To start with, let me get this out of the way, without structure or armor quirks, the Clan XL is the source of the Clan's power. It allows the Clan mechs to get good speed without sacrificing firepower or durability. Being a clan mech, it also has access to the better ranged lasers meaning it gets a boost in 4 important aspects of a mech.
Side Note: Maneuverability being tied to engine rating only exacerbates the benefits of the larger engines, like has been said for over 3 years, this connection needs to be removed.
Now, the interesting thing about quirks, is that a large chunk of the mechs that are often relegated to standard engines because of their profile (TBolt, Hunchie, Atlas, etc) got structure boosts to the side torso. Now what if that didn't have to be a quirk, but an inherent feature of standard engines? This becomes important because the Clans have no reason to ever run a standard engine mech, ever. The case would be the same with the IS light engine, as outside of lights there would be no reason NOT to use it.
I know I always bring up MW4:HC in almost every discussion, but to its benefit, it did a lot of good things to the balance on things like these.
Either way, in that mod, standard engines had two things going for it:
- All torso internals were doubled.
- Max heat is boosted by 50%. <- Not quite as important
In other words, with this change, many side torso internals/armor boosts could be done away with.
As for the max heat, this one is interesting. I would almost say that if it were 25% higher max heat and 25% better cooling, it would more than makeup for heat quirks if they were to be removed as well. Really this was a larger boon than most might think, as it allowed you to manage poking a lot better when you don't have to worry about a massive heat spike shutting you down as easily. Then again, HC had lower max heat ratings and weapons recycled slower there, so the heat dynamic was a little different.
Basically what I'm suggesting is to get rid of the torso structure boosts and just make that an inherent feature of standard engines. This not only helps the IS, but the standard engine Clan mechs should we ever get one.
Now as for IS XLs, which are pretty much death traps in all but lights and some mediums. Just get rid of the side torso destruction = kill rule. It is that simple, this is part of what makes the Clan XL so great, once you are stripped to just CT, there isn't much you can do anyway and on mechs with no CT/H hardpoints there is nothing you can do. So dying upon losing both side torsos isn't a huge deal to them, especially when you gain so much from the trade-off.
Now many TT purists will probably rage over this, but they also forget that the IS can only compete through force in numbers. If it weren't for some of these quirks, the IS would still be a decent amount worse than their clan counterparts, so some more things need to change for the IS to have a better chance against the God Tier mechs (which Im sure the Cheetah will join the ranks of, completing the set) and a large part of the reason for the disparity is the engines.
As for Light engines, if XL engines no longer meant no more side torso kills, what point will they have over XLs? Well HC gave them half the boosts that standards got in exchange which meant a decent enough trade-off (speed for tangible durability). So that is always a good start however that is still a ways away from being added.
Huge Side Note: This would probably have weird effects on TTK, since many mechs would get boosted protection, but also be able to mount more firepower.
tl;dr - Rather than quirk everything with boosted internals, just boost IS engines to not suck.
Edited by WM Quicksilver, 09 March 2015 - 01:01 PM.