SolasTau, on 15 July 2014 - 01:17 PM, said:
So... I'm new to MWO. I've been playing two weeks... and largely I have no real issues with the game outside of things that I remember being radically different from BattleTech. I used to run BattleTech games, so there's some differences between TT and MWO that kinda' grind my gears, but I always try to keep in mind that hey, this is an FPS, it's GOING to be different. So that said...
Let's talk about Alpha Strikes.
I was reading that the dev team thinks Alpha Strikes are a problem-that the prevalence of builds in meta that focus on doing the biggest Alpha they can is something that bothers the devs. This may be outdated info or whatever have you, but I was reading it just the other day. This got me thinking about how the board game deals with this issue, and in so thinking about that, I also got to thinking about the differences between MWO Heat and BattleTech Heat.
Most MechWarrior players I've ever talked to don't KNOW that the Heat system in BattleTech is BRUTAL. If you're mad that your mech shuts down at "max" heat, you may not want to read this link, 'cuz that's PANSY MODE for BattleTech.
http://d20battletech.wikidot.com/heat
Important: I know BattleTech's heat system is designed for a TURN BASED STRATEGY game and would NOT be good for an FPS. But I *believe* that sticking a little closer to that table would vastly improve the "balance" of the game. If nothing else, it would make shake up the meta very hard and max damage alphas would probably disappear...or be made of Gauss Rifles exclusively.
So how do we get there? ...I'm not sure. I don't KNOW exactly how they translated a BattleTech turn to model heat and heat dissipation in real time. My best guess is they doubled the Max heat a 'mech could sustain at any one time (so 60 instead of 30 Heat) and then applied a linear amount of heat cooled per heat sink per "time period" that I also do not know. That "time period" is very key to this discussion. They may have painstakingly adapted a variant of the rules and it's just obtuse on the surface... but I more strongly suspect they took the concept and applied their own internal reasoning to it as that would be appropriate for an entirely different game.
Anyhow. I'm just responding to what I was reading. I don't know how current it all is, I'm late to this party, on and on. And if this has been talked about prior to me chiming in, well... it's till a good idea. So there. ;p
You are somewhat correct in your observations.
The heat system in battletech works as follows - your mech fires and generates heat during its turn. At the beginning of the next turn, the total number of operational heatsinks is deducted from the heat total.
Effectively, this means that if you had 20 double heatsinks - you can generate 40 points of heat without having any heat to penalize you on the start of your next turn.
So the heat system is not nearly as brutal as it sounds - since you have to exceed your heatsink capacity by a considerable amount before problems arise.
The problem is that PGI did not properly think about how to incorporate a real-time heat system. They thought that they could have heatsinks increase the shutdown limit and simply cut heatsink performance while keeping various tabletop values.
They thought that, by doing this, it would force players to more properly manage how much heat they were building up.
Of course, having never played a computer game before, PGI didn't expect players to figure out that it was far more beneficial to stack on high-heat, instant-damage weapons (such as PPCs) and slam those weapons into an exposed opponent before dropping back behind cover (even if that meant they had to wait a little while to cool down).
Which is why they eventually introduced "heat scaling" and other insults to innovation.
The solution is relatively simple and revolves around the thermal equation. You have heat-sink capacity and you have chassis capacity. Between the two sits an insulator with a given value and for every unit of energy (heat) added to the heat sink system, a nonlinear migration of that energy to the chassis begins (the more heat in your heatsinks, the less effective the insulator, the faster heat bleeds over into your chassis).
The insulator works both ways - meaning that 'spiking' your heat leads to a disproportionate buildup in your chassis (that takes longer to get rid of and tends to linger) as compared to a more gradual process of firing that gives heatsinks time to dissipate heat out of the system.
If you 'spike' your heat higher than what your heatsinks can handle - it spills over instantly into the chassis and begins slowing the mech and even causing damage to internals).
This would actually make single heatsinks very challenging to play - as a stock mech with 10 standard heatsinks would suffer heat buildup (due to environmental and movement buildup) when firing one PPC - if we go according to BT values.
Of course - it would be a negligible amount in the long run - but failing to let the heatsinks dissipate heat would result in more heat dumping directly into the chassis (which would cause problems).
With that system - you have no need for heat scaling. 2 ERPPCs is 30 heat. A 40 heatsink capacity is pretty high-end for most mechs (even clans) - which means that firing 2x 2ERPPC volleys results in 60 heat with current recycle rates putting direct heat dump into the chasis at around 5 points with another 5-8 points crossing the insulating barrier during the first recycle (to continue pouring over as the heatsinks try to remove the buildup).
It creates a natural gradient where creating a 'spike' of 15 points may only result in a spill-over of 2 points while a heat spike of 30 might result in 6 points building up in the chassis.
Thus, you don't really run into a situation where a Jenner fires its lasers and instantly crawls to a halt (again, exact values would be subject to some change - and I argue that some weapons need their mechanics completely overhauled) - nor do you get a situation where you can blast 4 PPCs all at one time without suffering a real-time consequence for the decision (but not arbitrarily decide how many weapons you can fire at one time without suffering phantom heat - heat buildup would be more a consequence of management and design than a consequence of developer arbitration).
The simplest way to think of this idea is if you have two pots of water connected by a small tube. One pot is a fixed size of 30 units and represents your chassis. The other pot can be stacked onto in 1 or 2 unit increments (depending upon whether we are talking single or double heatsinks). Each time a weapon is fired, a certain unit of water is added to the pot of variable size equal to the heat the weapon generates. In the bottom of the pot is a drain sized so that, if full, the pot will drain fully within 10 seconds.
The higher the water rises in that variable pot representing your heatsinks, the more pressure there is to push water through the small tube and into the pot with a fixed size and the quicker the water levels will equalize.
Should you over-fill the variable sized pot, it simply overflows directly into the pot with a fixed size.
Perhaps a small drain can be added to the fixed pot to simulate the sinking effect of armor (which would get rid of the last few units of heat more quickly than it would pass through the small tube).
But that might have just confused anyone who thought they understood. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and I think there are about two pictures here.
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