Using Victors and the Heavy Metal would not confer the same advantage because of the wide spacing between the arm-mounted weaponry, as well as the loss of having a "shield side". If your target is moving laterally and forces you to aim into the background to hit him, you have to aim and fire two separate shots to hit with both. If your target is moving laterally to the left, and you aim in front of him enough to hit his CT with your left arm weapons, your right arm weapons will miss behind the target. I suppose if he's facing you and you fire a shot that makes the left-arm weapons hit his right arm, then your right-arm weapons will hit his left arm, if you fire simultaneously.
You can still fire the weapons separately and hit. Take a HBK at 98 kph as the target. He turns his torso so his side is facing you. You have PPCs in the left arm, AC/5's in the right arm in a Victor. Range is 500 meters. HBK runs 27 meters/sec. You'll have to lead 9 meters ahead of him to hit. If we estimate the Victor's width at 8 meters, that means the PPCs in the left arm are 4 meters offset to the left from the cockpit reticle, and the AC/5s are 4 meters to the right. So, you put the crosshairs 5 meters ahead of the HBK and pull the trigger. If you trigger both PPCs and AC/5's at the same time, your PPCs will hit, but the AC/5's will miss behind the target. What you can do is put the crosshairs 13 meters ahead of the HBK, pull the trigger for the AC/5's, wait about 300 milliseconds for the HBK to run an extra 8 meters, then pull the trigger for your PPCs, and hit the HBK in the arm/shoulder with both shots.
Or you can be a total badass and instead of waiting for the HBK to run a littler farther, you can snap your reticle around after the first shot and plant that second shot as quickly as possible. Either way, this action takes a split second, which is a split second in which the HBK being shot at has time to turn, twist, stutter-step, to try to dodge or take the hit on a different spot.
Removing arm-lock is not going to save people who just stand there, or run directly away from you or directly toward you, without shielding with an arm or shoulder.
Retaining weapon convergence, but giving mechs better hit boxes, and maybe *better* responsiveness (more acceleration, better twist and turn speeds), will make it so that it takes skill to spread damage, just like it takes skill to land hits accurately. I'd rather they buffed mechs' agility, rather than nerf jump jets.
EDIT: It kind of already is the case that, with skilled defensive piloting, you can spread damage across your mech, *if* your mech has good hitboxes. It also helps to have jump jets.
Almost no amount of skilled piloting in a Dragon will let you spread the damage, that CT is too ridiculous.
Edited by YueFei, 12 February 2014 - 08:56 PM.