Scott ExV, on 06 July 2015 - 10:30 PM, said:
Better than IS mechs without quirks: Yup, as it should be.
Better than IS mechs with quirks: Depends on the mech and quirks for the IICs, also pending the Aug rebalance. I'll reserve judgement on this until after that. No point speculating about it now.
Better than ommimechs: Really depends on play style, on the following factors:
- If you regularly equip ommipod variants other than the stock ones in order to get the weapon hardpoints that you want.
- Ability to swap engines is a double edge sword, moving faster means less weight for weapons and armor, and that pesky requirement of mandatory heat sinks if you don't want it. But I will concede the point that having the option is a good thing.
- Ability to change heat sinks / armor type / internal structure type: I could be wrong, but there's no released information on this and we are all assuming that they will be able to. Would it make a difference if they cannot be changed (?? because the clan's manufacturing capabilities are located outside the Inner Sphere ??)? Although options are (again) good, the weight/space trade off will depend on the mech and how you want to equip them.
Ultimately it boils down to 2 things:
1) New mechs: Yay! New mechs to play with and tinker with, also new mechs to shoot at and watch them keel over.
2) But they are overpowered/underpowered compared to what's available now: Aw shucks, too bad, time to put those brain cells to work to find a way around it.
Swapping engines is enormous, particuarly for large mechs. TT engine sizes are usually not optimal due to having to follow MP*Tonnage.
Dynamic crits for ES/FF is enormous because it allows you to put ammo in useful locations like legs and head, and force crits that you dont care about losing to the sacrificial arms. Take a look at the Timber wolf and see that it loses 3 slots per torso, both legs, the head and 1 in the CT to locked crits, it would be a MUCH better mech if those crits were dynamic and could all be forced into one arm, for example.
These two factors work quite well balancing the clan tech advantages actually, because they seriously hamstring builds. If IIC mechs do not have these disadvantages then, regardless of their power level vs IS as that can be altered by overall balance adjustments to the gear itself, they will DEFINITELY be ENORMOUSLY superior to Omnimechs, as both use the same tech base and would be equally affected by any balance changes. All you need to do is find the IIC mechs with the good hardpoints (which some do have) and the Omnimech legomech advantage is gone. ALL that does is make 100% of Omnimech variants serviceable, which is nice but since you can only drive one mech at a time it doesn't actually confer a gameplay advantage.
Edit:
Personally i think ES/FF should ALWAYS have locked crits, some in each section. It makes no sense that bulkier internals should be able to move ALL of their additional bulk to one arm of the mech. That would kill SO MANY builds though, including stock ones, so it will never happen.
Edited by Widowmaker1981, 07 July 2015 - 03:25 AM.