7 replies to this topic

[Dave Woodchuck]

Since everyone else is tossing out random, semi-informed musings, I decided to do the same

How about instead of focusing on heat, power draws, and ghost heat, we try something a little different to create a disincentive to the ALPHA-ALPHA-ALPHA style of combat. How about we have cooldown affected by the number of weapons fired? Chain-fire, firing in pairs or threes, or something along those lines sees normal weapon cooldown. Fire everything, and your ‘mech has to wait a little before trying something that heavy again. Let’s go straight to the boatiest of boat stock ‘mechs, the Nova Prime. That joker sports 12 cERML, no sweat. He fires one fist at a time (6 lasers, no ghost heat under the current system, so the precedent is set for that being fine), then his weapon cooldown is normal. Fire both fists (12 lasers, ghost heat out of every orifice under the current system), and instead he has a 2x weapon cooldown time.

You could set a number of a weapon for each weapon that can be fired before the cooldown penalties stack. This would also make weapon cooldown modules rather attractive.

This means that alpha strikes are viable but very situational.

Heck, with the current ghost heat thresholds and groups, we already have a good idea of where the developer likes to draw the line on massed weapons of a certain type. It even allows for some restrictions of the sort to be made on weapons which aren’t even hot; it is an equal-opportunity discriminator!

With the cooldown penalty (call it a “mechanical reset” or whatever), the bizarre magic of ghost heat can either go away entirely or be significantly toned down, and you can even point to real-world historical precedent to justify it. A WWII battleship rarely fired all the guns in a single turret at once; single fire of each barrel (“chain-firing”) allowed for greater rate of fire and greater accuracy, and it spared the ship’s structure from extra stresses.

Now, someone will surely say that a battlemech is not a battleship. That is correct. But I contend that this explanation is slightly less absurd than ghost heat, and heck, it certainly make more sense if you don’t look at it super hard.

[Tristan Winter]

I don't know. I don't really see how it makes more sense than some sort of "limited power" mechanic. Because it seems to be an arbitrary mechanic to simulate something that should happen naturally. For example, it's kind of like adding cockpit shake when running at high speeds, to simulate that it's difficult to hit your target when going fast. But unless you're arguing that your mech's gyros can't handle the shaking from moving fast, there's no need to add a penalty. Hitting your target when moving at full speed is difficult by default. Same as hitting with many different weapons at once, unless you're boating.

And what would be the logical argument for a longer cooldown? Limited power? I don't understand it.

Besides, Paul has already created the mechanic. Discussing alternatives seems a bit futile when he's not asking for feedback and we don't know what's coming.

[Tyler Valentine]

Dave Woodchuck, on 02 March 2016 - 08:36 AM, said:

Since everyone else is tossing out random, semi-informed musings, I decided to do the same

How about instead of focusing on...power draws...

Fire both fists (12 lasers, ghost heat out of every orifice under the current system), and instead he has a 2x weapon cooldown time.

You just described the 'power draw' system that PGI is implementing

[Lily from animove]

A propr heatscale, and not a giant heattreshold past 2alphas worth 70+ that can vaporize the CT of 50% of the existing chassis.

adjusting heat for some weapons having too less and some too much.

done. And unlike many simple sounding ideas, it is in this case actually that simple. it just needs some tries and adjustments with soem values to set it to a good point.

[TLBFestus]

Power is the one thing that all weapons have in common. More specifically Power draw.

Limit the amount of "draw" available and you limit the amount of weapons you can fire at once.

Consider that the more power you draw, the greater the stress on the system and the more heat that is produced, overwhelming the ability of heat sinks to dissipate said heat quickly and taking longer to cool down.

That should be the basis of the system.

[Gyrok]

TLBFestus, on 02 March 2016 - 09:02 AM, said:

Power is the one thing that all weapons have in common. More specifically Power draw.

Limit the amount of "draw" available and you limit the amount of weapons you can fire at once.

Consider that the more power you draw, the greater the stress on the system and the more heat that is produced, overwhelming the ability of heat sinks to dissipate said heat quickly and taking longer to cool down.

That should be the basis of the system.

If you go to a mana bar though...do you really need heat anymore?

You would now be limiting weapons that are more heat efficient by way of 2 systems...like ballistics for example.

[Lily from animove]

Gyrok, on 02 March 2016 - 09:07 AM, said:

If you go to a mana bar though...do you really need heat anymore?

You would now be limiting weapons that are more heat efficient by way of 2 systems...like ballistics for example.

easy to implement, PGI just eneds to change the color of the empty heat to blue
And we rename Heatsinks to ether collectors drainign magic from the ether to the mech to cats more pew pew.
MagicWarrior Online

Edited by Lily from animove, 02 March 2016 - 09:14 AM.

[FupDup]

Gyrok, on 02 March 2016 - 09:07 AM, said:

If you go to a mana bar though...do you really need heat anymore?

You would now be limiting weapons that are more heat efficient by way of 2 systems...like ballistics for example.

I guess that the difference for PowerDraw™ is that for some weapons with quite high damage but rather low heat (e.g. Gauss primary offender) it gives a way to limit them without directly giving them more heat.