MeiSooHaityu, on 24 February 2019 - 11:21 AM, said:
I know it is a bit of a tangent from the actual conversation, but can I just say...I HATED MechWarrior Tactic's artwork. That is nothing even remotely like a Hunchback. It looks like a weird Dragon with a PPC launcher on the shoulder. I can accept variance from the source material to some extent. PGI made some radical designs with the Catapult and especially the Centurion, but they just felt...Right. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I can even accept the MechWarrior 4 Catapult as a Catapult even when it looks like a walking door knob.
That Hunchback though....my lords it is atrocious!
That...was "creative freedom" on MW4's part.
And what's not to love about the Catapult in MWT?
Aside from the fact it looks like a Catapult II.
This is from MWLL, and note...
How similar it looks. (There's an identical match further down which is what they based it on).
Then again there are 2 canonical designs of the Catapult.. and technically they exist in the same universe at the same time and it just depends on the needs of the planet it primarily operates on...
There's the Stilt-legged
This design is used in areas with more mountainous terrain for reasons very similar to
here.
Emmerich: "On Terrain with significant differences in elevation like Afghanistan, you need a body that is vertically adaptable. That also lets it attack from Long Range while using Mountain Ridges for cover. So making it walk upright [note: in the Catapult's case, "TALLER"] was the most important factor in giving it superior height capability."
The area behind the knees are extra thick to support it if knocked down onto its back, so as to make getting back up easier. It is also better able to throw its center of gravity so that it could get back up. For some reason the stilted version is noted prefering to get back up from an on-the-back-of-its-legs position, though I don't see why it couldn't do the same thing the Shunt-leg version does. The longer legs also give it a better kicking ability, something the shunt-legged catapult relatively is incapable of doing above the waist.
Shunt leg (is what I call it)
A shorter design to make it harder to hit in open fields and for some reason this design is also more common in urban areas (perhaps due to its lower turning clearance due to shorter legs, and perhaps because sharp turns on long legs with a higher center of gravity is just asking to tip over). Being shorter, the mech has an easier time getting up than its nearly 2 meter taller counterpart. The metal at the knees is separated for a reason, its supposed to fold out in order to form a "heel" to brace it while firing as well as to catch it on backward falls to prevent the fall. In the event of a fall, the rounded body rolls until on the nosecone which is used as a hand. MWO's version removed the nose cone thinking of the same thing, but feeling that a flat panel would better provide support in standing. It may, but a flat panel is easier to penetrate than a sloped panel.
There's a 3rd design, the fatter one.
I don't know if this is simply an older design of the shunt leg before modernizing it with a visual retcon, or if this actually is a canonical difference, its simply more rounded than the shunt leg design with no discernible differences.
But yeah, side tangent over. This is pretty neat when you dig into it, isn't it? Sad thing is most of this awesome info is shared in the BattleTechnology magazines, which was considered canonical until 2006 or 2007 I think. Even so, most of the expansive info in those magazines are in the Techmanual, TacOps, StratOps, and others, and some elements are even in 2018's BattlemechManual. The BV system first started in the BT magazine as "Combat Efficiency Value", "Extreme Ranges" came from it, and even the pilot bonuses of "MaxTech" originated in the BT magazine. In fact the very reason the Flea even has the name Flea... was written first in the BT Magazine, because the Trooper 14 had the unique ability to double jump as its 4 JJs allowed it to move 4 hexes, then 4 hexes...as such people started to call it an annoying flea..and that stuck as a way to rebrand the clusterduck that was the Trooper line.
Ah well. I mean I can see why, the "Alliance" mech was misinformation and propaganda, the magazine is littered with hundreds of pieces of art or pictures of models of HG sensitive nature, and some of its info has been retconned (PPC minimum range being "too heavy" to swing around as PPCs at the time were only in the arms was changed to they'd explode if they built their energy up too fast, so its delayed by half a second to 2 seconds depending on the brand (thus is why the Lord's Light PPC is named as such, it is a Kurita model with an exceptionally long 2 second delay which builds up a blinding light before it actually fires...and to be fair, BT Magazine
retconned itself first, and later so did newer BT manuals).
Bombast, on 24 February 2019 - 11:38 AM, said:
We're not going to mention that the hunch is on the wrong side? And that there's clearly a laser in it? While it proudly stands over an anti-Swayback quote?
Nope -- that one's TOO EASY!
We're ALSO...not gonna mention this.
Though... from what I seen this is actually somewhat of a nod to the Japanese version of the Atlas...
With a wildly creative license...
Also by the designs, I suspect Mechwarrior Tactics was originally wanting to set itself in the 3142 era...
What's cool is the designs are unique enough that with just a tiny bit of tweaking, the entire thing could be salvaged and redone as a new IP. So whomever bought the assets, if they did at all, could actually do something like that.
4
