233 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

Yes, the barrel will heat faster and more violently, but it's not that the heat comes only from hot gases heating the barrel that second or two before they vent out of the buisiness end. And effort to keep barrel and its housing still is energy consuming.

But not that consuming, given that in WWI those various field guns could fire for hours with little in the way of active cooling. Usually some runner would bring water over to pour it on every so often; that's a far cry from the supposedly sophisticated cooling mechanisms employed on a 'Mech.

[Gas Guzzler]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 01:48 PM, said:

The HUD bar-indicator for 'Gost Heat triggered' make little sense as it is more of an 0/1 state indicator. If Russ was correct that it is a bar, not a message or alike, then the quantity such bar represents is not 0/1 but something else (so not just alpha, but something else is factored). If he was inaccurate, then, yes, all may revolve around alpha.
THe HUD indicator like coloring weapon groups around recticle or weapons in the lower right panel in bright red when firing said weapon will trigger GH might be a good thing. But the GH trigger is checked serveside, thus the server must constantly send ticks or states of weapons (in order to bypass packet loss problem, as if the absolutely reliable Mech info systems are a norm for BT) that will lead to the same problem as was with slow convergence - network load. So, I'd say low to no chances. With Power Draw system the indicator probably can have a client side indicator (with server validation) I thnik.

Well consider this... you have a 0.5 second window right? The indicator bar could decay to 0 at the 0.5 second bar. Maybe they will tweak the 0.5 second window, I don't know, but for ghost heat 1, you have to space shots 0.5 seconds apart. So if the indicator bar depletes in .5 seconds you know when you can fire again. Does that make sense?

[pyrocomp]

Gas Guzzler, on 12 August 2016 - 01:53 PM, said:

Well consider this... you have a 0.5 second window right? The indicator bar could decay to 0 at the 0.5 second bar. Maybe they will tweak the 0.5 second window, I don't know, but for ghost heat 1, you have to space shots 0.5 seconds apart. So if the indicator bar depletes in .5 seconds you know when you can fire again. Does that make sense?

Honestly, I doubt that people will percieve it as a depleting bar rather than a blinking line. Plus reation times are, well, not that they are of the same amount, no. Natural reaction for an event in the center of field of attention (quite a small area in the field of view) is around 0.2 seconds for normal men, less for trained ones (to 0.05 seconds, but I never was able to get pas 0.1 even at my best), more than 0.25 is considered an indication of a fatigue settling in, but I'm not sure that it is not 0.3. So 0.5 second bar in the conner or somewhere near the screen border (you know from spectating how people do not see anything that is not directly under the recticle) is quite unhelpfull and does not make much sense in my opinion. But cannot guarantee that unless I try.

[Alistair Winter]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

And MWO shows no impact from the shot on the firing Mech.

Ah, I get what you're saying now. Well, a lot of players have been asking for some sort of recoil, either in terms of visible barrel movement or the whole mech (and aiming reticle) visually moving to compensate for the recoil of the shot.

But I understand the argument that there needs to be some sort of hot space gnomes involved when there's no visible impact.

[pyrocomp]

Yeonne Greene, on 12 August 2016 - 01:50 PM, said:

But not that consuming, given that in WWI those various field guns could fire for hours with little in the way of active cooling. Usually some runner would bring water over to pour it on every so often; that's a far cry from the supposedly sophisticated cooling mechanisms employed on a 'Mech.

During WWI nobody bothered to lower recoil of the field gun (with a hole in the bottom of the barrel). And caliber of those guns was not that big. Plus reload times were really high. Sea cannons, that due to the construction and requirements had loading mechnism and could fire at a much higher rate, actually ran into the overheating troubles. And water pouring onto the hot barrel it the most affective way of active cooling. Even nowadays. So I'd say that example of water pouring (MechWarrior coolshot or coolant flush of previous incarnations are actually this thing) is quite an example of active cooling.

And Mechs do not have sophisticated cooling mechnisms. Simple air/water pumping throung the radiator as in any common device (laptop or PC cooler is the same in nature, even better with heat tubes). What a Mech has (in the lore) is the sophisticated heat transfer system that increadibly quickly outtakes heat from the equippement and transfers it to the rediators (I wonder how those are not melting in the process). Plus, again, pouring water on the mech greatly increases its cooling speed thus indirectly providing hints that the Mech is no different from the common refridgerator. And in game the Mech is a refrigerator with temprature inside (that gauge near the minimap!), few shelves to crush (heat sinks, weapons and other internals) and panels to shoot through (armored components).

