6 replies to this topic

[Sereglach]

After giving it some thought and looking over lots of various suggestions and concepts for heat, here's something I'd suggest.

Het Scale Change:
I'll admit, in the grand scheme of things, I'm more for removing ghost heat, and setting the standard heat cap to 31 per mech (so you don't shut down until after you exceed 30 heat). This alone would encourage more volley fire and reduce pinpoint alphas (you know, the way it's done in lore). An alpha strike with this sort of heat scale is almost guaranteed to overheat your mech (again, like what would happen in lore) . . . for most loadouts, anyway. Gauss Rifles generate next to no heat, but they still have their charge mechanic and PPC desync mechanics.

Heat Sink Change:
To make single heat sinks viable, give single heat sinks a cooling of .5 heat per second (each) and allow only single heat sinks to increase the heat cap of a mech by .5 capacity per heat sink. You want to have higher pinpoint alphas, go with single heat sinks. They'd actually become desirable for pop-tarts and high alpha hit-and-run/hill humping builds.

On the flip side, set double heat sinks to dissipate 1 heat per second (each) and retain a locked heat cap of 31 heat. For people blasting off lots of weapons on chain fire or looking to stay in a fight longer, namely brawlers, they'll want doubles.


An example of the results this would create:
Double Heat Sinks
Our Example AWS-8Q Awesome Assault mech, toting 16 doubles, would cool 16 heat per second with no less than 6 tons committed to just heat sinks. Because it has double heat sinks, its heat cap would be locked at 31. Firing more than 2 ERPPC's would shut you down, but with a cooldown of 4 seconds on the ERPPC's and cooling 16 heat per second, you'd be able to maintain a steady stream of volley fire of 2 ERPPC's just about every 2 seconds for 20 damage each volley. This provides better DPS, but you wouldn't be able to do a full alpha strike without shutting yourself down.

Single Heat Sinks
Our other Example AWS-8Q Awesome Assault mech, totes 29 single heat sinks. While this leaves the mech cooling at 14.5 heat per second, it has committed no less than 19 tons to just heat sinks. However, it does give the mech the advantage of having a heat cap of 45.5 heat, rather than the typical 31 (29 heatsinks x .5 capacity per heatsink = 14.5 capacity boost). With this setup, our 3 ERPPC Awesome is able to unleash full Alpha volleys onto a target for 30 damage each. However, it must also wait at least the full cooldown length of its weapons to dissipate all of that heat. With a bit of weight shuffling and standard PPCs, this mech could even be tweaked to fire 40 damage alphas rather consistently, but with a minimum range to worry about.

TL:DR

• Remove Ghost Heat and set Default heat cap to 31 heat.
  
• Set Double Heat Sinks to dissipate 1 Heat Per Second.
  
• Set Single Heat Sinks to dissipate .5 Heat Per Second AND increase the Heat Cap of a mech by .5 per heat sink.
  
• Double Heat Sinks become better for volley fire and sustained DPS at the cost of a lower heat cap and dangerous alpha strikes.
  
• Single Heat Sinks become better for pinpoint alphas at the cost of extra tonnage in invested heat sinks and lower DPS.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Interesting, certainly worth testing out.

I just wonder if that dissipation is a tad too high, but a lowered Heat Cap near ~30 will certainly be good to try out.

[Night Thastus]

I'll vote possibly. I think this basically is what I (and many others) have always said, but it's hard to tell
1: Lower heat cap, closer to lore/previous games
2: Double heat sinks = true double heat sinks
3: No Ghost heat
4: High penalties for running hot. (Ghost blips on radar, actuators + myomer slows down, max speed decrease, radar/minimap static, ammo cookoff, etc)

Bam.
Those 4 together would certainly be my suggestion on the improvement of heat. If we had those 4, hot damn would I love this game even more. Personally #4 is a biggy. You shouldn't be able to run at a constant 90% and act like it's nothing.

[Sereglach]

Praetor Knight, on 29 March 2015 - 09:29 PM, said:

Interesting, certainly worth testing out.

I just wonder if that dissipation is a tad too high, but a lowered Heat Cap near ~30 will certainly be good to try out.

It's worth testing, at least. I'd certainly say the exact numbers of dissipation and capacity are viably up for debate. I'm not a programmer, however, so I don't know exactly how the dissipation numbers are handled and how they'd effect the game. It's more an example than anything else.

However, I think the concept is a very solid option for making single heat sinks worth looking at instead of something we all get rid of as fast as possible.

