When you take heat into account, it's one of the few times those ACs really start to shine. An AC5 only does medium laser damage, but when you're baking, it generating only 1 heat is great.
Be carefully on pushing heat. There are many ways to turn it against you. Flamers, inferno ammo, or even a engine hit early can cause a thermal run away.
The double heat penalty for movement in XXL engines also catches some off guard. It makes me think that if the cost of the engine weight is that much reduced shielding, then I hope the pilots dont want any children...
The Awesome also has so many heat sinks that it can do a static alpha strike 4 times before having an accuracy penalty. Then to reset you just fire 2 instead of 3 PPCs to get back to 0. that's 140 damage output potential with each heat build and reset cycle.
Great video! Gives me a lot to think about and put into practice. One of the mechs that surprised me the most on the table when it comes to heat is the Orion. It sinks 10 heat, which is the minimum, but it's able to threaten solid damage at all ranges. The AC/10 always had a chance of taking a big chunk of key armor. The SRM4 has good ability to seek crits. The medium lasers give good granularity to tune your heat exactly. And since it's a battle line mech, if you get too hot, you can always go for a punch or kick.
Great analysis as always, I would just point out that mechwarrior skill DRAMATICALLY effects heat management. It's not that big an issue in random tabletop battles where every mechwarrior has 4 gunnery, but if you play extended campaigns lower gunnery is possible. If you're playing a Mechwarrior RPG campaign, player characters can START at 2 gunnery, and might be able to roll 3 dice and keep the best 2 (wouldn't recommend building that way though, since you'll suck at everything els). Every PC will end up with 2 or 3 gunnery eventually, and some will go down to 1 or 0 if the campaign runs long enough. RPG character might also start with 6 or 7 gunnery, so their is a wide variance. That difference in base gunnery makes "heat problem" mechs like the original Phoenix Hawk or Marauder variants a LOT more effective, because they can keep reasonable hit rates while running at extreme heat. On the other hand, ace mechwarriors don't gain much over rookies in mechs with more balanced heat. This is how some mechs with objectively horrible heat management earn reputations as duelists. Ace gunners also do better in mechs that rely on armor over movement for survival, or in those which have jump jets enough to jump out of trouble if they immobilize themselves. With ace gunners, it's generally better to push heat earlier, and to expend ammunition as rapidly as possible. You want to expend ammo early to lower the risk of explosion, or reduce the cost of dumping ammo, and you want to hit higher heat outside of short range because movement penalties matter more at close range where being outflanked is a risk. Because it's safer to run high heat outside flanking range, mechs with their firepower focussed at long and medium range tend to work better for ace gunners. Rookies, on the other hand, suffer least in mechs that are heat neutral. It all boils down to keeping your hit numbers low enough.
Weirdly I think this kind of accounts for the discrepancy folks always point out between the novels and classic. If you think of some of the book characters having better gunnery stats, they can push their heat higher with less downside. I also think many folks don't realize how high you can push your heat when you need to. This definitely opened my eyes a bit.
I notice a lot of folks talk about 'over sink-ed' mechs like its a bad thing. I disagree. I consider it a safety measure against damage. When the battle drags on and you're taking crits to the engine, those extra heat sinks can let you sustain damage/movement despite the extra heat generation. Or if your opponent is utilizing infernos, the extra sinks will make it harder to overheat you. Just another perspective. Food for thought.
This makes more sense if you are talking about generally useful states, where you might want more sinks as opposed to fewer for mobility or consistency purposes, and you should consider damage. Don't pay tonnage to account for engine hits, though.
