As a fellow (and by far older) Capellan player, I've got to comment on and correct a few things here.
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The basic problem that Mechwarrior Online has when converting the tabletop game Battletech to a computer game is that Battletech was meant to be a fast game between two players controlling several mechs so one mistake that killed one mech with a single shot wasn’t as devastating because you had other mechs. The weapons in Battletech were meant to kill most mechs in a round which translates to a second in Mechwarrior Online and that kills the fun out of most games because any moron can put 2 AC/20 in a mech and take out most mechs with a single hit.
Actually, twin 20's won't core anything heavier than a light 'Mech in MWO, thanks to doubled armor. Anything 30 tons or heavier can sustain a 40 point frontal CT hit, though a backshot will gut plenty up into the medium and lower heavy range. Of course, if you let a slow, lightly armored gun platform somehow punch two of the biggest guns in the game up your pucker-hole, you truly got played. Amusingly, most twin-20's can't take what they dish out or move faster than a crawl- or are tremendously fragile otherwise.
That's why we don't all run around in
Jagermechs. They take firepower to 11 but pay for it in needing someone to cover their approach, or their sniper Gauss versions suffer from similar issues but worse infighting power.
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The simplest way to balance the computer game while still using most of the rules of the tabletop game is to get rid of ghost heat and all the rules that are not in the tabletop game but quintuple the armor and ammo per ton. This simple change would allow option 1 but no self-respecting clan warrior would mount quad AC/20 he would mount quad Ultra AC/20 which would kill most light and medium mechs in one second even with quintuple armor, not to mention that the clans have targeting computer to target the head for an easy kill. It might even be necessary to have ten times the armor and ammo per ton to eliminate the easy head kills with targeting computer but keep all the other rules intact.
If you knew TT, you'd also know you can't target the head with a targeting computer. Now, I'll agree that the single-shot AC model is not only broken in terms of MWO, but canonically as well- AC's should have been burst-fire for the same reasons lasers were made "burn" DoT. Aimed, accurate damage breaks Battletech's damage modeling, which is why the meta worships the AC and PPC. They're the most reliable weapons that deliver that focused damage, something that never should have happened in the first place. Adding further armor would merely make those weapons MORE attractive, simply because they'd cut through the increased armor best, and scatter would be even more of a detriment for any weapon that does have it.
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With the balance to the clans that Mechwarrior Online intends to implement everyone will end up using the same clan mech in other words the Timber Wolf (Mad Cat) and the inner sphere mechs would become obsolete. Mechwarrior Online could be one of the greatest games if inner sphere light, medium and heavy mechs had Hatchet, Stealth Armor, Bloodhound Active Probe, Angel ECM Suite, Triple Strength Myomer to get pass the clan’s superior fire power at medium to long range while relaying the targeting information to the heavy and assault mechs on their base with ELRM. One of the most important reasons why I am House Liao is because of the stealth armor of their Death Commandos.
Most of what you're describing doesn't show up for another decade or more- most notably, stealth armor debuts in 3063. The problem is that MWO is attempting to "unify" two things that really, REALLY don't belong together. Clan tech, and IS tech. Further, Clan weaponry is just going to magnify the basic flaws in weapon design for MWO- again, AC's and PPC's are the big ones here. The only way to "intergrate" Clantech into IS forces is to nerf it into the ground, while keeping it separated to Clan forces allow for numerical and tonnage disparity as balancing measures.
The era of "shadow" Capellan forces is a bit down the line, though there's plenty of tools now that would deepen the game, like 'Mech-portable artillery (Arrow IV)- which happens to be a very Capellan tool! We're the first "modern" force to intergrate them, after all. Hatchets would be a fun melee weapon, though more a Davion/Steiner weapon at this point- the Vindi-6L with it's TSM-powered sword is a Jihad-era design. TSM of course comes to Liao in 3050 as well, but without melee combat, it's heat-activated boosts only provide limited benefits such as increased ground speed. In the hot-running MWO universe, this is still a handy benefit, though!
But I digress. This is supposed to be about Clan technology.
MWO's initial angle for it is ripe for one thing. Failure- it will not add to the game so much as it will reduce the actual flavor of the system, and that is a damn shame. I expected to fight Clan forces with Clan 'Mechs, not
Timber Wolves painted in Davion colors.