99 replies to this topic

[Sifright]

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

Right. You're missing the point, though.

In your system, Low-heat weapons (already the strongest type in the game) are able to Alpha even more than they are now, putting all of their damage on the same location. This is a buff.

Conversely, High-heat weapons (already the weakest type in the game) are forced to chain-fire even more than they already are, spreading their damage out further and making them even weaker overall. This is a nerf.

There's a reason the SRM6 and the Gauss Rifle are not considered equally powerful brawling weapons despite doing the same amount of damage at close range.

Aggregate theoretical heat is not particularly useful as a metric in a real-time game.

Say what now?

*****, my SRM6 CAT will eat your *** for breakfast.

Seriously COME AT ME BRO.

My 90 damage mutilation attack turns everything into scrap and you are trying to say it's a bad brawling weapon.... buwhahaha.

[Volthorne]

Sifright, on 03 December 2012 - 11:29 AM, said:

Say what now?

*****, my SRM6 CAT will eat your *** for breakfast.

Seriously COME AT ME BRO.

My 90 damage mutilation attack turns everything into scrap and you are trying to say it's a bad brawling weapon.... buwhahaha.

He didn't say SRM6 was BAD, and it's not, but on a heat-management basis it cannot match the Gauss, despite having an equal damage output (and high damage per ton).

[Lanessar]

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

Short version: Any Low-Heat Weapons config with a small enough heat profile to Alpha once without shutting down in the proposed system will receive a massive boost to overall DPS while High-Heat weapons configs receive a massive nerf to damage precision as they're forced to switch to Chainfire.

I see. Thanks.

[valrond]

What about this:

-Increase heat dissipation to 200%
-Decrease cap to 30+HS/2
-When you go past 50% heat, decrease top speed, turning speed and targeting speed by 1% per each 1% over 50% heat. (so, at 70% heat, you lost 20% speed and turning). This will simulate the MP and targeting penalties of the TT.
-When you go over 80% heat, make it a 5% chance every 5 seconds (or 1% per second) of the mech auto-shutting down.
-When you go over 90% heat, make it a 1% chance every second of ammo exploding.

Now, that's making heat management more important, reduces alpha-strikes, and, at the same time, it makes a better balance for the weapons and improves the stock mechs.

[SteelPaladin]

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Right. I definitely mistyped a key into the calculator. Values should be correct now.

Still a little off, actually, because you're still treating the MPL recycle as 3 seconds instead 3.75 (your 3 second timer doesn't start counting until the beam duration expires, so it's 3.75 seconds between trigger pulls).


Current System Alpha potential:

+30 heat, -16.5, +30, -16.5, +30, -16.5, +30 -- shutdown @ 4 Alphas

Current System Max Burst Damage: 112.8 (9.6 DPS over 11.75 seconds)

Current System Sustainable DPS: 5.28 (You can sustain 3.3 MPLs constantly firing on your dissipation; anything over and you start to heat up)

Proposed System Alpha Potential:

+30 heat, -33 ad infinitum (at 8.80 cooling per second w/a 3.75 cooldown, the mech is dispersing faster than it can build)

Proposed System Max Burst Damage: No real max, since it is sustainable.

Proposed System Sustainable DPS: 9.6 (6 MPLs are heat neutral at this dissipation, so they max out their sustained DPS)


The proposed system that you did the math on increases the sustainable DPS of your build by 81.8%. So yeah... That would be a problem.

Edited by SteelPaladin, 03 December 2012 - 11:57 AM.

[Lefty Lucy]

I don't see a problem with increasing the sustainable DPS of energy weapons because right now the sustainable DPS of non-energy weapons is hardly effected by heat at all.

[SteelPaladin]

Lefty Lucy, on 03 December 2012 - 11:59 AM, said:

I don't see a problem with increasing the sustainable DPS of energy weapons because right now the sustainable DPS of non-energy weapons is hardly effected by heat at all.

That's debatable. Not all ballistics are the gauss rifle.

AC/2 - HPS: 2
AC/10 - HPS: 1.2
AC/20 - HPS: 1.5

They all have an HPS value higher than a medium laser (1 HPS). The AC/2 and 20 even have a higher HPS than an MPL (1.333). They also have the limiter that heat neutrality doesn't mean the ability to fire forever like lasers. Ammo is a factor.

I think the current heat system is borked as much as the next guy, but we don't want to throw the baby out w/the bathwater here.

[Hatachi]

I don't understand why the second people talk about heat equivalent to tabletop they automatically think weapons could only be fired once every 10 seconds It's really not that complicated just take damage/ heat and by 10 for the number of weapon recycles that are possible possible in 10 seconds. A PPCs damage and heat would be divided by roughly 1/3 in heat and damage and firing it constantly over 10 seconds would equal the heat created by firing the current one once every 10. The same could be done ammo for ballistic weapons. Bam, balance is fixed, double armor would possibly not be needed anymore, and everything would be basically equivalent to tabletop weaponry. Then tweak things based on gameplay analysis from there.