Great video. Another thought that you may have planned for later but could fit here as well: Sometimes it's acceptable to gain heat to run some ammo bins dry before contact. I know it sounds odd to many but some mechs I WANT to burn through their ammo before fighting gets up close. For example the standard Crusader has nothing but LRM ammo in it's side torsos. You can't hit anything with that close up and it's a liability once they're on you. If the enemy is closing you might be better off firing it then dumping it. YMMV. I also fire off a few rounds from most mechs with SRM-6's at terrain on the way in. (Warhammer and Wolverine for example)
One thing on pushing vs sustain. As you mentioned, it is situation dependent. In a continuous engagement, sustain will be generally better, but there are plenty of scenarios when push or even partial push may work better. Say - hypothetical scenario when you have a mech intercepting a flanker. An enemy pushes from one side, away from the rest of the lance in order to get to the backside of your sniper. So, you intercept him with some fast medium or heavier armed light. In this kind of matchup, there is no point to preserve heat. Even if you push it, your counter-flanker will be far away enough from any action that you should be able to vent in the meantime - and dealing with a flanker early takes priority - you won't have to engage in a wild goose chase, basically tying up your more valuable asset. Another scenario I can think of is a situation when you are reasonably confident that you can finish the target off. Generally, the best idea is to remove as many enemy guns as possible as quickly as possible, no? A word on basic Shadowhawk - while it is true it is an inefficient design in a sense it can't push for more, it is an advantage in certain scenarios. First off - it is what I call a "soldier mech", a "do-it-all" design. And while it is not spectacular by any means, it is a nice enough newbie mech. It lets you try variety of weapon systems, and heat management is never a real problem. This also means, it does not rally care for heat related damage debuffs. Also - if you play around with weather conditions, this built-in heat neutrality is kind of nice when you are running around deserts or any other conditions that negatively impact your heat management. That said, the lack of going beyond what you normally can also means you are pretty much forced into prolonged engagements - and baseline Shadowhawk is not very well armed on the best of days.
12:00 To expand on some of the conditions in which you'd actually want to engage in the 'spike-sink' strategy (it comes up more often in standard rules more than introtech rules), the big one immediately coming to mind are what I refer to as 'poptart toasters' - mechs with exceptionally high heat output that utilize jump jets to move in and out of position to maximize survival while looking to outright delete enemy units before they can act again. A key reason for this is that the heat movement penalties don't apply to jump movement - so even if you spike your heat up to 17, you're effectively just as fast as you were the turn before, meaning you can still reposition for cover or even for physical attacks on turns you're looking to vent your heat. A classic example of this kind of design is the Nova Prime - 12 clan er medium lasers means you can output a staggering 84 points of damage on an alpha strike but if you do so, you jump to 29 heat points all in one turn - you don't risk ammo explosions, but you do risk shutting down. But because a lot of its mobility is based in it's jump jets, even on 'off' turns where you're not firing your weapons, you can still make the decision to exert pressure with physical attacks or fall back to cover and disrupt line of sight for the next round of blasting.
While it's always fun to pick on the most excellent of mechs, the Shadow Hawk, they really aren't designed with competitive play and single battles in mind. A Shad only really shines in a campaign. Which leads me to an interesting question, will you ever go back and the mechs in the context of multiple battles and the dreaded supply chain? Also, you missed THE most important design advantage... Being a Charger. When your only purpose is 'YOLO distraction Carnifex' the entire heat scale can be ignored! Also, it's got crappy weapons and can't overheat anyway. 11/10 best mech.
probably yeah. Once I get around to doing mech spotlight videos and tier list stuff again. Most of my videos are set "in universe" rather than tournament play. I would argue the opposite actually. The Shadow Hawk is a massive Cbill liability. But in a one shot game it's pretty decent because of its low BV. You just run it in like a Charger.
Heat and range vs tonnage/ammo. Altho ac2s shine when you are fighting combined arms against aircraft. Realistically unless there are alternative ammo the lower bv cost of ACs are the only real benefit until you move up to uacs and lbx.
You're not wrong about the AC/2 and AC/5. They have good range and gentle heat output, and that's the end of their advantages. Both of them do very poor damage for their size, weight, and ammo dependency. The AC/2 in particular tends to ruin any mech that mounts one, although a few can overcome this (like the Blackjack which just uses its AC/2s to pass the time while it closes to Medium Laser range). The AC/10 is in the sweet spot. Compared to a PPC, you give up a little range, but keep the damage for much less heat. The PPC would need to be paired with seven heat sinks to match the heat balance of the AC/10, which matches the weight of the AC/10 with two tons of ammo, and the AC/10 is significantly cheaper in BV. The AC/20, of course, is the big boom gun, and is the defining feature of any mech that mounts one. Even LRM-20s will rarely actually do 20 damage, and when they do they'll scatter it across the surface of the target; the AC/20 will spike its damage in a single location, making it much more likely to ruin something important and forcing a piloting check all on its own. There are also special rules for different ammunition types which massively improve basic autocannon (Precision Ammo being the big one), although era restrictions in your playgroup may zone those out.
