53 replies to this topic

[ScarecrowES]

Not A Real RAbbi, on 23 September 2016 - 05:48 PM, said:

And AGAIN, I wonder why we keep the intrinsic heat capacity.

Need more neat sinks for energy weapons, because they're hotter. Missile and ballistic weapons, not so much, BUT they require ammo. So there's the trade-off--a ERPPC never ever ever ever ever ever runs out of ammo, nor does it ever have to concern the pilot about ammo explosions or weapon jams or anything else.

SO, let's go back to the example of ERPPCs versus UAC/10s. The cUAC/10 weighs 10 tons and occupies 4 slots, according to Smurfy, whereas the cERPPC weighs 6 tons and occupies 2 slots. FURTHER, the cUAC/10 needs at least one ton of ammo to be of any use at all, so we're at 11/5 versus the cERPPC's 6/2. Right away, I see that I could add one cDHS to the cERPPC and come out 4/1 lighter/smaller than the cUAC/10, or TWO DHS to come out 3/-1. This is all to say that the tradeoff isn't ONLY about heat, but also about weight and critical space. The example is woefully inadequate without considering those as well.

So yeah, 2 ERPPCs will generate more heat than 4 UAC/10s, but they will leave more space and weight free to add heat sinks. That doesn't matter much with a FLAT 30, sure. But say that the mech's intrinsic heat cap was dropped to something like 10 or 15, for starters, rather than the obscenely high current value (IIRC, that's been consistent since open beta... I haven't noticed any big change, anyhow, or don't remember it). Each additional SHS adds 1.0 to the heat cap, each DHS adds 2.0. Tweak dissipation rates to balance™, and call it a day. What's this do? It does what Paul & Russ apparently really REALLY want to do, which is that it limits those high-damage pinpoint alphas that they're so scared of. The obscene heat capacity of any/every mech in the game right now makes energy weapons all the more viable for boating, because it gives a fair bit of cushion to work with against the heat cap for those hot weapons. REMEMBER that HEAT is what supposedly balances out the lighter, smaller energy weapons, versus the heavier ammo-dependent missile and ballistic ones. With that ceiling being as high as it is for no additional investment of tonnage or critical space, though, the energy weapons have an advantage. And that advantage has contributed to those metas that Paul & Russ have worked so hard to balance™ out.

And it's a single number somewhere in the system that can be changed, without having to add new HUD elements and new functions and whole new game mechanics that will INEVITABLY be exploited in some unforeseen way, as is every balance™ change to-date in MWO's glorious four-year public history. Change one number, tweak other values as necessary or adjust that change to the number. Drive on.

And that, in turn, forces those wanting to boat energy weapons to make more room for DHS. YES, it emphasizes the Clan advantage over IS tech, with their smaller/lighter energy weapons of greater range. And that'll be hard to balance, in turn. Might require individually quirking mechs, or something...

Having a hard time trying to figure out what you're arguing for here. If you're talking about adjusting the additional 30 points of cap every mech gets on Live, instead of the part of cap the mech earns through its build... then yes, this is the only reasonable way to perform the cap reductions PGI has done here on the PTS and stay fair to different kinds of weapons.

However, messing with the earned portion at all creates imbalance from the get-go, no matter what you do with the rest. Reducing the value of heat sinks will ALWAYS hurt energy weapons more, so long as heat values aren't adjusted accordingly.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

ScarecrowES, on 24 September 2016 - 11:29 AM, said:

Having a hard time trying to figure out what you're arguing for here. If you're talking about adjusting the additional 30 points of cap every mech gets on Live, instead of the part of cap the mech earns through its build... then yes, this is the only reasonable way to perform the cap reductions PGI has done here on the PTS and stay fair to different kinds of weapons.

However, messing with the earned portion at all creates imbalance from the get-go, no matter what you do with the rest. Reducing the value of heat sinks will ALWAYS hurt energy weapons more, so long as heat values aren't adjusted accordingly.

I think we're in agreement. Sorry, I tend to not communicate very well due to some idiotic tendency to try to explain things, and I tend to fail at that as well.

