49 replies to this topic

[That Guy]

BT has never handled heat in a realistic fashion. seriously, it makes no sense. for more realistic heat you will need body specific heat generation, and reactor management. and heat induced ammo explosions? do you realize how hot you need to get modern conventional ammo to cook off? if a mech were to get hot enough to cook off its ammo as shown, most of the wires and connections and electronics would have long burned off (and additionally, a whole bin isnt going to go off at once. one round might pop, and might generate enough heat to start a chain reaction)

ammo would be more likely to cook off in the weapons barrel from extended fire, and cause a "run away gun" (weapon just keeps firing because the chamber is so hot)

so yeah, mechs dont have a realistic portrayal of heat management.

HOWEVER, the way BT has implemented heat is a great game-play mechanic. its fairly simple and easy to understand, and it limits what players can do in a fun challenging way. (in this case i would say stick closer to the TT heat rules for funs sake)

I am also hoping the PGI will implement more harmful heat effects more gradually. heat should not only cause your mech to slow down, but the arms and torso should also start to slow. additionally weapon convergence should slow as well.
past MW games heat really was a non issue (except for the LL and PPC boats that would risk shut down after everyshot). in MW2 i dont remember any negative effects beyond exploding if you stayed red too long, MW3 you would slow down once you reached about 60% (yellow, orange on the heat scale) with chances for ammo explosions (that never did anydamage, even with out CASE). MW4 heat really is a joke, with the only negative effect at like 80% heat, with a slow down and flickery hud.

In MWO I hope that even a low heat levels there is a slight and linear decrease in movement speed, aiming speed and convergence speed.

for example (these numbers are purely arbitrary and are only for presentation purposes, not actually well thought out)

• loss of -1%kph per point of heat above 10 (on a scale of 50)
  
• -.05% loss of convergence speed per point of heat above 20
  
• -.1% loss of extremity (arms and torso twist) speed per point of heat above 30
  
• .05% chance per second for fusion reactor to "stall" (spontaneous, non-overridable reactor shutdown) above 45 heat. takes some significant time for reactor to come back online, and might cause damage that needs to be fixed with C-Bills
  
• .05% chance per second for minor ammo explosion (few rounds pop, they break feeds, break links, misalign cartridges, cause stoppages, cause no structural damage, but you cant use that ammo bin anymore) when heat above 40. chance for ammo explosion increases at a +.5% chance per additional point of heat
  
• .02% chance per second for minor ammo explosion to become catastrophic ammo explosion when heat above 40 (we all know and love it, BOOOOOM)

etc...


a good heat system is the balancer for the energy weapons

Edited by That Guy, 01 April 2012 - 11:32 AM.

[StandingCow]

Be cool to see a visual heat effect that actually impairs your vision a bit if you at/over your max.

[Moosehead]

Didn't one of the novels have a Locust pilot experiencing heat build up, or am I crazy and/or memory problems?

I wouldn't really mind normally 'cool' mechs actually having to worry about heat, and boats _really_ having to worry

[Gozer]

Strum Wealh, on 01 April 2012 - 08:32 AM, said:

Take, for example, the recently-unveiled AWS-8Q Awesome.
It has 28 standard Heat Sinks installed; it would have an overall dissipation rate of 2.8 units of heat per second.
If the Awesome were to fire its three PPCs together while standing still, it would generate 30 units of heat (10 per PPC) instantly (representing the heat spikes described in the novels).
It should take the Awesome's 28 Heat Sinks about 10.71 seconds to completely dissipate all of the heat generated by that triple-PPC firing.

As an Awesome pilot I fully agree with this idea. Mainly because I never fired all 3 PPC's at once in MW I single fired to keep the heat down. (That and fix my ***** aim. ) Though this might be too "Sim" for MW:O. I look forward to seeing what they do though!

[HighlandWolf]

I too hope they make sure heat is a major factor in your decisions in game and in preperation of your mech

[Thomas Hogarth]

I think slowing your 'mech by 10kph walking(and recomputing max run speed) per five heat units excess wouldn't be amiss. You shouldn't be able to overheat then run away at full speed.

In fact, I think I've seen figures that look a lot like that before...

[Belisarius1]

Riding a heat curve is a fundamental feature of a pilot's skill set. I can't believe people are trying to take that away.

Reductions in the 'mech's speed, hud blackouts etc are all fine. So are eventual ammo explosions and unavoidable shutdown, so long as they occur at a defined time after a high threshold. Random, unavoidable shutdown risks that come into play as soon as a 'mech gets warm are not fine at all.

The pilot should have control over how long and how hard they push. If you remove override, coolant flush and whatever else and replace them all with dice rolls, a first-time player behaves exactly the same under heat load as an expert, and that's crazy.

