66 replies to this topic

[Hotthedd]

Belorion, on 04 June 2013 - 03:30 AM, said:

Agreeing with heat penalties and agreeing with the op suggestion are two totally different things. First off even though they aren't all that fleshed out right now there are already heat penalties in the game. Second the op suggestion is more about limiting alpha strikes than having anything to do with heat penalties. Alpha strikes are fine. They are part of the game, always have been, and should always be.

While Alpha strikes ARE part of the game, Alpha strikes that all magically hit the same spot are NOT. Additionally, Alpha strikes (as per the lore) are shots of last resort, only used when you had to take the chance of shutting down or damaging your mech in order to finish off a target. They were NEVER the default mode of weapons fire, and never should be.

Syllogy, on 04 June 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

Heat penalties are a staple of Battletech, not Mechwarrior.

MechWarrior is based on Battletech. It occurs in the Battletech universe. Therefore, heat penalties are a staple of MechWarrior.

[Theodor Kling]

HiplyRustic, on 04 June 2013 - 05:26 AM, said:

You can't be serious? Start crippling mechs @50% of their rated design capacity for heat management? Do you realize how many non-boats you'll cripple that way? What is your goal?

Mechs are rated to deal with a specified amount of heat safely, and until that threshold is crossed there should be no penalties, it's asinine.

The numbers need some teaking, sure. But ANY heat that does not drop down to around 10% within 3 sec would translate to heat points in TT: It´s more heat then your heat sinks can dissipate within a round. So staying at 50 heat for extended periods of time means at least 7 heat points. You have already some movement penalties there.
That is using the first heat with a shutdown risk as 100%, 14 heat which is also the max heat for a restart after shutdown.

[blinkin]

HiplyRustic, on 04 June 2013 - 05:26 AM, said:

You can't be serious? Start crippling mechs @50% of their rated design capacity for heat management? Do you realize how many non-boats you'll cripple that way? What is your goal?

Mechs are rated to deal with a specified amount of heat safely, and until that threshold is crossed there should be no penalties, it's asinine.

it may be asinine but WW2 planes did the same thing. if you ran them at full throttle very long (or even anything above around 70-80%) they would begin to overheat. you could open the radiator cowlings and run it a little harder, but that would slow your plane down, because of the increased drag.

military tech is often designed to be allowed to run beyond safe levels, so that in emergency situations you can squeeze out more power and maybe live. being able to take a machine to full throttle DOES NOT mean that it is healthy for the machine and won't cause problems.

[Lyoto Machida]

Matthew Ace, on 31 May 2013 - 11:29 PM, said:

Gee, I dunno, I played MW2 and MW3 as a kid (MW2 when I was 8 or 9, I'm now 24) and understood heat management. Why don't you tell me?

You were 9 and clearly not 12 years old.

blinkin, on 01 June 2013 - 10:50 AM, said:

i hate this general view that games, movies, or any form of entertainment need to be thoroughly dumbed down for younger people to enjoy them.

It's not just for younger people...it's for the average person in general.

I love that old George Carlin line...it was something along the lines of "Think about the average person you know and how dumb they are. Now imagine that 50% of the people in the world are dumber than that person..."

The average person will never get into this game...too complicated.

[Pater Mors]

The Gunman, on 04 June 2013 - 05:08 AM, said:

OP,

If I've read your post correctly, under your proposal a player could:
Alpha 6 ERPPCs,
spike their heat level to 170% or beyond,
then automatically shut down,
automatically power up,
then continue on their way with no lasting after effects. Correct?

While another player could:
Chain fire AC2's,
Override auto shut down,
heat up to 101%
Suffer permanent damage to mechs systems.


If so, how would your suggestion discourage Alphas?

No, I think you've misread my post.

For a start, anything over 140% is instant death and with decreased heat cap (from the first point) a 6 PPC Alpha would very likely kill you outright.

Blowing past 110% with a 6PPC Alpha would likely blow a few heat sinks and cause a permanent 25% penalty to engine power under my original suggestions.

Edited by Pater Mors, 04 June 2013 - 05:16 PM.

[The Gunman]

Pater Mors, on 04 June 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

No, I think you've misread my post.

For a start, anything over 140% is instant death and with decreased heat cap (from the first point) a 6 PPC Alpha would very likely kill you outright.

Blowing past 110% with a 6PPC Alpha would likely blow a few heat sinks and cause a permanent 25% penalty to engine power under my original suggestions.

In that case I strongly support your suggestion.

[Pater Mors]

The Gunman, on 04 June 2013 - 05:58 PM, said:

In that case I strongly support your suggestion.

Cheers mate.

Keep in mind the numbers don't have to be even close to what I've suggested, although I do think 140% should be about the limit before complete engine failure (death).

[Gamgee]

I want to bump this to keep the discussion going. How do people feel after the patch? While poptarts have been heavily nerfed, I still feel high alpha strike builds are mostly unaffected by this.

