46 replies to this topic

[VYCanis]

Ok, so we all know about double heatsinks
how pretty much, they are a flat out upgrade due to the engine sinks being converted at no space cost, and once you have them, unless your energy weapon load is ridiculous, you almost never have to worry about heat again. I.e. there are very few reasons to ever use a standard heatsink when doubles are available.

Now then, i have an idea on how to balance this out.

Now according to the fluff and stats, double heatsinks have more surface area for the same weight, allowing for better heat transfer.

In the tabletop this translated into a double heatsink being more likely to be broken via a crit. However this really never got represented well in real time. and in games like MW4, you could be down to one leg, a head, and a CT, and still somehow have all your sinks.

on the flipside, double heatsinks made flamers and inferno almost obsolete. as they heat they added was usually only a drop in the bucket.


Well. here's my solution.
1.Flamers and inferno SRMS, assuming they are hitting a location that contains heatsinks, deal progressive damage directly to the heatsinks located there.
2. Single heatsinks take normal damage, clan doubles take 2x the damage, IS doubles take 3x the damage.
3. As individual heatsinks take damage, their cooling rate drops until they pop

additionally

Mounting more heatsinks, especially doubles, increases how easily your mech is detected, as your mech is constantly venting heat into the surrounding air, looking like a christmas tree on infrared.

[DoubleD]

I like some these ideas you have here, but flamers were plenty useful in MW4 despite the automatic DHS that all mechs mounted. Sure gave me quite a fuss while trying to rock a Warhammer.

[VYCanis]

well the idea isn't so much how to make flamers more powerful, that would merely be a side effect

the idea is making players think a bit more carefully over whether they want to make the jump from singles to doubles quite so easily.

The same way that going from standard to XL engines gives you lots of freed up tonnage, but drastically decreases the survivability, or ER weapons give you more range, but more heat, or how endo/FF frees up tonnage, but costs a lot of space

So if a player wants to run like a fridge on doubles, they have to be conscious of their weaknesses, and a player who wishes to avoid those weaknesses might go for the less efficient, but more resilient singles. A give and take. Plus the approach helps keep certain pieces of equipment from sitting around gathering up dust, not being used.

Edited by VYCanis, 06 November 2011 - 12:43 PM.

[VYCanis]

@ Patriot, yeah, that does sound better, instead of dealing direct damage, you tax them till they fry, but anything less, and they reset. At least, I think thats what you're implying

well, the way i imagine it, since weapons are not likely to be firing once every 10 seconds, it doesn't really make sense to have critical hits being calculated the same way as on tabletop. It would probably make more sense that components have individual amounts of health and weapons each have certain bonuses or negatives for when it comes to popping afore mentioned components. Like an lbx20 cluster shot getting massive bonuses to fragging equipment, but a gauss rifle would probably deal considerably less. Since even though the gauss deals 3/4th the damage, the lbx20 cluster still has 20x the potential critting power, at the cost of not being able to localize those hits.

Edited by VYCanis, 06 November 2011 - 01:02 PM.

[UncleKulikov]

If they are to be included, make them really expensive/rare/take a long time to repair due to their advantage.

If they have larger surface value, making them vulnerable through the armor plating could help as well. Something significant though.

[VYCanis]

actually that reminds me.

if you gotta buy or salvage double heatsinks before putting them on a machine. Might be interesting if you actually have to have enough of them to replace all the internal "free" engine sinks before you can start adding them to a chassis.

So like if you have an engine that normally includes 10 internal heatsinks,and your mech normally has 3 extra heatsinks elsewhere in its chassis, if you want to convert the design over to double heatsinks, you don't just replace the 3 extra HS. you need 10 DHS first as a prerequisite to replace the engine ones. Thus making the retooling of a design a more costly matter. And if you want to make a design cheaper to repair and a bit more resilient by teching down to single HS, you also need to swap out the DHS in the engine with SHS

[fearfactory]

If they move away from the MechWarrior 4 Mechlab then doubles will be pretty balanced. They take up a lot of space...

I think most of the game balance needs to come from customization itself. You really can't swap out singles for doubles unless you have access to a factory or certain equipment to perform the modification. Or even something like Endo Steel, you basically have to create a whole new skeleton for the BattleMech if you want it and that takes a very LONG time. Personally, I think a game like this would thrive with only basic customization/field refit kits (those who play BattleTech and have Strategic Operations know what I'm talking about). Otherwise, if you want better weight-saving things (like XL engines, DHS and Endo) you have to sell your old 'Mech buy an upgraded chassis.