Edited by Belisarius†, 01 April 2012 - 07:14 PM.

[Insidious Johnson]

I just don't want another MW4 over-ride bug. On desert maps, even, you could fire 7 erlls, override, back up, shut down, restart after recycle, repeat ad naseum. What is the point if it can be bypassed?

[William Petersen]

According to the rules, excessive heat also reduced your mech's speed. I'd like to see that implemented, too.

[Hawkeye 72]

That Guy, on 01 April 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

BT has never handled heat in a realistic fashion. seriously, it makes no sense. for more realistic heat you will need body specific heat generation, and reactor management. and heat induced ammo explosions? do you realize how hot you need to get modern conventional ammo to cook off? if a mech were to get hot enough to cook off its ammo as shown, most of the wires and connections and electronics would have long burned off (and additionally, a whole bin isnt going to go off at once. one round might pop, and might generate enough heat to start a chain reaction)

ammo would be more likely to cook off in the weapons barrel from extended fire, and cause a "run away gun" (weapon just keeps firing because the chamber is so hot)

so yeah, mechs dont have a realistic portrayal of heat management.

This isn't necessarily true. High temperatures apparently do damage ammunition. Lead itself melts at 600 Kelvin. While you won't always ruin your ammo on a hot day, a lot of gun forums talk about how ammo will pop in the fire and in the oven around 300 degrees Farenheit. High explosive shells won't detonate if the target doesn't provide enough resistance to build up frictional heat to detonate the explosive. No doubt hot mech internal temperatures could spark a reaction.

As for that chain reaction, that is known as slamfire, and is unrelated to heat.

Heat does cause pressure problems in ammunition as well, http://www.loadammo....ics/April02.htm

Another good video on ammo and fire/heat

Here is a video of a tank supposedly suffering an ammo explosion

Edited by Hawkeye 72, 01 April 2012 - 07:42 PM.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

Ok, so AC rounds and other ballistic munitions may be more difficult to cook off, but what about SRMs/LRMs/(MRMs)/and T-bolts?

Missiles being more prone to internal ammo explosions, and if you manage to cook off your own AC rounds, then you either really messed up (since ballistics tend to run pretty cool in BT) or you just got mauled by flamers left and right. Would be a rather interesting dynamic that specific weapon types are slightly more prone to internal ammo explosions, no?

[SD 47]

In reading through this, it seems like a lot of good ideas are being thrown around but not a lot of detail on what the pros and cons are of each idea are; so I am going to try and break a few of these ideas down the way I see them and see how things look. This will probably be another long one so feel free to skip past.

First off, I think we are conflating 2 separate issues: Boating, and Alpha Strikes. Boating is a question of variety and balance, and Alpha Strikes mostly being an issue only when they can one shot core you. In both cases, I am not sure if heat is necessarily the thing you want to adjust because what you are really doing is punishing players for using high heat weapons. Not for building a boat or Alphaing.

Ex: If I build an Atlas that carries nothing but PPCs, but I never hit the max heat limit due to how I cycle my weapons, the heat issues won't really effect me and stop me from boating. For the Alpha Strike issue, it just makes me want to use low heat weapons, not necessarily stop myself from Alpha Striking every 5 seconds.

If any are interested, I did a much more detailed breakdown if my opinions about One Shot Alpha Strikes and Boats on the Scratch Building thread. But long story short, Heat is a mechanism by which the Devs can slow down damage done, not prevent you from building Alpha Striking Boats.

______________________________________________________

All that said, heat can be an effective balancing tool for preventing people from relying on some weapons and trying to burst all their output decreasing Time to Live; so lets look at 3 of the most common suggestions: Ammo Explosions, Equipment Damage, Pilot Effects.

Ammo Explosions:

When your Ammo explodes due to heat, you are either doing a lot of damage to your own mech (w/o case) or just making a weapon useless. Weapons who are most affected by this are Missiles and ACs (I am leaving out Gauss because the ammo is inert). Personally I think heat sourced Ammo Explosions are a bad mechanic because:

• They happen randomly, the outcome of a battle shouldn't be random.
  
• They punish players for using Ammo based weapons, which typically are lower heat, than Energy Weapons.

My guess is that by implementing this type of system, you are going to push players towards having builds where energy weapons are not the primary focus (to avoid heat) or not using Ammo based weapons (to avoid ammo explosions). So I am going to have to vote against this one because it may cause less weapon variety.



Equipment Damage:

• This type of an effect can accumulate over the course of a battle, leaving you in a worse position at the end than someone who used their weapons in a more judicious manner.

So long as this effect isn't random, I think its a net positive for immersion. You have to make a decision about blowing that Jenner away now, when you might want that extra speed to help run away from that Atlas that you are going to face off against in 5, but its something that you can control. I think that Mech Speed and Weapon Recharge/Reload Rates are both valid targets for this type of damage.

