20 replies to this topic

[Vellron2005]

So, I wanted to put on LAMS on my Irondome mechs, and lo and behold, they crash my heat so much it's better so simply stick with regular AMS..

My Kitfox has heat 1.7 with 3 x AMS and 4 tons of ammo..

I replaced the ammo with heat sinks, and put on a single LAMS, and my heat drops to 0.7?

Is this a bug?

have you tried LAMS?

Are they any good for you? How often do you go BOOM from LAMS?

[Jingseng]

in actual use, they haven't heat crashed me at all. Things that have a heat/s rating is currently screwing the heat management ratio thingy in mechlab like no tomorrow (racs do it too). Probably a bug of some sort.

that notable difference to keep in mind is this: if you are firing rac for several seconds, yes the heat will be bad.

if you are firing ams for several seconds, you are probably dead.

[Antonius Zalman]

I saw that too but so far i have not seen a huge spike in my heat gauge.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

Mechlab heat efficiency goes crazy with even one LAMS. So see real heat efficiency of weapons you must always remove it temporarely.

Also remember the heat effency used is based on "estimation" formula, it's not heat generated/heat dissipated. Of course when you only use it it's good enough, but LAMS breaks it .

Edited by Teer Kerensky, 25 July 2017 - 01:48 AM.

[LordNothing]

lams is a little absurd with the heat. in a game on the pts i forced a to hot kitfox to overheat by simply firing missiles over its head. he shut down and blew up. i knew he was hot because he had just restarted and immediately fired an alpha. i knew his override was on, so i just loosed a volly and his ams went nuts and he was gone. didnt even have to aim. there was a small heat reduction after that on the second revision. its still hot as hell, i have a feeling this is because russ really didnt want to have a damn thing to do with lams.

its good when used as a one off unit, but if you are going to do an iron dome mech with 2 or 3 ams units use old skool ams. on mechs with 3 i sometimes do one lams and 2 ams, this gives me a backup when the ammo runs out and doesn't run too bad. i think its way hotter than it needs to be though.

Edited by LordNothing, 25 July 2017 - 01:57 AM.

[jss78]

Yeah the "heat efficiency" value doesn't signify much with LAMS. I wonder if that value assumes the LAMS is firing non-stop.

However IMO currently LAMS is just a bit too hot. In my experience, even on cold maps a single LAMS firing is enough to stop the heat dissipation on a well-sinked 'mech. Two LAMS on a hot map is so bad I find switching them off to avoid overheat shutdown -- and you can forget about firing any weapons of course.

LAMS has the slot/tonnage requirements of AMS+1 ton ammo, so it's only worth it in situations where you would've needed MORE than 1 ton ammo. Or to avoid ammo explosions. And that's just extremely situational, and generally not worth the significant heat spike.

Currently I'd only equip LAMS on 'mechs which are for all practical purposes heat neutral.

(Then I had this weird thing happen, with LAMS heat killing my 'mech even though significantly under 100% heat. I still don't know if it was a bug or some server desync issue:

Spoiler

[Vellron2005]

Guys, I don't think this heat weirdness only affects LAMS..

I get the same sharp absurd heat drop when I install RACs.. basically anything with "Heat/Second" will cause my heat management indicator to drop absurdly..

I had a 1,23 heat Mauler.. I put on 2 RAC5s, and I get 0.53.. I'm like WTF? (that's with 4-6 additional heat sinks!)

After using it in-game, yeah, it was a bit hot, but not so that 0,53 would be justified.. on weapons like PPCs, 0.53 is like one-shot overheat.. and I can spam those RACs for 10-15 seconds on a hot map without overheating..

So yeah..

I think Heat/second is broken..

Also, my Mauler with 2 RAC5 and 2 Medium lasers apparently has 116 firepower!?

PGI you guys need to fix your mechlab...

Edited by Vellron2005, 26 July 2017 - 12:15 AM.

[Methanoid]

if you have a constant barrage of missiles flying overhead, 1 single laser ams will overheat you nevermind 3 of them on a kitfox, their best abandoned if you actually want to support the team and want to down missiles, stick to regular ams, laser ams is best seen used in a large group huddled together each packing 1 each, but even then they can overheat each mech easily under missile barrage, they are a bit of a joke.

[Trenchbird]

Maybe LAMS should turn themselves off ariund 70 to 80 percent heat.

[Mole]

There's a few new tech weapons that ruin your heat scale when you stick them on your 'mech in the 'mechlab but in practice don't actually give you that bad of a heat hit. RACs, Laser AMS, and Rocket Launchers are all offenders.

