19 replies to this topic

[Greyhart]

ok so there was this long post on heat https://mwomercs.com...ework-idea-v10/

all very complex, but of course it gets me thinking. If I was making this game from scratch how would I make heat work?

I realised I would probably not use heat as it doesn't make a whole load of sense as to why shooting a laser from my left arm should make things in my right arm hot.

I'd use the idea of energy draw.

An engine would produce a set amount of energy per second. Larger engine would probably produce more energy per second (probably with diminishing returns).

The capacity would be set by the number of capacitors (heat sinks) you had equipped. Note that the minimum of 10 would now make some sense.

I think that makes a lot more sense, than heat.

So after emptying the energy meter you have to wait for it to be filled up again (obviously being able to fire before being completely filled). The more capacitors the longer it takes to fill.

Of course the problem is that this system doesn't fit the gauss, but then again the gauss doesn't really fit. We have all sorts of problems balancing it because it produces no heat.

So if you were redesigning the heat system (from scratch so go wild) what would do?

[Wintersdark]

Well, the heat system is as it is because it's not about realise (Battletech is inherently unrealistic) but because it's a resource from a game design angle. It's like Mana or Rage in an RPG. Oh, it's dressed up for the IP, but that's what it is.

So, any changes need to happen in the lens of gameplay mechanics first, not "this seems more realistic" - changes made in the line of "realism" rarely lead to good game play.

[Cementi]

Remove the heat cap (keep reading before you have apolexy).

Greatly increase the effectiveness of heat sinks.

Add in all the juicy TT penalties. Some tweaking would be nessesary as TT does not translate perfectly to a digital enviroment. I am thinking probally twice as much heat as TT before you incured the same penalty. So it would be as follows.

10 heat -10% speed
16 heat (a to hit modifier is hard to simulate) 10% reduction in torso and arm speed as well as turn rate.
20 heat -20% speed
26 heat 20% reduction to torso, arm and turn rate.
28 heat Mech will shut down unless the override button is hit, has a 1 second grace period, lasts for 4 seconds, no longer a toggle. If still over this point at the end of 4 seconds another warning is triggered with a 1 second grace period to hit the override button again.
30 heat -30% speed
34 heat -30% reduction to arm, torso and turn rate.
36 heat as 28 heat however it only lasts 3 seconds instead of 4.
38 heat 1 structure damage to every locations except the head every second you remain at this level or higher.
40 heat -40% speed.
44 heat as 28 heat however it only lasts 2 seconds instead of 4.
46 heat as 38 but the damage is increased to 2 per second.
48 heat -40% to arm, torso and turn rate.
50 heat -50% to speed.
52 heat as 28 heat but it only lasts 1 second instead of 4.
56 heat as 38 but the damage is increased to 3 per second.
60+ heat the mech shuts down until it lowers to 56 heat. Structure damage is now also applied to the head until you drop below 60.

I tried to take alot of the RNGesus stuff out as people are not fond of that. Ammo explosions and random shut downs would probally not work so instead structure damage and manual override was added. However the hitting the override all the time might annoy people so something else might have to be worked out but realisticly with proper cooling and fire control that could likely be avoided.

I also tried to keep things around making a 30 point shot viable. Its hot but not crippling if you wait a little to cool down between volleys. Keep in mind heat disapation would be increased.

When translating TT to digital they doubled armor values to compensate for pinpoint damage but they also shortened the cooldowns of all weapons. In TT it was a static 10 seconds per round so all weapons had the same cooldown. I can see why that might not have been fun for people so I am fine with the change.......the problem is they did not increase the cooling to handle the increased rate of fire. Instead they elected to ignore the heat penalties for the most part and increase the heat cap, even to the point of having heat sinks increase the heat cap as well as increase the disapation. This is what has lead to alpha warrior online.

Heat sink effectiveness would have to be tweaked but to start I would probally set the heat per second of standard heat sinks at .125 HPS and doubles at .25 HPS for testing. Also, in the engine outside the engine would not matter. They all work the same.

So firing 3 PPC's would put you at 30 heat with some modest penalties however if you had 10 double heat sinks it would only take you 6 seconds to bleed off that heat. Trivial but it would allow you to fire back up weapons or play a heat neutral build if you added a few heat sinks and as I said might have to be tweaked.

High alphas would come with high risk as they should. Sure if you fired 8 CERML's your heat would spike to 48 which would incur some significant penalties including structure damage, and that is not even considering ghost heat which I would remove but they probally would keep. Without firing anything else you would take 3 structure damage to every location before you cooled off enough to stop taking damage. Your mech would be very sluggish so you would likely also take alot of fire and not be able to spread it well on top of that.