YES, reducing or outright eliminating the built-in automatic intrisomatic whatever heat cap, and making heat cap more reliant (if not completely so) on heat sinks, is what I'm after here. And that, because HEAT is what supposedly keeps energy weapons in balance with missile and ballistic weapons.

Energy weapons are pinpoint (unlike missile weapons, and some ballistics). Energy weapons are lighter for their damage at range, than are their B and M counterparts. And they're smaller. They WOULD be the natural go-to, except that they kick off all that heat, and heat is the enemy.

So it's NATURAL that we have E being chosen over M or B (in most, but certainly not ALL, cases). After all, there's an automatic like thirty (30!!!!!) heat cap built into every mech, regardless of size or weight or shape or engine or anything. There aren't any extra TONS or CRITICAL SPACES, though, for those mechs that are lacking in E hard points. The increased heat cap benefits E weapons far more than it does B or M.

And since the latest thing that Russ & Paul are out to change is the high-damage laser alpha thing, and in particular the spam of ERLLs or LPLs, with lots of MLs or ERMLs in backup, and the ability to outright alpha a high-damage build at least twice without taking a cooldown break, this might be the more natural place to start.

ED itself, on a mostly-unrelated note, should NOT have HEAT as its penalty for overdrawing. I mean, Ghost Heat™ does that better. Easier, anyhow, at least to the player's perspective. Simpler. And one less HUD element to worry about. There's a function in the game already, since 2013 IIRC, that can more/less scramble a HUD. There was one back in open beta to stagger a mech (remember taking leg actuator damage and having it cut your speed to like NOTHING, when you were trying to escape a botched backstab attempt in that JR7-D? I do...). There's functionality in there to shake-up the aiming reticle. And so on. ALREADY IN THE GAME. And all stuff that would seem more well suited to a penalty system for overdrawing the mech's available energy, than just throwing more ghost heat at it. Especially when you GIVE every mech all that heat cap before the first heat sink is even installed.

And we're back to that weird intrinsic heat cap.

Okay, this is an adaptation from TT rules, right? I mean, before we got too much balance™, the values were more or less gleaned straight from the TROs (3049, IIRC). Only armor values were different, and those were doubled to raise TTK. But that worked in 10-second turns. It'd be pretty insane to say that a small laser and a large pulse laser and an ERPPC all have a 10-second cooldown, or a 6 per minute rate of fire. So there is a considerably more complicated picture to work with here than in TT, and I think that's part of why the heat cap is separated the way it is from the old TT way of doing things. And that's why I say to try working with lower numbers first, rather than just dumping the intrinsic cap outright. There may be a happy number out there somewhere that brings the E weapons back down to relative balance™ with the Bs and Ms.

As far as heat sink values go, I'm sure that a change in the intrinsic heat cap would require SOME tweaking of DHS and SHS capacities, just as long as it's nothing serious.

[ScarecrowES]

Not A Real RAbbi, on 25 September 2016 - 07:37 PM, said:

I think we're in agreement. Sorry, I tend to not communicate very well due to some idiotic tendency to try to explain things, and I tend to fail at that as well.

No, you explained it fine I think... it just seemed there was a disconnect between the things you were saying and the general implication of what you were saying. I was just quite confused which side you were on, haha.

[The Faceless]

The problem here has three main facets.

• The damage and heat rating for the original game was ment to be acrued over a 10 second time span.
  
• PGI has changed this out of all porportion in oder to allow people the feeling of being in a FPS (even though they call it a simulation.)
  
• PGI also decided to use a different heat scale inplementation as well because trying to make the TT game mechanic (that is a static system) work in a dynamic setting is difficult.

These design decisions have led to a whole laundry list of problems that we the players have been carping about since the early days of the game.

what I would have liked to see them do is this.

• Set the damage and heat for weapons to match the TT game so that it is either spread out over 5 or 10 seconds. (I favor 10 seconds) This would bring the pinpoint damage problem down somewhat. It would also allow PGI to reset the Armor values to the original values instead of the doubled values we have now. They could also set the rate of fire anyway they liked as long as the damage cap didnt change over the given time frame.
  
• Set all of the heat sinks so that they dissapate their heat over the same time frame as is set for the weapons damage time frame.
  
