Paigan, on 14 June 2017 - 02:57 AM, said:
What about a 80 ton atlas with full atlas armor, that brings a little lighter, short-ranged weapons faster to the enemy?
Let's be honest with each other: It's a game with gamey physics. Mechs are way too dense to have that weight at those dimensions, the heights are all over the place, a mech in and of itself makes no sense, and the weapons are magical. For starters. Moving right along, this is a game. Normal limits do not count for games, as long as they make sense in universe. Authentic versus realistic. BattleTech isn't realistic. But, within it's own set of rules, it can be authentic. We have some physics that apply. Things fall down, heavy things move slower than light things, and if weight goes up, engine power needs to go up to match the requirements and keep speed up (or "up there").
Now let's look at this proposal: Make your mech lighter (regardless of it's maximum allowed tonnage rating), but make it faster in return. When looking at the underlying game system, you'll quickly notice: That isn't planned for. Battletech doesn't do that. You pick a lighter mech. Don't want to bring another 15 tons on your Atlas? Bring a Battlemaster instead. It is also a question of balance. Heavier mechs can load up more armor. Lighter mechs can go faster. If you would bring an 85 ton Atlas, and move at the speed of a Battlemaster (or comparable), while carrying the armor of a 100 ton mech, and the weapons loadout of a Medium, you'd upset the balance. Suddenly, we would have fast, heavily armoured quasi-mediums.
It would also make various mechs pointless. There's a couple of mechs that can already do "pocket atlas". Orion and Huntsman come to mind (big gun, medium lasers, SRMs). Those mechs would have no reason to exist - you could just drop the difference in weapons load, and kablooey. Furthermore, there is a reason why we go max armor on ST, CT, carrying arms, and head. We want the most protection we can get. For the low price of a few tons of (light ferro or ferro, you got the slots from dumping gear...) armor, the Atlas could outperform Heavies and Mediums in the protection department.
You can probably see how upsetting the balance to such a degree is a bad idea.
And if you want an in-time, in-universe reason: The engine is tied to the chassis, and the chassis has a maximum speed per engine rating setting, hardcoded into internal circuits.
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