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[Maelstrum]

I was testing out the NVA-D when I found a bit of a flaw to the ghost heat system (not opposed to it by the way): if you manually cycle fire one small laser at a time but don't wait for the 0.5s delay after the 6th shot to reset ghost heat, the ghost heat table applies completely to every successive shot. It feels unintuitive to have a laser that heats just 1% per shot be able to put enough stress on the heatsinks to suddenly raise it 5-10% on the 8th shot and by 50-60% on the eleventh shot. (Approximate values based on how I saw my gauge jump up)

Its entirely understandable that firing an alpha of 8-12 lasers at once, even smalls, would produce increasingly massive heat. But firing them one after another and generating the same amount of heat makes little sense.

The result is any sustained manual laser cycling is hindered by the pause required to reset the ghost heat mechanic, breaking the immersion and making it feel like a bug.

As an easy but suboptimal solution, the required delay parameter could be changed from 0.5s to 0.3s or less to reduce the occurance of ghosting-ghost heat. I don't see a way a shorter delay would hinder the mechanic's effectiveness to prevent PPC/LRGlas/AC20 boats alpha. And it would allow lasers to be fired at a more interesting pace. The value should be kept high enough to prevent players from cheating the system by ultra fast/macro firing their large energy weapons but at a low enough value to allow manually cycling fire smaller energy weapons.

The other solution I have in mind would revisit the whole ghost heat system. Basically generating a lot of heat by alphaing could affect how fast the heatsinks cooldown instead of generating arbitrarily more heat. Preventing another salvo for a lot more time than currently or risking suicide by overheat. You'd still have your snipers that shoot hard but have an abysmal dps. Laser gattling could become a viable technique replacing some of the current all-in laser blasters. And you'd think twice shooting an alpha if it means being unable to fight back an extended period of time. You could even throw in that when heatsinks are already under a lot of stress, all heat generated at this threshold (e.g.: 75% and up) would generate even more heat forcing players to keep their heat under the threshold and probably thinning the laser builds towards more ballistic build.

Just my two cents on the topic.

I've tried finding a similar topic but failed to dig anything by searching "laser cycle ghost heat" amongst the thousands of ghost heat post. If i missed it, feel free to redirect me and I'll move my post.

Still, I love my brawling 10smlas Nova-D!

[Tahribator]

Ghost heat is all about keeping that initial alpha down and stretching it out. 0.5 seconds of delay is pretty good in this aspect, it's short enough not to be an annoyance but long enough to delay the massive damage spike and give you more exposure. Pulling it down to 0.3 seconds would essentially remove the delay. Believe me, you don't want to go back to the days of Assaults one-shotting every other 'Mech in the game.

Your other idea has the same effect. If I'm able to dump 60-90 laser alpha and essentially kill everything I look at, the reduced cooling efficiency afterwards doesn't matter at all. I'll just boat mid-long range weapons, find a good spot and dump my alphas. I can wait out the cooling phase in cover.