71 replies to this topic

[Nightmare1]

This isn't TT.

There's no reason to implement such a mechanic in the game; it will kill too many Mechs. What may work in a strategy, dice-rolling, chance reliant board game will not work in an online video game.

For example, cutting a Light Mech's speed by 20 kph could be the death of it. Can you imagine cutting a Locust's speed by that much? They are already too much like little glass figurines.

[Khobai]

Quote

There's no reason to implement such a mechanic in the game

there is a reason. it helps prevent abuse of the heat system. right now players run their mechs in the red at 80%-90% with absolutely no penalty.

erppc builds and laser vomit builds are completely out of control in the current meta because theres no heat penalties to keep those builds in check.

Quote

For example, cutting a Light Mech's speed by 20 kph could be the death of it.

Then dont overheat? Simple as that really.

The threshold can be adjusted up or down depending on what feels right for MWO. But there should definitely be a penalty for constantly having your heat in the red.

Edited by Khobai, 14 January 2015 - 06:01 PM.

[Nightmare1]

Khobai, on 14 January 2015 - 05:56 PM, said:

there is a reason. it helps prevent abuse of the heat system. right now players run their mechs in the red at 80%-90% with absolutely no penalty.



Then dont overheat? Simple as that really.

The threshold can be adjusted up or down depending on what feels right for MWO. But there should definitely be a penalty for constantly having your heat in the red.

*Unboxes Crayons*

Let me draw you a picture.

The 100% mark is the maximum operating threshold for BattleMech heat. Once Mech heat reaches this point, a safety cut-out kills the Mech's power in order to prevent it from damaging itself. If a pilot spiked his heat substantially, then damage or death can occur due to the cooling system being overloaded.

The 100% mark represents the safety limit. Passing the safety limit means that you are exceeding your Mech's designated operating conditions. Anything below the limit is okay and will not, nor should, result in any sort of penalty. In RL, nearly all processes have this sort of safety built into them. So long as the process remains below the safety threshold, it will continue to run without any negative impacts regardless of where on the scale it is operating. When it reaches the threshold, the automatic safeties stop the process. Thresholds are typically set well below the danger marks to prevent a process from approaching too close to the danger limit.

In MWO terms, you can overheat without damaging your Mech, as I'm sure you've noticed, so long as you do not overheat with too high of a heat spike. What you are proposing is, in essence, shifting the entire scale downward, but leaving the damage penalties where they currently are. Instead, you want to halve the safe operating range and then implement movement penalties for going above it.

That is not logical and will kill Light Mechs and energy boats. IS energy boats only recently made a comeback; before that, it was all Cataphracts, LRM boats, and Guass Jagers. I'd rather not see our new-found diversity and fun gameplay killed off on some kind of grand heat experiment.

[Lily from animove]

Nightmare1, on 14 January 2015 - 06:08 PM, said:

*Unboxes Crayons*

Let me draw you a picture.

The 100% mark is the maximum operating threshold for BattleMech heat. Once Mech heat reaches this point, a safety cut-out kills the Mech's power in order to prevent it from damaging itself. If a pilot spiked his heat substantially, then damage or death can occur due to the cooling system being overloaded.

The 100% mark represents the safety limit. Passing the safety limit means that you are exceeding your Mech's designated operating conditions. Anything below the limit is okay and will not, nor should, result in any sort of penalty. In RL, nearly all processes have this sort of safety built into them. So long as the process remains below the safety threshold, it will continue to run without any negative impacts regardless of where on the scale it is operating. When it reaches the threshold, the automatic safeties stop the process. Thresholds are typically set well below the danger marks to prevent a process from approaching too close to the danger limit.

In MWO terms, you can overheat without damaging your Mech, as I'm sure you've noticed, so long as you do not overheat with too high of a heat spike. What you are proposing is, in essence, shifting the entire scale downward, but leaving the damage penalties where they currently are. Instead, you want to halve the safe operating range and then implement movement penalties for going above it.

That is not logical and will kill Light Mechs and energy boats. IS energy boats only recently made a comeback; before that, it was all Cataphracts, LRM boats, and Guass Jagers. I'd rather not see our new-found diversity and fun gameplay killed off on some kind of grand heat experiment.

but when I know my hardware breaks at 130C then i will probably make my emergency shut down routines at already 100C it would not be very clever using 129C.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

The heat system just needs total rework, to have deep and be faith full to TT,
Adding by that a lot to game play and deep.
With 10 DH lets say janner with 4ML would be heat neutral.
So that would rise possibilitys to build less dps but totally heat neutral meks for example.
Real heat scale would just change the game totally, totally for good.
Adding just something to current shallow heat system, not sure if that would goes well.
Rework of heat scale, and make the real one is the answer.

