I haven’t seen a recent post on the heat system in the forums other than the heatsink balanced one so here’s my suggestion for a overhaul to the heat system. A trend that I’ve been witnessing more and more is the issues with heat and Mech designs. I’m witnessing more and more pilots sacrificing heatsinks to load that extra weapon, or just creating boats, to push their alpha damage just a little further. What I think would help would be to give more consequences for overheating; right now when you overheat your Mech will shut down for a time and nothing else happens even if you fire 3 or more PPCs at 98% heat. In the canon at a certain point the heat starts affecting the electronics keep pushing the heat levels and ammo is at risk and then if pushed farther, the Mech goes nova. I’d like to see a new heat bar that shows Green, Yellow, and Red to show the risks of heat with it showing more than 100% so if you push it past the shutdown point you see how far. Also when the Mech goes into temporary shutdown, it runs on battery power so status displays like heat and damage stay on (but the rest turns off). The other thing is at a certain point computer systems would be overheating from the Mech’s heat levels, so the crosshairs and displays should start malfunctioning making it harder to get locks and aiming, thus making people think before pulling the trigger. I’ve seen some get around the high heat by avoiding ammo and allowing their Mech to shutdown causing no damage to the components which I think should be fixed. After 100% heat things should start taking damage, even when shutdown and if it gets high enough the Fusion Reactor, that gives these Mechs life, should blowup and damage things near the mech. The Games, Lore, and Table Top all had this mechanic within them and I think MWO should as well. This would tie in to adding another mechanic to the game, by having the reactor blow up if damaged, like it would in all of the games, lore, and table top. I’ve always wondered why it isn’t in MWO even though everything else uses it. This may also deter boats like the “Splatcat” and people charging headlong into Mechs by making them think if the Mech’s reactor is destroyed, BOOM *little mushroom cloud*, and they take heavy damage or they themselves is destroyed.
So an outline of some changes that I’d like PGI to look into:
New Heat Bar that goes to 125-130% with Green, Yellow, and Red zones to emphasize heat dangers.
At high heat, before 100%, computer systems like Targeting, Missile locks(dropping and longer lock-times), Map, Visions, etc. start to malfunction.
Heat can be pushed past 100% and the heat bar reflects this.
Even when shutdown after 100% heat things start to be damaged.
At a certain heat level the reactor has a meltdown and blows up dealing major damage to nearby objects/Mechs like what would happen in the Mechwarrior games.
If the reactor is destroyed through damage, then it may or may not blowup.
What do you guys think of this? Anything that I should add or remove? It’s just some of my ideas to curb boating, to fix the heat mechanic, and to add a mechanic that is a big part of the Battletech/MechWarrior series.
Oh and a video to show what happens when a reactor goes nova, which is at about 1:53min into the movie.
Unfortunately the heat system is broken and this might help some. I'd love for the idiots to get TK penalties for going nova, but the system has been broken since early first CB. Many threads have been deleted so I don't know if you're aware of what exactly occurred. I'll try to be brief.
I started playing in the 2nd round of Closed Beta and immediately noticed what you're seeing right now. It was noticed almost immediately when first CB started testing. From what I was able to gather PGI tried to bring things over as TT had it. This included the 10 sec round(turned into 10 sec firing delays). The pace was way too slow for this style of game. PGI decided to triple rate of fire and only RoF. Then they noticed that fights were way to fast(duh) so they doubled armor on the mechs. Then LRMs were under powered and testers were subjugated to WAY OP LRMs. Things started to get slightly more balanced with missiles. PGI finally got around to addressing the heat issue that everyone was complaining about and decided to increase the heat cap per heat sink and leave/reduce heat dissipation in a feeble and failed attempt to stop Alpha striking. What they actually did with this was front load the burst damage of things like the x6 PPC Stalker.
What everyone that has half a brain in their domes tried to suggest to PGI was to cut the damage and heat generation of weapons to 1/3 of TT values to make up for the tripled RoF. This would have been the simplest way to do things. I suppose they instead could have tripled heat containment, heat dissipation, armor and a multitude of other things to make up for the increased RoF. This is why the heat system is totally broken and changes are futile because PGI has been pig headed concerning how much of TT stuff they want to use. They also can now claim that they tried to do TT and it just won't translate. Perhaps it won't to 100%, but it would have been a damned close fit with minor tweaks to capture perfect.
Since PGI failed in balancing heat from the get go they have been making knee jerk drastic changes that alternate from one extreme to another. Until the heat system is fixed, anything you do to try to find balance is going to be futile.
That being said, once the heat system does actually work, your ideas would be a great addition.
Id like to add following: Every shot will turn the heat of a Mech for short time to a relative High level (heat spike) and dropping very fast to its normal heat increase (half a second or sth). This would prevent us from getting stomped by a 6 PPC Alpha Stalker or else like this, cuz hed not be able to fire all his weapons simultaneously. Ofc should every weapon have a unique spike behavior, due to the fact a Gauss Rifle wont generate that much heat at all...some scaling has to be done for sure.
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