Alistair Winter, on 21 June 2014 - 01:36 PM, said:
A Direwolf with a million UAC2 and UAC5s will win in a straight up, toe to toe shoot-out against an IS mech, from what I can tell. I used to run a few Atlas and Victor mechs with small engines and lots of ballistics, and on paper, they seem inferior to the Clan assault mechs. In reality, I'll probably still do ok with them, but that's at least partially because I have an average skill level, and there are Clan players out there with below average skills.
Yes, a Dire Wolf will win in a straight up, toe to toe shootout with .. Well, anything. That's what it does.
However, that's _all_ that dire wolf does, and no (well built) IS mech is required to play its game.
And that was Bishop's whole point in this thread. Clan mechs do have more firepower, but its nature requires them to continue facing their targets longer. This leaves them vulnerable to precision strikes that IS mechs are not so vulnerable to. Skill can trump the clan advantage, but not so much the IS advantage. So, at lower levels of play, clan tech appears more powerful, but that advantage is readily negated.