95 replies to this topic

[Iron Hyena]

Mahws, on 03 April 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

It's been a long, long time since I've run Single Heatsinks. Longer still since I've taken a trial mech out to play. I imagine the same is true for the vast majority of people here, we've all been playing for a while and by this point we simply know better.

So I'd like to remind us all just how utterly bad single heatsinks that new players use are.

Test run on Tourmaline. Exact same loadout (AC10/2ML/LRM10) on each mech, only difference is 10 SHS vs. 10 DHS.



DHS can alpha five times before overheat, SHS three times. DHS cools down from 100 percent almost twice as fast as SHS.

I think that bears repeating in bigger letters. DHS GIVE YOU TWICE THE EFFECTIVE FIREPOWER OF A NEW PLAYER. Let that sink in for a moment. No cost. No disadvantage. No trade off. Just straight up double the heat cooldown. Remember how we all make fun of terribly balanced MMO free to plays were high level characters walk around kicking sand in the face of new players with a massive unfair disadvantage? Welcome to Mechwarrior Online, we may not be doing it on purpose, but that's what's happening.

And this is on a STD200 engine, so it's not even the full advantage that engine DHS automatically give over a single heatsink mech.

Imagine a new player, just getting in to the game after reading up on the mechanics on the forum and running around in the test area like a good little mechwarrior. You get in game, you square off against someone else with the same tonnage and weapon load out as you. You get your face beaten in because they can fire their weapons twice as often as you. Rinse, repeat. You uninstall.

Buffing in engine single heatsinks to 1.8 would still keep doubles the better choice for the vast majority of builds, but make trial mechs/stock mechs less massively handicapped and give some more options to experienced players in the mechlab, which is always a good thing.

TL;DR:

Single Heatsinks are a massive (almost half the firepower) handicap for new players that drive them away from the game and offer next to nothing to experienced players. Buffing in Engine SHS would be an effective way to make trial mechs actually work and would make SHS viable for some (but definitely not most) custom builds.

Oh shut up.

[Jae Hyun Nakamura]

Never underastimate the power of Water. In fact only necessary on two maps but single heatsinks in the legs inkrease coolant efficiancy (<-- don't know how to write this, please correct me) in water. Enough to shoot 2UAC/5 and a PPC with little heat frequently.

[MustrumRidcully]

Lord Psycho, on 04 April 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

I thought SHS was heat management training...but okay kids...don't tell the newbies how to manage heat.... >.>

I figured the Trial mechs are a tutorial..I mean you want them to use uber powerful mechs thhen get disappointed when those mechs are really expenisve to buy?

You can use any kind of mech, regardless of what heat sinks it uses, for heat management training. All you need to do is give it a bit more weapons than it can cool. A lot of the mechs we're discussing were not heat neutral in the table top either, but there, they would still take longer to overheat then here.

Trial Mechs are heat management training for people that get bored by how easy it is to manage the heat on a Hexa PPC Stalker.

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 04 April 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

Never underastimate the power of Water. In fact only necessary on two maps but single heatsinks in the legs inkrease coolant efficiancy (<-- don't know how to write this, please correct me) in water. Enough to shoot 2UAC/5 and a PPC with little heat frequently.

You overestimate water.

Water can up to double your cooling on the leg sinks. That's 4 "virtual" extra sinks you could pull off. If I upgraded to DHS, I am still 6 sinks ahead and you still have to catch that advantage.

And many trial mechs don't even have heat sinks in their legs. Lots of them just have the 10 standard heat sinks even, their heat sinks are all in the engine.

[Mahws]

MrPenguin, on 04 April 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

For some reason. People in this thread appear to assume that new players will actually know the difference between single a duel heatsinks with out ever touching the game or even care about it.

In other words: The OP thinks everyone interested in this game is a massive battletech fan and are very knowledgeable.
The problem with this is that said people have been playing the game for months and the only people left that can join are people who have no idea what the hell battletech is or have never played a mechwarrior game in there life. Which would probably be the majority of gamers.

Alternatively the OP has the common sense to realize that you don't need to know why you're at a massive disadvantage to realize that you are at a massive disadvantage. If I hadn't known about Word of Tanks tiers/armor/weapon dynamic I'd have still noticed that I was being dropped in matches with players who had a massive speed/armor/firepower advantage. MWO newbies may not be getting one hit killed, but they'll still notice that they're bringing half the effective firepower to any match.

