86 replies to this topic

[Battlemaster56]

As the title says I thinks it's time to remove this restriction in the game, it really doesn't serve much other than annoyance in the mechlab when building mechs it simply screw other light mechs who want to play around with builds that require more tonnage for example the new Urbie IIC-2 it have some awesome HAG/Guass(Yes this is the main reason I'm starting this thread) quirks but trying to get anything less than HAG 20 with maybe a one erml and ammo and you have to completely stop and shove heatsinks in because this lousy restriction.

Heavies and assaults mechs can easily go around this restriction as they usually have more than enough tonnage to put the minimum amount of heatsinks in, while lights that want that tonnage for more ammo or equipment is screwed being the tonnage starve machines they're are with mediums following up but it's not as bad.

[Ihlrath]

Heat sinks are a core part of the game.

[KursedVixen]

Battlemaster56, on 19 September 2023 - 03:55 PM, said:

As the title says I thinks it's time to remove this restriction in the game, it really doesn't serve much other than annoyance in the mechlab when building mechs it simply screw other light mechs who want to play around with builds that require more tonnage for example the new Urbie IIC-2 it have some awesome HAG/Guass(Yes this is the main reason I'm starting this thread) quirks but trying to get anything less than HAG 20 with maybe a one erml and ammo and you have to completely stop and shove heatsinks in because this lousy restriction.

Heavies and assaults mechs can easily go around this restriction as they usually have more than enough tonnage to put the minimum amount of heatsinks in, while lights that want that tonnage for more ammo or equipment is screwed being the tonnage starve machines they're are with mediums following up but it's not as bad.

simply giving all engines 10 heat sinks would be good enough. or simply increasing the number of heat sinks on small engines.

Edited by KursedVixen, 19 September 2023 - 04:22 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

The Lorewarrior in me knows that external engine heat sinks come from tabletop. But it confuses the mech build process in this game. So just make the smallest engines heavier (as if they had purchased those required heat sinks) and give them all 10 heat sinks inside. Its a little deviance from lore in exchange for a LOT less heartache in the game.

And to the folks who say "but we can't deviate from lore!!!!1!", I ask when was the last time you saw a Warhammer put its big guns in the arms? If we're okay ripping the machine guns off a Warhammer 6R and replacing them with Autocannon 20's as if that was a straight up swap, then we should be fine with fudging a few crit slots for heat sinks on tiny mechs.

[An6ryMan69]

Yes.

Having to pile on heat sings into lights, that may just me running MG's or something anyway, is brutal.

Engine heat sinks should be enough to run any mech, add more if you like, but optional.

[LordNothing]

im fine with occasional minimum sink quirks on some mechs, but im talking like -1 or -2 and used primarily on mechs < 30t. you still need some sinkage for your fusion reactor. also shs quirks on some mechs.

Edited by LordNothing, 19 September 2023 - 07:02 PM.

[KursedVixen]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 September 2023 - 05:39 PM, said:

The Lorewarrior in me knows that external engine heat sinks come from tabletop. But it confuses the mech build process in this game. So just make the smallest engines heavier (as if they had purchased those required heat sinks) and give them all 10 heat sinks inside. Its a little deviance from lore in exchange for a LOT less heartache in the game.

And to the folks who say "but we can't deviate from lore!!!!1!", I ask when was the last time you saw a Warhammer put its big guns in the arms? If we're okay ripping the machine guns off a Warhammer 6R and replacing them with Autocannon 20's as if that was a straight up swap, then we should be fine with fudging a few crit slots for heat sinks on tiny mechs.

i mean we already have non lore mechs adn non-lore variants so.

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 September 2023 - 05:39 PM, said:

The Lorewarrior in me knows that external engine heat sinks come from tabletop. But it confuses the mech build process in this game. So just make the smallest engines heavier (as if they had purchased those required heat sinks) and give them all 10 heat sinks inside. Its a little deviance from lore in exchange for a LOT less heartache in the game.

And to the folks who say "but we can't deviate from lore!!!!1!", I ask when was the last time you saw a Warhammer put its big guns in the arms? If we're okay ripping the machine guns off a Warhammer 6R and replacing them with Autocannon 20's as if that was a straight up swap, then we should be fine with fudging a few crit slots for heat sinks on tiny mechs.

making engines heavier defeats the purpose... we want extra tonnage not less.

