322 replies to this topic

[MWHawke]

Dreadp1r4te, on 03 December 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

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

They will probably make Clan DHS only work at 1.2 efficiency to "balance" the game..

[Sifright]

MWHawke, on 04 December 2012 - 03:05 AM, said:

They will probably make Clan DHS only work at 1.2 efficiency to "balance" the game..

haahahahaha, I actually hope they do exactly that. I can't wait to see a stock variant marauder appear newbies exploding themselves with a single alpha will be hilarious

[MWHawke]

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

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

Good write up. If ONLY PGI did not keep trying to be defensive..

[John Norad]

TruePoindexter, on 29 November 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

To be fair - it was broken in MW3. It followed TT rules fairly closely and so in the upper tiers of play lasers reigned supreme. 12 ER Medium Laser and 16 ER Small Laser boats made up the vast majority of the field unless energy weapons were removed from play

The cause for this is something different than heat sink efficiency. It's rampant customizing and the fact that aiming and hitting one spot was too easy. So some of the TT->FPS implementation that had nothing to do with heat was not properly done or accounted for.

The same can be observed here in MWO. Balance is everything combined, not just one spreadsheet with some heat values, or a jenner that could've done what he did one way or the other, since in 3s heat dissipation can't even play a deciding role, as opposed to, say, heat capacity..

Just to briefly get back to that Jenner, a light mech running at 100% capacity is not a big issue! Light mechs are limited by their tonnage. They are imited by being squishy. And if you let them stand unchecked in an Atlas'es back for too long, of course the Atlas will be destroyed. This would happen in the TT, too. It shouldn't happen in the first place. But even then it takes some time/rounds. Now here's the difference in WMO. By increasing the dps, the burst damage of a light mech is enough to pull it off. It's not because of dhs, it's because of the dps increase.
And to adress this problem they cripple the heat system, actually hurting the big mechs more than the light mechs? Makes no sense.

Is it an attempt to make all mechs equally strong? Not going to work, not going to happen. Light mechs are not supposed to tackle assaults. That's just silly and TF2 thinking.

Edited by John Norad, 04 December 2012 - 03:43 AM.

[Phoenix182]

There are compromise options.

Keep DHS at 1.4 - 1.6, drop to 2 slots instead of 3.
Put DHS at 1.5 - 1.75ish, slightly reduce current heat levels (weapon/environment/etc), at least the most severe parts.
Put DHS at 1.6 - 2.0.

I think any of those would work ok. But yes, right now they're NOT acceptable in any way.

[PurpleNinja]

But this will make Jenners less powerful, so it stays the way they are.

[Windsaw]

No compromises.
DHS are very good as they are now.
Any change would make them worse.

[Not a Number]

From the latest Ask The Devs (#27):

Garth Erlam, on 03 December 2012 - 04:27 PM, said:

Q: Can we please at least try DHS at 2.0? It doesn't seem like much of a boost to lights who usually benefit mostly from the engine heat sinks, but heavies and assaults that use big energy weapons need the boost. [Wolfways]
A: No. Prior to releasing the Dual Heatsink upgrade the forums were abuzz with whether or not they would be mandatory on all Mechs. With the numbers we've chosen, they aren't, so I'd say we answered those questions well. [Garth]

Now I'm not sure if most people in favor of having all DHS at 2.0 feel the same way, but I don't think the goal here is to make SHS even less relevant than they already are. My primary concern is the effect the current DHS values have on the viability of high-heat weapons like the ER PPC. Heat should definitely be a big factor with these weapons, but not annoyingly so. At least not when you've equipped a reasonable number of heatsinks.

I actually really like the idea of SHS still being viable for certain mechs, if only to promote build diversity, so I share PGI's concern of the performance delta between SHS and DHS being too large. I do however think there are more elegant ways to address the problem.

