77 replies to this topic

[Tweaks]

Jarek Kalen, on 05 November 2011 - 02:39 PM, said:

I would be amazed if there was an "Arena" that was like Trellwan in "Decision at Thunder Rift"

I would not! Meaning, I wouldn't surprise me if they did.

Edited by Tweaks, 05 November 2011 - 02:54 PM.

[Hayden]

I got one: Maybe make passing out a consequence of overriding the shutdown sequence too often?

[Lorebot]

Eradicator, on 05 November 2011 - 02:12 PM, said:

lol which would you die first from? ammunition explosion from overheating or dehydration? no seriously, which one?

The ammunition explosion obviously, but the point is that that ammunition explosion is inevitable once you pass a certain level of heat. It's a box filled with combustible materials with a specific temperature that it explodes at. If you can keep your internal temps from ever crossing that threshold your ammo won't explode.

Passing out from heat and dehydration however isn't a temperature based threshold, but is instead a time based one. Passing out from the heat is something that can happen even at moderate temps if you're in them for long enough, the hotter it is the shorter the time you can take it. If you're riding the line and workin your systems hard enough to keep your mech below your ammo explosion threshold, but still over taxing your cooling system then eventually your cockpit is gonna be an oven baking you alive. Stay in there long enough and you're gonna suffer for it. Heck, people pass out in saunas all the time and they're no where near the heat levels a human would experience in a mech's cockpit under combat conditions, add in the stress of actual battle and it's a recipe for unconsciousness. All it takes is time.

Pilots should have a condition monitor that checks stuff like endurance, physical stress, and cockpit temp. Lots of heat for prolonged times (5-10mins) will push a pilot past certain limits. Taking lots of fire and getting tossed around inside the cockpit from the concussive forces for a prolonged time would do it too. It shouldn't be an instant affect though, it should be a gradual change in perception. Once you get to about 50% endurance you should start reacting slower, at 75% your vision should start blurring, by the time you hit 100% you should be well aware of what's happening and either be making a retreat so you can rest or be in a situation where you have no options but to hang in the fight and hope you get lucky before you pass out.

[Sergei Smirnov]

Tweaks, on 04 November 2011 - 08:00 AM, said:

Isn't alcohol a huge dehydrator actually?

Razor Kotovsky, on 04 November 2011 - 08:06 AM, said:

Not in soviet russia.

This is for fact.

Edited by Sergei Smirnov, 05 November 2011 - 04:06 PM.

[VYCanis]

heat makes pilots uncomfortable yes, it makes them sweat bullets, gives them swamp ***, and gives them an impromptu sauna, yes, and given enough time, they'd probably pass out from heatstroke.

However, if we are going based off the tabletop, and going by crit systems, they aren't actually taking any damage from extreme heat unless their life support systems are messed up.

Not to say that there shouldn't be visual queues that its getting hot as hell in there, but i'd avoid the heatstroke passouts o death for when the systems meant to keep you alive get broken.

[ArgentumLupus]

Heat gets too high for too long, pilot check. Failed pilot check? Damage. Damage? Consciousness check. Failed consciousness check? pass out and likely get you head stepped on my a Mackie piloting ****.

[Draconis March]

As long as it doesn't happen too quickly, I'm for it.

[infinite xaer0]

I voted "no". There should be some sort of visual heat effects from within the cockpit when your mech is overheating, but other than that, I would think that your mech would auto-shutdown well before your cockpit could reached heat levels that were high enough to cause you to pass out. Plus, from a gameplay standpoint, it's punishment enough that you're forced to be a sitting duck due to an overheat shutdown, adding the possibility of passing out on top of that, especially if it's outside of the player's control, would be plain overkill.

[Spice]

While nice from a written and story point of view, it's unnecessary coding for something
easily covered by shutdown and other mech effects. Keep it in the writing, but it's far
from necessary within a game tableau, and and smart producer would axe it first thing.

[That Guy]

I voted no, because if i can survive being in 130F degree weather for 12+ hours in full combat gear for days, some ninny in a little box can take it for a few min at a time WITH appropriate "cooling gear" and no heavy exertion.

so realistically, NO, in a game play sense, NO, so NO

heat stroke and dehydration take time to set in

[Lorebot]

that guy, on 06 November 2011 - 06:08 PM, said:

I voted no, because if i can survive being in 130F degree weather for 12+ hours in full combat gear for days, some ninny in a little box can take it for a few min at a time WITH appropriate "cooling gear" and no heavy exertion.

so realistically, NO, in a game play sense, NO, so NO

heat stroke and dehydration take time to set in

You're right, it does take time to set in, and if you're aware of what's happening you can easily take the steps to avoid it.

But in canon mech combat the cockpit of a mech can easily reach 200+ degrees for prolonged periods of time, that's why cooling suits exist...and also why the Star League took most of them with them when they left in the Exodus. Without a cooling suit you'd bake in short order in those temps, and most mechwarriors from the Inner Sphere in the pre-clan invasion era, didn't have a full suit, they'd have a vest at best. Usually they'd have nothing, and they'd climb into the cockpit in their undies instead, wearing gloves to prevent them from burning their fingers or hands on the metal consoles and controls inside once everything started heating up in combat.

So realistically, YES, but it does take more than a few minutes so, NO, it's not something you're going to come up against often. So perhaps it shouldn't be coded into the game because it'd be seen so rarely, but I personally think it should be. It helps with immersion and the sim feeling to know that if you run your mech at full capacity and you've hit the button to stop the auto shutdown routines so you can hang in a fight for a minute longer and you don't get out of the fight to cool down that you're going to start slowing down, your vision will start blurring and if you're still not taking the hint that you're pushing too hard...then you're going to pay for it.