But that's just a dream as I do not see us ever having a real heat scale as it would be hard to code and people would freak out.

I dream of the day my Locust can fire 4 medium lasers on an endless loop and not over heat......like it should be able to.

Edited by Cementi, 20 June 2017 - 08:02 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

What would I do?

Localized heat on each weapon or piece of equipment (anything that shows up in the weapon list). These would provide soft caps on output per item. Proximity to heatsinks increases the cooling rate for that equipment item.

Engine would have fixed power output per rating, and places a hard cap on your total possible output, including movement. Bigger engines give you more overhead for add-on systems (i.e. weapons, MASC) per speed rating (i.e. I could go 81 kph using a 260 in my Jester, but I would not have much overhead to fire energy-intensive weapons). Lighter 'Mechs use less power to move per unit of speed. Power draw for movement spikes for acceleration. Energy weapons have a steady-state background draw to hold a charge, spike on recycle.

Pipe dreams.

[Shifty McSwift]

Yeonne Greene, on 20 June 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

What would I do?

Localized heat on each weapon or piece of equipment (anything that shows up in the weapon list). These would provide soft caps on output per item. Proximity to heatsinks increases the cooling rate for that equipment item.

Engine would have fixed power output per rating, and places a hard cap on your total possible output, including movement. Bigger engines give you more overhead for add-on systems (i.e. weapons, MASC) per speed rating (i.e. I could go 81 kph using a 260 in my Jester, but I would not have much overhead to fire energy-intensive weapons). Lighter 'Mechs use less power to move per unit of speed. Power draw for movement spikes for acceleration. Energy weapons have a steady-state background draw to hold a charge, spike on recycle.

Pipe dreams.

Yeah that would definitely be cool if doable, in practice each gun (or structure point too possibly) having its own heatscale, link the weapons health to the system too etc. Makes sense and would play out interestingly and add another layer of depth to weapon balance.

[Morderian]

The only things i would like to change about the heat system are:

1: remove the heat bonuses from skill tree and quirks and replace them with skills that work against overheat damage and similar stuff

2: make Std Heatsinks 1.0 heatcontainment and let them reduce 1 (or better said 0.1 heat per second) heat and Double Heatsinks the same but 2 heat contain and 2 reduce (aka make them really double heatsinks) and if this does not fit that good with our faster gameplay (rof) we can still higher the cooling the heatsinks put out (but not the containment)

3: Heatcontainment comes entirely from the Heatsinks so you have no large heatcontainment for free which is one of the biggest dislikes i have with the game as it allows weapon builds to run on a mech with only engine heatsinks that should take large penaltys when he fires

4: introduce a heat penalty system for the now existing overheat and not just shutdown which aligns to the one from the tabletop so you get slower, take damage, risk ammo explosions, BBQ your pilot etc. so people have to watch their heat.

5: kick out coolant flush so the changes achive the goal i have (or let it have a disadvantage so it is not a free of skill button press)

6: remove ghost heat(there might be some weapons that still could need it but it is unlikely)

Now why do i propose this well its simple:

1st: its because it always feels for me that additionel Heatsinks outside the engine are not worth it as even with builds that would never rund cold i can fire alpha after alpha ignoring any overheat that might be created and only the shutdown stops it and that only with 10 -15 dhs in the engine ,best example here is my 4 ERPPC Madcat i fire them 2 and 2 to ignore Ghostheat and i would create 60 heat but i only have 15 DHs which should not be enough to handle all the heat but the Mech easily stays online and at roughly 80% heat max and i can soon fire another salvo again not caring much about the heat buildup (same goes for the 4 ER LL Madcat too)

2nd: to cut down the laser vomit builds without removing them, just make them more of a tradeoff and more demading to the player using it so he has to take choices like more lasers or better cooling, Speed or heatsinks etc.

3rd: to bring more easy logic into the heatsystem as atm a newbie will in most cases have a hard way of learning how it works thanks to things he can not directly see

Edited by Morderian, 20 June 2017 - 11:54 AM.

[evilauthor]

Heat is fine the way it is. In universe, the heat being generated isn't just coming from your weapon, it's coming from your fusion engine as well as power production is ramped up because of energy demand from your weapons (especially the energy weapons).

And the best example of this is what happens when you overheat enough to shut down your mech: your CT takes internal structure damage. And if you hit Override and continue to fight while overheated? You continue to take CT damage and can kill yourself by destroying your own CT through overheat. I know; I've actually done this a couple times.

So it's not just your weapons getting hot. It's your engine too. Wanna see what happens when a fusion engine goes into meltdown? Hit the O button and continue ignoring you heat indicator while you fight normally. You'll probably be dead before your CT armor gets breached.

