. But if you want to give us much more powerful mechs, where only an alpha strike would destroy virtually anything Medium or smaller in a few hits, you're asking for SO MUCH BIGGER OF A PROBLEM.
I don't agree with this idea. But I do support reworking PPC weapons and a slight DHS increase,......maybe.

I think that we've shown pretty comprehensively that the mathematics just don't show 2.0 out-of-engine DHS "breaking" any builds. They would simply allow assault mechs to be slightly more consistent damage dealers. That is what assault mechs *should* be. Gaining 10% effective DPS because your out-of-engine heat sinks got better would not turn your mech into some unstoppable juggernaut of destruction.

[Urza Mechwalker]

SteelPaladin, on 01 December 2012 - 09:19 PM, said:

I see exactly why PGI are trying to keep tech 1 items viable. It's the same reason I come down on people who say MGs shouldn't be useful because they're for infantry. Having non-viable items in a game is bad design. If there is an item that never has a decent niche where it is a good choice, it needs to either be changed or pulled.

Unfortunately, that's not really the way BattleTech was designed (at least not until they started trying the same thing by adding stuff like specialized AC ammo only for tech 1 ACs). Trying to redesign the items so that tech 1 remains a viable choice puts PGI in a very thorny place.

• The majority of tech 2 gear coming after this is geared for DHS. They put out ridiculous amounts of heat compared to tech 1 items. They are all going to require major tweaking to keep tech 1 gear viable around them, yet keep them in turn viable enough for use w/the seriously reduced cooling MWO has versus TT.
  
• Clan gear is an even bigger strict upgrade over tech 2. Trying to keep tech 1 viable in a world w/Clan tech is going to be an outright nightmare.

NOSENSE

If non competitive items are bad design so why in hell we have cannon ferro fibrous? It is faaaaaaar less competitive than canon single heat sink compared to canon double heat sink.


THe fact is PGI has no clue about how BAD the gamefeels heatwise and why gauss is so popular!


PGI you TRIPLES rateof fire and made heat 3 times more problematic. Gauss has zero problem of heat.. so after trippling still zero. ERPPC has a large heat problem.. after trippling it becomes UNUSABLE!!


Simple! Want the energy weapons to be as used as gauss? Give us roper heat sinks.

[anonymous175]

[Diablobo]

Viper69, on 29 November 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

Yeah, this needs fixed or rather made correct. We have a double edged sword. We have weapons that fire faster than their table top version, with heatsinks that sink less heat than their table top versions. So what you have is weapons accumulating heat more than they ever would. So their solution is make the sinks worse because of a god damned jenner? That same Jenner that is still doing what it was their reasons for not making them correct in the first place. More of the ad hock house rules.

This is exactly why this whole 1.4 vs 2.0 DHS is completely beside the point. Triple heat Battletech is not going to work with true DHS OR 1.4. We are just spinning our wheels whining about .6 extra heat dissipation in a triple heat environment. The heat system is broken, and no amount of buff to 1.4 DHS is going to fix it.

[Mordin Ashe]

I love the 1.4 DHS. I think it is ballanced quite well, for the same tonnage it gives you a lot of extra heat dissipation. As any other upgrade, it should only give you some edge, and shouldn't be used by every mech in every situation. I think it is a perfectly ballanced upgrade.

And now, throw the rocks!

[Diablobo]

unwary, on 30 November 2012 - 02:33 PM, said:

PGI could make DHS efficiency be mech specific All lights have 1.6x, Mediums 1.75x, Heavies 1;9x, Assault 2x

That is an interesting idea. Maybe all mediums and below have lower dissipation and the just the heavies and assaults have the higher rate. Since MWO doesn't follow canon in any way, it makes just as much sense as the triple firing rates while leaving heat dissipation at single rates.

[LionZoo]

SpiralRazor, on 02 December 2012 - 12:03 AM, said:

There is NO in game reason to offer an "incentive" to people to use SHS if and when they can afford to run DHS.

The only case that can be made is RPG elements, ie, that certain houses/units have better access to DHS technology.

Please stop trying to defend a r-tarded concept of Tech lvl 1 => Tech lvl 2.

Well PGI stated that they wanted certain situations where players would still use SHS. Currently, the only build where players would stick to SHS would be Gauss boats. If you follow tabletop rules, then DHS will be better than SHS in every situation. I've designed plenty of Mechs, and quite simply have never found a situation where I'm not better served by using DHS, cost reasons excluded.

While that's completely fine, the point is PGI is trying to make SHS a somewhat viable alternative, and to do that they're going to have to deviate from tabletop rules. Yes it's going to be different from canon, but in some ways each item in the game should have their niche, however small. As it is, SHS currently does not have a niche in the game outside of cost reasons, and balancing with cost is not a great idea. Especially for an item that doesn't take that long to get.

(Random question: Can anyone come up with a reason why Wolf's Dragoons dumped 30 SHS into the Imp?)