[happy mech]

Nightmare1, on 14 January 2015 - 04:18 PM, said:

Currently, a Firestarter with a 100 kph speed cap would always move 100 kph up until it shut down. That's a good thing since the Firestarter's chief defense is it's speed. Under your scale, it would only move 15 kph (85% penalty and insta-death). Last I checked, 100 kph does not equal 15 kph. Thus, under your new scale, your Firestarter would not maintain the same firepower and speed.

Thus, you don't understand math and you don't understand your own proposal.

man, do you even read what i write?
in the system now, i use firestarter at 90-100% heat and have 150 km/h speed and destroy atlas left arm and torso in 55 seconds on terra therma
in the system i propose, i use firestarter at 40-50% heat and have 150 km/h speed and destroy atlas left arm and torso in 55 seconds on terra therma
same speed, same dps

Khobai, on 14 January 2015 - 05:42 PM, said:

In tabletop you lose -1 movement for every 5 excess heat. 1 movement in tabletop is equivalent to 17.82 kph in MWO. So for every 5 heat over your heatsink threshold you should lose -17.82 kph. A mech cannot go slower than 1 though (17.82 kph) and the max speed penalty possible is -5 or -89.1kph, since anymore heat beyond that would make you shut down automatically anyway.

You should only suffer penalties if you exceed your heatsink threshold. Your heatsink threshold should be equal to the number of heatsinks you have (x2 for DHS). A mech with 20 DHS would have a heatsink threshold of 40. So for every 5 heat over 40 it would suffer -17.82 kph.

The game should record your mech's heat every second. Every 10 seconds the game should take the average of your mech's heat over the last 10 seconds and that average should be used to determine your heat penalty. So with 20 DHS and a threshold of 40, if your mech's average heat was 45, youd suffer -17.82 kph penalty for 10 seconds. If your mech's average heat was 50 youd suffer -35.64 kph for 10 seconds. And if your mech ever reached 40+30=70 heat it would shut down automatically.

Thats the most true-to-tabletop way of putting heat movement penalties into MWO.

thank you for posting how it works originally, it could be adopted and tweaked

Lily from animove, on 15 January 2015 - 04:48 AM, said:

but when I know my hardware breaks at 130C then i will probably make my emergency shut down routines at already 100C it would not be very clever using 129C.

good example

Jaeger Gonzo, on 15 January 2015 - 06:41 AM, said:

The heat system just needs total rework, to have deep and be faith full to TT,
Adding by that a lot to game play and deep.
With 10 DH lets say janner with 4ML would be heat neutral.
So that would rise possibilitys to build less dps but totally heat neutral meks for example.
Real heat scale would just change the game totally, totally for good.
Adding just something to current shallow heat system, not sure if that would goes well.
Rework of heat scale, and make the real one is the answer.

i believe my system could be tested easily (use what is already in the game), just check for current heat and set max throttle, test how it works on the test server, get feedback on how it would affect the game
but i agree the rework and a way to remove ghost heat (which is probably also caused by high heat cap i think) would be good

[Khobai]

Quote

The 100% mark is the maximum operating threshold for BattleMech heat. Once Mech heat reaches this point, a safety cut-out kills the Mech's power in order to prevent it from damaging itself. If a pilot spiked his heat substantially, then damage or death can occur due to the cooling system being overloaded.

The 100% mark represents the safety limit. Passing the safety limit means that you are exceeding your Mech's designated operating conditions.

I fail to see your point. Just because 100% is the safety limit for the mech's internal structure doesnt mean the rest of the mech systems cant be adversely affected by overheating less than 100%. Different systems overheat at different temperatures. The engine for example would be more susceptible to overheating than the Internal structure.

Plus its not a faithful representation of the battletech heatscale. In battletech when you hit 100% you automatically shutdown. But theres still other heat penalties that get applied before you get to 100%... like ammo explosion chance, movement penalty, hit penalties, etc....

Im not saying MWOs heatscale should copy battletechs exactly. But there should definitely be penalties for constantly running your mech in the red. laser vomit and erppc builds completely abuse the heat system right now and that cant be ignored for the sake of game balance.

Edited by Khobai, 15 January 2015 - 11:56 AM.

[Bellum Dominum]

I can only hope that this OP is a troll. This wouldn't do anything in the way of 'balance'. Makes no sense from an engineering standpoint. Has no place in official lore or any of the fan fiction (at least not that I have ever come across).

There is a penalty of this sort already in place. It's called complete shutdown, or if over ridden an explosion, when one ignores their heat Just like the engine in your automobile.