[Milt]

this would solve so many problems with the current build. i absolutely and wholeheartedly support this

[Metafox]

I believe that heat penalties would help to reduce PPC boating and they would also make regular gameplay more interesting.

With reference to the original post, I would like the soft penalties to begin at a lower heat value, maybe 70%. It wouldn't be too difficult to juggle your heat above and below 80%, effectively spending a great deal of time above 80% but negating the penalties by dipping below the limit every 5 seconds or so. By reducing the limit to 70%, players probably wouldn't be able to alpha strike to nearly 100% without facing some heat penalties.

I'd also like to see harsher hard penalties. Perhaps increased chances of ammo cooking and chances of core meltdown beginning at 110%. I'd prefer to see hard penalties make alpha striking at high heat a significant danger. As the original suggestion was written, the existing shutdown at 100% is a far bigger danger than any of the penalties.

[Skoaljaw]

I'd like to see how this heat thing plays out. It's been pretty obvious thus far that things that worked on the table top back in the 80's do not translate into the world we play in now. I'm confident that PGI will have it sorted out before official launch. Gotta keep in mind we're still in Beta.

[Pater Mors]

Metafox, on 06 June 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

I believe that heat penalties would help to reduce PPC boating and they would also make regular gameplay more interesting.

With reference to the original post, I would like the soft penalties to begin at a lower heat value, maybe 70%. It wouldn't be too difficult to juggle your heat above and below 80%, effectively spending a great deal of time above 80% but negating the penalties by dipping below the limit every 5 seconds or so. By reducing the limit to 70%, players probably wouldn't be able to alpha strike to nearly 100% without facing some heat penalties.

I'd also like to see harsher hard penalties. Perhaps increased chances of ammo cooking and chances of core meltdown beginning at 110%. I'd prefer to see hard penalties make alpha striking at high heat a significant danger. As the original suggestion was written, the existing shutdown at 100% is a far bigger danger than any of the penalties.

Cheers, thought this topic had died the usual lack-of-interest forum death! Thanks for the bump.

I agree with you 100%. The numbers I used were just place-holders to illustrate the idea itself.

I would suggest they be set reasonably high to begin with and then slowly lowered (made harsher) over time until a balance has been achieved.

After reading PGI's version of 'heat penalties' I really wish they'd go with literally any other idea on these forums. It doesn't even have to be mine, just anything other than this 'stacking' penalty they're looking at.

[Exilyth]

From the descriptions in the novels, piloting a battlemech must feel like operating heavy machinery in a sauna during an earthquake. And that's under 'normal' operation conditions. There are only a few reports of pilots driving their mech so hot that their skin began to blister. There are countless descriptions of pilots falling unconcious long before reaching that point. Although they like to forget the fact, 'Mechpilots are human beings after all.

Then again, telling a player 'you've fallen unconcious due to heat' doesn't make for the best gameplay, so the penalties suffered by the machine could be increased to compensate.

[Pater Mors]

I've always had that image in my head of a pilot sitting in the cockpit, hellish light flooding in from the battle in front, sweat dripping down his face and steam rising from his cooling jacket much like a lot of the old cinematic imagery from the MechCommander and other series.

Someone (I forgot who) brought up sweat droplets as a cool aesthetic effect when running very hot. I'd love to see that, maybe your hand come up and wipe your face etc etc.

[Accursed Richards]

Lyoto Machida, on 04 June 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

It's not just for younger people...it's for the average person in general.

I love that old George Carlin line...it was something along the lines of "Think about the average person you know and how dumb they are. Now imagine that 50% of the people in the world are dumber than that person..."

The average person will never get into this game...too complicated.

You ever noticed how people who laugh at the "average" person are always assuming they're above average?

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Heat penalties are a good idea, but your specifics are lacking.

1 - Penalties should start much earlier. I like 25%, but it could be pushed higher. 50% would seem like a hard limit to a practical starting point for penalties.

2 - Soft penalties are a great idea, but they should scale based on your actual heat level. If you're at 26% heat, then you suffer a 0.5% penalty to max speed, accuracy, turn/twist/arm reflex rates, sensor range, etc. If you're at 75% heat, then you suffer a 25% penalty to those things (assuming a flat 0.5% penalty per % over 25 on the heat scale). Naturally these numbers are super rough, but they are flat, predictable, and consistent across all builds and equipment options.

3 - Hard penalties are a great idea, but they should not involve random chance. That's why I dislike ammo explosions due to heat, in the context of MWO. I prefer a system where you distinguish between Override mode and Shutdown mode. If you're past 100% heat, you take internal damage to all locations with engine critical slots (CT for Standard engine, LT/RT/CT for XLs), if you are in Override mode. The damage would be low per each individual tick, but would tick pretty quickly and would add up if you consistently push your heat. If you push past 125% heat then you take damage even if in Shutdown mode (and double damage in Override mode while past 125% heat). If you push past 150% heat your engine dies outright and you are destroyed (your engine goes into an emergency shutdown that can't be overridden until it undergoes a full maintenance cycle, so it's a mission kill).

