61 replies to this topic

[Karl Streiger]

akkelemvor, on 19 December 2013 - 12:15 AM, said:

It has been a while since I took a long look at the clan mechs and the lore, since I honestly always prefered 3025 as setting and for playing battletech, but isn't the clan endo steel and ferro-fiberous armor better? Don't their XL engines weight less as well and take up fewer slots?? if thats the case a clan mech will always be able to mount more weapons, armor, and be faster than any intersphere varient.

The XL has only 2 criticals in each torso location - that is right. But we don't know how they will implement the loose of a side torso.
Clan FF is better 120% armor per ton instead of 112% per ton and 7 instead of 14 criticals
Endosteel as well only has 7 criticals

Only in the Stormcrow and Timberwolf the combination of DHS, XL, FF and ES is near optimum.
But thats why you shouldn't be allowed to change structure. Because when you are able to build a IS-Mech with Endossteel you don't have any problems in using C ES and C FF together
(for example i have an Atlas with ES -> if i would swap all the equipment for clan stuff - > i would have afterwards 6 criticals more and 9tons more available) -> enough to turn those ASRM4 into SSRM6 - add AMS and a bigger engine + additional heat sinks

[Corralis]

Karl Streiger, on 19 December 2013 - 12:55 AM, said:

The XL has only 2 criticals in each torso location - that is right. But we don't know how they will implement the loose of a side torso.
Clan FF is better 120% armor per ton instead of 112% per ton and 7 instead of 14 criticals
Endosteel as well only has 7 criticals

Only in the Stormcrow and Timberwolf the combination of DHS, XL, FF and ES is near optimum.
But thats why you shouldn't be allowed to change structure. Because when you are able to build a IS-Mech with Endossteel you don't have any problems in using C ES and C FF together
(for example i have an Atlas with ES -> if i would swap all the equipment for clan stuff - > i would have afterwards 6 criticals more and 9tons more available) -> enough to turn those ASRM4 into SSRM6 - add AMS and a bigger engine + additional heat sinks

And that pretty much highlights why IS Mechs' should not be allowed to use Clan Tech. With Clan Mechs', I will not be able to choose which engine I can put in it, I will not be able to choose if I want FF or ES armor and structure, I can't decide which ratio of armor I want in the front and rear of my mech and I can't take out heat-sinks and therefore I can't see too many people being able to modify Clan Mechs' too much. It may be the case where the stock variant is the most viable build.
I don't know about you guys but I really need more information before I can decide whether the Clan Mechs' are going to be a viable purchase in this game.

[Karl Streiger]

Corralis, on 19 December 2013 - 01:12 AM, said:

I don't know about you guys but I really need more information before I can decide whether the Clan Mechs' are going to be a viable purchase in this game.

The same here - but only about equipment. Based on the concept of OmniMechs - i allready know that the Stormcrow will deliver the best trade-off speed armor and fire power -> even with full MechLab you hardly will be able to make it better.

(I believe thats the main reason behind the package content ->
worst of the worse - kit
worse (but with JJ) - nova
worse (but with JJ) - thor
very good(slow big but decent fire power - if you don't use energy weapons 15DHS fixed) - daishi
average - not enough speed - but good fire power and armor
extremely good - as said above
very good - limite choice of ballistics (only prime and
good - well rounded - depends highly on the omnification - heat is never a problem (20 DHS fixed)

[toncrell]

well corralis I can only guess to your questions but bieing they are going to try and balance the clans id have to say we will have for lack of better terms ghost weight, meaning it will show the extra 4 tons only if you use the lrms but not give us the extra tons to use for anything else

as far as the gimping for the Is and clans mixing weapons only way I see it is not allowing the IS mech to use clan weapons because what you said is correct.


I know every one likes to have things balanced but doing this to the clan mech is disaster. The clans didn't get thier equal in weapons till years later in the cannon with the new Is mech copied from the captured clans.I say let us battle cannon clans. I posted an idea of using a mod to nerf the clans mech in a way that didn't hurt anyone in the clan tech perspective feedback but I doubt they will do something that's so simple or even read the feedback to begin with

[Thorn Hallis]

Karl Streiger, on 19 December 2013 - 01:19 AM, said:

worse (but with JJ) - thor

Dunno, I think this one fits perfectly into what people call the current "meta".

[TibsVT]

akkelemvor, on 19 December 2013 - 12:15 AM, said:

It has been a while since I took a long look at the clan mechs and the lore, since I honestly always prefered 3025 as setting and for playing battletech, but isn't the clan endo steel and ferro-fiberous armor better? Don't their XL engines weight less as well and take up fewer slots?? if thats the case a clan mech will always be able to mount more weapons, armor, and be faster than any intersphere varient.