And what is with all the crazies that think that MWO is trying to be TT?
If you want to play TT, MW4, or candy crush then go play those games.

Edited by Death Drow, 15 January 2015 - 12:07 PM.

[Nightmare1]

Lily from animove, on 15 January 2015 - 04:48 AM, said:

but when I know my hardware breaks at 130C then i will probably make my emergency shut down routines at already 100C it would not be very clever using 129C.

The 100 degrees C you reference would be the 100% safety cut out. That would leave a 30 degree C buffer before you hit the actual damage/danger zone. That's what I am saying we have now; overheat a little bit, and you accrue no damage. Overheat a good bit, and you damage your CT internals. Overheat by a lot, and you cause significant damage throughout the Mech or possibly death.

We've got this in-game already; there's no sense in saying, "Let's make the safety buffer 80 degrees instead!" That's literally making the safety buffer larger than the operational window.

Granted, the values are arbitrary for the sake of example, but I think you can get what I'm driving at here. Cutting the operational scale by 50% is nuts!

happy mech, on 15 January 2015 - 10:17 AM, said:

man, do you even read what i write?

Yes, you said that in the current state of things, you can run your Mech with the same DPS between 40% and 50% and 90% and 100%. I'm not disputing that.

However, you then said that under your system you could do this exact same thing. That's what I was calling you on; you can't have it both ways. If that's not what you are saying, then you should invest more time in writing coherently so that you are communicable.

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 11:47 AM, said:

I fail to see your point. Just because 100% is the safety limit for the mech's internal structure doesnt mean the rest of the mech systems cant be adversely affected by overheating less than 100%. Different systems overheat at different temperatures. The engine for example would be more susceptible to overheating than the Internal structure.

The 100% mark would be the safety cut-out for the most susceptible components within the Mech. That is how cut-out systems are designed. The weakest parts tend to fail first, so cut-outs are designed to protect the most vulnerable systems. In other words, it does not matter what the fail temperatures of the various components are, the most susceptible components are the ones for which the safety cut-out is most intended to protect. By cutting power before these can overload, systems with higher tolerances would never be affected, unless you were to spike your heat dramatically enough to damage them while shut-down. I thought this was implicit enough in the description that it need not be stated. Apparently, I was incorrect.

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 11:47 AM, said:

Plus its not a faithful representation of the battletech heatscale. In battletech when you hit 100% you automatically shutdown. But theres still other heat penalties that get applied before you get to 100%... like ammo explosion chance, movement penalty, hit penalties, etc....

*Beats head on table* This isn't TT! Have you not paid any attention to any of the previous discussions? This has already been well covered.

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 11:47 AM, said:

Im not saying MWOs heatscale should copy battletechs exactly. But there should definitely be penalties for constantly running your mech in the red. laser vomit and erppc builds completely abuse the heat system right now and that cant be ignored for the sake of game balance.

You're still missing the point; running in the red is still running in the safe zone that's incorporated into the Mech by design! There shouldn't be any negative effects unless you go over 100%! In real life, I can run a reactor between 80% and 90% all day long without any negative penalties because the 100% cut-out is well below the danger level. If it gets too high, I lower the heat. If it spikes suddenly and hits 100%, the system engages and shuts it down or adds cooling. The safety limit itself is so low compared to the danger limit, that it would take a heat spike of incredible energy to raise the level high enough to actually pose a threat.

In MWO, the safety margin is fairly small and is only a few percentage points over 100% on the gauge. This is to punish pilots who use override extensively. Your TT heatscale's chances for ammo and Mech explosions are in the game if you go over the 100% mark!!!

The bottomline, is that the OP wants that 100% limit cut in half before you start accruing negative affects. I say no, because it will kill the gameplay, is illogical if you take even a moment to critically consider it, is completely unneeded, and will unbalance the entire game at a time when only a few gentle tweaks are needed to bring it fully into balance.

As far as laser vomits and PPCs are concerned, those are reflective of the quirk system and not the current heat system. Tweaks to the quirks will bring those back into line with the rest of the game's weapon system. Just because a handful of features need fixing does not mean you should take a hammer to the entire apparatus.

Death Drow, on 15 January 2015 - 11:55 AM, said:

I can only hope that this OP is a troll. This wouldn't do anything in the way of 'balance'. Makes no sense from an engineering standpoint. Has no place in official lore or any of the fan fiction (at least not that I have ever come across).

There is a penalty of this sort already in place. It's called complete shutdown, or if over ridden an explosion, when one ignores their heat Just like the engine in your automobile.

And what is with all the crazies that think that MWO is trying to be TT?
If you want to play TT, MW4, or candy crush then go play those games.

