FupDup, on 26 February 2016 - 09:35 PM, said:
Is there some kind of law of physics that demands a new post about Clan hero mechs every other week or something? It gets old after a while...
Anyways...
Only changing one pod kind of defeats the point of an Omnimech to begin with. Might as well just make it a Battlemech.
But then if we let them equip any pod combination, they could easily be stronger than their C-Bill counterparts if at least one hero pod beats the equivalent C-Bill pod.
This is why it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. For Battlemechs, their heroes are "balanced" by the fact that their hardpoints aren't changeable, thus you have to accept both the strengths and the weaknesses of the hardpoint layout. But with Omnis, you can just swap out the bad hardpoints for good hardpoints.
Case study: Summoner-M "Malthus"
Stock hardpoints: 1E right arm, 1B left arm, 1M + 1E left torso
Analysis: Both arms and the right torso are pretty mediocre. However, the left torso pod is clearly the best LT pod that the Summoner has because of adding an extra energy on top of the SMN-Prime, SMN-B, or SMN-C left torso. The player who buys this hero can then equip whichever arms and right torso they wish, and they will have exclusive access to a Summoner that is a bit stronger than C-Bill Summoners.
This isn't the best example because even then the Malthus would still be outclassed by things like the Mad Cat, but it should hopefully illustrate the balancing problem with hero Omnis.
Anyways...
Only changing one pod kind of defeats the point of an Omnimech to begin with. Might as well just make it a Battlemech.
But then if we let them equip any pod combination, they could easily be stronger than their C-Bill counterparts if at least one hero pod beats the equivalent C-Bill pod.
This is why it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. For Battlemechs, their heroes are "balanced" by the fact that their hardpoints aren't changeable, thus you have to accept both the strengths and the weaknesses of the hardpoint layout. But with Omnis, you can just swap out the bad hardpoints for good hardpoints.
Case study: Summoner-M "Malthus"
Stock hardpoints: 1E right arm, 1B left arm, 1M + 1E left torso
Analysis: Both arms and the right torso are pretty mediocre. However, the left torso pod is clearly the best LT pod that the Summoner has because of adding an extra energy on top of the SMN-Prime, SMN-B, or SMN-C left torso. The player who buys this hero can then equip whichever arms and right torso they wish, and they will have exclusive access to a Summoner that is a bit stronger than C-Bill Summoners.
This isn't the best example because even then the Malthus would still be outclassed by things like the Mad Cat, but it should hopefully illustrate the balancing problem with hero Omnis.
Why not make the Hero TW 30% cbill boost like the XP boost on omnimechs right now? You only get the full 30% if you run matching omnipods...pretty heavily incentivizes keeping the pods together...