16 replies to this topic

[Quazil]

Edits:

• -0.1 vs -1.0 HPS was wrong, changed to -0.1 vs -0.333 HPS
  
• -0.333 is sub-optimal BT rules, -0.250 Solaris rules works better

I have calculated how much the non-canon heat dynamics affect lasers, ballistics, & missiles.

With SHS sinking -0.250 HPS the effective tonnages of the weapon balances out well. It takes 23 tons of 2x large-lasers and heat-sinks to match the effectiveness of a guass-rifle with 4 tons of ammo (and 1 HS).

The concentrated hit from the guass rifle happens to have sufficiently low heat with a sufficiently long cool-down that the MWO heat-sink nerf is swamped by the automatic 10 heat-sinks from the engine. This is why the weapon is so effective in MWO. Analysis indicates a guass-rifle ought to be 10% less effective than auto-cannons which good for balance because auto-cannons require more exposure of your mech due to the higher rate of fire. This is not realized in MWO because the additional heat generated by the auto-cannons limits their use faster than it ought to.

Link to spreadsheet for download.
Screen-shot here for quick-view.

If I have any numbers wrong please respond and I will update the spreadsheet.
In particular, are my ammo tons accurate? (Those are tons per weapon, e.g. 2 guass-rifles means 8 tons of ammo).

Edited by Quazil, 06 December 2012 - 10:39 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I am not sure what you mean wit -0.1 vs -1.0 dissipation?
MW:O and Table Top Heat Sinks both sink 1 heat in 10 seconds, that hasn't changed. What has changed is how much heat weapon produces - that increase ranges from a factor of 2.5 to a factor of 20 (with a likewise increase in DPS.) Low heat weapons can deal with this better than high heat weapon.

[RAM]

Your canon figures are inaccurate and thus your analysis is flawed.


RAM
ELH

[Quazil]

RAM, on 06 December 2012 - 12:05 AM, said:

Your canon figures are inaccurate and thus your analysis is flawed.


RAM
ELH

What's wrong?
My numbers are taken from Ohm's spreadsheets and my calculations line-up with his pretty closely. e.g. 9.09 DPS for the UAC 5.

Edited by Quazil, 06 December 2012 - 09:13 PM.

[Quazil]

MustrumRidcully, on 05 December 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

I am not sure what you mean wit -0.1 vs -1.0 dissipation?
MW:O and Table Top Heat Sinks both sink 1 heat in 10 seconds, that hasn't changed. What has changed is how much heat weapon produces - that increase ranges from a factor of 2.5 to a factor of 20 (with a likewise increase in DPS.) Low heat weapons can deal with this better than high heat weapon.

So we're saying the same thing ... I am just presuming the obvious fix is to make heat-sinks sink more heat and maintain the RoF. As-is it takes *80* heat-sinks to achieve what the CBT says takes 28.

You can fire a MW:O PPC 3.333 times in 10 seconds not once so a MW:O heat-sink ought to sink 0.333 heat per second not 0.1 and a double ought to sink 0.666 not a useless 0.14

... then we need triple the armor.

Then two large lasers won't be a joke compared to one guass-rifle.

Using -0.1 vs -0.333

• Lasers 40%
  
• Ballistics 71%
  
• Missiles 58%

AC's got a RoF bump and missiles got a damage bump which compensates pretty closely for their heat nerf (SRM's are under-powered, LRM's are spot-on). It doesn't /seem like it/ playing the game because lasers suck.


Lasers could be fixed by reducing their heat-generated to 40% of current values.

Edited by Quazil, 06 December 2012 - 09:43 PM.

[Noth]

Quazil, on 06 December 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

So we're saying the same thing ... I am just presuming the obvious fix is to make heat-sinks sink more heat and maintain the RoF. As-is it takes *80* heat-sinks to achieve what the CBT says takes 28.

They don;t want heat to be like TT in how easy it is to mitigate. Currently, changing things to 1.0 hps would make heat a trivial thing to manage. Heck DHS already make many builds with high heat weapons overly easy to manage. They want heat to actually mean something and not something you can just build away without downgrading weapons or other things.

[Quazil]

Noth, on 06 December 2012 - 09:15 PM, said:

They don;t want heat to be like TT in how easy it is to mitigate. Currently, changing things to 1.0 hps would make heat a trivial thing to manage. Heck DHS already make many builds with high heat weapons overly easy to manage. They want heat to actually mean something and not something you can just build away without downgrading weapons or other things.

