4 replies to this topic

[Adamasartus]

"The Clans of BattleTech were originally the self-exiled remnants of the Star League Defense Force army, after Stefan Amaris brought about the downfall of the Star League." - Sarna

"Fully eighty percent of the SLDF agreed to this, and in November of that year they made their fateful departure." - Sarna

The Clans have a lot of old Star League tech. Including Battlemechs. While I don't see your average trueborn warrior piloting Kerensky's Orion it would make sense to have higher ranking clansmen using Star League mechs. A Khan with a venerated relic of an Atlas would be worth seeing.

On the flip-side the Inner Sphere captured a small amount of clan 'mechs. It would make sense to have them refurbished and fighting against their original owners.

With the Loyalty Point system giving out skins and ranks I don't see why high tier LP rewards can't be the use of either side's tech. It would probably have to be limited to a particular chassis and build so as not to upset the general IS vs Clan feel. I wouldn't want to see more than one 'mech either side to be enemy tech.

So what do you think?

[FupDup]

There was already a recent thread about this...

The gist is that tech exclusivity is part of the "hidden balance" of the equation. Many Clan guns are better than their IS equivalents, but their "hidden weakness" is that they need to be mounted on an Omnimech that features hardlocked internal items such as internal structure, armor, engine, DHS, and sometimes more. Conversely, the IS has their usually weaker individual items balanced by being able to nearly infinite min-max their Battlemechs. Allowing IS mechs with infinite customization to use Clan guns would probably break the game, and allowing certain Clan mechs like the Dire Whale to use IS FLD Autocannons would also be obnoxious.

Allowing them to mix would require a drastic rebalancing of just about everything.

[Adamasartus]

I was talking about IS teams using Clan 'mechs and equipment and vice versa. Not Clan 'mechs with IS equipment.

My apologies, I should have been more clear.

[FupDup]

Adamasartus, on 25 October 2014 - 08:55 PM, said:

I was talking about IS teams using Clan 'mechs and equipment and vice versa. Not Clan 'mechs with IS equipment.

My apologies, I should have been more clear.

That has much fewer issues, although it still isn't foolproof. Namely, it will increase the extent of the min-maxing minigame of trying to find mix the best Clan mechs of certain tonnages with certain IS mechs of certain tonnages. I.e. mixing things like Mad Cats and Doomcrows with Jenners/Firestarters and Victors (after agility nerfs are removed on November 4th). With separated factions, you at least have to choose from both the good mechs of that faction and the bad mechs (rather than just mixing the good ones from each side).

Also, to a lesser extent, it's a lore-ish "immersion" kind of thing. Some people want to roleplay the IS vs Clans war, and having them co-exist on both their team and the enemy team would probably detract from that flavor. "Muh immersuns!" Personally though I'm not as concerned with this point, as I might not even play CW as it is...

[Alek Ituin]

If that "venerated relic" is an Atlas II, then yes please. Regular Atlas are great, but the Atlas II is a beast with a sweet arse rotary cannon.

Speaking of upgrades, it's almost ironic that the AS7-K is so horrible in this game, when it was designed as a straight upgrade from existing Atlas models (using rediscovered lostech).