47 replies to this topic

[TruePoindexter]

Noth, on 12 November 2012 - 04:22 PM, said:

I don't know, seeing my heat spike from 10%-15% to 25%+ while just walking pretty much told me I shouldn't fight in there.

Yes but you were paying attention to it at the time. In the middle of a fight you might not notice and there's no warning saying "you're standing on a volcano" or any kind of visual key from the environment.

I'm with you - I noticed it the first time I was there too. Just I see it from the other side and understand that most probably won't.

[AEgg]

Yeah, for most mechs standing in the crater even when not shut down means you'll be constantly gaining heat. I'm pretty sure the break-even point is around 15 heatsinks, which many mechs don't have.

Overheating there is certain death, because either you'll be shut down for minutes at a time to cool, or you don't have enough HS and you'll be shut down until you explode from gaining heat.

[Mechwarrior413183]

I like the suggestion of a voice over warning for outside temperatures good idea.

[dF0X]

Accident, on 12 November 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

So I was just running a trial commando on calderra. I over heated in the cauldron, and instead of hitting over ride, decided to wait it out. I sat there for at least 10 seconds without powering up. Finally I hit over ride and immediately exploded. This would lead me to believe that a trial commando doesn't actually have enough heat sinks to get out of shut down in the cauldron. PGI, unless this is some sort of bug, you guys have no concept of game design or balance.

As to the "Watch your heat, l2p crowd" I was only firing a medium laser, not the large, and not the srm.

-Accident

You shut down due to heat in the caldera of an active volcano. What else is there to say than watch your heat?

To imply that balance is somehow off due to this is really, really pathetic. Are you upset that you don't run full speed up hills too?

[IceSerpent]

Accident, on 12 November 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

Haha, I am a bad pilot, but that doesn't mean an external heat indicator wouldn't add to the cockpit.

TruePoindexter, on 12 November 2012 - 04:13 PM, said:

Seriously - the game doesn't make it obvious that going in there is a bad idea.

Guys, you already have your heat gauge and thermal vision - use them.
There are also smoking vents in the caldera, and word on the street is that things that emit vast amounts of smoke could maybe, possibly be hot to the touch...

[TruePoindexter]

IceSerpent, on 12 November 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

Guys, you already have your heat gauge and thermal vision - use them.
There are also smoking vents in the caldera, and word on the street is that things that emit vast amounts of smoke could maybe, possibly be hot to the touch...

Haha well to play devils advocate further I am color deficient so to me that thermal vision view on caustic becomes a green mass of nothing. The typical visual clue for heat is some red which is missing. Also the smoke stacks are all over the map not just in the caldera.

All that said, I approve of the game making you pay attention to subtle things like your heat changing while you're moving.

[Blaank]

When mech is shutdown there is no heat gauge, right? Also when at 100% heat it's impossible to tell how far over that you are and how much danger of blowing up you are in. There is no indication of the amount of heat gain or loss your mech has other than closely watching the heat bar. Even then it does not tell you how effective your current place in the environment is. Many trial mechs don't have enough heatsinks to break even or lose heat if they get stuck in there.

Put a heat gain/loss indicator next to the heat gauge showing total heat. It's why planes (and everything) has an altimeter AND a rate of ascent/descent gauge. It's useful information and critical to not dying horribly.

[Accident]

Desrtfox, on 12 November 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

You shut down due to heat in the caldera of an active volcano. What else is there to say than watch your heat?

To imply that balance is somehow off due to this is really, really pathetic. Are you upset that you don't run full speed up hills too?

I was firing a medium laser on and off when I ended up shutting down. A single medium laser. Now if the designers want to make hot map areas, I'm actually all for that. I think environmental effects have the ability to add tactical options to the game. What I have a problem with is the current implementation.

Expecting an area to have as drastic an effect as making your mech unable to power back up without exploding is silly without putting in a decent way for players to monitor it. And the whole "you're in a volcano with vents, of course it's hot" is a pretty weak argument in a game that doesn't have environments you can interact with. I mean trees don't even fall over, you just clip through them , let alone having something as crazy as destructable buildings. So some random vent graphic doesn't exactly scream deathtrap to me.

Now all this being said I hope that heat sinks on your legs work better when you're standing in water in the game. It'd also be pretty awesome to have some waterfalls on forest colony that you could run through to cool off. What about coolant trucks at various bases around the maps that could cool you as well. A couple of forward outposts with cooling trucks, especially on Calderra, could make several strategic areas on the map worth capturing instead of just the bases.

TLDR: You want to make dangerous map terrain, fine, great, but put in a better way to monitor it, especially considering that maps aren't even as interactive as WoT with regards to terrain,

-Accident

[Scratx]

Yeah, Caldera is bad, don't go in there unless you have to and monitor heat levels. None of my mechs afaik is susceptible to dying from overheating there but it really does mess up with heat efficiency. If you're forced to fight in there you're going to be in for a world of pain.

