41 replies to this topic

[Homeless Bill]

Double heatsinks are broken in their current implementation (DHS = 2.0 internal, 1.4 slotted and external). The way they work causes two negative side-effects:
1. They make single heatsinks completely obsolete. They are a straight upgrade for anything that mounts less than 11 external SHS (and even then, I never run SHS in anything).
2. They do not allow for a high enough heat threshold for energy-based assaults to shine (the AWS-8Q being a prime example).

PGI has explicitly stated they do not want DHS to be a straight upgrade. Their current solution causes that very problem along with others.

My proposed solution(which has probably been proposed before) is that all internal heatsinks (up to the ten that come with the engine) function at a set rate, whether or not you have SHS or DHS equipped. External heatsinks would then function as either 1.0 for SHS or 2.0 for DH (numbers would be adjusted according to internal testing).

The change would have these positive effects:
1. DHS would not be a straight upgrade for anything that doesn't mount external heatsinks. Right now, there is never a reason for a light 'mech to run SHS. This would level the playing field.
2. DHS would be a good choice for 'mechs that mount a lot of external heatsinks, while SHS would be viable for low-heat builds.

The change would, unfortunately, throw current balancing into slight disarray. PGI would have to test to determine what rate internal heatsinks should cool at, determine what rate external heatsinks should cool at (though I think 1.0 and 2.0 are a good starting place, only testing can tell for sure), and check that DHS still need to take up three critical slots (they probably do).

Why suggest this change if I know it will take a lot of re-balancing? Because I believe the entire direction they've taken is wrong. Attacking the problem from an entirely new angle is the only way to sort it out. They'll never be able to make SHS viable if DHS means you get 10 extra for free.

TL;DR: Single heatsinks need a buff, and the best way to do that is to make all engine heatsinks function at the same rate (whether you have SHS or DHS).

Edit: If you voted no, why? Is it the scare of re-balancing? Is it that you actually think the current system works well?

This thread no longer reflects my views. Let it die.

Edited by Homeless Bill, 04 July 2013 - 05:19 PM.

[DocBach]

I believe truly 2.0 functioning double heat sinks would make the new implementation of instant cooling by MC purchased tier 3 coolant pods less of a dramatic edge over the opponent.

[Xostriyad]

Or really just give us straight up DHS that are DOUBLE a HEATSINK.

Then use a different system than just weight to balance mechs with each other. The problem will only get worse down the road with Clan Tech.

Edit in response to edit:

I voted no since I only half agree with you.

Yes, the current system is unbalanced.

But you see it as an isolated problem, whereas I see it as a symptom of the real problem.

Edited by Xostriyad, 05 March 2013 - 04:28 PM.

[DocBach]

I accidentally voted yes, but changed my vote to no - I don't believe in PGI's idea that single and double heat sinks are suppose to be balanced against each other. Single heat sinks by this time frame are considered obsolete tech, and Inner Sphere double heat sinks are necessary to use advanced weaponry like ER lasers to fight the Clans.

[Butane9000]

I voted no. Becuase I disagree. I believe in their current format DHS are not truly "broken" They are slightly imbalanced and could use a minor (and I mean minor) nerf. I could see balancing by making internal and external DHS have a value of 1.5 to 1.7 across both instead of 2.0 for engine heatsinks and 1.4 for slotted and external.

The flip side is Double Heat sinks also take up critical slots which is the other trade off. I just don't think they are as bad as you make them out to be.

[Frank the Tank]

I had been under the impression that 2.0 engine DHS was a bug that was fixed months ago, and that all DHS engine or not cooled at a rate of 1.4. Is this not the case?

Edited by Frank the Tank, 05 March 2013 - 07:03 PM.

[Deathlike]

Frank the Tank, on 05 March 2013 - 07:03 PM, said:

I had been under the impression that 2.0 engine DHS was a bug that was fixed months ago, and that all DHS engine or not cooled at a rate of 1.4. Is this not the case?

The bug is actually the mechlab display of the cooling efficiency. That's about it.

Note: It hasn't been changed yet, but probably soon thru the mechlab UI overhaul.

[Homeless Bill]

Xostriyad, on 05 March 2013 - 04:21 PM, said:

Or really just give us straight up DHS that are DOUBLE a HEATSINK.

That just makes the current problem worse. Single heatsinks are worthless, and making doubles even better is just going to exacerbate that problem.

Have you gone back and played old MechWarrior games? There seriously is no reason to prefer SHS to DHS. "It's canon" is a terrible excuse for ****** game balance. They would do better to either make both viable or remove the useless one.

DocBach, on 05 March 2013 - 04:24 PM, said:

I don't believe in PGI's idea that single and double heat sinks are suppose to be balanced against each other. Single heat sinks by this time frame are considered obsolete tech...

