Only 5 Free Heatsinks

[blueratel413]

Anyone who plays Battletech often complains that energy weapons are too good. The problem isn't that their weight-to-heat ratio isn't balanced in isolation but out of isolation the internal heatsinks mean it becomes way too good. I will focus on CBT because DHS makes these issues worse.

Let me show you the math.
Name, Damage, Heat, Weapon Weight, Total Weight after heat neutral, DMG/Weight Ratio
SL, 3 DMG, 1 Heat, 0.5 tons, 1.5 tons, 3/1.5 = 2
ML, 5 DMG, 3 Heat, 1 tons, 4 tons, 5/4 = 1.25
LL, 8 DMG, 8 Heat, 5 tons, 13 tons, 8/13 = 0.61
PPC, 10 DMG, 10 Heat, 7 tons, 17 tons. 10/17 = 0.59

Note: I have included enough ammo for 20 shots and used HBS damage values 5/8/12/20
AC2, 5 DMG, 1 Heat, 6 tons, 0.5 ton ammo, 7.5 tons, 5/7.5 = 0.66
AC5, 8 DMG, 1 Heat, 8 tons, 1 ton ammo, 10 tons, 8/10 = 0.80
AC10, 12 DMG, 3 Heat, 12 tons, 2 tons ammo, 17 tons, 12/17 = 0.70
AC20, 20 DMG, 7 Heat, 14 tons, 4 tons ammo, 25 tons, 20/25 = 0.80

Note: I include enough enough ammo for 20 shots.
SRM2, 0-4 DMG, 2 Heat, 1 ton, 0.5 tons ammo, 3.5 tons, 2/3.5 = 0.57
SRM4, 0-8 DMG, 3 Heat, 2 tons, 1 ton ammo, 6 tons, 4/6 = 0.66
SRM6, 0-12 DMG, 4 Heat, 3 tons, 1 ton ammo, 8 tons, 6/8 = 0.75
LRM5, 0-5 DMG, 2 Heat, 2 tons, 1 tons ammo, 5 tons, 2.5/5 = 0.5
LRM10, 0-10 DMG, 4 Heat, 5 tons, 2 tons ammo, 11 tons, 5/11 = 0.45
LRM15 0-15 DMG, 5 Heat, 7 tons, 2.5 tons ammo, 14.5 tons. 7.5/14.5 = 0.52
LRM20, 0-20 DMG, 6 Heat, 10 tons, 3.5 tons ammo, 19.5 tons, 10/19.5 = 0.51

All of them have reasonable Damage to weight ratios, those with lower ratios have the bonus of being harder hitting or hitting further. The problem is that the 10 internal heat sinks are too much, it leaves any mech with AC oversinked (consider the WVR-6R generates a max of 13 heat if they jump and alpha with 12 heat sinks) and makes energy weapons from good to great.
SL, 3 DMG, 1 Heat, 0.5 tons, 0 tons, 3/0.5 = 6
ML, 5 DMG, 3 Heat, 1 tons, 0 tons, 5/1 = 5
LL, 8 DMG, 8 Heat, 5 tons, 0 tons, 8/5 = 1.6
PPC, 10 DMG, 10 Heat, 7 tons, 0 tons. 10/7 = 1.43

In comparison, the damage to weight values for AC.
AC2, 5 DMG, 1 Heat, 6 tons, 0.5 ton ammo, 6.5 tons, 5/6.5 = 0.77
AC5, 8 DMG, 1 Heat, 8 tons, 1 ton ammo, 9 tons, 8/9 = 0.88
AC10, 12 DMG, 3 Heat, 12 tons, 2 tons ammo, 14 tons, 12/14 = 0.85
AC20, 20 DMG, 7 Heat, 14 tons, 4 tons ammo, 18 tons, 20/18 = 1.11

My fan rule change is reducing the free heat sinks from 10 to 5. Every other rule stays the same. You still get an extra free heat sink for every 25 engine ratings above 250 and need to place an internal sink for below 250. DHS still double the heatsinks. 5 free heat sinks instead of 10 means that the choice to jump or run is a choice instead of hopping around like a bunny on crack.
What do you all think?