-1.0 was too high, -1/3 appears to be the 'right' value.
With -1/3 then 2 large lasers are comparable to one guass-rifle in effectiveness both requiring about 20 tons.
At -0.1 it takes 40 tons of lasers & heat-sinks to make larger lasers match a guass at 20 tons.

I understand they want heat to mean something but right now heat means 78% more to lasers then other weapons.
Lasers have been severely punished by their desire to make heat mean something but ballistics haven't.
Then they compensated the heat nerf to missiles with respective increased damage.

What is implemented now is broken.
We all want heat to mean something.
Breaking lasers to make heat meaningful is not an acceptable compromise.

PS DHS have been nerf'd into uselessness. You can achieve better heat-dynamics without DHS. This is dumb. They nerf'd the heat dissipation without also reducing the slots taken... you can't do that, they are horribly broken now. I don't know why anyone would use them on anything other than a Jenner (or maybe another light mech).
If they want to fix DHS with current heat-dynamics then they need to reduce the heat-dissipation slightly to -0.1333... and reduce the space to 2 slots.

Edited by Quazil, 06 December 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[Noth]

Quazil, on 06 December 2012 - 09:55 PM, said:

-1.0 was too high, -1/3 appears to be the 'right' value.
DHS have been nerf'd into uselessness. You can achieve better heat-dynamics without DHS. This is dumb.

I understand they want heat to mean something but right now heat means 250% more to lasers then other weapons.
Lasers have been severely punished by their desire to make heat mean something but ballistics haven't.
Then they compensated the heat nerf to missiles with respective increased damage.

What is implemented now is broken.
We all want heat to mean something.
Breaking lasers to make heat meaningful is not an acceptable compromise.

Lasers are broken? I see more lasers than any other weapon. Large lasers are seeing more use than ever before. The only energy weapons that could be considered broken are the ERs, and PPC. Even then PPC is still quite usable currently, just outclassed.

[Tarl Cabot]

It would be better if MWO was compared to the Solaris Rules, where BT's 10sec combat round is divided into 4 2.5sec combat round.

Heatscale max would be 120 instead of 30.
Heatsinks still dispersed 1 for SHS and 2 for DHS.
Weapon damage stayed the same
Weapon Heat was multiplied by 4.
Weapon ranges multiplied by 4 (hexes)
All weapons had recycle times (iirc, PPC had to wait 3 rounds before it could be fired again, but would you want to fire it )

S7: 3PPC = 120 heat (40*3) Imagine the rolls needed for shutdown, ammo cook offs, etc
S7: 28 SHS: 4*28=112 heat removed every ten seconds
S7: 8 heat surplus every 10 seconds. Fire those 3 PPC and ya at an initial 128 heat then ends that round at 100 heat.

The above is on an awesome standing still in a normal temp environment.

Basically, trying to match up the heat scale with BT will only work IF everyone weapon had a recycle time of 10 seconds. Then I am not asking for MWO to match Solaris scale but it gives a person a BETTER perspective than trying to make sense of it by trying to compare it to BT scales.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 06 December 2012 - 10:19 PM.

[Quazil]

I agree, comparing to Solaris rules is better but it is essentially the same result.
Solaris PPC's have a recycle time of 7.5 seconds, MW:O PPC's have a recycle time of 3 seconds which is a 2.5x RoF increase instead of a 3.33x... so that means SHS should now dump -0.25 HPS instead of -0.333.

MW:O makes PPC's 2.5x times less effective than Solaris rules and 3.333 times less effective than BT rules.
Ballistics do not suffer so. This is why the guass-rifle is perceived as OP and why it calculably is OP.

At -0.25 HPS it takes 23 tons of larger lasers & heat-sinks to match the effectiveness of a gauss-rifle.
That's fine, that's great - I agree it's better than BT rules.

[De La Fresniere]

Noth, on 06 December 2012 - 09:57 PM, said:

Lasers are broken? I see more lasers than any other weapon. Large lasers are seeing more use than ever before. The only energy weapons that could be considered broken are the ERs, and PPC. Even then PPC is still quite usable currently, just outclassed.

Personally I used lasers because they didn't need to be rearmed. I hated cheesing the 75% rearm, so it was either lose *all* C-bill profits or go to lasers. Missiles are unaffordable and most ballistics are broken, which makes lasers look great, but they're actually fairly bad.

It's not even that I don't like lasers. I like lasers, at least the Medium ones (Large and Pulse ones are pretty damn bad in comparison), and I'm OK with having to spend considerable tonnage on heat management... but the way things are now, if you use lasers, every last bit of remaining tonnage also goes away because you need an absurd amount of heat sinks.