Edited by Hatachi, 03 December 2012 - 12:39 PM.

[Icebound]

Sadly trial mechs are always going to suck. It's my opinion that this drives away many would-be players who don't know if the game becomes more fun once they buy their own mech.

[Lanessar]

Hatachi, on 03 December 2012 - 12:38 PM, said:

I don't understand why the second people talk about heat equivalent to tabletop they automatically think weapons could only be fired once every 10 seconds It's really not that complicated just take damage/ heat and by 10 for the number of weapon recycles that are possible possible in 10 seconds. A PPCs damage and heat would be divided by roughly 1/3 in heat and damage and firing it constantly over 10 seconds would equal the heat created by firing the current one once every 10. The same could be done ammo for ballistic weapons. Bam, balance is fixed, double armor would possibly not be needed anymore, and everything would be basically equivalent to tabletop weaponry. Then tweak things based on gameplay analysis from there.

The problem is that the developers believe they solved this with doubling the armor values, and that weapon heat/damage is "better balanced than any previous MW game".

I'm not entirely certain of that, at all. It's a house of cards, which required balancing by changing DHS to 1.4 HS - thus making DHS unviable to any mech using over 17 DHS (which would mainly be heavy or assaults).

I just have a heavy suspicion that it's going to go further and further from "working" into "broken" as time goes on, mostly because the 6xMPL awesome is infinitely more powerful than a 4xPPC awesome purely due to mechanics. This isn't how it should work.

Next is a "boating" penalty (already discussed for SSRMs), and more and more complicated systems to solve the issue. Instead of just re-working the system as it stands. If the net code gets fixed, this may help the situation (lasers do infinitely more damage hitting a mech on a single tick than a PPC which can miss entirely), but that's just surmise on my part.

Edited by Lanessar, 03 December 2012 - 12:50 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

SteelPaladin, on 03 December 2012 - 11:56 AM, said:

Still a little off, actually, because you're still treating the MPL recycle as 3 seconds instead 3.75 (your 3 second timer doesn't start counting until the beam duration expires, so it's 3.75 seconds between trigger pulls).


Current System Alpha potential:

+30 heat, -16.5, +30, -16.5, +30, -16.5, +30 -- shutdown @ 4 Alphas

Current System Max Burst Damage: 112.8 (9.6 DPS over 11.75 seconds)

Current System Sustainable DPS: 5.28 (You can sustain 3.3 MPLs constantly firing on your dissipation; anything over and you start to heat up)

Proposed System Alpha Potential:

+30 heat, -33 ad infinitum (at 8.80 cooling per second w/a 3.75 cooldown, the mech is dispersing faster than it can build)

Proposed System Max Burst Damage: No real max, since it is sustainable.

Proposed System Sustainable DPS: 9.6 (6 MPLs are heat neutral at this dissipation, so they max out their sustained DPS)


The proposed system that you did the math on increases the sustainable DPS of your build by 81.8%. So yeah... That would be a problem.

I am including the 0.75s beam duration in my calculations, but I think we're treating the functionality of lasers differently and this is causing a bit of a problem with our numbers.

As far as I know, you're not receiving the heat dissipation effects of your heat sinks in the 0.75 seconds that your lasers are firing. At least, that's what I was told in the old "PPC/heat is broken" thread that Abrahms made a while back.

If this is not the case, and dH/dT is just adjusted to <[(Heat / Duration) * # of weapons] - Heat Sink Dissipation> while weapons are firing, then my numbers would need to be adjusted and the AWS-9M MPL boat would become heat neutral and OP as all hell.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 December 2012 - 01:03 PM.

[Hatachi]

My biggest with the current implementation is every time a new weapon is has to be changed from the ground up to fit with the current systems. Heck, any stock mech in a TRO with a TAG will already be a half ton overweight. My system would actually make many stock builds highly viable with most customization being more of a side-grade.

[Monky]

The only practical way to fix it is to set rounds to 5 seconds, double ammo counts and halve heat generation and damage output. This way everything is at a '10 second round' for total damage output, so it would scale with heat.

[SteelPaladin]

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

I am including the 0.75s beam duration in my calculations, but I think we're treating the functionality of lasers differently and this is causing a bit of a problem with our numbers.

As far as I know, you're not receiving the heat dissipation effects of your heat sinks in the 0.75 seconds that your lasers are firing. At least, that's what I was told in the old "PPC/heat is broken" thread that Abrahms made a while back.

If this is not the case, and dH/dT is just adjusted to <[(Heat / Duration) * # of weapons] - Heat Sink Dissipation> while weapons are firing, then my numbers would need to be adjusted and the AWS-9M MPL boat would become heat neutral and OP as all hell.

I'd have to dig through patch notes, but I swear there was a patch where PGI said they fixed it such that weapon heat is applied when the weapon begins firing rather than when they finish firing.

Edited by SteelPaladin, 03 December 2012 - 01:08 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

SteelPaladin, on 03 December 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

I'd have to dig through patch notes, but I swear there was a PGI where PGI said they fixed it such that weapon heat is applied when the weapon begins firing rather than when they finish firing.

