19 replies to this topic

[Walery]

Dual Heatsinks Explained

For the Surfers Scroll past the Stars.

This Post will cover heatsinks in their current iteration as well as the way they are said to operate come the 6th.

For this post I will use a couple of abbreviations
SHS = Single Heatsinks
DHS = Double Heatsinks
EHR = Effective Heat Reduction (How Much Heat your Heatsinks dissipate in 1 second)
EHS = Effective Heat Sinks (Amount of Heatsinks required to keep a weapon heat neutral)

To see EHS values for weapons as well as other stats such as damage and range go to http://mwomercs.com/...s-excel-inside/ this page is invaluable when designing a mech.

You will also need to know that all engines have 10 HS "built-in." On engines smaller than a 245 you are required to add heatsinks to your chassis to equal this 10. Engines larger than 275 have spaces for additional heatsinks without using crit slots.

First i will just cover SHS, SHS are pretty easy to understand, each one reduces your heat by 1 every 10 seconds, weighs 1 ton and uses 1 crit slot. This means you have an EHR of .1 for every SHS. So in the mechlab
if your mech has 15 heatsinks, your EHR is 1.5 (15x1=15).

Now for the DHS, this is where things get a bit more tricky, currently DHS mean just that .2 heat reduction for the same weight as a SHS but taking up 3 crit slots. Now what has confused many is that when converting to
DHS they thought the SHS inside the engine converted as well. Due to an accounting error this has not been the case, any heatsinks inside the engine were remaining SHS while outside the engine were truly DHS. This meant that if in the mechlab you had 15 heatsinks, your EHR was 2.0 not 3.0 (5x2=10 10+10=20).

What further muddied the waters here was the fact that if your engine came with extra heatsink slots and heatsinks in those slots were also considered SHS. This Meant that on a 300 engine if 2 of your 15 Heatsinks
were in those slots, your EHR would become 1.8 (3x2=6 6+12=18).
The New system will mean that when you have DHS the ones in your engine will become them as well. The downside is that the new system will also make DHS equal to .14 reduction instead of .2. What this means is that on the mech with 15 DHS, Your EHR is now 2.1 (15x1.4=21).

An interesting side effect of this change is that mechs with small amounts of heatsinks will actually see an improvement in their EHR while mechs with large amounts will see a reduction the cut-off point for this
appears to be 17 heatsinks.

HS Old New
10 10 14
11 12 15.4
12 14 16.8
13 16 18.2
14 18 19.6
15 20 21
16 22 22.4
17 24 23.8
18 26 25.2
19 28 26.6
20 30 28
21 32 29.4
22 34 30.8
23 36 32.2
24 38 33.6

*****************************************
So in Short

Before November 6th
SHS = .1
DHS = .2 (if outside your engine otherwise .1)

After November 6th
SHS = .1
DHS = .14

So,
If your mech has the crit slots (in multiples of 3) and is light on tonnage DHS are for You.
If your mech has crit slots and lots of tonnage SHS "can" be better.

Examples:

After fitting the your mech with weapons you have 6 crit slots and 6 tons left.
counting the engine,
with SHS you will have 16
with DHS you will have 16.8

After fitting the your mech with weapons you have 7 crit slots and 7 tons left.
counting the engine,
with SHS you will have 17
with DHS you will have 16.8

After fitting the your mech with weapons you have 8 crit slots and 8 tons left.
counting the engine,
with SHS you will have 18
with DHS you will have 16.8

After fitting the your mech with weapons you have 9 crit slots and 9 tons left.
counting the engine,
with SHS you will have 19
with DHS you will have 18.2

After fitting the your mech with weapons you have 10 crit slots and 10 tons left.
counting the engine,
with SHS you will have 20
with DHS you will have 18.2

[Kaptain]

Why do you say the new system will put DHS at 1.4 instead of 2.0? Where did you get that info?

[Walery]

Kaptain, on 03 November 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

Why do you say the new system will put DHS at 1.4 instead of 2.0? Where did you get that info?

MR. Ekman says so in this post, http://mwomercs.com/...heat-sinks-dhs/ , which is in the command chair forum which is as close as we get to a developer tracker currently.

[Trinton]

Thanks. Been waiting for someone to explain the numbers for HS

[Kmieciu]

Since you can put 4 single heatsinks in the legs to benefit from water cooling, I doubt anybody will use DHS at all.
Probably only mechs that have 10 heat sinks and 250+ engine. So maybe a stock Jenner or a Gaussapult with medium lasers :-)

[Hersaint]

wow...what a confusing system. Thanks for wading through it for us. Double heat sinks sounds like it should double your heat efficiency. Why would you devise a system that appears at face value to be an improvement but in reality is no improvement at all? This is defienetly not a way to garner trust from fans and open their wallets for support.

[Al Bert]

Kmieciu, on 05 November 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

Since you can put 4 single heatsinks in the legs to benefit from water cooling, I doubt anybody will use DHS at all.
Probably only mechs that have 10 heat sinks and 250+ engine. So maybe a stock Jenner or a Gaussapult with medium lasers :-)

The other reason is: weight. Depending on your configuration, the use of DHS may allow you beter waepon loadout. Actually i am not sure, if the HS in the legs are more effektve wen running through water. In the matces i did at least not observe anything significant. But i remember old MW books with mecs sitting 100% under water for surprise attack and the pilot started freezing

[Kmieciu]

Al Bert, on 05 November 2012 - 04:51 AM, said:

Actually i am not sure, if the HS in the legs are more effektve wen running through water.

