Pezzer, on 02 March 2014 - 06:00 PM, said:
The Crab would be awesome, but the King Crab presents a million and a half balance issues.
2 Gauss, LRMs, and pulses as just one example. The 4 Ballistic variant scares me. I can see people putting 2 Gaus in 1 arm and an AC/20 in the other. Someone could simply run that with a bunch of ammo and be extremely powerful alone. I mean, 3 AC/5s on my Shadowhawk is arguably OP on a 55 ton Mech, let alone a S*** ton of Ballistics on a 100 ton assault.
I think this is the 1 Assault that we will never see added to the game. Awesome Mech in the TT, overpowered in the game. I mean, imagine 4 AC/5s on one of those things....
There is talk of the Mauler (with 4 ballistices in the torso, 2 left, 2 right. That could fit in even more than the King Crab could) being the next assault...
Also, consider the possible hit boxes, size and shape of the mech. I suspect that the King Crab will have a small twist, but I would hope with a wide arm rotation (and no vertical lift with those arms though) and large side torsos. Not to mention it will probably be an LRM magnet with that huge top profile. The arms will be hanging low, making it less useful for sniping.
Basically put, it wont be XL friendly in the least. It also wont be sniper friendly. It will be a different type of mech that can be devastating at close up. It probably can still support enough weight to have LRMs or lasers as well.
I don't see it being any more threatening (depending upon what they do for the arms) than a 100 ton version of the Jagermech, that can't place XL in it (without being a death trap more than the Jager is) and will be moving a lot slower than a Jagermech, which is a 65 ton mech.
The King Crab I think could be done in such a way that it will have a lot of strength, but can also have enough weaknesses to balance it out in the end. The strengths are fairly obvious I'd like to think with the hard points and tonnage. The weaknesses would probably be hit box layout, twist rate, arm movements (if it can't go up, anything jumping could escape it's wrath), speed/engine cap, etc. The question is, how will the details of the mech come out, and how will that effect it's play style in the end...
(Personally, I want to set my King Crab up with 2 AC20s and LRMs...)