29 replies to this topic

[wintersborn]

Hello I wanted to try out a IS Laser boat so I got a BLR-3M with (3) ER Large Lasers in each torso. I figured that would be good at fending off lights, Poking over hills and O **** alpha's if needed.

To pull off the alpha I was going to need some serious heat management so I originally went with double heat sinks and found out that alpha's are a big no no.

So I paid to revert back to singles again and just stuff them everywhere to see if that would do it.

So with a STD 250 (10 Heat sinks) and (19) Singles stuffed everywhere but the sacrificial arms I get a better Heat MGMT of 1.11/2.

It seems singles are better in this case but alpha's are still self destructive action.

What I need to know is if how the following work.

1. What effects the max heat threshold or heat cap before shutdown?
2. Are there diminishing returns on the # of sinks vs heat dissipation/cap?
3. Do heat sinks effect the amount of damage or shutdown time after a overheat shutdown?

Any good current info would be great, Thanks : )

[FupDup]

wintersborn, on 04 September 2017 - 12:45 PM, said:

1. What effects the max heat threshold or heat cap before shutdown?

The number of heatsinks you have, the type of heatsinks, and if you have the Heat Containment skill unlocked.

wintersborn, on 04 September 2017 - 12:45 PM, said:

2. Are there diminishing returns on the # of sinks vs heat dissipation/cap?

No. It's linear.

wintersborn, on 04 September 2017 - 12:45 PM, said:

3. Do heat sinks effect the amount of damage or shutdown time after a overheat shutdown?

Not directly, but having more sinks means that you will dissipate the excess heat faster, and therefore start back up a bit quicker after shutdown.

[Appogee]

The thing that's killing you alphaing 6ERL is ghost heat.

You can only fire 3ERL without incurring additional heat. For every ERL you add to those 3, you incur quite a bit more heat.

In practice, 5ERL is better. Put the other 5t you would have used for the 5th ERL into heat sinks.

You fire the 3 on one side, and the 2 on the other, in groups. You can alpha if you are at zero heat and need to make a kill shot. Plus, if you're getting close to your heat threshold, you can just fire the group of two.

I will leave it to others to explain the heat thresholds etc.

[N0ni]

IIRC Heat Containment nodes are not working as they should and will be fixed at a later date (next patch).

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

You're getting hit hard by ghost heat, you have to fire 3 ERLL at a time max with IS mechs and only 2 at once as a Clan mech.

Basically PGI doesn't want people firing off super high alphas at long range so they put very restrictive ghost heat limits on long range weapons so you can't fire a lot at once without overheating. To get around this you must mix weapon types. With lasers this usually means pairing the ERLL with ERML.

In general its a very bad choice to bring a 250 rated engine in an assault mech, as you'll move super slow and get left behind and won't be able to poke as well due to the slow speed. Also LFE engines have replaced STD engines on the IS side.

Here's a build that does exactly what you wanted to be able to do, poke at range but then also shoot out high alphas up close. It won't overheat when you alpha strike, and it moves a whole lot faster than that STD 250 build.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...d9dbb6b14c3f338


Single heatsinks are only really useful if you have a whole load of free space in your mech and have a low engine cap and a lot of tonnage to spare, otherwise other builds just work better.

[AncientRaig]

Yeah, the thing with SHS is that if you put enough tonnage into them, you'll eventually outperform DHS. Doubles are better if you only have a few tons, but if you can put like 20ish tons into SHS you can get some insane heat management out of it. I run SHS on my Banshee and my Awesome for that reason.

Edited by AncientRaig, 04 September 2017 - 01:10 PM.

[Wintersdark]

AncientRaig, on 04 September 2017 - 01:10 PM, said:

Yeah, the thing with SHS is that if you put enough tonnage into them, you'll eventually outperform DHS. Doubles are better if you only have a few tons, but if you can put like 20ish tons into SHS you can get some insane heat management out of it. I run SHS on my Banshee and my Awesome for that reason.

While it's occassionally possible to get better dissipation by stacking a LOT of SHS, those builds are generally not competitive with other DHS based builds. I forget the specific math, but you need ~35 SHS to outperform DHS (the in-engine base 10 DHS count as 2.0 while other DHS are 1.4, so with ZERO DHS installed in extra engine spaces or the rest of your mech, you'd need to add 10 tons of SHS to match dissipation.

So you're ten tons short from the get go, and 1 ton of DHS gets you 1.4 vs. 1.0 from 1 ton of SHS. You can fit more SHS due to space limitations, but you need SO MANY MORE (remember, 10 SHS just to break even with the base DHS build).

