66 replies to this topic

[1453 R]

As the title says: can we try and drum up some support for the Shadow Cat Alt. Delta in the next Clan booster?

The Shadow Cat is a sweet, highly enjoyable ride, and one of only two 'Mechs in the whole-*** game with access to God's Trifecta - M.A.S.C., ECM, and jump jets all on the same chassis. Until the Stryker pack and the introduction of the Blunderbolt TDR-10SE, it was the only 'Mech in the game that could do this.

The problem? Sadly...Shadow Cats are terribly armed. The 'Mech is one of those that, in the tabletop, tends to rely on a small number of hard-hitting weapons, a'la the Summoner, for its firepower. That serves it splendidly in tabletop where single heavy-hitting weapons are to be feared, but in MWO 'Mechs smaller than 50 tons never really accomplish anything without boating dozens of smaller weapons. The Shadow Cat is hard-pressed to bring more than four weapons to any given fight without using its machine gun splooger Papa-variant pods, and there are other 'Mechs drastically better for Machine Gun Screwkakke builds than the Shadow Cat. The machine can do some work with ATMs given its agility, but ATMs are in a bad spot right now anyways, as are most of the heavy-hitting energy weapons that the Shadow Cat otherwise relies on. Two PPCs accomplish nothing by themselves, two large pulse lasers are same. The Shadow Cat can almost fight with two HLL, but those builds are hot as blazes and outperformed easily by larger 'Mechs able to sufficiently cool the lasers. Like, I'unno...Hellbringers.

Enter the Delta configuration.

The Delta does turn off God's Trifecta, as the left-torso omnipod conflicts with the SHC-Bravo's ECM. The left torso does, however, carry a sweet load of hardpoints. 2E2B, with a 2E left arm to boot. In one single swoop, the SHC-D grants access to an otherwise impossible 6e SHC configuration, allowing the same sort of cERML skirmish builds as the Black Lanner or (admittedly hot-running) 6xcMPL Brawlcat builds. Just as importantly, the SHC-D pods grant access to a 4E/5B hybrid build that actually has the primary armaments needed to open targets up for the machine guns.

One possibility here (accounting for the inadequacies of the builder): SHC-D. You get a ~32-point laser strike and five machine guns well supplied with ammunition, good both for opening holes and for hammering the bits out of holes that've already been opened. The nearest equivalent you can do today is this sucker: SHC-PRIME

Which...sorta works, I guess? Two heavies run hot even with five extra heat sinks, and you have to put ammo in weird places to get all the sinks to fit. if I'm sacrificing my ECM, I want to get more out of it than a handful of machine guns.

The SHC Alt. Charlie carries 3E/3M and might be useful as well, though I don't know where it carries its weapons.

...I guess mostly I just really want an option for the Shadow Cat that improves its ability to carry a MWO-style payload even slightly. I really like piloting the dumb things, I love having all the toys on one 'Mech, but in MWO the poor Shadow Cat is bad at fyte. Anyone have any other ideas for making it less bad at fyte?

Edited by 1453 R, 20 August 2021 - 10:17 AM.

[Heavy Money]

I'd support this. But I also wouldn't mind its hardpoint count staying low, and just uber quirking it. That'd give it a different feel and role from other mechs.

Either way, I really want to see it become useful as its one of the funnest and most stylish mechs imo.

[1453 R]

I'm never really sure about Uberquirking OmniMechs. Mostly because it's always tied to the So8 bonus, and huge So8 quirks force you to give up the whole-*** reason you're playing an OmniMech in the first place - to have some measure of control over your hardpoint distribution. Like, sure, use So8 to try and slap-patch absolutely terrible stock fits, but when you slap-patch so hard that actually utilizing the "Omni" capability of your OmniMech is a strictly bad idea? Seems uncool.

[pbiggz]

Im always an advocate for making unique mechs play uniquely. I.e. the summoner/shadowcat and its ilk ought to be quirked to compensate for lack of hardpoints. I think you could do really fun stuff, like for example, an 8/8 prime summoner (literally 3 hardpoints) could have halfed PPC heat and doubled PPC rate of fire and that would make it match the DPS of a double PPC summoner. When you have hardpoint spreads this limited, you can start to get real wonky with quirks.

In terms of the scat, gigaquirks for masc, jumpjets, gauss, and maybe ECM? I think we should incentivize 8/8 omnipod bonuses much more heavily.

Barring all of this, yeah, give it more pods. A 6E 45 ton clan mech wouldn't always be that interesting to me, but it would be good and im sure it'd get played.