[Speedbump]

Your damage to rate ratio calculation is slightly underestimating missiles(a little more than half the missiles hit on average) and more importantly the comparison appears to be completely ignoring range. The AC5 isn't competing against medium lasers, it's competing against PPCs and it a lesser extent LRMs. Now it's perfectly valid to say that you want ballistic weapons to have a better damage to weight ratio than energy weapons because ammo explosions are a devestating weakness in a pre-CASE techbase, but if you're doing that you probably need to buff missiles as well. Side note, but HBS battletech made a slight tweak to internal structure insure you needed the equivalent of 12.1 damage to destroy a fully armoured head so that the AC10 wasn't a headcapper. You don't necessarily have to do the same, but I thought it was worth pointing out for anyone borrowing those numbers.

As for reducing base heat sinks, it won't necessarily break anything, but it will make armour even better vs weapons as a design trade off in a game where alot of people already recommend you take near max armour as the first thing on a new design. Do you want to slow a game down such that two assault mech slugging away at eacher takes even longer? If you actively want mechs to feel more like titanic war machines that take alot of beating to finish off then fair enough, but historically alot of the advanced equipment introduced on both sides of the Clan invasion seems to have been designed to push things to be more lethal to speed games up.

Also, tweaking base heatsink numbers is one of those changes where you basically have to redesign most mechs if you want them to make sense and even if you don't you need to re-write every record sheet. That shouldn't stop you from doing it if that work will improve your game enough, but if you're at that point you're also at the point where you can do things like tweak tonnage values for weapons at the same time.

[Daryk]

I approached the problem this way: https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,62762.0.html

Granted, that really only partially ameliorates it...

[Zematus737]

Considering the Wolverine, as a 55 ton mech is getting 11 spaces in the engine for free non-crit space heat sinks, it is hardly the best example of heat efficiency being too good as it is an excellent candidate for high heat weaponry by its engine size and high rate of movement that overcomes the short fall of laser range and lack of custom ammo options.  Double heat sinks will take up 3 slots for Inner Sphere, possibly causing many fitting issues with larger mechs and their load-outs getting tighter and tighter.  The wolverine can fit the doubles, but, like I said, it is a good engine size for it's weapons and weight.  Not the best example of a laser platform as a baseline for comparison, as it's only sporting 1 med laser and the rest is low heat A/C.  The WVR-7K is the better example, but you'll see it is forced to use the XL engine to support the weight of the loadout and remains mostly a player within short range engagements.

The 10, while being free, still demands that engine rating division of 25 to find the amount of free sinks that don't require critical slots.  The Wolvering at 275/25=11 is probably not the fairest example of free sinks being OP.  While other mechs have to remain with a tight weight restriction on their loadouts, and the larger mechs worry with critical space limitations, medium mechs have a unique position to diversify their options in a much less stressful way.

[RifleMech]

I don't think that would help as it would invalidate designs that were maxed out of crit space and weight. What would help is to make ballistics more competitive against energy weapons and I think the key to that resides in the old Solaris VII Override Delay rules. Basically rapid fire.

Solaris VII has 2.5 second turns and weapons can only fire so often as they need to cool. They can override that at a risk. In BT time the AC/2 can fire 4 times without delay. The AC/5 can fire twice.

This rule does apply to energy weapons too but there's the heat. Each weapon generates heat when it's fired plus the heat times it's Override Delay number. The AC/2 has a Overide delay of 0. If can fire 4 times per BT turn generating 4 points of heat with no further problems. The AC/5 has a delay of 1. It can fire twice per BT turn with no problems for 2 heat.  To fire 3 times that third shot would generate 1 heat + (1 heat x Overide #) for 2 heat and then have to roll for any damage, which would be a +2 +O# for a +3. Get that and the AC/5 is toast and you have to roll for to see if the ammo explodes which is a +6.

For a Large Laser with an Override # of 2 would generate 8 heat for firing, plus 16 heat for overriding the delay for a total of 24 heat. A PPC with an O#3 would generate 40 heat if it fired twice per turn. A and an ER PPC would generate 60 heat! Those heat numbers aren't something a mech with DHS is going to want to do very often. If ever! This rule makes the AC/5 is very competitive with the PPC and the AC/2 with the LL. At least as long as the ammo lasts.