Thank God! I thought I was going crazy myself! Finally, another voice of reason!

+1

[Bellum Dominum]

Nightmare I've been wondering the same thing myself. Am I the crazy one? I'm seeing a rash of these 'in TT' this.. 'in TT' that.. lately. THIS ISN'T FREAKING TT. I don't care how well you like the brokenness of TT. This is MWO. Take your broken ideas back to TT please.

EDIT: Not directed at you, but I'm sure you get that

Edited by Death Drow, 15 January 2015 - 01:06 PM.

[VinJade]

Quote

THIS ISN'T FREAKING TT. I don't care how well you like the brokenness of TT. This is MWO. Take your broken ideas back to TT please.

oh that's rich. MWO's ECM is broken!
it was never meant to make a mech vanish from radar or map just ruin the day for thiose that use Arty IVs, C3s, ect.
the ECM grants mechs the phantom mech ability that had been ban from BT a long time ago.

ithere are so many things broken in MWO that would never fly in the tabletop game that isn't funny.

for a good examply, the Gauss Rifle does not need to be charged by the pilot but on its own.
the Gauss Rifle explodes if it is damaged, and so on.

I am sure if I dig a little more I kind find so much more..

but that's not the point, the point is there are some things that do in fact need to be tinkered with. the Movement restrictions from heat is also in the BT books which unless stated other wise is cannon.

The heat effect should be taken into account.

besides need I remind you that in the screen as the game loads up they have 'Battletech' under MWO.

and Battletech IS the table top game.and is the back bone of this game.

now granted the MWO is one of the few MW games that is closest to the TT game from weapon tonnage/crits, Armor, & D/HS.

so if they are going to take from the source then they should also deal with the heat problems but with a MWO twist.

the only ones I don't think that would like this type of thing are those that love to run the red all the time and still get away with full movement speed.

Edited by VinJade, 15 January 2015 - 01:32 PM.

[Bellum Dominum]

VinJade yes there are many things in this game that are not like table top. First thing I noticed was... it's on a computer.

[Khobai]

Quote

The 100% mark would be the safety cut-out for the most susceptible components within the Mech

Youre missing the whole point. The absurdly high heat capacity in MWO is half of whats wrong with the game and one of the reasons mechs die so fast. Pinpoint alphas being the other main reason.

The heat system is fundamentally broken. period. And one possible way to fix it is to make it harder to abuse by adding heat penalties. Adding heat penalties also makes MWO closer to battletech, which is the game mechwarrior is based off of.

The only plausible reason you would be opposed to rebalancing the heat system to prevent abuse is if youre one of the players abusing the system. Everyone else seems to recognize theres a problem. And youre certainly not contributing alternative ideas to balance the heat system either.

Edited by Khobai, 15 January 2015 - 02:27 PM.

[Bellum Dominum]

Until one of you that are pushing for all of this 'TT this TT that' also ask that PGI removes the ability to change mech builds from all mechs other than OMNI's then everything you have to say might as well be invalid.

The option in the rules to do is is ONLY an optional rule up to the group playing the TT to decide if they want to use it or not.

Edited by Death Drow, 15 January 2015 - 02:35 PM.

[HlynkaCG]

I would like to see the

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 02:18 PM, said:

Youre missing the whole point. The absurdly high heat capacity in MWO is half of whats wrong with the game and one of the reasons mechs die so fast. Pinpoint alphas being the other main reason.

The heat system is fundamentally broken. period. And one possible way to fix it is to make it harder to abuse by adding heat penalties.

I would rather see the thresholds reduced and then work from there.

[HlynkaCG]

Death Drow, on 15 January 2015 - 02:30 PM, said:

Until one of you that are pushing for all of this 'TT this TT that' also ask that PGI removes the ability to change mech builds from all mechs other an OMNI's then everything you have to say is invalid.

Dude do you even read the forums? That's been brought up. You should count yourself lucky that PGI lets you modify armor distribution.

But anyway this thread is about heat and movement.

[Nightmare1]

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 02:18 PM, said:

Youre missing the whole point. The absurdly high heat capacity in MWO is half of whats wrong with the game and one of the reasons mechs die so fast. pinpoint alphas being the other main reason.

The heat system is fundamentally broken. period. And one possible way to fix it to make it harder to abuse by adding heat penalties. Adding heat penalties also makes MWO closer to battletech, which is the game mechwarrior is based off of.

"Half of what's wrong?" Seriously? That's a cop out dude.

The heat in this game is actually okay now. Sure, a few Mechs are over-quirked, but that can easily be tweaked. The rest of the mechanics are pretty good. JJs impose a heat penalty. Running at max speed imposes a heat penalty. Overheating shuts you down. Spiking too high past the overheat mark results in damage or death. These all seem reasonable and logical.