[Methanoid]

Catten Hart, on 26 July 2017 - 10:49 AM, said:

Maybe LAMS should turn themselves off ariund 70 to 80 percent heat.

You could say the same for weapons tbh, its just that here in our super futiristic highly advanced mechs the powers that be for both IS and Clans seem to want their mech pilots to do everything manually because, you know, thats somehow more efficient than the onboard computer being clever and micromanaging like it probably should, year 3000+ engineered mechs apparantly prorammed by 1960s planners / programmers.

If our override is OFF, then Lams/Weapons shouldnt even be allowed to even function so as to actually prevent overheat in the first place, they should do whatever the heck they want while the override is on.

Im not even a fan of the whole "mech stuts down" thing while overheated esp now after the "heat patch" we just got, id be happier if an overheated mech just slowed down 80% and the weapons all had major issues functioning but at least functioned until cooldown, at least you dont get frustrated sitting there like a dead duck.

Edited by Methanoid, 26 July 2017 - 11:11 AM.

[Trenchbird]

Methanoid, on 26 July 2017 - 11:08 AM, said:

You could say the same for weapons tbh, its just that here in our super futiristic highly advanced mechs the powers that be for both IS and Clans seem to want their mech pilots to do everything manually because, you know, thats somehow more efficient than the onboard computer being clever and micromanaging like it probably should, year 3000+ engineered mechs apparantly prorammed by 1960s planners / programmers.

If our override is OFF, then Lams/Weapons shouldnt even be allowed to even function so as to actually prevent overheat in the first place, they should do whatever the heck they want while the override is on.

Im not even a fan of the whole "mech stuts down" thing while overheated esp now after the "heat patch" we just got, id be happier if an overheated mech just slowed down 80% and the weapons all had major issues functioning but at least functioned until cooldown, at least you dont get frustrated sitting there like a dead duck.

It's a discussion about giant robots fighting in a video game where a lot of the controls are already condensed for ease of use for the real-life people piloting fake people piloting fake giant robots.

Logic went out the window about two decades back, and we still never found the mummified corpse of it in a tree after it was thrown out of said window.

After all, none of us really know what 70% of those lights, dials and switches in the mech mean, aside from educated guesses about some of the monitor displays (Reactor Output? Catgirls getting killed to fuel said reactor?) and some buttons. And even a modern plane, with all the fancy auto-do-things tech, still has a ton of lights and switches in case the automatic systems fail. And most modern machines have an override (For example, a lot of vehicles on an airport) so that they can function without essential materials-for example, oil. A heat-ignoring shutdown isn't exactly something that is out of place.

**Edit**: And while I kind of like that idea, I foresee a lot of people boating all of the ERPPCs possible (A'la Direstar) and firing nonstop to abuse the heat situation, regardless of slowdown. Adding a bunch of extra RNG would alienate some people, too, if you wanted to add stuff like ammo explosions, etc etc, as at least with overriden shutdown your imminent demise is likely a calculated or a purposely suicidal risk, same as shutting down normally.

Edited by Catten Hart, 26 July 2017 - 04:51 PM.

[evilauthor]

Methanoid, on 26 July 2017 - 11:08 AM, said:

Im not even a fan of the whole "mech stuts down" thing while overheated esp now after the "heat patch" we just got, id be happier if an overheated mech just slowed down 80% and the weapons all had major issues functioning but at least functioned until cooldown, at least you dont get frustrated sitting there like a dead duck.

If MWO were following table top rules, you would already be experiencing slow downs and targeting problems just by getting the mech warm before hitting mandatory shut down levels. Instead, all we get is voice telling us our mech is reaching critical heat levels.

In game, shut down happens when the engine is about to melt/explode. You're beyond the levels of heat that your engine can handle so it makes sense for it to shut down to avoid destroying itself. If you hit override and continue to fight anyway, you shouldn't be surprised when you spontaneously die and the game attributes this to "suicide".

[Methanoid]

evilauthor, on 26 July 2017 - 04:59 PM, said:

If MWO were following table top rules, you would already be experiencing slow downs and targeting problems just by getting the mech warm before hitting mandatory shut down levels. Instead, all we get is voice telling us our mech is reaching critical heat levels.

In game, shut down happens when the engine is about to melt/explode. You're beyond the levels of heat that your engine can handle so it makes sense for it to shut down to avoid destroying itself. If you hit override and continue to fight anyway, you shouldn't be surprised when you spontaneously die and the game attributes this to "suicide".

if our override was ON then yeah that all makes sense blowing ourselves to smithereens, but with the override OFF i find it incredible that year 3000+ engineers would just allow any machine, mech, car, aeroplane or otherwise to just scatter its remains over a wide area in a ball of flame just because the operator continued to cluelessly drive it.

