
Anyway- stock CDA-3C is like a junker car- it may move, but it's not great at doing so. It's vastly underarmored, undercooled, and has a lot of work that can be put into improving it. Basically, for a new 'Mech, you check for:
1) Double heat sinks. If you don't have them, the 'Mech is incredibly tough to keep cool.
2) Armor. Most stock designs don't have near-max armor. Most solid MWO-pilot designs do. You'll want to find tonnage to tweak the fragile -3C's base armor up- even if it means downgrading the PPC to a large laser or the like for now. Heck, I've seen newbies mounting one MPL + 4 MG's, basically giving you a wannabe Spider. Of course, you can always find...
3) Weight savings! XL engines are common in speedy lights and mediums, with endosteel a close second. Your Cicada has a 280 Standard engine- and a 280 XL gives it nine tons to work with. You're small enough that speed > worrying about a blown side torso. Endosteel gives you back 5% of the 'Mech weight for the cost of 14 crit spaces, making the chassis able to carry less- in this case, the -3C will give you 2 tons back for using endosteel. Hey, that's 2 more MG's and another ton of ammo right there!
Right now, you have a lightly armored, overheating basic stock 'Mech. Eventually, that's a XL/Endo design with thicker (something like twice the armor you have stock) armor, probably an ER PPC and quad MG's + 2 tons of ammo. And when the time comes for a new chassis to skill up, you can move that XL engine over to the new Cicada if need be,