Stargoat, on 04 April 2013 - 08:18 AM, said:

Assuming Elo is working properly, and if further newbie-friendly measures are implemented (trials more likely to face trials?), there shouldn't really be a problem for new players using SHS over DHS.

That being said, it would be nice if there were more tactical tension over the decision of taking DHS over SHS. At least DHS aren't 2.0 outside the engine, that would make the DHS an unquestionable upgrade, as opposed to unquestionable only 98% of the time. SHS having higher capacity but lower cooling rate is an interesting idea.

The ELO system drops new players in at 'average' which is 1300 ELO. There's other trial mechs around but still more custom DHS mechs than trials.

Lord Psycho, on 04 April 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

I thought SHS was heat management training...but okay kids...don't tell the newbies how to manage heat.... >.>

I figured the Trial mechs are a tutorial..I mean you want them to use uber powerful mechs thhen get disappointed when those mechs are really expenisve to buy?

Welcome to Racing-Game-2013! We don't have a real tutorial, but we'll put you in a multiplayer match with an engine that has half the acceleration of everyone else to make you a better driver!

The mechlab is what teaches players to manage heat. Forcing them to run in terribad overheating SHS builds that no real player would ever choose to use doesn't teach them anything useful because that's not how the real game works.

Roadbeer, on 04 April 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Heat system is fine
New players, when they get their 7mil Cbill thing can buy up to a Catapult with DHS.

Nothing to see here.

Stop trying to force your agenda by using New Players as your crutch. It's like screaming "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN". When they have absolutely f'all to do with the argument.

I see people use it with ECM, and nobody has yet been able to explain to me how DHS, ECM or anything else (except the abysmal new player experience sans tutorial, training grounds) is detrimental to new players.

To check my suggestion before I posted it I went through all the mech builds I currently have (eleven of them) to see if they'd be better off with singles with in engine 1.8. None of them were. Doesn't help me one iota, doesn't help my preferred playstyle, buff SHS and I still won't use them. So swing and a miss there.

The argument is pretty simple and it's been repeated more than a dozen times in the last four pages. Shoving new players into a shark tank where they can do half the effective damage as any other player puts them off. It puts them off because they realize that they're not just losing because of skill but because the game is grind-to-win. Even if they don't know that double heatsinks are the cause of the advantage they can still see the enemy pouring out firepower that'd overheat them in an instant.

Edited by Mahws, 04 April 2013 - 04:44 PM.

[Belorion]

SHS are fine...

[Senior Knight Steele]

Voted No, No, Yes. The first reply to this talks about how double heat sinks are twice as effective at cooling your mech as single heat sinks. That, uh. Doesn't seem surprising or unreasonable to me considering that double heat sinks are called, well. Double heat sinks. O.o I think the fact that they take up more slots than SHS maybe isn't quite unattractive enough to keep you from using them.

Either SHS need to weigh like .5 instead of 1, or DHS need to weigh more as well as being larger than SHS. Maybe DHS could just take up even more space than they do. They ARE fairly expensive... but some of you make money pretty fast. Idk.
It doesn't seem urgent to me. I think for casual people the price thing is more of a downside. I will say however, on the two builds that I own, I now use DHS. Didn't always. Just seemed to work out best that way.

[StandingInFire]

The big problem is the in engine heat sinks (upgrading to DHS = 20 SHS with a decent engine, most SHS designs are never gonna be able to fit much more then 20 SHS). Outside of the engine DHS and SHS have a decent trade off each.

I think the best way to solve this is to not have engine heat sinks upgrade to DHS and in turn make DHS outside of the engine 2.0 heat dissipation. Maybe even buff engine heat sinks to something like 1.5 heat dissipation to not destroy high heat builds. This would make double heat sinks not an auto upgrade,and buffs stock builds.

[Mahws]

Senior Knight Steele, on 04 April 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

Voted No, No, Yes. The first reply to this talks about how double heat sinks are twice as effective at cooling your mech as single heat sinks. That, uh. Doesn't seem surprising or unreasonable to me considering that double heat sinks are called, well. Double heat sinks. O.o I think the fact that they take up more slots than SHS maybe isn't quite unattractive enough to keep you from using them.

