true, it's just the Blood Asp really is the mech better known for originally fielding them (not to mention being incredibly popular as one of the biggest powerhouse Clan Assaults, which makes it the perfect counterpoint to the Fafnir here).
I loved the Fafnir, it’s maybe my favourite 100 tonner...
But... Why are the designers giving huge mechs such a crappy amount of hardpoints? What a waste of tonnage! How come pissy little light mechs can sneak up and blaze with 6 or 8 lasers, some with 12 machine guns, and a 100 ton monstrosity can maybe make 5? It should have 2-3 hardpoints per region, (probably minimum)!
Don’t say the ability to mount a 20 damage weapon offsets that design short coming - it doesn’t. 20 damage weapons ARE JUNK. A weapon that is unlikely to even hit, or leaves you unable to attack or retaliate until you are at close range is worthless. They have rubbish range, velocity and ammo shortages. There is no good reason to ever mount one when 2 or 3 AC 10s are vastly superior. One big weapon is nowhere near as good as a battery of smaller ones, so why do the assualt mechs get so hamstrung with their load outs? They are supposed to be the mechs where ALL OPTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE.
Literally half the fun of any mechwarrior game is being able to customise your mech and adopt a wide variety of load outs to find the one you most enjoy.
C’mon MWO, stop gelding the premier BattleMechs. They are supposed to be the big guns. Let them actually carry more weapons than mechs which are considerably smaller/lighter.
You also need to reduce the weight and slot requirement of ballistic weapons so they can be mounted in batteries and more fairly balanced against energy weapons, or other fuxes such as much more ammo per ton.
I have pre-ordered many many mechs, but the Fafnir is in danger of being too risky to buy, since it WILL be slow. Gauss needs to lose the charge up phase... I can’t divert the brain power and coordination to do that when the battle really gets hectic! They also get critted and destroyed far too easily, making them pointless to mount.
Aesthetically, the guns(arms) need to be scaled up to be proportional as well... just a bit bigger. The shielding plates are good, they could perhaps get bigger and be used to shield the side torsos from flanking shots?
Thanks for listening.
Edited by Sebaztien Hawke, 07 January 2018 - 03:53 PM.
true, it's just the Blood Asp really is the mech better known for originally fielding them (not to mention being incredibly popular as one of the biggest powerhouse Clan Assaults, which makes it the perfect counterpoint to the Fafnir here).
Don't get me wrong, I really want the the Blood Asp, quite a bit more than the Hellfire, but the Hellfire does more to help the current Clan line-up than the Blood Asp. Sure, the Blood Asp adds a 90 ton OmniMech, but it would be the 4th 90 tonner. The Hellfire adds a BattleMech to the 60 tonners, of which there is only 1.
I want the Blood Asp more, but I think the Hellfire deserves to come out first.
Edited by Jay Leon Hart, 07 January 2018 - 01:56 PM.
The entire mech is designed around delivering one or two heavy gauss rifle rounds to a target, which requires getting as close as possible, and they limit the engine size to 325? Really?
I have to admit, that gives me a lot of pause on the pre-order. This is probably the last big mech that I'd be interested in for a pre-order and to limit its engine size like that basically means it can only run its canon build in Solaris and in FP if you're lucky and have gotten a defensive engagement.
The entire mech is designed around delivering one or two heavy gauss rifle rounds to a target, which requires getting as close as possible, and they limit the engine size to 325? Really?
I have to admit, that gives me a lot of pause on the pre-order. This is probably the last big mech that I'd be interested in for a pre-order and to limit its engine size like that basically means it can only run its canon build in Solaris and in FP if you're lucky and have gotten a defensive engagement.
It is an odd choice, given that the other 100 tonners with a stock 300 rated engine, the Atlas & King Crab, both have a cap of 360, not 325.
I've asked in the official thread, where Matt was answering a few questions, but no response.
I would try Twitter, but I just don't see the point.
The entire mech is designed around delivering one or two heavy gauss rifle rounds to a target, which requires getting as close as possible, and they limit the engine size to 325? Really?
I have to admit, that gives me a lot of pause on the pre-order. This is probably the last big mech that I'd be interested in for a pre-order and to limit its engine size like that basically means it can only run its canon build in Solaris and in FP if you're lucky and have gotten a defensive engagement.
What engine do you think you're going to fit with dual Heavy Gauss? 325 might be a little too ambitious.
Since no Fafnir has a CT weapon, the best version offensively would be the FNR-6R with 1B1E torsos, as opposed to the FNR-5 or FNR-5B with an ECM CT & 1E head.
