Bishop Steiner, on 27 March 2013 - 07:34 PM, said:
In about 13 years, both will be available.
Sad truth is tho, no matter how they tried to push em in fluff, since most mech forces carried a mix of weapon types, their very specialization is what makes them inferior to standard armor in most cases.
If they had ever implemented them intelligently, allowing them to act as normal armor, but with a bonus damage soak to their specialized nature, then we would finally have had an advanced armor worth the weight/critical concessions required.
Meh, reactive armor was pretty good, the actual chance of the negative effect being triggered on any given hit was 1 in 1296. So yes, it was entirely possible for the RNG to take a steaming dump on you, but in general practice it was vastly superior to standard armor especially if your pilots had edge to force a reroll on a TAC roll.
Same for reflective....keep the mech in the backfield so you don't need to worry about physical attacks, and the only real trade you're making is enhanced vulnerability against armor piercing ammo for half energy damage.
That being said, it's only a 13 year wait for reactive, reflective comes around in "only" 8 years. I'll be rocking that on the field in 2021!
Edited by Squigles, 27 March 2013 - 07:44 PM.