MeiSooHaityu, on 27 May 2015 - 03:46 AM, said:
You answered part of it in your own statement above. Two high mount energy. You could mount LLasers, LPLasers, ER or standard PPCs. I think one Cataphract even has PPC quirks.
If you still consider the ballistics the main weapon. The 0XP only had one ballistic where most other Cataphracts have 2 or 3. The other Phracts that don't, again have better weapon locations a long with strong ballistic and energy quirks.
The structure and armor are a way too offset less than ideal weapon locations, but without buffing the weapons too much because of the ECM.
Aye, not disagreeing with anything you write. Just to explain what I mean, when I think about main weapon I am thinking about one "volley", be that of whatever type it may. For example, the main weapon of my 0XP would be 2x LPL and 1x AC/20. In the case of the 0XP the location of these 3 hardpoints are not optimal, but also not the worst. You can protect them all with the left side, and you can side-poke, or slope-side-poke rather OK.
All other Cataphracts suffer approximately the same amount of nuisance from hardpoint placements imo. You can place one "half-volley" on the two high E hardpoints, but you'll never be able to do a full volley anyways, and if you use these two hardpoints you give up the ability to sword-an-board, while half your volley is low slung still. That goes for the 3D, 1X and 2X. For the Ilya and 4X it's worse, there I think we can agree that the entire main weaponry is low-slung.
I am thinking that the same armor quirks would be needed for all of them to compensate for hardpoint placement, while the -4X could use additional help because it's entire weaponry is low slung. Ilya perhaps also, but that's a Hero and with a larger engine, so I won't have an opinion about that one. The 3D already have worse quirks than the 1X and 2X because of JJs so I don't think we can use that argument twice.. I would even argue that it could use some minor quirk in addition to armor because it's quite far behind the 1X/2X level quirks and I am not entirely convinced that paying 4t to be able to jump compensates for that. Especially when it almost implies XL engine on a CTF...
Edited by Duke Nedo, 27 May 2015 - 04:36 AM.