Who here misses overheating themselves?

Discussion in 'General' started by Lazybum, Oct 8, 2016.

?

Well do you?

  1. AYE

    66.7%
  2. NAY

    33.3%
  3. What do you mean by overheating yourself?

    6.7%
  4. I like voting

    53.3%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Reading security's thread on overheat and moving I got to thinking about how we used to be able to overheat our selves. Honestly, I kinda miss it. It helped make tank fights a little more... unstable? It's like being able to push yourself into overheat made it exciting because if you did overheat your goose was cooked, so there was this subtle risk reward thing going on. Do you push it hard in an attempt to finish off the enemy or do you pace yourself to not run the risk to overheating?

    Makes me wonder if that was another part of why it feels like tanks last so much longer now, movement is always an option. So running away for repairs is always something people end up doing.

    All that said I can easily see why it was implemented and it is a good change. There's 10 times less yelling at terrible tank drivers or overly aggressive drivers(like me) because they can always at least run away, before it was guaranteed they would kill themselves by overheating. Still I do miss that heat management.
     
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  2. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    I think it was removed also to prevent things like dual-nuke.

    You show up, you fire, boom, that's 700 damage, you only have to "rest" for 2 secs after.

    It didn't matter how much you cross the line(101 heat or 170 heat), the overheating penalty was always the same.
    We can certainly add a new variable but then again, why the work?

    Self-overheating was the main reason why I use only one mouse button for dual cannons.

    So no, I don't miss that, it's one of the things that made Empires look......amateur.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2016
  3. BlackRedDead

    BlackRedDead Member

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    well, changing overheating state to be more a penalty than a punishment in general and allow self overheating again could be a compromize ;-)
    meaning if you get into overheating state you get a movement penalty and can only fire MG slot weapons (because theire heat can be managed by the engine)
    to get out of the state you need to wait a certain amount of time (deepends on penalty - something between 50%=10s - 80%=6s) - just like CV at start - meaning you can enter overheating state and need to wait for it to end, aditionally have 1 or 2s time after exiting it where you can't get into that state again
    the condition to enter overheating state is simple, just reach or exceed 101 heat (wich means that you need to manage high heat weapons such as HIT's - fireing it while having not the heat space for it cause you to get overheated :P)

    an interesting additional penalty would be turret movement also decrease
     
  4. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Honestly, the heat-system should have been worked differently. Unfortunately it'd need some code changes because despite having a script line for it, the actual bit where you say there's "100" heat doesn't change properly if you do edit that.

    My point being, instead of having 100 heat and you can't move when you hit 100, it would be more interesting if you could make it 200 heat but you can't move when over 100, so dual nuke punishes you as much as it should. It would also allow for some more interesting engines, with an engine that overheats after only 50 heat but cools super quickly, or an engine that doesn't overheat until 150 but cools slowly. I'm just making examples but I'm sure it would give some interesting balance options.

    Right now the game works by simply cutting your throttle when you're overheated, or cutting an unbalanceable percentage. If you were able to tweak it so instead it just limited the max speed when you over overheated, you could viably keep it at like 5-10 mph on most engines.
     
  5. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    the problem with that is that in source once a vehicle has speed, there is very little needed to keep that speed.

    so a vehicle on speed with like 75% of its throttle cut will still be able to maintain that speed. its all fubar.

    We experimented with damage reducing engine throttle even, to make some engines more damage resistant etc, but it just did not work because 9 out of 10 it was not noticeable.
     
  6. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    heat is too easymode now. hate what it was changed into. it might as well be removed completely and balanced by ammo
     
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  7. BlackRedDead

    BlackRedDead Member

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    removing it totaly? - great, neverending tankpulks... -.-#
    (and balancing it by ammo... balancing ammo pools in the first place would be nice! xP)
     
  8. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    IMO either slow it THE FUCK down so its something that can be planned and coordinated with (as in, make it useful to say on talk 'im close to overheating') or else make it super fast and ignorable, just meaning you cant shoot and drive too much.
     
  9. A-z-K

    A-z-K Member

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    I'd love heat to be a serious part of the game, Mech games ae a really good place to look for ideas I think because they've usually loads of similarities.
    Armored Core comes to mind, it was quite "arcade-y" it had huge amounts of customisation but heat management was a really important mechanic that raised the depth of the gameplay but never felt overbearing.
     
  10. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    tanks in empires are shite conceptually. instead of high damage output and a weakness to AT weaponry, their damage output is meh but they dont take a scratch. they are the complete opposite of infantry combat where you can go from full health to ded in less than a second. killing tanks takes for fucking ever, thats the issue with them. just look at what is considered "more fun", its infantry combat. its punishing and therefor rewarding. it requires a certain level of skill to prevail. tanks? you can sit the most unaware dense player into them and they still are useful and be it only to soak up damage.

    and to not be offtopic compltely i answer the question - is overheating as originally implemented a good mechanic? fuck yes it is, but its not when overheating is barely punishing because you can just sit there take some shots and then drive away anyways because you have over 9000 hitpoints and AT weapony is a sad joke.

    but what does it matter, no one got the balls to change it anyway.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2016
  11. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    There you go.
     