GAuss ammo can't explode from heat, right? So then gauss rifles would be awesome. Actually Plasma Rifle ammo doesn't explode either i don't think. Same with Chem laser ammo, no? So there's three additional weapons that can be mounted and have no risk as heat goes up...
lol, I suppose it's also the frequency that you have to deal with the number. On the heat chart it's (normally) you picking when you trigger the shutdown roll.
Thanks! Keep it coming! Appreciate it!
Whoa another Super Thanks! Thank you my guy!
More are on their way Commander! I plan to cover everything a player would need to know with this series.
When you take heat into account, it's one of the few times those ACs really start to shine. An AC5 only does medium laser damage, but when you're baking, it generating only 1 heat is great.
Its so hard to balance the other weapons because of the weight requirements tho. D:
@@nerdyOveranalyzed Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Battletech design and gameplay is simple at first, but man, it goes deep.
Be carefully on pushing heat. There are many ways to turn it against you. Flamers, inferno ammo, or even a engine hit early can cause a thermal run away.
yep!
The double heat penalty for movement in XXL engines also catches some off guard. It makes me think that if the cost of the engine weight is that much reduced shielding, then I hope the pilots dont want any children...
@@Colonel_Overkillyou get more heat when walking with an XL Engine? Or is XXL even later tech?
@@Colonel_OverkillYou gotta keep that thermos of coffee warm somehow.
@VictorSteiner XXL is dark age tech.
The Awesome also has so many heat sinks that it can do a static alpha strike 4 times before having an accuracy penalty. Then to reset you just fire 2 instead of 3 PPCs to get back to 0. that's 140 damage output potential with each heat build and reset cycle.
yeah!
Great video! Gives me a lot to think about and put into practice.
One of the mechs that surprised me the most on the table when it comes to heat is the Orion. It sinks 10 heat, which is the minimum, but it's able to threaten solid damage at all ranges. The AC/10 always had a chance of taking a big chunk of key armor. The SRM4 has good ability to seek crits. The medium lasers give good granularity to tune your heat exactly. And since it's a battle line mech, if you get too hot, you can always go for a punch or kick.
Yep! They Orion is quite nice.
Great analysis as always,
I would just point out that mechwarrior skill DRAMATICALLY effects heat management. It's not that big an issue in random tabletop battles where every mechwarrior has 4 gunnery, but if you play extended campaigns lower gunnery is possible. If you're playing a Mechwarrior RPG campaign, player characters can START at 2 gunnery, and might be able to roll 3 dice and keep the best 2 (wouldn't recommend building that way though, since you'll suck at everything els). Every PC will end up with 2 or 3 gunnery eventually, and some will go down to 1 or 0 if the campaign runs long enough. RPG character might also start with 6 or 7 gunnery, so their is a wide variance.
That difference in base gunnery makes "heat problem" mechs like the original Phoenix Hawk or Marauder variants a LOT more effective, because they can keep reasonable hit rates while running at extreme heat. On the other hand, ace mechwarriors don't gain much over rookies in mechs with more balanced heat. This is how some mechs with objectively horrible heat management earn reputations as duelists.
Ace gunners also do better in mechs that rely on armor over movement for survival, or in those which have jump jets enough to jump out of trouble if they immobilize themselves.
With ace gunners, it's generally better to push heat earlier, and to expend ammunition as rapidly as possible. You want to expend ammo early to lower the risk of explosion, or reduce the cost of dumping ammo, and you want to hit higher heat outside of short range because movement penalties matter more at close range where being outflanked is a risk.
Because it's safer to run high heat outside flanking range, mechs with their firepower focussed at long and medium range tend to work better for ace gunners.
Rookies, on the other hand, suffer least in mechs that are heat neutral.
It all boils down to keeping your hit numbers low enough.
Heyyy Cav! Thanks for your insight! It's good to see you again!