[Curccu]

This would help some lights and slow mediums tremendously.
Pir, ACH, MLX, UM-IIC, FLE comes to mind 1st. (ones that use MGs and few energys).

edit. actually omnis got that 10 HS already locked so wouldn't help those..

Edited by Curccu, 19 September 2023 - 11:54 PM.

[MechMaster059]

KursedVixen, on 19 September 2023 - 04:22 PM, said:

...simply increasing the number of heat sinks on small engines.

This.

I've thought about this as well and it seems like a very arbitrary constraint on lights. I think an easy solution would be to change the heat sink progression from -1 sink per 25 engine size to -1 sink per 50 engine size. In other words a 150 engine would have 8 sinks instead of 6.

[Shivalah]

Or what about keeping the "needs 10 heatsinks" requirement, but until you reach the 10HS threshhold those HS would weigh nothing? IS BAP and CASE already weigh less/nothing compared to their canon depiction.

Edited by Shivalah, 20 September 2023 - 12:37 AM.

[Meep Meep]

The entire balance of the game revolves around fittings though. If you changed the characteristics of sink fittings or make all engines have ten sinks then that frees up extra slots for more stuff or to take both full ferro and endo with double sinks and still have plenty of room for more stuff.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Meep Meep, on 20 September 2023 - 12:40 AM, said:

The entire balance of the game revolves around fittings though. If you changed the characteristics of sink fittings or make all engines have ten sinks then that frees up extra slots for more stuff or to take both full ferro and endo with double sinks and still have plenty of room for more stuff.

it's something that punishes lightmechs ONLY, though.
given that a 250engine is "heatsink"-neutral, ANY mech at 40tons or above is gonna run at least that in almost any situations, anyway.
therefore, it's effectively just a thing to clog up lightmechs with heatsinks they possibly don't need or want.
and it hurts those mechs unnecessarily here and there.
where my wolfhound will grab any heatsink it can get, an MG-only Piranha invests WASTED tonnage into those, just to fulfill the "rule of 10".

as others have pointed out: we're already ignoring enough battletech-rules were they are uncomfortable, why not 1 more that REALLY affects the "worst-perfoming and least played class" of mechs only?

[Curccu]

Meep Meep, on 20 September 2023 - 12:40 AM, said:

The entire balance of the game revolves around fittings though. If you changed the characteristics of sink fittings or make all engines have ten sinks then that frees up extra slots for more stuff or to take both full ferro and endo with double sinks and still have plenty of room for more stuff.

Yes and what else than weakest weight class of the game, lights... would really gain anything from this? do you really want to make that STD 200 Anni just to get few free heatsinks?

[Necroconvict]

Ihlrath, on 19 September 2023 - 04:20 PM, said:

Heat sinks are a core part of the game.

So is a single slot head weapon... well until the new Atlas... lol

[Der Geisterbaer]

I do seem to remember having suggested this quitea few times before. I always got (unnecessary) attempts of educating me on how heat sink / engine weight calculations are done 'in lore' (albeit that's nothing really lore related but TT rules a.k.a. "crunch") as well a how MW:O altered the calculation for simpler use (including negative values on certain Urbie engines) and each and every time - even after pointing out that I know those things - it boiled down to "because Lore breaking" while neglecting the actual consequences.

Let's just consider the often named PIR-1 that is typically used with 10 to 12 machine guns plus 3 heavy smalls. Under normal conditions this build is pretty much heat neutral with the enforced 10 heat sinks.

Now what would happen with IIRC only 7 heat sinks on the largest engine it can carry? Well it's max heat as well as the dissipation would be significantly lower and make even those 3 heavy smalls a real possibility for overheat. Guess what would happen when using the three free tons of crit space for anything other than more mg ammo or stuff like a active probe or maybe a low end TC?!

The same applies to pretty much every other Light in the sub 30t area and the 'bad boy' Mist Lynx could't even "profit' (within the limitations imposed by lower max heat and reduced dissipation) unless its fixed heat sinks are unlocked as well. ~shrug~

I fully expect this to be shouted down just as before and forsee a return of "Light machine gun boats are OP" posts if this change were ever to go through.

