9 replies to this topic

[Feral Goose]

Of the Clan mechs that come with pre-installed engines, that can not be changed out, I have a question why two of them do not come with the engine mounted, external Dbl. Heat Sinks(DHS), allotted to the engine, due to it's size.
Any engine, above the size 250, gains an engine mounted heat sink (or at least the slot for one) for every 25 sizes above. This holds true, across the board. I've gone through all of the clan mechs, that come with permanent engines, and found:

Ice Ferret has a 360XL, has two(2), engine mounted, DHS, but should have 4
Storm Crow has a 330XL, has zero(0), engine mounted, DHS, but should have 3


What gives? There aren't any negative quirks listed about this, dealing with these mechs.


The other Clan mechs are fine:
Ebon Jaguar 325XL and DOES have 3 external, engine mounted, DHS
Hellbringer 325XL and DOES have 3 external, engine mounted, DHS
Summoner 350XL and DOES have 4 external, engine mounted, DHS
Timber Wolf 375XL and DOES have 5 external, engine mounted, DHS
Dire Wolf 300XL and DOES have 2 external, engine mounted, DHS
Gargoyle 400XL and DOES have 8 external, engine mounted, DHS
War Hawk 340XL and DOES have 3 external, engine mounted, DHS
Adder comes with 8 engine DHS, like it should, with a 210XL
Artic Cheetah comes with 9 engine DHS, like it should, with a 240XL
Kit Fox comes with 7 engine DHS, like it should, with a 180XL
Mist Lynx comes with 7 engine DHS, like it should, with a 175XL


Sorry this is a re-post. It seemed to be better asked in this forum, but only after I had posted it in General.

[The Basilisk]

The reason is simple one word:
Canon
They don't have more heatsinks installed in their base frame by default in the tech readouts.

[SilentFenris]

As The Basilisk said, the stats of the mechs in MWO are based on the same model stats in Battletech (the source material).

The Ice Ferret would not do well with extra internal heatsinks. Two more mean two tons less weaponry space on a mech that already has very little weight left for weapons as is.

[Tarl Cabot]

He posted elsewhere, but what he should be saying is that if the slots are not filled up, they should be available to use though. If Clans were completely canon, weapons/other components would not be changeable, armor pts would be locked in place (they were before Clans were released) and only omnipods with their respective equipment could be switched out.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 10 June 2016 - 05:05 PM.

[Dee Eight]

Nothing is changeable or subject to modification with the basic internal loadout of omnimechs including where heat sinks are located. The basic omnimech that is the Ice Ferret only mounts 12 double heat sinks, all in the engine. It doesn't matter that it could mount 14, its engine and its configuration are fixed. Same goes for the stormcrow. Optimizing of "meta" was not the goal for the battletech authors who created the construction rules.

[Platinum Spider]

The problem with this all being that IS mechs are supposed to be all hard locked with nothing changeable, and the clan omni's were the ones you could change something one. This game reverses which side has more build flexibility and currently which side is stronger.

[Dee Eight]

False. Clan OMNI mechs were only changeable in terms of the pods mounted to them. Changing the pods allowed changing weapons/electronics installed in those pods. In larger lore terms, this meant easier field refits and altering of weapon loads optimized for the local conditions of a battle. This could be done on deployment with the minimum of maintenance personnel and equipment, even the few items you'd find inside a small dropship. A star of mechs could carry extra omnipods with them on deployment and the technicians could change them in a matter of hours. This is in contrast to inner sphere mechs which had to be brought to a factory, or maintenance depot, and even simple modifications would usually require days of work.

BUT... you're arguing rules points for a video game, based on a table top board game, that was played with paper, pencil, dice and cardboard miniatures on plastic bases with a map grid of hexes.

[Platinum Spider]

How does anything you just said show what I said to be false? I said IS mechs were hard locked you said you need a factory to change them. Same thing. I said Clan Omni-mechs were the ones you could change something on, IE the damn pods, and you say no you can change the pods.

[Koniving]

Platinum Spider, on 12 June 2016 - 08:21 PM, said:

The problem with this all being that IS mechs are supposed to be all hard locked with nothing changeable, and the clan omni's were the ones you could change something one. This game reverses which side has more build flexibility and currently which side is stronger.

Technically the opposite is true.

Technically.

Yes MWO gives insane and unparalleled freedom in customization for Battle mechs.
Then again in Battle tech it wasn't uncommon to take the legs of a war hammer and use them on a rifleman. Or to take the arm of a Wolverine and use it on a Dragon. In the old source books there are examples of this and I'm surprised no one has cried for that yet.

From a tabletop perspective in a solo battle, omnimechs are severely limited with strict rules.
From a tabletop campaign and lore perspective Omnimechs are superior... in the short term.
Need weapons changed? 20 minutes at most, most of it is picking up and aligning weaponry. Want to repair armor? Gimme an hour, we'll just replace it.

From that same perspective, if you have the time, with average technicians you can turn an Atlas D-DC into an Atlas K in 7 months. Fro! D-DC into an Atlas C in a little more. Or if you wanted, you could replace the Atlas's left arm with a Kodiak's, then tack on a Banshee's right torso and arm in only 3 months (no delivery time as parts were salvage.). Interestingly, the banshee parts cut me down to being a 95 ton Atlas, even then due to technician error the banshee's upper arm actuator became broken beyond repair. Funny thing is I'd the transplant because my right shoulder actuator became non repairable and I didn't have any replacements left of the 100 ton variety so I grafted via the special rules written in 1987.

So why the special restrictions on Omnimechs?

Clan mentality. Why would you want to change the engine? Why would you want to wait weeks or months for changes when you can have it tweaked in less than two hours? Even then, the omnipods are designed for this mech with these specs and if you change those specs, we can't use these pods anymore.

Once you tinker with an omnimech's core build, it loses its status as an omnimech.

As an experiment I captured a dire wolf in megamek. I followed the rules in regards to Omnimech tampering and mixed tech, with each repair degrading it further, requiring replacements of equipment, weapons. At one point the engine needed replacing with 2 out of three crits on it. I couldn't. The tech failed repeatedly. Got my best Tech's on it and then finally got Scotty (God mode plus) on it. Couldn't fix, couldn't replace. Even with a 0 (god mode) engineer with bonus stats (the plus), I couldn't fix or yank it out. The Dire Wolf made its final voyage in January 2016 where it was torn to shreds by a plague of locusts, fleas, a mercury and finished off by a hatchetman.

Still, made it through 13 battles with a stolen dire wolf.

Edit:
Btw, taking the same mech and toggling omnimech and battle mech, the exact same weapon replacement and armor repair procedure on both mechs took...
Omnimech -- 2 hours and 30 minutes. Due to complications first try. Repeat: 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Battle mech -- 9 weeks. Repeat:. 13 weeks (they broke the damn thing and I had to god mode another on hand!!!)

Note repairs included 100 units of armor repair or replacement as necessary (omnimech got more replacement than repair), replace or repair one actuator, change 6 weapons, replace two non-core damaged heatsinks and add one, and repair one Clan large pulse laser with no replacement on hand (all attempts succeeded to repair it).

Edited by Koniving, 14 June 2016 - 05:27 AM.

[Dee Eight]

The warhammer/rifleman leg sharing is related to the original source material for the artwork. Three of the five main ground battle mecha shown in super dimensional fortress macross came from the same manufacturer and thus shared the same lower drivetrain/legs.