Weirdly I think this kind of accounts for the discrepancy folks always point out between the novels and classic. If you think of some of the book characters having better gunnery stats, they can push their heat higher with less downside. I also think many folks don't realize how high you can push your heat when you need to. This definitely opened my eyes a bit.
I notice a lot of folks talk about 'over sink-ed' mechs like its a bad thing. I disagree. I consider it a safety measure against damage. When the battle drags on and you're taking crits to the engine, those extra heat sinks can let you sustain damage/movement despite the extra heat generation. Or if your opponent is utilizing infernos, the extra sinks will make it harder to overheat you.
Just another perspective. Food for thought.
This makes more sense if you are talking about generally useful states, where you might want more sinks as opposed to fewer for mobility or consistency purposes, and you should consider damage. Don't pay tonnage to account for engine hits, though.
You're entitled to an opinion Commander! o7
Great video. Another thought that you may have planned for later but
could fit here as well: Sometimes it's acceptable to gain heat to run some
ammo bins dry before contact. I know it sounds odd to many but some mechs I WANT to
burn through their ammo before fighting gets up close.
For example the standard Crusader has nothing but LRM ammo in it's side torsos.
You can't hit anything with that close up and it's a liability once they're on you.
If the enemy is closing you might be better off firing it then dumping it.
YMMV. I also fire off a few rounds from most mechs with SRM-6's at terrain on the way in.
(Warhammer and Wolverine for example)
yep very good point on mechs like the Crusader! Similar to the dumping concept. You can't explode if there's no ammo there!
Great topic! Heat is one of the defining pillars of BT, so it's great to see a in-depth video about it.
Glad you liked it Commander! o7
One thing on pushing vs sustain.
As you mentioned, it is situation dependent.
In a continuous engagement, sustain will be generally better, but there are plenty of scenarios when push or even partial push may work better.
Say - hypothetical scenario when you have a mech intercepting a flanker. An enemy pushes from one side, away from the rest of the lance in order to get to the backside of your sniper. So, you intercept him with some fast medium or heavier armed light.
In this kind of matchup, there is no point to preserve heat. Even if you push it, your counter-flanker will be far away enough from any action that you should be able to vent in the meantime - and dealing with a flanker early takes priority - you won't have to engage in a wild goose chase, basically tying up your more valuable asset.
Another scenario I can think of is a situation when you are reasonably confident that you can finish the target off. Generally, the best idea is to remove as many enemy guns as possible as quickly as possible, no?
A word on basic Shadowhawk - while it is true it is an inefficient design in a sense it can't push for more, it is an advantage in certain scenarios. First off - it is what I call a "soldier mech", a "do-it-all" design. And while it is not spectacular by any means, it is a nice enough newbie mech. It lets you try variety of weapon systems, and heat management is never a real problem. This also means, it does not rally care for heat related damage debuffs.
Also - if you play around with weather conditions, this built-in heat neutrality is kind of nice when you are running around deserts or any other conditions that negatively impact your heat management.
That said, the lack of going beyond what you normally can also means you are pretty much forced into prolonged engagements - and baseline Shadowhawk is not very well armed on the best of days.
Great video and super informative as usual. Best Battletech channel on the 'Tube.
Ayy Zahreel! Thanks again for your kind words.
Great video, love this series : )
Glad you enjoy it!
Wahoo!! Building up my 3rd Armored MacCarrons atm would love to see a video on thr Banshee and/or Wraith
Not sure when that would come around! But I do know the wraith is a very good mech (was taken in a Clan Invasion tournement)
12:00
To expand on some of the conditions in which you'd actually want to engage in the 'spike-sink' strategy (it comes up more often in standard rules more than introtech rules), the big one immediately coming to mind are what I refer to as 'poptart toasters' - mechs with exceptionally high heat output that utilize jump jets to move in and out of position to maximize survival while looking to outright delete enemy units before they can act again.
A key reason for this is that the heat movement penalties don't apply to jump movement - so even if you spike your heat up to 17, you're effectively just as fast as you were the turn before, meaning you can still reposition for cover or even for physical attacks on turns you're looking to vent your heat.
A classic example of this kind of design is the Nova Prime - 12 clan er medium lasers means you can output a staggering 84 points of damage on an alpha strike but if you do so, you jump to 29 heat points all in one turn - you don't risk ammo explosions, but you do risk shutting down.
