Recoil/Accuracy

[(TLL) Heretic]

I believe the heat system was more a representation of the increased temperature of the fusion reaction as it is amped up to deal with the increase in power drain from the various weapon systems. A PPC draws 10 units of energy out of the reactor, requiring the reactor to spike in order to maintain the reaction. That at least explains why missile launchers which vent all their exhaust out the back are building up heat in a mech.

I agree it's one of the things all the games have got the wrong way around, it'd be great to have heat applied on the recharge/reload (rather than on the discharge) because it'd enable the game dynamic of being able to turn off individual groups of weapons recycle on a weapons groups management panel (Do we get a TIC panel?).

I could see builds where that could be very useful.. For example: a Laser Boat engaging at medium range with a mix of large and medium lasers, all fully charged.  You could choose to turn off recycle on the Large lasers weapon group, fire all your weapons and only the mediums would start recharging.. so no heat from that Large lasers discharge.  That way you can get more bang out of you heat dissipation, and start recharging your Large lasers when the heat build-up is more manageable.

[Tallen]

In that case, a flamer should decrease the user's heat level.

[DoA]

Something seems a bit off with the view that the heat should only be generated on recharge.

Ok, if were going to go with a laser capacitor idea here, then the fusion reactor would have to ?spike? to get the power to recharge alot of capacitors and therefore generate more heat.

IMO this does nit make a whole lot of sense, but then were talking futurtech TM , and fusion power is something were working on desperately now to try to solve our energy crisis, but I will suspend disbelief and say,  ok heat = energy output on a reactor.

If were going along this line of reasoning and were generating enough power to melt armor with a laser at a capacitors discharge, that is going to generate waste heat.  ppc's with there man made lighting approach, yep, waste heat. Missiles venting there discharge out the back of your mech? Whelp it seems that if we've got something like that then the rear armor is gonna have to have some sort of baffling system to vent heat, or if its direct discharge, then were talking tissue-paper armor on the rear of all missle mounts. Somehow I do not see the SRM/LRM's in a standard Atlas reaching the rear torso for direct discharge. So the baffeling would generate waste heat.

Suffice it to say there is waste heat when you fire or recharge a weapon. Having a steady heat curve, from charging, through firing, rather than sliding it one way or another prevents some real time balance issues, such as were just noted with the laser boat not suffering a heat spike from firing all there lasers if they are not set to recharge.

Taken to its extreme, that would easily allow people to alpha strike, and run and charge up weapons for another alpha strike  rather than insta shut down or even cook off some ammo and go boom. That is truly a game altering change, and not one I cotton to.

[(TLL) Heretic]

People hit and run anyways....

Don't know if it'd be an advantage though, just another strategic option for heat management, your going to have to suffer the core temp increase if you want to fire that weapon again, this way you could wait till you were in cover but the downside is that you'd be without that weapon. Little features like this are always cool, like in MW2:Mercs with the jettison ammo option, it wasn't something you really wanted to do, but it could save your 'mech or it's arm for one more shot before destruction so it was a cool feature.

I agree with you that all weapons discharges should heat the machine up in some way, I just think that 70%+ of that heat would be the reactor straining to recharge the capacitors.

[Uranium - 235]

Can't say I'm a fan of the idea that the recharge is generating the most heat.

Heat in the case of missiles weapons doesn't make a whole lot of sense no matter how you describe it. Venting exhaust into the interior itself is just insanity (and there wouldn't be that much of it, really), and the reloading action wouldn't be exactly power-intensive.

The concept does have merits, while at the same time, it really doesn't. After all, moving faster generates more heat (by the book at least, this has never been reflected in a Mechwarrior game, IIRC), jump jets generate heat (again, I don't remember this in Mechwarrior games), but at the same time, an Artemis IV doesn't generate heat, a C3 doesn't generate heat (and that's a *five ton computer*), at least not that I remember.

Ballistic weapons are supposed to generate less heat to counteract their ammunition shortages. Yet a Gauss rifle, which strictly speaking is powered with capacitors, should generate as much heat on the reload as a laser weapon.

In other words, Battletech is extremely unclear on the nature of 'heat', but in all likelyhood it's probably a combination of all actions involved - targeting, firing, reloading. In laser weapons, I'd daresay most of the heat is generated from the firing action itself, however.

[DoA]

Your right Heretic,

However, if all the heat comes when you fire your weapons, as I believe is standard in btech, and mw, you will either shutdown , override and cook off, and/or at the very least override and move like a drunken turtle near a spawning ground.

Shutting down would be bad, as if your target survived the alpha strike your generaly in for a world of hurt.

Cook off , well, I guess you like your mechs well done

The drunken turtle leaves you very vulnerable to any counterattack , not as bad as a shutdown, but still at a serious disadvatage till you can cool off.

But the real shift in moving the heat around would let a light mech load up with 8 mlas, sprint it, fire, and sprint off without a worry. No drunken turtle, no shutdown, no cook off. That I believe is a real change from btech, books, and games. I do believe, It really would change the game to the determent of most heavy mechs.

[Uranium - 235]

Another thing - you could compare the power draw of laser weapons to turning on multiple high-amperage devices in your home at once. How the laser weapons exactly work isn't very detailed. They could be with quick-discharging capacitors, or they could simply channel a shitton of energy at once. As it is described, it's safe to assume that the most heat from laser weapons is generated when firing. Whether that's because the laser is nearly molten and it's conducting to the rest of the mech, or it's because the reactor is running doubletime (which makes a bit more sense), doesn't matter - heat is heat as far as Mechwarrior is concerned.