Furthermore, DHS added to the engine after the base 10 (you get +1 heat sink slot per 25 engine rating) while only counting as 1.4, take no critical slots. So those 10 tons saved can get you a bigger engine, which gets more DHS that don't cost critical slots. This requires MORE SHS to compensate for - more tonnage, that could have gone into an even bigger engine and thus to more DHS.

SHS builds generally require a chassis with a LOT of tonnage available, and a very small engine cap so just using a larger engine to slot in more DHS isn't an option. That's pretty uncommon, and as well choosing to go with a smaller engine than an already low max is rarely a good option strategically either.

[wintersborn]

I use my left mouse button for my 3 ER LL's in the left torso and my right button for the other side. I normally try to stay behind cover or below ridges so this set up made sense only exposing that bit of my mech at a time. I like the idea of having the same weapons side to side or groups to group so I only need to remember one range, cool down and heat % number to fire again and not overheat. I also like the idea of not having weapons in arms due to loss of limb and only one reticle to focus on maybe that's the because I ran Cicada's for so long?

Appogee: I see what you mean by mixing vomit to just before ghost heat though.

1. What about critical padding, do single heat sinks have the same HP as double?
If so (3) singles would be better than (1) double for the same space right?

2. Do heat skills scale per heat sink or just the total Heat MGMH number?


Thanks again.

[wintersborn]

Ahh so there is something I did not know about, the engine internal HS have more effectiveness.

Thank you, Wintersdark.

Edited by wintersborn, 04 September 2017 - 01:59 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

AncientRaig, on 04 September 2017 - 01:10 PM, said:

Yeah, the thing with SHS is that if you put enough tonnage into them, you'll eventually outperform DHS. Doubles are better if you only have a few tons, but if you can put like 20ish tons into SHS you can get some insane heat management out of it. I run SHS on my Banshee and my Awesome for that reason.

My Battlemaster has 22 (!) Double Heatsinks running a Light 350 engine. It dissipates at a rate of 3.80 h/s before skills and has a cap of 68.0, also before skills. To match the dissipation, I would need 32 SHS. To get the tonnage required to bring that many SHS, I have to go XL and drop one ERML. So in exchange for 8 extra cap and a mere 0.04 better dissipation, I have to run a 'Mech that is way more fragile and with one less gun. That's how bad SHS are. Even your BNC would be better off with DHS.

[Deathlike]

There's only a limited number of SHS builds for laservomit that makes sense.. where tonnage is not an issue but crits are. So something like a Supernova laservomit has all the crits+tonnage available (especially with the 7 slots taken up with the grand benefits of Clan tech or Clan XL, which some pro-Clanners seem to conveniently forget and ignore).

In most instances though, you will want DHS, unless there's a situation that demands otherwise.

[wintersborn]

Ok so just changing to double heat sinks and a Light 355 engine (10 internal + 4) and (2) doubles, one in each torso I get a Heat Management of 1.01/2 vs 1.11/2 with singles?

So is the trade off is .10 MGMT for 20KPH but crit. padding?

1. Heat sinks have HP and everything in a side torso needs to be destroyed before damage can pass to the engine/center torso right?

[Appogee]

Here's how I run my 5ERL BLR-1G in Faction Play.



To anticipate an objection likely to be made by someone: "But you shouldn't use an XL."

I use this Mech at maximum range on long range maps in FP. In those situations, it's more useful for me to have more heat sinks and faster refire, than to be able to survive with one torso missing. On big maps like Polar, a bigger XL also gets me to the battle sooner than a smaller LFE.

This Mech almost always gets me 1000 damage in the first wave of a FP match on Polar. By the time it has exposed components, I'm usually wanting to get into my next Mech anyway.

On longer range maps where I expect more brawling, I run a 3ERL+3ERML BLR-2C with an LFE, because the 2C's structure quirks are more useful than range quirks, and the 3ERML deliver more DPS than 2ERL would.

Edited by Appogee, 04 September 2017 - 02:32 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Appogee, on 04 September 2017 - 02:28 PM, said:

To anticipate an objection likely to be made by someone: "But you shouldn't use an XL."

I use this Mech at maximum range on long range maps in FP. In those situations, it's more useful for me to have more heat sinks and faster refire, than to be able to survive with one torso missing. On big maps like Polar, a bigger XL also gets me to the battle sooner than a smaller LFE.

This Mech almost always gets me 1000 damage in the first wave of a FP match on Polar. By the time it has exposed components, I'm usually wanting to get into my next Mech anyway.

