77 replies to this topic

[gilliam]

After doing some thinking, I am thinking there shouldn't be specific effects from overheating.
They should model pilot injury.

If you fall you have a chance of being injured, if your ammo or gauss rifle explodes, you take damage. Mech shot in the face? Injury. If you take damage, you have a chance to pass out; the more injuries you take, the more likely you are to pass out and the longer you are likely to stay passed out. If they do the skill tree they plan on, one of the paths could increase your toughness to reduce these effects, allowing you to stay awake with more injuries, and sustain more before dying.

This ties into the heat scale. When your mech heats up enough, you risk taking an injury; life support hits reduce the heat level that happens at.

[AuGuR]

Personally think the pilot should only pass out AFTER running out of 'dew, pizza and 24+ hours of continuous playtime, but that's just me...

[FlystreesVagann]

O **** i alraedy voted before reading your post op,sorry x( I agree with your idea,it would be nice to have that in game.

[Eegxeta]

It would prove interesting and I want it because I always use low heat mech load-outs. It should be optional, though some people(most likely those that run on high heat load-outs) might not like it.

To sum my thoughts up I want it because it will give me an advantage.

Edited by Eegxeta, 07 November 2011 - 06:06 AM.

[GI Journalist]

Heat seems like a great opportunity to use some cool visual effects that will interfer with my ability to see and pilot, such as heat haze and the like. At higher levels, automatic shutdowns and ammon explosions will probably be a bigger concern than a little difficulty seeing what I'm trying to shoot.

[Lorebot]

Passing out from heat is certainly something that shouldn't be your first concern in combat. Shutdowns and Ammo Explosions should definitely be a higher priority. But pilot condition shouldn't be ignored, and in a prolonged battle should definitely come into play.

[Rendall]

I think not just pass out, but if you overtax your mech's heat too much, you should also blow up. adds spice to managing your heat in your mech, not just produce a 4 PPC sniper Black Knight like what was seen a lot in MW4M Multiplayer.

[Lorebot]

Rendall that's sort of what we're talking about. In a way making pilots pass out after a long period in combat at high heat levels (meaning they've already overridden the shutdown and they're close to a full on meltdown) is far better than just making the mech explode. If you're gonna build a laser boat and you can manage the heat then I think you should have every right to do that because, really, that takes some skill to hang in a fight while generating that much heat. However, managing your mech's heat won't stop a pilot from feeling the long term effects of that heat. So the pilot of that laser boat won't be able to hang in an extended fight, he'll need to retreat to cool down at some point or he's going to pass out and get fragged while unconscious. And by cool down I don't mean just get his mech back to normal operating temps, I mean relieve the pilot's heat exhaustion levels with an extended reprieve from combat, a couple minutes out of the fight at least.

A skilled pilot would use that time to head to a support base or your drop ship and get some minor repairs done and rest up and then head back into the fight. Remember, a Drop Ship isn't just a big balloon that brings you where you need to be, they're also repair, salvage, and rearming facilities as well. They're heavily armed because they're an inviting target siting out on the field just begging to get taken out because they function as C&C and staging areas as well as transportation for your Lance. In the case that your a defender and weren't deployed via Drop Ship you probably have a well defended C&C and Mech Hangar complex near your defensive line. Mechs, just like any other war machine, require maintenance during combat.Defending your Drop Ship or your Hangar complex should be just as important as actually completing your objective.

That however all depends on how true they make MWO to the Battletech tabletop rules. In a tabletop game you're not going to kill another mech in short order unless you're very lucky or you outclass them greatly. So running away and rearming and getting field repairs is a large part of combat if you play it smart. I'm hoping they make it less arcade game and more simulation, in which case all this talk of passing out because of the heat will make sense because an average fight will last more than a minute. An exceptional fight between 2 experienced Mechwarriors with similar equipment should take 10minutes or more. It shouldn't be about who gets the first strike, it should be about who gets the last one. And hanging in a fight that long is going to lead to stresses not only on the mech, but the pilot too. Which is what the heart of this entire thread is really about. And I'm heartened to imagine that the devs of the game want all of this too because that's the message I got from the 2009 video. That Warhammer takes care of the Jenner in short order, which is what should happen when a light mech tries to go toe to toe with a heavy, but that Atlas and the Warhammer take a couple minutes to duke it out. The Warhammer's a great mech, but the Atlas has a clear advantage in that fight and it still takes a good amount of time for the Warhammer to buckle under the assault and the Warhammer got a couple good shots in on the Atlas too.

Edited by Lorebot, 08 November 2011 - 09:04 PM.

[ice trey]

I voted "no", but for one reason.

A 'mech has a life support system that, while it gets hotter than a sauna in a 'mech cockpit, there is the advantage of the coolant vest to keep the Mechwarrior from suffering from heat stroke and the ilk. Your 'mech should shut-down automatically without an option to override before the point of passing out.

