Weapons Mod/Dan & Herby's think tank

I will test combos of flamers where they aren't being boated, mixed in with 1 or 2 other weapons, today on regular heat maps. I can then give a better idea of heat suggestions 10 flamers.

That's not a bug. It's a mech design flaw. There are two guns on the champion that are mounted on the pelvis, which don't follow the torso when you turn the torso, they still shoot in the direction of the pelvis. I could try and mount them in the proper firepoints for weapons mod 2.2

It also might be because you use freelook. Next time you use that mech try it without freelook and see if they all shoot in the same direction. Some mechs have a problem shooting firepoints all together when using freelook.

So, since there are really only 4 of us voting on this thread, I finally put my vote in. Truth is, I made the change a week ago and wanted to wait for the vote. The switch was much easier than I thought originally and won't present a conflict with textures. It looks great, and it works out perfectly because the animation for small lasers actually looks like more of a focused beam, which fits the description of why it all makes sense.

Flamers: I've got a working model of what I want to do. They fire a continuous stream of flame-balls (that's the only way it can be done with the original animation) and I"ve been working to balance heat imparted vs internal heat, and Stonewall and I will give it a test run sometime soon. I'm a little worried that this is going to create more lag in games and possibly cause players to get lag-booted from games, but we'll see. I'm shooting for a balance that will allow 6 flamers to be barely useable because they generate so much heat, and also cause mechs to shutdown.
Ultimately I don't think it's possible to create a way to avoid the Nuke/death of a mech from overheating. I might fool around with Fire's idea of "salvos" of flamers, because the recycle time between salvos might just be the key to making a mech shut down without killing it, but that might not work.

Update: I tried it, and it did work. In fact, it works so well it's perfect! The recycle time allows you to shutdown someone's mech without killing them. And 4 flamers is about the limit, 3 can shut down the average mech loading 15 double heat sinks on the coolest warm map there is, the mission 3 world. But it's harder to use because you have to focus the flames on the target, sort of like it was for the old style pulse lasers (only with the flamer). It will be harder to lag-shoot than before. 4 is a lot to heat-manage, 6 will be very difficult even if you load a lot of heat sinks. The point is that if you want to use flamers you'll have to make sacrifices. I'm not worried about how they'll behave on an ice map...I imagine they'll be tougher to use than before but still cause one shot kills...but in a c1 game you've got to learn to have enough skill to deal with them anyway, and in a c6 game all you need is a streak missile boat to deal with flamer boats. So to me, flamers on ice is a non-issue.

I only wish I could bring the mech nuke to multiplayer, then players would pay a heavy price for those one-shot kills.

Something that's been bothering me is the hud static with damage. I've been watching a lot of videos lately and it's really hard to figure out what's going on. Also when piloting it seems to go useless almost immediately. It seems the display goes 'wonk' almost immediately after a hit and it never recovers. Could the static be reduced some? Maybe make it harder to 'wonk' it?

I played with the lasers today. I'm pretty happy with the results.

One thing you could try is launching the game and selecting Multiplayer --> TC/IP Game and host your own. There you can run around in maps with whatever time limit you want without any AI Mechs shooting you. I have done this numerous times looking at maps and trying builds.

Btw, I've been working on another version of the weapons mod this week. It will include everything from 2.2 plus some more new stock mechs, (one just for you Herby) and some sound enhancements and other weapons adjustments. I decided the Ultra AC's were not hot enough (not hot at all) This makes the 20's way too powerful. Back in the day Ultra AC20's ran a little hot and for my first iteration of the mod I wanted to try cooling them down especially since they're now single-shot mode, but it just makes them too powerful. Battletech always has pluses and minuses, give and take. The regular AC's will remain the same as they were, cool-running, because they have twice the recycle time. Also created a new, "less powerful sounding" firing sound for ERsmall lasers. Might do the same for the mediums. I'm also thinking about the "tink" sound that happens when you get shot in the cockpit and the glass crack happens...I want to add the sound of armor becoming slag to the "tink" because the canopy is actually not glass, but see-thru armor. Might mess with the "crack" animation too.