Either SHS need to weigh like .5 instead of 1, or DHS need to weigh more as well as being larger than SHS. Maybe DHS could just take up even more space than they do. They ARE fairly expensive... but some of you make money pretty fast. Idk.
It doesn't seem urgent to me. I think for casual people the price thing is more of a downside. I will say however, on the two builds that I own, I now use DHS. Didn't always. Just seemed to work out best that way.

It works out best that way because 99% of builds are better off with double heatsinks. Engines sized 250+ give you ten invisible free heatsinks. Double heatsinks are only worth 1.4 single heatsinks outside of the engine, but the invisible engine ones are worth 2.0, so you're effectively getting a free ten tonnes and ten slots of single heatsinks without adding a single double to your build.

It eliminates any real choice between weight vs. space as doubles get a massive head start from the engine sinks.

[Warskull]

5 pages and no one understands the problem. It all boils down to the engine heatsinks. When you upgrade to double heat sinks you get up to 10 free points of heatsinks. Thus single heatsinks have to spend 10 tons and 10 slots to be on par with a DHS mech who takes no extra heatsinks.

The solution is simple, change to a system where engine heatsinks are the same for both double and single heatsinks. Engine heatsinks always work at 1.0 efficiency, all mechs get 10 free heatsink points regardless of engine they take, and heat sinks outside the engine continue to function exactly as they are.

[Teralitha]

DHS should not be in the game, they make high damage alpha strikes way to heat efficient. When you use DHS, heat managing skill becomes old school...

[Novakaine]

Oh good gravy stop with the training wheels.
Every game has a starting point.
Play game.
Grind XP and C-bills.
Gain experience and skill.
Poof! Vetern before ya know it.

[Sephlock]

Honestly I just want double heat sinks to be true 2.0 heatsinks again- all of them. Single heat sinks aren't bad...

I just want to cram a mech full of DHS and end up with something like the robot from http://en.wikipedia....Animated_Series)

[Mahws]

Single heatsinks are bad, short of sub-250 engine restricted lights and medium laser boating Awesomes there's no reason at all to use them, you always get better efficiency from dubs.

Novakaine, on 04 April 2013 - 09:33 PM, said:

Oh good gravy stop with the training wheels.
Every game has a starting point.
Play game.
Grind XP and C-bills.
Gain experience and skill.
Poof! Vetern before ya know it.

Last I checked training wheels were something that gave new players an advantage over more experienced players. Not giving them an obscene and pointless handicap isn't training wheels, it's just common sense.

[MustrumRidcully]

Mahws, on 04 April 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

Alternatively the OP has the common sense to realize that you don't need to know why you're at a massive disadvantage to realize that you are at a massive disadvantage. If I hadn't known about Word of Tanks tiers/armor/weapon dynamic I'd have still noticed that I was being dropped in matches with players who had a massive speed/armor/firepower advantage. MWO newbies may not be getting one hit killed, but they'll still notice that they're bringing half the effective firepower to any match.

I think there is still a difference between WoT and MW:O here, which I get to in a bit

Quote

The argument is pretty simple and it's been repeated more than a dozen times in the last four pages. Shoving new players into a shark tank where they can do half the effective damage as any other player puts them off. It puts them off because they realize that they're not just losing because of skill but because the game is grind-to-win. Even if they don't know that double heatsinks are the cause of the advantage they can still see the enemy pouring out firepower that'd overheat them in an instant.

What I think is important to stress: It's not just that single heat sink mechs have less firepower. It's in what manner they have less firepower - they have less because they shut down if you use the weapons you use. If you compare it to World of Tanks - it is as if your tank would shut done after every shot, leaving you with nothing to do passively observe what's happening to your tank for several seconds, every few shots you take.

It turns a dynamic real time game in a stop-motion game. Your only way to evade this is figuring out weapon groups and basically not using the weapons you have, put only half or less of them. It would be better if these mechs just had half the weapons they have in the first place for newbies, at least that would be one gameplay trap less for them.

[Tennex]

Please buff single heat sinks. 1.0 is not heat efficient. Make it so

[Chavette]

That would be a straightforward and logical thing, therefore its only a last resort for pgi.