Nightbird, on 14 March 2018 - 07:41 AM, said:
If equipment takes the same # of slots on an assault as on a light, is there any reason for there to be more available interior space per crit on an assault? (Following your head canon approach, where crits are only attachment points)
Yes. Because Assaults are HEAVIER. They have more tonnage, so they have the mass to balloon in size to contain whatever they need to contain.
But as the thread OP notes, they shouldn't balloon in size as much as MWO makes them.
Also, as near as I can tell, Assaults don't automatically come with lots of empty volume (unless they're Omnimechs of course). They come with a skeleton rated to carry a certain amount of tonnage. Equipment is hung on that skeleton and then armor is wrapped around all that as snug as possible. Assaults have more volume than lights
because they're carrying more stuff internally even if in the case of something like the Charger, that "extra stuff" is just armor.
Also, the proportions of a mech seem to be based in part on how fast they are. Fast mechs look have long, thin legs. Slow mechs have stumpier looking legs in comparison. It's not just Assaults; a lore Urbanmech is supposed to be really slow and sure looks like a slow assault even though it's only 30 tons.
I've always suspected that making a mech faster than a few percentage points would "in real life" involve more than just swapping in a larger engine. You'd need to redesign the legs too at least to handle the faster pace.