14 replies to this topic

[Dragosi]

So my lancemate Albeleo and I were looking around on the battletech wiki this evening after a long night of practice. Because Albeleo is a clanner at heart, he decided he would look up the clan tech weaponry and tech systems compared to the Inner Sphere's. The results were astounding. With a little help from of good friend smurfy.net, we compiled a little build here. So Lets take a look and see what we have. The build we went with was a Commando 2D.

IS Commando 2D:
XL 210 engine
3 Streak 2's
1 Med Pulse laser
ECM
Ferro
Endo
Double HS
Full Armor.

Clan Commando 2D
XL 210
2 Clan Streak 2's
1 Clan ER Large Laser
Ferro
Endo
Double
-1/2 ton of armor

Seems not too different right? well here's the interesting thing.

First of all, the IS XL 210 as we all know takes up 12 crit slots, meaning this breaches the side torsos. the CLAN XL 210 only takes up 8. What this means is that, while you sacrifice the 3rd missle slot, the engine remains within the center torso. You now have the survivability of a mech with a standard engine, at XL weight. Ok, so.. thats kinda bonkers.

Next on the list, for the IS Ferro and Endo, they each take up 14 critical slots. Meaning that 28 slots of your mech are gone. IS Ferro, gives you 12% increased protection and roughly a 3-4% weight reduction, and Endo gives you a 10% weight reduction. Now lets compare to Clan Ferro and Endo. While Clan Endo remains the same in terms of weight reduction, Clan Ferro, instead of giving you 12%, now gives you 20% protection. The biggest head turner about these is how many critical slots each takes up. With Clan Ferro and endo, each now only take up 7 critical slots each, meaning that 14 slots are gone. HALF the amount of the IS equivalents, 28.

So already, based on these calculations, we've found out that with Clan tech in just the engine, ferro and endo alone, you save you save 18 critical slots on this mech. no weight changes, just open slots. But what about the weaponry?

Looking back at the IS build, we had 3 streak 2's, a medium pulse laser, and ECM. Each IS Streak 2 weighs 1.5 tons, and 1 critical slot. The meidum pulse laser is 2 tons for 1 slot, and the ECM is 1.5 Tons for 2 Slots. Now Compare to the Clan build. The clan build takes off a Streak 2 due to the engine taking up the slot. Clan Streak 2's weight 1 ton for 1 slot, in comparison to the 1.5 for 1. So losing the 1 streak 2, you save 1 ton. Next, the Medium Pulse laser are the same in weight a slots for both IS and Clan, but you don't see a Med pulse on the Clan version, do you? Instead you see a Clan ER Large laser. Now where is the extra tonage coming from to fit that? The ER Large weighs 4 tons. That comes with the next bit. IS ECM weights 1.5 tons for 2 Slots. Clan ECM weighs 1 ton for 1 slot. So far, we've chopped off 3.5 tons and have saved 1 slot. Shave off a half ton of armor, and you now have an ER Large Laser on here.

In comparison to the IS build, the Clan build is Ambitious and Far more greedy. Your heat is nowhere near as good, 2/3's worse in the Clan build, but you now have far more variety in what you can do. You're now a 150 KPH sniper with that ER Large.

While this build may not be completely optimal, you can take these concepts and translate them over to other mechs. Atlas, Awesomes, heck the Hunchback, become far far more versatile and dangerous with Clan Technology. This examination of the two systems in technology shows that Clan tech will be FAR superior to IS tech come the Clan invasion (which, based on the time, is coming upon us rather quickly).

We will be doing more Clan vs IS comparison builds, and i'll be posting them up as we finish them.

[IceSerpent]

Dragosi, on 08 January 2013 - 02:52 AM, said:

First of all, the IS XL 210 as we all know takes up 12 crit slots, meaning this breaches the side torsos. the CLAN XL 210 only takes up 8. What this means is that, while you sacrifice the 3rd missle slot, the engine remains within the center torso. You now have the survivability of a mech with a standard engine, at XL weight. Ok, so.. thats kinda bonkers.

Clan XL engine takes 2 slots in each of side torsos (instead of 3 for IS XL), 6 in CT + 2 in RT + 2 in LT = 10 slots total.