So going back to your original post, a clan mech with clan tech, should always be better than an intersphere mech with clan tech.

And another point clan mechs always carried more weapons, which would translate into more hard points. I know I'm dreading the 12 medium laser nova already...

or... I'm completely off base here and I tender my regrets for putting out yet more false info.

The OmniMech weapons fit into allocated pod space by lore, not hard points. I find it difficult even PGI would make the mistake of making OmniMechs alike the current BattleMechs in that regard.

For reference;

P.S. No tl;dr.

KelesK, on 18 June 2013 - 02:12 AM, said:

The Mad Dog C variant is the best example of this, it trades 26 tonnes of LRM's and lasers (Prime) for a mere 12 tonnes of two Gauss rifles. The variant effectivly removes the arm pods and the shoulder pods. I personally wouldn't do that but others would. Effectivly you're wasting, after ammo (4 tonnes) is taken into account, 12 tonnes of your pod space. Bear in mind, neither of these setups have heatsinks placed in pod space.

You can't just keep shoving stuff on an Omni and think it's going to work. It doesn't. It has X tonnes of allocated pod space. Pod space which you put your weapons in. Now while I have no idea exactly how heavy a clan 300 XL is for this example but as the Mad Dog is a 60 tonne Omni, if you get rid of it's pod space you're only left with 32 tonnes of free space in which you need to fit an XL engine, heat sinks and armour. That's not a lot of room to play with when you start taking critical space into account either.

People need to learn that Omni's aren't BattleMechs, you can't just duct tape equipment on them like a battlemech and expect it to work, it doesn't work that way.

The Timber Wolf, the one Omnis that everyone is so afraid someone will end up 'taping' Clan ER PPCs to only has 27.5 tonnes of pod space. Now while I have no idea how pod space will effectivly work, if you notice the larger weapons, PPCs, Gauss Rifles, generally take up whole pods which can usually be split between the regular lasers (Small, Medium, Large), and as I showed above, depending on the Omni, can require the entire disassembly of other pods to fit. Even the Assaults can only manage two ER PPC's per arm (not to say the Dire Wolf probably couldn't fit a third in both but the sacrifice would be substancial).

Basically the heavier the weapons you fill those pods with, the bigger your disadvantage especially depending on the Omni you actually pick as all of them vary depending on pod allowances. You pick heavy weapons, you risk not only overheating but ending up with less fire power then someone who split their weapons into smaller, more heat efficient groups much alike those ******** PPC Stalkers you see that manage to cook themselves on the ice maps.

We all get a little embarrassed when we see them. Now imagine you did it in a Clan Omni... People just seem to overlook the most basic of ideas when they point out their 'inbalance' arguement. If you are complaining about Clan tech being too overpowered, then you are clearly not here for any of the right reasons. We chose to play the Clans because we will be at a disadvantage in both numbers and, technically, technology. Sure, it's lighter, takes up less space, does more damage even. But what we sacrifice for those benefits more then makes up for what we gain. We all know the first person who jumps in a Clan Mech thinking he is some kind of diety is going to walk into an Atlas, cook the damn thing and end up making us all look like idiots.

An old post I made some time ago when everyone was having this grand debate. Only back then people were concerned other would strip back as much as possible and toss in as many weapon as possible. Obviously some of the above is no longer relevant, sorry in advance.

PGI have already mentioned heat may be the deciding factor in Clan tech which I hope it is.

Edited by KelesK, 19 December 2013 - 06:55 AM.

[Pale Jackal]

I think it's silly to throw stock tonnages out the window after so much effort has been spent to maintain stock configurations.

I'd much rather they:

a. reduce ammo per ton
b. increase reload time
c. increase heat (especially with extended range lasers, but in general as well)
d. possibly decrease damage

For Clan LRM20s, and do whatever else is required for other Clan weapons.

Maybe Clanners love long reload times because managing multiple weapon systems requires more skill.

Either way, Clan weaponry will be superior, even if their lightly armored 'mechs present a tactical disadvantage, but Clans were never ones to embrace tactics over ideals of honor.

Edited by Pale Jackal, 19 December 2013 - 10:30 AM.

[Corralis]

KelesK, on 19 December 2013 - 06:50 AM, said:

The OmniMech weapons fit into allocated pod space by lore, not hard points. I find it difficult even PGI would make the mistake of making OmniMechs alike the current BattleMechs in that regard.

For reference;

P.S. No tl;dr.