Oh. As far as heat is applied, it's definitely just heat per time rather than a chunk at the beginning or end of firing. That's what caused the whole Pulse Laser/Small Laser debacle about a month ago. They were calculating heat/tick at (Total Heat / number of ticks in 1 second) instead of (Total Heat / number of ticks in the beam's duration) where each tick is some really small unit of time where damage and heat are applied.

Essentially, firing a laser is treated like firing an assault rifle in burst mode, except it's a burst of hundreds of consecutive mini-shells that each track and apply heat individually. The length of time between each tick is probably synced up with the server's refresh rate to make things easy.

The big discrepancy between our methods is whether dH/dT has two independent states (Firing and Not Firing) or is always an aggregate.

The former would mean alternating between two states of dH/dT = +5/0.75 for 0.75 seconds and -4.4/1 for 3 seconds.

The latter would mean alternating between dH/dT = (5/0.75 - 4.4/1) for 0.75 seconds and -4.4/1 for 3 seconds.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 December 2012 - 01:15 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

I'll go test this real quick. It shouldn't be too hard.

If dH/dT is treated as an aggregate, then it should be impossible to generate any heat at all firing 1 Medium Laser (4 heat/second) with 23 DHS (-4.4 heat/second).

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 December 2012 - 01:30 PM.

[SteelPaladin]

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

Oh. As far as heat is applied, it's definitely just heat per time rather than a chunk at the beginning or end of firing. That's what caused the whole Pulse Laser/Small Laser debacle about a month ago. They were calculating heat/tick at (Total Heat / number of ticks in 1 second) instead of (Total Heat / number of ticks in the beam's duration) where each tick is some really small unit of time where damage and heat are applied.

Essentially, firing a laser is treated like firing an assault rifle in burst mode, except it's a burst of hundreds of consecutive mini-shells that each track and apply heat individually. The length of time between each tick is probably synced up with the server's refresh rate to make things easy.

The big discrepancy between our methods is whether dH/dT has two independent states (Firing and Not Firing) or is always an aggregate.

The former would mean alternating between two states of dH/dT = +5/0.75 for 0.75 seconds and -4.4/1 for 3 seconds.

The latter would mean alternating between dH/dT = (5/0.75 - 4.4/1) for 0.75 seconds and -4.4/1 for 3 seconds.

That could make calculating problematic. Because then technically, each of those little ticks of heat becomes eligible for cooling the instant it applies.

I've always kept the math simple so I never verified, does heat sinking only actually tick every 1 second or is x/sec just the rate?

[Vlad Ward]

Interesting. You were right.

Heat is definitely treated as an aggregate. That would mean just about any conceivable boat of ML/MPLs would be heat neutral) in the proposed system. Christ in a bucket =/

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 December 2012 - 01:44 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

SteelPaladin, on 03 December 2012 - 01:18 PM, said:

That could make calculating problematic. Because then technically, each of those little ticks of heat becomes eligible for cooling the instant it applies.

I've always kept the math simple so I never verified, does heat sinking only actually tick every 1 second or is x/sec just the rate?

Heat is updated every server tick. It looks more complicated on paper because you start dealing with really small numbers, but it's actually not that hard for a computer to calculate.

Essentially, you have a dH/dT variable which tells the server how much to increase or decrease your total heat by every time it updates.

That dH/dT variable is represented as a pseudo-mathematical expression as follows:

Sigma[Heat of weapon being fired / Duration of weapon being fired] - heat dissipated by heat sinks per server tick

Every time the server refreshes, it increments your current heat by your current dH/dT value.

Firing a laser on the client is just treated like continuously firing a stream of mini-lasers for 0.75 seconds as far as the server knows.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 December 2012 - 01:43 PM.

[SteelPaladin]

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

Heat is updated every server tick. It looks more complicated on paper because you start dealing with really small numbers, but it's actually not that hard for a computer to calculate.

Essentially, you have a dH/dT variable which tells the server how much to increase or decrease your total heat by every time it updates.

That dH/dT variable is represented as a mathematical expression as follows:

Sigma[Heat of weapon being fired / Duration of weapon being fired] - heat dissipated by heat sinks per server tick

Every time the server refreshes, it increments your current heat by your current dH/dT value.

Makes sense.

Vlad Ward, on 03 December 2012 - 01:20 PM, said:

Interesting. You were right.

Heat is definitely treated as an aggregate. That would mean just about any conceivable boat of ML/MPLs would be heat neutral (and thus generate 0 heat) in the proposed system. Christ in a bucket =/

Ick. I want a stock Awesome to be scary, but I don't want to be facing down THAT nightmare. Lunchbacks were enough fun, thank you very much.

I'm starting to wonder if folks weren't right that individual weapon tweaks will be necessary to get things balanced out over a heat system change. It's a lot more work, but MWO just does not make short range a significant enough hazard to deal w/that level of ML boating.