Discuss the heat meta changes

[Crimson Kaim]

With the coming 2.1.05 update, heat weapons will be "balanced" according to the patch notes.

However, there had been no detailed information, especially with numbers included. So as soon as this patch goes live, would someone be so kind and make some tests and share the results here?

Also, feel free to tell the forum about this upcoming "balance" (note: it hasn't been said that it is a nerf, though it is very likely to be a decrease rather than an increase in effectiveness, ultimately because Sandro himself stated that somewhere in the last days/weeks).

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Crimson Kaim!

The changes we have made are to reduce the amount of heat damage from thermal cascade, and in addition, increase the diminishing returns for all heat delivery via weapons (including Thermal Shock and Thermal Cascade), which results in a lower top end cap but that should have negligible effects unless thermal weapons are being used en masse.

The goal of these changes is take the edge off mass heat weapon load outs, without ruining thermal as an effective tool.

 

[Shanaeri]

Hello Commander Crimson Kaim!

The changes we have made are to reduce the amount of heat damage from thermal cascade, and in addition, increase the diminishing returns for all heat delivery via weapons (including Thermal Shock and Thermal Cascade), which results in a lower top end cap but that should have negligible effects unless thermal weapons are being used en masse.

The goal of these changes is take the edge off mass heat weapon load outs, without ruining thermal as an effective tool.

Thanks Sandro, can you give us any numbers on the cap and projected reduction in damage. What constitutes en masse?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Hello Commander Crimson Kaim!

The changes we have made are to reduce the amount of heat damage from thermal cascade, and in addition, increase the diminishing returns for all heat delivery via weapons (including Thermal Shock and Thermal Cascade), which results in a lower top end cap but that should have negligible effects unless thermal weapons are being used en masse.

The goal of these changes is take the edge off mass heat weapon load outs, without ruining thermal as an effective tool.

Sounds good, looking forward to testing it!

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Shanaeri!

I use the phrase en masse because lots of weapons will make the diminishing returns kick in faster, effectively reducing their heat delivery more.

I think the new plateau is just past the point at which hull damage occurs, though you'll need plenty of thermal firepower to be pushing the heat up at this point.

 

[Shanaeri]

Hello Commander Shanaeri!

I use the phrase en masse because lots of weapons will make the diminishing returns kick in faster, effectively reducing their heat delivery more.

I think the new plateau is just past the point at which hull damage occurs, though you'll need plenty of thermal firepower to be pushing the heat up at this point.

Thanks so by the time the hull is getting damage, modules will be well and truly cooked or has rate at which modules incur damage been changed as well. I can forsee a scenario where although hull damage is almost negligible the ship is as good as wrecked due to module damage without the cap or DR being breached.

Basically, my concern is heat beams will still trash a ship PDQ and there is no good counter other than hoping you live long enough to high wake away?

Thanks again

 

[mikael]

Hi,

Will the lower top end cap be an aggregate limiter - ie heat spike is capped regardless of how many ships are using heat weapons on you - or applied just to multiple weapons on the same ship?

 

[Duane Dibbley]

Very interesting developments or what I'm really thinking..

..IN YOUR FACE!!...black FDL piloted by a Russian cmdr who killed my poor, innocent (granted - a 'bit' wanted ) non-modded Vulture in a CG 3 weeks ago!

 

[CMDR John Casey]

Very interesting developments or what I'm really thinking..

..IN YOUR FACE!!...black FDL piloted by a Russian cmdr who killed my poor, innocent (granted - a 'bit' wanted ) non-modded Vulture in a CG 3 weeks ago!

I'm not Russian and my FDL is vanilla, no mods [big grin]

(uhm maybe the wrong Vulture, I was in Nanomam...)

 

[the100thmonkey]

I think

forgive me, Mr. Sammarco, but should you not know?

No troll - I'm just genuinely interested to hear about how developers interact with their babies!

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander mikael!

The heat resistance that we used to create diminishing returns does not care where the heat comes from - as long as it is being delivered by weapons - because it increases based on the heat of the target ship.

So the number of ships is not important, just the heat of the ship itself.

 

[Lunchmunny]

So what are the real affects here? I would imagine heat dmg caused by your own actions, such as using energy weapons while heat is at this new "cap" would still cause dmg similar to previous experiences? Or is heat generated from your own "weapons" also included in the diminishing returns?