Where the Override Delay would need work converting to BT scale is the time. (And to include all weapons.) Technically any weapon with a Override delay of 2 or less can fire twice a BT 10 second turn. So the rule would need some tweaking to avoid keeping track of quarter turns.

Large Laser with Override 2
10 second BT Turn
2.5 sec, 2.5 sec,  2.5 sec,   2.5 sec
Fire!       Wait,       Wait,      Fire!

Still, the LL firing twice a turn generates 16 heat generate per BT turn. That's crippling with SHS and rough for DHS if you want to fire anything else. But for ballistics, especially the lighter ones, it's a huge help. With this rule mechs like the Vulcan and Blackjack aren't just for plinking, and the Shadow Hawk isn't in a hurry to ditch it's AC for a PPC. And AC carriers like the JagerMech, Pike and Partisan get scary. Even the Urbie gets more dangerous as the AC/10 can fire twice per round with no problem.

[PuppyLikesLaserPointers]

What do you all think?

I don't think that it's meaningful at all, for it results almost nothing positive, but have a bunch of negatives.

All it does is, just adds +5 tons for DHS mechs/ASFs when they want to reduce 20 heat per turn. At this, still starting to 150 grade engine DHS uses smaller internal size in overall compared by single heat sink, while it's still weights 10 tons less, and still leaves SHS inferior to DHS.

Also I worry that it only makes the weaker units even worse. Yes it reduces the performance of units with DHS, but it's a flat 5 tons reduction, means while the heavier units are not so affected by that too much but the lighter chassis such as medium and light units are suffer a fatal blow with this. For a 100 tons, 5 tons is mere a 5%, but for a 50 tons, it's 10%. For 25 tons? It's 20%. While the endo steel frame gives spare weight to the same chassis by 5 tons, 2.5 tons and 1.0 ton.

And it allows a glitch, that DHS uses smaller internal size on a 75 or more grade engine than a SHS and also has 5 tons less when you want to reduce 10 heat per turn, means for the unit with low heat that don't needs to reduce more than 10 heat and smaller engine DHS is even better with this while units with SHS would be required to change the heat sink to DHS or thirst for more spare space and weight. Yes it means even for just reduce 10 heat DHS is still far better choice.

So, seriously, I don't think that it's something good enough, and also the side effect would be too dangerous as well. Especially for the weaker units.

edit: I have a suggestion for the alternative solution for this. What about to limit the free heat sink for DHS only, while you are need to have 10 heat sinks at least anyways? Although it doesn't do much for the superiority of DHS, and it still have the problem for weaken the lighter chassis with DHS so it needs more to fix those problems, but at least it doesn't harm the chassis with SHS.

[Grand_dm]

I think the best solution would just be to make ballistics better for Fan campaigns.

If you need a weapon, ammo and potentially Case they should be more competitive for all that investment.

Back in the 90s, the black summer of DHS virtually ruined our Battletech campaigns. ML spam was everywhere because of DHS in engines.

[PuppyLikesLaserPointers]

I think the best solution would just be to make ballistics better for Fan campaigns.

If you need a weapon, ammo and potentially Case they should be more competitive for all that investment.

Back in the 90s, the black summer of DHS virtually ruined our Battletech campaigns. ML spam was everywhere because of DHS in engines.

Perhaps that is the answer. AC is too weak compared by its various problem. Even for the advanced ACs are not so feasible I think. Still, about the time DHS is available CASE is available too, although they needs CASE II to be properly functional.

[DevianID]

So energy weapons being too good is not solved with fewer heat sinks.  No matter the 'free' heatsinks being 5 or 10, the energy weapon efficiency is the issue.  17 tons for a 0 heat PPC+sinks is less then 19 tons for 2 AC5s and HS+ammo.

