25 replies to this topic

[Mahpsy]

Been away for a long time, but I recall a long time ago that they did a buff to single heat sinks. I tried looking for a graph to see how many are needed to be efficient for both types at what amount.

[Leone]

Standard hold more heat, Double cool faster. I forget the rates, and where to look them up, but I do have 3025 mechs for playing around with and some've been upgraded to be optimized and still boat single heatsinks due to the sheer viability of the builds and their ability to hit 'o' and just brawl it up long past those same mechs using doubles.

~Leone

[Vlad Ward]

Leone, on 17 June 2021 - 12:43 PM, said:

Standard hold more heat, Double cool faster. I forget the rates, and where to look them up, but I do have 3025 mechs for playing around with and some've been upgraded to be optimized and still boat single heatsinks due to the sheer viability of the builds and their ability to hit 'o' and just brawl it up long past those same mechs using doubles.

~Leone

Could you share some examples?

Brawling seems like the opposite of what you'd want to do with a high capacity, low dissipation build. You'd think that'd be better suited for long range sniping or poking where you can take longer breaks to cool down.

[FupDup]

I thought that SHS have both lower capacity and lower dissipation than DHS? The trade-off is that if you mount an absolute crapton of them then eventually you can surpass DHS. Problem is that this is very rare because of the "head start" advantage that engine DHS give.

If I were the balancing overlord I'd make engine SHS equal to DHS, then set external SHS down to 0.11 (DHS are currently 0.22 everywhere). This would make the catch-up point come much earlier and might help some oddball sub-250 engine builds that want to pack FF armor.

EDIT: SHS do actually give a bit more capacity, 0.75 vs. 0.5. IMO still not worth it unless you've got like 40+ of the things. If engine SHS got buffed then the cap might need to come down too.

Edited by FupDup, 17 June 2021 - 03:24 PM.

[Bixente Vega]

This is a very interesting topic. I have 131 Mechs and not one of them has singles on it

[Leone]

Vlad Ward, on 17 June 2021 - 02:43 PM, said:

Could you share some examples?

Brawling seems like the opposite of what you'd want to do with a high capacity, low dissipation build. You'd think that'd be better suited for long range sniping or poking where you can take longer breaks to cool down.

ARC-2R The problem with sniping with such builds is I have no patience. Well, very little. That brawler's meant to hold the red line long enough to clear the opfor before overheating, even brawling it up with an assault.

Just took it into Terra Therma testing grounds and took out the cataphract in there through the arm, went over heat in the last volley. Six volleys of Srms with constant small pulsing (Eight volleys of small pulse) in Vitric Forge before hitting overheat, seven srm volleys on Boreal Vault. So on vitric it puts out... 6x12.9x3 + 8x4x6 == (232.2) + (192) == 424.2 damage before hitting override. All splashed about of course, but it adds up.

When overrun it can sustain a very high DPS and oft dies to damage rather'n heat. Also runs ~70kph so it can keep up with the fast brawl fairly well. (Assumed 74 kph. Said Archer does not lead the pack, sadly. It's meant more for gate defense or pushes.)

~Leone.

Edited by Leone, 17 June 2021 - 03:25 PM.

[FupDup]

Leone, on 17 June 2021 - 03:15 PM, said:

ARC-2R
~Leone.

I'd rather run that with 20 DHS (strip a small amount of armor off the head and legs, or just do 19 DHS and use the last 0.5 tons on ammo or whatever). Capacity drops from 47.25 to 40, but dissipation goes up from 3.22 to 4.40. Time to overheat goes from 14 seconds to 20 seconds (according to the Smurfys weaponlab).

Side-Note: Smurfy's is outdated when it comes to weapon values (doesn't account for Cauldron).

[Leone]

Fair, removing the endo'd allow for casing both legs as a side benefit, rather'n just the one as well. Arguably placing heat sinks in the legs and CT is the biggest draw of single heat sinks.

BLR-1G this guy has poor hitboxes sadly, but gets off four salvos afore overheating. The flamers and mg are meant to be used when the opfor is twisting and not paying attention and is a very busy build. That build still twists and fires primarily.

~Leone.

[FupDup]

Leone, on 17 June 2021 - 03:51 PM, said:

Fair, removing the endo'd allow for casing both legs as a side benefit, rather'n just the one as well. Arguably placing heat sinks in the legs and CT is the biggest draw of single heat sinks.

