3 replies to this topic

[GX9900 Gundam X]

I feel like there isn't enough reason for either techbase to use single heat sinks except if you're working with mechs that have low engine ratings and thus need to compensate for lacking the 10 required heat sinks with externally mounted ones (a la the urbanmech, a lot of other lights, and the annihilator) meaning that they actually benefit from singles taking less slots than doubles. Even a gauss build on a high engine rating mech would still use doubles as it would only use engine heat sinks, leaving slots free for backup weapons and additional supplies. The slot savings you get from a single heatsink just don't outweigh the overall cooling power of Double Heat sinks IMO because you're almost always going to have the 10 in the engine, and that's going to get you about the same cooling as having 16 standard heatsinks with 6 less slots occupied.

One thing I love about standard heatsinks is how when you stand in water, the cooling gets doubled. But because the majority of your heatsinks are still in the engine and you can only ever submerge up to four heatsinks at once, this bonus is never enough to justify using singles over doubles on the vast majority of builds.

Why don't we increase the cooling bonus? Make it so standards get triple, maybe even quadruple the cooling from standing in water. That way, even clan battlemechs might have a reason to switch to standards. It won't decisively change the meta, but it would at least be a pro over DHS for singles, and one that isn't particularly game-breaking at that.

[Appuagab]

Water cooling bonus really interesting yet most underused and underappreciated feature in the game. I think that all mechs should get cooling bonus in water regardless of heatsinks allocation (especially considering that some lights get their body fully submerged) plus additional bonus for heat sinks in legs.

[GX9900 Gundam X]

Appuagab, on 05 April 2018 - 04:11 AM, said:

Water cooling bonus really interesting yet most underused and underappreciated feature in the game. I think that all mechs should get cooling bonus in water regardless of heatsinks allocation (especially considering that some lights get their body fully submerged) plus additional bonus for heat sinks in legs.

Actually this is a feature that was implemented as far back as Mechwarrior 3. It would be nice for all components submerged to receive the water cooled heatsink bonus. On the other hand people would start complaining about Locusts running around with 6 medium lasers and [Redacted]tons of bonus cooling coring people without fear, so maybe it would be prudent to just keep it in the legs.

Edited by draiocht, 23 April 2018 - 02:56 PM.
inappropriate language

[Reno Blade]

I think all components already recieve cooling bonus depending on your water level.
e.g. if you are 50% submerged with the torso, you get a 50% better cooling rate.

For single heatsinks, the problem is the high tonnage that you need to invest compared to the gain.
Especially for the 10 DHS vs 10 SHS in the engine.

I would suggest:
First step the internal heatsinks to be either always standard, or depending on the engine.
E.g. you have a STD engine, so you get SHS, if you have XL engine, you get DHS, and if you have LF engine, you only get SHS.
How this would play, we need to check the maths, but that's just one idea.

Another option could be to give the engine different number of base heatsinks or slots for the size.
e.g. 300 STD engine would have 10 DHS and 2 slots but could get 12 SHS and 4 slots for singles.

And ofc the old discussion about capacity vs dissipation comes back, but in the end, you always want the best dissipation and a good cap, so the DHS will be prefered in most times.
But we already have a relatively close game with the 1.0 vs 1.4 (or are DHS now 1.5).
If the engine heatsinks are always SHS, the whole SHS build option could be totally different.