A new heat system

[=KoS=Zeus]

How would the Madcat A be worthless?

2 CERPPCs = 15 heat each (hint, don't alpha strike these)
2 CUAC10s = 3/6 heat each (hint, cool down by firing these)
14 double heat sinks = 2.4 heat dissipation per second.

You start the engagement by firing a single CERPPC. This spikes you to 15 heat (you need to hit the override button because, yes, the highest heat weapon in the game should do that to you.) you wait 6 seconds (dropping 14.4 heat) and fire the second CERPPC. This kicks you up to 15.6 heat, again you hit the override key.)

4 seconds later you get into range of your UAC10s (dropping 9.6 heat as you do, putting you at a total of 6 heat.) You lay down on the UAC10 triggers and both autocannons start roaring. You can afford to build up 13 heat worth of UAC fire and not suffer any heat penalties. Let's say this amounts to ~5 seconds worth of continuous fire. Over the course of firing you also dissipate 12 heat thanks to your heat sinks. Guess what, your UAC10s cannot overheat you by themselves. At the end of that 5 second period of shooting you actually end up at 6-7 heat, right about where you started. Wait just 1 or 2 seconds and now you let the enemy have it with another CERPPC and spike up to 22 heat, tapping override again but not suffering any damage.

This is the key to CBT, and more importantly, Solaris VII. Heat spikes are the balance to burst damage.

(Edited because I used LB10X heat instead of UAC10 heat)

[Kyatlu]

Parts I don't like;

- Heat dissipation being turn-based. Instead of all those numeric values mentioned being implemented I believe only reducing avarage heat dissipation speed would have the same effect.

Turn-based? Nothing is turn-based in my implementation

So how will it be with chain fire? Or firing weapons in less than 10 sec after each? Say with a config of 20 heatsink value I fire 1 lbl, getting 8 points of heat. After 2 sec, I'm cooled by 2*(20/10 sec)= 4 point, 4 point remains. Then I fire another lbl for 8 points of heat. Now my heat is 12 points. Now what? Do I have 8 secs for cooling 12 heat points or each is calculated seperatly, firing a weapon (or group) starts an individual 10 sec countdown?

Nah, the high heatsink config would dissipate that in a little over 4 seconds
50*(10/20 sec)

It's actually 22*(10/50 sec)=4,4 sec. . Got confused with the 20 heatsink config. Anyway, my question still stands. How does this system gives low heat sink configs advantage over the old one? I'm sorry if I'm overlooking something but it seems to me that it actually puts high heat sink configs forwardeven more. Is it heat dissipation speed being constant as opposed to higher heat dissipation speed at higher internal temperatures? (that takes some of the sim feel away for me). Just lowering the overall heat dissipation speed would make almost the same effect, with less consequences I say.

[HAARP]

Good point Zeus, it actually forces you to manage your fire even more!


Kyatlu: There is no countdown, heat is dissipated constantly if present.
And have a look at this post to see how low-heat configs would benefit from that:

Example: Osiris B w/ AC/20 and 2 small lasers. AC/20 builds up 7 heat, small lasers 1 heat each. You spike 9 heat, dissipate 10 over 10 seconds. You never exceed your 10 heat threshold.

[=KoS=Zeus]

One problem with this system, however, is that Heat transfer weapons will have a much higher impact on low heat few heat sink designs than high heat high heat sink designs.

It would be suicide to take anything with single heat sinks if a Mauler C was on the field.

[xInVicTuSx]

Right now I understand the feeling that the Ncat is the real problem and everything is working towards it.
Coolant+ rapid heat dissipation+ quick refire in chain fire = pain in the ass to fight.
On the C you can easily fire each ERPPC in quick succession, for a "staggered" alpha, then tap coolant which increases your heat dissipation rate even more so you can spike it down below critical without taking any damage, then by the time this has happened, you just fire one ERPPC at a time in a slightly slower pattern as they become available and tap the coolant to get that tiny bit of heat over critical down instantly. Nothing is stopping you at this point, you won't run out of coolant because you're not using very much at all, you don't have to wait for refire because you have 4 ERPPCs, and the loads of heatsinks gives you just enough heat dissipation to keep pace more or less with the quick refire.
There is no heat build up problem at all, and the threat of shutting down is a joke.

Dancing around that critical line constantly is what pisses me off, I don't mind if all hell rains down on me when I first spot the Nova(particularly if he misses) but if I'm in his face circling him after hes missed with his initial quasi-alpha and he can hurpadurp fire CERPPC after CERPPC ad infinitum the retarded damage output of them will overwhelm me rather quickly.
Damage isn't really the problem here though, it should do the same output as Gauss more or less, but who would take Gauss over PPC at the moment? Endless ammo and no worries on heat with PPC for an easier weapon to use thanks to extreme splash damage.

