Part 18: Sortie 18 - "Terrible Decisions"

Sortie 18 - "Terrible Decisions"

Well boys and girls, summer is here, and you know what that means! High temperatures, beach trips, and travel! Yep, that's the life.

Or you could be like me and perch yourself in front of the air conditioner with a big fan on and wonder why you ever moved below the 45th parallel, in between loudly cursing at whatever horrible sky gods you can think of. But hey, we can experience those first three things in a giant robot in this next set of missions, and isn't that just an overall improvement?

Today I'm back with JamieTheD and motoh, who at the very least give me alternative things to loudly curse at, when they're not being horrible memelords. And for when you're done with that, have a little bonus of the magical missile immune aircraft carrier bridge that I mentioned.




As for today's winner, dis astranagant showed us who the true newtype is by correctly identifying last time's suit as the Hi-Nu Gundam from the Mobile Suit Gundam novel Beltorchika's Children. The lesser of suits to headline that book but I'm afraid the PS2 just could not handle rendering the glory that is the Nightingale.

Though if the lack of DLC updates for Extreme Versus are any indication, neither is the PS3.





So since I was just moaning about the heat, what better time to discuss Radiators and Heat?

Compared to legs, radiators in Armored Core 2 and Another Age are an incredibly simple affair, with only two unique stats to them, and they're basically the same damn thing.



Cooling: The 'standard' cooling rate for the radiator. Basically this is the base rate at which you dissipate heat at all times, from pistol rounds to plasma bolts.

Forced Cooling: How much extra heat you start dissipating once you start overheating, which starts once you hit Output Down, at which point your AP starts dropping rapidly until you go back to minimum heat.

And that's it! It's just a matter of how much heat you let off after you've taken fire. But of course that's not all there is to heat, so let's talk a bit more about one more aspect of heat - the 'cooling' stats on body parts



This is kind of a weird, esoteric stat that I think everyone took for granted Hell, even I didn't understand it until I started doing Rigorous Hardcore Testing for this writeup. Cooling on parts does not effect heat dissipation, despite what I and probably every guide written on this game has said. That's a strictly radiator only thing. What cooling on parts does do is affect where your threshold for Output Down and Danger Heat are. So the more cooling your parts have, the more hits you can take before you start getting close to that dangerous Output Down threshold. Comparing between two ACs, one stacked for max cooling on body parts and one specced for minimum, the max cooling AC can take almost 40% more heat damage before hitting the danger zone.

As for the stat itself, this cooling stat is another one of those stats that varies wildly, even between weight classes and types. Often lighter parts tend to have higher cooling, as a means to balance the fact that heavier ACs which would use heavier parts would have more extra weight to spare for a better radiator and not have to worry about energy costs quite as much. But the spread is so out there that no matter what your preference is, there's at least something in your range that has the stats you'll want

So, when it comes down to it, what's really important when it comes down to picking a radiator?

I'm gonna be honest, for me, it's weight, all the way. If playing a lighter weight AC, every point matters, and a lot of times, you don't have the luxury of getting a nice radiator when you're sitting right on the maximum weight barrier. But like so many other things, it domes down to a variety of factors. If you're going lightweight, can you afford the extra weight? Are the energy costs cutting into your ability to spit plasma at everyone? Or are you a super tank build who can spare the weight but at the risk of overheating more often? Those are personal choices, but don't think that you even have to invest in a radiator at all.

It's not like I haven't been using the baseline model since AC2 mission one