[torgian]

I think some of you are forgetting, or are unaware of the tabletop rules for double heat sinks.

Using double heat sinks for the Inner sphere side is more of a tradeoff to lose some weight. ie.: two single heat sinks is two tons, while one double heat sink is one ton. However, that doulbe heat sink takes up three critical spots, and a critical hit to anyof those three spots will destroy it.

As far as customizing mechs... this is a tough area. I'm going off of level two rules here in my head, since I don't have my book with me, but I think that an engine simple COMES with ten heat sinks. I cannot remember if they are slotted into the mech, or if they are just part of the engine itself. Either way, I doubt that the game, when it comes out, will allow for much customization.

It is here where I agree with fearfactory. in the tabletop game, you do need a factory to basically do indepth modifications to a mech. If the devs really want to balance out customization, they will have to force players to buy a different chassis for them to enjoy the benefits of the lighter or more heat resistant mechs, and only allow basic customizations for most mechs.

As far as heat in the game is concerned... i remember in the books coolant trucks being mentioned. After a battle, they flush out the used up coolant in a mech and replace it. To me, this makes it seem like that the longer a mech fights in a prolonged battle, the less efficient the coolant becomes overtime. Even if the heatsinks themselves don't get damaged, the coolant itself is not going to do a very good job over a long period of time, or over long, drawn out battles.

[Owl Cutter]

Any fusion engine comes with 10 base heatsinks, which are included in the engine's mass. This ends up being really silly for teeny-weeny engines with double heatsinks, but whatevs.

The engine rating determines how many heatsinks the engine can "hide" so they do not take up space and cannot be critted. Regardless of engine and heatsink type, the engine rating is divided by 25 (rounding down) to determine how many heatsinks fit internally. For example, a 300-rated engine fits 12 heatsinks since 300/25=12. A 320 SFE also shields twelve, since it is shy of the 325 points needed for 13 heatsinks. A 340 hides 13.

I am hoping the refit rules at least kinda follow BT canon. MW2 and MW3 allowed "customisation" that was more like building an entire new 'mech from the ground up and I guess handing down the cockpit from the old one, since that's the only bit of continuity. Where the rest of the original 'mech minus 3 tons goes, I don't know.

When modifying a 'mech whose engine is big enough to hide more heatsinks than it has, putting new heatsinks inside the engine is a higher-level refit than adding them externally, which I'd also like to see reflected in MWO. Having heatsinks outside the engine when there's still room inside the engine is perfectly Kosher, and even commonplace on Omnimechs since opening up the engine is a modification of the base chassis. (Omnimechs "with voided warranties" cannot exist, so you completely lose the ability to quickly swap loadouts.)

Edited by Owl Cutter, 06 November 2011 - 09:58 PM.

[guardiandashi]

I am going to suggest that as long as they use something like the full construction and refit rules weather from strategic operations, or the old mercs handbook 3055 (which are different) it should keep a lot of the concerns under control

and actually under the strategic ops rules adding heatsinks or changing the engine heatsinks is the same level of refit (maintenance) either C or D I would have to check

under strategic operations rules if you use 1 tech team to retrofit your mech with DHS changing 10 DHS is ~40-45ish hours worth of down time for the mech. If they are serious about wanting to maintain a "real" battletech ops tempo including travel times and repair/refit times there could be some major issues. because replacing armor has a base time of 5 min/point so if you let your mech get shot up it litterally could be unavailable for days to a week or more while it is being repaired.

fortunately for people whould be frustrated you can have up to 3 tech teams working on a mech simultaniously, and if you can have access to enough techs to effectively work 24/7 you could reduce it to ~15 hrs worth of refit time, but still...

[gilliam]

Well, DHS are more expensive and the ceramics that make them possible require a higher tech base. Have that play into customizations. THey are more expensive and it takes more work to acquire them and find a facility that can install them.

Also, I am hoping we have critical hits actually simulated. That would disadvantage DHS just like in the TT game once your armor is breached.

[TheRulesLawyer]

The DHS boat sailed a long time ago. They make heat management in the game trivial and make ammo weapons much worse buys. I think the only thing you can really do to bring back the balance is make ammo weapons cycle much faster than energy weapons.

[Gaius Cavadus]

You can balance them by not including them.