EDIT: typos

Edited by pyrocomp, 12 August 2016 - 02:24 PM.

[pyrocomp]

Alistair Winter, on 12 August 2016 - 02:13 PM, said:

Ah, I get what you're saying now. Well, a lot of players have been asking for some sort of recoil, either in terms of visible barrel movement or the whole mech (and aiming reticle) visually moving to compensate for the recoil of the shot.

But I understand the argument that there needs to be some sort of hot space gnomes involved when there's no visible impact.

Shhh! Do not say this aloud or the 'Dat takes away Da Skill!' crowd will light the pitchforks and sharpen the torches.
Not that this approach can have natural explanation why waist level mounted weapons have lower recoil (in terms of recticle deviation length) than high mounted ballisticts. Or that dakka builds suddenly will have spread even on the IS ACs. And that spread will be percieved as random (however it would be implemented). So beware of the no-RNG crowd also.

PS: if you will provoke no-RNG crowd ask'em about crits, I'm really interested in the answer, but have spent my flame sheild on the other forum.

Edited by pyrocomp, 12 August 2016 - 02:38 PM.

[Lyoto Machida]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 August 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

russ says dekkuls, too.

*shrugs*


People still worried about laser spam? Easy fix? Put all Large Lasers heat and damage back to lore levels.

They can't.

[Y E O N N E]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 02:18 PM, said:

During WWI nobody bothered to lower recoil of the field gun (with a hole in the bottom of the barrel). And caliber of those guns was not that big. Plus reload times were really high. Sea cannons that due to the construction and requirements had loading mechnism and could fire at much higher rate actually ran into the overheating troubles. And water pouring onto the hot barrel it the most affective way of active cooling. Even nowadays. So I'd say that example of water pouring (MechWarrior coolshot or coolant flush of previos incarnations are actually this thing) is quite an example of active heating.

And Mechs do not have sophisticated cooling mechnisms. Simple air/water pumping throung the radiator is in any common device (laptop or PC cooler is the same in nature even better with heat tubes). What a Mech has (in the lore) is the sophisticated heat transfer system that increadibly quickly outtakes heat from the equippement and transfers it to the rediators (I wonder how those are not melting in the process). Plus, again, pouring water on the mech greatly increases its cooling speed thus indirectly providing hints that the Mech is no different from the common refridgerator. And in game the Mech is a refrigerator with temprature inside (that gauge near the minimap!), few shelves to crush (heat sinks, weapons and other internals) and panels to shoot through (armored components).

Begging your pardon, but many field pieces in WWI were naval weapons adapted for shore-use, and I'm not talking about the coastal defense guns. They were given carriages and recoil-control systems (spring mechanism to roll it forward after firing at first, later proper hydraulic systems). There were also purpose-built weapons of similar caliber. Personally, I would not consider 80 mm small (40 mm would be small), but they still went up past 200 mm. Their rate of fire is identical to that on their naval-grade counterparts (2 rounds per minute) from the same time period.

The sophistication in the 'Mech cooling comes from the fantastical materials they use in their double heat-sinks as well as the magical instantaneous transfer of heat from the weapons to the sinks. Also the fact that it is all automatically regulated; no water boy running up to your 'Mech to throw some water on it.

[pyrocomp]

Yeonne Greene, on 12 August 2016 - 02:39 PM, said:

Begging your pardon, but many field pieces in WWI were naval weapons adapted for shore-use, and I'm not talking about the coastal defense guns. They were given carriages and recoil-control systems (spring mechanism to roll it forward after firing at first, later proper hydraulic systems). There were also purpose-built weapons of similar caliber. Personally, I would not consider 80 mm small (40 mm would be small), but they still went up past 200 mm. Their rate of fire is identical to that on their naval-grade counterparts (2 rounds per minute) from the same time period.

Ok. From the beginnig. The WWI cannons were used as an argument that BT autocannons should not be hot.
Now. First, 2 rounds per minute is 1 round per 30 seconds. Not 1 round per 2 seconds. The 15 times difference for the barrel heating intensity (with pouring water over them as the WWI cruiser main caliber cannons had the water cooling systems as had many of the decondary weapons). Thus runners for the water. Plus the barrels were exposed to the air which is not the case for MWO where much of the gun is inside of the Mech.