On longer range maps where I expect more brawling, I run a 3ERL+3ERML BLR-2C with an LFE, because the 2C's structure quirks are more useful than range quirks, and the 3ERML deliver more DPS than 2ERL would.

I mean, that's valid and plenty of comp people do that, but plenty of comp people also just run it on a STD 325 to get the same number of sinks and zero worries about XL side-coring. On a map like Polar or Alpine, where being mobile has practical application, I would probably take the XL version. On a map like Grim Portico or Boreal Vault, where you just stand around and get lines the whole match, I'd take the STD version.

For mid-range, though, this is what I run. I don't think there's another IS 'Mech besides the Banshee that can fit that many heatsinks without compromising its firepower at all.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

wintersborn, on 04 September 2017 - 02:23 PM, said:

Ok so just changing to double heat sinks and a Light 355 engine (10 internal + 4) and (2) doubles, one in each torso I get a Heat Management of 1.01/2 vs 1.11/2 with singles?

So is the trade off is .10 MGMT for 20KPH but crit. padding?

1. Heat sinks have HP and everything in a side torso needs to be destroyed before damage can pass to the engine/center torso right?

Nothing needs to be destroyed for the side torso to take damage.

Things only get destroyed in the side torso because damage done to the side torso after armor is gone results in crits which cause things internals to be destroyed. 15% of crit damage also transfers back into structural damage resulting in you just taking more damage. More likely than not your entire side will be destroyed long before all the internals are ripped out.

As a side note, an empty side torso is most resilient against crit seeking weapons, as there is nothing for them to crit.


So in your build with the 250 rated engine and single heatsinks you'd have a bit more cooling than the LFE engine build, but you move slower than a Dire Wolf, not really a good trade to be making, as speed is just as important as firepower so that you can get into position to use your firepower.

[Gorgo7]

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/

[MCY Xale]

wintersborn, on 04 September 2017 - 02:23 PM, said:

1. Heat sinks have HP and everything in a side torso needs to be destroyed before damage can pass to the engine/center torso right?

No. Purpose of padding is to reduce the likelihood that one of your more valuable/important components is chosen as the 'Crit Damage Target'.

When taking structure damage, theres a percentage chance for it to be a 'crit'. Crits damage an item in a randomly occupied slot. Crit padding therefore involves occupying as many slots as possible in order to minimise the likelihood that an important item is chosen.

If you only have a 2-Slot laser and nothing else, crits have a 2/2 chance (100%) of damaging the laser. But if you have that laser with two DHS (3 slot), then you only have a 2/8 chance (25%) of a crit damaging your laser.

This is why Gauss Rifles are so prone to exploding; they're very large (so padding is ineffective), and have very low HP.

Edited by MCY Xale, 04 September 2017 - 03:00 PM.

[wintersborn]

Hmm so crit. padding is to reduce crit. damage in the same slot (protecting weapons) not about preventing damage passing through the side into the center/engine.

Thanks

[ProfessorD]

Since I'm here and already made them, here are some Smurfy builds with variations on your original laser boat, OP.

All builds have 6x ER Large Laser in the torsos.

Original: STD 250, 19 extra Single Heat Sinks
Smurfy's reported sustained DPS: 3.84
Max speed: 47.6

Light Engine 300 with 17 extra Single Heat Sinks
Smurfy's reported sustained DPS: 3.60
Max speed: 57.2

Light Engine 315 with 8 extra Double Heat Sinks
Smurfy's reported sustained DPS: 3.60
Max speed: 60.0

Light Engine 340 with 7 extra Double Heat Sinks
Smurfy's reported sustained DPS: 3.36
Max speed: 64.8

Light Engine 360 with 6 extra Double Heat Sinks
Smurfy's reported sustained DPS: 3.24
Max speed: 68.6

And just for extra fun, taking this to its extreme:
Light Engine 380 with 1 extra Double Heat Sink
Smurfy's reported sustained DPS: 2.40
Max speed: 72.4

Notes:

1. Smurfy's reported sustained DPS does not account for quirks or Skill Tree.

2. It happens that the BLR-3M has no quirks that would affect its heat efficiency or sustained DPS.

3. Smurfy's reported sustained DPS is, in my opinion, a much better measure of heat efficiency than the in-game figure-of-merit given. Ask yourself sometime, why is 2 the maximum in-game heat efficiency value? Where does that come from?

4. If I wanted to take 6x ER Large Lasers on a Battlemaster, I would probably take the third-to-last build, with the Light Engine 340 and 7 extra DHS.

Edited by ProfessorD, 04 September 2017 - 04:03 PM.

[Mechteric]

Always use doubles, absolutely no reason for singles ever.