There has been some discussion lately in spec in regards to changing the stalling mechanic. Many people find that the existing mechanic of tanks being both unable to move and fire needs to go. I tend to agree as it kills action, which is already a problem noting how slow matches are these days. Therefore I have a proposal. I'm going to try and add support for engine horsepower and top speed, together with weapon cycle time scaling negatively (or even positively) with engine heat, rather than resulting in a completely inability to move/fire once you hit the heat limit. This means there would be an option to make it so that tanks will either stop moving or firing when stalling. Or - aternatively - it could be made so that either movement or cycle time slows down above a certain treshold before stalling completely (or simply plateauing). Personally I am aiming for certain engines slowing down firing when nearing the heat limit, while others would slow down weapon cycle time (with most being a combination of the two). If you have any ideas or suggestions as to how this should be implemented, please post below.
heres what i think after i read the topic: driving around chasing people is not fun. especially in a slow vehicle. especially with lag. no to removing stalling/heat heres what i thought before i read the topic: i hate candles' change to heat not allowing you to overheat yourself you should be rewarded for adequate resource management (heat in this case), and not relying on easymode. a possible change could be like auto/manual heat. in which auto would never overheat you and manual can but you dissipate heat faster, possibly? (for those easymode scrubs) ur idea is ok too
i liked the original heat system because it was very similar to mechwarrior/battletech. but change is good, youll never find out what works if you dont try.
Yeah, I noticed the similarity. I also found out I can already do one implementation without any code changes. Ill set all the weapons to have zero heat, but make it so that all the engines have damage to heat. If it works as I expect players should be able to continue firing even while stationary/slowed down. According to the scripts I should also be able to make it so that you aren't completely immobile. I'll test it tonight. Well, ill first test the implementation where you can fire but not move. Heat management would be replaced by dodging enemy fire, keeping distance, etc. Until I can make it so that you can continue to fire even while overheated. In the end, not being able to move or fire isn't exactly fun. Though at the same time I don't want to remove the ability to pin enemy tanks down.
Damage to heat? What are you talking about? The stall? That's the only thing I can think of. It's a crappy mechanic, it lasts for half a second, if people have even a tiny bit of momentum it does virtually nothing. Unless you intend to make the damage so low that du and he mg can perma stall someone. Sure that person can fire back, but holy hell that's a massive buff to anti tank mgs. That's the only way I can think of it working too, there's Now I wonder if bio damage can affect the stalling too. That would be crazy, that's exactly like when people keep mentioning the power of plasma and bio, except you don't even need plasma now. These are extreme examples for sure, but the cycle time on most weapons combined with people not getting every shot on target means stalling doesn't mean too much if the threshold is like 40 damage, the same as a std ml or ml turret. Doesn't hurt to try, but be prepared for some disappointment. For everyone else, this is how bio diesel works. Code: "Heat Stall Penalty" "0.0" //how much max throttle is limited to when overheating is occurring Honestly if you could change it to affect top speed instead of throttle that would be grand. Throttle is a crappy thing to touch because the difference between a tad slow and can't move is very small.
Yeah, just realized I misread it and damage to heat is only for armors. I've removed all heat for now, and see how that works. Then once that is done ill just add it back in the form of heat to target and see how that works.
I thought you might be talking about the armor thing, but I thought you couldn't mean that because that would just be heat to target in a stranger form. Not being able to control your heat is super frustrating, which is why I don't quite like this. Even if you made everything move they still couldn't fire and honestly it's people running that makes combat suck a bit. If you made them able to fire, well I'm still not sure. Some setups allow a ton of instant damage if you could make something sit still for 3 seconds. Also, dual nukes is a thing, so please consider if every weapon should have no heat or not. Scripts can only get you so far, I've certainly tried to make tanks not be able to up an go and there simply isn't enough decent support for it.
Well, this would be coupled with more powerful weapons (100% more damage and longer cycle time). We just tested it, and it was great. No one felt like heat was really necessary, and vehicle combat was both intense and smooth. Though dual nukes for NF is something I need to look into. I'll probably reduce the 2nd ML 3slot to a 2slot. For now I've just removed it in the scripts we are testing, no complaints so far (except dual nuke heavies).
Oh, I don't think it's bad that there's no heat if you just intend to shoot each other. It's the heating everyone else up part that has me a tad worried. Something off about not only getting penalized for taking a hit by taking damage but also getting heat. Admittedly I used to say it was fine for plasma, and I still think that in the way because it was an odd way to make a defensive weapon(they shot at you less due to the added heat.) But it was restricted to just plasma. Everything giving heat to a tank could make it really easy to overheat them which is the worrisome part. Damage to heat can be scaled easier then htt in a way though, if you know how much of a beating a tank can take you can scale it so say taking 20% of it's total health off(4 sides+hull) from 0 heat assuming engines didn't cool causes overheat. Like a medium can have around 1000 hp altogether, 12 plates of reflective = 960 hp plus 200 for the hull so actually 1160. So if you used 20% if you could deal 232 damage you cause an overheat. The rate that engines cool would modify how much damage til overheat, so say coolant makes that take 25% more damage til overheat or diesel is 20% less but hey you can still move. Please note, I'm kinda typing this to give myself a better idea of how it works or could work. I'm not suggesting how things be done, but to get a feeling of how it would work and be balanced. This kinda reminds me though, does mines trigger the damage to heat thing? Mines could be the new sticky stun, which is kinda funny and I don't think I hate it. But I say that after seeing heavies drive over a stack of 5 mines and live, that usually makes me sad.
