While the BSK-6, NSR-10P, and JM6-DD are all good, nothing really came close to the Aksum when it released. It's partially my fault since I took the lead on designing the mech but it really had it all. Quirks don't matter too much when you have 8 ballistic with mounts and convergence like that.
Historically, when looking at quick play stats of mech performance, the Aksum has been almost top of the chart every cycle since it came out. In fact, in the past 2 cycles it beat the BSK-6, NSR-10P, and JM6-DD in average damage. If you are curious, we publicly post our QP stat gathers of mech performance in quick play. We don't base balance purely off of there but it is good to get ideas of what mechs could be over performing from that list. I encourage you to give it a read to double check the validity of your statements.
https://docs.google....#gid=1582927142
IS AC2 has always been one slot in tabletop. How do you mean it was a questionable buff when we're just following the tabletop stat for that weapon? I could be wrong, but to my knowledge they have always been one slot in MWO and tabletop.
I dislike the common notion that there is a Clan or Inner Sphere bias among balance. The reason why Inner Sphere mechs get more quirks is because their base equipment stats are worse. Worse engines, worse weapons, larger items causing more slot restrictions, etc. If both sides got equal quirks, clan mechs would simply rule the game and there would be no variety whatsoever.
Let's take the examples of mechs you said were good dakka boats in the Inner Sphere and compare them to the Aksum. Mind you, the Aksum
performs better than all of these examples according to empirical quick play data. That is not a debatable fact.
Aksum quirks(as of January patch, Feb hasn't hit the game yet):
- Armor
- Screen shake -100%
- Crit chance -20%
Nightstar 10P
- Armor
- Cooldown -15%
- Crit chance -10%
- Range +10%
- Weapon Velocity +10%
- UAC Jam Chance -30%
- UAC Jam Duration -25%
I'm not including the RAC quirks because they don't impact the balance of this mech. The best build on it is 2 UAC5 2 UAC2 and enough ammo to siege an entire country.
Bullshark 6(as of Jan patch)
- Armor
- Weapon Velocity +10%
- AC Cooldown -10%
Jagermech DD(not near as strong as the above three but you included it so I'm adding it here)
- Armor/structure
- Range +15%
- Ballistic Cooldown -10%
- UAC Jam Chance -20%
All of these mechs are worse than the Aksum, there's no question about it. Yet their quirks are much, much stronger. While there are many more factors that go into the quirks a mech gets(mech geometry, hitboxes, hardpoint totals, etc), the matter of the fact is that clan tech is just so much stronger by default that you have to give decent quirks to many IS mechs. The strongest ones can hold their own with less, such as the Annihilator, but even they still need something. If you gave quirks like you see on Inner Sphere dakka boats to Clan dakka boats such as the MCII-B, SR-AK, BSK-M, MAD-IIC-DN, KDK-3, or NTG you would see mechs that are game breaking OP.
A Clan or Inner Sphere bias is not the way to describe MWO balance. The way to describe is "using quirks in an attempt to keep Inner Sphere mechs viable in the face of Clans and ensure all mechs are playable in a genre where all mechs, regardless of their tech origin, are created unequal."
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BlueDevilspawn, on 16 February 2025 - 10:41 PM, said:
