Modules (and powercells), since they’ve been introduced to the game, had impacted War Robots (well, I guess Yan-Di is to be blamed for this according to WR lore) in a lot of ways. Shieldbreaker has just been recently added, leading to the god of war’s downfall. Still, I believe that nothing is more game-warping than Phase Shift. It’s just annoying when you’re about to deal the death blow to your target only to see it go into incorporeal state. It’s not just a get out of jail card, but an outplay tool. It serves as a sort of virtual ability extender, especially on Leech. Coupled with Foolhardy Quartermaster and Last Stand, it adds a lot of invulnerability to the game, which in my opinion, shouldn’t exist in multiple forms, especially for a shooter game.
I’ve been lurking around WWR subreddit and FB groups and have read a lot of posts regarding phase shifts and powercells and how they tend to warp the game. Personally, I believe the Phase Shift should at least be toned down. Disabling reloads is one step to at least decrease its overall power. I think I’ve seen some suggestions like allowing a phaseshifted bot to attack another phaseshifted, which kind of makes sense as they’re probably in a same spiritual plane of sorts.
What I have in mind is inspired by my enthusiasm for Mechwarrior. In the Battletech universe, there exists the concept of heat. Running, for example, or using energy weapons generate heat which can then slowly build up. When a mech overheats, it needs to shutdown in order to cool up or use a coolant to reduce heat. Heat buildup can also be mitigated by adding lots of heatsinks to your mech, although I won’t be suggesting the addition of coolants and heatsinks to WR. I will be focusing more on heat.
I’m thinking more about gating the usage of powercells by making it heat up a bot. Also, some weapons would be able to inflict “heat damage” to enemy bots, thereby limiting their usage of powercells. The concept is shown in the image below.
As per the image, getting to 100% heat will temporarily shutdown weapon systems, while going over that would disable both weapon and bot ability systems temporarily. I said before that weapons also cause heat damage, right? Heat damage is maxed out at 75%, so that they can’t disable enemy bots by themselves.
Let us think of a scenario. A red bot gets attacked by a blue bot with flamer weapons and got its heat to 75%. The moment it uses Phase Shift, its heat reaches critical levels. It’s still able to shift out but once it’s back, critical overheat causes its weapons and abilities to malfunction for a short duration.
Now, let’s talk about weapons. The image below shows weapons that deal heat damage.
Why did I choose these weapons? Well, you’ll notice that these weapons have 350 and 300 ranges. I just thought that it would be good to incentivize them at least for going into that range. The 350 range plasma weapons deal low but significant heat damage. I haven’t assigned any values yet, but let’s just imagine that emptying a clip could cause 10% heat. I didn’t include Redeemer because it’s strong enough on its own. But then it’s OK too to add, I guess. Well, we’re just pooping up crazy ideas anyway.
For medium heat damage (around 20% per emptied clip), I put the Flamer weapons. Originally, I placed them at high, but thought that they have higher range than the explosive rockets. I think that giving them heat damage is also rewarding since they’re tricky to aim with.
Explosive rockets deal high (close to 30% per clip emptied perhaps) heat damage. I guess they could be some sort of incendiary rockets. My thought here is their splash got nerfed, so giving them high heat damage would somehow give them some sort of value. And since the addition of cryo, I even thought of having them deal some DOT since they’ll be the fire rockets in contrast to the ice ones. I’m thinking along the lines of reducing impact damage but transferring it to a damage resist-ignoring DOT. Although that would be bad for the burst. I don’t know. LOL. I am just making things up anyway.
Cryo rockets would be the weird ones. Instead of dealing heat damage, they lower it. Hitting your teammates too would reduce their heat damage. But what would be the incentive for using them? I thought of having them equipped reduces the amount of heat damage that the bot is going to take. In this way, those who want to go heavy on powercells would choose them.
How about other weapons, you say? Energy shotguns are already popular. I just thought that this might help other weapons stay relevant at least.
With regard to module heat generation, refer to the image below.
I haven’t assigned values yet, but I guess ARU and Phase Shift could cause 50% heat, Death Mark, Lockdown ammo, and Shieldbreaker 30%, and Repair Unit and Quantum Radar at 20%. Last Stand and Anti-Control would generate heat upon triggering. Anyway, the values I assigned on weapons were just pulled out of nowhere.
How about Foolhardy Quartermaster and other module-related pilot skills? Well, for FQ, I’m thinking of having it reduce hit A BIT when triggered.
Other ways to reduce heat
The only thing that I thought of is standing still for a while and not firing weapons would make heat levels to gradually decrease. Well, Pixonic can also add heatsink modules to reduce heat generation probably.
How will this affect the meta?
Actually, I’m not really sure. LOL. I’m wondering Tarans and Magnums might make it back at least. Same with Orkans and Pinatas. We’ll probably see more Cryo Leeches. Not really sure. I just feel this will add another layer of complexity to the game.
How will this benefit Pixonic? This is actually a tricky question. Powercell consumption will be drastically reduced, I guess, so it wouldn’t be a benefit at all. But at least, reducing invincibility stacking would reduce the one-sided game scenarios. I don’t think invincibility is bad. It’s just that too much of it can be frustrating to most players. Yes, we can all say GIT GUD and bait abilities, blah-blah, but that doesn’t take away the fact that stacked invincibility is ridiculous.
Anyway, I’m just another player speaking out my thoughts. I still believe that Phase Shift should at least be toned down a bit as games tend to be a powercell race instead of a strategic shooter that it should be.
I guess this is it for now. Thanks for bearing with my toilet thoughts and again, see y’all in the battlefield.
The Omniscientist 