BLR-1G this guy has poor hitboxes sadly, but gets off four salvos afore overheating. The flamers and mg are meant to be used when the opfor is twisting and not paying attention and is a very busy build. That build still twists and fires primarily.

~Leone.

This one is a little less clear cut than the Archer. You can swap to 21 DHS by upgrading the engine to 350, swapping armor, and moving the ammo. Cap is decreased from 50.25 to 40.5, cooling goes up from 3.78 to 4.62. Time to overheat actually is 1 second longer for SHS but sustained DPS is higher for DHS.

I'd stick to DHS here out of convenience if nothing else (so I don't have to keep paying the tax when builds get changed).

[FinnMcKool]

one way you can experiment in the mech lab try both on any build and check the heat efficacy ,
you can even do this in the store, on mechs you don't own

Also a little known fact you can make builds in the store and save the Build for a future purchases

the single heat sinks can be useful but not often as far as I can tell, the ThunderBolt Hero Mech was one of them.

[Leone]

FupDup, on 17 June 2021 - 04:10 PM, said:

This one is a little less clear cut than the Archer. You can swap to 21 DHS by upgrading the engine to 350, swapping armor, and moving the ammo. Cap is decreased from 50.25 to 40.5, cooling goes up from 3.78 to 4.62. Time to overheat actually is 1 second longer for SHS but sustained DPS is higher for DHS.

I'd stick to DHS here out of convenience if nothing else (so I don't have to keep paying the tax when builds get changed).

Fair. The entire point of the 3025 phase was figuring out how to be a more efficient mechwarrior with subpar tech, to test the game and my understanding of it. Some of those builds turned out pretty sweet, so I tweaked em and kept 'em around. Also, built and mastered on my alt, which wasn't swimming in Cbills at the start. Finally those designs're meant for Community Warfare, for when I'm getting another pug drop and cannot expect backup. They're meant to fire until they pop when getting overrun, so cooling rate was a tertiary concern, because it didn't often come up.

~Leone.

Edited by Leone, 17 June 2021 - 04:29 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

There are fringe uses for SHS.

If your 'Mech is extremely low heat but tonnage and slot-starved (i.e. FLE-19, FLE-FA, LCT-1V), SHS will allow you to meet the minimum 10 heatsink requirement while also allowing you to stack both Endo and Ferro.

If your 'Mech has a low max engine size and lots of tons and slots to spare, mass amounts of SHS will allow you to have comparable dissipation to DHS but with a significantly higher heat capacity.

That said, there are some grey areas where they aren't unquestionably better, but yield some capabilities you can't get with DHS. I have a 8x LL Marauder 4A that runs 27 SHS because I can fire 4+4 twice with it without any significant wait; I can't do that with DHS. The dissipation is only 3.78 vice the 4.18 I would get with 19 DHS, but the heat cap is 65.3 vs. 54.5. The AWS-8Q is another 'Mech that sometimes runs SHS for the same benefit, even if it isn't cut-and-dry better.

[LordNothing]

the number of shs builds i have can be counted on one hand, and thats out of 350 mechs. almost all of those are cold running lights where dhs is a waste of slots that would break the build. a couple of those are urbies and i think an osiris. i do have a thunderbolt which is an shs boat. its a standard laser boat with an absurd number of sinks. it actually worked last i used it, but that was an eternity ago.

[w0qj]

Many thanks to everyone for such an interesting discussion regarding the guts/maths behind DHS/SHS!

Just some anecdotal feedback, for my Marauder II, MAD-4HP (LRM100, or Artemis-LRM90):

Option A: before
Before this discussion thread I did put 2x SHS in my mech for cooling, Standard Engine 275.
Heat Management=1.16, and Standard Heat Sinks (Engine) = 3/(10)
***Could shoot 6 volleys of 2xLRM15 before mech thermal shutdown.
***Took 34 seconds to cool down from Heat=100 down to Heat=0

Option B: after
After this discussion, changed to DHS for mech cooling, but no user-added DHS in the mech. Standard Engine 275 with the built-in 10x DHS did all the cooling.
Heat Management=1.33, and Double Heat Sinks (Engine) = 1/(10). (ie: more heat efficiency)
***Could shoot 8 volleys of 2xLRM15 before mech thermal shutdown. (ie: can shoot more)
***Took 24 seconds to cool down from Heat=100 down to Heat=0 (ie: faster cooldown)


Guess what?
Option B (DHS in Engine, with no user-added DHS at all) runs a lot cooler, details as above!
(Addendum: I've used the 2tons saved with "no SHS" for 2tons of LRM ammo instead!)

