The6thMessenger, on 22 October 2023 - 10:43 PM, said:
That is exactly what she is thinking. That is exactly what she is always thinking. Haven't you seen her pop in to troll topics in the new player help forums? Literally the only thing Vix cares about on this subject is buffing the Clans to the "balanced" state depicted in her signature's limerick.
And it's just about always bunk, like a lot of Clanboi/gurl rhetoric. Take the "our lasers are so hot, it's just terrible. argument. Leaving aside the weight and space advantages of the guns themselves, Clan DHS are 50% smaller than their IS counterparts, very often resulting in better cooling. This nearly always offsets higher heat, particularly in larger 'mechs with tonnage to play with. That gets hand-waved away, but try to build an IS laservomit build that equals the Timber Wolf, or compare Marauder IIC and Marauder II laser vomit, and you'll see what I mean. The Marauder IIC fields firepower equivalent to the Marauder II, with slight advantage in range, and disadvantage in maximum DPS (but an advantage in sustained dps.) But the Marauder II took 15 more tons (less armor) and massive quirks to get there. They're both good 'mechs - but this also tells you where Clan weapon balance really is.
Not that the raw numbers are all that matter; 'mech architecture, hardpoint placement, and terrain interactions all matter. This is where a lot of people fail at analysis - too often weapons are compared as if the 'mechs using them were standing on an endless, level plane, at whatever range is convenient. Clan Fans deprecate the drawbacks of IS weapons, while Clan advantages glossed over with conveniently selective memory. Like being "pretty sure" Clan HAGs have a longer range than RAC/5s, for example. It's a Gauss Rifle - no direct-fire weapon in the game has a longer range. And the requirement for RACs to stare at people instead of dealing damage in bursts is non-fracking-trivial. But when people start to engage in motivated reasoning, things can take a fast trip to crazy town.
But people with an IS bias (or no bias, like most of us) can make the same mistake - I'm not an advocate for either tech base, it's just that so many examples from the Clanboi side have presented themselves in this thread...