Any new heat system needs to prevent this first.

[Sesambrot]

How would the Madcat A be worthless?

2 CERPPCs = 15 heat each (hint, don't alpha strike these)
2 CUAC10s = 3/6 heat each (hint, cool down by firing these)
14 double heat sinks = 2.4 heat dissipation per second.

You start the engagement by firing a single CERPPC. This spikes you to 15 heat (you need to hit the override button because, yes, the highest heat weapon in the game should do that to you.) you wait 6 seconds (dropping 14.4 heat) and fire the second CERPPC. This kicks you up to 15.6 heat, again you hit the override key.)

4 seconds later you get into range of your UAC10s (dropping 9.6 heat as you do, putting you at a total of 6 heat.) You lay down on the UAC10 triggers and both autocannons start roaring. You can afford to build up 13 heat worth of UAC fire and not suffer any heat penalties. Let's say this amounts to ~5 seconds worth of continuous fire. Over the course of firing you also dissipate 12 heat thanks to your heat sinks. Guess what, your UAC10s cannot overheat you by themselves. At the end of that 5 second period of shooting you actually end up at 6-7 heat, right about where you started. Wait just 1 or 2 seconds and now you let the enemy have it with another CERPPC and spike up to 22 heat, tapping override again but not suffering any damage.

This is the key to CBT, and more importantly, Solaris VII. Heat spikes are the balance to burst damage.

(Edited because I used LB10X heat instead of UAC10 heat)

You know it's all that calculating I don't like...
I'm good in math, but an FPS shouldn't have that much to do with it.
It's cool for a tabletop like CBT, but that's it IMO.

Also, I really don't get it!
It's not that I'm opposed to changes, or to be closer to CBT, it's simply that I don't understand why you think a change like that would be necessary...

TBH lately I feel, like I don't like any changes proposed by any community member, but at a second look I simply don't get why people keep suggesting significant balance changes (or rebalancing from the scratch), while the current balance works just fine.
Please help me to understand what exactly doesn't work with the balance as is right now?

I may be wrong though, but everything points at the NCat being the source of the problem...
Actually it's much better than it was in 0.2.0 when heat wasn't even worth considering in a NCat.
Currently I see only few NCats out in the field, it's still a popular mech however, not as popular as it used to be.

[Kyatlu]

And have a look at this post to see how low-heat configs would benefit from that:

Example: Osiris B w/ AC/20 and 2 small lasers. AC/20 builds up 7 heat, small lasers 1 heat each. You spike 9 heat, dissipate 10 over 10 seconds. You never exceed your 10 heat threshold.

Except you can fire small lasers numerous times in the 10 sec period (and ac20 twice possibly)

[xInVicTuSx]

TBH lately I feel, like I don't like any changes proposed by any community member, but at a second look I simply don't get why people keep suggesting significant balance changes (or rebalancing from the scratch), while the current balance works just fine.
Please help me to understand what exactly doesn't work with the balance as is right now?

Late game if you want to win you spam the shit out of Novacat A,C or Madcat B.
Something is wrong there, the rest of the game is fine and it has its boats, look at the Puma Prime for instance, but there is something about loads of DHS on heavies that is breaking the late game and making is tiresome.
There has been much discussion on this, the problem is you can't just bandaid tweak the heatsink system without having it unfairly nerf the high DHS.
Rather, the heat system should allow the extremely deadly loadouts of the clan heavies but not allow them to spam fire everywhere everysecond, (that is the IS job ). This has to come from a natural consequence of high heat build up rather than targeted nerfs, thus why a heat system rework is being discussed. 

[KingLeerUK]

While the community is free to make whatever concepts and designs that they so choose, I currently do not see a need for a radical revisioning of the method by which heat is managed within MWLL.  While the system is not perfect, I would volunteer that no system truly is, nor would even a "perfect" system satisfy all users due to the preponderance and wild range of opinion.
 
There will likely be some tweaks to the MWLL heat system going forward, especially as we introduce new features and weaponry, but the project simply does not have a manpower budget to undergo a massive refactoring of heat.  I would much rather spend that effort on the development of new features and systems for the game.
 
To summarise: "[it] may not be exactly as you envision it, but that does not mean [it] is broken"

[Sesambrot]

Late game if you want to win you spam the shit out of Novacat A,C or Madcat B.
Something is wrong there, the rest of the game is fine and it has its boats, look at the Puma Prime for instance, but there is something about loads of DHS on heavies that is breaking the late game and making is tiresome.
There has been much discussion on this, the problem is you can't just bandaid tweak the heatsink system without having it unfairly nerf the high DHS.
Rather, the heat system should allow the extremely deadly loadouts of the clan heavies but not allow them to spam fire everywhere everysecond, (that is the IS job ). This has to come from a natural consequence of high heat build up rather than targeted nerfs, thus why a heat system rework is being discussed.

