31 replies to this topic

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Pixel Hunter, on 28 April 2025 - 05:47 AM, said:

Just the fact that it's considered meta to run with it on all the time means it's a bit too forgiving.

It's the opposite, not having it on is too harsh of a penalty that you're willing to risk it sometimes. It's definitely overly forgiving for assaults but other mechs because they have less structure suffer a bit more (it's really risky for lights).

[pbiggz]

There is some truth to what OP says, but, I think its a bit undercooked.
I dont think it would be bad for heat to have steeper penalties, but its really easy to just make your game feel bad if its done wrong, and even if your game is perfectly mathematically balanced, if it feels like crap to play, its a bad game.

[nanashi0110]

In my opinion, we should make the current override the default.

I think it would be better to put it in a format that does not require the override to be active for every match.

Along with this, removing the warning that appears at the top of the screen would be perfect.

[1453 R]

Heat in MWO doesn't actually work even remotely like heat in the tabletop game, and it never has throughout the game's whole history. In TTBT, you don't ever want to go up on the heat scale if you can help it, and even just being halfway up the heat bar means being slower, rolling for ammo cookoff, taking aim penalties, and worse. The whole "ride your heat bar" thing isn't a thing in the source material, you want to stay cool as a cucumber and avoid the constant, cumulative penalties of overheating.

In precisely zero MechWarrior games is this a thing, however. In all MechWarrior games, "heat is a resource" and you're expected to ride the redline as hard as you can - or, if you're an override monkey, to sail past it on the back of your magic flaming unicorn to join the Epic Quest for Valhalla as you blow past 500% heat cap and blow up so violently you alter the orbit of the planet. Y'know, like what happens at least twice in goddamn near every single match I play.

I have to wonder what a more TTBT-accurate heat system would look like in a real-time game. I am not clever enough to block it out off the cuff in a forum post, but man. Wouldn't it be wild to have a heat system that actually discouraged people from committing Completely Avoidable Heat Seppuku, rather than beckoning them to their completely-evitable dooms with siren songs and flashing lights egging them on the entire time.

Edited by 1453 R, 28 April 2025 - 01:55 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 28 April 2025 - 01:54 PM, said:

The whole "ride your heat bar" thing isn't a thing in the source material, you want to stay cool as a cucumber and avoid the constant, cumulative penalties of overheating.

There's a difference between riding the line and staying cool. I feel like in the books a single energy weapon has the potential to make your heat go crazy when in reality you are staying cool because well, TT is abstract.

Heat is only calculated in 10s time segments so there is no real hard cap other than how much heat you could dissipate. Heat sinks are less effective in MW relative to weapon cooldowns to make heat a factor because in TT, outside very specific builds (where you might volley fire to avoid getting the first +1 to-hit penalty at 5 overheat) or ones where you alpha your weapons and spend the next turn cooling down while you incur penalties (typically a JJ mech to avoid the movement penalties) you want to be fairly heat neutral. So heat functions a bit differently to make it more of a factor in game. It's meant to be avoid in a match pretty much entirely by most good builds outside stuff like engine crits or inferno-esque weapons.

tl;dr in TT, "managing your heat" is more about building a mech that has enough dissipation for your weapons functioning more like an energy mechanic but one that you can go over but with serious penalties. In MW it's more of a resource that you actively have to manage with fire control.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 28 April 2025 - 04:21 PM.

[Gasboy]

1453 R, on 28 April 2025 - 01:54 PM, said:

or, if you're an override monkey, to sail past it on the back of your magic flaming unicorn to join the Epic Quest for Valhalla as you blow past 500% heat cap and blow up so violently you alter the orbit of the planet. Y'know, like what happens at least twice in goddamn near every single match I play.

This was so frustrating in the Solaris event. Too many people overheating to death before I could land a killing blow. Got robbed of so many cbills.

[GreyNovember]

1453 R, on 28 April 2025 - 01:54 PM, said:

In precisely zero MechWarrior games is this a thing, however.

Have you never played 3 or 4?

Does "Heat Exceeding recommended level" , "Approaching critical heat level", or "Heat level critical, shutting down", not ring any bells?

The movement slowing, the HUD blurring as you ramp up?

Likewise, the very first GDL book has overheating in a locust firing one medium laser. The situation does not improve when they upgrade to overheating a Shadowhawk. I wouldnt take it seriously considering how fast and loose it plays with the source rules.

[Ttly]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 28 April 2025 - 06:20 AM, said:

It's the opposite, not having it on is too harsh of a penalty that you're willing to risk it sometimes. It's definitely overly forgiving for assaults but other mechs because they have less structure suffer a bit more (it's really risky for lights).

Well here's an idea then:
No more overheat shutdowns (or only heat shutdown at 150% so your average ghost heating 12C-ERML Nova-Prime or accidental Warhawk-Prime 4C-ERPPC alphas don't blow up all the time) but overheating instead locks you out of firing weapons at all (or only zero heat weapons like MGs/TAGs if possible)

Wooosh, overheating is now a lot less punishing, yay, you can still reposition and twist around or what have you while in the state.
But hey, zero engineering hours and stuff I guess, which is enough to have transparent minimap when arm lock goes through it though.

