5 replies to this topic

[Adam Mieter]

Hi guys!

I've been playing this game on and off for a couple months, so I am new to it.

I've made the newbie mistake of mounting FF on my Shadowhawk since day 1, as I thought that it will increase my armor points by 12% as well as lowering the weight, which is obviously not true. Actually, if I would've known that FF is basically useless compared to Endo (especially if you don't have your 'Mech on full armor), I would not have spent c-bills on it.

Since the percentage/ton in this game seems like a totally irrelevant stat (as we assign armor by points, not per ton), can't the FF description be changed as to not be misleading for those who are not familiar with this ton/point system?

Something along the lines of "Offers the same amount of protection while weighing less" would be more user friendly IMHO. Or keep the original description, but add "It does not increase the amount of armor a 'Mech can have" to it.

My intention is not to whine, but there are so many topics about FF that it looks like the description/explanation in-game is not anywhere near foolproof, and you have to pay quite a lot of c-bills to learn.

[Wintersdark]

Yeah, this has been a point of contention since closed beta

[Tesunie]

It's wording very well probably should be altered for better clarity.

Sorry you had to learn that the hard way. Thankfully, C-bills come and C-bills go. I find they come quickly enough that a mistake like that is typically fairly easy to compensate for, even if it is annoying.

[Barkem Squirrel]

Still, it is the same amount of protection for less weight. Just Endo Steel structure gives a better weight savings as compared to Ferro Fibrous armor. Both use 14 slots, so 28 slots together for IS mechs and an XL is 40 out of 78 slots. Not much room for anything after that.

I know what you are saying, this is one of the more confusing issues. People are thinking that Ferro is better. Those of us from table top, still have a hard time realizing how confusing the wording is for new people

[Adam Mieter]

"Still, it is the same amount of protection for less weight."

Which is exactly why I'd love the wording to state that. People who aren't familiar with tons vs. points are only going to see "Blabla 12% more blabla weighing less". I don't think it would cost a lot of development time to rephrase or expand on that sentence and it would only help. Battletech vets would still know how FF works, Battletech newbies would make less mistakes in the Mech Lab

[Tier5 Kerensky]

This was really the thing I wondered when I was noob.

It was further more confusing as I only had Clan omnimechs myself, so I was looking at mechs I didn't own at the mechlab, and if you switch their armor, the mechlab showed the tonnage gained as compared to original amount. But if you redesigned the mech and armor to look what kind of builds you could make, how many guns you could take, and lessened the amount of armor, it showed that ferro armor could even weight more. I don't know if it's been fixed but I think it's the way it works for mechs in store being checked out in mechlab.