Killkie, on 03 November 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:
Any of these games and decisions are about increasing performance margins. Upgrades in games are about small boosts to margins.
doubling effectiveness would be a huge boost to margins. There would be no trade off, everyone would have double heatsinks. Already they are the most effective upgrade because you get at least 10 of them for free, without the need to place them in hardpoints.
I don't think you get it- but DHS are supposed to be the standard, and SHS the "budget-cheap" version of a cooling system.
Canonically, 3049 marks the point where Battlemechs take a step forward (or rather, forward again to where they were)- it would be like if we suddenly lost so much tech we went from jet fighters to WWII-style propeller ones. Sorta like the late 1940's/early 1950's (hey, funny that) where we started developing jet-engine aircraft, things like the DHS, Gauss Rifle, pulse lasers and ER weaponry began to make itself known. Just in time, too.
The Clans did what an armed force full of Korean War-era MiGs would pull on a force defending with old WWII aircraft- shot the existing defenders to pieces on a vastly superior basis- if they'd had comparable numbers, they'd have obliterated their opponents.
In the process, the Inner Sphere threw their old-tech designs in huge numbers into said meat grinder- with the result that most of them were turned into sausage even as they used the delaying tactics to push out upgraded versions and field refits.
By the late 3050's, old-tech machines, including ones commonly using single heat sinks had rapidly become the exception on the battlefield, mostly assigned to podunk militias or refit to newer standards. The double heat sink was actually the most common upgrade of the bunch (along with ferro-fibrous armor)- because modern warfare functioned at a higher baseline than the primitive, barely-buildable machines of the Succession Wars that marked the 3039 -> 2800 era of "lostech".
The single heat sink designs of old were literally blown out of warfare, either refitted into modern tech or scrapped by combat as newer, better designs marched off the assembly lines. There was no "sidegrade" discussions. SHS were inferior in most cases, DHS were the new standard and all 'Mechs were built with that base 20 heat removed/10 seconds standard in mind.
PGI's idea that somehow DHS should be a "sidegrade" is an A-1 method of leaving nearly every stock design to come that's 3050-era even worse than the stock Trial 'Mechs we see used in MWO today, and hampers or cripples heavier 'Mech designs even with customs using that technology.
People buying older 3025-era variants SHOULD be upgrading them quickly to DHS without much thought. It's what's supposed to happen anyway. Instead, later-tech chassis are given 70% their default heat removal while 3025 era ones get 100%, and the "upgrade" is functionally useless for assaults who desperately needed it.
Quote
If heatsinks were 2.0 heat disipation, then assault mechs would be marginallized out of the game because the hardpoint space is so limited. Why have an assault mech which can't cram in all these DHS's when you can just throw them on a Cat and add a decent weapons loadout?
I support the 1.4 setup for the game balance. Otherwise, the whole game will turn in to a jenner/hunchback circle jerk.
You apparently fail to realize that the less efficient a DHS becomes, the worse they are for heavier designs and the easier they are for lighter ones? Poorer DHS actually make the light/medium better off than the big guys.