Second, spring mechanism and hydraulic system 'catch' barrel after the shot and slow it down while either accelerating themselves with the platfrom they were mounted on or lower the force (but for longer time to keep that force) that was fixed to the ground by some means. After that the barrel was returned to the original postion. The cycle took few seconds with hydraulics and around a secon or two. BT cannon even with such mechanism should get back about 10 times faster. Thus 'rigidity' or the system is much higher. As a consequence higher means to keep it that way - higher energy used to do so, higher heat per shot (but this can be tackled with supertech of the BT universe).

Third, 2 minuted per minute fire rate consumes ammo at an incredible speed. This temp of fire was used only in the situation of highly concentrated fire. Not hours. For hours fire rate of a cannon was kept lower than this just to save ammo. Just what type of the target requires a artillery battery to keep that firing rate on each barrel for 4 hours? It's less than any kind of a dicive battle, but consumes 480 shells per barrel that exeeds ammo used per barrel to storm Berlin in 1945 (and that wasn't done in a day). HMS Hood had 163 shells per barrel of the main caliber and wasn't expected to fire them all in a moments notice rather than use it during full patrol and multiple engagements.

The 2 rounds per minute fire rate was needed in the naval battle due to the nature of naval manuevres and battle orders. But it was naver ment to be sustained for hours.

So while I may be wrong in my estimations of WWI technology performace and I have limited knoweledge of key details of various battles, but the argument that WWI naval cannons had high consistent fire rate for hours without overheating looks somewhat unbased and it definetely cannot be used to justify no-heat BT cannons.

Edited by pyrocomp, 12 August 2016 - 03:28 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Note I never said they shouldn't be hot. Rather, I implied that they should be generating heat at a rate low enough that our fantastic space-magic heat-sinks should be able to keep them heat-neutral, given that ye olde kannone can be kept cool enough for sustained fire (they pounded enemy positions for days) when doused with coolant at a much lower rate. That is the only point I was trying to make. I mean, I've gone ***** shooting. Those 20 ga. shotguns got hot only after sustained fire for 30 minutes, at a rate of one shot every 12 seconds or so; then you need to cool it off...which if we had decided to throw water on it would have been pretty much instantaneous. Sure, an artillery piece has more powder and thus more energy, but it also has a lot more mass to soak it up.

And think of it this way; a weapons-grade laser can, at best, only be 60% efficient if I recall my science right and it takes a lot of energy to make it as effective as we see in MWO. We're talking megawatts, here. Whatever 3 points of heat from a Medium laser is in terms of kelvins....will be far and away hotter than anything coming out of a single AC/20 shot. If we can keep that heat-neutral, ballistics are trivial.

[Novakaine]

[AnTi90d]

Alistair Winter, on 12 August 2016 - 10:01 AM, said:

It's just balancing space magic. Ballistic weapons should all be as cold as gauss rifles, realistically.

In TableTop, ballistics are cold but are balanced by having extremely volatile ammunition.

People don't run 5AC5 builds in TT because the ammo required to keep that thing alive would be the death of your mech and possibly your team. If your mech gets over 50% hot or if someone gets a lucky shot on you.. your ammo might start to explode in your mech. If 100 AC5 rounds pop, that's 500 damage: enough to kill you and kill or disable every mech near you.

That would be an awesome and lore correct way of balancing ballistics. They also already have AOE damage coded in the game from artillery.

All lasers need to be balanced is a lower heat cap and more dangerous heatscale penalties.. like mechs becoming nearly immobile when very hot.. cockpit damage when your mech is 100% hot.. ammo exploding after 50% heat..

PGI needs to go play actual-Battletech for inspiration and stop inventing bandaid fixes to problems that they, themselves, have created.. (by not having negative drawbacks to too much heat.. by not having ammunition be deadly to everyone.. by making mechs have such a high heat cap..) TT ballistics and lasers are balanced. That system can be emulated here in a way that would preserve weapon diversity and we don't need another damn bar next to our heat bar with some arbitrary, non-canon BS that they invented.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Andi Nagasia, on 12 August 2016 - 11:41 AM, said:

maybe we are looking at this wrong,
people are always comparing Lasers needing more Energy to use then ACs,
perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way,

instead of thinking or a AC needing Lots of Energy to Reset after firing,
why dont we look at lasers as if they needed less Energy?

in this case a Laser stores Power and holds the Energy at the Weapon,
so firing a laser woundnt take that much energy and would be balanced to AC energy use?