This is a terrible argument. Why even have things in the game that are considered "obsolete"? If they're going to leave them irrelevant, they should get rid of them and re-vamp heatsinks to a system easier to understand from a new player's perspective (a constant rate, internal and external).

Canon machine guns and flamers aren't exactly useful against 'mechs, but PGI is doing their best to make it so. That's good (attempted) game balance. Why limit options because some books and table top games picked numbers first? I'd wager that a hell of a lot more people care about game balance than Battletech lore.

Butane9000, on 05 March 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

The flip side is Double Heat sinks also take up critical slots which is the other trade off. I just don't think they are as bad as you make them out to be.

I apparently didn't do a very good job of articulating what I think is broken. DHS are weird, and I don't think they allow for a high enough heat threshold. That said, they aren't broken.

Single heatsinks, on the other hand, are utterly worthless, and there is almost never a reason to take them over doubles - and that's primarily because getting 10 free heatsinks offsets the extra critical space in all but the most obscure situations.

Frank the Tank, on 05 March 2013 - 07:03 PM, said:

I had been under the impression that 2.0 engine DHS was a bug that was fixed months ago, and that all DHS engine or not cooled at a rate of 1.4. Is this not the case?

Engine - 2.0
Slotted - 1.4
External - 1.4

Working as intended. Though they did update the 'mechlab display for efficiency sometime last month.

Edited by Homeless Bill, 05 March 2013 - 08:12 PM.

[Zerstorer Stallin]

I didnt vote because its hard to vote when in the near future we have clan tech, possible cheese hat colant crap to deal with. I see bad times ahead.

[Zyllos]

I personally think they just need to make all heatsinks only give +1.0 capacity and DHS need to be 0.17 dissipation per heatsink (regardless of location).

I can understand why they do not want to do 0.2 but having 0.2 inside and 0.14 outside is just hurting larger mechs that need many heatsinks.

Having them all 0.17 would penalize the mechs that only run 10 DHS inside the engine (and balance the smaller engines that HAVE to wield some outside the engine) while minorly buffing mechs with many DHS.

[Homeless Bill]

Zyllos, on 05 March 2013 - 08:47 PM, said:

I personally think they just need to make all heatsinks only give +1.0 capacity and DHS need to be 0.17 dissipation per heatsink (regardless of location).

I can understand why they do not want to do 0.2 but having 0.2 inside and 0.14 outside is just hurting larger mechs that need many heatsinks.

Having them all 0.17 would penalize the mechs that only run 10 DHS inside the engine (and balance the smaller engines that HAVE to wield some outside the engine) while minorly buffing mechs with many DHS.

It's better than what they have now, but they would still need to do something to make single heatsinks viable. Fixing DHS (and the heat threshold problem) would be nice, but it's SHS that severely need a buff.

SHS should be the choice of low-heat builds, DHS should be the choice of high-heat builds, and the weight/space tradeoff would leave wiggle-room for builds in the middle of the road. Currently, DHS is simply the best choice in all situations.

[Zyllos]

Well, with making all DHS and SHS at +1.0 capacity allows SHS have much higher capacities, according to my graphics I created that I can dynamically modify.

The only problem is it takes a lot of extra tonnage to have that higher dissipation rates. And generally this will mean you need to sacrifice engine tonnage to get that extra capacity.

Take my AWS-8Q with 21 DHS and 290 STD engine. If I reduced the size of the STD down to a 250 STD (saving 5 tons), I can place 26 SHS, thus I have increased the capacity from 55.2 to 61.2 (this includes the added 20% from Heat Containment) but my dissipation rate dropped from 4.07 to 2.99.

SHS is just REALLY hard to balance to DHS as a true balance. But DHS where never meant to be balanced along with SHS. DHS is lvl 2 tech and thus should replace SHS. This is why SHS do not exist for Clans.

[Joker Two]

This almost completely deincentivizes DHS, except on slow configurations mounting very heavy laser armaments. Even the most stripped-down chassis can only mount 14 DHS outside the engine, while every stock chassis except the COM-1B, COM-1D, COM-2D, COM-3A, COM-TDK, RVN-2X, and RVN-4X mounts at least 8 heat sinks in its engine.

DHS is the one upgrade that represents a true improvement, rather than an additional option, and even then critical space is a limiting factor on large designs with small engines, the only ones who would even be able to take advantage of DHS under your plan.

[DocBach]

Homeless Bill, on 05 March 2013 - 07:59 PM, said:

Canon machine guns and flamers aren't exactly useful against 'mechs, but PGI is doing their best to make it so. That's good (attempted) game balance. Why limit options because some books and table top games picked numbers first? I'd wager that a hell of a lot more people care about game balance than Battletech lore.