As multiple people have already pointed out, with engine internal DHS at 2.0, DHS mechs with a 250+ engine essentially already get 10 SHS for free. They straight-out save the 10 tons and 10 criticals that SHS mechs would need to have equivalent dissipation. This is probably the main reason many players never even consider choosing SHS over DHS!

At the same time mechs with high heat weapons, which have even less reason to consider SHS because they tend to have the space and need all the heat dissipation they can get, get shafted because external DHS are set to 1.4. No wonder these weapons don't see much use at the moment.

The only way I see the current values making sense is if PGI wants SHS to only be viable for these high heat builds, which seems odd to me. They'd be more interesting if they were viable regardless of the amount of heat dissipation needed.

So, hence my previous suggestion of at least equalizing DHS values and setting them to something like 1.8 or 1.75, which has the added benefit of being easier to understand.

This doesn't really change the overall performance delta between SHS and DHS. That could however still be achieved by making the Coolrun efficiency, which is easy to unlock, substantially more effective when used in combination with SHS. I'm not sure if Coolrun also affects total heat capacity but it could of course be made to do so.

Finally, if we consider that a DHS with a value of about 1.8 would have an effective efficiency of about 2.0 when taking into account the (maximum) Coolrun bonus of 15%, it would not be much of a stretch to nerf the Coolrun bonus for DHS to a single digit percentage or remove it entirely and simply give DHS a native value of 2.0. This should also satisfy the purists among us, though some might say leaving it as it is (and still having an effective efficiency of ~2.0) is already good enough.

While you might object to DHS getting all the performance up front, consider that Coolrun (750 XP) is usually unlocked before the DHS upgrade (1.5M C-bills). There is of course the factor of having to unlock all Basic efficiencies on 3 variants to get the full bonus, but this too could be tweaked to not be as big of a deal.

[Joseph Mallan]

The problem I have is double is two times a quantity. I would be fine with with double sinks being about 1.8 IF single sinks were 0.9!!! Double is double.

And Dual is the same thing Garth. Sorry but that failed.

[MWHawke]

DHS is already limited by critical slot constraints. How does that make SHS not viable??!? This is like saying we should not introduce Hybrid engines so that people still need to buy more petrol. I used to defend PGI but seeing posts like this, they really do NOT qualify to be involved in MWO universe as they totally do NOT understand it AT ALL!!!

Joseph Mallan, on 04 December 2012 - 05:55 AM, said:

The problem I have is double is two times a quantity. I would be fine with with double sinks being about 1.8 IF single sinks were 0.9!!! Double is double.

And Dual is the same thing Garth. Sorry but that failed.

Seconded. It's like they didn't go to primary school and do not understand what Dual means.

[Not a Number]

As I pointed out, you could technically set SHS to 1.0 and DHS to 2.0 and still improve SHS through an efficiency like Coolrun. It's not like DHS would suddenly become worthless because the performance ratio of SHS to DHS is not 1 to 2. That isn't the case now and DHS are still better.

If SHS are to be viable, which is totally defensible, they need to be buffed one way or the other.

The problem with DHS is not so much their overall performance, but the way they're balanced now causes issues with high-heat weapons and doesn't really make SHS any more interesting than they would be with all DHS at 2.0.

[MWHawke]

Have ANY of you who say that SHS should not be made redundant by DHS even PLAYED Battletech??!?

[MustrumRidcully]

Also, he's wrong in believing that DHS are not mandatory. You get 10 bonus engine heat sinks if you install DHS.

If you ever find yourself a mech config that needs single heat sinks because otherwise it couldn't get enough dissipation and DHS wouldn't fit anymore, you should seriously rethink your configuration. Or your entire mech choice. There are probably many such configs if you have an all-energy mech like the Awesome 8Q, but just get rid of it and find a mech where you can mix energy with either ballistics or missiles or both.

Just because something is not possible without single heat sinks doesn't make single heat sinks better than doulbe heat sinks. It just means that your entire mech is worse off with that config, because you are selecting a less efficient heat sink type.