The idea would be to make it harder to fight effectively when running hot, making a properly cool build advantageous. It would also be punishing to overheat your mech outright, especially with 4-6 PPCs that push you way past 100%. Finally, it would make rapid, high-heat damage output much harder to apply with precision, since it'd introduce margin of error to your aiming (I imagine it might just change your effective convergence point by a certain amount, say 0.1 meter per degree of excess heat, which would give a 5m convergence error at 75%), thus reducing the sustained deadliness of 4-6 PPC builds (and 2 AC20 builds as well, since those tend to run hot). It would limit damage concentration (and with lower responsiveness to the controls it would make compensating a bit harder), which is most of what needs to happen to fix the high-alpha problem.

[Mahnmut]

The idea of visually representing heat could really help in more ways than one. It would give the player some more immersion - double vision, blacking out, messed up sensors etc, but more importantly it would also make things harder to see by obscuring your vision so staying at higher heats would actually affect your ability to pilot. Having these visual cues as you reach closer to 100% would be better than any real permanent penalties which should only occur above the 100% threshold.

[Pater Mors]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 16 June 2013 - 03:39 PM, said:

Heat penalties are a good idea, but your specifics are lacking.

1 - Penalties should start much earlier. I like 25%, but it could be pushed higher. 50% would seem like a hard limit to a practical starting point for penalties.

2 - Soft penalties are a great idea, but they should scale based on your actual heat level. If you're at 26% heat, then you suffer a 0.5% penalty to max speed, accuracy, turn/twist/arm reflex rates, sensor range, etc. If you're at 75% heat, then you suffer a 25% penalty to those things (assuming a flat 0.5% penalty per % over 25 on the heat scale). Naturally these numbers are super rough, but they are flat, predictable, and consistent across all builds and equipment options.

3 - Hard penalties are a great idea, but they should not involve random chance. That's why I dislike ammo explosions due to heat, in the context of MWO. I prefer a system where you distinguish between Override mode and Shutdown mode. If you're past 100% heat, you take internal damage to all locations with engine critical slots (CT for Standard engine, LT/RT/CT for XLs), if you are in Override mode. The damage would be low per each individual tick, but would tick pretty quickly and would add up if you consistently push your heat. If you push past 125% heat then you take damage even if in Shutdown mode (and double damage in Override mode while past 125% heat). If you push past 150% heat your engine dies outright and you are destroyed (your engine goes into an emergency shutdown that can't be overridden until it undergoes a full maintenance cycle, so it's a mission kill).

The idea would be to make it harder to fight effectively when running hot, making a properly cool build advantageous. It would also be punishing to overheat your mech outright, especially with 4-6 PPCs that push you way past 100%. Finally, it would make rapid, high-heat damage output much harder to apply with precision, since it'd introduce margin of error to your aiming (I imagine it might just change your effective convergence point by a certain amount, say 0.1 meter per degree of excess heat, which would give a 5m convergence error at 75%), thus reducing the sustained deadliness of 4-6 PPC builds (and 2 AC20 builds as well, since those tend to run hot). It would limit damage concentration (and with lower responsiveness to the controls it would make compensating a bit harder), which is most of what needs to happen to fix the high-alpha problem.

I have to say that I fully disagree with your first two points. 25% is far to low to start penalizing people. Mechs are designed with a certain amount of heat tolerance in mind (100% of the capacity) and to start punishing them that early I feel is arbitrary and has no real benefit. There will be no point running ANY large laser based weapons if that were the case, because every single time you fire you're incurring penalties.

Certainly the soft penalties can start kicking in lower than 80%, but I would be hesitant to suggest anything less than about 65%. But I also feel that time spent hot is key. If you are running hot consistently then you'll start feeling heat stress like any machine does. So you can run at 80% for 1 or 2 seconds without much issue as long as you cool off quickly, but when you start getting to 3, 4, 5 seconds the soft penalties start kick in.

I also disagree with override being the only function that brings hard penalties when overheating. Overriding should bring very severe penalties because you're preventing the Mech's systems from protecting themselves, but anything over 100% is still going to damage you whether you override or not because you're exceeding the tolerance levels of the chassis.

[Bendak]

To the OP. For novice pilots, your mechanics are too confusing and convulted to understand. A simple solution is usually more effective and that is what the devs are proposing. Hows about we let them try their solution before yours?

[VikingN1nja]

Isn't heat penalty when you exceed the threshold and overheat not when you are using a combination of weapons and what is point of having a 1.4 HE if you overheat more due to using more than ie 2 vs 3 lasers now your HE is not valid?