Odanan, on 16 January 2014 - 03:51 PM, said:
Have you checked the edited text in the
Overkill Omnimech thread? I hope there was an improvement.
FireSlade, on 16 January 2014 - 04:31 PM, said:
I read it and I like it but I suck with editing and missed everything that Strum mentioned, so hopefully he checks it out.
For
Overkill Alt. C: MASC isn't allowed to be pod-mounted in BT ("Unlike jump jets, neither MASC nor Triple-Strength Myomer may be 'pod-mounted', so an OmniMech may not feature MASC or TSM capabilities on an alternate configuration unless the base configuration is so equipped." -
TechManual, pg. 53); either it's part of the base configuration (and thus fixed equipment), or the OmniMech can never mount it at all.
For
Overkill Alt. D: Pulse Lasers can't make use of a Targeting Computer in BT ("Pulse and rapid-fire weapons may not use a targeting computer to make an aimed shot, unless a rapid-fire weapon is firing a single shot, in which case it can make an aimed shot..." -
Total Warfare, pg. 143; note that "pulse weapon" refers to anything with the word 'pulse' in its name (i.e. standard Pulse Lasers, ER Pulse Lasers, VSPLs), while "rapid-fire weapon" refers to anything that can fire more than once per BT turn (i.e. UACs and RACs)), and carrying a TC for the sake of a single ERSL and a single Flamer seems... odd.
Overpower seems to check-out, spec-wise.
----------
As far as the writing goes...
It's something of a convention that a character's internal monologues (that is, when they're "thinking to themselves") are usually italicized, to make more clear that it's the character's own thoughts that are being presented.
As such, the first four paragraphs might appear as follows:
Late in the evening, Star Commander Julien turned on the engineer room computer. That sneaky new tech was up to something and he would find out today.
Browsing through the omnimech’s archive, he found a recent entry. A new mech project? That is strange. A mech called “Overkill”. He smirked. So the tech assistant boundsman was studying the omni tech…
He looked the specifications. 100 tons mech. Someone is thinking big. Maximum speed of 54 km/h, 2 jump jets, 15 double heatsinks, only 15 tons of regular armor… except for the jump capability, the mech was inferior to the Dire Wolf in everything.
Apparently, the Inner Sphere barbarian was playing with five configurations. He even managed to figure out how the omni system works. Let me see the weapons, the Clansman thought.
(There is some other proofing that needs to happen - just fixing a bit of grammar - but the use of italics to represent Julien's own thoughts, as opposed to representing the author's descriptions of Julien's thoughts, are what I'm trying to emphasize.)
Additionally, 'Mech chassis names & indivivual names are generally also italicized, in much the same way that ship names & classes are when written (e.g. "USS
Lake Champlain, a
Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided missile cruiser, launched in 1987.", "
Yen-Lo-Wang, a
Centurion, is the personal BattleMech of the Allard-Liao family.").
Also, it should probably be "...the omnimech archive..." or "...the omnimechs' archive...", as "the omnimech's archive" (note the position of the apostrophe!) grammatically implies the archive of a single OmniMech while the context of the sentence implies that there is a single archive representing the configurations of multiple OmniMechs.
Moreover, 'Mech types (among other things) in BT are written in
CamelCase (that is, with each component word of the compound word capitalized); it's always "BattleMech", "IndustrialMech", and "OmniMech".
Likewise, the humanoid vehicle specific to BT/MW, independent of function, is always "a 'Mech" (that is, capitalized and with an apostrophe before the M), as opposed to "a mech" (the general term for analogous vehicles across all franchises); "a Gundam/Armored Core/HOUND/Veritech/Vertical Tank/HERC/Scoobee/etc is a mech, but not a 'Mech".
Finally: it's "
chalcas", not "chalkas" (probably from "(to)
challenge (the)
caste (system)").