But because a lot of its mobility is based in it's jump jets, even on 'off' turns where you're not firing your weapons, you can still make the decision to exert pressure with physical attacks or fall back to cover and disrupt line of sight for the next round of blasting.
Awesome tutorial!
Glad you liked it!
While it's always fun to pick on the most excellent of mechs, the Shadow Hawk, they really aren't designed with competitive play and single battles in mind. A Shad only really shines in a campaign. Which leads me to an interesting question, will you ever go back and the mechs in the context of multiple battles and the dreaded supply chain?
Also, you missed THE most important design advantage... Being a Charger. When your only purpose is 'YOLO distraction Carnifex' the entire heat scale can be ignored! Also, it's got crappy weapons and can't overheat anyway. 11/10 best mech.
probably yeah. Once I get around to doing mech spotlight videos and tier list stuff again. Most of my videos are set "in universe" rather than tournament play.
I would argue the opposite actually. The Shadow Hawk is a massive Cbill liability. But in a one shot game it's pretty decent because of its low BV. You just run it in like a Charger.
Hello, Slime Commander!
hello!
A buddy of mine likes to say you're paying for the entire heat scale, so you might as well use it.
i mean as long as you dont have ammo ...might as well ....pilot are cheap after all
Very true!
@@nerdyOveranalyzed .........................i mean the explain firetruck........when you need to hose someone out....
Heat management is one of the most defining elements of Battletech combat, setting it apart from other sci-fi / mech settings!
What are some of the advantages of ballistic weapons? It seems like you pay a lot for them because ammo is heavy, takes up space, and explosive.
Not much unless you're using the AC/20. The AC/10 may be viable but the AC/5 and AC/2 seem to be quite bad imo.
I think (I could be wrong) in a campaign they're more easily available. So it might help in a roleplaying version of the game.
Not really, except for alternate ammo in some cases.
Heat and range vs tonnage/ammo. Altho ac2s shine when you are fighting combined arms against aircraft. Realistically unless there are alternative ammo the lower bv cost of ACs are the only real benefit until you move up to uacs and lbx.
You're not wrong about the AC/2 and AC/5. They have good range and gentle heat output, and that's the end of their advantages. Both of them do very poor damage for their size, weight, and ammo dependency. The AC/2 in particular tends to ruin any mech that mounts one, although a few can overcome this (like the Blackjack which just uses its AC/2s to pass the time while it closes to Medium Laser range).
The AC/10 is in the sweet spot. Compared to a PPC, you give up a little range, but keep the damage for much less heat. The PPC would need to be paired with seven heat sinks to match the heat balance of the AC/10, which matches the weight of the AC/10 with two tons of ammo, and the AC/10 is significantly cheaper in BV.
The AC/20, of course, is the big boom gun, and is the defining feature of any mech that mounts one. Even LRM-20s will rarely actually do 20 damage, and when they do they'll scatter it across the surface of the target; the AC/20 will spike its damage in a single location, making it much more likely to ruin something important and forcing a piloting check all on its own.
There are also special rules for different ammunition types which massively improve basic autocannon (Precision Ammo being the big one), although era restrictions in your playgroup may zone those out.
Gotta rip out that AC on the poor shadowhawk.
GAuss ammo can't explode from heat, right? So then gauss rifles would be awesome. Actually Plasma Rifle ammo doesn't explode either i don't think. Same with Chem laser ammo, no? So there's three additional weapons that can be mounted and have no risk as heat goes up...
Haha... different games have different philosophies about risk. I'm mostly into Blood Bowl, where 8.3% is terrifying lol.
lol, I suppose it's also the frequency that you have to deal with the number. On the heat chart it's (normally) you picking when you trigger the shutdown roll.
The joys of failing an 8.3% chance when it doesn’t immediately end your turn.
@@nerdyOveranalyzed the Turnover Rule is the really scary bit. If you fail an action, in most cases it ends your team turn.
Heat is what prevents Energy weapons becoming OP.
yes!
Overall pretty good. Ummm... Lots of umms, ahhh, and umms tho. Your presentations would be inproved if you worked to eliminate them.
We need an "Uh" counter in the next video, please.