51 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

So question I keep coming to is why do we need energy draw on top of heat?

First, ideally heat should be taking into account different ranges and damage outputs, something that is missing from energy draw, even the way it groups things isn't granular enough.

Second, energy draw still relies on heat to dole out punishment to any mech that abuses power draw.

So here is the idea, get rid of energy draw, and separate heat into three 'stages':

• Safe zone: Heat incurred in this zone is unpunished, could be set to 30, or maybe a bit higher.
  
• Penalty zone: Heat incurred here is punished with a penalty ramp up the higher up the heat you go, ideally you would see the penalty in the UI by some kinda of special color as some have suggested in other threads. This would also be where you add flavor "penalties" like HUD flickering or maybe some extra cockpit stuff going to or maybe even a slight slowdown. Maybe this could be at double the safe zone?
  
• Shutdown zone: Once you reach a certain amount of heat you shutdown. This would have a special max though, that when hit (like if you alpha'd right before the instant shutdown) you would instantly suicide kinda like how it is with the 120 energy draw instant suicide. This zone doesn't necessarily need to be displayed through the HUD (but could be displayed in the cockpit) since you are shutdown at this point. I would imagine something like being triple the safe zone would suffice for the capacity.

Some caveats:

• This means that heat sinks would no longer affect capacity (which is probably for the best) except in the choice between SHS and DHS, installing one or the other may increase capacity, but adding heat sinks beyond the default 10 engine heat sinks will not increase this further which is really one of the keys to this.
  
• Quirks should be used to control mechs to potentially force them into a specific role of DPS or burst, or give mechs stuck with unfortunate hardpoint type spreads with more capacity/dissipation to allow better DPS in spite of their unfortunate hardpoints.
  
• Gauss seriously needs heat, can we stop ignoring this and stop creating stupid artificial rules for it like gauss charge limits or putting a hard limit on how many gauss a mech can mount?
  
• Some weapons may still need their heat values adjusted (like SRMs).

Things to keep in mind:

• For DPS builds, capacity controls how long a DPS build can keep up holding down the trigger for all weapons while dissipation controls the DPS of the build once it has reached capacity.
  
• For alpha builds, capacity should control what is a reasonable alpha, while dissipation should control how long before it can be repeated.

I am still unsure on this idea just like I am unsure of energy draw itself, but this tries to combine the concepts into one to make reduce the necessity of managing two resources at once and simplifies the balance between the two given they have the same reasons for existence.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 August 2016 - 12:08 AM.

[Spleenslitta]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 12:06 AM, said:

So here is the idea, get rid of energy draw, and separate heat into three 'stages':

• Safe zone: Heat incurred in this zone is unpunished, could be set to 30, or maybe a bit higher.
  
• Penalty zone: Heat incurred here is punished with a penalty ramp up the higher up the heat you go, ideally you would see the penalty in the UI by some kinda of special color as some have suggested in other threads. This would also be where you add flavor "penalties" like HUD flickering or maybe some extra cockpit stuff going to or maybe even a slight slowdown. Maybe this could be at double the safe zone?
  
• Shutdown zone: Once you reach a certain amount of heat you shutdown. This would have a special max though, that when hit (like if you alpha'd right before the instant shutdown) you would instantly suicide kinda like how it is with the 120 energy draw instant suicide. This zone doesn't necessarily need to be displayed through the HUD (but could be displayed in the cockpit) since you are shutdown at this point. I would imagine something like being triple the safe zone would suffice for the capacity.

Let's look at how the mech could be affected by higher heat levels.

Safe zone - Agreed.
Penalty zone - HUD flickering sounds good up to 50% heat but beyond that i think more serious things needs to occur.
Such as.

This is just an example so shuffle things about as much as you like. Thanks to IaIdabaoth for providing the numbers.
- Speed, acceleration/deceleration, turning, arm, and twist speed are reduced linearly starting at 30% heat, as follows:

30% heat: 100% speed
40% heat: 95% speed
50% heat: 90% speed - Lower sensor range - Longer time to get data on targeted enemy mech - Longer lock on time for missiles.
This gets worse the higher the heat goes.