[Prophet of Entropy]

sounds like you shut down on a vent which is 2-3 times worse heat then simply being in the cauldera. also the trial commado has very few heatsinks, 10 singles.

it would be nice if there was an in-cockpit heat gauge, but coolant trucks? no, no, no...

im sure theyll probly add some dumb stuff like this to later game modes but assualt is fine except not not being able to slow down or reverse capping by shooting guys on the cap.


edited for language

Edited by Prohet of Entropy, 12 November 2012 - 07:57 PM.

[Accident]

Fair enough, a simple cockpit gauge would suffice. The coolant truck thing was just an off the cuff thought on adding some more interactive stuff into the game, make it really feel like you were fighting over a dynamic battlefield. It has been awhile, but didn't they have coolant trucks in the TT game. I seem to remember they were sort of like fire trucks that would hose off hot mechs. Err insert joke here.

-Accident

[Scratx]

I'm not sure you could get a coolant truck into the caldera anyway.

[Stonefalcon]

Accident, on 12 November 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

I was firing a medium laser on and off when I ended up shutting down. A single medium laser. Now if the designers want to make hot map areas, I'm actually all for that. I think environmental effects have the ability to add tactical options to the game. What I have a problem with is the current implementation.

Expecting an area to have as drastic an effect as making your mech unable to power back up without exploding is silly without putting in a decent way for players to monitor it. And the whole "you're in a volcano with vents, of course it's hot" is a pretty weak argument in a game that doesn't have environments you can interact with. I mean trees don't even fall over, you just clip through them , let alone having something as crazy as destructable buildings. So some random vent graphic doesn't exactly scream deathtrap to me.

Now all this being said I hope that heat sinks on your legs work better when you're standing in water in the game. It'd also be pretty awesome to have some waterfalls on forest colony that you could run through to cool off. What about coolant trucks at various bases around the maps that could cool you as well. A couple of forward outposts with cooling trucks, especially on Calderra, could make several strategic areas on the map worth capturing instead of just the bases.

TLDR: You want to make dangerous map terrain, fine, great, but put in a better way to monitor it, especially considering that maps aren't even as interactive as WoT with regards to terrain,

-Accident

So what you're saying basically is you like the fact the developers made a trap area that can catch in suckers who have no idea what their doing. But you don't like it cause you got caught in that trap.

[Accident]

And you're saying you don't think it'd be neat if some of the gauges in your cockpit actually did something, or that how the Calderra is designed offers anything more than an area you should stay out of?

What I'm saying is that in my opinion the devs spent time and resources on a one off "Gotcha" rather than adding in something to really add some more immersion and or tactical considerations. A high heat area but with an excellent firing vantage, a high heat area that was a short cut to the enemy base. These would have been interesting tactical decisions to add to a map. "Don't go in the center of the map", not so much.

-Accident

[Scratx]

Actually, there are stock mechs capable of fighting there, and just about all (rare exception exist) customized mechs are as well. So it is a tactical option to use the caldera.

It just so happened that the mech you were using is not one of those.

[Fortune]

Something that I wanna add:

1. It's a caldera, and if you know what that word means in English, you should associate it with volcane -> high temperature.

2. The heat gauge in battletech/mechwarrior is used to monitor the maximum heat that a mech can take. You don't need an "outside" heat gauge to tell you anything pass that because anything over it IS dangerous to the machine. So either shutdown or risk it and blow yourself up.

3. How much hand hold do you want? Put a giant sign with "HOT! Don't go there!!!" at the edge of the caldera? Also, you CAN use that tactically. You can run through it to get to the enemy base faster, just don't do ANY kind of fighting in there, ever! As long as you don't fire any lasers or other high heat weapons in the caldera, your heatsink can manage those extra heat while you run through it.

[Khavi Vetali]

If you paid more attention, you'd see that there are gauges and readouts in the mech cockpit that do have information on them, such as ammo remaining (even shows where on the mech), operational heat sinks, mission kills, etc. Some of the screens are inoperable so I assume they have plans for them. Of course, when you are shut down, there is no power, so...no readouts. There isn't a heat level readout or gauge, but hey, that's a damn fine idea, so why don't you truck over to the suggestions forum and make a proper thread about it. They've added multiple things to the game so far that have originated from player suggestions.

As to not paying attention to your heat levels, you learned a lesson about fighting in a volcano. It's rather a large part of battletech and mechwarrior the effect an environment can have on the performance of a mech. Every level has it's own little heat tweaks. Go stand in the open fires in River City and see what happens to your heat levels. You learn from it, and become a better player.

[IceSerpent]

Accident, on 12 November 2012 - 09:05 PM, said:

And you're saying you don't think it'd be neat if some of the gauges in your cockpit actually did something, or that how the Calderra is designed offers anything more than an area you should stay out of?

Caldera does offer something more - for example you can trick stock Commandos into fighting you in there and try to make them shutdown right on top of the vent...

[DogmeatX]

Actually one thing to come from this topic:

Why isn't there some kind of backup mechanical gauge for heat or something?

When you do overheat and shutdown you lose everything and the OP's right, there's just no way to tell if you've cooled down enough.

A simple mechanical gauge somewhere in the cockpit could help with this.

Edited by DogmeatX, 12 November 2012 - 10:34 PM.

[aKlutz]

Alot of things to keep you eye's busy ... Watching the gauge isn't second nature, but it is a necessity .. All part of the fun.