Mr Blonde, on 21 September 2013 - 04:37 AM, said:
The key problem is the IS mech customization. This has been discussed on other forums as well. Fact is you can customize IS mechs in canon. However this takes lots of time and money, and available parts. As it stands, IS mechs are beyond Clan omni tech. Omnimechs can replace their arms/side torsos, they have 4-5 options in this time period. All those are stock and cannot be altered. They can't switch out CT stuff or engine without screwing everything up. You certainly can't change to endo steel, which would be about as easy as grafting adamantium to Wolverine's skeleton, after removing it from his body, and then re-inserting it. Not something that can be accomplished with one button click. There should be a penalty in C-bills and downtime for switching systems out on IS mechs, andit should be a painful one (cumulative, so stripping the mech and rebuilding from scratch costs you 2 days of downtime and a fortune in C-bills, no MC option. No transition to or from Endo-steel, you buy the mech with it from the manufacturer stock, or you don't). Then Clan omni tech would be seen for what it was in canon, a revolution and a technological marvel. As of now it's a step backward.
As far as the OP of Clan mechs, you should have to switch to Clan faction (at a more significant penalty than switching IS factions) to use, and any Clan equipment does not transfer with you if you switch factions again (Clanners do not own their mechs). IS learned to use it after a while, the cost of refit was astronomical. In addition you could only use what was salvaged from combat. When it's gone, it's gone.
I have no faith in PGI to implement Clans anywhere close to canon, nor do I think they care in the least. I pray that I am mistaken, and that I will be forced to eat my words.
None of that has anything to do with balance, and I know I haven't come up with anything useful (Not that PGI would listen anyway), but penalties alone won't balance. I don't mind the idea that you take penalties when switching factions, but the fact of the matter is that Wolf's Dragoons handed out plenty of Omni-mechs to the IS houses and outfitted regular IS mechs with clan tech. On top of that, the factories on Marik and in the Free Worlds League were also starting to churn out the Dragoon Omni-mechs to deploy all over the IS.
While that took a year past the initial invasion for all that to happen, technically we're already at the point where we should have heard about the Second Battle for Twycross where Victor and Kai defeat the Jade Falcons, and next month IlKhan Leo Showers is killed by Tyra Miraborg, resulting in a cessation of hostilities for a year and the implementation of what I talked about in the previous paragraph. So Cannon-wise, the IS has clan tech, but the clans don't have any IS tech, because all their tech, even old tech, is more capable than IS tech.
I have no argument about the IS customization being possible as it is, because while it's possible to customize mechs to the degree we have, it is supposed to take time. Justin Allard's Yen-Lo-Wang being a perfect example of the time it takes. Unfortunately, that particular part of lore doesn't translate well to the game (just like firing each weapon only once in ten seconds) because either you don't have a time scale, making it moot, or you create a system that penalizes weapon experimentation heavily. Ultimately, the difference between clan omni and the customization we have now, is that clan configurations can change the weapon type that is equipped, while our IS mechs can only change the weapon within the type already slotted to be there.
Edit: And for the record, almost all clan omni-mechs are already fitted with the clan version of endo-steel.
Edited by Guido, 21 September 2013 - 11:16 AM.