12 replies to this topic

[Grey Ghost]

Noticed all the in-engine Heat Sinks are Singles, even for the Mechs that come with nothing but Doubles. Is that how it's supposed to be? Do none of the fusion engines have integrated Double Heat Sinks for this games time period whatsoever?

[LordNothing]

i noticed you could use singles and doubles on the same mech, and they work.

[Odanan]

Grey Ghost, on 10 January 2020 - 10:31 PM, said:

Noticed all the in-engine Heat Sinks are Singles, even for the Mechs that come with nothing but Doubles. Is that how it's supposed to be? Do none of the fusion engines have integrated Double Heat Sinks for this games time period whatsoever?

Yep, and this is VERY GOOD. I wish the TT was like that too.

[Nesutizale]

While they come with singles you can build doubles into the engine slots IIRC.

[Hawk_eye]

Odanan, on 11 January 2020 - 01:34 AM, said:

Yep, and this is VERY GOOD. I wish the TT was like that too.

IIRC, Jordan Weisman was asked some time ago (probably during one of the Q&As HBS did for the BattleTech Kickstarter), what he'd change if he could go back in time and change ONE thing in the TT rules and his answer was: Engines only can have single-heat-sinks.

Nesutizale, on 11 January 2020 - 03:23 AM, said:

While they come with singles you can build doubles into the engine slots IIRC.

Yes, but those aren't the 10 sinks any engine comes with for free, those are slots you get for engines above a rating of 250 (1 in-engine-sink per 25 engine rating) so a Marauder (engine rating 300) gets 2 additional slots that _can_ take double-heat-sinks but the original 10 the engine came with? Not so much.

Of course, this also means that, say, a Centurion (engine rating 200) can only fit 8 of those 10 sinks the engine comes with into the engine and has the remaining two outside and those can be upgraded to doubles.

Edited by Hawk_eye, 11 January 2020 - 03:36 AM.

[Koniving]

Grey Ghost, on 10 January 2020 - 10:31 PM, said:

Noticed all the in-engine Heat Sinks are Singles, even for the Mechs that come with nothing but Doubles. Is that how it's supposed to be? Do none of the fusion engines have integrated Double Heat Sinks for this games time period whatsoever?

If you mean compared to the source material, no.

Given the way MW5's mechlab works, something tells me they didn't make a distinction for whether a mech uses SHS or DHS. The benefits as mentioned here is that you can mix single and double heatsinks -- something you can't do in the source material. The drawback as you brought up, is that all the heatsinks that come with the engine itself are singles, regardless of what the mech supposedly would be using. So a mech with a 250 engine and "10 DHS" in the engine actually only has 10 SHS.

For the source material and this time period...
There are a few, they would be the ones that come stock with DHS and built after 3039.

Of curious note...
MW5's behavior depicts Prototype DHS except PDHS are single slot.

Also, discovered the Super Griffin.
I think if I can export the "special" model of the ...nevermind that's a special shadowhawk model not a special griffin.
Welp, modifying an existing mech is easier than making a new one.

Think I'll add the Super Griffin as an experiment in making a "hero" that actually appears in game. In this case, an enemy that can only appear under a specific mission, on a specific planet, in a specific time window. Need the mission to be special as a way of warning you that 1) it will be there and 2) you should probably make sure to have enough negotiated salvage shares 'cause I'm not nice enough to make sure you get it as a "reward."

Edited by Koniving, 11 January 2020 - 07:52 AM.

[Grey Ghost]

Yeah I already knew you could mix doubles & singles. You can also build Mechs with less than 10 HS (sub 1.0 cooling), which seems odd (or maybe that's just a MW:O thing?).

Odanan, on 11 January 2020 - 01:34 AM, said:

Yep, and this is VERY GOOD. I wish the TT was like that too.

I don't know, just thought that it might make the MW5 Mechs that come with them more meaningful beyond buy it / strip it / sell it back.

[Lightfoot]

I think in all the games, changing the engine heatsinks to DHS changes all the heatsinks to DHS because you can't combine DHS and SHS in the same mech. Result, adding DHS in place of SHS changes all heatsinks to doubles. So it was in MW3 and MWO. Goofy if you can mix them in MW5.

[Odanan]

Hawk_eye, on 11 January 2020 - 03:31 AM, said:

IIRC, Jordan Weisman was asked some time ago (probably during one of the Q&As HBS did for the BattleTech Kickstarter), what he'd change if he could go back in time and change ONE thing in the TT rules and his answer was: Engines only can have single-heat-sinks.