  12. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    mmm sure, its not like i say this for years now. but every time i bring this up someone comes and says "tanks cost resources so they cannot die" which is among the saddest excuses i heard in my life. aside of that we swam in resources for the longest time (i dont really know how it is atm) tank costs are nothing god given, theyre defined in scripts. if they drain res too fast, you lower the costs, simple as that ...

    also dont take it personally security, i didnt mean you in specific, none of the previous scripters dared to touch it either.

    and </rage> im out of this thread again, im really fed up with empires after the 2 rounds i recently played - and it was neither scripts nor spartacus' fault at all.
     
  13. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    Everyone got his own version of Empires.
     
  14. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    what a convenient way to deal with criticism.

    also fuck i didn't want to post here again.
     
  15. Donald Trump

    Donald Trump Member

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    Surprisingly, I am actually in full agreement here. Tanks need to be able to just destroy other tanks. It needs to go from full on tank game, to a tanks are a big support factor. Overheating used to be more costly than it is now, I remember overheating and dying quickly... but not anymore.

    Tanks need to be weak to AT weaponry, they need to provide some cover, but ultimately need to die quickly when up against another tank. It's stupid how tank combat works, it is more stale than ever and little is done to fix it. Please, Security, edit the armors. Make some armors strong and some weak and make them weigh different, make them cost different, there is very little variation in cost/weight of armors and it is kind of pathetic. Make tank weaponry EAT through armor, make grens eat through it as well and make it so it's not "retreat and now full health". This would make combined arms a thing, this would make the game SO much more fun. I know this is a tangent, but seriously this game need some desperate rework to the mechanics. I understand you wouldn't do this all in one go, but can you start working towards it some?

    I would go into making counters a thing once more, but I'll save that for another time.

    Edit: Flasche is a dick and pointing out grammatical issues on an issue we BOTH agree on... can't even let something slide because I guess he hates me so much.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2016
  16. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    Chill, I didn't said if I agree with you or not.

    But it is true that everyone got his own version of Empires. (and people tend to religiously think their version is the right and only way to go.)
     
  17. Acolyte

    Acolyte Member

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    Yeah, i missed turrets on buildings version (although i really like the current version too)
     
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  18. Señor_Awesome

    Señor_Awesome Member

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    I always considered overheating to be part of the "good" to "great" mechanics in Empires. What I mean by that is it's one of the components that makes Empires a great game instead of a good game, and it does/did that by way of raising up that skill ceiling. The higher that skill ceiling, the more invested a player can get and feel like they're improving.

    Downside: being a free game that only 12 year olds these days could love, a high skill ceiling and non-obvious difficulty actually lowers player retention. And when I say non-obvious, that tank better literally be yelling at you and flashing all kinds of lights on your screen with text in six languages warning you as to what is about to happen to you.
     
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  19. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    Empires already has a ridiculously high skill ceiling.
    If you think Empires needs to be harder(or, doesn't need to be simpler) then you probably aren't deep into the game, yet.

    Let's take a look at vehicle combat, our vehicles are twice as fast as World of Tanks, but our projectile speed is like 3 times slower.
    When I started World of Tanks, I had absolutely no trouble with "prediction", because it's literally 10 times easier than Empires.
    It took me ~20 games(less than 3 hours of game time) to pull off something like this.
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22159878/shot_001.jpg

    Empires vehicle combat is also the reason why I enjoy late-game as much as early-game, because even though I am really good at it, it's challenging as fuck.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2016
  20. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Overheat mechanics were good in about 10-20% of the cases where you were basically getting slapped down for getting overeager, or you'd put yourself in a dangerous situation and had to clamber the fuck out of it. Everyone gets more excited when the stakes are raised, even more so when you pull off a great move to get yourself out of it. That's generally what makes games memorable - moments where you have to raise your game and play on another level to get out of.

    Right now, heat mechanics are useful, because they don't only work as a rof limiter, but rather a limitation on how much you can unload. So you have rof working as a baseline, then heat acting as a cap (similar to how weight works, but as a gameplay implementation instead). It's not very exciting, but it is useful, and good that people aren't overheating and abandoning/wasting their tanks. Which was a real problem.

    There are still other implementations that can be explored tho. Personally I'd love to see a whole topic discussing the ins and outs of Tricksters idea, and exploration of different ideas too.

    Tank combat is still one of the big things that needs to be looked at, and it won't really be a better game as a whole until a lot of ideas get a bunch of testing and people can figure out what actually plays better. I mean Empires as a game, without tanks, is pretty good as is. Tanks add a massive dimension to the game, but for a long time now they haven't been more interesting than whether you can crush the opposition or not. Hell, APC's are downright integral to the game, but tanks really work more like a guy bringing a gun to a knife fight. If you're going to fight evenly, you both need them, unless you can throw really well.
     
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