The 'fix' to energy weapons lies in the BV system.  We no longer balance by tonnage, so the fact that the PPC is a tad more efficient after HS saturation when balancing by tonnage doesnt matter.  What matters is that 2 ac5s and a ton of ammo is cheaper, in BV, then 1 PPC, because the AC5s have ammo and ammo explosions that drag the BV down (which is good and appropriate).

HBS battletech, the video game, does not balance by BV, but instead balances by tonnage.  In that game, the strongest build is 4 100 ton mechs, and the game is coded to ramp up the players tonnage, trading fast light things for things with more tonnage as a clear upgrade, because tonnage is king in that system.  And in a tonnage balanced video game, they felt they had to buff AC weapons and make energy weapons hotter, due to tonnage balance reasons.  They also massively reduced visual LOS, making long range much weaker because the AI has a hard time dealing with sniping tactics, so the valid tactic of sniping with weak, but longer ranged guns like the ac2 doesnt exist in that video game.

Now, if you dont play a lot with BV, then yes you will find the same issues with a mech like a Jagermech.  However, the Jagermech in BV balanced games is quite good, its ~900 BV, but has 24 sustained damage, and for the same cost or cheaper then many medium or even light mechs.  Its cheaper then a centurion, for example, but outranges the centurion and has almost the same total amount of armor and structure.

Now, even with BV, the BV system is in need of an update.  I have gone on at quite a length about what should be Errata'd for BV to improve the formula.  However, I play a lot of BV balanced games, and I can say very confidently that ACs, like the 5/2, are UNDERCOSTED when using the alternate ammos available to them.  So as soon as you advance past beginner box/intro tech, the AC class of weapon is very deadly.  Flak ammo, available in 3025 but like all alternate ammo not part of introductory tech, makes AC2/5 guns very potent vehicle and plane hunters.  Further, the Flak ac2 is the most efficient anti infantry weapon in 3025, dealing the most damage at long range in that era for the tonnage, let alone the battle value, until you reach range 3 where flamers become amazing.  So while ac2s may feel underwhelming in an introtech mech v mech game, even just using standard rules in 3025, with vehicles and infantry and such, immediately shows why ac2s and 5s are fine, as they are class leading weapons against non-mech targets.

[Grand_dm]

BV is so imperfect though. Any savings for ballistics still don't equal the efficiency of DHS laser spam once mechs hit the game table.

[DevianID]

BV is so imperfect though. Any savings for ballistics still don't equal the efficiency of DHS laser spam once mechs hit the game table.

In what way?  Again, if you are balancing by BV, 5 damage is 5 damage.  But 5 energy damage is more expensive then 5 ballistic damage.  So a mech with 12 machine guns is cheaper then a mech with 8 small lasers, but both have the same damage output.

If you are using tonnage as part of the argument, then 12 machine guns and 1 ton of ammo, versus 14 small lasers, well the small lasers now have more points total in offense.  So, for the same BV, you just get more points in armor or more units when using machine guns instead of small lasers.  A big folly is that the unit with more damage (per same tonnage) is better... but because we dont balance by tonnage, efficient ballistic mechs (and more of them, because they are cheaper), often wins versus max damage laser boats.

On the flip side, its easy to make 'bad' ballistic mechs.  Too much ammo, not enough ammo, ammo poorly placed, ect.  Like, 2 machine guns and 1 ton of ammo is poor optimization because of the ammo bomb.  Or 5+ tons of ammo for one gun, like on some gauss or ac20 units.  The flipside for energy mechs is usually not enough heat sinks, like on the Nova prime which is hilariously over weapon'd.  The nova prime would be a much stronger mech by turning 6 of those ER medium lasers into an lb2x, or literally anything other then that much laser overheat.

[Charistoph]

Perhaps that is the answer. AC is too weak compared by its various problem. Even for the advanced ACs are not so feasible I think. Still, about the time DHS is available CASE is available too, although they needs CASE II to be properly functional.

Pfft, I think Clan CASE should be the standard, honestly.  Then CASE would have the rules for CASE II.  CASE II is then moved so that the single Structure point of Damage just doesn't happen.  CASE III then improves the situation by reducing Pilot Damage by 1.

Still not perfect for ACs.  The Mass/Damage/Range paradigm for Autocannons under the 20 are just off.