• Set a cap on the heat (I dont know if 30 would be appropriate or not you might have to change that) and set points on the heat scale where the mech starts incurring penalties. (ie. slower movement rates, loss of targeting reticle, mech shut down etc. ) This would encourage staggerfireing weapons to avoid said penalties. So if you want to run an energy mech your going to need to make sure that have an appropriate number of heat sinks in order to keep from shutting down all the time.

These changes would likely make weapons feel really weak to what we have now but it seems to me that the weapon damage values now are half the problem.

[albinogryphon]

A flat 30 threshold has no place. The TT base heat scale went to 30, but that was after the heat phase. Take an extreme example of the Clan SuperNova. Six C-ER Large Lasers, 26 double heat sinks plus movement of 0-3 points. Firing all weapons would generate 72 points of heat and during the heat phase you would sink 52 of that. Add movement heat as well. Without moving that means that in a round this mech would build 20 heat, but it generated 72. Threshold definitely has a point and a place in an adaptation such as this.

Now some deviation from tabletop is a given in a translation, the doubling of structure and armor has overall worked well, but I'm not a fan of ghost heat or this new ED. Meta-science fusion reactors that can withstand the motion and stresses of mech movement aside without the magnetic jar tipping, they can easily produce enough power, especially with meta-science. I understand the need in a game for mechanics that violate logic to make things fair, but there are other things that could be considered that would definitely change the game, but also enrich it in other ways.

Convergence is another topic that comes up often. Their is an answer to this that would address some aspects of this, without ruining this as a shooter, but it would take coding complexity, and potential performance hits I would imagine in play. Weapons wouldn't be set in fixed positions in may cases, but employ actuators to maneuver, particularly for torso mounted weapons. Isolate hardpoint regions in a location, and assign a targeting reticule to that region. Convergence can they be addressed using these various reticules. Causing the pilot to either operate them independently, or to potentially fire weapons they have grouped to trigger together when not all have converged. More on this with the next point. LRM and streak weapons would not require this and could remain largely as is.

For the next part of this battlemechs maintain their stability from a combination of their form (largely bipedal) and movement controlled actuator design working with the core structure and myomer 'muscle' bundles and their gyro. In tabletop this stability is addressed in two ways when it comes to aiming, movement penalty on to hits, and the random dice roll once a weapon has successfully hit. Nobody in a first person game wants to be aiming at a mechs head and hit their leg. It wouldn't be fun, and for a translation doesn't have to be true to this to embrace the semi-realistic spirit of these aspects. Currently when utilizing MASC your targeting reticule dances. This same aspect should be expanded to be incorporated based on movement and taking weapons fire. If you're not taking fire and not moving then your various reticules converge without such shake. If you are moving and/or taking fire, then they should shake to some extent. This won't cause such head to leg hits in most cases, but CT to ST and such deviance would be possible. This would enhance immersion, as well as raise TTK as is often a desire by many, without being too out there. For those that think that lasers wouldn't cause such 'impact' take into account the shift in balance compensation that would be needed by the mech's systems linked and controlled via the pilots neurohelmet as a half ton or more of balanced wait suddenly evaporates as it is vaporized/melted by the heat of the beam. Thus all weapons could use the same basic system without needing drastic individualism.

Heat penalties is another aspect that I think should be incorporated and has been called for before. I don't suggest that a direct translation of either the base 30 point heat scale, or the expanded, but rather inspiration be drawn from. I would say a simplified threshold be incorporated that can be addressed by color coding and marks on the existing heat threshold bar. Taking into account the embracing of both threshold and sinking capability, the same 'scale' but not numerical values could be utilized. Lower levels should introduce lowered speed/responsiveness penalties affecting speed and the aforementioned reticule shake. Higher levels could introduce the chance of ammunition explosion and shutdown as already exist, with pilot impact potentially a factor if heat rises above the top of the scale due to override.

All of these draw inspiration from tabletop which some decry, but I would readily embrace. Additional adjustments to firing rates as well as convergence rates could be avenues for individual mech distinction without relying on the existing broad quriks which make many mechs feel like poor versions of another, but definitely add a huge level of complexity to the coding of the game, but would be a greatly welcome enriching of the experience and play-ability overall I feel. I fully recognize that such an overhaul would take a great deal of time, but incorporated in phases would provide a further enjoyment of changing metas.

