W E N D I G O, on 17 June 2017 - 08:41 AM, said:
Because 10 vs 12 would have killed all fun? The tabletop values for weaponry still would have been inappropriate and would have been in need to be adjusted. Also, with only two additonal Mechs on IS side the tonnage for both teams could still be on equal/near equal level and wouldn't have to be an extreme difference. You are just twisting the whole idea to create a strawman argument to blanket justify yet another questionable balance attempt from PGI that overall turns out to be less impactful for IS tech.
Weirdly enough you don't seem to have a problem with asymmetric drop deck tonnage though - or are not mentioning it here - while the weapons are balanced directly against each other, same for all Mechs and all tech since this is PGI's approach to balance.
10 vs 12 means that the 10 guys have more powerful mechs and have more targets. The 12 IS players in the 12 vs 10 will constantly feel underpowered, because they know they are not worth a full Clan unit.
The drop deck balance tells you that one Clan Unit will be worth as much as an IS unit, but it will do it with less weight.
Of course, it would be even better if this nonsense imbalance in tech power would not exist in the first place, and the tech bases were just different.
Imagine IS players would have standard lasers, pulse lasers, standard ppcs,
LRMs, SRMs and Autocannons and MGs, while Clan players would have ER Lasers, Heavy Lasers, ER PPCs, MRMs, Streak SRMs, Gauss Rifles (of different sizes) and Flamers.
All on the same power level base, however (either all IS or all Clan equivalents of these weapons). The two sides would play differently and feel differently without one side clearly having OP stuff.
But Battletech's creators in their infinite wisdom didn't do it, and PGI didn't feel called upon to improve on that, either.