[pbiggz]

Ttly, on 02 May 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

Well here's an idea then:
No more overheat shutdowns (or only heat shutdown at 150% so your average ghost heating 12C-ERML Nova-Prime or accidental Warhawk-Prime 4C-ERPPC alphas don't blow up all the time) but overheating instead locks you out of firing weapons at all (or only zero heat weapons like MGs/TAGs if possible)

Wooosh, overheating is now a lot less punishing, yay, you can still reposition and twist around or what have you while in the state.
But hey, zero engineering hours and stuff I guess, which is enough to have transparent minimap when arm lock goes through it though.

That's the hawken approach. There is something to that, because hawken was fun as hell, and it felt great to play, BUT its not a one-to-one comparison. Hawken was a first person shooter first and foremost. Care has to be taken to translate those systems.

I would argue for a hybrid approach. Make it harder to overheat (i.e. you have a bigger heat capacity) but make the punishment more severe if you go into the red, and very severe if you cap out. Running into the red should disrupt your UI, slow you down, etc getting progressively worse the more red you get. If you override, it can disable the autoshutdown but redlining could lock out your weapons temporarily, assuming you dont explode, which you will if you stay in the red for too long.

Once you have these different stages of overheating then you get to experiment with things like mechs/weapons/equipment that gives you bonuses when you redline; perhaps higher agility when you're riding the line (but obviously not in the "i am taking damage" area), or improved weapon cooldowns. You can also do things like introduce weapons/mechs/equipment that gains bonuses from staying as cool as possible, encouraging you to run excessive heatsinks and under-gunning because the quirks carry you where other mechs might just need more dakka.

Armored core 6 plays with this with their different generator types. That game has a sort of souls-like stamina bar system that ends up being your main resource similar to heat capacity in MWO. Coral Generators heavily encourage you to redline, they have a lower capacity, but once they are fully drained, after a brief reset cycle, the energy bar refills to nearly full instantly; you can stay in flight nearly indefinitely if you use them right. Other generators have a much larger energy capacity and a much faster recharge rate, but if you redline them and they have to restart, the bar starts damn near zero, and takes a much longer time to refill to full, so you never want to redline them.

Of course, none of this will happen.

Edited by pbiggz, 02 May 2025 - 11:03 AM.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

There are already cases of mechs doing good impressions of soup cans in microwaves in MWO, I have had my lights decide on occasion to just Presto Change-o into a smoking wreck at a surprisingly low overheat with fresh internals so anyone kvetching that override has no consequences has not had the misfortune of running a light mech at redline and turning MWO into FAFO

Edited by a 5 year old with an Uzi, 03 May 2025 - 07:06 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

pbiggz, on 02 May 2025 - 10:58 AM, said:

That's the hawken approach. There is something to that, because hawken was fun as hell, and it felt great to play, BUT its not a one-to-one comparison. Hawken was a first person shooter first and foremost. Care has to be taken to translate those systems.

Ttly, on 02 May 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

No more overheat shutdowns (or only heat shutdown at 150% so your average ghost heating 12C-ERML Nova-Prime or accidental Warhawk-Prime 4C-ERPPC alphas don't blow up all the time) but overheating instead locks you out of firing weapons at all (or only zero heat weapons like MGs/TAGs if possible)

Wooosh, overheating is now a lot less punishing, yay, you can still reposition and twist around or what have you while in the state.

This is the approach MW5 already took. It's alright, I don't feel like it's as engaging of a punishment though, the way I like to think of it, overheating should be like going into debt, you shouldn't come out of it without paying some interest somehow (damage, slower movement, reduce equipment cooldown rate, slower dissipation rate, etc are all penalties that are solid for override). Without override on I toyed with the idea of it just behaving like energy in other games, you just can't fire your guns if you don't have the capacity, it simplifies the overheat situation as there's no way to avoid punishment, but having weapons locked until you cooldown is a solid option.

Ttly, on 02 May 2025 - 10:30 AM, said:

But hey, zero engineering hours and stuff I guess, which is enough to have transparent minimap when arm lock goes through it though.

This is something Navid put together, it is likely similar to an XML edit like balance changes. That's different than touching code.

pbiggz, on 02 May 2025 - 10:58 AM, said:

You can also do things like introduce weapons/mechs/equipment that gains bonuses from staying as cool as possible, encouraging you to run excessive heatsinks and under-gunning because the quirks carry you where other mechs might just need more dakka.

I don't think this is a good idea, you'll then run into the issue where you invalidate having to really manage heat MGs/Gauss currently do. If you are avoiding a core mechanic of the game, then you have entered similar territory like MWO lock-on territory. Like I said, Run Hot or Die is a legit thing, you have heat capacity, you shouldn't be disincentivized from using it.

[pbiggz]

not particularly advocating for any specific equipment or buffs to running hot or running cool, im just pointing out that if you're careful about how its implemented, it opens design space that would otherwise be closed to you.