These aspects also open up certain new equipment and pilot skills/adjustments to existing to offer further options. Heavy duty gyros could help to reduce the reticule shake as well as make the existing gyro pilot module an interesting choice reflecting the pilots familiarity with the chassis and loadout from a meta/lore standpoint. Things like the Clans Enhanced-Imaging module could be incorporated again speeding up convergence/target info gathering, and reticule shake as their tie to the mech is ever closer. Pilot impacts could similar as those alluded to from excessive overheating where in that case, or if an EI equipped mech takes structure damage their field of vision dims and shortens for a recoverable period, with the recovered amount diminishing each time. Lets avoid full blackout for play-ability/enjoyment, but an interesting adjunct to just overheating. Triple strength myomer could be introduced offsetting the low levels of heat offering enhanced mech speed and maneuverability and offerring an interesting gamble for those that want to flirt with the risk/rewards of the adjusted heat scale at the cost of just cbills and slots. Many cannon possibilities, as well as those outside of it.

For heat scale something as simple as say under 1/3 = normal, 1/3 to 1/2, slight increase in reticule shake with reduced movement/turning, 1/2 to 2/3 further reduced movement and increased reticule shake, 2/3 to 9/10 very slight ammo explosion chance and further reduced movement and reticule shake, and 9/10 to shutdown moderate ammo explosion chance. Override mech damage and pilot vision dimming/impact along with high ammunition explosion chance. All of this is just a base concept and can be adjusted as needed, but would address high heat/dmg throw in most if not all areas as far as I can see to a more manageble and thinking man's shooter.

Anyone who took the time to read this I appreciate it as I know it was a wall of text.

Edited by albinogryphon, 29 September 2016 - 06:37 PM.

[Pjwned]

Not A Real RAbbi, on 25 September 2016 - 07:37 PM, said:

I think we're in agreement. Sorry, I tend to not communicate very well due to some idiotic tendency to try to explain things, and I tend to fail at that as well.

YES, reducing or outright eliminating the built-in automatic intrisomatic whatever heat cap, and making heat cap more reliant (if not completely so) on heat sinks, is what I'm after here. And that, because HEAT is what supposedly keeps energy weapons in balance with missile and ballistic weapons.

Seems a little harsh to just take away the base 30 heat capacity from all mechs, but it's not like we have real heat penalties and if we're not going to ever see any real heat penalties then this could maybe work; I would personally prefer that mechs still keep a base 10 heat capacity or so if this did happen though.

Also if this happened then we would need to see some fairly major changes to SHS and DHS, as in not this heavily nerfed dissipation & capacity garbage that's on the PTS, and I would also want to see some mech construction rules changed a little bit so that mechs with sub-250 rated engines don't get the shaft.

I can see how this idea has some merit because it doesn't completely screw over energy boat mechs in particular since they can just pack in more heatsinks for more capacity and dissipation, unlike other brainless garbage ideas that involve heatsinks not giving any extra heat capacity in order to screw over energy boats as much as possible.

On the other hand though I don't really agree with it entirely and I do still think there's better solutions, like adding real heat penalties and addressing convergence.

The Faceless, on 28 September 2016 - 01:12 PM, said:

The damage and heat rating for the original game was ment to be acrued over a 10 second time span.

This is wrong and the rest of your post is based on this false premise.

The "10 second turn" meant nothing in TT, which is easily demonstrated by changing the "turn length" to be 100 seconds or 1 second or 5 seconds or whatever other number you can think of.

Does it make any difference when you change that number? No, it doesn't.

[Cold Darkness]

Pjwned, on 29 September 2016 - 04:36 AM, said:

The "10 second turn" meant nothing in TT, which is easily demonstrated by changing the "turn length" to be 100 seconds or 1 second or 5 seconds or whatever other number you can think of.

