0
That means a mech with 10 standard heat sinks has a heat capacity of 40, a mech with 10 double heat sinks has a capacity of 50, and so on.
My suggestion is to lower this heat capacity, because it is one of the biggest enablers of high damage alpha strikes and effectively cheapens the value of chain-fire mode and heat management.
A low heat capacity can make alpha striking very punishing for most weapons, and makes it impractical to "skimp" on heat dissipation in favor of alpha strike potential. But a mech that still has a good heat dissipation can still use the full firepower of his weapons - he will just resort to chain-firing so he doesn't incur all the heat at once. If you can dissipate the heat your weapons can produce in the same time it takes them to produce it, a low heat cap might force you not to fire them all together, but it allows them to fire the weapons at their maximum rate of fire. If you dissipate less heat than the weapons produce, a lower heat capacity will force you to take a firing break earlier to cool off (but if you still have a high dissipation, you will take less time to recover).
Examples
To show the effects of the current heat capacity on the game and how a change to the heat capacity could change them, here are some examples:
6 PPC Stalker
Let's look at one of our favorite "boogeymans" in the alpha strike discussion - the 6 PPC Stalker.
6 PPCs fired together produce 48 heat. That means just with 10 double heat sinks or with 20 standard heat sinks, you can fire 6 PPCs once and not overheat.
Now, firing once isn't all that impressive, you might say. But, the PPC has a decent range. If you position yourself well enough and have some other allies with similer ranged builds, an enemy will not want to cross that 540m range directly, or risk being shot to death by focused fire.
This means that your PPC boat can get into cover again and cool off. Fully cooling of with just 10 double heat sinks would take 24 seconds, which is a bit much - but a Stalker can easily manage 16 double heat sinks, without sacrificing much, which gives you a heat capacity of 58.4 and a dissipation of 2.84 / sec. That means we need only 17 seconds to negate all the heat, and 13 seconds to repeat a full alpha.
So, if this Stalker gets his 13-17 seconds of cooling time between shots, he can deliver full 60 point damage alpha with high precision. 60 damage is a lot of damage for one hit location - a Stalker's stock side torso armour is only 50, so that means already 10 internal damage, it's arm max armour is 60, stock armour is only 46. For lighter mechs, the situation becomes even worse.
That is 60 damage at the start that could potentially take out a complete hit location - with all the weapons installed. An early destruction of the enemy weaponry means that the enemy team has lost firepower before it could even use it.
Now, what would change if we lowered the heat capacity to, say half this value?
Our 16 DHS mech would have a heat capacity of 29.2.
That means every single alpha would make this mech overheat. This would be somewhat impractical - a shut down mech cannot get back to cover.
3 ER PPC + Gauss Rifle Highlander
Now let'S look at a different mech - a Highlander with 3 ER PPCs and 1 Gauss Rifle.
That'S a 45 damage alpha with an even better range as that of the 6 PPC Stalker. The extra range will give it even more opportunity (particularly on Alpine and Tourmaline) to deliver alphas and move back into cover.
Without much optimziing, I could give it 14 DHS, which gives it a heat capacity of 55.6 and a dissipation of 2.56 heat per second.
It's alpha heat value is 34. It would need a bit more than 13 seconds to dissipate that heat, and a bit less than 5 seconds to launch a second alpha without overheating.
It's not quite as impressive as a single 60 PPC alpha, but it can, relatively quickly, deliver 2 45 damage alphas.
With half the heat capacity, it would have a heat capcity of 27.8. It would again overheat immediately on the first alpha.
Now, if this mech would only use Gauss Rifles and Standard PPCs, it's heat situation wouldn't be as bad, it would produce only 25 point alphas, which would not lead to an immediate shut down. But we've now made it still less "heat effective" as the 6 PPC Stalker is with the current heat mechanics and the high heat capacity, and have a lower alpha strike damage, too.
Now, as you can see, lowering the heat capacity has made these alpha values impractical. Even with mixed weapon combos, the limitations can become severe.
Remember the Splatapult?
The Splatapult is definitely not a long range build. Its 90 damage alphas however were impressive enough that 2 or 3 were usually enough to finish off a mech, and this made the mech pretty fearsome if you met him at close range.
Splatapult produced 24 heat per shot and a simple build might have had a heat capacity of 51.4 and a dissipation of 2.14 heat per second. This would allow roughly 3 alphas in a row without overheating, at the maximum cycle rate.
With half the capacity, the Splatapult would not overheat on the first shot, but it would on the second. This would increase the Splatapult's risk notably, and might give its victims more breathing room.
Of course, since missiles have been changed so much, and will recieve further changes, I won't make any guesses on how good or bad this build will be in the future, with or without heat changes. But the important point here is - even with some of the lower heat alpha builds, the heat cap can make a difference.
What about non-heat limited weapons?
Now, you might ask - what happens if we get the first mech that can carry 4 Gauss Rifles? WHat good does heat capacity do then?
Spoiler
But the PPC sustainable firepower is very poor - Wouldn't this just make them useless?
I'd suggest increasing the heat dissipation. If you go so far as to half the heat capacity, double the dissipation. This will make 6 PPCs alphas impossible, but you would need only half the number of heat sinks to dissipate the same amount of heat, so you can still chain fire a few PPCs. Currently, a PPC produces 2.67 heat per second at its full rate of fire, which would require about 27 standard heat sinks to dissipate. With doubled the dissipation, you need only about 13 standard sinks or 7 Double Heat Sinks. This would allow you to at least build a mech (like the Awesome) that can chain-fire his 3 PPCs at full ROF. A stock Awesome AWS-8Q might suddenly feel useable and not overly punishing. (OF course, upgrading to DHS would still be a good idea - this doesn't change anything about DHS being superior to SHS. It just makes all stock configurations less problematic.)
Why not just adjust the PPC heat, or add an extra heat penalty for alpha striking, or add heat penalties?
1) Adding the PPC heat would make the PPC simply useless for alpha striking and sustained fire. It might remove the alpha strike boats that rely on PPCs, but it doesn't improve the balance.
2) An extra heat penalty for alpha striking is gameable by using Macros, and adds additional complexity to the game. I advise against that.
3) Heat penalties that are triggered below the current heat capacity could also help, but my concern is that at least for the snipers and poptarters, such penatlies are meaningless. The penalty can only start affecting the mech when the shot has already been taking. A shutdown is a very harsh penalty that can stop someone from going back into cover completely - other heat penalties can simply be ignored while you're in cover and cooling off.
