1
How will the battlefield change when IS gets the Annihilator, capable of dakka on the same level as the Dire Wolf?
Will IS ultra autocannons be a straight upgrade to regular autocannons?
Will IS become the dominant dakka with rotary autocannons?
Will IS ECM-wielders become ninja-mechs by adding stealth armor?
Will the heavy PPC or snub-nose PPC be dominant brawling weapons?
Will the heavy gauss be a dominant brawling/midrange weapon?
Will the light gauss produce super-irritating light and medium snipers?
Will IS SSRM-4 and SSRM-6 screw light brawlers?
Will the Mad Cak Mk. 2 become the dominant new hotness, with high-mounted hardpoints & jump jets?
How will one-shot rocket launchers be balanced?
How will laser AMS change lurm warfare?
How will Clan ATM's change SRM & LRM warfare?
Will the clan Micro Lasers be useless, or will they turn the Nova into something unholy & apocalyptic?
Will heavy lasers usher in a new era of clan laservomit?
And yes, these are all important questions. But let's get our priorities straight. There is one question, far more important than any of the rest. And how it is answered will define Mechwarrior Online forever:
HOW PRETTY WILL THE NEW LASERS BE?!
So here are my suggestions on the upcoming laser colors:
Small Heavy Laser: Orange
For the crazy nova pilots & other laserfist operators daft enough to install small heavy lasers, make them orange! It has a nice fire-motiff. Since bigger lasers in this game have higher-frequency colors, orange instead of the pink/red clan small lasers does properly infer that it's operating at higher energy levels.
Medium Heavy Laser: Turquoise (or lime green)
A mix of blue & green properly infers that this is not your run-of-the-mill inner sphere green laser. Or lime green, a mix of yellow & green, might also be appropriate. Did I mention that the clans do not currently have a laser in any shade of green? They need one. And it continues the higher frequency = higher energy motiff.
Large Heavy Laser: Purple
If you thought blue lasers meant business, purple lasers are the stuff of freebirth nightmares! Purple is the only color fit for properly burning Atlases, King Crabs, and Annihilators. Purple is also the highest-frequency visible color, which is appropriate for the biggest & baddest laser of them all.
Micro Lasers: Translucent White
Since bigger lasers have higher-frequency colors, it's reasonable to assume that micro-lasers could actually be infrared, and would be visible only by making the superheated air in their path glow a faint white color. (Don't ask how this works on HPG Manifold.) Making micro lasers nearly invisible might also give an otherwise questionably useful weapon an interesting niche.
Edited by Falconer Sword, 25 June 2017 - 12:53 PM.