Does it make any difference when you change that number? No, it doesn't.

actually, it does. increasing the number isnt a big deal, as you say. however, decreasing the number makes the whole battletech setting ALOT less realistic, because physics.

on a side note: to whoever wrote the innate 30 heatcap every mech has profits energy weapons more then missiles and ballistics ... you are so wrong, it hurts. its EXACTLY the other way around. and thats BECAUSE energy heavy builds take extra heatsinks. kodiak 3 with 4 uac 10 would propably be irrelevant if that extra heat cap was removed.

[ScarecrowES]

Cold Darkness, on 29 September 2016 - 05:55 AM, said:

actually, it does. increasing the number isnt a big deal, as you say. however, decreasing the number makes the whole battletech setting ALOT less realistic, because physics.

on a side note: to whoever wrote the innate 30 heatcap every mech has profits energy weapons more then missiles and ballistics ... you are so wrong, it hurts. its EXACTLY the other way around. and thats BECAUSE energy heavy builds take extra heatsinks. kodiak 3 with 4 uac 10 would propably be irrelevant if that extra heat cap was removed.

I'd argue that the turn length in TT was indeed meaningless, outside of Solaris, up to the point MWO established it's entire combat system on those same 10-second turns. Once they did that, that 10-second turn became very meaningful.

And yes, the intrinsic heat given to each mech helps ballistics more. Think, for a mech that mounts only 15 DHS, it's doubling the heat cap, but for 30 DHS, it only adds 50%. A much bigger deal for the low cap mech.

[Cold Darkness]

ScarecrowES, on 29 September 2016 - 08:32 AM, said:

I'd argue that the turn length in TT was indeed meaningless, outside of Solaris, up to the point MWO established it's entire combat system on those same 10-second turns. Once they did that, that 10-second turn became very meaningful.

And yes, the intrinsic heat given to each mech helps ballistics more. Think, for a mech that mounts only 15 DHS, it's doubling the heat cap, but for 30 DHS, it only adds 50%. A much bigger deal for the low cap mech.

actually, the turn lenght of 10 seconds is a very nice thing as a number, as it gave the option to compress multiple actions of a specific timeframe into a single action. like firing that laser 3 times to deal 10 damage can be fire that laser for 10 damage. theres also the heatissue with battletech. many materials react allergic to huge temperature swings in very short time.

but yeah, the specific value of 10 seconds has indeed no real meaning, seeing as it could as well be 15 or 30 seconds and still work just fine. but it surely can not be made any shorter for what its roll in immersion (and "realism") is.

[Pjwned]

Cold Darkness, on 29 September 2016 - 05:55 AM, said:

actually, it does. increasing the number isnt a big deal, as you say. however, decreasing the number makes the whole battletech setting ALOT less realistic, because physics.

That doesn't affect the actual game though. People keep saying that TT was "balanced" around the "10 second turn" but that's wrong, so when they argue for similar "balance" in MWO they have flawed reasoning for doing so.

Quote

on a side note: to whoever wrote the innate 30 heatcap every mech has profits energy weapons more then missiles and ballistics ... you are so wrong, it hurts. its EXACTLY the other way around. and thats BECAUSE energy heavy builds take extra heatsinks. kodiak 3 with 4 uac 10 would propably be irrelevant if that extra heat cap was removed.

That's not necessarily true. Let's say that double heatsinks dissipate 0.2 h/s (like they should) and increase heat capacity by 2.0 (again, like they should), and then let's also assume that standard heatsinks are normalized so that the minimum 10 engine heatsinks dissipate 0.2 h/s and increase heat capacity by 2.0 (again, even with SHS equipped) because equipping SHS shouldn't mean effectively missing 10 tons of heatsinks.

That would be a minimum of 20* heat capacity and 2.0 h/s dissipation for every mech. I still don't really agree with taking away 30 heat capacity from all mechs like that, but I don't think it would be so bad if that did happen.

Edited by Pjwned, 03 October 2016 - 04:33 PM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Here's an idea: remove heat capacity completely!

Then put heat penalties on a curve that begins at 1 so that the more heat you produce the more penalties you get. Penalties could be applied to virtually anything about the 'Mech (weapon performance, mobility, internal damage).