To asure you, though I agree with Leer, I neither want to use his statement as sample for mine, (nor kiss his as) but regarding what he said, I have a general question;
Wouldn't it be way more productive to think about small changes which could be done to address a problem like this, instead of suggesting the complete remake of an established system?

[=KoS=Zeus]

It's simple. Heat sinks should allow you to fire your weapons, no matter what they are, more often than a mech with less heat sinks.

This does not mean that you should be able to fire ALL of your weapons, no matter what they are, and not suffer massive penalties. This is not just a failing of the heat sinks in the system, it is a failing of the heat scale.

With the real time simulation aspect, heat is applied immediately to the scale rather than having a chance for the heat sinks to dissipate it at the end of a "turn" as it does in CBT. What this means is that the concept of a term needs to be understood by the community discussing the system. A turn could be 2.5 seconds of time where you are chain firing weapons, not an alpha strike. The term alpha strike in CBT means a much different thing than one in MWLL, even though the idea is the same (fire all your weapons at the target.)

In CBT, an alpha strike takes place over a 10 second time period. The game was designed around the idea that as you are firing weapons, one or two at a time, your heat sinks are working at the same time to combat the heat build up. The net result of 10 seconds of doing this was calculated at the end of the turn, for ease of book keeping.

Now we have computers to handle this on a millisecond by millisecond scale. Alpha striking all those weapons in 1 millisecond is completely different than chainfiring them over 10 seconds. Right now the heat scale allows a Novacat to alpha strike 5 CERLBLs in the same millisecond and suffer very little negatives for doing so. If that were to happen in CBT then the mech would immediately spike up to 60 heat and the 50 heat dissipation of the heat sinks would only be able to get rid of 50/1000, or 0.02 heat. You shut down when you hit 30 heat on the scale. Guess what, you shut down.

If, however, you chain fire the weapons over the course of 10 seconds, firing one every 2.5 seconds after the first, then you should end up with a net result of 10/30 on your heat scale. Currently a Novacat can do this ~3 times in 10 seconds by flushing coolant with every alpha strike. This is the problem.

[(TLL) Heretic]

While the community is free to make whatever concepts and designs that they so choose, I currently do not see a need for a radical revisioning of the method by which heat is managed within MWLL.  While the system is not perfect, I would volunteer that no system truly is, nor would even a "perfect" system satisfy all users due to the preponderance and wild range of opinion.
 
There will likely be some tweaks to the MWLL heat system going forward, especially as we introduce new features and weaponry, but the project simply does not have a manpower budget to undergo a massive refactoring of heat.  I would much rather spend that effort on the development of new features and systems for the game.
 
To summarise: "[it] may not be exactly as you envision it, but that does not mean [it] is broken"

We had a thread some months ago where we discussed the Heat system. It was discovered in that thread that the heat capacity of 'mechs in MWLL was actually double what it was in CBT, Ergo the Alpha-strike happy gameplay of high DHS machines in 0.1-0.3.

As much as I like Haarps approach to a new Heat model I've got to agree with Leer here.  Given our previous debate I'd say that if we dropped the Heat capacity of all the assets by 50% then the Heat system would work perfectly for all machines in the game and we'd see an end to the endless Alpha-strikers.

What would that mean when playing the game?  2ERPPCs would fill your Heat bar from cold to the redline (half the 0.3 capacity), then Heat sinks would kick in, more HS the faster the bar goes down (just like now).  Heat Fixed.

PS. I love Haarps idea about Heat Sink efficacy based on ambient temperature (rather than Inferno filling up 10% of the Heat bar as it does in 0.3, it would cripple your Heat Sinks dissipation rate instead. Love it! Plus it's supported by the Lore too.

[Cujo]

why would the number of heat sinks affect the capability of an entire system to absorb sudden heat spikes?  There's literally no physical reason for it.  unless I've totally missed your point.

It's like this for gameplay reasons. Let's just say that more heatsinks means more coolant that can absorb the heat

This would bother me to noooo end being a mechanical engineer and having done heat transfer calculations.  I like the current setup of the system and apart from some balance tweaking, I think it works very well and like that it's based on some real equations.  Actually based on the equations for heat transfer, there would be a lower heat transfer when the ambient temp is higher, but that doesn't really bother me too much.

I think this is the best possible summary and I agree 100%

To summarise: "[it] may not be exactly as you envision it, but that does not mean [it] is broken"

[=KoS=Zeus]

Some of us are designers in the industry. As this is a volunteer project I would love to dig through the numbers and put together balance propositions for the heat system to be tested. The man power is available for the mod, we're all over these forums. If we have the tools available we will design.

[Cujo]

http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/forum/index.php/board,10.0.html