An old post I made some time ago when everyone was having this grand debate. Only back then people were concerned other would strip back as much as possible and toss in as many weapon as possible. Obviously some of the above is no longer relevant, sorry in advance.

PGI have already mentioned heat may be the deciding factor in Clan tech which I hope it is.

OK so if I understand this correctly and I'll use the Timber Wolf as an example here, let's say I remove all the weapons on the prime variant of the Timber Wolf. I'm not gonna use the correct weight here cause I just don't know what it might be, but let's say taking all the weapons off a Timber Wolf gives you 40 tons of weight to play with. with the game as is right now I could put as much weaponry as I want to back into the mech as long as I don't go over the Hard points or the available weight. What your saying is that with Clan omni-pods, if I decide to add 2 Gauss rifles to the mech (one on each arm) I may not be able to fit any other weapons to it as I would use all the omni-pods space, is that basically what you mean?

Pale Jackal, on 19 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:

I think it's silly to throw stock tonnages out the window after so much effort has been spent to maintain stock configurations.

I'd much rather they:

a. reduce ammo per ton
b. increase reload time
c. increase heat (especially with extended range lasers, but in general as well)
d. possibly decrease damage

For Clan LRM20s, and do whatever else is required for other Clan weapons.

Maybe Clanners love long reload times because managing multiple weapon systems requires more skill.

Either way, Clan weaponry will be superior, even if their lightly armored 'mechs present a tactical disadvantage, but Clans were never ones to embrace tactics over ideals of honor.

If you did all those 4 things to the CLRM20 no one would ever use them. As I see it, the only advantage the CLRM20 has over the IS version is that it doesn't have a minimum range (and it's a lot lighter of course).

[Deathz Jester]

I always thought one idea could be, allow Innersphere mechs to mount Clan weaponry, but have a heat penalty or something since its not a clan mech and isn't "optimized" for the weaponry. idk just a random thought.

[NocturnalBeast]

Iron Harlequin, on 19 December 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

I always thought one idea could be, allow Innersphere mechs to mount Clan weaponry, but have a heat penalty or something since its not a clan mech and isn't "optimized" for the weaponry. idk just a random thought.

Since clan heatsinks are not removeable, IS would already have a heat penalty by not being able to use clan double heatsinks, which would balance itself.

[Pale Jackal]

Corralis, on 19 December 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

If you did all those 4 things to the CLRM20 no one would ever use them. As I see it, the only advantage the CLRM20 has over the IS version is that it doesn't have a minimum range (and it's a lot lighter of course).

First off, I didn't suggest they do all four of those things, especially since I kind of dislike the idea of making CLRMs do less damage. Secondly, your statement is ridiculous since I didn't specify how much the values would be tweaked. Tweaking all four values by 10% would still mean the CLRM20 is the greatly superior weapon.

Also, with Clan DHS, tweaking heat values might be wise.

[Deathz Jester]

Ed Steele, on 19 December 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

Since clan heatsinks are not removeable, IS would already have a heat penalty by not being able to use clan double heatsinks, which would balance itself.

Thinking it would, "balance" itself is naive, and not at all what I was suggesting.

[Corralis]

Ed Steele, on 19 December 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

Since clan heatsinks are not removeable, IS would already have a heat penalty by not being able to use clan double heatsinks, which would balance itself.

Are we assuming that Clan DHS's are going to be the true double 2.0 while still only using up 2 critical slots?

[NocturnalBeast]

Iron Harlequin, on 19 December 2013 - 03:02 PM, said:

Thinking it would, "balance" itself is naive, and not at all what I was suggesting.

It is "naive" to not be able to comprehend what I said. The Inner Sphere mechs, not being able to use the 2 crit slot / 2.0 dissipation clan heatsinks along with the clan weaponry, would effectively have a heat penalty.

Corralis, on 19 December 2013 - 10:17 PM, said:

Are we assuming that Clan DHS's are going to be the true double 2.0 while still only using up 2 critical slots?

Yes

[TibsVT]

Corralis, on 19 December 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

OK so if I understand this correctly and I'll use the Timber Wolf as an example here, let's say I remove all the weapons on the prime variant of the Timber Wolf. I'm not gonna use the correct weight here cause I just don't know what it might be, but let's say taking all the weapons off a Timber Wolf gives you 40 tons of weight to play with. with the game as is right now I could put as much weaponry as I want to back into the mech as long as I don't go over the Hard points or the available weight. What your saying is that with Clan omni-pods, if I decide to add 2 Gauss rifles to the mech (one on each arm) I may not be able to fit any other weapons to it as I would use all the omni-pods space, is that basically what you mean?

