Juodas Varnas, on 23 August 2017 - 09:23 AM, said:
I never found "height" of the mech to ever be a problem (i mean, how often do you overshoot a mech? miss in the vertical plane? Almost never, in my case. It's the horizontal plane that matters and Vulcan could possibly be very good for it).
Also Vulcan is a 3025 chassis, which makes it inherently superior.
Precisely. Height is a factor only when it comes to hugging short terrain, but width has the single largest impact on how we can effectively direct damage. A horizontal slice across a mech's torso renders 5 components to hit. The narrower the mech, or the smaller the components (inter-spaced by "air space" between parts), the harder it becomes to focus a single component on a moving target, as the bounding boxes for those sections are narrower.
It's why, for example, I can put most of an SRM salvo into the side torso of a griffin from the front, but I'd be guaranteed to hit two or even three sections on a Bushwacker or an Assassin with the same weapon from the same angle. This leads to natural durability in that the mech will automatically spread damage. A vertical slice of the mech, however, will only ever render one or two components, meaning the impact of height is far lower on the ability to single out a section than the impact of width. Makes hugging terrain harder if you're taller, but that's about the end of that downside.
The Vulcan, as an example mech, might be tall, but it is typically shown with spindly limbs and torso components, with plenty of air space between the parts. Lots of room for shots to miss between armpits and such, with narrow critical components where they exist. Perhaps the largest single target on the mech is the cockpit housing sphere, but otherwise? I wouldn't be terribly concerned.