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Next on the list, for the IS Ferro and Endo, they each take up 14 critical slots. Meaning that 28 slots of your mech are gone. IS Ferro, gives you 12% increased protection and roughly a 3-4% weight reduction, and Endo gives you a 10% weight reduction. Now lets compare to Clan Ferro and Endo. While Clan Endo remains the same in terms of weight reduction, Clan Ferro, instead of giving you 12%, now gives you 20% protection. The biggest head turner about these is how many critical slots each takes up. With Clan Ferro and endo, each now only take up 7 critical slots each, meaning that 14 slots are gone. HALF the amount of the IS equivalents, 28.

Mostly correct, except "increased protection" in reality means "decreased armor weight" (by 12% and 20% respectively). The maximum amount of armor points on the mech remains the same, it just becomes lighter.

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Looking back at the IS build, we had 3 streak 2's, a medium pulse laser, and ECM. Each IS Streak 2 weighs 1.5 tons, and 1 critical slot. The meidum pulse laser is 2 tons for 1 slot, and the ECM is 1.5 Tons for 2 Slots. Now Compare to the Clan build. The clan build takes off a Streak 2 due to the engine taking up the slot.

Engine won't take extra slots, see above.

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While this build may not be completely optimal, you can take these concepts and translate them over to other mechs. Atlas, Awesomes, heck the Hunchback, become far far more versatile and dangerous with Clan Technology. This examination of the two systems in technology shows that Clan tech will be FAR superior to IS tech come the Clan invasion (which, based on the time, is coming upon us rather quickly).

You are making some serious assumptions:

1. That PGI will allow for Clan equipment and upgrades (i.e. engine, FF armor, ES structure, ECM, etc.) to be put on IS mech. IIRC, this is against TT rules, not 100% positive though.
2. That PGI will allow mixed tech at all (i.e. Clan weapons on IS mech or IS weapons on Clan mech).

[Zerbob]

At this point in the timeline, I doubt we'll see mixed tech. Most of the speculation and theorizing has been that IS and Clan tech will be separated for balancing purposes. We don't want to see a Hunchback 4P with 8 Clan ER Medium Lasers.

The other thing here, is that Clan tech is hella expensive, and with a possible return of repair and re-arm (I really do hope it returns, but properly balanced - if only for Community Warfare), people won't be able to afford using it all the time.

To compare, the Commando-1B (stock) comes with a SRM 2, Medium Laser and a Large Laser, and costs 1,820,000 C-bills. In Table Top it's Battle Value (basically a rating of how good it is) is 616.
The Mist Lynx, a Clan 25 Ton 'Mech has a few different variants. The most comparable one in terms of BV is The Mist Lynx-A variant, with a BV of 608. So in TT terms, they are about equal in terms of value. The A variants comes with a 175 XL engine (Clan of course), Jump Jets, FF & ES, Clan Double Heat sinks, Clan TAG, 2x AMS, 2x Machine Guns, 1 Flamer, 3 tons of AMS ammo and a Active Probe. Cost - 4,801,042. That's 3 million extra C-bills for a 'Mech which has an equivalent rating.

Cost and numbers are going to be what balances Clan and IS Tech. It takes the Inner Sphere several years to begin to reverse engineer some of the advanced Clan tech they salvaged through the war (which wasn't much as most of those years were spent getting their butts kicked).

[Pariah Devalis]

Keep in mind that BV system has some well documented issues with certain things. The first that pops into my mind, and is common on clan lights, is MASC. For how little it gets used, it creates a disproportionate jump in battle value. That said, having a value based balancing system of some sort would go a long way to balancing team compositions regardless of IS or Clan mech team composition.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 08 January 2013 - 09:04 AM.

[Dragosi]

So while i understand some of the stuff that you guys are saying, this is purely a... general idea of what we can expect from clan tech. generally we can see that clan tech will more than likely be "better" in ways than IS tech. The thing about the XL engine, i misread the wiki. It states that IS XLs are 2x the size of a standard while the Clan XLs are 2/3s larger so yes IceSerpent you would be correct there. but yes for the most part though we'll see that clan tech, while yes the numbers will probably be changed to balance out things, it will more than likely be superior to the IS equivalents. And If they do end up separating techs, i'm sure that there will eventually be a mech that will be able to house 8 clan ER Meds just like the 4P.

[IceSerpent]

Dragosi, on 08 January 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

And If they do end up separating techs, i'm sure that there will eventually be a mech that will be able to house 8 clan ER Meds just like the 4P.

Nova Prime comes with 12 ERML stock, but it overheats on alpha strike even in TT - with our "new and improved" DHS in MWO its usefulness is doubtful.