60% heat: 85% speed - Gyro starts to perform less effectivly. It's less capable of countering recoil and the higher the heat goes the worse it gets. See below for explanation of recoil.

70% heat: 80% speed - BAP's ability to boost sensors is gone. ECM only affects the mech it is mounted on.

80% heat: 75% speed. Maybe concider slight chance of ammo cook off. Chance increases as heat goes up.
90% heat: 70% speed - At 90% heat, you behave as if you were inside an enemy ECM bubble.

100% heat: 65% speed - at 100% and higher heat, in additional to CT internal structure damage.
- Very high chance of an ammunition explosion for non-Gauss ammo.

Should the mech be even more sluggish at high heat levels?
But now we need to look at the elephant in the room. What about ballistics?

Ballistics aren't that hot so AC40, 3 or 4 x UAC5, dual gauss builds are not affected much by what happens at high heat levels.
Should recoil be introduced to keep ballistics under control? Here are a couple of ways that can be done.

1- Fire 2x AC20 and the gyro overloads making it produce heat for example.
But the heat produced by the gyro would be unlikely to be enough to keep Dakka builds under control so screenshake while the gyro recovers would be reasonable.

2- Mech gets a much reduced top speed and acceleration/deceleration while the gyro recovers.
Screenshake because the gyro is barelly keeping the mech on it's feet.

Any other ideas?

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 12:06 AM, said:

• This means that heat sinks would no longer affect capacity (which is probably for the best) except in the choice between SHS and DHS, installing one or the other may increase capacity, but adding heat sinks beyond the default 10 engine heat sinks will not increase this further which is really one of the keys to this.

Giving SHS an increased heat capacity has been suggested plenty of times. There is another alternative however.

Something that makes the SHS a better alternative for an Nova with 2x ER PPC but makes DHS a better alternative for a Nova with 12x CERML.

Works like this. DHS works like it does on the live servers.
But any SHS mounted outside the engine can be directly linked to a weapon. You can link 1 SHS per crit slot on an energy weapon while missile and ballistic weapons can only mount a single SHS no matter how big they are.

The linked SHS do not dissapear inside the weapon like it does with engines larger than 270. It stays outside.
A linked SHS provides superior cooling for the weapon it is linked to but functions normally to other weapons it isn't linked to.
Thus it's good for builds that use few weapons that produce a lot of heat such as ER PPC's.
But it's inferior to DHS when it comes to cooling a mech stuffed to the brim with lasers.

How much better should a linked SHS be in comparison to a DHS? I ain't got a clue.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 21 August 2016 - 01:12 AM.

[Tiantara]

-

Quote

90% heat: 70% speed - At 90% heat, you behave as if you were inside an enemy ECM bubble.

- Yeah, and trying to shoot leg of fast mech to run out, you get even slower to be killed for sure. Really nice. Duels on full speed light vs light doomed, medium mech even more doomed. Overheated heavy, who try to kill light mech become statue and easy target.

[Spleenslitta]

Tiantara, on 21 August 2016 - 01:36 AM, said:

- Yeah, and trying to shoot leg of fast mech to run out, you get even slower to be killed for sure. Really nice. Duels on full speed light vs light doomed, medium mech even more doomed. Overheated heavy, who try to kill light mech become statue and easy target.

Light vs light is not doomed. Just keep your mech cool by not firing a bucket load of SPL's constantly and you would be fine.
In the case of a pure energy variant mech just go for a mix of short range weapons and something with a bit more reach.
Being able to seize all opportunities thanks to a flexible weapon loadout will make up for the lack of focus on a single rangeband.

OP wanted to have the energy draw mechanic gone and replaced. Look here-

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 12:06 AM, said:

So here is the idea, get rid of energy draw, and separate heat into three 'stages':

• Safe zone: Heat incurred in this zone is unpunished, could be set to 30, or maybe a bit higher.
  
• Penalty zone: Heat incurred here is punished with a penalty ramp up the higher up the heat you go, ideally you would see the penalty in the UI by some kinda of special color as some have suggested in other threads. This would also be where you add flavor "penalties" like HUD flickering or maybe some extra cockpit stuff going to or maybe even a slight slowdown. Maybe this could be at double the safe zone?
  
