135 replies to this topic

[Brakkyn]

Your 'Mech should shut down until it "naturally" dissipates enough heat for the 'Mech to restart.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

mekabuser, on 20 November 2011 - 12:09 PM, said:

scary results. Anything over a few seconds and overheat = death.
team mates protecting you? yeah right, maybe, but Ill tell you anything over ten seconds and your anywhere near the front means your dead.

The cooling jackets/suits that MechWarriors are lets you survive quite a bit, mind you.
And as long as the Life Support of the 'Mech isn't damage, the MechWarrior doesn't suffer any significant ill effects (other than sweating and such).

[Xhaleon]

Miles Tails Prower, on 20 November 2011 - 01:32 PM, said:

A specific, universal amount of time to spend in forced shut down wouldn't make sense.

The time you spend in forced shut down should be based on how quickly your mech dissipates waste heat. So a mech equipped with a lot of heat sinks should reactivate sooner from forced shut down than a mech equipped with few.

I think the point is the additional time it takes for the mech to go through the startup sequence after cooling down. Then again, maybe there shouldn't be anything significant because there's already so little penalty to hitting the Override button every time.

[Reno Blade]

im against the "the more heatsinks, the faster it restarts"..
because. your heatsinks are not working without power!

if you play a Novacat/Awesome with high count of heatsinks, you should dissipate the heat faster if your reaktor is still powering the heatsinks.
everyone should lower the same amount of heat over the same time while shut down. that way its the best to keep your alphas rare and an eye on the red line !

[Miles Tails Prower]

Xhaleon, on 20 November 2011 - 02:07 PM, said:

I think the point is the additional time it takes for the mech to go through the startup sequence after cooling down. Then again, maybe there shouldn't be anything significant because there's already so little penalty to hitting the Override button every time.

I re-read the question in greater detail then.

Well the first time the mech activates the computer goes through all the bullcrap of informing the pilot of its system settings etc, an emergency shut down wouldn't force the computer to go through that routine again so it should only take a few seconds to bring the power back up again.

[Miles Tails Prower]

Reno Blade, on 20 November 2011 - 02:09 PM, said:

im against the "the more heatsinks, the faster it restarts"..
because. your heatsinks are not working without power!

I'm pretty sure the entire mech doesn't totally shut off. It's like turning your car's engine off while still using existing charged battery power to keep the air conditioning and radio on.

[I R O N Patriot]

Reno Blade, on 20 November 2011 - 02:09 PM, said:

im against the "the more heatsinks, the faster it restarts"..
because. your heatsinks are not working without power!

if you play a Novacat/Awesome with high count of heatsinks, you should dissipate the heat faster if your reaktor is still powering the heatsinks.
everyone should lower the same amount of heat over the same time while shut down. that way its the best to keep your alphas rare and an eye on the red line !

Heat sinks are not allways mechanical. You have several non-mechanical designs that are implemented to just spread the surface-area to dissipate heat. I am sure in the 31st century this tech will be used.

[Xhaleon]

Miles Tails Prower, on 20 November 2011 - 02:14 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure the entire mech doesn't totally shut off. It's like turning your car's engine off while still using existing charged battery power to keep the air conditioning and radio on.

Heat sinks in Battletech are heat pumps, otherwise they'd never cool down from a medium laser in anything short of an hour. Those require electrical power, which is no longer supplied as the fusion engine has been shut down completely, you know, the whole point of the safety mechanism. We can assume that there is always enough energy in a battery just for the startup.

But like I said, there's something inherently wrong with the way overriding the emergency shutdown works. With the developers stating that the pilot cannot be harmed directly, that leaves out cooking to death as a penalty. What else is there? Making the sinks less efficient the longer you stay overheated? Or weapons not recycling as fast due to heat damage?

[Pht]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 20 November 2011 - 02:03 PM, said:

The cooling jackets/suits that MechWarriors are lets you survive quite a bit, mind you.
And as long as the Life Support of the 'Mech isn't damage, the MechWarrior doesn't suffer any significant ill effects (other than sweating and such).

Actually, even with the best cooling vests, after a while you can suffer from just normal good old heat exhaustion. The cooling systems are good, but they're not that good. 'Mechs can run HOT! ... hot enough to cause heat death.

Reno Blade, on 20 November 2011 - 02:09 PM, said:

everyone should lower the same amount of heat over the same time while shut down. that way its the best to keep your alphas rare and an eye on the red line !

That nerfs the daylights out of designs like the flashman and such - it would render the biggest advantage of energy based weapons into a nearly moot point.

Irontygr, on 20 November 2011 - 02:22 PM, said:

Heat sinks are not allways mechanical. You have several non-mechanical designs that are implemented to just spread the surface-area to dissipate heat. I am sure in the 31st century this tech will be used.

J Echo, on 20 November 2011 - 02:24 PM, said:

The kind of heatsinks which just radiate heat by spreading surface areas dissipate heat very, very slowly.

Actually, the name "heatsink" is a misnomer. They're actually heat-pump setups, just like on air conditioner units.

http://www.sarna.net...Cooling_Systems

[Mota Prefect]

It should be handled just like in MW2. It had the best balance of all the mechwarrior games.

[Mota Prefect]

Xhaleon, on 20 November 2011 - 02:30 PM, said:

Heat sinks in Battletech are heat pumps, otherwise they'd never cool down from a medium laser in anything short of an hour. Those require electrical power, which is no longer supplied as the fusion engine has been shut down completely, you know, the whole point of the safety mechanism. We can assume that there is always enough energy in a battery just for the startup.