• As for targeting and Radar, it would be really hard to balance these IMO.

If you damage radar you either reduce range (a significant punishment as that Fire Support Mech may be out of radar range preventing you from dodging its shots), or you make it "Fuzzy". Fuzziness really isn't a punishment as you don't need Radar to make accurate shots, you just need it to get an idea of where the enemy is. Another option for radar is generating False Signals, but if these are transitory then it really doesn't matter. For targeting, if I use the Old School trick of putting a dot in the default cursor position, I don't need a targeting reticule. The punishment may have no effect.

• Also worth noting, if you know that you are currently fighting the last mech of the match in a slugfest, then this isn't much of a punishment.

If you take him down quickly, then you win and your equipment damage will be repaired (ignoring any potential C-Bill cost); if you don't fire as fast as possible then you risk your opponent outlasting you.


Pilot Effects:

• A lot of people have brought up the idea of blurry vision.

​This is an interesting mechanic, very much based in lore (from the books) but with some odd effects. If two Atlases are Slugging it out in close quarters, blurry vision won't matter much as you can still make out the outline of the enemy. Might decrease your chances of legging or blowing off an arm, but if you are going for the core then this probably won't matter much. That changes entirely at long distance when you need clear vision to make that shot. Net effect here is to reduce damage output at long ranges and no real effect at short ranges.

• Next we have shaky vision, without some shakiness in the ridicule, this can be compensated for but the effect will be really annoying.

Given that this game isn't based around accurate clicking, this is probably a good immersion effect, and will probably throw off some players. Good candidate for a pilot ability to reduce its effects, for those who like to run it hot.

• Finally we have something that wasn't mentioned but I will throw it out here anyway, tunnel vision.

By causing someone's in game vision to tunnel you don't penalize them for focusing on one target, but they become less situationally aware. This will allow fast scout mechs to get more hits in during a slugfest because they won't be noticed. It will be most effective if paired with shaky vision.



_______________________________________________________________________

One last thing I want to touch on since people keep bringing it up. I think that TT rules are great for starting out, and certainly a great place for ideas, but I think everyone should be cautioned from referring to them for everything. Its not that TT isn't balanced, it has been around for a while so they have had a lot of time to polish, its that many of the rules and number in TT are based around the need for turns and dice. Without a turn based system a lot of things no longer make sense; for instance rules about the time it takes to re-equip a mech, no one wants to spend 6 hours repairing their mech after a battle. Another example is someone on the first page who calculated that a "turn" = approximately 12 seconds, that forces the effect that I can only fire weapons once every 12 seconds but with a real sim I could fire one weapon every 2 seconds if I cycled them right. So personally while I think that TT is a great place to go for basic rule design and lore compatibility, it shouldn't be set in stone based on those values.

Edited by SD 47, 01 April 2012 - 08:58 PM.

[VPrime]

That Guy, on 01 April 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

BT has never handled heat in a realistic fashion. seriously, it makes no sense. for more realistic heat you will need body specific heat generation, and reactor management. and heat induced ammo explosions? do you realize how hot you need to get modern conventional ammo to cook off? if a mech were to get hot enough to cook off its ammo as shown, most of the wires and connections and electronics would have long burned off

This happened too and is discussed in the novels, and the descriptors in the rule books themselves. Many have little stories that refer to the detrimental effects of heat, including insulation burning off of wiring and circut boards melting. Remember that just because heat is livable in the cockpit doesn't mean it is in the chest cavity. Mechs direct many cooling systems to the cockpit to reduce this danger to the pilot, plus the cooling vest. So a mechwarrior might experience 150 degrees, which is very bad but not lethal, the torso might be at 5 or 6 hundred degrees, which may start the ammo cookng off. This only happened in extreme circumstances though, and shouldn't be something we would run across every battle

[That Guy]

Good info hawkeye, but I think you somewhat missed the point of my post. Wile it is possible to make ammo cook off with thermal alone, it seems very ,... unlikly that a mech will suffer such a fate with out damage.

in a realistic sense, that ammo-bin has to reach a minimum temperature 300F (after all we dont know the chemistry of future BT AC powder). IF that bin gets that hot, you have even more serious issues. IE internal fire

but from a gameplay perspective, I like the ammo explosion.

Also i would think that missiles would be much less susceptible to spontaneous ignition as most modern missiles require electronic ignition, and not a conventional spark or other precession means (i forgot the damn name!)

SD47, wile I see where you are coming from about potential weapon balance forcing players to be all ammo or no ammo, I dont think that we have to worry about it. Ammo shouldnt have a chance to detonate untill very high on the heat scale, and if people are dumb enough to say up in that area long enough, they are (hopefully) going to be suffering enough already, and already risking shut down.