[Shifty McSwift]

evilauthor, on 20 June 2017 - 12:15 PM, said:

Heat is fine the way it is. In universe, the heat being generated isn't just coming from your weapon, it's coming from your fusion engine as well as power production is ramped up because of energy demand from your weapons (especially the energy weapons).

And the best example of this is what happens when you overheat enough to shut down your mech: your CT takes internal structure damage. And if you hit Override and continue to fight while overheated? You continue to take CT damage and can kill yourself by destroying your own CT through overheat. I know; I've actually done this a couple times.

So it's not just your weapons getting hot. It's your engine too. Wanna see what happens when a fusion engine goes into meltdown? Hit the O button and continue ignoring you heat indicator while you fight normally. You'll probably be dead before your CT armor gets breached.

Certainly a fair assessment there too, still attaching overheat and weapon health could be interesting.

[Greyhart]

evilauthor, on 20 June 2017 - 12:15 PM, said:

Heat is fine the way it is. In universe, the heat being generated isn't just coming from your weapon, it's coming from your fusion engine as well as power production is ramped up because of energy demand from your weapons (especially the energy weapons).

And the best example of this is what happens when you overheat enough to shut down your mech: your CT takes internal structure damage. And if you hit Override and continue to fight while overheated? You continue to take CT damage and can kill yourself by destroying your own CT through overheat. I know; I've actually done this a couple times.

So it's not just your weapons getting hot. It's your engine too. Wanna see what happens when a fusion engine goes into meltdown? Hit the O button and continue ignoring you heat indicator while you fight normally. You'll probably be dead before your CT armor gets breached.

I am aware of this. I am also aware that heat is a game play mechanic, designed to stop you just shooting everything all the time.

Of course if the heat does come from the power plant I have to ask the question; why is the gauss rifle heatless as it must at some point draw power to accelerate the slug.

describing it as a power draw rather than heat makes more sense conceptually (although may not work well in TT).

If you add in that running has a significant power drain (a slow but noticeable, also scales with weight) and that larger engines have more power output.

It does still hit the problem of boating small weapons. And could cripple small mechs.

[LordNothing]

i think heat level needs to be tied into sensors. run hot, get detected, and we all know what happens next.

[Greyhart]

LordNothing, on 21 June 2017 - 02:37 AM, said:

i think heat level needs to be tied into sensors. run hot, get detected, and we all know what happens next.

Could also make you visible in heat vision even if you're behind a building.

[MustrumRidcully]

Greyhart, on 21 June 2017 - 01:25 AM, said:

I am aware of this. I am also aware that heat is a game play mechanic, designed to stop you just shooting everything all the time.

Of course if the heat does come from the power plant I have to ask the question; why is the gauss rifle heatless as it must at some point draw power to accelerate the slug.

describing it as a power draw rather than heat makes more sense conceptually (although may not work well in TT).

If you add in that running has a significant power drain (a slow but noticeable, also scales with weight) and that larger engines have more power output.

It does still hit the problem of boating small weapons. And could cripple small mechs.

Warning, personal head canon here:


My interpretation is now that the heat caused by weapns is basically a direct consequence of the massive power draw they mean to the system. That is also the reason why by Table Top rules, weapons are fired individually (leading to seperate hit locations for every shot) instead of group-fired.

The Gauss Rifle's unique mechanic is that it has a charge that causes it to explode when critiically hit.
Now, the Gauss Rifle is special in that it does not draw all power when it shoots - it is constantly drawing a small amount of power to build up its charge, and when you fire, only a little extra energy is needed to release that charge and propel the gauss projectile.

The small constant power draw itself is no big deal for the fusion reactor, hence you don't gain heat from just enabling the Gauss Rifle.

---

For my personal fun mostly, I am actually working at a variant Battletech ruleset that tries to bridge that TT and FPS gap a bit by incorporating the above idea. So in these rules, you can group-fire weapons (and you can actually aim them, too), but only as much as the engine can take.

[Greyhart]

LordNothing, on 21 June 2017 - 02:37 AM, said:

i think heat level needs to be tied into sensors. run hot, get detected, and we all know what happens next.

Actually running hot should extend lock on time when out of line of sight. I think complex math involved so I leave that there.

[Davegt27]

I think energy draw makes way more sense then the heat nightmare we have now

after working on military jets for over 33 years equipment is to expensive and the stakes are to high to let heat be that
big of a factor

I think I could build a pretty good case for energy draw (would take to long but a few things)

*capacitor is more like a battery (quick discharge Batt)
so I would have 3 levels
1) reserve or back up batt power
2) main reactor pwr
3) Capacitive discharge pwr

Main reactor pwr would give you continuous power flow rate minus what is needed to recharge the capacitors
Capacitive would be used to fire weapons beyond the continuous fire rate (like high alphas)

you could eliminate the shut down and die mechanic
it would be more a shut down pwr systems
for example high alphas would not be possible until capacitors reached 80%
another example would be boated weapons would be reduced by there inability to have the energy to fire them

energy draw has way more potential

[Almond Brown]

Yeonne Greene, on 20 June 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

What would I do?