Well for starters the Timber Wolf only has 27.5 tonnes of allocated pod space. Secondly the example with the Gauss rifles was strictly dealing with the Mad Dog C variant. I would need to double check all the variants to be sure of it but I'm sure when the Timber Wolf sports heavier weapons, such as the ER PPC, in its arm pod that weapon fills the entire pod. It could also boil down to having a number of slots in a particular omni pod and if those slots are overfilled it would require further pod space to be allocated to the selected weapon, which would explain why the Mad Dog C requires the arm and shoulder space be allocated to the Gauss'.

Though while this is all good in theory, I don't think PGI plan to implement the omni pod in this manner. A shame really. I think it would be better this way. Also bear in mind additional heat sinks must be placed in pod space as internals cannot be modified.

[Corralis]

KelesK, on 20 December 2013 - 02:47 AM, said:

Well for starters the Timber Wolf only has 27.5 tonnes of allocated pod space. Secondly the example with the Gauss rifles was strictly dealing with the Mad Dog C variant. I would need to double check all the variants to be sure of it but I'm sure when the Timber Wolf sports heavier weapons, such as the ER PPC, in its arm pod that weapon fills the entire pod. It could also boil down to having a number of slots in a particular omni pod and if those slots are overfilled it would require further pod space to be allocated to the selected weapon, which would explain why the Mad Dog C requires the arm and shoulder space be allocated to the Gauss'.

Though while this is all good in theory, I don't think PGI plan to implement the omni pod in this manner. A shame really. I think it would be better this way. Also bear in mind additional heat sinks must be placed in pod space as internals cannot be modified.

Yea as I said I wasn't using accurate weights cause I didn't know them. Regardless the whole omni thing does sound like it'll be a challenge to find the ideal build, maybe too difficult, I think it would limit builds to pretty much stock variants. Now the stock variants have been built to be really good in tabletop but as we have found out, that doesn't really translate to being really good in MW:O.

Also I'm interested in what you class as internals? You say things like heatsinks can only be placed in any spare pod space because internals can not be modified, which slots do you class as being the internal slots?

[TibsVT]

Corralis, on 20 December 2013 - 08:09 AM, said:

Yea as I said I wasn't using accurate weights cause I didn't know them. Regardless the whole omni thing does sound like it'll be a challenge to find the ideal build, maybe too difficult, I think it would limit builds to pretty much stock variants. Now the stock variants have been built to be really good in tabletop but as we have found out, that doesn't really translate to being really good in MW:O.

Also I'm interested in what you class as internals? You say things like heatsinks can only be placed in any spare pod space because internals can not be modified, which slots do you class as being the internal slots?

Engine, required DHS, Ferro, Endo. Any additional DHS's you want can only be placed in pod space. Obviously each Omni requires a certain amount of heat sinks for the engine. Though with the extreme limitations of pod space putting extra heat sinks in a Clan omni is next to impossible.

Remember also ammo in nearly all Clan omni's is limited to 1 tonne per weapon. That is simply due to lack of weight/space. I'll post you up a breakdown of the space required for everything if I can find it.

Edited by KelesK, 20 December 2013 - 09:08 AM.

[VanillaG]

Corralis, on 20 December 2013 - 08:09 AM, said:

Also I'm interested in what you class as internals? You say things like heatsinks can only be placed in any spare pod space because internals can not be modified, which slots do you class as being the internal slots?

Internals are locations for ES/FF crit spaces and any equipment/weapons that are hardwired into the omnimech. The Puma has a flamer that is hardwired and cannot be removed and I believe that the Timberwolf as 15 heatsinks hardwired but are all in the engine so no crits are taken up.

A good example of what you can do with an IS mech is that the dynamic structure and armor crit spaces that can moved to make space for weapons and equipment. In an Omnimech, those crit spaces are fixed and cannot be moved so some of the space would be considered wasted because you cannot consolidate them.

[Banshee Bullet]

CyclonerM, on 18 December 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

"You have all the nice stuff, contracts, planetary assaults, Dropships, custom decals (probably), your own ranks etc. etc. but you could hardly have the resources to make work, maintain efficient or even salvage Clan 'Mechs so you are not going to have them, stravag!"

"You could hardly believe the resources we have sonny"

[CyclonerM]

Banshee Bullet, on 20 December 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

"You could hardly believe the resources we have sonny"

You still need Clan tech to keep efficient Clan 'Mechs. You have to salvage enough each battle to make the next run.

To say it simply, you may have stockpiled 300 tons of AC/10 ammo.. And IIRC UAC/10 has different ammo, so you need to salvage it from destroyed Clan 'Mechs.. Same for heatsinks, armor plates, engines, weapons..