Shifty McSwift, on 25 April 2017 - 09:55 AM, said:
Because hardpoint bloat for the game MWO is just another aspect of powercreep that is edging out the vast majority of mechs as viable choices? Because mechs 1/5 the size of an Atlas with twice as many guns is a bit weird? Because we both know that, like the nova, it will become the supreme mech at its role with those loadout potentials? Because it is more tunnel vision, boat style build promotion?
Except it doesn't? More weapons != power creep, as there are other limits too.
"Boat style build promotion": That's Battletech. There are LOTS of mechs designed around boating, and that's not a bad thing.
"Become the supreme mech at it's role": What role is that, exactly? If it's something as specific as "killing mechs that are already nearly dead" then sure, it'll be pretty good at that.... except that it's a 20t light with minimal armor, 30s of ammo, and a ~100m effective weapons range. A mech being good at a very specific thing isn't bad.
"Have more weapons than an Atlas": Sure. Lots of mechs have more weapons than an Atlas. More weapons != more firepower. It's not like you're going to be mounting a UAC20, 4ASRM6, and some lasers on that Piranha. Hell, you'll notice many assault builds
still don't use all their hardpoints. More hardpoints give more options, but not necessarily more power. A 12E Piranha can't come anywhere close to the
usable firepower of a 6E Cheetah, for example. Those 10 tons make a tremendous difference.
"powercreep" ... But the Piranha isn't going to be even a strong light. What
specific build do you think is going to cause power creep? 12 MG's with 33s worth of ammo? That's reasonably high DPS against one opponent, that requires 100% face time in a 20t mech (read: Death sentence if he so much as glances sideways at you). The Piranha will be comfortably in Urbie territory where it's a competent and fun mech, but one that isn't going to be in the T1 list.
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IDK probably some more good reasons and lots of little ones too. Mainly the first one, as I said originally it isn't so much about the piranha specifically, it is just coming up as another example of hardpoint bloating in general, which raises damage/dps potentials overall (adds to powercreep).
"hardpoint bloating" isn't a thing. There's hardpoint multiplication on some older IS mechs (due to them having so few) but that's kind of necessary to avoid them having hard limits on firepower that force them below lots of other mechs that have more options. Again, more hardpoints alone doesn't directly coorelate to more firepower, as you need to have the tonnage and space to
use those hardpoints.
Take the Nova. Most of it's best builds see far fewer weapons mounted than how many it's actually capable of mounting. Hell, take a look at Metamechs, and tell me how many Nova's there use all their potential weapons. One build has 11, the rest less. You can run 16 hardpoints on a Nova, but it's objectively bad at using them. It's got up to 16 though, which gives it interesting capabilities for fun builds - but those builds aren't power creeping anything as they're simply weaker builds.
Now, slapping 16 hardpoints on a bigger mech can be an issue, to be sure, but more hardpoints on their own does not make something better. There are a lot of interacting limits.
Power creep is an issue, but just because something has more hardpoints doesn't mean it's contributing to power creep.
Put it the other way around. If the KDK-3 had only it's 4B hardpoints, would it be weaker than an AS7-DDC with it's 7?
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