• Shutdown zone: Once you reach a certain amount of heat you shutdown. This would have a special max though, that when hit (like if you alpha'd right before the instant shutdown) you would instantly suicide kinda like how it is with the 120 energy draw instant suicide. This zone doesn't necessarily need to be displayed through the HUD (but could be displayed in the cockpit) since you are shutdown at this point. I would imagine something like being triple the safe zone would suffice for the capacity.

I provided my opinion on how we could do it. If you don't like the numbers all i got to do is quote myself.

Spleenslitta, on 21 August 2016 - 01:07 AM, said:

This is just an example so shuffle things about as much as you like.

Adjust things as they please you. If you want you can provide a different way for heat to completly replace energy draw as the OP wanted.
Oh yeah...beware the elephant in the room. It's kinda cranky. It's the ballistics.
They are cooler than energy weapons so they wouldn't be affected much by heat alone. Good luck.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 21 August 2016 - 02:13 AM.

[Khobai]

we dont need energy draw instead of heat

and ghost heat would actually work better than energy draw if they fixed ghost heat instead

since ghost heat actually rewards you for taking mixed loadouts while energy draw PUNISHES you for it.

Edited by Khobai, 21 August 2016 - 04:22 AM.

[Wibble in a Clan can]

How is that Khobai???? E D actually just punishes by damage output- it is largely weapon mix agnostic.
It may punish some of your mixed builds- but its not the MIXED that its punishing.

And yes we do need energy draw, because PGI have not been able to balance heat, or quirk mechs to balance damage- so they have come up with a more direct method of modulating damage output. It wouldn't be my first choice, but its a lot better than ghost heat.

Edited by WibbsScrapMerc, 21 August 2016 - 06:14 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Khobai, on 21 August 2016 - 04:22 AM, said:

we dont need energy draw instead of heat

This is heat, the only real thing that is copied from energy draw is the extra heat penalty once you pass a certain threshold of heat.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Spleenslitta, on 21 August 2016 - 01:07 AM, said:

Should recoil be introduced to keep ballistics under control? Here are a couple of ways that can be done.

No, as one of my caveats, gauss should have heat to actually make it affected by this system and other ballistics generally have only the default 10 number of heat sinks meaning that dissipation rates should be low enough to ensure builds going beyond something like 20 DPS would be kept in check fairly fast

Spleenslitta, on 21 August 2016 - 01:07 AM, said:

30% heat: 100% speed
40% heat: 95% speed
50% heat: 90% speed - Lower sensor range - Longer time to get data on targeted enemy mech - Longer lock on time for missiles.
This gets worse the higher the heat goes.

60% heat: 85% speed - Gyro starts to perform less effectivly. It's less capable of countering recoil and the higher the heat goes the worse it gets. See below for explanation of recoil.

70% heat: 80% speed - BAP's ability to boost sensors is gone. ECM only affects the mech it is mounted on.

80% heat: 75% speed. Maybe concider slight chance of ammo cook off. Chance increases as heat goes up.
90% heat: 70% speed - At 90% heat, you behave as if you were inside an enemy ECM bubble.

100% heat: 65% speed - at 100% and higher heat, in additional to CT internal structure damage.
- Very high chance of an ammunition explosion for non-Gauss ammo.

I don't like how early you lose speed, since the "shutdown zone" really shouldn't be shown on the hud, speed loss should only occur at 50% heat. Ammo explosions should not be a part of penalty zone either. I could understand ammo explosions, heat sink catastrophic failures, energy weapon failures as a part of the shutdown zone, but the penalty zone should not give you a chance to die while in it. While I don't mind speed loss, that should be the harshest penalty in this zone. I don't like the gyro effect either.

Spleenslitta, on 21 August 2016 - 01:07 AM, said:

Works like this. DHS works like it does on the live servers.
But any SHS mounted outside the engine can be directly linked to a weapon. You can link 1 SHS per crit slot on an energy weapon while missile and ballistic weapons can only mount a single SHS no matter how big they are.

No, there is no need for this.

[Spleenslitta]

I'm just tossing ideas in Quicksilver.
How would you make the penalty zone?

