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ditching the heat scale
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Vagabond
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PostPosted: 28-Jan-2003 01:26    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

i tried somethin like this, called it alpha heat, after the alpha heat scale in MW2. or was it Gamma Heat, ehhhh... it dosen't matter.

anyway it reflected the fact that a mech dissipates heat over 10 seconds, but weapons build heat in less then a second. your total heat generated in a turn was compared against the heat table [modified of course] and only certain effects where figured in. [used the extended heat table in maxtech] you could alpha strike a nova prime and risk melting internal systems, THEN run those risk the heat table gave you.

was interesting for the avide roll player, but not the beginner.

you tried battleforces 2 gangrene?

something like that might be good. also revamping the heat scale to stuff like, every 5 heat subtact 1 mp. then list these effects on cards, kinda like MW:DA. seperate them by catagory and then color code them to the heat table.

at 5 heat, green movement; at 10 heat, yellow movement; at 15 heat, blue movement; ect. then under movement corispond the colors, green -1/-1, yellow -2/-3, blue -3/-5.

the whole idea of heat trackings very easy in and of itself..... i have 10 heat disappation, so if i run +2, and fire a Large Laser +8, then i'm even. only elementry school students shouldn't be able to do that easily.

now i agree, battletech has been and is a game of time. taking hours to complete and alot of tracking. BUT its these features that make it fun.

heres an idea i just had, use BF2 rules mixed with the miniture rules on a hexless board/table, using simple terrain rules. you get a pretty fair blend between BT and MW:DA. you can still design your own mechs and units. you can still imploy combined arms. but you get speed.

then those who want a better blend of realism, introduce to BT. those who arn't, can keep playing BF2.

the thing that makes BT slow, is all the calculating you must do, but to me... thats what makes it so fun.

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Karagin
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PostPosted: 28-Jan-2003 09:57    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

Quote:

On 2003-01-28 01:26, Vagabond wrote:
heres an idea i just had, use BF2 rules mixed with the miniture rules on a hexless board/table, using simple terrain rules. you get a pretty fair blend between BT and MW:DA. you can still design your own mechs and units. you can still imploy combined arms. but you get speed.

then those who want a better blend of realism, introduce to BT. those who arn't, can keep playing BF2.




Actually two of my friends have rules for this kind of thing...I am waiting for them to send them to me and I would be happy to share them.

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Gangrene
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PostPosted: 28-Jan-2003 11:58    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

you tried battleforces 2 gangrene?

No. Its OOP now, so I won't have the chance. I did play Bforce 1. It was OK. I heard Bforce2 was a lot better.

the whole idea of heat trackings very easy in and of itself..... i have 10 heat disappation, so if i run +2, and fire a Large Laser +8, then i'm even. only elementry school students shouldn't be able to do that easily.

I posted this topic on the CBT site and I lot of people say similar things. But "annoying" and "hard" are different things. I never said the heat scale was difficult, just tedious after movement management, modifier management, weapon management, ammo management, and crit management.

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Rarich
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PostPosted: 02-Jun-2003 17:30    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

We came up with a simple way of doing the heat accounting when doing a couple of Battalion encouters.

A mech could fire half its weapons with no heat effects. It could fire all of its weapons with no heat effects if it did not fire the next turn (move only). If a mech fired an alpha strike and followed with half its weapons, it would suffer from heat 5 effects for the next 2 turns. If a mech suffering heat 5 alpha strikes for a second turn it would go to heat 20. The mech would then have to spend 5 turns in cool down fire, or 2 turns move only.

This worked pretty well, the standardized values (full/half weapons and stepping 5 points on heat) allowed everyone to keep track of what was happening without getting bogged down in the smaller details. We could concentrate on fighting the battle, not game mechanics.

We used colored paper to note a mechs heat state. Yellow indicate an alpha strike(overheating), red indicates 2 alpha strikes (seriously hot), white indicates cooldown fire.

the indicating sequence (couting down) would be: Red(20),red/white(15),yellow/wht(10),yllw(5),white(fired 1/2 weaps this turn)

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Gangrene
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PostPosted: 03-Jun-2003 10:54    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

That's an interesting idea. When you decided what 1/2 of weapons you were firing, did you base it on some output or was it literaly 1/2 the number of weapons? For example, if your mech has 2 ER PPC's and 2 mg's, does firing both ER PPC's count as firing "half" of the weapons? Or did you designate half based on heat?

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Rarich
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PostPosted: 07-Jun-2003 18:06    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

Based on heat, otherwise the heat balancing effect would be lost. Using your example, the mech would probably have enough heat sinks to deal with constant firing of 1 PPC. firing both would tend to overheat the mech, slowly or quickly, depending on what HS it carries.
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Foxhound
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PostPosted: 08-Jun-2003 15:23    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

I like the idea of heat. Weapons fire should have reprecusssions. Otherwise we just get one alpha strike platform after another. It requires a bit of forethought before just blasting a target.

One of the things we've found was that it isn't the heat or movement or firing that makes the game slow down, it's that they aren't being done quickly. In our group we played with eggtimers. Each player had 20 seconds to make a move or declare fire (per unit). If it wasn't done in that much time, it just wasn't done. It required players to pay attention and make decisions, and even think ahead. Of course socializing was a part of it, but it wasn't being done when you were supposed to be moving. All those dice rolls and figuring out damage and whatnot still took time, but we didn't have players spending three minutes deciding which mech to move where.

As far as getting rid of heat, I think heat is there for a reason. I do think the introduction of double heat sinks took away a lot of that skill of being able to manage heat, but that is a different debate. The only solution I can think of is in the design process and that is to make sure a 'Mech is designed to dissapate 100% of the generated heat per turn.
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Gangrene
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PostPosted: 08-Jun-2003 16:20    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

Quote:

On 2003-06-08 15:23, Foxhound wrote:
I like the idea of heat. Weapons fire should have reprecusssions.



I think eapons fire should have tactical reprecussions. I don't think throwing in some random excuse that requires accounting is a good solution to balancing game play.

The timer thing has never worked or any of the groups I have been in. Someone always challenges it, and rightly wins because there is no L2 rule basis for time control.

Quote:
I do think the introduction of double heat sinks took away a lot of that skill of being able to manage heat, but that is a different debate.



I think you're right. But I also think that the skill set of the game should focus on tactics, no accounting. While there is some tactics to using heat, I find the whole thing rather lame in light of how true battles are fought. The heat scale is just a construct to limit weapons fire.

Quote:
The only solution I can think of is in the design process and that is to make sure a 'Mech is designed to dissapate 100% of the generated heat per turn.



If you reread my post, you'll see that's something I propose: "To adjust the game so as to compensate, I think the heat should be accounted for in the design of the mech."

I don't think it would take away from the game at all.

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Sir Henry
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PostPosted: 09-Jun-2003 08:07    Post subject: RE: ditching the heat scale Reply to topic Reply with quote

If we removed the Heat from BT, how would we cook our lunches while on patrol???? Or the for the Victory Party????

Priorities folks....



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