Edited by Jay Leon Hart, 07 January 2018 - 03:06 PM.
Jay Leon Hart, on 07 January 2018 - 10:10 AM, said:
The MWO model keeps the TT arm shields, thankfully. I just find the TT "pea shooters" a little too comical.
Looking into the mech. Those "pea shooters" are laser guns, fitting with the old art style of long barrelled laser weapons. Particularly ER versions.
The two BIG cylinders... are supposed to be the big barrels of Heavy Gauss Rifles, and a rough idea of how big the barrels are supposed to be... which in turn give a hefty impression of just how deadly the things are meant to be.
Especially when you consider that depictions of Gauss Rifles are really big, such as the Hollander.
Yet PGI wants to pump single shot ACs on us.
Jay Leon Hart, on 07 January 2018 - 08:26 AM, said:
Did someone say they wanted MixTech? If not, what is your point?
Blind? Point is all of these players with their rose colored glasses for IS mechs which utilized Clan tech. That is what PGI has been banking on. But back then a mech did not have to worry about dying to the loss of a side torso if using isXL engine in a game that does not have a fully functional engine crit system in place. Oh yes. in MWO there is the STD and the LFE while Clan Battlemechs are actually still alive after their cXL losing a side torso.
Sebaztien Hawke, on 07 January 2018 - 01:54 PM, said:
I loved the Fafnir, it’s maybe my favourite 100 tonner...
But... Why are the designers giving huge mechs such a crappy amount of hardpoints? What a waste of tonnage! How come pissy little light mechs can sneak up and blaze with 6 or 8 lasers, some with 12 machine guns, and a 100 ton monstrosity can maybe make 5? It should have 2-3 hardpoints per region, (probably minimum)!
Don’t say the ability to mount a 20 damage weapon offsets that design short coming - it doesn’t. 20 damage weapons ARE JUNK. A weapon that is unlikely to even hit, or leaves you unable to attack or retaliate until you are at close range is worthless. They have rubbish range, velocity and ammo shortages. There is no good reason to ever mount one when 2 or 3 AC 10s are vastly superior. One big weapon is nowhere near as good as a battery of smaller ones, so why do the assualt mechs get so hamstrung with their load outs? They are supposed to be the mechs where ALL OPTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE.
Literally half the fun of any mechwarrior game is being able to customise your mech and adopt a wide variety of load outs to find the one you most enjoy.
C’mon MWO, stop gelding the premier BattleMechs. They are supposed to be the big guns. Let them actually carry more weapons than mechs which are considerably smaller/lighter.
You also need to reduce the weight and slot requirement of ballistic weapons so they can be mounted in batteries and more fairly balanced against energy weapons, or other fuxes such as much more ammo per ton.
I have pre-ordered many many mechs, but the Fafnir is in danger of being too risky to buy, since it WILL be slow. Gauss needs to lose the charge up phase... I can’t divert the brain power and coordination to do that when the battle really gets hectic! They also get critted and destroyed far too easily, making them pointless to mount.
Aesthetically, the guns(arms) need to be scaled up to be proportional as well... just a bit bigger. The shielding plates are good, they could perhaps get bigger and be used to shield the side torsos from flanking shots?
What engine do you think you're going to fit with dual Heavy Gauss? 325 might be a little too ambitious.
Two HGRs? You could push up to a 350 if you strip some armour.
That said, if you go with one HGR you can fairly easily reach 350 and above. Even the Hero variant only mounts one HGR, yet its stuck with a 325 cap. It is rather disappointing.
The only reason that I can imagine for it is that they didn't want something so short that can pack a bunch of ballistics into their side torso to be able to move relatively quickly and have a low profile all at the same time. If you really wanted to mess with people you could run around at 60+ KPH with two RAC5s and two LBX10s and without the drawback of being the walking bullseye that is the Annhilator. Could you imagine how many people that would piss off?
HammerMaster, on 06 January 2018 - 03:13 PM, said:
Not in actual variants but in actual use in the queue. I do like lists.
I think a relatively inoffensive way of encouraging players to not just use only assault mechs would be to, hypothetically speaking, rework the queue so that during peak hours you have lower priority in the player queue based on how much you've been using an assault/heavy in the past 24 hours. The better your queue rating the sooner you get matched, somewhat ahead of other players but not obscenely longer. Piloting lights and mediums improve your queue rating, piloting heavies and assaults damage your queue rating. Tweak it so that you're never waiting obscenely long and that there's a point where it can't get any better or worse, just maybe a minute or two three minutes at the maximum. If you wanna play fifteen straight matches in a Dire Wolf you still can but it'll be a minor impediment to your convenience. This would also ideally ease up on the quick play pool whenever a new mech is released so that it isn't 80% heavy all day long.
