Nathan Foxbane, on 07 February 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
Looks like you slapped ferro-lamellor on a Behemoth and then shaved 15 tons off of it. It would get mauled pretty badly in a duel with a Hellstar. Granted in an open field fight it is a pretty annoying fire-support 'Mech using its endurance and ability to "LURM ALL THE THINGS!" Which in and of itself it a bit counter to standard Clan trial practices for such things. The 12 to hit rolls is nice if you have bad modifiers because it increases the odds of doing at least some damage. But with Ferro-Lamellor you must be expecting to fight against lots of re-engineered lasers, tandem-charge warheads, and AP toting ACs.
I don't know, it can jump at 5 hexes to the heckstar's 4 movement, and it can fire with low hit chances. Remember, the Hellstar has to worry about heat. The Hellwolf 2 does not have to worry about heat or ammo. Granted, it could be a toss up, but a smart pilot using hit and run could wear the Hellstar down in all probability. That means if we are rolling 10s, 11s and 12s, I can fire with impunity whereas my opponent has to consider his heat gauge.
And it costs a lot less. About half as much. However, I do not ascribe to the c-bill/BV dogma other players do. Technically there are no actual rules for these in relation to numbers, and even Great Houses only have so many Jump Ships, Drop Ships and always worry about logistics, to the point where MRMs became economically viable within fiction, despite saving only thousands per round vs millions spent on Mechs and Ships. Until the new Interstellar Ops arrives, and maybe even then after that, we may never know how real economies play in Battletech. I will note they do use XXL Mechs in the dark ages, the Mad Cat Mark 4 uses a 375 XXL Engine for example. It costs over 68 million c-bills. Why that is cost effective, but my Lancea and other designs are not I have no idea.
Keep in mind the concept of Battle Value evolved from the idea of Combat Value which evolved from Resource Points. One Resource Point equated to 1,000 Combat Value. A Light Factory made something like 1,000 a month, a medium 2,000, a heavy 3,000 (I could be wrong on some details. ) C-Bills were a different measure then industrial production (likely due to Soviet influence over intellectual thought back in the 80s. )
Suddenly Battle Value was switched to an abstract measure of "fairness", while the formulas remained pretty similar. This is why I am kind of skeptical of it today.
Also keep in mind the Ferro-Lamellor, while less effective against PPCs then other weapons, would help.
I wouldn't say the victory of the Hellstar was by any means certain, though it would be a darned scary opponent. I would say this Mech is cheaper, in Battle Value and C-Bills. I myself do not consider those necessarily important (within reason, a 400xxl mech is probably cost prohibitive in the b-tech universe, I am guessing, maybe, I mean they do produce those Mark 4s which are pretty darned costly and Battle Value aka "new name for Combat Value" now doesn't measure anything real in terms of economics within the game universe) and it is a lot more mobile. This mobility could be useful in more mixed units. They could run from the Hellstar and hope the enemy is stupid enough to chase, dividing their forces. You never know. Sometimes you only need one idiot in the enemy ranks to start coming after you and thinning their number. So in a direct fight, I say toss up. You say Hellstar, I say Hellwolf.
In any event, the Hellstar is my favorite cannon Mech, and I wouldn't mind sprinkling my Clusters of Hellwolf's with a few Hellstars, just in case the enemy decides to be a jerk and bring in lots and lots of AMS.
What really kinda bugs me, is how people accept designs like this so much more readily then the Lancea. Personally, I think a Cluster of Lancea could waste a Cluster of Hellstars and Hellwolf 2's.
There is no real way to test this. Megamek will not handle those numbers, and the Lancea only works in large enough numbers to saturate an area. But my instincts tell me based on my studies of military history/theory, my decades of battlemech designs and my megamek/game experiences.
But like I said, there is no real way to test it. Perhaps the Lancea could fall right on its face, you never know. This is just a board game after all.
In any case, I think the biggest barrier for the Lancea would be political. Even if, by chance, it worked as a group in simulations 1- The Clans would hate it. They prefer 1 on 1 fighting, or near that. The Lancea is based on the Roman idea of the Legion working together with heavy armor as a single unit, essentially, through years of discipline and training, becoming a massive machine. 2- The Houses have to consider various companies and corporations with designs, many of which patent products and will not work together.
Yet if the simulations proved compelling enough, I would suspect an ambitious enough leader would at least want to test it. And if it won, it would change the very face of warfare in the Battletech universe.
If I really existed there and designed it and it by chance was approved, produced and worked, I imagine I would feel a little like Oppenheimer or Richard Gattling. Inventing a weapon to save lives, only to be haunted by how many it took.
Again though, it may not work at all (my opponents vitriolic criticisms do not help with an objective assessment btw, that is like someone saying "Gattling gun is for wimps duuude! Only a moron would think two ppl with gattlers could beat 50 ppls with rifles it is so MUCH MORE 'spensive"!) dude wtf?! (unfortunately that kind of criticism does make me less objective at times) yet I still constantly look for the next stage.
I have gone from general specialized Mechs (aka Combo Mechs), to a lot of short-range Streak Assaults (don't ask me why, they just work in simulations against comps, and while many players consider the comp completely ******** I find it smarter then myself half the time) and now I am at the Lancea. Again, I could be completely wrong, but my biggest problem with my critics is their methods, not their conclusions necessarily.
It's kind of like my feelings towards the USSR. I liked a lot of their conclusions, but their methods often left something to be desired.
"We must repress the petty bourgeoisie after revolution because they could become nexus of counter-revolution!" Never mind that would entail repressing the entire middle class and taking away their free speech and right to vote, basically depriving hundreds of millions of all political liberties (they would argue it was only 10s of millions in the US, in theory, but I know pretty much it would be hundreds of millions in practice, of course I would then be locked up for "Non-Comformist" science, art and politics and would be "re-educated" ) . In their minds, the ends (Communist Utopia) justified any means.
BTW when the USSR deprived and repressed, it did not mean a day in detention. It meant they tortured you to near death for 10-20 years. Basically, if they won the cold war, the middle class people would be under threat of that for anything they said or did that could even be interpreted as political. That means even works of art they made they did not realize were political and conclusions they did not like from science (search: Lysenkoism, ---Darwinism was illegal : 'It is always environment (aka Class) that determines who you are, inherited biological features are a myth!"). (The USSR would definitely not mesh with the Clans, as they felt genes were determined by environment, officially until the 80s and unofficially well after. ) When the USSR fell, 1 in 7 Soviet citizens was KGB. They even had KGB spying on KGB in cross-referencing teams. If they ever had the resources of US or Western Europe, this would have been far more intense, and their punishment more "scientific."
Edited by PaintedWolf, 07 February 2015 - 04:33 PM.