I am sure they do work, but I have no hard data. What I know is while running on solid ground my Commando`s heat gauge is at 4% and while running through water it`s at 0%

[Zelse]

Hersaint, on 05 November 2012 - 04:46 AM, said:

wow...what a confusing system. Thanks for wading through it for us. Double heat sinks sounds like it should double your heat efficiency. Why would you devise a system that appears at face value to be an improvement but in reality is no improvement at all? This is defienetly not a way to garner trust from fans and open their wallets for support.

Here are your options;

1) With 200% heat dissipation, heat becomes irrelevant for all laser boats and DHS is the clear and cut desired upgrade in every case where a mech generates enough heat.

2) current plan of 140% dissipation. Builds don't become horribly skewed. DHS is not manditory in every build.

You have a choice; "proper" numbers, or balanced numbers. I choose balanced numbers myself.

Also; they'll be tuning the numbers as they progress. If DHS isn't appropriately beneficial, they'll buff it.

Edited by Zelse, 05 November 2012 - 05:53 AM.

[I Just Ate Your Grapes Bro]

heh, definitely won't be worth the money to upgrade them in the future, 1.5 mil for very minimal differences if any? No thanks.....

DHS should ALWAYS be an upgrade if you can fit them, they ARE called DOUBLE heatsinks, the balancing is in their ability to be hit/destroyed MUCH easier as well as the fact that they can't be placed just anywhere, I can agree that double is likely too much and eliminates heat all together, but as is, there is almost NO time where you'd benefit from them, especially at the current cost.

Edited by Ehrithane, 05 November 2012 - 06:09 AM.

[MagicHamsta]

Ehrithane, on 05 November 2012 - 06:07 AM, said:

heh, definitely won't be worth the money to upgrade them in the future, 1.5 mil for very minimal differences if any? No thanks.....

DHS should ALWAYS be an upgrade if you can fit them, they ARE called DOUBLE heatsinks, the balancing is in their ability to be hit/destroyed MUCH easier as well as the fact that they can't be placed just anywhere, I can agree that double is likely too much and eliminates heat all together, but as is, there is almost NO time where you'd benefit from them, especially at the current cost.

Request denied.
Me would rather play a fair balanced game rather than a game where money rules all.
Also my Brawler assault will benefit by from upgrading to DHS even if they "only" be 1.4.
My laser based mech be on the borderline though & will likely use singles.

[Krazy Kat]

But double heat sinks would still be a good idea if you want to reduce weight at the cost of extra spaces, right? I am not sure since I haven't bought them yet.

[Benimus]

Yep, they're still great if you have extra crit slots, which happens in mechs with lots of heavy weapons that don't take up space e.g. large lasers, PPCs, etc.

The examples the OP posted are correct, but here's a different example. Say you have a mech with 30 crit slots free and 10 tons of weight. Assuming 10 HS in the engine, with DHS you could get a heat dissipation of 28, with SHS you could only get 20. So yes, there is definitely a use for them, the original post was just saying that the like for like tradeoff of DHS vs SHS is largely weighted towards mechs that use smaller numbers of heat sinks. Think gaussapults for example, DHS are a godsend for them.

The magic number of 17 heat sinks is the sweet spot for the diffence between engine heat sinks at 1 and extras at 2 (pre patch) vs the new system where all DHS will be 1.4 (post patch)

Edited by Benimus, 05 November 2012 - 06:37 PM.

[Walery]

Benimus, on 05 November 2012 - 06:35 PM, said:

Yep, they're still great if you have extra crit slots, which happens in mechs with lots of heavy weapons that don't take up space e.g. large lasers, PPCs, etc.

The examples the OP posted are correct, but here's a different example. Say you have a mech with 30 crit slots free and 10 tons of weight. Assuming 10 HS in the engine, with DHS you could get a heat dissipation of 28, with SHS you could only get 20. So yes, there is definitely a use for them, the original post was just saying that the like for like tradeoff of DHS vs SHS is largely weighted towards mechs that use smaller numbers of heat sinks. Think gaussapults for example, DHS are a godsend for them.

The magic number of 17 heat sinks is the sweet spot for the diffence between engine heat sinks at 1 and extras at 2 (pre patch) vs the new system where all DHS will be 1.4 (post patch)

Indeed I appoligize, when i made the post i was focused on proving that there were instances where SHS were still better, but that DHS had their place. My examples reflect the former while ignoring the latter. Benimus hit the nail on the head with his post though and that is that DHS will still play a role, they are just not the definitive must have in every instance.

[Hersaint]

Geesh why do I have to be a mathmagician to figure out an upgrade in a giant fighting robot game? lol Another question, why do they have heatsinks I can take off my mech but I can't take them off my mech? For the love of the gods of the mech world, just incorporate them into the engine base so noobs like me dont have to pull our hair out trying to get a mech that the lab will accept. Or at least put up the words minimum heatsinks somewhere!

[Belzzz]

what I cant figure is why you have to choose and cant mix

[Amaris the Usurper]

DHS are not behaving as described. See my post in General Discussion: http://mwomercs.com/...-effectiveness/

[Mercules]

Belzzz, on 07 November 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

what I cant figure is why you have to choose and cant mix

Because those are the rules?

By game lore the entire mech system is built to use normal heat sinks or the more efficient "Double Heat Sinks". As the two are incompatible it's all or nothing.

[Krazy Kat]

OK I did the math for my Hunchback with 20 HS total including engine HS. BTW not all engines have 10 heat sinks, but close enough.

If I change to DHS my heat dissapation value goes from 20 to 18.2, just like in your post. But the number of heat sinks goes way down. Thus my free tonnage goes way up. But since I have nearly max armor and all weapon slot filled, I have no use for that much free tonnage. I could always get a bigger engine for speed i guess. But I would rather have the better heat dissapation for now.

Conclusion: You are correct. For many mechs DHS is still a good deal. But it is not a "must have" any more.

BTW great post. Thanks.

[Nulnoil]

Great guide, thanks a lot!