[Lunatic_Asylum]

If I seriously ask myself the question, then I can answer frankly: there is no need for the new mechanic, energy draw.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Spleenslitta, on 21 August 2016 - 06:57 AM, said:

I'm just tossing ideas in Quicksilver.
How would you make the penalty zone?

Honestly, just have the heat penalty, I don't care about the extras because outside of losing speed, they either have no real effect on balance (just immersive tools) or are way too harsh (gyro causing issues, ammo explosions) so really I'm ok with just having a heat penalty like energy draw, just with a harsher penalty than we have now, and that heat penalty grows the higher your heat is. Speed loss is something PGI doesn't seem willing to do so for now I'll just go with heat penalty.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 August 2016 - 07:56 AM.

[Hit the Deck]

I feel that the TT-esque low heat cap (although you don't explicitly mentioned that) should be the way to go since it naturally promotes mixed builds (of the multi purpose types and not the synergetic types) because bringing too much of the same (purpose) weapons don't create an advantage.

Imagine that you want to put 6x PPCs on you Stalker, for example, but under this system you can only reliably fire 3x PPCs (either alpha'ed or staggered) at a span of time because of the low heat cap so then why bring more than 3? Instead of 6x PPCs, maybe you'd want to bring 3x PPCs and 4x SRM6s - the PPCs for medium range and the SRMs for short range (also to cover the PPCs minimum range limit). Bringing 3x PPCs and 3x LPL which have similar purpose also doesn't serve anything since you can only reliably fire some of them because of the low heat cap.

[Ghogiel]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 12:06 AM, said:

So question I keep coming to is why do we need energy draw on top of heat?

Because heat alone doesn't limit frequent alpha strikes to 30dmg. This is due to the fact there are other balancing factors to weapons other than heat such as tons and crits along with ammo/DHS tax. There really isn't a way to make say 2xAC20s or a fap load of cspls hot enough to limit them alphaing under 30 while making them still good enough to take one AC20 or 5csmpls over say a gauss without something like ghost heat.

Edited by Ghogiel, 21 August 2016 - 09:18 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Ghogiel, on 21 August 2016 - 09:17 AM, said:

Because heat alone doesn't limit frequent alpha strikes to 30dmg.

Actually, it can, we just aren't willing to change it to do that. Heat capacity impacts what alpha strikes are viable, if I have to wait too long before I can repeat an alpha, then chances are I'm not going to use that build.

Ghogiel, on 21 August 2016 - 09:17 AM, said:

There really isn't a way to make say 2xAC20s or a fap load of cspls hot enough to limit them alphaing under 30 while making them still good enough to take one AC20 or 5csmpls over say a gauss without something like ghost heat.

Trying to limit all ranges to the same alpha strike is silly, but there is a way to do it, I just don't think people want a rapid fire AC20. The shorter the range, the higher the alpha or DPS has to be, you can't limit both and expect brawling to be a thing. Which is currently the problem with energy draw as it stands.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 August 2016 - 09:44 AM.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

Trying to limit all ranges to the same alpha strike is silly, but there is a way to do it, I just don't think people want a rapid fire AC20. The shorter the range, the higher the alpha or DPS has to be, you can't limit both and expect brawling to be a thing. Which is currently the problem with energy draw as it stands.

PGI does intend on balancing individual weapons' draw values, so people can't really argue that it will punish all mixed builds. Plus I almost never alpha my mechs, which are almost entirely mixed builds, so my mechs aren't any weaker than they were before.

[Ghogiel]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

Actually, it can, we just aren't willing to change it to do that. Heat capacity impacts what alpha strikes are viable, if I have to wait too long before I can repeat an alpha, then chances are I'm not going to use that build.

Ok yeah sure.

Some weapons are just going to generate less heat and have sacrefices in other areas besides dmg, like tons, range and crits. It's possible to make the upper viable alpha limit be ~30dmg alpha before breaking the heat cap, but I suspect as soon as you set any new heat cap low enough that limits alphas on the majority of weapons to 30 you'll just see AC5 MALS firing forever because low heat gen and alpha doesn't break either a lower heat cap system or an ED system. While adding a 7th med laser would be a no no because that's clearly OMGWTFBBQ OP! in comparision.

