I think everyone agrees single heat sinks are garbage on nearly every mech in the game. Even on the mechs they're ok on double heat sinks are better. They simply have no redeeming characteristics. I'm thinking this was on purpose to force players to spend cbills, but it does make me wonder how single heat sinks could be made viable. Even something as simple as decreasing their weight to .5 or .75 tons, including engine heat sinks, might make them useful on some builds.
I think maybe an increased capacity in exchange for decreased dissipation. You can fire maybe 2 alphas instead of 1 with a certain build if you use SHS over DHS, but afterwards you'll have to cooldown more. DHS will still be better, which should be the point anyway, but gives SHS a bit of a purpose and newer players (who might not have installed them yet) a larger limit before going into overheat.
The Wubanshee and the Boomphract are the two most effective single heat sink builds that I can think of. Oh an the Longshot Cicada Pretty much anything with only Gauss or something with enough tonnage capacity to fit an obscene amount (like the Wubanshee). But even then, the extra heat dissipation and heat cap. Isn't EXTREMELY better than its DHS counterpart.
I have no idea how to fix it, but when every single build is a DHS build, something is definitely wrong.
The problem is that despite taking up 3x the space (2x the space for clans) and only being twice as effective while engine mounts so that those outside only get 1.4x heat, a double heat sink still only weighs one ton. It's stupidly hard to make something with the same weight and those kinds of benefits balance out. But I'll betya money that if they weighed even 1.25-1.5 tons per DHS, there'd be some parity.
Why is this even a problem? It's not inconceivable that a game have something that's a clear upgrade over something else. Name competitive builds that don't include endo, or one good reason to take ferro over endo. It's natural for us to min/max, and DHS are just plain old better. Sure, perhaps if there were some bonus to SHS some people would take them, but why worry? It's not really impacting the game, other than DHS being an effective increase to the cost of an effective mech. (on a side note, this was always the case in table top too. A mech that mounted DHS was plain old better than if it mounted SHS).
As triforceelf said.... Why do we need to do anything??? They are not supposed to be competitive as one is a direct upgrade over the other just with a disadvantage tagged on - more space used - and with a cost. Progression.
Just let SHS die. The upgrade of DHS is meant to be a cbill sink. Even in the lore DHS is clearly a better tech (much better when it i true 2x function in lore/TT)
And what is wrong with them as an isk sink? Why recalculate all earnings just to accomodate removing single heat sinks because thats what you'd need to do? Frankly I want more maps etc not for core items to battletech to be removed.
Nothing wrong with everyone going DHS. Stop trying to so-called "save the crap" and let it be the cbill sink it is meant to be how. Stop being a lore-puppy. I don't want it to be removed. I am just saying that we don't have to do anything to change the status quo.
Thats my point ...... so confused by the lore-puppy reference (if that was aimed at me). This was your opener btw:
I understand the confusion now. No it is not aimed at you, more like, aiming at the general topic. And you know how I hate people trying to advocate SHS for the sake of lore (with exception of a few extremely rare builds that are actually functioning better than the DHS counterpart) Indeed it does seem like we are having a convo. *fixed*