The hunchback is exactly the problem. That's why I'm waiting to see how PGI figures it out.
The people who seem to be arguing with "Gameplay trumps Canon". It's not a gameplay vs canon issue. It's completely a gameplay issue. Canon is just canon because that's how they balanced gameplay.
If a hunchback is competitive with an atlas in a slug fest (baring crafty piloting), that means that "things" have been done to the hunchback or the atlas to make them equal. That means that either the atlas is given a penalty for BEING an assault. Or the Hunchback is given a bonus for BEING a medium and/or for being lighter.
If this bonus is purely a attack/defense or medium-based bonus, that means the faster knife-fighting mechs have this bonus, which means their already inherent bonuses for speed and such just compound. It means that that these mechs were given artificial incentive to "equalize" them out. So, is there going to be an artificial speed increase for the assaults to make up for THEIR penalties vs the others? If not, why not? And if so, what then becomes the differences between them?
The other option is there's HBK-specific bonuses to the chassis, and that the AS7 doesn't have them. Why would anyone EVER get in an assault?
Assaults have to be viable exactly as they are. Massive death machines for anyone who gets in their way. If combat against a unit with similar weapon attacks, and without any external support, is equalized in any way, you destroy gameplay and homogonize the units. At which point this turns into, AT BEST Tribes (Where units are homogonized into "fast, average, slow speeds"), and at worst, Modern Warfare, where everyone's running basically the same unit with slight weapon variations.
Edited by Wraeththix Constantine, 25 June 2012 - 01:55 PM.