Quote

Trying to limit all ranges to the same alpha strike is silly, but there is a way to do it, I just don't think people want a rapid fire AC20. The shorter the range, the higher the alpha or DPS has to be, you can't limit both and expect brawling to be a thing. Which is currently the problem with energy draw as it stands.

I never said ED wasn't a bit stupid. I dunno about you but who are these people that don't want a rapid fire AC20?! **** those guys.

[Strelok7]

Yep, PGI needs to clarify on their main goal for energy draw.

1) Anti-alpha measure.
2) Ghost heat visualization measure.
Are those the goals PGI?

If that is so, then yes, I agree with the thread title. We don't need "energy draw" and another bar flickering on our HUD constantly.

Heat is a good counterbalance. It's already there, Just update it to do tasks 1) and 2) above.

[davoodoo]

Unless heat sinks works instantly, by taking heat into them then dissipating it then current heat capacity is attempt at implementing tt rules though very poor.

Simply put, if you had 10 dhs, you could fire 49 heat alpha and you would have 29/30 heat next turn but you wouldnt shutdown).
If you added extra 10 dhs then you could fire 69 heat alpha instead and not shutdown because heat sinks took heat off in the same turn the weapons were fired.

If you removed heat capacity then it would simply limit how much you can fire meaning that awesome couldnt fire 3 erppcs without instant shutdown regardless whether heat sinks can dissipate heat before cooldown or not...

If you wanted accurate interpretation of tt rules then
1 dhs would need to negate 2 points(1 for shs) of heat then go on a cooldown(looking at weapon cooldowns i would say 4s, half if dhs absorbed only 1 point of heat) during which time it wouldnt dissipate any heat. Any heat sinks which arent on cooldown would then dissipate leftover heat which wasnt absorbed by heat sinks.

Which would effectively mean that
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...aa147e78c7f5419
this awesome would fire all 3 ppcs and generate 0.5heat, then not dissipate anything for 4 seconds

If you do that 30 point tt heatscale would work perfectly, you can even add dice rolls for shutdown starting at 14 heat.
You can even add hud element telling you how many heat sinks you have off cd.

This is ******* battletech license so use more of source material...

Edited by davoodoo, 21 August 2016 - 11:03 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

davoodoo, on 21 August 2016 - 10:44 AM, said:

Unless heat sinks works instantly, by taking heat into them then dissipating it then current heat capacity is attempt at implementing tt rules though very poor.

I don't really care what it is attempting at, the point is that the heat capacity is too high and has been for a long time, it is the reason the Gauss Vomit Whale was ever a thing.

Ghogiel, on 21 August 2016 - 10:09 AM, said:

Ok yeah sure.

Some weapons are just going to generate less heat and have sacrefices in other areas besides dmg, like tons, range and crits. It's possible to make the upper viable alpha limit be ~30dmg alpha before breaking the heat cap, but I suspect as soon as you set any new heat cap low enough that limits alphas on the majority of weapons to 30 you'll just see AC5 MALS firing forever because low heat gen and alpha doesn't break either a lower heat cap system or an ED system. While adding a 7th med laser would be a no no because that's clearly OMGWTFBBQ OP! in comparision.

I don't disagree, which is why I would expect the heat limit to rise to allow for at least 40-50 point alphas so that AC5 boats aren't just a goto thing, this is more of just a suggestion to get rid of this dual resource management crap and just tie everything into heat since power draw will end up being just a duplicate heat bar anyway.

[davoodoo]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2016 - 11:12 AM, said:

I don't really care what it is attempting at, the point is that the heat capacity is too high and has been for a long time, it is the reason the Gauss Vomit Whale was ever a thing.

It is too low along with heat dissipation.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...51428e0ef4d2eee
This thing wouldnt be able to ever overheat without taking assault lance worth of inferno ammo in tt.
38 heat generated by weapons(82 dmg alpha with double tap btw), 2 by movement, 50 dissipated

Here it can fire for 12 seconds... 3 alphas...

Edited by davoodoo, 21 August 2016 - 11:51 AM.