Remove overheat as a stalling mechanic and use it as a self damage mechanic. Dual nukes fixed. never getting stalled fixed, Damage output capped if they are worried about damaging self too much.
Not a bad idea, but I still feel that would penalize action/activity. As mentioned earlier, heat combat in Empires (and even customization it self) is inspired by mechwarrior. The problem is that in those games you can kill an enemy mech in a few seconds if you aim well. In empires it is nigh impossible once you've researched better armours and chassis, except if you go for really gimmicky fits like shotgun NF heavies. And even then you usually overheat before you can kill a single target. The (natural) result of this is that tank combat, and matches in general are slowed down considerably. Mostly because it allows tanks to retreat before sustaining critical damage, repair, and then get back to the front. This is especially noticeable on chokepoint maps like Slaughtered, but also open maps like Duststorm. Now, of course I could fix this by giving all weapons a lot of heat to target. But where would the fun in that be?
OH yeah, I wanted to say that if you look at the whole damage to heat thing you can use it passively buff grens against heavier tanks. If people don't like extra damage or don't think it'll do much, one of the strange benefits to what I talked about is that 2 grens would output enough heat to make a tank stall, in the example of a be med at least. Due to armors being able to have specific chassis you can change that damage threshold to overheat by whatever you want. It's a good buff to grens against heavies because what really kills it is the fact grens can't hit the same side of a tank with much reliability. That's just a thought though, I don't think it would work right. There is the idea of simply playing with horse power to heat, but like I said that can go pretty bad pretty fast.
ok, ok... thinking cap on here... How about this? When you get to 80% heat there is some chance that the round/missile you shoot will jam up (maybe even cook off if you don't unjam fast enough?). To unjam you hit reload and go through reload wait time. The higher your heat the higher the chance becomes till it reaches some high chance (3/5?) but, still not 100% that your shot will jam.
Well, for now I'm just going with the slow down idea. As that is also easier to implement. Most people during the tests said they didn't find heat was necessary. In fact, when I tried increasing heat as well by 100% it just slowed down combat a lot. To go back to Mechwarrior, which the heat combat is inspired by. In the game weapons really are balanced around heat (mainly lasers). Weapons with very high range and/or dps generate a lot of heat. Mostly those weapons with either extreme range (larger than Empires maps) or the ability to kill tanks within seconds. If you were to remove it, the balance would be gone completely (as is possible using cheats). In Empires, heat really isn't necessary, except (as our tests showed) the case of dual nukes on the NF heavy. There are no weapons that can deal extreme (instant) damage over extreme damages (i.e. the other side of the map) or - on their own - destroy an armoured heavy tank in under 2 seconds. What is necessary though is the ability to slow down/pin down tanks, so tanks can't hit & run or rush into bases with impunity.
ofc its merely a design decision. you can have the game with and without heat. but personally i liked the idea of controlling fire or suffering the consequence of being a sitting duck. as i also liked the idea of tank ammunition when it was removed only to be readded because it takes away depth from the game.
I'd like to point out that since cooling for heavies was raised something like 40% that's been true. Before though heat was a serious issue, heavies can dish out a ton of damage but only for a short burst, now they can fire all day long it feels like. I think it's a small reason why meds were still useful back then. Might have also helped absorbant be more useful considering taking damage let you put even more damage, now it doesn't really do much.
If heat is removed, I recommend balancing around ROF then. Honestly, cannons should be the end all on damage per shot bar nukes but, our current setup has cannons firing so damn fast its completely unrealistic even for future shit. Missiles can make up for the lack of high damage per shot with guidance and lockon, spam and splash.
That's pretty much what I've done. Cannons have the highest damage per shot. Missiles have the highest initial DPS. And MGs tend to have the highest damage potential (Total ammo * damage) and weight very little. Well, we did test more powerful tier-3 weapons combined with a very high heat output. Problem was that everyone thought it was ridiculous when we tested it (Railguns capable of killing a light tank in one shot and a medium in 2, super nukes, etc.). In the new version currently being tested the advantage of mediums over heavies is mostly mobility and cost. As for absorbant: I'll try to find a temporary niche as I add code support for the new mechanic. I certainly do not want to see any weapons, engines or armours being made obsolete. Yeah. I like the idea in it self, but unless I up the DPS by a lot, it just doesn't seem to work well. Heat won't be completely removed however. It will simply be redone and in turn allow more freedom for scripters. Like having an engine that overheats quickly, but suffers only a minor horsepower/top speed penalty. Or an engine who's performance (horse power/top speed) increases with heat. There are a lot of possibilities. Even more so if I add support for slowing (or speeding up!) cycle time with heat.