But like I said, there's something inherently wrong with the way overriding the emergency shutdown works. With the developers stating that the pilot cannot be harmed directly, that leaves out cooking to death as a penalty. What else is there? Making the sinks less efficient the longer you stay overheated? Or weapons not recycling as fast due to heat damage?

Penalty is what its always been, you risk blowing up.

[Pht]

Mota Prefect, on 20 November 2011 - 03:41 PM, said:

Penalty is what its always been, you risk blowing up.

Only if you're carrying explosive ammo.

[simon1812]

this question is more complicated than u think, 5 seconds alone are a lifetime if you are in the middle of combat, but again if your lance pals will cover you while u get rdy for the next devastating shot (thats the only reason worth overheating) 5 seconds will mean little if anything at all, 60 seconds ? you might as well declared defeat.

it should depend which weapons you have equipped and how many, I dont know enough about thermodynamics to elaborate any further, darn you ADHD !!!

I like the idea somebody suggested that weapons should break after overheating a couple of times, it would be a form to encourage players to diversify their arsenal or to make it so they make every shot count.

Edited by simon1812, 20 November 2011 - 04:00 PM.

[Sirisian]

MW4 handled this good for gameplay. 5 seconds is a good restart time. Basically just waiting for the heat to drop below safe levels which is usually fairly fast.

I think a lot of you are being unrealistic in regards to gameplay. 20 seconds sounds boring for going over a little bit. You might as well as had an option to blow up the mech when it overheated at that point. The penalty that you decided to alpha strike or fire a few more times hoping for a kill should have a progressive penalty which the heat sink system allows as you wait for the heat to drop.

[Bear Shaman]

Here's a thought, though I don't believe it's got a basis in the canon at all. What if a massive overheat burned off any lubricants/oil that keeps the joints of the mech moving smoothly? It could result in a match-long slowdown of the mech or a lot more pitching and rolling in the chassis. No damage to the armor, but something's definitely mechanically wrong now. It'd be like running a car out of oil IRL. Nothing works as well afterward.

As always, I'm spitballing, and the devs have probably already come up with a solution to overheating with regards to game balance. It's fun to talk, though.

[Kenyon Burguess]

a forced restart due to heat should be a fatal error on the part of the mechwarrior. so 30 seconds would certainly achieve that.

[Pht]

J Echo, on 20 November 2011 - 03:49 PM, said:

You can blow up even with a laser-only build, but it takes some impressive boneheadedness.

In mw3, yes, but that makes zero sense by the lore and zero sense by the game mechanic.

You don't blow up because without explosive ammo, because *there's nothing TO blow up!*

There are, however, other repercussions - you can literally cook the myomer muscles and electronics that move and control your mech, amongst other things.

Edited by Pht, 20 November 2011 - 04:17 PM.

[Bear Shaman]

Pht, on 20 November 2011 - 02:32 PM, said:

That nerfs the daylights out of designs like the flashman and such - it would render the biggest advantage of energy based weapons into a nearly moot point.

I have one objection to this: Laser weapons never run out of ammo. Missiles run out very quickly, and ballistics fire much more slowly. I believe that the people here who are suggesting stronger penalties for overheating see the current advantage of lasers and consider it overcompensation. LAMS don't help against them, they're deadly accurate, they're powerful, they don't run out of ammo, and at present the only penalty for using them too quickly is a temporary shutdown - that just encourages people to remain far enough from the action and behind enough cover that the shutdown is not an issue. Infighting is downright suicidal when you're in the scopes of a one-shot sniper, which is what most laser mechs equate to right now.

For my part, any limitations I suggest here are not intended to discourage the use of lasers, but rather to encourage their judicious use by removing some of the advantages of staying away from the fight. If you suffer when you overheat, you can still poptart, but there will actually be consequences. If you make an infighting lasermech that can handle its own heat and/or is designed to volley fire, that will have its place in the game, too.

I'm not the expert here, of course, but my goal is to make suggestions that promote the use of a variety of battlemechs so that we see a more interesting, mixed group of mechwarriors in any given fight.

That said, yeah, thirty seconds is a bit much, and it doesn't encourage close-quarters laser use when people are terrified of becoming an immediate sitting duck.

[Pht]

Bear Shaman, on 20 November 2011 - 04:46 PM, said:

I have one objection to this: Laser weapons never run out of ammo.

Which I don't contend with - however, they're already balanced by their prohibitive heat output and (relative to ballistics and missiles) lower damage capabilities.

Smacking them with even more heat will make their rate of fire go down below the basement.

As for excessive heat and the problems it causes...

[Bear Shaman]

Ah. Sorry about that, I had accidentally placed you into the camp of people who would prefer to see lasers utterly unchanged. If you're in favor of these penalties, especially for excessive overheating, I could see some of these working. The problem thus far is that movement isn't restricted at all until we reach insane heat levels, the possibility of mech/ammo explosion was removed when laserboat fans mistook it for a glitch, and shutdown can be overridden for quite some time without penalty. In its current iteration, MW4 has severely overpowered not merely laser-heavy mechs, but heat-heavy mechs. It really seems as though autocannons have no place right now, and missiles have a somewhat more limited application.

Thanks for clarifying, though I do see a problem with the ability to avoid a shutdown (at least at earlier heat levels) based on a die roll. There's a strong, vocal contingent of people on these forums who object to any sort of random number generation in Mechwarrior. Maybe the likelihood of shutdown at any given heat level could be determined by the number of heat sinks installed on the mech? That might translate to the computer determining whether it can cool the mech off in time to prevent an ammo explosion while the engine's still running.