so instead of a AC needing 10Energy and a Laser needing 50energy,
the AC needs 10, but the Laser has a Battery and only needs 10 to activate,

come on guys im trying to fluff it into working some how,
im grasping at straws(i cant do any more Fluff'icals Capt, im giving ya' all shes got!!!)

if you fit a bigger engine does it give you more energy?

cause if not you have it misnamed

[pyrocomp]

Yeonne Greene, on 12 August 2016 - 05:07 PM, said:

Note I never said they shouldn't be hot. Rather, I implied that they should be generating heat at a rate low enough that our fantastic space-magic heat-sinks should be able to keep them heat-neutral, given that ye olde kannone can be kept cool enough for sustained fire (they pounded enemy positions for days) when doused with coolant at a much lower rate. That is the only point I was trying to make. I mean, I've gone ***** shooting. Those 20 ga. shotguns got hot only after sustained fire for 30 minutes, at a rate of one shot every 12 seconds or so; then you need to cool it off...which if we had decided to throw water on it would have been pretty much instantaneous. Sure, an artillery piece has more powder and thus more energy, but it also has a lot more mass to soak it up.

And think of it this way; a weapons-grade laser can, at best, only be 60% efficient if I recall my science right and it takes a lot of energy to make it as effective as we see in MWO. We're talking megawatts, here. Whatever 3 points of heat from a Medium laser is in terms of kelvins....will be far and away hotter than anything coming out of a single AC/20 shot. If we can keep that heat-neutral, ballistics are trivial.

Well, that's the key problem. If we consider ACs heavy (and 11 tons of AC/20 are heavy only in BT, real world 203 mm cannons had barrel plus lock mass aroun 18-23 tonnes out of 50-400 tons turrets and 110-120 kg shells) then yes, your arguments look good. But they are extrememly lightweight thus making the recoil strong and keeping those ACs pinpoint problematic.

Now real lasers. Boeing HEL MD (technology demostrator aka 'already-not-a-prototype' as advertised) capable of shooting down drones and fired mortar shells (speed is thus low), had power of 10 kWt. Northrop Grumman tests their anti-air 2 kWt laser. DARPA plans to develop 100 kWt laser to be effective against infantry and light armor. Hence BT tech functions at or below 1 MWt even at medium lasers. For simplicity 1 heat = 400 kWt times burn time (arbitrary unit). Thus 1 BT heat unit give you 0.1-0.4 MJ for estimation purpose only (for any other purpose... this is a game and that is the limit of this unit usefulness).

Now back to ACs. AC/20 has 7 round per ton. Lets assume that this includes casing. Thus, around 130 kg per round, which is close to real life (as powder and cartride have relatively low mass of few kiloss). MWO AC/20 round travels at 650 m/s. Real life 203 mm round travels at about 550 m/s and is capable of reaching 30 km range, but ranges are off the game and table for gameplay reasons. So once again close to the real life. Kinetic energy of real life 203 mm shell is 16 MJ, BT AC/20 shell has kinetic energy of 27 MJ. Now to the cannon. The momentum coserves. The real life 203 mm cannons in their turrent had recoil around 900-1200 mm, not a BT case with exact zero.
But back to the subject. Let the barrel and lock of AC/20 weight half of the weapon (for real life situation that ratio should be around 1/5th, but lets be generous). Thus 6 tones of barrel and a projctile at the moment right after the shot have equal momentums (actually barrel has higher momentum for having higher butt area and for the gases jet, but we will leave this out of brackets). With equal momentums the kinetic energies of the bodies in motion are back proportional to the mass. Thus AC/20 barrel will have 60 times less energy than the fired shell. Around 0.4-0.5 MJ in the kinetic energy (that will be absorbed by dampers and heat them). That is 1-2 heat in BT and this do not account for direct heating by the powder burn. BT AC/20 produces 6 heat. Should I say more?

Barrels of the small bore rifles also do get warm after not so intence use.

As to shelling the enemy positions... The battery had to do it. And said battery rarely had low barrel count. But artilery use tactics and strategy from ancient Greece to WWII is not my strong side and at this moment I'll pass. I know from the memoirs that 'mad shooting' had it's place, but often was in a dire situation (shoot or die under tank tracks) or as a preparation move before full frontal assault. And thus wasn't prolonged. For other things... Well, I'll skip, not my department, not my field, not my science.

