Greetings. It is me, haarp. You may know from educational threads such as
A new heat system,
fix heat already and
fuck this shit. I am here today to talk about a topic that concerns us all. Heat.
I won't even bother to post this on the MWLL forum. They have shown that they don't really care about fixing critical things. Or anything, really.
So why post it in the first place? Well, I needed a place to collect and write down my ideas. It also helps that others can point out any flaws they find.
So, what's wrong with heat? For your consideration, I shall organize the problems.
a) Engine heatsinks
Got single heatsinks? That's 10 free heatsinks in your engine. Got double heatsinks? Too bad, you only get 5 free engine heatsinks instead.
- This affects many mechs, primarily the Clan Primes, which rely on them for their config to work. Consider Primes such as the Cougar, (old) Mad Dog, Timber Wolf or Hellbringer, which have terrible problems with heat dissipation.
- But what's important here are the consequences on energy boats and similar machines. Notice how once you go above ~12 DHS, heat becomes meaningless? A Nova Cat in the right hands
thrives, even on Inferno! Why is this so? It actually has to do with engine heatsinks.
Consider Battletech: You have 10 engine heatsinks (20 dissipation) and want to improve that. You invest 5 tons to add 5 HS (10 dis.) and get 30 dissipation. Your dissipation has improved by 50% (from 20 to 30). Another 5 HS gives you 100% (from 20 to 40).
Consider MWLL: You have 5 engine heatsinks (10 dis.). You invest 5 tons to add 5 (10 dis.). Your dissipation has improved by 100% (from 10 to 20). Another 5 HS yields an improvement by 200% (10 to 30)!
In MWLL, each additional heatsink is much more worthwhile!
b) Heat capacity
You cool down extremely quickly. How long does a mech with intact heatsinks stay above 900? A second? During prolonged battles, the pattern stays the same. Heat spike, cool down, heat spike, cool down. For a good pilot, heat is not a factor apart from its immediate danger above the magical 900 line.
This means that fleeing to cool down is not necessary. By the time you're behind cover, you might aswell turn around again.
It means that heat effects are pointless, because they'd barely play a role in combat. If "heatsink damage" wasn't cumulative, how many of us would ever suffer from it?
c) Non-linear heat dissipation
Ah, my favorite. Notice how you dissipate heat a lot quicker the hotter you get? That is non-linear dissipation.
Now, physically, this is correct. Heat flow is proportional to delta T to environment. It is, at the same time, bullshit. If real-life physics were an issue in this game, then you'd have to use radiator temperature, not core temperature. Radiator temperature would barely change. You have hundreds of liters of coolant that could absorb a
megajoule (kinetic energy of a one-ton car traveling at over 160kph!) of heat before it would even rise by 1 °C! You'd have so much heat capacity in this bitch that you could spend minutes laying down fire before finally having to cool down. You know what?
Screw that.
Now that we have established that,
why is it bad for gameplay?
- It decreases the effective heat capacity even further. Does it ever go below 500 during combat? Do you care if your heat is at 25 or 250 at all? Nope, only temperatures above 500 are of interest. -> We just about halved the effective heat capacity.
- It makes it difficult, if not impossible to judge your heat dissipation. How long does it take to dissipate half my current heat? If I fire this ERPPC, how far will my heat spike? How long until I can fire my medium lasers after that? -> The current system is arbitrary and unpredictable.
- It encourages "riding the red line". It is more effective to stay as hot as possible because you're able to dump more heat this way. I'm serious. The longer you stay hot, the more heat you lose. How does rewarding high-heat conditions make sense?
Don't believe me? Try MASCing back to base. What gets you farther: Using coolant to keep the heat between 700 and 900, or using it to keep heat between 850 and 900?
d) Brake heat
The idea is this: To stop quickly, you hit
x and generate a bit of heat.
Vehicles: It makes no sense. A hovercraft would deploy airbrakes. A wheeled or treaded vehicle would apply brakes. Let me tell you something about brakes. A fully-loaded 400-ton Boeing 747 has a take-off speed of 300 kph. Its uncooled disc brakes are capable of dissipating this energy in an emergency before it reaches the end of the runway. Sure, the brake discs will
glow an unhealthy red and possibly catch fire, but it's possible. There is no point in forwarding brake heat to the vehicle.
Mechs: Myomer are not very efficient. They generate waste heat that is fed into the mech's cooling system. Furthermore, myomer depend on reactor power to perform any kind of movement. So it makes sense that rapid deceleration heats the mech. But then why doesn't acceleration?
Why is it bad for gameplay?
- Movement should always generate some heat. Not moving is a risk that should be rewarded. Ergo the process of going from moving to not-moving should be rewarded. Brake heat does the opposite, it punishes those wishing to stay still.
- Some vehicles like the Huey or Long Tom already have enough problems with heat. Adding the act of stopping their (pitiful) top speed to that often is troublesome.
e) Clan Large Pulser Lasers
Those things still dump more heat than anything else. Over a longer period of time, too, meaning it does not gain as much from the non-linear dissipation as non-pulse weapons do.
Now that I have discussed the problems, let me approach their solutions.
a) Engine heatsinks
This is simple to solve. Every mech with DHS gets its full 10 engine heatsinks. At the same time, effectiveness of each individual DHS is reduced to, say, 66%. The result:
Mech with no extra heatsinks: It previously had a dissipation of 5*2=
10 through its engine. It now has 10*2*0.66 =
13. A slight improvement, which should help variants with few or no extra heat sinks.
Mech with 12 extra heatsinks: It previously had 17*2 =
34. It now has 22*2*0.66 =
29. A small penalty for this heatsink boat.
b) Heat capacity
This is a tricky one. We want high heat capacity for its obvious benefits. Yet we also need a low capacity to stop alphastrike country (Nova Cat behind hill).
Why not both?
We implement
two heat scales. The
peak scale has the capacity of maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of our current scale. It will not only prevent alpha striking like mad, it also encourages chainfire, careful selection of weapon groups and makes you think about which weapons to use at which range. High-heat weapons easily fill it completely in a matter of a second, but it also dissipates heat at a high rate.
Heat dissipated from the peak scale enters the
bulk scale. It has around 10x the capacity of the peak one. This is the bulk of the mech's heat capacity and takes a while to fill up. It is not a problem for short engagements, but the longer you fight, the more it fills. When it's near full, you better seek cover, because you need a while to cool down. Should the pilot however choose to continue fighting, we now have a beautiful opportunity to implement heat effects (e.g. blurry vision, scrambled HUD, lower engine output, ammo explosions, etc.) that would be pointless in the current system due to its quick dissipation.
Both heat scales are summed and the result is a single heat scale as the pilot sees it. It is one that peaks when he fires energy weapons and then normalizes to a now slightly elevated level. Beautiful, isn't it?
c) Linearity
Simple. X*HS*
deltaT/time. In words: remove the delta T element from the equation.
d) Brake heat
First we add heat for
acceleration to all assets. This is a good idea either way, because at the very least the fusion engine will work harder to accelerate the asset.
Now we can decide whether to remove brake heat from vehicles only or all assets. My vote is on vehicles only. Not only are the physics sound, but maneuvering on a mech (which is its biggest advantage) should put an additional burden on the pilot.
Coolant
Just get rid of it. I have already
proven that gameplay works, nay, benefits from its removal.
And thus concludes my article. Give me your opinions!
If the radiance of a thousand suns
were to burst, at once, into the sky
It would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...
I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.
Edited 19 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2015 09:29PM by haarp.