[Curccu]

Der Geisterbaer, on 20 September 2023 - 02:03 AM, said:

Let's just consider the often named PIR-1 that is typically used with 10 to 12 machine guns plus 3 heavy smalls. Under normal conditions this build is pretty much heat neutral with the enforced 10 heat sinks.

Now what would happen with IIRC only 7 heat sinks on the largest engine it can carry? Well it's max heat as well as the dissipation would be significantly lower and make even those 3 heavy smalls a real possibility for overheat. Guess what would happen when using the three free tons of crit space for anything other than more mg ammo or stuff like a active probe or maybe a low end TC?!

Pir-1 12xHMG 3 tons of ammo and 3xuPL heat neutral 20,8 DPS (125 alphas to overheat) can strip those lazors + armours and add ammo.

[Der Geisterbaer]

At first glance I'm unsure if those numbers add up, but to be sure:
You calculated this with 7 (double?) heat sinks instead of mandatory 10 with a used weapon critspace / weight of 18/10.5 tons?

vs. what dps with 12 mgs plus X tons ammo plus 3 heavy smalls with the now mandatory 10 heat sinks while retaining same engine and armor and a weapon critspace / weight that IIRC should be around 18/8 tons?

[Curccu]

Der Geisterbaer, on 20 September 2023 - 05:08 AM, said:

At first glance I'm unsure if those numbers add up, but to be sure:
You calculated this with 7 (double?) heat sinks instead of mandatory 10 with a used weapon critspace / weight of 18/10.5 tons?

vs. what dps with 12 mgs plus X tons ammo plus 3 heavy smalls with the now mandatory 10 heat sinks while retaining same engine and armor and a weapon critspace / weight that IIRC should be around 18/8 tons?

Just build it in https://mwo.nav-alph...m/mechlab/pir-1 12xHMG 3xmicro pulses 3 tons of ammo and don't add any DHS.

edit: strip head armor (like I always do with lights, if someone is good enough to headshot my light they deserve "easy" kill (has happened once since closed beta) and few points from both arms.

I cannot link build because it's "illegal due not enough heatsinks".

edit2: does this work......

Edited by Curccu, 20 September 2023 - 05:50 AM.

[Necroconvict]

Curccu, on 20 September 2023 - 05:44 AM, said:

Just build it in https://mwo.nav-alph...m/mechlab/pir-1 12xHMG 3xmicro pulses 3 tons of ammo and don't add any DHS.

edit: strip head armor (like I always do with lights, if someone is good enough to headshot my light they deserve "easy" kill (has happened once since closed beta) and few points from both arms.

I cannot link build because it's "illegal due not enough heatsinks".

edit2: does this work......

You avoid loading it to bear.... There's a lot of mechs that are able to run heat neutral, there's a lot of mechs that have a lot of weapon slots. Just don't use them all. Now is that otherwise possibly a silly rule, when we're tossing other rules aside because breaking those rules makes money? Does it give faith in a potential future project? I've had games recently with 7+ LGD mechs on a single team, and I find that concerning.

[ScrapIron Prime]

KursedVixen, on 19 September 2023 - 07:06 PM, said:

making engines heavier defeats the purpose... we want extra tonnage not less.

We don't need more tonnage, we need less heartache. A standard 60 rated engine in an Urbanmech doesn't REALLY weigh -2.5 tons. It's listed that way because you have to buy 8 more heat sinks to field it. So just add the 8 more heat sinks inside the engine and make it weight 5.5 tons (which is the lorewarrior cost for a 60 rated engine plus a 1 ton gyro plus a 3 ton cockpit).

Then do a similar adjustment to all other engines under 250 rating. Standard Engines 225-245 add 1 ton, Light and XL add 0.5 ton or 1 ton depending on how the fractions work out. ETC.

The game mechanics don't change at all, but mechs with the tiniest engines are saving some crit slots. ooo. Ahh. In return, no one ever has to worry about the "what do you mean I need more heat sinks" thing ever again. Less heartache, and it can all be accomplished by changing values in the game and a minimum of coding.