However, a critical on the Life Support system means that any cockpit coolant systems stop working, outright. At that point pushing your 'mech in to the mid-high heat-bands should be lethal to your character over time, and a hot 'mech with no life support should risk knocking the pilot unconscious, and eventually cook the pilot alive in the cockpit if the heat is not dissipated quickly enough (or further raised VIA Flamers, Magma, Forest Fires, and Inferno SRMs).

Edited by ice trey, 08 November 2011 - 10:07 PM.

[Lorebot]

ice trey, on 08 November 2011 - 10:05 PM, said:

I voted "no", but for one reason.

A 'mech has a life support system that, while it gets hotter than a sauna in a 'mech cockpit, there is the advantage of the coolant vest to keep the Mechwarrior from suffering from heat stroke and the ilk. Your 'mech should shut-down automatically without an option to override before the point of passing out.

However, a critical on the Life Support system means that any cockpit coolant systems stop working, outright. At that point pushing your 'mech in to the mid-high heat-bands should be lethal to your character over time, and a hot 'mech with no life support should risk knocking the pilot unconscious, and eventually cook the pilot alive in the cockpit if the heat is not dissipated quickly enough (or further raised VIA Flamers, Magma, Forest Fires, and Inferno SRMs).

The problem with depending on a cooling suit or vest is that your life support systems are internal to the mech so they're subjected to just as much heat as the pilot and the cockpit and all the other internal systems. Eventually the life support system is going to be overwhelmed by the long term exposure to heat and it's going to cool the pilot less and less efficiently over time until eventually it's not providing any benefit at all...in a worst case scenario it could actually start working in reverse and pushing heat into the pilot instead of removing it. This however all assumes that you have a cooling suit or vest at all. They're expensive and not every Mechwarrior has access to them in 3050. Till the Clans return with their advanced tech a lot of things that were extremely common in the Star League are just not available to the average pilot.

[Tierloc]

So instead of the chassis just shutting down on you, you want the pilot to pass out but the chassis would still be completely operational? LAMs would still work.. maybe other automated systems will still be operational but your pilot is laying in the chair. You know most people who go down from heat exhaustion are out for a LONG time. It's not a OH, my pilots down for 10 seconds. The view to the player would be what exactly? A black screen? A 3d camera rotation view so you can watch yourself sit there. If the chassis was still operational, how do you know a little arm wouldn't drop down and crack some smelling salts for you to wake up.

I would think for heat, once the chassis over heats, you cool it down or it shuts down for you. If you override, then depending on the damage the heat is doing to the chassis, you eventually risk explosion. How can you possibly simulate what every pilots' resilience factor is, even with the same training. You can hard number what a chassis' abilities are, not the pilots.

[Sideways]

Is there going to be the chance of an ammo explosion too?

[Amarus Cameron]

I said yes, but realistically I do not know how they would implement pilot hits and effects in the cockpit. We may have something bearbones working at launch and as we infuse them with cash they can add more features.

[Tierloc]

If you wanted to get really fancy, similar to armor placement, what, if any, is cooled down by coolant could be selective. It wouldn't be like taking a shower, it would only cool what needed to be to keep from shutting down.. or what the pilot chose.

For survival, if you cool the reactor, maybe your weapons still overheat but you can run away. You could decide that 80% of your coolant goes to life support systems instead of weapons, for example. Or decide that 80% of your coolant flush goes to weapons.

I don't know, it seems like the entire system gets way to over complicated for what it needs to be.


I think taking a few rounds in the cockpit would knock out a pilot before heat would, anyway.

[Amarus Cameron]

Sideways, on 09 November 2011 - 06:07 AM, said:

Is there going to be the chance of an ammo explosion too?

Aw man ammo explosion would be awesome, and since I saw the Bryan is already watching this I should say that having an ammo bin explode because of heat would be freakin sweet! Please take a serious look into that

[Max Liao]

Amarus Cameron, on 09 November 2011 - 07:18 AM, said:

Aw man ammo explosion would be awesome, and since I saw the Bryan is already watching this I should say that having an ammo bin explode because of heat would be freakin sweet! Please take a serious look into that

^^ This

Give us real reasons to manage heat. It's a vital part of the TT game and canon, make it vital in this game too.

[RangerRob]

I'm wondering how many folks mistook the original question.

We are talking about two different things folks.

1) A Mech shutting down due to heat.
2) The Mechwarrior passing out due to heat.

The poll question is in regards to #2 the Mechwarrior passing out due to being too hot. I'm kinda shocked that the poll is leaning so heavy toward the Passing out.

[SquareSphere]

Some good ideas in here, but there definitely needs to be some repercussion from "Riding the Redline" for too long of a time. I'm in favor of visual affect that degrades the pilots ability to "see". Could be heat waves, sweat in the eyes, monitors fogging over due to evaporation and condensation happening in the cockpit or even the "black out spots" in your vision if you have heat stress.