Now I don't think that MWO has the player population to pull that off, and the long length of most matches hurts its ability to apply something like this too. Its just a hypothetical idea.
I have the current BattleMech Manual in my lap. Page 98, section opener for Autocannons, quote:
"some fire a single massive round..."
So, it's canonical. You'll get used to it. And spare me the wall of text you will no doubt feel the urge to post, I have no intention of allowing you to cherrypick data to obscure the fact that single-slug ACs are within the scope of the setting.
Yeonne Greene, on 07 January 2018 - 08:52 PM, said:
I have the current BattleMech Manual in my lap. Page 98, section opener for Autocannons, quote:
"some fire a single massive round..."
So, it's canonical. You'll get used to it. And spare me the wall of text you will no doubt feel the urge to post, I have no intention of allowing you to cherrypick data to obscure the fact that single-slug ACs are within the scope of the setting.
And which manual is that?
Because if you mean this one...
Is it covering well into 3150, a hundred years from now? https://store.cataly...ttlemech-manual
Because as even covered in the footnotes, mechs start to reach 16 meters tall, which they didn't surpass 14.4 meters in until after 3080.
In much the same, AC calibers can expand, but until the Dark Ages, there's no AC/2 that goes above 90mm, no AC/5 that goes above 120mm, no AC/10 that goes above 120mm, and no AC/20 that goes above 185mm in the IS and no UAC/20 that goes above 203mm in the Clans, and 150mm is explicitly 2 damage per shot, and 120mm is explicitly 1.67 damage per shot. (1) (2).
TechManual which covers into the darkages...
Quote
For what amounts to one of the most basic combat systems on
the modern battlefield, autocannons (often abbreviated as ACs) are
a broadly varied class of rapid-fi ring, auto-loading, heavy ballistic
weaponry—gigantic machine guns, in other words. With calibers
ranging from 30 to 90 millimeters at the lighter end, to as much as 203
millimeters or more at the heaviest, most autocannons deliver their
damage by firing high-speed streams or bursts of high-explosive,
armor-defeating shells through one or more barrels. While caliber
and firing rate can vary greatly, four main classes have emerged over
the centuries, setting the standards by which all other ACs are rated,
based on their relative ballistic damage. At the lightest end is the AC/2
class, followed by the long-time standard AC/5, then the heavy punch
of the AC/10 class, and finally the brutal, close-in AC/20.
At the dawn of the BattleMech era, only two proven autocannon
models existed: the AC/2 and the AC/5. Production model versions
of the heavier AC/10 and the ’Mech-killing AC/20 did not appear until
after 2460 and 2500, respectively (though the Mackie sported a prototype
of the AC/10 as far back as its 2443 battlefi eld debut).
In the centuries since, additional autocannon variants have evolved,
including the cluster-style LB-X, the high-speed Ultra and the multibarreled,
high-cycle rotary. These three autocannon styles—as well as
the standard models—are discussed below.
Page 207, though the index says it should be on page 206.
A "single shot" autocannon is known as a Rifle.
By the very definition of the word autocannon, it cannot be a single shot weapon.
Here's an autocannon at work.
Now this isn't to say that autocannons can't fire single shots. But it isn't single shots to get full damage. A specific example is the nearly extinct Tomodzuru AC/20, at 180mm this was the largest IS AC/20 mounted on a mech prior to 3100, and the deadliest AC/20 the IS ever had until 2823, the advent of the Demolisher with its 185mm cannon. It held 5 shells per cassette/reload and 5 reloads per ton in a drum of the left torso that held two tons of ammunition. It fired in single shots for accuracy, with a single shot per trigger pull, however it still took a total of 4 shots to net 20 damage and had a maximum firing rate of 1 shot per second. A single shot is described as pretty devastating, able to tear a hole through a mech in with one such example in TRO 3025 original. A thing to remember though is unlike MWO and BT Basic tabletop where you have to get through all armor to do structure damage, in lore and advanced TT you only need to land a strong enough hit to make the damage and can split-fire your AC/20 on multiple targets (which is exactly what the Hunchback 4G does in TRO 3025 original's short story for the HBK-4G).