[Bryan Ekman]

This concept has a real possibility of being a stick. Done right, definitely a carrot, something you have to manage, cool fx, and tactical reprecussions.I think Need For Speed: Shift handled this concept well.

[torgian]

Hm interesting concept. Make it so that if you press the fire button, your in game character takes that much longer to react, and so on.

[That Guy]

at 200F+ you are going to experience good old fashioned 1st, 2nd degree burns (or is 3rd the worst? or 1st? i forget) resulting in actual physical injury. if it gets that hot, dehydration and passing out are the least of your worries.

and you are telling me these idiots even forgot how to make damned refrigerators?? a cooling suit isn't exactly high energy directed particle weaponry surgery if you know what i mean...

so cool effects like heat waves, blurry screen, shaky vision etc, awesome, but its just not realistic to have your pilot pass out form a little heat!

beat the heat! drink water!

Edited by that guy, 06 November 2011 - 07:07 PM.

[Glare]

It's canon for the cockpit to heat up immensely in combat. Not clear up to 180-220 F, but certainly enough to make dehydration and passing out a concern in a protracted battle.

[Lorebot]

that guy, on 06 November 2011 - 07:01 PM, said:

at 200F+ you are going to experience good old fashioned 1st, 2nd degree burns (or is 3rd the worst? or 1st? i forget) resulting in actual physical injury. if it gets that hot, dehydration and passing out are the least of your worries.

and you are telling me these idiots even forgot how to make damned refrigerators?? a cooling suit isn't exactly high energy directed particle weaponry surgery if you know what i mean...

so cool effects like heat waves, blurry screen, shaky vision etc, awesome, but its just not realistic to have your pilot pass out form a little heat!

True, passing out from the heat is the least of their worries in a protracted battle, but it's something that can't be ignored either.

You have to remember the state the Inner Sphere was in when Kerensky lead the Star League Defense Forces on the Exodus. They'd just spent years in a protracted civil war that more than decimated Kerensky's forces. Of the 486 divisions that followed him in the war to oust Amaris only 113 remained and followed him in the Exodus, taking all that remained of their tech with them. Star League era tech became priceless after the Exodus and for centuries afterwards till the return of the Clans in 3050. They had blasted planets from orbit, rolled over industrial centers, flattened research labs and libraries, and then took all the people that knew how to make this stuff on the Exodus with them. A lot of the tech was reverse engineered over the coming decades, but none of it was as good as what had come before and in the rush to fill the gap choices were made between quality and quantity that forced things like cooling suits to become cooling vests instead, and even those weren't cheap to make. The entire Inner Sphere was touched by the Kerensky-Amaris civil war, every planet was busy rebuilding life sustaining industries like agriculture and basic commerce. Keeping a Mechwarrior cool in the cockpit of his mech was a luxury most could not afford, and when they could they had to relearn how.

So yea. Cool heat waves, blurry vision, slowed response times shouldn't be something that's seen regularly, but if you're in protracted combat, blasting away for 10+ minutes constantly having to hit that override button to keep from shutting down then it should definitely be something to worry about on top of everything else. And when you start to see those heat waves and vision starts blurring that should be your queue to get out of the fight for a while to cool down, call for an airstrike or an artillery barrage to cover your retreat so you can get a break before you get the point of really being in trouble

[DFDelta]

Kerensky did nothing like nuking planets or abducting the intelligence of a society. He fled the IS exactly to prevent that his troops were forced to do such things by the houses. The Amaris war did also have no impact on technology, since it only damaged the terran hegemony. The houses were totally untouched by that.

The succession states did this all by themselves, basically bombing themselves back into the stone age during the almost 300 years between Kerenskys exodus and the Clans return.

To make it clearer how something like this can happen (it is actually quite realistic)
Remember that something like internet does not exist on an interplanetary scale. Most planets in BT have only one huge city where all databases, librarys, universities and stuff are located, and a few smaller towns (e.g. for farming purposes).
During the 1st and 2nd succession war an invasion or a raid basically looked like this:
Warship appears in orbit -> warship drops a few dozen nukes and chemical bombs onto that one city -> warship flies off.
Now also remember that this happened to what? 70% of all planets?
Every major planet exept maybe the capitals and a few lucky ones like Kathil and Hesperus II did not suffer this.

Repeat this often enough and it seems quite logic that many things that seem rather backwards are unknown to BT people.
(If I went and killed every car mechanic on earth, and then went and deleted every entry on the internet that mentions car repair and burnt 95% of all books about that topic, how long would you think it would take to find someone who repairs your car?)

Edited by DFDelta, 06 November 2011 - 07:38 PM.

[Lorebot]

You are correct, Kerensky didn't nuke planets from orbit and he did leave to prevent his forces from being used for exactly that sort of thing in the wars that were clearly going to follow what Amaris caused. I did not however specify that he used nukes when I say he 'blasted planets from orbit'. There most certainly was orbital bombardment during Operation Liberation, but nukes were not involved.

And you're right, the Succession Wars did far more damage to the Inner Sphere than the Amaris Civil War ever did.

[DFDelta]

Ah right, the good old orbital bombardement. Does amost the same damage if done correctly.

'blasted planets from orbit' just sounded like a good old mushroom cloud causing nukes, so I jumped to conclusions

[JC Daxion]

would be cool if there were different lvls of over heating..


getting hot.. controls get slowed, or laggy, basically simliar to when you get groggy

verge of colapse, Controls lag severly, targeting/movement very shakey, vision blurs

pass out.. You black out, the screen goes black, and no inputs work for a period of time