Heat Sinks

I think it fits in the current state. IS' advantage is burst/alpha, so they need a higher capacity than the clan mechs in order to be able to do so once or twice, while Clan mechs are mostly about sustained damage -> good dissipation.

I'd like to see SHS get a heat capacity boost though (maybe per heat sink, but more interesting would be per empty critslot). They're supposed to be extremely inferior to DHS but right now it's more like a 1,5 mil tax on almost all IS mechs. 2.0/0.1 or something like +.1 capacity per 3 empty crit slots per heat sink should make SHS builds at least workable in dealing a bit of damage, as long as you don't put in too many (big) weapons.

 

I never said make them good.
I said make them useful. In their current state they have no use in the game, while standard armor/structure do, even though they're still purely inferior.

ES vs Standard: sometimes you don't have the slots for endo in your build and you run standard.
FF vs Standard: see above
DHS vs SHS: No use except to severely undergun yourself and still dissipate heat slower than an upgraded build.

Please don't twist what I say into suggesting that I want SHS on par with DHS or 'good'. I just want the difference to be more in line with the difference between ES/FF and Standard structure/armor (and then scaled to the cost difference of course).

 

I'll continue my opinion on SHS below. First, on-topic:

@Remover of Obstacles : Then that's a problem with the quirk mentality, if it was supposed to be the other way around. Consider that clan mechs can theoretically run much more DHS than IS due to less crit slot usage and often have to run more due to fixed DHS. The increased dissipation will stack up and the capacity will be partially compensated in similar builds, bringing the values closer than they currently seem, but skewing clan mechs to dissipation over time and IS to building up heat and disengaging after alpha strike.

@POOTYTANGOSAUR : You're forgetting that every clan weapon, with the exception of SRMs, spread their damage over a far longer time than IS weapons, so the damage Spike (AKA, "Burst") of a similar loadout is higher for IS. The staggered ACs, LRM rain and stricter ghost heat cap also incorporate that ideal. Additionally, clan weapons have a longer effective range than IS weapons. This means that the fight can be kept at a distance, which is usually a matter of sustained hide and seek while you cool down in cover.

Clan cools down faster, though as you said it's largely counteracted by the fact that they can mount more weapons in general than most IS mechs, in addition to their increased heat and damage per weapon, but the clan mechs with comparable loadouts to IS mechs will outperform them in sustained damage rather than burst. Or at least, they should, before IS' 50% Heat Reduction ERLL quirks kick in.

Now, for the SHS:

Stellar example, the 8 MPL banshee. That's really a great weapon loadout for an assault, with an XL engine and still running slower than 60 kph. Kappa.
Sure it will do some damage if they let you, but that's probably the single niche build in the entire game where SHS are doing a decent job - along with the SDR-5V which can't mount a normal loadout anyway - made especially for finding a use for SHS. Not a great way to support your argument that SHS are 'fine'

Calculation time!

Let's take Endo Steel as our ideal upgrade. Lots of mechs use it, as it is a straight upgrade. However, in some (more than 1) cases the slots don't allow for it, and the upgrade is fairly priced. Since the other options for 'fair upgrade' are FF (barely used unless you have the slots, fits with the price) and

Endo steel costs 200000 - 1 Million and 14 crit slots to lose 1-5t of weight, based on mech weight. For the rest, the performance is the same.

DHS start by having engine sinks that run at 2.0 capacity and dissipation. For the same performance, you're basically already saving 10t and 10 crit slots (regardless of mech weight) of SHS that you don't need to install for 1,5 Million c-bills (assuming a 250+ rating, which is a valid assumption)

So you have already a 24 crit slot advantage, on top of doubled tonnage advantage, for less than double the price, without the effects of regular DHS, free engine slots, etc. Considering that you use around 3 SHS per 2 DHS to maintain roughly equal performance, you need 3 extra crit slots per 2 DHS outside of the engine to maintain the same heat performance. Thus, you'll need 8x2 = 16 outside-engine DHS to have the same critslot disadvantage as endo steel. At the same time you've saved 16*(2/3)= roughly 10 additional tons by not having to install more heat sinks.

Thus, DHS will save at least 4 times as much tonnage as ES at equal critslot cost, while having at least 1,5x the price.

Of course, smaller mechs will never have enough tonnage to support that amount of heat sinks, in fact, many mechs won't have enough space to support that many heatsinks, so there are no loadout-limiting drawbacks from having too little slots. It's also modular, meaning that you can exactly finetune the tonnage/critslot conversion the upgrade essentially embodies, which is much stronger than a fixed tonnage for critslot exchange. It only gets worse when you include the advantages of in-engine DHS vs in-engine SHS.

This shows exactly why SHS to DHS is a mandatory upgrade / new mech tax and currently in a bad spot, but why FF and ES are fine, healthy upgrades for building your mech. If the difference between SHS and DHS were brought more in line with the price of their upgrade (because the other way around - a mandatory upgrade of 4 Million C-Bills - seems like an unhealthy game idea), that would make them a good addition to the game, though still much weaker. In their current iteration they are simply a laughing stock, and make all the stock builds for new players highly unplayable. It doesn't need to be something like the way I suggested, but it needs to be a change.

 

I understand you, but that doesn't mean that I agree with you. There is much more to the game than damage and heat values which you don't account for. Hopefully this is tl;dr enough (try to read the bold parts of the previous post), otherwise lets just agree to disagree. There's no point having an argument if you don't read / want to understand what I write:

- Sub-60 with an XL
- Making it go 65+ immediately invalidates the heat dissipation that you're talking about.
- 5 LPL vs 8 MPL is a 19t weapon loadout difference, enabled by DHS (compare to 4.75t from ES)
- cLPL 13 over 1.12 sec, LPL 11 over 0.67 -> 7.7 vs 11 damage in .67 sec alpha. Burst is about quick localized damage.

The whole issue is that they don't matter to veterans, but stall the game for new players and make every non-upgraded loadout garbage. Loadouts without ES/FF can still function even with ES/FF being clearly superior to standard, while for SHS that only works with 2 specific builds/mechs in the entire game.

@enileph that's exactly why I say the mechanics and not the cost should be updated

 

I guess we value different details and uphold different ideas about how a problem is 'solved'. That something clunkily works by merit of 'duct tape' and workarounds doesn't mean the issue underneath is nullified, but I guess it's good enough for some people (and that many more don't care).

Agreeing to disagree it is.



Back to the topic of the OP, I think that switching the DHS values around or making them the same would pose a problem. If allowed more heat capacity, the Clan mechs could easily outperform IS in both sustained as well as burst damage, especially since (as I've mentioned briefly earlier) they generally sport a few more heat sinks already which would increase their capacity even further. Having more dissipation and less capacity per heat sink instead will give clan mechs a better ability to work with the HPS they generate, while limiting the damage they can do in one to two alphas so IS will not be purely outclassed.