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[XXXAngry AngelXXX]

Ok, so this is going to be a wall of text, so i'm going to put my suggestion first for y'all to read, and if you care after that, the tl:dr will be below...so here goes:

1: Inner sphere light and xl engines should be changed to where you do not die unless BOTH side torsos have been destroyed

2. After the map and battle type have been chosen, on the loading screen where you see your team and their mechs along with the enemy players, if you are in an omnimech, right next to the "Ready" button there should be a drop down menu that contains all your personal saved loadouts for that omnimech chassis, you can select one from your pre-saved loadouts and enter the battle with that. ONLY omnimechs can do this.

Ok, there they are, you can stop reading now if you want....


...but if you want to know why I think this, here comes the tl:dr



1. I understand the desire to make clans seem more tech-savvy and therefore give them the advantage of their engines, but at this point in the timeline, they aren't THAT much more savvy. More importantly than that, is the gameplay aspect: once you get into heavy and assault mechs(and even mediums i suspect) you simply cannot afford to risk death just because a side torso got ripped off. Or if you do risk it, you will likely spend the match hiding and pot-shotting because you cannot risk the alternative. This only adds to the environment of mech-hider instead of mech-warrior. The end result is that you have two entire trees of engines that are basically non-viable options for mechs to use, severely limiting IS loadout choices. Expanding the death requirement to both side torsos would make the engines a more viable option, and open build options for more variety on the IS side.

Now for those of you getting ready to call a hit on me for giving the IS even more advantages in a game where they already have alot...here's the reasoning behind the second of my suggestions.

2. Omnimechs. The greatest and most versatile designs in both the inner sphere and the clans. The most powerful mechs ever built....unless you are in MWO....then they suck.

Yes, they do...

The power of an omnimech was the ability to change its loadout, and change it quickly. This is mentioned multiple times throughout the lore. In fact, I believe Natasha Kerensky once told Phelan Wolf in Blood Legacy that an omni loadout could be changed inside 30 minutes if necessary. When you compare that to the weeks and weeks it would take to change even a single missile launcher on a conventional mech (and that ONLY if you had a top-notch support facility and staff, certainly not a drop ship mech bay) and you can see the power of an omni. Plug and play weapons, engines, armor, structure...the pilot could change the mech for whatever fight he was about to face. But not in MWO. In MWO we ALL have that level of support and therefore we can change the loadout on even a conventional mech, and the engine, and the internals, and the armor, and the cooling....hell, on a conventional mech, you can make it PERFECT. EXACTLY the right speed, EXACTLY the right weapons, EXACTLY the right armor...you see my point.

Now the omni's CAN change their torsos and arms and legs, but if they do that, they actually get PENALIZED for it, because they loose their 8-piece set bonus. That can actually be pretty bad, especially if that bonus included things like armor buffs or reduced heat, or god forbid, a threshold change to ghost heat. Omni's cant change their speed, or their armor, or their cooling or internals or anything. Now the ability to completely change your hardpoints does have advantages for TESTING loadouts and weapons, but sooner or later, you will go get a mech that has the right hardpoints and bonuses so you don't loose the set bonus. Added up, this actually puts the omni's in a far weaker position, which they definitely should not be. So I will repeat...in MWO, they actually suck.

I believe that by giving IS the option of different engines, it will open up more viable builds for them. This would make an already powerful faction even more powerful...perhaps too powerful...unless I could do what and OmniMech DOES and change to a different loadout based on the fight I am entering. This would put a fundamental difference between Omni's and conventionals:

Conventionals: tweak and peak, fine tune the loadout until it is perfect in every way, but what you got is what you got...

Omni's: More limited on loadouts, cannot change many fundamentals about the mech, but cans swap weapons for the fight at hand...

...I think it would be fun.