Interesting! I wonder why the game never changed much since Battledroids... it really could use some "modernization".

[Asmosis]

Lightfoot, on 11 January 2020 - 07:54 PM, said:

I think in all the games, changing the engine heatsinks to DHS changes all the heatsinks to DHS because you can't combine DHS and SHS in the same mech. Result, adding DHS in place of SHS changes all heatsinks to doubles. So it was in MW3 and MWO. Goofy if you can mix them in MW5.

Honestly I think it's much better balance wise.

It never made much sense that a light mech could effectively just "flip a switch" to double the mechs cooling capability since they usually don't use non-engine heat sinks.

MWO spent months/years trying to balance DHS eventually resulting in the current heavily nerfed state, when all they really needed to do was keep all engine heat sinks singles.

[Nesutizale]

Odanan, on 11 January 2020 - 08:30 PM, said:

Interesting! I wonder why the game never changed much since Battledroids... it really could use some "modernization".

There where two tries to modernise the game. One was MWDA, that went the way of the dodo.

Then there is "Alpha Strike". Haven't played that one but from one fo the bigger Battletech groups I know they said its hardly used. Mostly as introduction and then they use the old system.

Then there is the semi modernisation where they remove the hexfiled and play it like a tabletop.
Don't know how well that is received.

Overall it seams that every attempt so far wasn't very successfull.
Frankly I don't see much that could be changed. Maybe some balanceing like with the HS stuff but overall the system is pretty good and allows for quite some flexible use of rules, tons of options to create scenarios and so on.

Edited by Nesutizale, 12 January 2020 - 01:57 AM.

[Odanan]

Nesutizale, on 12 January 2020 - 01:55 AM, said:

There where two tries to modernise the game. One was MWDA, that went the way of the dodo.

Then there is "Alpha Strike". Haven't played that one but from one fo the bigger Battletech groups I know they said its hardly used. Mostly as introduction and then they use the old system.

Then there is the semi modernisation where they remove the hexfiled and play it like a tabletop.
Don't know how well that is received.

Overall it seams that every attempt so far wasn't very successfull.
Frankly I don't see much that could be changed. Maybe some balanceing like with the HS stuff but overall the system is pretty good and allows for quite some flexible use of rules, tons of options to create scenarios and so on.

There is a LOT that could change. The game spends too much time rolling dice and checking tables - this is not acceptable by today standards. People don't have 6 hours to play a match, anymore.

Let me give some examples (of house brew rules I use here) that how the game could be shorter:

• No roll for crits. Each time the internal structure is damaged, you get one crit.
  
• No roll for number of missiles: use the value of the attack roll.
  
• Dang, no "roll again" in crit locations. You either hit something or not. I hate how if you have one 1 ammo in the whole torso, a critical hit MUST BE in that ammo.
  
• A fixed maximum damage for ammo explosion.
  
• NO FREAKING different range difficulties for each weapon. Each weapon should have just the maximum (and minimum, perhaps) range. Penalty for range should be standard, based on the range of the target. Something like: range 1-7: short (no penalty), 8-15: medium (+2), 16-23: long range (+4), 24+: extreme range (+6)

[Nesutizale]

Takeing your time to play is exactly what I like about it. Day is stressfull and fast enough, lets slow down a bit.
As for your points:

No crit rolls: No that is so much fun. Seeing the face when the enemy roll no crits or when crying out when he rolls 3 crits.
On that note, we also had a house rule for "roll again". It was the closest component to the roll or if you rolled exactly the number of crits as the number of componets left all where hit. So yes "roll again" I can agree upon.

No roll for # of missiles: Yes can be done, will most likely increase the damage you make as hit roles are normaly high.

Fixed ammo explosion damage: Well except you have very little ammo left it will most likely eat itself through the CT anyway. IIRC most of the time we just took the mech from the field without calculating the damage.

Weapon range...that one I don't quite get.
ML is 3 6 9 ranges and its added 0 +2 +4..that is pretty much what you discribe? Do you want all weapons ot have the same range or that there is only one overall range difficulity and each weapon has a fixed range?
So instead the ML has a range of 9 and if the target is 8 hex away you get a +2?

If its the last one...that one I would need to test. It could make sense in the way of "why should it be more difficulte for a medium to hit on 7 hex while its easier for a large to hit at the same range?"
My guess is this was initialy made to balance the damage, kinda like a falloff of damge.

So the idea you have would result in more hits I guess. In that case you can either say you want to make the game faster by adding more damage or you have to rebalance the damage.

Edited by Nesutizale, 12 January 2020 - 02:55 PM.