Cutting the scale by 50% is not reasonable or logical. That's like saying that your shoe lace is broken, so you're going to chop off one foot. It's an over reactive measure to fix something that only a few people seem to perceive as a problem. Frankly, I'd much rather have PGI work on CW than some harebrained new heat scale.

Mechs die quickly because of concentrated firepower. That comes in the form of heavy weapon load outs or multiple points of fire from several Mechs. They don't die quickly because of heat; they die quickly because their pilots were outmatched. Complaining about this and then demanding a heat nerf is rather childish. When I die, even if I'm insta-killed by a powerful Clan Mech, I don't get frustrated by it. I just shrug it off and recognize it for what it is; I made a mistake, or the other pilot was better. I don't come to the forums and ask PGI to radically alter the game to try to save my butt.

That being said, cutting the scale will result in longer TTK, yes. However, the same pilots whining about dying too quickly now will still be whining about dying too quickly once this sort of scale is implemented. The rest of us will just be living longer and dying of boredom because the consequences for rash actions will have nearly been annulled. Stupidity should be painful; if you make a mistake, your Mech should get shredded. PGI shouldn't have to save your butt by breaking the game's heat mechanic.

Frankly, I like my matches ending in about eight minutes. That seems like a good game length. I don't want things getting nerfed through the floor so that I have to play out the full 15 minutes every single time because we are reducing to bludgeoning each other to death.

Trying to mandate that everyone be punished simply for having the bad luck of owning an energy boat is ludicrous.

Finally, I do recognize that MechWarrior is based on BattleTech. However, the key word there is "based."It is not BattleTech or TT. It is based on these. That does not mean that it must fall into lock step with them; instead, let's leave the heat scale as it is and worry about fixing ghost heat and the over quirks. That will solve all the problems you complain about without gutting the game.

[Bellum Dominum]

I don't like ghost heat, but without it the heat scale is too much. I'm fine with the current system, or should say accepted it long ago and have adapted to it.

I don't like all the additional internal hit points (or whatever term has been given to it: hit points, internal points, etc). I've adapted to it as well.

There are things in this game that needs worked on. Hit registration. Hit boxes on some mechs still. CW needs more maps. The UI (if we really want to bring out the big demon) Etc. Etc. Etc.

Personally if I can adapt to and accept some things about a game and there are other issues with the game that actually hinders the play ability of the game then I'd much rather see the games developers spend time on those issues.

[Khobai]

Quote

The heat in this game is actually okay now.

except the meta is completely dominated by laser vomit and erppc builds. its not low heat weapons dominating its the high heat weapons.

[Lily from animove]

Nightmare1, on 15 January 2015 - 12:20 PM, said:

The 100 degrees C you reference would be the 100% safety cut out. That would leave a 30 degree C buffer before you hit the actual damage/danger zone. That's what I am saying we have now; overheat a little bit, and you accrue no damage. Overheat a good bit, and you damage your CT internals. Overheat by a lot, and you cause significant damage throughout the Mech or possibly death.

We've got this in-game already; there's no sense in saying, "Let's make the safety buffer 80 degrees instead!" That's literally making the safety buffer larger than the operational window.

Granted, the values are arbitrary for the sake of example, but I think you can get what I'm driving at here. Cutting the operational scale by 50% is nuts!



Yes, you said that in the current state of things, you can run your Mech with the same DPS between 40% and 50% and 90% and 100%. I'm not disputing that.

However, you then said that under your system you could do this exact same thing. That's what I was calling you on; you can't have it both ways. If that's not what you are saying, then you should invest more time in writing coherently so that you are communicable.




The 100% mark would be the safety cut-out for the most susceptible components within the Mech. That is how cut-out systems are designed. The weakest parts tend to fail first, so cut-outs are designed to protect the most vulnerable systems. In other words, it does not matter what the fail temperatures of the various components are, the most susceptible components are the ones for which the safety cut-out is most intended to protect. By cutting power before these can overload, systems with higher tolerances would never be affected, unless you were to spike your heat dramatically enough to damage them while shut-down. I thought this was implicit enough in the description that it need not be stated. Apparently, I was incorrect.

I amde a few test,

I tested a 6 flamer and 6 CERSPL (they give me exactly 20% heat) on my nova now which with some "tabfiring and pressing the overheat putton can asily be kept at a constant 101%.

with the override, it does damage your mech very significantly.

With shutting down, it seems that when you heattreshold reaches 106% you start taking minimum damage, but below this, with shutdown sequence it seems to not cause any damage.