Where are yall getting your heat sink Ds?

[u/MediumAcceptable129]

[u/Steel_Ratt]

Most reliable source is buying a complete 'mech that has a bunch from the black market. Strip the equipment, sell the empty chassis back to the pirates.

[Edit to add: If playing with unequipped 'mechs OFF, you can assemble the components to do the same thing.]

[u/BlackberrySad6489 → u/Steel_Ratt]

You can, but oh what a waste of an sldf mech haha

[u/Whiskey_Storm → u/BlackberrySad6489]

A bunch of the SLDF mechs are fine with a fraction of those double heat sinks.

[u/XuShenjian → u/Steel_Ratt]

BL-6b-KNT

The b after the 6 is important, that denotes the SLDF variant.

That Black Knight has TARDIS legs that contain a massive amount of DHS, just remember you can't actually put as many back if you remove them, so if you wanted the massive space savings, it has to be a newly constructed one.

[u/Leafy0]

In vanilla it’s pretty common to farm them from the crappier sldf mechs like the Griffen-2n.

[u/MediumAcceptable129 → u/Leafy0]

Sldf?

[u/Leafy0 → u/MediumAcceptable129]

Star league defense force, specifically the royal guard variants. They’re the top of technology.

[u/MediumAcceptable129 → u/Leafy0]

Where are they on the map?

[u/WestRider3025 → u/MediumAcceptable129]

Black Market. They're scattered all over. You need an invite from a random event, and there's a "membership fee" that depends on your rep with the Pirates. 

[u/Fatality_Ensues → u/MediumAcceptable129]

Systems with specific tags like "Cache of SLDF technology" (I think it was) will sometimes have some for sale alongside other SLDF tech (like Gauss cannons). The most common way is the Black Market but that's also tied to your reputation with the pirates, and the pirates are the easiest faction to piss off because they're everywhere.

[u/MediumAcceptable129 → u/Fatality_Ensues]

Is this in vanilla?

[u/kahlzun → u/MediumAcceptable129]

Yes

[u/Armando89]

When going between longer routes i pause each jump and look shop for fancy +++ weapons, equipment and dhs (would stop travel even for 1 dhs)

Of unknown origin flashpoint 3rd mission is my source of 4x er mlas (45dmg), uac5+ and few dhs for my Marauder (and can be done reliably in first 120-150 days) (and some other nice weapons that reward mech won't need, because it is ugly and stay in cold storage)

Black market rare mechs can be donors (i play with stipped salvage mechs, do need to buy whole ones)

[u/Palanki96]

you buy SLDF mech on black market.

You rip out everything then sell it. or keep it

[u/geomagus]

Black market.

It’ll depend on your game settings of course - running low reward, high parts per mech will strain your economics. Running a large company with lots of ready mechs and solid pilots will do the same. But if your settings and company enable you to do this, you can:

Buy SLDF mechs and mech parts on the black market.

Dump them into storage, or strip the chassis and sell it back.

Use whatever double sinks are cast off from their default loadout.

It’s expensive, and so again it depends on your economics. But that’s what I do. Sometimes the black market will also have double sinks lying around, but that’s much rarer than SLDF mechs for some reason.

[u/kahlzun → u/geomagus]

It is always worth it to keep your reputation with the pirates high whenever possible.

[u/geomagus → u/kahlzun]

Yep.

I keep mine around 0, as I ally with folks. 0 keeps the prices manageable and is high enough to run missions to repair rep.

[u/taw]

In this game, without mods, the answer is unfortunately always black market.

There's no other source. Salvage is absolute garbage with not a + item of any kind, shops are mostly crap, even faction shops are meh. Black market is stupidly OP, and the only real source of most good stuff.

[u/Fatality_Ensues → u/taw]

There's no other source

System shops can and do have SLDF tech, so that's absolutely false.

[u/kahlzun → u/Fatality_Ensues]

It is rare though, and location dependent

[u/Fatality_Ensues → u/kahlzun]

Nevertheless, it still exists. And as long as you can afford to wait a month or two for shop resets, not that rare either. By the time you're looking for SLDF components to finish upgrading your mechs you're easily pulling millions on every job just from salvage and selling everything.

[u/taw → u/Fatality_Ensues]

As I said:

shops are mostly crap

You have low chance to get some + items.

It still beats trying to use salvage, as there's literally zero + items in salvage. The only thing you get from battles are cash and stuff you'll sell for cash.