Im still a fan of just heavily crippling the speed and weapon efficiency/dmg/etc, it at least removes the feeling of helplessness, your f***ed anyways and probably know it but at least you could flop around like a dead fish doing something while your dying.

[Aim64C]

evilauthor, on 26 July 2017 - 04:59 PM, said:

If MWO were following table top rules, you would already be experiencing slow downs and targeting problems just by getting the mech warm before hitting mandatory shut down levels. Instead, all we get is voice telling us our mech is reaching critical heat levels.

In game, shut down happens when the engine is about to melt/explode. You're beyond the levels of heat that your engine can handle so it makes sense for it to shut down to avoid destroying itself. If you hit override and continue to fight anyway, you shouldn't be surprised when you spontaneously die and the game attributes this to "suicide".

This is incorrect.

Tabletop did not apply heat penalties until the beginning of the turn. I fired a weapon, it added heat. When it came time for my next turn, deduct functioning heat sink values from the heat. Only then did heat become an issue.

Therefor, a more appropriate simulation of this for a real-time game would be to have two different heat gauges - one representing critical systems, the other representing what is present at the reactor or on components. Using something akin to thermal transfer equations, you would move heat from the reactor/weapons over to the systems, where heat penalties would accrue. Heat sinks pull heat away from the weapons/reactor.

What this means is that firing a large number of weapons, suddenly, would lead to a greater differential between the two heat gauges and, therefor, a more rapid rate of transfer while slower, more sustained heat generation will be counteracted by the heatsinks so as to keep average heat very low and therefor keep little heat from crossing over into critical systems.

Thus, chain-firing lasers could keep you from ever overheating, while firing all of them at once would overload your heat dissipation and you'd take some movement and accuracy penalties as heat built up on in your 'penalty gauge.' Continuing to fire, even in chain-fire, without allowing for your heatsinks to pull the heat from your critical systems would keep the penalties intact as your weapons would have to be cooler than your internal systems before heat would transfer back over to be eliminated by the heatsinks.

This way, you don't have mechs slamming to a halt or having their ammunition cook off for firing the pair of PPCs equipped to them - but you also don't have a situation where it's a good idea to alpha-strike with 42 tons of PPC.

Unfortunately - it doesn't exactly change the fact that moving out to alpha a target and then wait to cool off is a valid strategy.... it just means that you lengthen the time before that can be done, again, in a 'safe' manner as the 'penalty gauge' has to be allowed to deplete before accuracy returns or the risk of cooking all your ammo off goes away (for the SRM-boats). On the other hand, DPS builds with good heatsink consideration could push in on and pound on these alpha builds without suffering penalties to movement, accuracy, or running the risk of blowing up.

[ingramli]

I dont think the heat efficiency is screwed with LAMS. In actual use, if you push, fire your main weapons, and counter enemy' LRMs with your LAMS AT THE SAME TIME, it is THAT HOT. The heat efficiency gauge shows how fast your heat build up when all equipments/weapons used at the same time, whether or not you do so, is another question.

[Palfatreos]

note that not the exact formula how heat management work but to explain why certain new weapens give bad heat management.

heat management = dissipatiin / max hps
max hps = weapon heat/(cooldown+duration)
max hps mean you keep firing all weapon as soon they of cooldown

lams and rac has no cooldiown or duration thigh gives a huge max hps and a very terrible heat management
although in reality they dont fire constantly and jammin is accounted in formula

[s0da72]

Methanoid, on 26 July 2017 - 11:08 AM, said:

year 3000+ engineered mechs apparantly prorammed by 1960s planners / programmers.

Apparently they can't even design a U/AC that doesn't jam in the future either.

[Methanoid]

s0da72, on 26 July 2017 - 06:34 PM, said:

Apparently they can't even design a U/AC that doesn't jam in the future either.

On 1 polar opposite they do have airstrikes that appear in seconds tho.

[Jingseng]

Back on topic.......

Had a LAMS on a MAD-IIC on terra therma. while walking but not firing weapons, 1xLAMS activity ~1-2 seconds did not budge my heat gauge at all - DHS and skill tree apparently compensated for whatever increase it would have generated. Even with firing 1x cerppc and 2x chll while LAMS was laser light showing did not create a heat problem (above and beyond what those weapons already did)