Posted 06 July 2013 - 05:35 PM

Something that has come up as a very frustrating aspect of building a mech has been the minimum requirement of 10 heat sinks no matter what engine or chassis or type of heat sink used. This has made it so mechs who run very small engines and very low heat builds have to make room for 1 or more unnecessary (in terms of performace) heat sinks. This is especially an issue on the light mechs: commando, spider, and raven; medium mechs: blackjacks (sans BJ-1x), and to a lesser extent hunchbacks (very slow ones); and the unreleased phoenix mech, locust.I realized that the 10 heat sink minimum must be a staple of tabletop, as I have not come across a stock loadout with less than 10 for any mech. However this limit, as far as I know, is not explained in lore, which makes its inclusion in MWO very frustrating (It turns out I am wrong about this, even if a standard 170 engine only has 6 engine heat sinks the mech still needs 4 more external heat sinks to run. Usually the weight of these additional sinks is included in the weight, but in mwo the weight is not included and there are no "weightless" heatsinks in mwo).I believe that removal of this minimum would allow for more competitive builds for certain underpowered mechs in comparison to others in their weight class. For example, the ravens 2X and 4X are undeniably much less effective than the 3L, largely due to their low engine limit. The 4X especially would benefit from this change due to its ballistic slots and (usually) low heat builds. Without a minimum heat sink limit one could opt for a ballistics based build such as the silly yet reasonably powerful gauss raven. With virtually no heat the tonnage and slots saved by the no longer required 2 or more heat sinks could make the variant more deadly and comparable with the 3L (there's other issues with the 2X and 4X but this would certainly help).The potential issues I see with this change are with the commando and spider (and locust) chassis. Both mechs can and have been used to great success under the current system and the commando already has impressive firepower ratings for its low weight. The removal of the heat sink minimum could give these mechs critical tonnage and slot improvements which could push them over the edge to being too good, but I think that is still unlikely. Both mechs can use relatively hot laser-heavy loadouts and would probably want 10+ heat sinks anyway, and those that don't would most likely only use the extra space for more ammo and/or electronic equipment. The only potential problem variant I see under the proposed removal of the minimum is the commando 2D which has decently low heat and has trouble currently finding space and tonnage for armor, ammo and ecm. 3 streaks and 1 medium laser does generate a little bit of heat though, and its not unheard of for the mech to overheat with 10 double heat sinks, so perhaps 10 DHS would still be optimal.As for heavies and assaults dropping to very low engine limits and benefiting even more with the increased tonnage with the lack of heat sinks, I do not see that to be a problem. With the vastly increased firepower coming from that (silly) decision comes rediculously low speed and therefore survivability. Also excluding 3+ gauss rifle builds, those mechs would probably require a decent number of heat sinks anyway.So sorry about the wall of text but I have put a lot of thought into this and I really think this change would benefit certain chassis which are having a bit of trouble in the current game. Again, if I am missing some lore that explains the minimum or missing some criminally overpowered build which would arise from the change, let me know.

Edited by Wilson, 07 July 2013 - 08:48 AM.