You should have to put some serious thought into heat management, but it shouldn't be your primary concern like it is now.

[Noth]

De La Fresniere, on 06 December 2012 - 10:44 PM, said:

Personally I used lasers because they didn't need to be rearmed. I hated cheesing the 75% rearm, so it was either lose *all* C-bill profits or go to lasers. Missiles are unaffordable and most ballistics are broken, which makes lasers look great, but they're actually fairly bad.

It's not even that I don't like lasers. I like lasers, at least the Medium ones (Large and Pulse ones are pretty damn bad in comparison), and I'm OK with having to spend considerable tonnage on heat management... but the way things are now, if you use lasers, every last bit of remaining tonnage also goes away because you need an absurd amount of heat sinks.

You should have to put some serious thought into heat management, but it shouldn't be your primary concern like it is now.

It you bring only energy weapons then it should be your primary concern when it comes to using your weapons. Energy weapons already instant hit (outside of PPCs), can sweep to get glancing hits, don't fall prey to ammo or weapon explosions, weigh less, much easier to boat. They have a lot of upsides compared to ballistics, heat should be hard on them as it is really the only thing that holds them back.

The only reason we have seen an up turn in ballistic use is because of a heavier mech that can mount multiple ballistics. Even then they still suffer from all the issues that ballistics do. Since closed beta, laser have been superior to ballistics and nothing has changed to change that fact.

On my energy heavy builds, I do fill my tonnage with heatsinks, because typically tehre is nothing else for me to realistically put in there. In my mixed builds, I bring a lot less heatsinks yet still can easily use my energy weapons without overheating (actually I over heat more using ballistics). AC2s themselves require just as many heatsinks as many heavy energy weapons and then they need ammo on top of that.

Edited by Noth, 06 December 2012 - 10:53 PM.

[De La Fresniere]

Noth, on 06 December 2012 - 10:51 PM, said:

don't fall prey to ammo or weapon explosions, weigh less, much easier to boat

I'll disagree on the weight because every laser requires many heat sinks to balance, but this is pretty much what I'm saying... other weapons are so bad they're practically unusable, and this makes lasers look excellent. In comparison, perhaps they are. But in the absolute, they're pretty bad. If everyone's fighting using wet noodles it's easy to claim your foam sword is an awesome weapon, but in the end it's just not true.

This is one of the many things that bother me with the game at the moment. I go out in a huge combat mech, a supposed marvel of technology... and I don't feel tough and powerful, I feel fragile and impotent. My consolation is that everyone else is suffering the same issues, but I don't think MechWarrior is supposed to feel like a slow-motion version of the special olympics...

[Noth]

De La Fresniere, on 06 December 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

I'll disagree on the weight because every laser requires many heat sinks to balance, but this is pretty much what I'm saying... other weapons are so bad they're practically unusable, and this makes lasers look excellent. In comparison, perhaps they are. But in the absolute, they're pretty bad. If everyone's fighting using wet noodles it's easy to claim your foam sword is an awesome weapon, but in the end it's just not true.

This is one of the many things that bother me with the game at the moment. I go out in a huge combat mech, a supposed marvel of technology... and I don't feel tough and powerful, I feel fragile and impotent. My consolation is that everyone else is suffering the same issues, but I don't think MechWarrior is supposed to feel like a slow-motion version of the special olympics...

Even with the net code fix, ballistics will still be hard to hit with. Ammo explosions are a feature and balancing aspect. All weapons are perfectly usable. They just have downsides (finally the GR has a real downside). If a weapon having downsides makes them broken, then I don't know what to say. To me the weapons are almost perfect. each has strengths and weaknesses. There are some bugs, but with those bugs fixed, it won't magically make one weapon perfect. The downside to lasers are heat and damage over time (this actually allows them to be quite good against faster moving targets). Ballistics downsides are ammo, ammo explosions (or weapon explosion for the GR). There are very few broken weapons and even they can be used in some situations or are broken only because there is something so superior in every way they are pointless to bring.

If you view everything as broken, then perhaps in fact they are not broken at all but designed to be weaker than what you want?

Edited by Noth, 06 December 2012 - 11:08 PM.

[De La Fresniere]

I'm saying they don't have one drawback, they're all drawbacks with one or two redeeming qualities that make them functional, and then only in the sense that they're better than nothing. ...sometimes. Don't get me started on Flamers. We should purposefully give ****** cancer to whoever thought it was acceptable to implement those as they are now. It's a crime against common sense for which there is no sufficiently harsh punishment.