Localized heat on each weapon or piece of equipment (anything that shows up in the weapon list). These would provide soft caps on output per item. Proximity to heatsinks increases the cooling rate for that equipment item.

Engine would have fixed power output per rating, and places a hard cap on your total possible output, including movement. Bigger engines give you more overhead for add-on systems (i.e. weapons, MASC) per speed rating (i.e. I could go 81 kph using a 260 in my Jester, but I would not have much overhead to fire energy-intensive weapons). Lighter 'Mechs use less power to move per unit of speed. Power draw for movement spikes for acceleration. Energy weapons have a steady-state background draw to hold a charge, spike on recycle.

Pipe dreams.

And XL's work the same way for 1/2 the weight costs? (Clan XL work same as now)? Just curious.

Edited by Almond Brown, 21 June 2017 - 05:45 AM.

[LordNothing]

Greyhart, on 21 June 2017 - 04:28 AM, said:

Actually running hot should extend lock on time when out of line of sight. I think complex math involved so I leave that there.

it would extend targeting range for one. so you can get locked if you are further out. and perhaps faster lockes closer in. it might make your locks on others slow down as well. perhaps no running speed (which would really hurt hill humpers who push high alphas). though going that way is just going to make players even more timid. also your ecm stops working above a certain point. part of running silent should be keeping your heat down to prevent detection.

[Y E O N N E]

Almond Brown, on 21 June 2017 - 05:41 AM, said:

And XL's work the same way for 1/2 the weight costs? (Clan XL work same as now)? Just curious.

XLFE would generate the same amount of power per rating as their SFE and LFE counterparts, yes.

As for durability, similar to now. I like the idea of making the isXL a hardier one-and-done affair while the Clan one is squishier but with increased redundancy. So IS still explode when you finally take out any torso component while the Clan one can survive a partial loss.

[Greyhart]

LordNothing, on 21 June 2017 - 04:11 PM, said:

it would extend targeting range for one. so you can get locked if you are further out. and perhaps faster lockes closer in. it might make your locks on others slow down as well. perhaps no running speed (which would really hurt hill humpers who push high alphas). though going that way is just going to make players even more timid. also your ecm stops working above a certain point. part of running silent should be keeping your heat down to prevent detection.

I think a small HUD indicator on estimated detection range and retention time would be useful. Would add to info war elements.

also if you used heat as a factor in detection and retention then hot maps would have an advantage that you are less easily detected.

[Reno Blade]

I think the basic value that limits the weapon fire / dps is not important if it's heat-depleating or energy-regeneration (or both together)... as the "idea" behind the heat is coming from higher engine power output to recharge the weapons (at least for energy weapons).

The thing is that we have a hard time balancing weapons with way different values for DMG, Range and Ammo with totally inconsistent heat values.

Say you have a Gauss that is very strong with long range 15dmg, but only 1 heat and compare that to a SRM6 with similar strong 12dmg spread and very short ranged for 4 heat.

How do you balance a heat-based scale with weapons such as the Gauss?
If I look at the "previously OP" AC boats, they are running quite hot if you keep firing...
And at the same time we ALWAYS have the issue with boating > mixed builds, so thats why we currently have the Ghost Heat (with it's gaps).

So, we need to "fix" the outliers like Gauss 1heat AND we need something like GH / ED / TT-Heat-penalties to reduce boating alpha strikes.

Part1 - Fix heat outliers
- Gauss heat increased to 4-6 heat
- Maybe reduce ROF for ammo based weapons to reduce DPS without increasing heat for all of them?

Part2 - Anti-boating (penaltize going too high in dmg/heat)
- Penalize going over 60% heat
- Pernalize strongly going over 90% heat
- Penalize boating -> GH / ED heat or cooldown before "recharging" enough energy

Edited by Reno Blade, 23 June 2017 - 03:04 AM.

[LordNothing]

Greyhart, on 23 June 2017 - 02:17 AM, said:

I think a small HUD indicator on estimated detection range and retention time would be useful. Would add to info war elements.

also if you used heat as a factor in detection and retention then hot maps would have an advantage that you are less easily detected.

certainly would make maps like terra therma more desirable if you could use them to mask your heat signature.

Edited by LordNothing, 23 June 2017 - 09:05 AM.