Night Thastus, on 29 March 2015 - 10:27 PM, said:

I'll vote possibly. I think this basically is what I (and many others) have always said, but it's hard to tell
1: Lower heat cap, closer to lore/previous games
2: Double heat sinks = true double heat sinks
3: No Ghost heat
4: High penalties for running hot. (Ghost blips on radar, actuators + myomer slows down, max speed decrease, radar/minimap static, ammo cookoff, etc)

Bam.
Those 4 together would certainly be my suggestion on the improvement of heat. If we had those 4, hot damn would I love this game even more. Personally #4 is a biggy. You shouldn't be able to run at a constant 90% and act like it's nothing.

Yeah, I'll agree. A huge thing that I think would help balance out gameplay is having incremental penalties to running so hot. There really does need to be a penalty to the incessant alpha-striking gameplay. We're proposing a lot of the same thing, I've just thrown something in there to make single heat sinks worth looking at.

I think another viable option to curtail issues would be imposing heat penalties once a person is tracking over 50% heat for a certain amount of time; and also having the problems be worse at higher heat levels over longer amounts of time.

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One thing worth considering for everyone is that in lore mechs vent a LOT of heat and they do it pretty quickly (as long as they're not suffering from issues like damaged heat sinks). If we actually lower the heat cap then the heat sinks should dissipate heat quicker, in the grand scheme of things. It shouldn't be quite so much about heat capacity as it should be about managing your cooling rates in comparison to how much heat you're generating. That also provides a feel for heat management that's more in line with lore.

Also, thank you both for the good feedback.

[butchly13]

Night Thastus, on 29 March 2015 - 10:27 PM, said:

I'll vote possibly. I think this basically is what I (and many others) have always said, but it's hard to tell
1: Lower heat cap, closer to lore/previous games
2: Double heat sinks = true double heat sinks
3: No Ghost heat
4: High penalties for running hot. (Ghost blips on radar, actuators + myomer slows down, max speed decrease, radar/minimap static, ammo cookoff, etc)

Bam.
Those 4 together would certainly be my suggestion on the improvement of heat. If we had those 4, hot damn would I love this game even more. Personally #4 is a biggy. You shouldn't be able to run at a constant 90% and act like it's nothing.

You got my vote. Penalties for running hot sounds like a fun new mechanic to play with. Probably a decent amount of work for PGI to implement, but I'd definitely like to see them introduce this in the future. Down side is maps like Terra Therma may get chosen even more infrequently than they already do. Granted, your DHS =actual DHS idea may help mitigate this.

Personally, I think PGI would benefit from improving existing content and features before adding more mechs or features. Improve destructive models, maps, cockpit elements, ect. Personally I'd like to see bigger maps too, but I think fine-tuning what they've already made would be a massive step in the right direction. Let's face it, they're working with infrastructure they've been using since the game launched. Sometimes you just have to stop developing new stuff and go back and defrag your earlier efforts.

[Sereglach]

butchly13, on 28 January 2016 - 06:52 AM, said:

You got my vote. Penalties for running hot sounds like a fun new mechanic to play with. Probably a decent amount of work for PGI to implement, but I'd definitely like to see them introduce this in the future. Down side is maps like Terra Therma may get chosen even more infrequently than they already do. Granted, your DHS =actual DHS idea may help mitigate this.

Personally, I think PGI would benefit from improving existing content and features before adding more mechs or features. Improve destructive models, maps, cockpit elements, ect. Personally I'd like to see bigger maps too, but I think fine-tuning what they've already made would be a massive step in the right direction. Let's face it, they're working with infrastructure they've been using since the game launched. Sometimes you just have to stop developing new stuff and go back and defrag your earlier efforts.

Wow, sudden attention to another ancient thread of mine from nearly a year ago. It's also sad that this discussion about the heat system is just as pertinent today as it was then. While some improvements have been made (SHS are at least semi-useful for a modest amount of builds, now, but still pretty much junk), they have a long way to go.

While we're still going to keep getting new maps and mechs, since they have nothing to do with the people who work on the core mechanics and game balancing, it would be nice if they take some time once CW Phase 3 hits (whenever that is) to go back and really polish the core mechanics that they have. There's so much balancing that the game still needs that it's sadly not even funny, in a lot of ways.

[butchly13]

Sereglach, on 28 January 2016 - 09:27 AM, said:

Wow, sudden attention to another ancient thread of mine from nearly a year ago. It's also sad that this discussion about the heat system is just as pertinent today as it was then. While some improvements have been made (SHS are at least semi-useful for a modest amount of builds, now, but still pretty much junk), they have a long way to go.

Oops! It seems I've got a knack for not paying attention to when the last post was. I saw the topic on the first page of Feature Suggestions probably because someone voted recently. Anywho, definitely like yours and Night's take on the heat system. I'm new to all of this so I don't have strong opinions either way, but the way heat works currently seems to be unnecessarily complex and therefore unnecessary. Sometimes simple ideas are more effective than elaborate ones.