7 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

in my quest to find a build to make racs useful i discovered something interesting. ive seen various builds in the wild that i would consider insane. like the hex rac2 crab, which turns out is a rather brutal delete key, provided the enemy dies before you reach heat saturation. having tried that build and finding it somewhat non-viable i considered lesser configurations.

its fairly easy to build a 4 rac2 mech with enough double heat sinks to be viable, its not the instant death (you or your enemy) bot that the kc build was. using 5 is a little better. this is roughly on par with 3 rac5s. these seemed most likely to core an atlas through th front ct before jamming provided you didn't shut down first. i also tried a 2x rac2 + 2x rac5, but that seems oddly too hot to run in any heat sink configuration. so the 3x5 and the 5x2 seem to be the most viable.

either of these builds is easily accommodated by the anh-1a. i also tried both configurations on fafnirs, maulers, and the 3x5 on the loyalty victor, and while some of those produced builds id consider viable, the anh-1a prooved the best test bed.

the test bed could accommodate a max lfe300, 5 tons of ammo standard armor and structure, which i used as the base configuration. i also had to strip the legs down quite a bit to free up tonnage. i think id give up a half ton of ammo for a little more leg armor, but this works for now. i tried this base build with either the 3x5 and the 5x2 gun configurations.

i tried several configurations with double heat sinks, and either gun configuration could accommodate 18 dhs. this gives a heat capacity of 9 and a dissipation of 3.96. this makes it better in short controlled bursts, but it suffers at sustained bursts. it was very hard to core out assault mechs in the testing grounds without splitting into two bursts with a small cool down in between.

with standard heat sink varients, the 5x2 configuration allowed for 23 standard heat sinks (i had to instal endo on this configuration to free up the required tonnage). this gave a heat capacity is 17.25 and the dissipation is 3.22. thats almost double the capacity of the dhs variant without much cost to dissipation. even better was the 3x5 configuration, which managed 28 shs for a heat capacity of 21, and dissipation of 3.92. which means you can run the guns well into the jam zone before heat becomes an issue.

on one hand these are interesting findings, especially for assault rac boats. but it doesnt mean a whole lot for smaller rac mechs. i suppose once you start getting into the heavy range with fewer guns, it might be viable to slap on shs, but reducing guns makes the dhs configs a little more viable as there is space for them and less heat to contend with.

Edited by LordNothing, 11 January 2019 - 06:10 AM.

[arcana75]

I think one of the reasons for the recent heatsink changes was to give SHS a reason to exist and having a larger heat pool for SHS and higher heat dissipation for DHS was one of the goals.

LordNothing, on 11 January 2019 - 05:22 AM, said:

with standard heat sink varients, the 5x2 configuration allowed for 23 standard heat sinks (i had to instal endo on this configuration to free up the required tonnage). this gave a heat capacity is 17.25 and the dissipation is 3.22. thats almost double the capacity of the dhs variant without much cost to dissipation. even better was the 3x5 configuration, which managed 18 shs for a heat capacity of 21, and dissipation of 3.92. which means you can run the guns well into the jam zone before heat becomes an issue.

I don't understand this. Why does 23 SHS give 17.25 cap and 3.22 dissipation but fewer SHS @ 18 gives more cap @ 21 and better dissipation @ 3.92?

Edited by arcana75, 11 January 2019 - 05:51 AM.

[LordNothing]

arcana75, on 11 January 2019 - 05:51 AM, said:

I think one of the reasons for the recent heatsink changes was to give SHS a reason to exist and having a larger heat pool for SHS and higher heat dissipation for DHS was one of the goals.


I don't understand this. Why does 23 SHS give 17.25 cap and 3.22 dissipation but fewer SHS @ 18 gives more cap @ 21 and better dissipation @ 3.92?

my bad that was supposed to be 28.

[arcana75]

5 RAC2s sounds all kinds of delicious will definitely try it out!

[justcallme A S H]

LordNothing, on 11 January 2019 - 05:22 AM, said:

in my quest to find a build to make racs useful i discovered something interesting. ive seen various builds in the wild that i would consider insane. like the hex rac2 crab,

SHS since the patch for dissipation are worse in basically every scenario.

As for RAC2s x 6 - use 3 x RAC2 & 3 x AC2 - much better for a KGC, no ghost heat and more DPS for face time.

arcana75, on 11 January 2019 - 05:51 AM, said:

I think one of the reasons for the recent heatsink changes was to give SHS a reason to exist and having a larger heat pool for SHS and higher heat dissipation for DHS was one of the goals.

No SHS were patched mid-year, or there about. For stock mode in world champs but also to make them more viable. Might have been earlier, either way they were actually viable on many builds.

Dissipation patch basically made them useless. I tested on a BLR-1G, the DHS version over the SHS boating is almost always better. 100T mechs, maybe the only place they are ok - haven't tested them but it would be super niche. (ofc assuming max skill tree)

Edited by justcallme A S H, 11 January 2019 - 09:27 PM.

[LordNothing]

there are still some weapons where having huge heat capacity is useful. racs certainly are. i wonder if clan uac10s could benefit from the capacity, no more chain firing those to make them not kill your core. high tube count missile boats might be another. perhaps high alpha ppc boats. for every 10 dubs you need 16 standard to actually get better dissipation. but you get more than double the capacity (12 vs 5). but it does cost you 6 tons and 6 slots over the dhs equivalent. things bet better when you get above that. 16 dhs is roughly equivalent to 25 shs in terms of dissipation, costs 9 tons more but uses 3 less slots. so using shs to save slots is not a great idea. but that extra heat capacity can be useful on some builds.

[Ilfi]

SHS just seems bizarre even with the "buffs". Glad someone else chimed in about that.

In my experience, if the choice is between more RACs or more bonus weapons, Rotary ACs will perform better when paired with bonus weapons like AC2s. You can push an Annihilator up to 33 DPS with something like 2 RAC5 + 4 AC2, while 3 RAC2 + 3 AC2 pumps out 28 DPS with less heat and less jams. Either way, being huge and slow are the two things you don't want in a RAC boat, so it's hard to justify walking away from the perfection that is a Bushwacker's geometry. The thing was damn near made for the role.

If you really want to get stupid with your goofing off, the Orion 1V does have the mega-quirks to almost get away with 2 RAC5 + MRM 30, for 29 DPS -- more than the RAC2 setup and on a smaller platform... except for the part where you're slow as molasses, your guns are low-mounted and everything is on one side (something you can only get away with because of the game's awful matchmaking). Still, the thing is a freezer and most Solo Queue players are absolutely smitten by this onion's honking left shoulder despite the fact that this build has nothing there.

The big takeaway for me is: you can, but you probably shouldn't even if you are the kind of person that can make s***ty non-optimal builds like these work anyway.

[justcallme A S H]

LordNothing, on 12 January 2019 - 02:40 AM, said:

there are still some weapons where having huge heat capacity is useful.

Yes but the dissipation is absolute garbage.

Thats the issue. Pre-dissipation patch SHS were really good in a number of situations.

Now, they do not dissipate. Heat cap is not as important anymore at all IMO.