1
There's a lot of fear that if you drop past zero energy you'll suffer massive heat penalties. This isn't the case. You can freely over draw your reactor, and simply suffer a minor heat penalty no matter which weapons you're using without it being an issue, as long as you don't keep doing it.
Energy Draw is "playable".
Because the penalty heat scales up gradually, it's easy to "ride" the line, bursting harder when you want, then backing off, without sudden heat spikes. What happens with Ghost Heat is if you exceed certain weapon counts (or fire a second group slightly too fast) you get a massive heat penalty. That doesn't happen under energy draw. If you do break the limit slightly, penalty heat is so minor as to be irrelevant - it's still extra heat, so it hurts sustained DPS, but a 40 point alpha is still only +5 heat, which on a 75 heat cap mech is less than 7%.
As such, a Laser Vomit build can be quite effective choosing to fire a second volley quite quickly. This makes a 12 ERSL Nova, for example, a lot safer to play under Energy Draw than Ghost Heat: Firing that second group of lasers a fraction of a second early isn't an instant shutdown.
Changes I recommend:
- Lasers should be reduced to .9 due to their DOT nature.
- SRM's should be further reduced to .5 due to their strictly limited range and high, but spread damage.
- As per Quicksilver's post below, we need a better visual indication of how much you're exceeding power draw by. A front and center HUD icon showing at least minor/major overdraw would be very helpful: say yellow/orange/red icon below the crosshairs, so you immediately see that you're breaking it and by how much, without taking your eyes off your target.
- Not immediately, but it may well be decided that the over draw -> heat conversion needs to be more punishing; 0.5 per point is very minor.
Some things to consider:
- On live, a dual gauss/dual ERPPC Direwolf fires 50 point alphas for 30 heat. With Energy Draw, those 50 point PPFLD hits cost 40 heat.
- On live, firing 3 PPC's is crippling, despite it only being 30 damage. Yet firing 2 PPC and an AC10 is fine. Energy draw allows any combination without penalty, so mechs aren't penalized for having the wrong combination of hardpoints.
- You can choose to fire, for example, a 40 point alpha from a Firebrand with 2 AC10 and 2 PPC for 30 heat, a 5 point penalty. This is a bit warmer than live, but it spreads the fairness around, as say a Battlemaster can drop a 40 point PPC alpha for (ignoring quirk heat reduction) 43 heat (and ofc with better synergy)
- Large Laser usage is pretty free: If you want to snipe, you can fire groups of them and eat minor heat penalties - firing 4 Large Lasers for 36 damage generates only 3 bonus heat; for a total of 31 heat. ER Large Lasers? 4 IS ERLL push 36 damage for 35 heat, or fire 2 then two more a fraction of a second later for just 32 heat.
- UAC's have a refire delay when doubletapping of 0.5s. This means you'll always recoup 10 energy before a doubletap - dual UAC10's, then, will use 20 energy, recoup 10, then 20 more for 30 total. So firing a pair of UAC10's is still perfectly safe. Firing other weapons during that half a second will incur additional heat, but it's sort of the goal of the system to space things out: Fire more than that and you burst harder at the cost of efficiency, or spread it out a little bit and you get higher DPS. A dual UAC10 burst is a perfectly legit hit, though; that's still 40 damage in less than a second.
Edited by Wintersdark, 19 August 2016 - 09:28 AM.