PS: regarding SO8. The thinking should be that you choose between more optimal hardpoints (mixing pods) or more potent quirks (SO8). In my opinion, that means in general, SO8 omnipod bonuses should be alot stronger than they currently are, but yes, we shouldn't push it so hard that mixing pods becomes bad.

Edited by pbiggz, 20 August 2021 - 11:33 AM.

[1453 R]

I'm down for quirks, so long as they're split between the So8 and the pods themselves. Like I said, telling OmniMech players "your 'Mech is only good if you don't ever swatch your pods around" feels crummy to me. Especially in cases like the Shadow Cat where there's no blatantly superior pods with scads of hardpoints to go to. Shadow Cats are just about flat required to grab the ECM pod, and if the design is being quirked for ECM that means that only the SHC-B would be useable. Frankly, I don't know what sort of Gigaquirks one could introduce to make 2E/2M playable, especially when the weapons being quirked for are...medium lasers and LRMs.

If one was going to try and fix it with quirks, how would that work? Halving the cooldown for a Gauss rifle is only half the issue, since the durned thing only carries twenty shots in the first place. The other variants typically aren't much better off. The Alpha could maybe do decently with cERLL quirks, but at that point just play a Rifleman or something? The Bravo and Hotel both rely on LRMs for their principle firepower, and I can just imagine the raging Pooricane people'd raise at 'Giga'-level LRM quirks. The Papa is kind of a tire fire; Gauss and cMGs are a poor replacement indeed for a HAG-20 and massed AP Gauss.

You could theoretically issue the whole chassis quirks to reduce M.A.S.C. and jump jet cooldowns/recharges, maybe? Something like 25% increased recovery of M.A.S.C. and Jump Jet reserves, so the things could sprint and jump more often, but I don't know how much of an impact that would have. With the values we currently have to play with for quirks, I don't see how anything other than break-the-game level So8 quirks fixes the poor 'Mech. And we can't be doing break-the-game level So8 quirks for every forgotten OmniMech out there.

[pbiggz]

1453 R, on 20 August 2021 - 11:44 AM, said:

we can't be doing break-the-game level So8 quirks for every forgotten OmniMech out there.

Yeah we totally should tho that'd be pretty cool.

I don't disagree with you. A balance between the two is needed. SO8 bonuses could perhaps enhance weapons you'd expect to find on the stock loadouts. Specific omnipods could come with quirks of their own so if you mix and match, you get a smattering of reasonable quirks, but if you SO8, you benefit from fewer, but more powerful quirks?

I dunno, probably worth thinking about. Another variant that gives the Scat 6 energy would be a quick and dirty solution in the immediate term.

[FupDup]

This would be a very good choice for the next Clan booster pack.

That is why we'll probably get something with ECM instead.

[Kanil]

FupDup, on 20 August 2021 - 12:47 PM, said:

This would be a very good choice for the next Clan booster pack.

That is why we'll probably get something with ECM instead.

I mean, some of us don't "really like piloting dumb things", and would be more likely to buy some power creep like the Huntsman H.

... then again, looking at the builds people bring to QP, I'm kinda surprised the dumb things aren't PGI's best sellers...

Edited by Kanil, 20 August 2021 - 01:04 PM.

[1453 R]

The Warden pack was a big, hot savory helping of top-heavy power creep. I figure whatever the next Clan pack is, it has space for at least one medium 'Mech. The Shadow Cat has relatively few variants next to other OmniMechs, and it could use the boost a new variant with new pods could give it. Sure, an ECM beam spam Huntsman would be great, but you can already get nine energy hardpoints on a Huntsman. Hell, the Prime by itself has nine hardpoints total, plus AMS. The Huntsman is doing fine, the Shadow Cat is not.

Besides. Who's to say the next Clan pack couldn't have both? Two 'Mechs to every pack, and nothing says they have to be different weight classes. If the Stryker can be two heavies, we could get one with two mediums.

[Kanil]

1453 R, on 20 August 2021 - 01:21 PM, said:

The Warden pack was a big, hot savory helping of top-heavy power creep.

... and it sold really well. I'd say it did so specifically because of this, but it's impossible to know for sure.

I mean, I don't really care what's in the pack, because I'm not buying it anyway... but I can understand why PGI might go for ECM power creep round two, because that seems to make them money.

[FupDup]

Kanil, on 20 August 2021 - 01:04 PM, said:

I mean, some of us don't "really like piloting dumb things", and would be more likely to buy some power creep like the Huntsman H.

... then again, looking at the builds people bring to QP, I'm kinda surprised the dumb things aren't PGI's best sellers...

The Huntsman H at least lets you boat more lasers, so it's not purely an ECM thing.

