The only thing I didn't like about mechwarrior is the heat system. Why did my laser overheat my entire mech? Shouldn't it just heat up the weapon itself? I'll never understand it.

Lasers were directly linked to the energy core of the Mech, the process of extracting that energy would create a lot of heat seepage I imagine, seeping it into the main body of the mech, as it's impossible (or impractical) to have mega heat shielding on anything BUT the core.

Tell me, Winterous, have you ever held an electrical cord while it's running?

Do they actually heat up? Unless our dearest mechwarrior engineers are conducting electricity over, I don't know, bamboo rods or something, there's going to be far more energy going through the wire than heat leaking out; that's the entire point of wiring.

Yes I understand Grif and Winter's argument but we are talking about millions of volts of electricity and in the future I'm sure they would have superconductors that don't emit heat (have almost no heat emitted/energy lost) so I think I would have to agree when you say that it wouldn't get hot and overheating is kind of strange

Also Isn't the whole Idea of a laser to be as fast as the speed of light? I mean in movies they always have these fat blobs of laser that go as fast as a bullet but in real life a laser is light so it would travel as fast as light.

I'm salivating over this mod so I hope it comes through!

I'd think that each laser would just be set up with its own power source, which would constitute its "ammo." But that's just me.

And this doesn't explain why the OTHER weapons make the entire mech heat up. Last time I checked, the only thing a machine gun should heat up besides itself is the air around it.

It's a gameplay mechanic from back when it was a boardgame. It's a game about giant bipedal robots, it doesn't have to make sense

I'm just trying to rationalise it, I realise that ultimately Darlos has a damn good point, but there would probably some reason why it doesn't work.

And really, it's not as if the Mech's energy core is a huge battery, it's something like a nuclear reactor.
They can't just wire the energy away, there has to be a conversion mechanism which would cause some heat buildup.

And also yes Grif, wires DO heat up while they're running.
It's just that the ones we use aren't overburdened, they have a modest amount of power running through them, and a rubber coating, so feeling the heat produced is difficult a task indeed.
Copper is NOT a 100% efficient method of transferring electricity, and as such there will ALWAYS be some wastage, usually in the form of heat and light.

ITT Winterous beats Grif in physics.

Good job, patting yourself on the back.

Hey, guess what Winterous, I don't know what cables you are handling, but they do not typically get heated. Even high voltage cables are properly insulated.

Now, power supplies. Those get hot. Hot hot hot. Because they are converting energy. Wires don't covert it, they transmit it.

Besides, I don't think that it's the entire mech that gets heated up but only the nuclear reactor. Which would also explain why the consequence of overheating is the core blowing up. This however would not explain why projectile weaponry heat up the reactor

You would be right. In MechWarrior lore, an overheat is centralized in the power supply. If the power supply overheats, the entire unit shuts down (because there is no power). The term is called "scramming," and it comes from nuclear power lingo about an immediate and rapid shutdown of a power generating unit.

This is experienced with everything that has a power source, not just MechWarrior. Laptop and desktop PSUs can overheat and shutdown. Even CPUs can scram if they aren't cooled properly.

No, Thor, no.
Copper does not have 0 resistance.
0 resistance is the only condition that there is literally no energy wastage.
How can wasted energy be wasted if the energy doesn't get converted to another type, hmm?
What better type than heat and light? After all, that's how Lightbulbs work.

Explain that to me, and you'll make me look like a fool.
Otherwise, you're just plain wrong.

I wasn't saying wires get HOT, I was saying they produce HEAT when transmitting electricity.
Heat =/= Hot


@p3lb0x (which I've always read as Pillbox, for some reason)

I was rationalising why Laser weaponry heats up the whole Mech.
It cannot be rationalised for Ballistic weapons, or Missile weapons, which just plain wouldn't.
It's never really much of an issue with those though, unless you have 8 Autocannon.

Yes it's true, in reality only the laser weapon would heat up (and probably melt sometimes), but there is a rational explanation, it just doesn't explain the magnitude of the whole-body heat buildup.

Grif beats winterous in reading b/c I never said copper wiring was 100% efficient dawg

I suppose its just a gameplay balancing thing, but I must say I hated it when autocannons made tons of heat to the reactor, almost as much as an Large Laser.

And on top of that it consumed ammo. And autocannon ammo was never abundant. : /

It was a powerful weapon though, so maybe its alright.

What realm do you live in that doesn't adhere to the laws of physics?

Now you're just playing semantics to cover your stupid argument. Everything generates heat. My fingers touching the keys generates heat. The implication you were making (but are now pretending that you did not) is that wires get overheated. And they certainly can, provided that they are not properly insulated and maintained. This is not typical (and you would assume it would be atypical for a fictional mechanized robot fighting unit).

tl;dr Winterous is a Wikipedia Scholar.

Haha, I started an argument.

Though it kinda got off-point. I probably shouldn't have argued from the point of lasers, since I have no idea how they integrate into the mech's overall system. I just don't see why a mostly self-sufficient gunpowder-based weapon can heat up the mech, or the mech's power core, so much. The only thing that should use the mech's power directly is whatever pulls the gun's trigger, which I doubt is a very high-energy task.

Also, regarding balancing, I'm not suggesting overheating be removed entirely. It should just be relocated to individual weapons, unless the weapon is explicitly designed to do something that would weigh heavily on the mech's power core and wiring. So you fire your autocannon a couple times, then when that gets too hot... you fire your other autocannon until it cools down. As it stands, no matter what you fire, you have to wait to fire anything else, which just feels weird to me.

And I don't think it would be that much more complicated for players to deal with and think about, considering how much complex customization is in the game already.

Ultimately though, I'm not certain how any of this could be implemented in CC right now anyway. At least, I'm not sure how it could be implemented very robustly.