That done, heatsinks no longer need to provide capacity, only dissipation; making it so much easier to distinguish between SHS, DHS and cDHS.

[Pjwned]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 29 September 2016 - 06:31 PM, said:

Here's an idea: remove heat capacity completely!

Then put heat penalties on a curve that begins at 1 so that the more heat you produce the more penalties you get. Penalties could be applied to virtually anything about the 'Mech (weapon performance, mobility, internal damage).

That done, heatsinks no longer need to provide capacity, only dissipation; making it so much easier to distinguish between SHS, DHS and cDHS.

Capacity is needed to not screw over energy boats or any mech that equips any number of higher heat weapons.

Not a good idea unless heat is generated over time rather than instantly, and that's still not a very good idea.

Edited by Pjwned, 29 September 2016 - 11:44 PM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Pjwned, on 29 September 2016 - 11:42 PM, said:

Capacity is needed to not screw over energy boats or any mech that equips any number of higher heat weapons.

Not a good idea unless heat is generated over time rather than instantly, and that's still not a very good idea.

Not necessarily.

If you take capacity out of the picture you're left with dissipation. If you have enough dissipation it negates any affect that heat might have. If you have enough heatsinks to dissipate the heat before you fire again (that is, during recycle), then you are heat neutral.

Other weapon systems have other limitations that would come into play more. ACs are heavy and ammo based. Missiles are half-way between, basically.

[Pjwned]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 30 September 2016 - 08:53 PM, said:

Not necessarily.

If you take capacity out of the picture you're left with dissipation. If you have enough dissipation it negates any affect that heat might have. If you have enough heatsinks to dissipate the heat before you fire again (that is, during recycle), then you are heat neutral.

Other weapon systems have other limitations that would come into play more. ACs are heavy and ammo based. Missiles are half-way between, basically.

Mech fires 2 ER PPCs.

OOPS ENJOY YOUR IMMEDIATE OVERHEAT SHUTDOWN + PENALTIES LOL

Not going to go into this in detail again because I already have elsewhere.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Pjwned, on 30 September 2016 - 09:59 PM, said:

Mech fires 2 ER PPCs.

OOPS ENJOY YOUR IMMEDIATE OVERHEAT SHUTDOWN + PENALTIES LOL

Not going to go into this in detail again because I already have elsewhere.

Oh, come on!

Heat capacity is the range of heat in which your 'Mech may operate and outside of which your 'Mech shuts down and/or begins taking damage. This range may be increased by adding heatsinks. My proposal is to eliminate this range and simply have greater heat have greater effect on the 'Mech.

That doesn't mean that the first threshold on the curve is going to make you instantly shut down.

What I'm suggesting isn't that far from the spirit of the TT rules. It just doesn't have a "cap" to it, starts at 1 and theoretically goes up forever.

[Pjwned]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 01 October 2016 - 05:45 PM, said:

Oh, come on!

Heat capacity is the range of heat in which your 'Mech may operate and outside of which your 'Mech shuts down and/or begins taking damage. This range may be increased by adding heatsinks. My proposal is to eliminate this range and simply have greater heat have greater effect on the 'Mech.

That doesn't mean that the first threshold on the curve is going to make you instantly shut down.

What I'm suggesting isn't that far from the spirit of the TT rules. It just doesn't have a "cap" to it, starts at 1 and theoretically goes up forever.

If there was no cap then override shutdown would no longer be a thing, and what would happen when you did reach a point where your mech shut down, and where would that point be? I suppose it would make your mech shut down for a few seconds and then power back up again regardless of heat levels, rather than staying shut down until the mech cooled off enough.

[xe N on]

A "fixed" 30 heat threshold as in TT can be realized. As written by me in another thread:

xe N on, on 23 September 2016 - 11:37 PM, said:

In a TT like heat system, heat capacity from heat sinks would be the only capacity that can be used without any disadvantage.*** Anything above would draw heat capacity up to 30 until shutdown that would give you negative modifiers as in TT.

Example: 15 heat sinks = 15 heat capacity. Fire two PPCs would lead to 5 overheat. That would result in TT in a -1 MP, you could translate that in a reduction of speed and acceleration.

