Overheating

[pegritz]

I really want to like this game, but I simply cannot understand how overheating works. The tutorial is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ *garbage* in this game, and even though I've played about three hours and have experimented with a number of different builds, I still cannot grasp how a lot of this works.

[Tri-Enclave President CEO]

What's not to understand?
Do too much in a single turn and you overheat, you can tell if you're going to overheat if you check the timeline.
If you're really struggling with the heat, you can edit the settings in your campaign's difficulty options (when clicking "new campaign" two options will drop down, one is adjust difficulty). There you can set it to as low as 10% (you can set it to 0% if you edit the config files (Phantom Brigade\Configs\Data\Settings), though I think you can change it at any time in the campaign.

You can also enable dev mode in the debug.yaml so you can use console commands, such as enabling God Mode so you can practice heat management for as long as you want without dying, or just outright enabling the no heat command (cm.godmode 1 and cm.noheat 1 I think). Side note, the dev console looks cool too, the little things like that are always appreciated.


As someone who really dislikes tutorials, I believe this game's tutorial is pretty good. Hands off enough to let people figure things out but hands on enough that it isn't throwing you in the middle of an ocean while going "sink or swim." Hope this helps.

[Satoru]

Overheating is when your mech will take damage if you try to fire too much in a single turn

With 1.0.4 when you begin to place your fire action, as you drag it along the timeline you can now see when you will generate overheat damage via the hashing on the fire action. If you don't wan tto take overheat damage, you'll want to move your fire action farther away

Of course there could be instances where you might want to take overheat damage. If say you really need to take out a specific unit this turn to prevent reinforcements, then you might risk the overheat damage just so you don't get more reinforcements coming

When you look at a weapon the 'optimal frequency' is how soon after the FULL action has taken place you can fire again without taking heat damage. So if a gun takes 1.1 second "Action Duration" to shoot and has an 'optimal frequency' of 1.9 seconds, you can shoot again at 3.0 seconds (1.1 second to fully fire + 1.9 seconds) Assuming you start firing at the 0 second mark

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944255568

[NCDarkness]

There's a temperature bar that actively shows you your temp, including when planning your actions; keep it out of the red or you take damage from overheating. Pretty staight-forward mechanic, but may just be familiar with it from other mech games.

[JPM]

If you hate overheating, then heat dissipation is your friend. Build your mechs around having high heat dissipation, and you'll rarely have overheating problems, not unless you're reckless. The Tsubasa (light) and Bein (medium) as far as I know are the best mech parts for heat dissipation and heat capacity. Heat capacity is the amount of heat your mech can tolerate, exceed that and that's when you start overheating. So say your mech has 115 heat capacity, and your gun has heat generation of 60, that means you can fire once and have to wait for a few milliseconds to fire again. You can fire again sooner if your heat dissipation is high. In some cases you can even fire a gun with heat generation that exceeds your heat capacity if your heat dissipation is high enough. Also, in case you don't know, if it's raining during a fight, that means heat dissipation is ridiculously high for all your mechs. So if it's raining, you can literally go ham with your guns without overheating at all.

Hope this helps.

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Overheating is when your mech will take damage if you try to fire too much in a single turn

With 1.0.4 when you begin to place your fire action, as you drag it along the timeline you can now see when you will generate overheat damage via the hashing on the fire action. If you don't wan tto take overheat damage, you'll want to move your fire action farther away

Of course there could be instances where you might want to take overheat damage. If say you really need to take out a specific unit this turn to prevent reinforcements, then you might risk the overheat damage just so you don't get more reinforcements coming

When you look at a weapon the 'optimal frequency' is how soon after the FULL action has taken place you can fire again without taking heat damage. So if a gun takes 1.1 second "Action Duration" to shoot and has an 'optimal frequency' of 1.9 seconds, you can shoot again at 3.0 seconds (1.1 second to fully fire + 1.9 seconds) Assuming you start firing at the 0 second mark

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944255568

The default overheating limit is horrible for a new player and the premise of fun.
Always turn it down if its your first time.
Or if you just want to enjoy the game definitely turn it down in the difficulty settings.
50% is good.
10% is like 0%
Don't argue these facts to anyone new to the game.. its real.. i watched twtich streamers cry about it too, people will see it, stop pretending you something more than a trigger troll.
Most of the battle maps are so tiny it puts you in the corner with 2 options, skirt the edge of the map limitation wall.. or.. Forward into the beehive.. because going backwards is like 2 steps and the bee's have just gotten into their cars n started the engine.
Maps so smallyou can sprinkle a few turrets in the middle of the screen and that can almost defend the entire map.
No pre-combat sneak up or stealth mission options nothing.. games so raw.. luck we can paint the mechs in NO SHADES OF SATISFYING RED OR BLACK..

Literally everything needs heat dissipation or cooling..
Why are we seeing mech parts without it?
You know who designed these mechs? that dude the wears shorts even when its cold, he got no clue what he doing but he is pretty good with math and disappointing his dad.

The game is modeled asif every Mech is a fat guy that is in the process of getting a stitch.
But really we all know that devs are winging it as they go and balance patches are always inevitable because no one is perfect, not even your overweight mech with asthma.
I look forward to the improvements in the repetitive gameplay.
Am hopeful that the people the game hopes to pass for as human get improved, i get the same popup messages about a bomb or someone dead all the time, like it doesn't have a big enough random pool to pluck a random event out of the hat and it not be the same two types of events.
Do you know how may bombs i'v collected and are in my wheelie-bin? i keep every bomb.. my doomsday device with wheels travels everywhere and could implode the world and forever shift the polarity that seasons will never be the same again.. dooming the world into a recession for billionaires to scoff over in their bunkers.. but im out there helping a farmer push a tractor out of the mud for 5 hours.. sure. gotchya. the exact same UI window everytime.. same wording.. le copy pasta.. where were we.. OVERHEATING.. thats right.. this game has a gross sense of fun, robot fights are cool tho, but i wanted to dual wield swords and i didn't find any until i had conquered half the world, i got to play around with one briefly in the tutorial with a mech that had a super sword or something.. only to find out in the games "real world" they suck because a rocket is going to crash me and make me feel warm inside.

[goinam]

Originally posted by NCDarkness:

There's a temperature bar that actively shows you your temp, including when planning your actions; keep it out of the red or you take damage from overheating. Pretty staight-forward mechanic, but may just be familiar with it from other mech games.

Basing my turns on that notion has caused my mechs to repeatedly overheat and implode for no apparent reason. DO NOT TRUST THAT THERMOMETER.

[Pezkiller]

Originally posted by goinam:

Originally posted by NCDarkness:

There's a temperature bar that actively shows you your temp, including when planning your actions; keep it out of the red or you take damage from overheating. Pretty staight-forward mechanic, but may just be familiar with it from other mech games.

Basing my turns on that notion has caused my mechs to repeatedly overheat and implode for no apparent reason. DO NOT TRUST THAT THERMOMETER.

You are doing something wrong then, I use the thermometer all the time to judge my actions. More specifically i use the numbers that appear above the thermometer

Is really easy to do simple math when the game tells you how much heat each action is going to generate and actively show you on the timeline how much heat you are gaining/ loosing via the thermometer and its numbers above.

Say you have a max heat threshold of 100 before you take damage, your current heat is at 89 or whatever. if your main gun is going to give you 64 heat you have to wait till your thermometer is at least down to 36 heat, i generally even wait a tiny bit more for some overhead safety net and wait till i'm at 33 or even 30 heat before i fire my main gun.

It Is not that hard of a concept to understand if you take the time to learn your weapons heat and your mechs heat threshold, after all you build the mech you should know how to use it.