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Inner Sphere:
LB-5-x:
Seems like it's fairly good for what it is. The higher fire rate and spread means it should see some use for exploiting holes in armour. I think the lack of ammo switching hurts this like all LB-x series autocannons since they can't fire solid shells.
LB-20-x
First, thank goodness there is no ghost heat!
I think this will see some use with brawler mechs that can carry it. Unfortunately, the number of chassis that can is limited since it can't fit into arms and can only be used with standard engines. In tabletop where the values for crit slots came from you can split the crit slots between the arm and torso while losing the weapon arc advantages of arm mounted weapons. These construction rules exist for a reason and not including them hurts the usability of the weapon. This could limit how new stock variants of mechs are implemented in the future.
ER Medium Lasers
These seem OK so far. The duration isn't awful on them so they could see some use in designs that need a bit of range on their secondary weapon systems.
Light Gauss Rifle
Can only fire 2 at a time and have similar charge time to standard gauss. Why? This is really going to hurt the LGR and limit what chassis will want to take them.
Heavy Gauss Rifle
Long charge time is going to make this awkward to use in brawls where it's meant to be with it's damage and range values. It's already penalized by tendency to explode and it's size.
Like the LB-20-X this is a weapon made to use the crit splitting rules from TT. Using TT values for crit slots but not implementing this rule heavily limits which mechs can make use of this weapon. Maybe also a problem for adding new mechs in the future which make use of this?
RAC-2
Low damage and the spread really hurts even at close range. Even getting below 200m I couldn't isolate damage onto a single torso of a stationary Atlas with two of these mounted on a MAD-3R. They run hot even without bumping into ghost heat and spread damage too much to be useful for anything but screen shake on the target. With 4 tons of ammo and using backup ER Mediums I ran out of ammo after only killing the Atlas and Cataphract while trying to keep realistic movement of my own mech going.
These are also affected by a longstanding bug with ghost heat so mechs like the King Crab and Mauler that might have used a lot of them probably won't be. -edit: Even 2 which should be below the ghost heat limit look like they trigger this bug. No wonder they run so hot!
MRM Launchers
These seem OK. The spread keeps them from being overly powerful so SRMs definitely still have a place. The extra range can probably only be used against big, slow targets. I can see them having a place in some builds. I think the implementation reflects the range brackets and to hit penalty of tabletop well.
Light PPC
Ghost heat from firing more than 2 at once??? Why? It's a 5 point weapon give it ghost heat limits that consider this. This severely limits what mechs will take it to only lights that don't have space for anything more.
Heavy PPC
Nerfed the damage down to 12 already for what? Even at tabletop values this is just plain worse than the clan ERPPC. As it is there is no point in taking this weapon.
Snub-nose PPC
This is pretty much exactly what it should be: the IS PPC adapated for CQC.
Only quibble is that the heat is 10 instead of 9.5 so it didn't keep up with the recent adjustments to energy weapons.
Clans:
ATMs
With the same minimum range as IS LRMs. These are awful. Clan LRMs are still better in almost every situation not only at long range. The narrow window where ATMs have some advantage is going to be mostly negated by movement in practice. This is a terrible way to compensate for the lack of an ammo switching mechanic. It hurts LB-x autocannons and means we will never get specialty ammo types but no ammo switching kills ATMs. Please remove the minimum range from these even if you can't implement an ammo switching mechanic, this is just too much of a nerf.
Heavy lasers:
These should be a trade off in range and heat efficiency for more damage. As it is with durations higher than the ER laser equivalents they're going to spread damage all over the target when both mechs are moving as they should be. Damage splashed around like that isn't useful and I doubt there will be any reason to take these instead of ER or Pulse lasers. The trade-off doesn't seem worthwhile in either direction.
Micro lasers
These should have had a place on smaller mechs with lots of energy hardpoints but with ghost heat limits only slightly better than small lasers I have a hard time seeing why anyone would take them.
Equipment that I left out I didn't have a chance to test well enough to form an opinion on.
Overall I'd say most of the new weapons are underpowered and should be brought up in line with the old technology so that we have more interesting choices to make when building mechs. As it is most of this looks like things people will buy to mess around with then never use again. That's not fun.
Edited by Estella Jimenez, 28 June 2017 - 08:38 PM.