However, in my mind ammo expositions were a way to dissuade people playing a scenario based war game/arena combat shooter from keeping thier mechs too hot for too long. In a presistant world game where we have to maintain our mechs, there can be something elce to dissuade us from abusing our rides too much: maintenance costs. if we spend 50% of a round teetering on the edge of reactor breach, all that heat is going to take a toll on the mechs internals. this means rewiring part of the mech, replacing actuators more often, electronics, and replacing other various things and generally having to spend more time checking to make sure everything is still working and not on the edge of failure.
How such a system would really work....(tracking mission heat constantly)... i dont know.

(to clarify, replace the arena style heat punishment of a quick and spectacular death with the long term consequence of having to replace your fusion drive because you burnt out the magnetic containment unit)

Edited by That Guy, 01 April 2012 - 09:57 PM.

[Hanged Man]

I'm a bit of a purist here. I'd like it best if we stick to the tabletop consequences for bad heat management: decreased speed, accuracy, ammo explosions, and the possibility of cooking a 'Mechwarrior alive if his life support is damaged. If that's represented as blurred vision or whatever, fine, but I'd prefer not to see wholly new problems pulled out of thin air.

[Hawkeye 72]

That Guy, on 01 April 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

Good info hawkeye, but I think you somewhat missed the point of my post. Wile it is possible to make ammo cook off with thermal alone, it seems very ,... unlikly that a mech will suffer such a fate with out damage.

in a realistic sense, that ammo-bin has to reach a minimum temperature 300F (after all we dont know the chemistry of future BT AC powder). IF that bin gets that hot, you have even more serious issues. IE internal fire

A battlemech uses a fusion reaction The ignition temperatures of two common fusion reactions, deuterium-deuterium fusion
and deuterium-tritium fusion, are 40 x 10^7 K and 4.5 x 10^7 K. This translates to a Celcius temperature of the same power of ten. A mech is already under extreme conditions without even moving or firing weapons which add a further heat burden. Even not in combat a mech is going to be hot. 300F is not hard to achieve- your car engine runs around 195-225F.

Its unlikely a mech will suffer this fate not in combat because a smart operator won't push a machine past its limitations. But this whole game is based on mechs in combat, so limitations will be breached and damage will occur. In a realistic sense your ammo is at risk if your mech internals are running at 500-600 K. There is a great chance that after a battle, the entire mech is averaging a 300F temperature.

Quote

Also i would think that missiles would be much less susceptible to spontaneous ignition as most modern missiles require electronic ignition, and not a conventional spark or other precession means (i forgot the damn name!)

Depends on the warhead type and detonation mechanism. Still, rocket fuel can auto-ignite anywhere between 450 K to 800 K, and some propellants that are hypergolic could detonate with the first critical hit to the area.

[Karel Spaten]

Suskis, on 01 April 2012 - 01:33 AM, said:

I think that devs should stick as much as possible to tabletop game for several reasons. Mainly because those rules have been around for almost 30 years. Effects of heat are clearly indicated in the manuals and that's all.
I have never read a battletech novel, but I doubt all writers played the game at all.

Stackpole was involved with the game from the start and used to game out his battle scenes so that they'd be plausible within the rules. I believe the Wolfhound was his design.

[Kael Tropheus]

Heat should play a major role. I want the feel of the books and TT. Remember running and walking produce heat as do jump jets. So that Awesome firing all its PPCs and running at the same time is producing +4 heat a turn so heat will build up quickly. I would like the same possible results as well. Increasingly blurred vision as the heat rises to the 8 mark and beyond. Slower max speed(still running but running slower) as the engine labors under higher heat(starts at 5). Possible shutdown at 14, 18, 22, 26 with increasingly difficulty in overriding it, Possible ammo explosions starting at 19. Flat out shut down at 30.
This will hopefully nip a bunch of the alpha strikers and customization freak mechs off and actually make the mechs make sense.

[SnowDragon]

Well, here's an idea. I can think of no better incentive to not redline it if your crosshair starts doing weird **** like dancing all over the screen. Then you've got to eyeball it and hope for the best. So, sure, you can 4 PPC it and Alpha all day. But you sure as **** ain't gonna hit anything.

[syngyne]

Hawkeye 72, on 02 April 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

A battlemech uses a fusion reaction The ignition temperatures of two common fusion reactions, deuterium-deuterium fusion
and deuterium-tritium fusion, are 40 x 10^7 K and 4.5 x 10^7 K. This translates to a Celcius temperature of the same power of ten.

In a fusion reactor that heat is carried by a very, very small amount of mass, though, such that even if plasma containment were lost inside the reactor, you'd just end up with a fizzled reaction and a millimeter or two of vaporized surface material in the reactor vessel.