The Tomodzuru gradually became extinct except for in the galleries of some avid collectors and museums as the projectiles were unruly and largely impractical. (There's also the fact that only the Komiyaba Type VII chassis HBK could handle them, which eventually every remaining 4G had been converted into something else. The newly designed 'Classic' 4 series using the Crucis Type V chassis HBKs were deliberately redesigned to not be able to handle anything used on the original Komiyaba Type VII, so that Kali-Yama could basically put a tourniquet on the refit kits out there and sell their own "classic" copies of refitted old 4Gs. The refit kits of old were incompatible with all Crucis Type V chassis HBKs, really screwing with the Marian Hegemony, whom turned around with a big Eff Yoo by making refit kits for the new chassis to again build profits from refit kits and stick a finger to Kali-Yama Weapons Industries for their undesired 'reimagining' of a cult classic machine.)
So if that is what you mean, then yes. But that does not mean that a single shot delivers full damage. That would be a Mech Rifle, which is based on 21st/22nd century TANK CANNONS... and not an Autocannon, which is based on Anti-Air style auto-firing weaponry. The entire reason the military stopped using Mech Rifles is frankly, a single hard hitting shot like the 190mm Heavy Rifle (which has the range of an AC/5, does 6 damage against BAR of 10, but 9 damage against structure and a BAR [Barrier Armor Rating] of 7) had numerous problems. A gas propelled projectile of that size (even saboted) lacked the penetrating power necessary to be fully effective against "modern" standard armor. With the piercing power stunted and at the right angle, outright bouncing off mechs with virtually no damage (see "The First Mech" short story, can find a copy on the Mech Factory App for Rifles in action against a Mackie), they quickly learned that large projectiles were NOT the way to go. Instead they began to focus on smaller, faster projectiles that can be fired and land in rapid succession with just enough power to wedge and stick into the armor without the intention of actually piercing it (the "AP" part of AC "HEAP" rounds) where it then goes boom (the HE part of AC HEAP rounds).
Big shells generally can't pierce and ACs are expressly bullets (and as such cannot fire sabots and you will note that is not an alternative ammo type). There is Armor Piercing but that still fails to meet the sabot mark and something about them requires twice the space and only be able to bring half the ammo.
The Chemjet Gun manages to get around this by being chemically powered by a fluid propellant, allowing it to stick in before it went boom though just as common was lobbing it over walls and obstacles and having it land from above where mechs have minimal ability to brace against it.
How the Tomodzuru managed is actually kinda beyond me, but a combination of brute force and firing rate is probably how it got by since lets be honest... Mech Rifles could only fire once every 4 to 5 seconds... but as mentioned earlier the Tomodzuru, while only managing 4 damage per shot, had a maximum firing rate of one per second and a cassette reload delay of 2 seconds, meaning it could churn two cassettes out in 10 seconds matching the firepower of a UAC/20 (actually most ACs can match UACs; issues with barrel melting, explosive jams, etc. are why you don't push them under the rapid fire autocannon rule of TacOps). The 203mm UAC/20 as mentioned in a previous post lobs 4 shells to get 40 damage from its twin barrels at a painstakingly slow rate and yes it does do 10 damage per shell, but considering it is exclusive to the Ebon Jaguar, a mech that had to be squat low to the ground and as wide as a barge to be stable enough to handle this weapon should tell you a lot. From what I understand it doesn't even fire this weapon while walking, as similar to a Gauss totting Crucis Type V chassis Hunchback 4G from TRO 3039, it needs to brace against the risk of knocking itself over when firing in Ultra mode.
What they do in 3150+...doesn't matter so much to me. Wrong time period, I mean by then there's shields and Gauss rotary cannons (HAG) and battle armor sporting autocannons. Not to mention if we do count Dark Ages as true canon, 25 meter tall 100 ton Atlases sporting a Kitchen with 3 cooks just to keep the tub of lard of a pilot happily eating KFC during combat.
Even then, name one AC caliber going anywhere above 203mm, or at the very least a single example of an AC/5 of the 185mm caliber, and I'll take your single shot AC/5 schtick.... and then point out that they don't exist in 3030 to 3052 which are the years MW5: Mercs will take place in, so in the end... the Shadowhawk's 80mm AC/5 still should not produce 5 damage per shot with a single shot AC.
If I recall correctly, it was mentioned in both the quickstart ruleset and the manuals for both classic and alpha strike battetech.
Also there is an extensive text about that in Sarna, where it says that ACs are classified by their dmg potential over "x" time, wheter they deal a single shot or a burst, which depended by who fabricated it, since each manufacturer gave ACs their own signature.
But anyways, Clan AC10s shoot two pellets instead of the single one IS AC10s do. So it's not like PGI did not take a little bit of Lore into account
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Jay Leon Hart, on 07 January 2018 - 01:28 PM, said:
They also get critted and destroyed far too easily, making them pointless to mount.