 

[nathdixon92]

Hello Commander mikael!

The heat resistance that we used to create diminishing returns does not care where the heat comes from - as long as it is being delivered by weapons - because it increases based on the heat of the target ship.

So the number of ships is not important, just the heat of the ship itself.

In other words it's heavily nerfed lol. Yay. *sarcasm*

 

[Crimson Kaim]

In other words it's heavily nerfed lol. Yay. *sarcasm*

I wouldn't even mind if it is gone.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Lunchmunny!

The diminishing returns only affect heat incoming from weapon attacks.

However, the reduction is significant, especially when combined with the drop in heat damage from Thermal Cascade attacks, which are one of the better ways to quickly apply catastrophic heat.

The bottom line is: less heat from missiles, less heat applied as the target gets hotter.

However, we're confident that heat is still an effective tool at the very least.

This is potentially just a step; we're looking forward to feedback.

 

[nathdixon92]

What really really annoys me is all the Nerf herders. Why dies everything need ti be nerfed. Why can't you guys put a bit more effort into having alternatives or providing buffs elsewhere?

 

[mikael]

The amount can be tweaked with feedback, the way it was implemented was well thought out so "thank you".

 

[rote1]

What really really annoys me is all the Nerf herders. Why dies everything need ti be nerfed. Why can't you guys put a bit more effort into having alternatives or providing buffs elsewhere?

I think the main problems is semantics. What should be called rebalancing is often unfairly called nerfing now.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

What really really annoys me is all the Nerf herders. Why dies everything need ti be nerfed. Why can't you guys put a bit more effort into having alternatives or providing buffs elsewhere?

Because it is easier to nerf one thing instead of buffing multiple other things. In the other case it would be easier to buff one thing if it is UP than nerfing all the other things. The heat wepaonary is the only thing that far exceeds and kind of limits, so it is nerfed as it was the only thing. Now we do have some more/less powerful stuff to be nerfed and buffed but that wasn't as urgent as the heat meta.

Likewise they have dumbfire rocket launchers as two C1 launchers could easily wreck an Anaconda's shields so they were clearly OP. Yes you could buff ECMs, shields, hull and PDTs but why not nerfing just the dumbfires? It is easier. However, they were utterly UP. Not useless, but not powerful at all ... especially when the hull meta arrived. Now they got buffed and likewise the hull meta got indirectly nerfed as rockets now deal alot more damage to exterior modules. This results in them being neither UP, nor OP without any other module beign touched. And from what I can see until today, people are fairly happy with it, especially with the engineers.


TL;DR: You tweak the things that break the average. Not the average itself.

 

[Lunchmunny]

Hello Commander Lunchmunny!

The diminishing returns only affect heat incoming from weapon attacks.

However, the reduction is significant, especially when combined with the drop in heat damage from Thermal Cascade attacks, which are one of the better ways to quickly apply catastrophic heat.

The bottom line is: less heat from missiles, less heat applied as the target gets hotter.

However, we're confident that heat is still an effective tool at the very least.

This is potentially just a step; we're looking forward to feedback.

I won't be able to test any of this for another 8 hours, so at this point, it's pure conjecture on my part. But my hope, after modding most of my weapons across five ships now, is that thermal is at least "effective" as an attack. Otherwise, that will be a whole lot of modding that has to be re-done. I feel like you all should have looked at hull and shield thermal resist values to help mitigate these types of attacks as well.

Ideally, I would enjoy being able to mod to mitigate thermal weaponry further as well. As in, concentrating on thermal efficiency within your own build to dissipate external heat sources more effectively. The biggest problem I've always had with thermal weaponry was that even with a paper, rock, scissors paradigm, there is no way to "beat" or render useless, a thermal build through defensive modification.

I wouldn't mind if thermal weapons were still really effective, as long as the people who could beat those ships, were the people who were modded to tank and defeat thermal weaponry through resistances and heat efficiency across the entire build. The trick to making that work is have those type of builds be somehow mutually exclusive. Seeing a meta that carried several paths one can take would be refreshing, as long as each of those paths had a "counter."

TL;DR I really hope they didn't nerf thermal weaponry to be "useless."