Right now the Atlas is nothing more than a complete joke.
There are lots of good ideas in this thread to "fix" it and I'll support
anything that can help that 100 tons bucket of fail perform better than it does right now. (And that's coming from someone who drops in a daishi 95% of the time when piloting an assault...)
But someone here might have just found the magic recipe to make it a "fun" mech again, although it probably won't be viable competitively, it certainly is a very
very interesting way to make it worth owning and playing, at least in pug drops.
THIS :
Thunder Child, on 23 March 2015 - 08:17 PM, said:
Just a Crazy thought.
Remove the Weapon Quirks. And give the Atlas no armour Cap.
If you've got spare tonnage (due to limited Hard points), you can just keep stacking on armour instead.
Of course, you'll always get the Muppets that run an XL 200, two Machine Guns (1t ammo), Four Small Lasers, Two SRM 2s (2t ammo), Endo, Ferro, and SHS, so they can cram on 2600+ pts of armour.
But, it does mean that suddenly the Atlas could be a LOT Tankier.
Bravo...
And this is why I think Thunder Child just had the best idea ever for the Fatlass' quirks :
1/ The Atlas's dreadful hardpoints compared to the two other 100 tonners justify the "No Armor Cap Quirk"
Every single battlemech has got an innate maximum firepower (DPS) restriction linked to their heat capacity and their ability to either boat a crapton of DHS or carry a combination of heat-less and moderate to high heat weapons.
The Atlas is hardpoint-wise much worse than a Thor, which ironically, still at least has some omnipods swapping capabilities.
The Atlas is capable of boating DHS to some extent, even though they are IS 3 slots ones, but is then incapable of carrying more than (best case) 6 energy weapons, something that is only possible in the "$ only" Boar's Head.
The Atlas is also incapable of max-boating the heat-less "meta" ballistic, at best it can only carry a single gauss rifle or 2 UAC5s.
Crabs can do either twin gauss or 4 UAC5s. Direwolves can do twin gauss or up to 6 UAC5s in troll builds.
Both the Crab and the Daishi can carry the infamous "meta combo" of twin heat-less gauss + 3 large IS lasers or twin heat-less gauss + half a dozen Clan ERMLs.
That means that even in a brawling situation in which Crabs and Daishis aren't supposed to perform effectively
at all, and after all the mechs have reached their maximum heat capacity, these two mechs will still, more often than not, be carrying and firing twice the amount of heat-less weapons than the Atlas.
The Atlas being gifted the ability to get an insanely higher amount of armor just seems like a perfect way to make this 100 tonner
completely different but somewhat equal.
It will effectively become the most feared close range mech and "first liner" during pushes in the game.
2/ The "No Armor Cap Quirk" isn't free, it will eat up tonnage.
Now, one of the best aspect of this idea is that this quirk would only remove the armor cap on the Atlas, meaning every point of armor still has to be paid with tonnage.
Indirectly, this also means that
every single additional point of armor is paid by lowering your firepower.
In a nutshell, more armor will always lead to less dakka. As opposed to the current quirk system that "
for some magical reason, gives a particular mech a +x points of internals for dem arms, torsos or rear butt mounted mud guard for free just because they felt like it and why the hell not".
Overall, anyone who wishes to double his Atlas' armor will be able to so at the cost of roughly 19 tons.
3/ The "No Armor Cap Quirk" will not lock any of the Atlas into one single meta/optimal loadout.
Another great aspect of the "no armor cap quirk" is that maybe
for the first time ever since the quirks have arrived; this particular one won't lock us with a single meta/quirk forced loadout carrying a "magically quirked" weapon at all.
*COUGH*DRG-1N
*COUGH*WVR-6K
*COUGHING INTENSIFIES*FS9-S
*MOAR COUGHS*STK-4N
*END OF COUGHS*
And while the change in gameplay is huge even compared to any other heavily quirked mechs, it hopefully only requires one single very lazy and easy change to implement.
Technically, all the previous builds in the game will still be remain "buildable" and unlocking the armor cap won't break anything from the stock/champion/hero loadouts either.
This won't solve the fact that some variants are way superior to others, but it will solve the fact that the Atlas s*cks like a hoover compared to not only the two other 100 tonners but almost every other assault mechs in the game.
It will still require some minor quirks to even out the bad variants and make them worth picking over the Magic Box DDC (or even the S).
4/ The "No Armor Cap Quirk" brings a new kind of "Eff My Life" moment in MWO that perfectly fits the Atlas / the lore.
100 tonners are supposed to be terrifying, ending up in front of a Crab or a Daishi's line of fire and their massive firepower is scary right now.
In high Elo, this usually means "LOLS, say bye bye to half your mech".
Not so much, at all, when you stumble in front of a Fatlass. This quirk will change everything.
Although being cornered by an Atlas won't mean getting instagibbed by a half a dozen CERMLs, 2 LPLs and 2 Gauss rifles.
It will still remain terrifying in a whole different way, one of a
"tough as hell" or "invincible" mech as opposed to the "ludicrously fat pile of weapons" of the Crab and Daishi.
Chances are ending up in front of it and not being able to escape will have the Atlas slowly but hilariously rip you apart while you barely manage to scratch through his insane amount of armor on your own.
5/ The "No Armor Cap Quirk" opens up a brand new world of lols is a process that is easy to balance.
Because "Ohais, I brought a firestarter lols <3" aka Boar's Head with Endo/Ferro/DHS, XL400, 6 Medium Lasers and almost twice the amount of armor.
And honestly even a massively armored Atlas fitted with a ridiculously tiny XL200 Engine and over 3 times the amount of armor, will still suffer from the universal heat issue that mechs do when they cannot boat heat-less weapons. 6 MLs brings it to 35% Cooling Efficiency only which is worse than a Jenner F's firepower.
The only massive trollish issue would be an STD engine Atlas D with 2 CT MLs and stripped armor on torsos and arms, all moved to a glorious 700ish points of CT armor.
What if this suddenly makes the Atlas tier 0 ? (LOL... it won't. But yeah let's assume it does)
Oh wells, we could maybe change the "
No Armor
Cap Quirk" to "
Double Armor Cap Quirk", which honestly should be done from the start to avoid some trollish builds. #funpolice
Still OP as hell? How about a "
+75% Armor Cap Quirk" ?
Still not working, let's try "
+50% Armor Cap Quirk".
And so on... As long as it finally takes its place alongside the Crabbie and the Daishi.
5
Needs some Spats though.