*** in TT you have only heat dissipation of a value corresponding to the amount of heat sinks. However, since BT is turn based you are only punished if you generate more heat than you can dissipate in one round. In a RT game like MWO we need heat capacity to simulate this buffer from TT.

For example: heat neutral AC10 vs. heat neutral PPC in a system as above:

Heat capacity per STD heat sink = 1
STD Heat sink dissipation: 0,2 / s (= 1 heat per 5 second per heat sink)

Base heatsinks 10 (engine)
tonnage AC10: 12 + 2 (ammo) | slots: 7 + 2 = 9
tonnage PPC: 7 + 7 (heatsinks) | slots: 3 + 7 = 10

We fire both weapons every 5 seconds to obtain the same DPS:

Shooting 2x AC 10 generate 6 heat. Uses 6/10 capacity. Dissipation 10 heat / 5 seconds: heat neutral
Shooting 2x PPC generate 20 heat. However, due to more heat sinks we have 20/24 capacity. Dissipation 24 heat / 5 seconds: heat neutral.

Both builds would be heat neutral though the PPC build generate more heat.

If you, however, reduce the amount of heat sink for the PPCs you can reach the point where you generate more heat than your capacity can handle. In this case you trade weight for efficiency - which is ok.

Edited by xe N on, 02 October 2016 - 02:27 AM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Pjwned, on 01 October 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

If there was no cap then override shutdown would no longer be a thing, and what would happen when you did reach a point where your mech shut down, and where would that point be? I suppose it would make your mech shut down for a few seconds and then power back up again regardless of heat levels, rather than staying shut down until the mech cooled off enough.

Yeah, you would still keep a point at which your 'Mech shuts down. I would put the shutdown threshold right before thresholds where heat starts damaging your 'Mech. You could still override it to keep going, you would just get progressively more damage and performance penalties until you blow up.

Up to the shutdown point, all thresholds would be performance based.

@xe N on:
But we don't really need that "magic number" cap or heatsinks adding capacity at all.

Seems to me we just need incremental penalties on a curve and heatsinks that add dissipation. Under this model, lots of heatsinks still allow you to handle lots of heat.

[Pjwned]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 02 October 2016 - 06:26 PM, said:

Yeah, you would still keep a point at which your 'Mech shuts down. I would put the shutdown threshold right before thresholds where heat starts damaging your 'Mech. You could still override it to keep going, you would just get progressively more damage and performance penalties until you blow up.

Up to the shutdown point, all thresholds would be performance based.

That still sounds like "fire 2 ER PPCs, enjoy your immediate shutdown + penalties" simply because of removing capacity, hence no buffer before penalties start kicking in no matter how many heatsinks you have, which would be dumb.

Why not just do that without removing capacity?

[Widowmaker1981]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 01 October 2016 - 05:45 PM, said:

Oh, come on!

Heat capacity is the range of heat in which your 'Mech may operate and outside of which your 'Mech shuts down and/or begins taking damage. This range may be increased by adding heatsinks. My proposal is to eliminate this range and simply have greater heat have greater effect on the 'Mech.

That doesn't mean that the first threshold on the curve is going to make you instantly shut down.

What I'm suggesting isn't that far from the spirit of the TT rules. It just doesn't have a "cap" to it, starts at 1 and theoretically goes up forever.

Any system that imposes penalties on mechs for firing single weapons from cold, like your idea would do, is a terrible system and should feel terrible. People WILL NOT take auto penalties, and this would literally become Gauss online as that would be the only way to avoid them.

it ABSOLUTLEY HAS TO BE possible to fire heat generating weapons without getting movement penalties / RNG ammo explosions / Etc., at least to some extent. You can argue that the penalty free cap is too large on live atm, you CANNOT argue that there should be NO penalty free cap.

edit: the Tabletop equivalent of no penalty free cap, like you suggest, would be if heat penalties for a turn are applied BEFORE heatsinking for that turn. I.e. The Hellstar fires all 4 PPCs, and then explodes violently. After violently exploding it sinks all 60 heat with its 30 DHS, but is then sad because bits of it are all over the map.

Edited by Widowmaker1981, 03 October 2016 - 02:21 AM.