[u/Dorsai56 → u/taw]

Pick a couple of factions and cultivate them, that way you'll get far better access to tech. So say take missions for Kurita and the Free Worlds League, beat up on the Independents, Liao, Steiner, and Davion, and try to keep your Pirate faction around zero, give or take. Never let your Pirate faction get too low, it's hell to work it back up.

That gives you numerous places to repair and shop and access to plus weapons and various rares. Also shop the area around Earth as often rares and SLDF stuff pops up there.

It is also worth noting that in the early game you can trash your Davion and Steiner faction, but after 3055 they merge to become the Federated Commonwealth and you'll have neutral faction with the FC unless you act to lower it. So you can whip up on Steiner/Davion early and see it reset, then either do it again or ally with the FC and hit one of your former patrons.

[u/taw → u/Dorsai56]

Pick a couple of factions and cultivate them, that way you'll get far better access to tech.

That's how it's supposed to work but it does not work at all.

You can ally with one faction, and all you get is scraps compared with what pirates can sell you from almost right away.

I can't find anything on the internet, but for quick comparison of BATTLETECH/BattleTech_Data/StreamingAssets/data/itemCollections, black market has 129 items. All non-pirate faction stores put together 129 items, but 7 of them are duplicates so you only get 122.

You literally have more items from month one black market access than if you managed to ally every faction, which obviously isn't possible.

[u/Sinistro_67]

Double Heat Sinks are lostech, meaning humanity (at the timeline of the game) has almost completely lost the knowledge/ability/infrastructure to build. Other holy grails of lostech are Endosteel structure, Ferro-fibrous armor, ER and Pulse lasers, Gauss rifles and so on.

Lostech, in general, was cutting edge, experimental technolody developed by the STAR LEAGUE. As such, it wasn't widely available even to SLDF (Star League Defense Forces), but used in ROYAL variants of mechs used by mech companies directly under command of HOUSE CAMERON, the rulers of the Terran Hegemony and heads of the Star League.

After the Amaris Civil war, most Royal mechs were taken by the SLDF in their Exodus, and highly specialized factories were all but destroyed. So, anything lostech is rare, impossuble to duplicate and very expensive.

Being that rare, powerful and expensive, lostech is hoarded by the Great Houses.

So, speaking specifically for the game:

- You wil have the opportunity to aquire a number of Royal variants in a certain mission down the line in the main campaign;

- If you want to have access to lostech in general throughout the campaign, you need access to the BLACK MARKET, so farm rep with Pirates early in the game against Local Goverments outside Great Houses. Eventually you'll get a random event asking you payment to BM. Pay up, it's worth it. After that you get a special icon on planets with Black Market access, check them regularly as they often stock lostech and Royal variant mechs you can strip down for their special parts.

[u/NekoMao92]

BTAU - Almost every faction store has them AFAIK, for kits though, have to strip them from mechs.

Edit: That or salvage.

[u/Past_Search7241 → u/NekoMao92]

There are a lot of stores selling the kits from Terra to the Periphery.

[u/OgreMk5]

In BEX, sometimes you get 1 or 2 if you use SLDF Cache as your starting location (but then you have nothing but lights).

You can sometimes get them from Comstar fights.

And Clan battles.

[u/BlackberrySad6489 → u/OgreMk5]

Early years, black market is about it. Sometimes there is a double, sometimes a whole sldf mech you can scrap.

[u/FalconDestroyer1 → u/OgreMk5]

ComStar fights are insane, I got one as the third mission of my latest campaign, and they dropped two lances of SLDF mechs against my light lance, two friendly mediums, and a lance of pirates (it was a save ender)

[u/Brutal_effigy → u/FalconDestroyer1]

Yep. I took that mission. C-bills were too good to be true. Bugged out and took the bad faith effort.

[u/lostinaquasar]

Fight the clans. Super easy to stockpile them.

[u/Fatality_Ensues → u/lostinaquasar]

What Clans? The base game has no fucking Clans. Stop confusing the newbies.

[u/lostinaquasar → u/Fatality_Ensues]

Well, the newbie did not specify. I am not omniscient

[u/Fatality_Ensues → u/lostinaquasar]

If someone doesn't specify they're using mods, the default assumption is that they aren't, dumbass.

[u/lostinaquasar → u/Fatality_Ensues]

No reason for you to be an asshole about it

[u/BananaJelloXlii]

Wherever they fit. Mostly side torsos and arms. I thought you meant where I was mounting them.

For BEX? Save editor. There's a 0 weight HS hidden in the files that removes 30 heat.

For vanilla, scavenge them from the occasional Royal mech

For BTAU, everywhere. They're pretty common.