Metus regem, on 11 April 2016 - 02:05 PM, said:
..... As much as I like Lockheed Martian for some of their past secuss machines, the F-35 is going to be a blight on that company for years. There was a report sent out by one of the countries that was involved with the program that more or less stated:
"The F-35 cannot out Fly, out run or out shoot the aircraft that would be used to intercept it."
The sad thing is, it really can't. MiG-29's / SU-37's are faster, have a longer operational range, turn tighter, and carry a larger weapons payload than the F-35. It's no small coincidence that every country but two that have been involved with that program have backed out of it. Hell they can't even make the VTOL system on the thing work right... and 3 of the four versions of the craft do not carry a cannon, that mistake hasn't been done since the late 60's with the early F-4 Phantoms!
Everything aside, the F-35 is a boondoggle, much like a few of the mechs we are going to see over the next little while.
Ahhhh, the ol' JSF project. Proof positive that there is absolutely
nothing bureaucracy loves more than wasting time, money, and thousands of man-hours of effort on something that serves no purpose whatsoever except to prop up the bureaucracy.
Aircraft are not like Jeeps. You cannot make one plane that does the jobs of half a dozen other planes. They don't work like that. And yet, too many bigwigs have too much invested in the worthless thing to let it die and admit that you can't make One Plane to Rule Them All.
The military's going to be a long time recovering from that mess.
Anyways. Tangent over. What were we talking about again?
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Nova Cat vs. Night Gyr looks like an interesting topic. Much better than all that other junk. Let's talk about that one.
As has been stated, the Nova Cat is sort of the premier energy-boat Clan heavy in TT, at least insofar as "translates to that role in MWO" goes. The issue is that most variants center on a moderate-small number of somewhat larger guns, which limits the Nova Cat to heavy energy builds for the most part. The Prime gets 5E, which is morbidly terrifying when those 5E are two TT-class cERPPCs and three cERLL...but that's not really going to hold water in MWO. Not when the Timber Wolf can mount two cLPL and four cERML and mostly hit the same(ish) damage output with half the weapon weight. Most of the Nova Cat's alternate configurations are even less blessed with hardpoints, when they're not stuffed chock-full of FutureTech.
Realistically, the Nova Cat would need at least one -P variant to really shine. As a sort of pocket Warhawk, utilizing things like quad cLPL or similar armaments, it would probably work out well enough, but the thing doesn't really work out amazeballs well without any of its FutureTech variants. Not to say the machine wouldn't be a nasty customer - art for the Nova Cat angles its arms up enough that the 'Mech wouldn't be a complete disaster as a poker, and those arms are generally gorilla enough to shield its torsos well. it has pod-mounted jets in the Alpha configuration, so it can match the Gyr there, but without any options for slinging half a dozen smallbeams alongside a primary armament, builds for the Nova Cat are going to be limited.
The Night Gyr, on the other hand, is pretty much purpose-built for heavy ballistics. cES, cFF, and a low-rated cXL frees up maximum tonnage for big, bulky megaguns, and most available variants do indeed center on at least one oversized cannon. The Gyr has generally limited energy hardpoints outside the one left(?) arm with 3E, but that conflicts with most of its best ballistic pods as well. Neither 'Mech has anything resembling current-meta compliant fits. Think the best the Gyr can do is 6E, scattered across all three torsos and the one arm, and as pointed out it doesn't have the critical room for buttpiles of DHS.
My general notion is that if anything on the Clan side is going to seriously challenge the Evil Cheating Baby-Eating laser Vomit
META (at least in the minds of those who still believe that there's absolutely nothing in MWO which can challenge Point And Burn Dominance), it's going to be the Night Gyr. The thing packs more firepower than half the Clans' heavies, and has the hardpoint allocation to make use of it. It's not cripplingly slow, though I maintain that sub-70 heavies are just not ideal these days...but yeah. A Night Gyr with multiple heavy Clautocannons or slinging dual Gauss and actually having the ammo, armor, and sidearm lasers to back it up, will remind people that ballistics still exist, and they hurt. A lot.
The Nova Cat...would be less impactful, if somehow forced in without any of its FutureTech offerings. Its 6M configuration is enormously hampered by Ghost Heat (and presumably power draw), and furthermore the Mad Doge already does 6M, arguably better than the slower Nova Cat could, and absolutely with more energy to back its artillery. The Nova Cat
can sling ballistics; the ability to rip out the four tons of jump jets the Gyr can't gives the Nova Cat plenty of weight to offset the lack of cFF should it need it. Frankly, the Nova Cat will probably be at its best with a single medium or heavy cannon augmented with heavy energy, sort of like the old gold-standard PPG Cataphracts. Except the Nova Cat is a baller OmniMech and not a crappy Capellan desperation-plan on mismatched FrankenFeet.
Anyone else figure I'm off-base somewhere?