Maple Nachiman, on 16 July 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:
Just because mechs come stock with more than the heat penalty cap, doesn't mean they were intended to be fire all at once. Lets just use some heat management.
Gulinborsti, on 16 July 2013 - 10:17 AM, said:
No mech is intended to fire 3+ PPCs or 7+ MLs at the same time ... without punishment
No? Clearly that seems to be the case here in MWO, but since they were designed for BattleTech whether they were designed with the intent of firing all their weapons at once should be gauged by BattleTech standards.
The AWS-8Q with its 3 PPCs produces 30 units of heat on an alpha, with its 28 Heatsinks that means that if the 3 PPCs are fired every time they can be, the AWS-8Q only rises 2 units of heat per weapon fire cycle if it is standing still. If it is walking at 32 km/h that is one more unit of heat per weapon fire cycle, and if running at 54 km/h that is only two more heat per cycle.
So if walking and alpha firing every single time the PPCs could be fired, it would take 10 full alpha striked to overheat into forced shutdown. Heat management on an AWS-8Q consists of every couple alphas only shooting 2 rather than 3 PPCs.
The HBK-4P is a similar story. With only 23 heat sinks and 8 MLs producing a total of 24 heat per alpha, the HBK-4P is only rising 1/2/3 (standing/walking/running) heat per full alpha fire cycle. It would take 10 full alphas while running to cause a forced shutdown due to overheating. The heat management here is again, just shooting 6 MLs every other turn.
Here in MWO, even without this added heat for large alphas, this sort of sustained fire that the mechs were designed to output is completely out of the question. The boogeyman here is not alphas, or heat though, it is convergence. BattleTech solves the problem of these scarry alpha boating mechs by allowing for not all the shots hit, or all of the shots hit the same place. If MWO never does anything about this convergence issue, high alphas will always be a problem, even with arbitrary heat penalties, and applying heat penalties (like in the form of heatsinks only being 1/3 as effective or worse, and this new change) only breaks the designs of the various stock mechs whose record sheets are being imported directly for all of the variants in this game.
One thing that MWO is lacking that could go a long way to help lessen the regularity of high alphas is actually use BattleTech's heat penalties that start occurring long before the mech is overheating and shutting down. Rather than spend to much screen space here talking about it, I will just link to another thread on the subject.
http://mwomercs.com/...-jump-jet-nerf/
Edited by Asatruer, 16 July 2013 - 10:31 AM.