If they want single heat sinks and double heat sinks to be viable and balanced alternatives, they need to rethink their approach.

[Not a Number]

MWHawke, on 04 December 2012 - 06:31 AM, said:

Have ANY of you who say that SHS should not be made redundant by DHS even PLAYED Battletech??!?

No, I never played anything but the MechWarrior and MechCommander games. But that's just the thing. This is a real-time computer game; it's unreasonable to expect all the traditional rules to make the same amount of sense here.

There is simply little harm, if any, in SHS remaining (somewhat) viable equipment in MWO. But if DHS are supposed to be the norm in 3049 it's SHS that need to be altered. Not the other way around.

[MWHawke]

Not a Number, on 04 December 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

No, I never played anything but the MechWarrior and MechCommander games. But that's just the thing. This is a real-time computer game; it's unreasonable to expect all the traditional rules to make the same amount of sense here.

There is simply little harm, if any, in SHS remaining (somewhat) viable equipment in MWO. But if DHS are supposed to be the norm in 3049 it's SHS that need to be altered. Not the other way around.

??!? You are saying that an improvement in technology does not mean the new technology should be better but that the older technology should be made worse??!?

And with regard to being viable, once DHS was introduced in the world of Battletech, I'd like someone to find me a line in any of the stories that says, "We are going to maintain SHS so that they remain viable and that DHS will not overtake them while we are fighting the clans".

[ArmandTulsen]

Not a Number, on 04 December 2012 - 06:21 AM, said:

If SHS are to be viable, which is totally defensible

NO! Viability is not a defensible argument. It makes the concept of upgrading moot.

I get the sense that PGI is simply being sentimental about their work using the excuse of viability. They're certainly not being logical about it.

[Not a Number]

I get what you guys are saying, but we're not talking about what makes sense story- or lorewise or about what works or doesn't according to classic BattleTech rules. At the end of the day we still need to have a compelling game, which is set at a very specific point in time where most mechs, if I understand it correctly, have already been retrofitted with DHS tech.

I'm totally in favor of DHS being the best choice in the majority of situations, so that if you don't want to use SHS (for whatever reason) you can avoid them and not feel gimped. That doesn't mean that they should never-ever be a viable option. If that were the case the game would have been better off without SHS altogether, which seems less interesting to me.

[Khobai]

Stock Mechs run way too hot.

SHS should be 1.2
DHS should be 2.0

That would go a long way towards helping stock mechs with SHS, and there would still be a reason to use SHS in certain custom builds.

[Joseph Mallan]

Not a Number, on 04 December 2012 - 07:18 AM, said:

I get what you guys are saying, but we're not talking about what makes sense story- or lorewise or about what works or doesn't according to classic BattleTech rules. At the end of the day we still need to have a compelling game, which is set at a very specific point in time where most mechs, if I understand it correctly, have already been retrofitted with DHS tech.

I'm totally in favor of DHS being the best choice in the majority of situations, so that if you don't want to use SHS (for whatever reason) you can avoid them and not feel gimped. That doesn't mean that they should never-ever be a viable option. If that were the case the game would have been better off without SHS altogether, which seems less interesting to me.

Single sinks are a better option in Mechs with 245 rate engines or smaller. At the 250 rate level and over 10 double sinks take up no extra room or weight and should be just as effective as having 20 single sinks. Cause that is what double sinks have done for 2 decades.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 04 December 2012 - 07:27 AM.

[rgreat]

Khobai, on 04 December 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

Stock Mechs run way too hot.

SHS should be 1.2
DHS should be 2.0

That would go a long way towards helping stock mechs with SHS, and there would still be a reason to use SHS in certain custom builds.

This!

And/or lower heat levels from all weapons to match TT spirit.
After that you can add negative effects from slight overheating.

Edited by rgreat, 04 December 2012 - 07:37 AM.