TL/DR: Nerds that invented BT had strange and weird ideas on what military tech is but in this case they accidentially (RNF, dart-board or whaevent Random bestoved on them) got correct values.

EDIT: typos

Edited by pyrocomp, 12 August 2016 - 06:30 PM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Alistair Winter, on 12 August 2016 - 10:58 AM, said:

Ah, I can imagine. Well, even though that's more heat than I would have guessed, I still feel comfortable saying that ballistic weapons in MWO are way too hot. Not that it matters, in a game with PPCs and jump jets, but still.

It's still a helluvalota heat. The tube and breech themselves get hot enough to flash boil water droplets and melt certain materials nearly instantly.

But it's not nearly enough to have an impact on anything besides the gun itself. All the delicate electronics merely inches from the tube and breach are completely unaffected by the heat.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 06:20 PM, said:

MWO AC/20 round travels at 650 m/s. Real life 203 mm round travels at about 550 m/s and is capable of reaching 30 km range, but ranges are off the game and table for gameplay reasons

also; the barrels for BT are hilariously short most of the time, especially with ac/20, which could explain the really short ranges if you really wanted a fluff answer



vs



like that... what kinda range/accuracy you getting out of THOSE things O.o

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 12 August 2016 - 06:34 PM.

[pyrocomp]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 12 August 2016 - 06:32 PM, said:

also; the barrels for BT are hilariously short most of the time, especially with ac/20, which could explain the really short ranges if you really wanted a fluff answer



vs



like that... what kinda range/accuracy you getting out of THOSE things O.o

Out of those things accuracy is low. Accuracy of 203 mm cannon of WWII at 30+ km was around hundred meters (or so). But mass was around 10 tonnes, barrel length not 10 m but 3/2 m and projectile speed of 900 m/s. Thus producing even more heat. But making them even closer to BT values (maybe those values were actually taken from some kind of data sheet).

As to BT ACs barrels... Well, that accounts for low speed and low accuracy. And lowers the efficiency of said barrels drastically.

[pyrocomp]

Also worth noting, that Atlas can absorb up to 50 MJs of energy to get heated on 1 C (if we consider Atlas to be a simple 100 ton steel bar). That is easily 200 BT heat units per 1 C. To get it to the 'boling temperatures' multiply that on 100. If we will try to derive BT heat unit from here, the 20 ER PPCs will produce 1-2 heat units (ghost heat included) per salvo and the ACs will not produce noticable heat in principle (or is there in lore a mech that is caple of mounting 20 AC/20?).

Edited by pyrocomp, 12 August 2016 - 06:49 PM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 03:25 PM, said:

So while I may be wrong in my estimations of WWI technology performace and I have limited knoweledge of key details of various battles, but the argument that WWI naval cannons had high consistent fire rate for hours without overheating looks somewhat unbased and it definetely cannot be used to justify no-heat BT cannons.

I'm an artilleryman that was self-propelled. The heat from the gun stayed with the tube and breech with some spilling over to the turret of the M109. It was enough heat that it would hurt bare skin, but gloved hands or the uniform made it a non-issue. The breech and tube on the other hand would get hot enough that we'd need to stop firing to swab out the breech with a wet towel so we wouldn't prematurely detonate our powder charge (since the 155mm uses a separate charge and projectile).

The ACs wouldn't heat up a mech to the point of needing to shut down or cook off ammo, but to much heat and your AC will break, blow up, run away, or jam. And even though the weapon system is enclosed in a mech, you can still help keep it cool with what are essentially barrel shrouds.

I understand where it's coming from on a balance point of view. Ballistics being the high weight, high damage, low heat weapon of the universe with energy being the low weight, high damage, high heat weapon.

I just think it would be cooler for ballistics to not transfer heat to the mech, have that heat transfer to the weapon and have recoil. Heat on the weapon increasing it's cooldown and/or making it jam more frequently, while the recoil makes it progressively harder to keep it on target. But I can dream.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

pyrocomp, on 12 August 2016 - 06:41 PM, said:

Out of those things accuracy is low. Accuracy of 203 mm cannon of WWII at 30+ km was around hundred meters (or so). But mass was around 10 tonnes, barrel length not 10 m but 3/2 m and projectile speed of 900 m/s. Thus producing even more heat. But making them even closer to BT values (maybe those values were actually taken from some kind of data sheet).

The modern 155mm, 45kg projo with a Charge 2 moves about 450m/s and is capable of hitting within 1m of a target out to 2500m.