There are other legit strong choices that aren't just ECM/MASC copypasta. There's stuff like a 4 energy + 6 missile Firestarter, 7 energy + ECM Shadow Hawk, Viper with 8 ballistics (can combine with existing variants for 12 ballistics)...Those kinds of mechs are a bit power-creepy while also actually being interesting and special.

Edited by FupDup, 20 August 2021 - 01:44 PM.

[w0qj]

I personally want the Set-of-7 bonus.
ie: Can swap out maximum 1 torso/arm part, and still keep the "full set bonus".

Why must I lose my So8 bonus when I swap in AMS?

1453 R, on 20 August 2021 - 11:05 AM, said:

I'm never really sure about Uberquirking OmniMechs. Mostly because it's always tied to the So8 bonus, and huge So8 quirks force you to give up the whole-*** reason you're playing an OmniMech in the first place - to have some measure of control over your hardpoint distribution. Like, sure, use So8 to try and slap-patch absolutely terrible stock fits, but when you slap-patch so hard that actually utilizing the "Omni" capability of your OmniMech is a strictly bad idea? Seems uncool.

[FupDup]

w0qj, on 20 August 2021 - 05:28 PM, said:

I personally want the Set-of-7 bonus.
ie: Can swap out maximum 1 torso/arm part, and still keep the "full set bonus".

Why must I lose my So8 bonus when I swap in AMS?

We've been over this a bunch of times...

Reducing SO8 to SO7 or anything less than 8 would require many of the quirks to be nerfed because it often only takes one or two pod swaps to turn a bad hardpoint layout into a meta one. SO8 needs to be all-or-nothing or else the goal of making bad variants usable without swaps will fail.

As mentioned by others in the thread, the optimal approach would be a mixture of pod quirks and SO8. PGI's sin is that they lean way too heavily on SO8, but that doesn't mean we should go in the opposite direction.

[PocketYoda]

There are so many better clan mechs than a shadowcat, but hey if thats what the masses want another mediocre mech...

[Scout Derek]

Kanil, on 20 August 2021 - 01:39 PM, said:

... and it sold really well. I'd say it did so specifically because of this, but it's impossible to know for sure.

I mean, I don't really care what's in the pack, because I'm not buying it anyway... but I can understand why PGI might go for ECM power creep round two, because that seems to make them money.

Not exactly just for powercreep, Nostalgia, Camo, are two others to name in why it sold well.

[1453 R]

Nostalgia, camo, and invoking the name of a famous BattleTech badass. The TBR-BH is basically a second Timber Wolf Hero 'Mech, and if there was a good way to hit that pool again for the second Clan booster, that'd be great. But...well.

Also heck off, MechaGnome DX. I like Shadow Cats, and fixing 'bad' 'Mechs is one of the reasons one releases new variants. OmniMechs, especially, benefit far more from new variant introductions - a solid new pod or two can salvage an entire OmniMech chassis. The Shadow Cat is actually a pretty great base chassis, with excellent agility, pretty good geo, and solid hardpoint locations. It's just very terribly armed. If we could fix the Terribly Armed issue, the Shadow Cat would be a much better 'Mech.

[pbiggz]

MechaGnome, on 20 August 2021 - 06:44 PM, said:

There are so many better clan mechs than a shadowcat, but hey if thats what the masses want another mediocre mech...

This is a thread about things that might make the shadow cat better, not a thread about what MechaGnome thinks of the shadowcat.

[bbihah]

Nah. Lets even it up with the similar IS mechs.
2E, 1B and 2M is now its new hardpoints.
Or how about 2 E arm, 1E head and 1M on each torso?


[redacted] clammers always whining while they have tonnage and hardpoints aplenty.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 23 August 2021 - 12:24 AM.
language

[FupDup]

bbihah, on 21 August 2021 - 08:52 AM, said:

[redacted] clammers always whining while they have tonnage and hardpoints aplenty.

[image removed]

But on a more serious note, it looks like you're comparing the Shadow Cat to some of the earliest added crappy IS mechs rather than more modern choices that blow the Scat out of the water.

The old Blackjack's hardpoints poop all over the Scat's hardpoints, as do some Vindicator variants and most Pixie Hawks. Even the freaking Hellspawn can poop all over the Scat.

Yes Clan tech has some serious advantages but that doesn't mean every individual chassis benefits equally from them. There are many IS mechs that compare to or surpass the effectiveness of Clan mechs.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 23 August 2021 - 12:32 AM.
quote clean-up, language

[bbihah]

Assassin isn't very old, yet caps out at around 30 firepower due to barely any hardpoints. Compare that **** to SCat or arctic wolf lol. Nice and fair.