==>Therefore unless one can boat a lot of Single SHS in the mech, it would not be worth it to use SHS after all.

Y E O N N E, on 17 June 2021 - 04:48 PM, said:

There are fringe uses for SHS.

If your 'Mech is extremely low heat but tonnage and slot-starved (i.e. FLE-19, FLE-FA, LCT-1V), SHS will allow you to meet the minimum 10 heatsink requirement while also allowing you to stack both Endo and Ferro.

If your 'Mech has a low max engine size and lots of tons and slots to spare, mass amounts of SHS will allow you to have comparable dissipation to DHS but with a significantly higher heat capacity.

That said, there are some grey areas where they aren't unquestionably better, but yield some capabilities you can't get with DHS. I have a 8x LL Marauder 4A that runs 27 SHS because I can fire 4+4 twice with it without any significant wait; I can't do that with DHS. The dissipation is only 3.78 vice the 4.18 I would get with 19 DHS, but the heat cap is 65.3 vs. 54.5. The AWS-8Q is another 'Mech that sometimes runs SHS for the same benefit, even if it isn't cut-and-dry better.

Edited by w0qj, 18 June 2021 - 05:26 AM.

[Mahpsy]

I ask for something small and ya'll go above and beyond lol. After all that is said and done does this mean that SHS need another small buff? I just feel like a mandatory DHS isn't good design. Even in Roguetech I find my self using the singles more often than you'd think. Granted this is a shooter and not Roguetech, but who doesn't like to have more flexibility with things

[Gagis]

Mahpsy, on 17 June 2021 - 07:20 PM, said:

I ask for something small and ya'll go above and beyond lol. After all that is said and done does this mean that SHS need another small buff? I just feel like a mandatory DHS isn't good design. Even in Roguetech I find my self using the singles more often than you'd think. Granted this is a shooter and not Roguetech, but who doesn't like to have more flexibility with things

Theoretically, but the difference between how useless SHS are and how amazingly powerful DHS are is one of the largest "what makes for a good mech" features of the original Battletech that it can be a bit hard to rebalance without getting weird. The leap from SHS to DHS in the board game is just amazingly long.

The way HBS Battletech and MW5 have done it, is to make the 10 engine heat sinks always be singles. In the original board game and MWO, they get upgraded for no tonnage or slot cost.

[justcallme A S H]

Pretty much as YEONNE said for lights. Then select Assaults if you're around the 30 SHS marker or more.

Meds/Heavies ia basically DHS all the time.

Many Solaris builds can use SHS and need to for slot reasons however that is very niche/specific.

[TVMA Doc]

tomzah, on 17 June 2021 - 04:09 PM, said:

Just don't use singles... period, they are almost never worth it, not even for the hefty heat capacity. They give you bigger initial burst but once you reach the capacity the poor heat dissipation will hurt you a lot. You need to keep in mind the heat sink type also changes the engine heatsinks and I don't mean the ones that you insert when you go above the core 10 but also the 10 initial ones that you don't "see". Given that most of your mechs will have 10 engine heat sinks, that's already huge advantage when using doubles and for free.

SHS are not always useless. There are a few light mechs that require a specific number of heat sinks and this cannot be met with engine heat sinks. There is rarely enough in slots available to get the right build while using DHS. Almost all of my mechs have DHS, but there are a few lights where SHS are the only way to go.

[Gagis]

It does work on the ERLL Annihilator and ERLL Supernova, both of which are extremely situational niche loadouts mostly only used in Faction Play.

[justcallme A S H]

tomzah, on 18 June 2021 - 11:54 AM, said:

I wasn't talking about builds where they are necessity but when they are an option and as an option they are almost never a better option. Even on assault mechs with 20+ shs I can't reach the same or even similar heat dissipation as with dhs and it costs me all the speed. No thanks... that one more salvo I can squeeze in before reaching heat limit isn't worth it. Maybe with 30+ of them if I knew I could count on my teammates to support me while I'm basically relegated to a 30kph turret it could work.

Sounds like you're building the mechs wrong.

You don't need to be doing 32km/h to have a SHS boated mech and have it perform well.