Posted 17 August 2015 - 03:32 AM
I think a lot of people miss the days when turning a corner and encountering the glowing eyes of an Atlas would make you **** your pants. Even when I started playing (after the glowing eyes, sadly), the Atlas would send most guys running.
You can increase armour and structure untill the Atlas is as indestructible as the cars in River City, but it's never going to really scare anyone as long as many heavy mechs have more firepower. 4Mlas, AC20 and some SRMs just isn't very scary anymore. And some indestructible mech running around at ~50 kph with mediocre firepower just means people will try to avoid and ignore it.
If the Atlas had the same hardpoint inflation that the King Crab got, it would be a different story. I don't like hardpoint inflation, but in the case of old mechs like the Atlas, I don't mind it. PGI already has all the 3d models needed to give the Atlas as many hardpoints as the the King Crab. All the three King Crab variants have 10 hardpoints each. So for the Atlas, that would be:
AS7-D: 6E, 2B, 2M
AS7-RS: 8E. 1B. 1M
AS7-S: 4E, 2B, 4M
AS7-D-DC: 4E, 3B, 3M
AS7-K: 6E, 1B, 3M
AS7-BH: 6E, 3B, 1M
Then give some armour and structure quirks to compensate for the tall profile, if needed.
Just to be clear, I don't want TTK to go down. But it doesn't help the TTK to have mechs like the Catapult, Commando and Atlas running around with fewer hardpoints, because it just means most people won't play those mechs anymore.