Single heat sinks are fine for running lower-end Inner Sphere technology against like tech. But when you fight the Clans, which the meta game is going to be all about, you need the right tools for the job. If you are going to be running high-heat weapons, like ultra autocannons or ER energy weapons, you are going to need Double Heat Sinks. That's part of the long term balance of this game. You just can't really see it yet because we don't have the overwhelming superior Clan tech in the game IS Double Heat Sinks are balanced against, and a DHS nerf really hurts the effectiveness of the Clans, who only have ER, pulse, and Ultra versions of their weapons.

[FiveDigits]

I voted "no" - not because I don't think that the current DHS implementation is bad and should change, but because I think your "solution" is just as bad - just coming from the opposite angle.

[Peiper]

I believe that DHS are working backwards. For internal heat sinks, there is no reason NOT to go double heat sinks. Only OUTSIDE of the engine does the trade-off begin to make sense. 3 slots per heat sink is a HUGE sacrifice to make compared to 1 per slot. For Double heat sinks to truly balance out, they should act as 1.4-1.5 INTERNAL, and 2.0 external.

I understand PGI found the true 2.0/double heat sinks way out of balance.

This makes me also wonder: what if they reverted back to real numbers for the weapon's heat, like a true 15 heat for ERPPC's for example. Would that balance out with true double heat sinks? PGI seems to keep tweeking things until they are unrecognizable and perhaps a rewind to tabletop is exactly what is in order?

[Monky]

One of the principle problems with heat and heatsinks in MWO is the incorporation of 'heat containment' into the heatsinks mechanics. Basically, weapons are generally designed to produce x heat when fired, against a static measure of how much heat a mech can 'contain' before it goes critical and shuts down.

In MWO, heatsinks not only cool your mech, they also increase your heatcap. Single heatsinks increase the cap by 1 per point. Your mech has 30 default storage, 10 mandatory heatsinks = 40 minimum heat capacity. Double heatsinks automatically raise this to 50 with just the default 10 heatsinks, which leads to heatsink boating that allows 6 PPC and 6 SRM6 Stalker and CPLT A1 builds to function. Instead - heat storage should be static. This cuts drastically the disproportionate advantage of DHS without really hurting SHS. It does also slow the game down some which depending on your perspective may be good or bad.

Second, the bonus experience perks need to allow 1 additional single heatsink worth of cooling, eliting upgrades that to a DHS worth of cooling. Heat 'containment' perk gets replaced with safer override or something. this alone will go a long way to reducing heatsink boating and making single heatsinks less of a stop-gap solution.

Finally, and this is the controversial point; Internal heatsinks all need to be 2.0 strength. This is the only way 'space vs cooling potential' will become a valid choice when choosing your build. It sucks, but it is the only viable path to changing DHS from almost strictly being an upgrade.

[That Guy]

I strongly agree with the premise that DHS are too good. and this saves me the trouble of making a thread about it. however, simply making DHS less effective doesn't solve the problem that SHS are useless. even with equal engine heat sinks, DHS are still better in every case (except maybe with some assault mechs that dont have the space. but still not good enough).

there needs to be a reason to take SHS, or at least not always swap them out.

to do this, give SHS the "free" engine heat sinks by increasing them to 1.2 or so, wile DHS built in are still 1.0. however, the external DHS are 2.0 or more.
the benefits are, trial mechs get a effectiveness boost, and moderate heat mechs have an option to stick to SHS. since the DHS is now at "full power" mechs that take lots of them are still capable of running cooler. its just not so OP

the one big problem with removing engine DHS is some canon mechs rely on the free 20, and in those cases, simply give them SHS for the bonus cooling.


but bottom line: the free20 breaks the game. only a few super hot mechs really need to worry about heat (heavy energy boats, and heavy missile boats), while anyone with even a semi-reasonable mech can fight indefinitely. get rid of the free 20, and normalize the difference between DHS and SHS. if you get rid of the free 20 suddenly heat becomes a game factor again.

[FiveDigits]

"Getting rid of the free 20" would halve the DPS of most resonable Light and Medium builds. You clearly haven't thought this through.

[Anony Mouse]

I nearly voted yes, because I'd like DHS to be addressed. However I don't necasarilly agree with you're solution. the DHS system is definitely borked, and the bork only intensifies the heavier a unit gets. The SHS/DHS system is suposed to be a weight vs size choice. Just like Endo and FF and XL engines, see the theme? As is we're tripling the size of a heat sink and increasing its ability to dissipate by less than 50%. I think the best solution is EITHER make ALL DHS true doubles OR, reduce them to two critical slots per, and 1 per for clanners when we get there.