Problem solved.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Cavadus, on 07 November 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

You can balance them by not including them.

Problem solved.

We both know that's not happening. Canon and the playerbase with insist on them.

[Captain Nice HD]

I just know that I'm going to be burned at the stake as a heretic for even suggesting this... but I apparently have no sense of self-preservation so here goes:

Under the current construction rules, all fusion-powered vehicles automatically receive ten 'weightless' Heat Sinks as part of the reactor's regenerative cooling system. Additionally, a number of Heat Sink criticals can be 'hidden' inside the engine, the exact number being determined by the engine's size. Since many BattleMechs have few additional heatsinks beyond the free ten, switching to Double Heat Sinks basically doubles their heat capacity at no cost. At worst, they might have to allocate a few more criticals, but that is generally only an issue on smaller 'Mechs, where free criticals are at a surplus and tonnage is at a premium.

Suppose if instead that the number of 'weightless' Heat Sinks should be tied to the number of Heat Sink criticals that can be hidden in the engine, whereas the number of Heat Sinks that the Mech receives for free is determined by how many Heat Sinks can be completely concealed. That way, when using Inner Sphere Double Heat Sinks, only a third the number can be hidden in the engine as Single Heat Sinks; they're only competitive in certain situations, instead of the automatic obvious choice. Clan DHS basically break even, being more of a situational choice. Unfortunately, under this system Compact Heat Sinks become horribly broken, essentially doubling the base heat dissipation as Double Heat Sinks do under the current system, and the heat scale may be skewed too much in favor of Assault 'Mechs.


Oh, and I like the idea of DHS taking more heat 'damage' than SHS from flamers/inferno SRMs/incendiary LRMs/etc. That works too.

[Pht]

VYCanis, on 06 November 2011 - 11:48 AM, said:

Ok, so we all know about double heatsinks
how pretty much, they are a flat out upgrade due to the engine sinks being converted at no space cost, and once you have them, unless your energy weapon load is ridiculous, you almost never have to worry about heat again. I.e. there are very few reasons to ever use a standard heatsink when doubles are available.

Now then, i have an idea on how to balance this out.

Why it is that people think that new technology that is *supposed to be better* than older technology is a problem is beyond me.

DHS are better.

They're supposed to be.

They're also bigger. IS double heat sinks are HUGE. Clan DHS are still twice the size of single heatsinks.

Also, if they implement the penetrating hits system from the tabletop (with the inclusion of the advanced penetrating hits stuff from tactical ops, which help a LOT), DHS will also be far more prone to being rendered useless.

There's nothing here that needs balancing, if they just pick up the stuff that's already there.

[VYCanis]

the problem with having certain stuff being flat out better is for the same exact problem that we've had in just about every mechwarrior and mechcommander game to date

that problem is the mile high stack of inner sphere gear piled in the corner, gathering dust, not being used. because at first opportunity 99% of players will tear out as much of the "junky IS ****" at first opportunity as they can.

I believe power should come at a cost.

A formula 1 race car is only able to be ridiculous fast and maneuverable because of its it's super ridiculous expensive engineering, that requires expert mechanics, and because it is made of light weight everything.

A toyoto hilux is absolutely mediocre in almost every respect, except that it's super cheap, super reliable, and almost any damage can be fixed by hammering parts back into place.

Each has strengths and weaknesses. I'm just tired of one side getting nothing but strengths while the other gets nothing but weaknesses. There should be legitimate in game reasons to use the cheap stuff.

[Kaori]

Make it a cash shop item...that will make the company lots of money...then the ftp'ers wont be using them.

[Captain Nice HD]

Kaori, on 07 November 2011 - 08:02 PM, said:

Make it a cash shop item...that will make the company lots of money...then the ftp'ers wont be using them.

Making DHS a cash shop only item would be one of the absolute fastest ways to get people screaming 'Pay 2 Win!' that I can think of.

[Pht]

VYCanis, on 07 November 2011 - 07:19 PM, said:

the problem with having certain stuff being flat out better is for the same exact problem that we've had in just about every mechwarrior and mechcommander game to date

that problem is the mile high stack of inner sphere gear piled in the corner, gathering dust, not being used. because at first opportunity 99% of players will tear out as much of the "junky IS ****" at first opportunity as they can.

This is a problem ... why?

Quote

I believe power should come at a cost.

It does, if they don't make their choices for arbitrary reasons and they possibly include a cost/rarity element with the hardware.