I try using missiles and I know I'm going to miss a lot and blow up as soon as my armor's breached and end up with a rearm bill that would literally eat all of my profits. I try using ballistics and I know I've spent nearly all my tonnage on 'em already, just to have convergence and netcode and firing delay make it all garbage, and even the supposedly mighty Gauss is either laughably fragile (if it's in the arm) or will actually kill me should my internals be briefly tickled (if in the torso).

Lasers are "kind of OK" if you use Mediums and put every remaining bit of tonnage on heat sinks. Yay?

If I lived in the MWO universe, I'd line up all engineers backs to a wall and have them executed by firing squad. Then I'd blow up my planet so no one would be able to get its resources.

Better than to drown in this ocean of mediocrity.



...yes. They're designed to be weaker than what I want.

[Noth]

De La Fresniere, on 06 December 2012 - 11:24 PM, said:

I'm saying they don't have one drawback, they're all drawbacks with one or two redeeming qualities that make them functional, and then only in the sense that they're better than nothing. ...sometimes. Don't get me started on Flamers. We should purposefully give ****** cancer to whoever thought it was acceptable to implement those as they are now. It's a crime against common sense for which there is no sufficiently harsh punishment.

I try using missiles and I know I'm going to miss a lot and blow up as soon as my armor's breached and end up with a rearm bill that would literally eat all of my profits. I try using ballistics and I know I've spent nearly all my tonnage on 'em already, just to have convergence and netcode and firing delay make it all garbage, and even the supposedly mighty Gauss is either laughably fragile (if it's in the arm) or will actually kill me should my internals be briefly tickled (if in the torso).

Lasers are "kind of OK" if you use Mediums and put every remaining bit of tonnage on heat sinks. Yay?

If I lived in the MWO universe, I'd line up all engineers backs to a wall and have them executed by firing squad. Then I'd blow up my planet so no one would be able to get its resources.

Better than to drown in this ocean of mediocrity.



...yes. They're designed to be weaker than what I want.

So you just don't like the game design. Despite how close to balanced they are? Too me the weapons having so many downsides makes them interesting and different from most games where it comes down to just thinking about bonuses. In this you have to weight the downsides more so than the upsides.

[MustrumRidcully]

Regarding "good" energy weapons:
Medium and Small lasers are extremely efficient weapons, with Double Heat SInks, they beat all other weapons.

The Large laser is currently reasonably balanced compared to other weapons in its range bracket (e.g. the ballistics like AC/5). From a stock mech perspective it's still problematic, because this balance was achieved by raising damage, instead of lowering heat, so stock mechs with LLs will still be built for much too high heat values (in addition to the fact that they may be using single heat sinks and the LL isn't balanced against ballistics there, and even if they use DHS, they probably do not have enough - they still need reconfiguration for less gun, more heat sinks.)

The ER Large Laser, the PPC and the ER PPC, and the Pulse Lasers are all very ineffectient and thus weak compared to the other weapons (not just the medium and small laser, but also compared to ballistics and missiles.)

Noth, on 06 December 2012 - 09:15 PM, said:

They don;t want heat to be like TT in how easy it is to mitigate. Currently, changing things to 1.0 hps would make heat a trivial thing to manage. Heck DHS already make many builds with high heat weapons overly easy to manage. They want heat to actually mean something and not something you can just build away without downgrading weapons or other things.

Fundamental error you make here: Heat will never be trivial to manage, because unless you remove heat entirely because 10 engine heat sinks is all you need to cool off 8 ER PPCs, you will always have good builds being "warm" builds.

Every heat sink you spend to get to heat neutrality is a ton not spend on weapons or armour. That's damage you do not deal or damage you do not survive. If your mech can fire for 30 seconds and deal the damage necessary to kill an Atlas (or whatever your preferred target of choice is, or rather your current target is), you don't need to be any cooler. The only thing you need to worry about is whether your enemy can actually do the same damage in 20 seconds and possibly kill you before you could kill him because he'S even hotter.

Your mech is only too hot if you cannot sustain your firepower long enough that the total damage you deal is insufficient to deal with your foes.


And besides that - heat management in the table top game was not about always evading the shutdown. It was aboutmanaging the drawbacks of high heat levels - speed loss, accuracy loss, ammo explosion risks. If you were in the perfect position to fire all your guns, you had to consider - is it worth doing not because you would be shutdown the next turn, but because next turn, you would be much slower and have more trouble hitting your enemies if you risk firing now ,but also, on the next turn, your enemy may outmaneuver you and you won't get off any good shots at all.

It wasn't just about "OMG, I am shutting down!"

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 06 December 2012 - 11:59 PM.