[Gremlich Johns]

Cross-teching should only be seen in servers that also permit 3rd Person View.

[Pariah Devalis]

...cross-teching should only happen in a parallel universe where the Mayan Calender apocalypse was true....

There is a long, long gap of time between when the IS encountered the clans, and when they could reverse engineer copies. Until then, and even after the fact, there are only rare cases of IS machines even being compatible with clan tech - and most of those were brand spankin' new post-clan designs like the Penetrator. It would be like trying to run Jaguar on Windows 7. Some sort of incompatibility that precludes one weapon system from running another.

[RagingOyster]

You did not realize that Clan-tech was superior to IS tech? That has literally been THE central point of the arguments against allowing players to play as Clanners. Where have you been mate? lol
To the point; yeah, Clan-tech is, ton-for-ton, slot-for-slot better in pretty much every way. For this reason, I believe (and this is pure speculation) that PGI will have to break canon a bit for balance's sake. In order to keep the Houses and Clans on even footing, something will have to be done that makes Clan-tech a trade off in some way. PGI will probably make upgrades like FF, Endo, ECM, DHS etc etc universal (i.e. Clan and IS versions are no different) so that players will not be able to take advantage of the huge weight savings that could be had from using Clan-tech upgrades. Now, as for the weapons like I said PGI will probably break canon a bit to give Clan weapons drawbacks to go with their advantages. I can see Clan lasers having better range and being lighter, but generating significantly more heat and having a longer cycle time. Missiles will be lighter, but carry fewer ammo per-slot and per-ton, limiting missile spam. Ballistics would be longer range but take up more space... again these are all just examples of what PGI could or might do, to get the idea accross that I seriously doubt they will stick close to canon (after all, crunch trumps fluff and balance trumps lore)

[Pariah Devalis]

Actually, by cannon, clan weapons already cause more heat. Furthermore, clans do not have access to non-ER weapons. It is high heat or no heat at all. There are ways to balance clans outside of balancing mechs on a 1:1 basis with IS mechs, as well. My favorite option is the 8v5 or 12v10 setup. Not only does it preserve the clan star organization, but disincentivizes those who only want the clan mechs for the "technological upper hand," since the min-max in-to-win-damn-the-cannon types will be forced to go with either clearly superior tech or clearly superior numbers. Without a compromise in between.

Either they fight with numbers but lower tech or fight with more optimized tech but lower numbers. Fair trade off to me.

[Thorn Hallis]

Pariah Devalis, on 08 January 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

Furthermore, clans do not have access to non-ER weapons.

They do, but they refuse to put them into their Omni- and self-build second line Battlemechs.

[Pariah Devalis]

True, but for all intents and purposes us, as players, will not have access to them. Probably. Unless for some reason they decide to give us the (C) and not II(C) variants of inner sphere mechs.

[qultar]

Clan tech needs to stay pure no mix tech
If you use a Clan use a Clan mech then you use clan rules
smaller drops 5vs8 10vs12 no LRM rain of death
these things even it out also with the small range of this game
Clan weapon ranges are useless and with ECM are even worse

Edited by qultar, 09 January 2013 - 10:29 AM.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

You actually missed what is the most powerful advantage in TT. The clan large pulse laser. 6 tons, 10 damage for 10 heat 6/14/20 ranges (about double the IS varients and longer range than an IS LL) while still giving the -2 to the to hit number of a pulse laser. Throw in 2 critical DHS, 15 damage ERPPC, half weight LRMs with no minimum range, SSRM6 for the weight of an IS SRM6, LBX 5 for long range crit seeking and well... the IS never stood a chance at range. So... yeah... 12 to 10 may not be enough of an advantage for the IS maybe 16 to 10 will make it evenish due to the availability of tons of lostech in this game. In TT with 3025 tech it takes a 2:1 advantage to maybe win and 3:1 to almost definitely win. So... clans are OP, redicuously so and that's what makes TT interesting as an IS fan.

[Pariah Devalis]

You forget, however, that this is not tabletop and individual player skill, not to hit modifiers, will dictate weapon strikes and accuracy. Ton of armor for ton of armor, IS mechs and Clan mechs are equally plated, assuming same armor types. A 70 ton IS mech with max armor has the same total armor value as a Clan 70 tonner with maxed armor. If you watch organized teams of two or more mechs in the game now, they can drop a single enemy mech in under 5 seconds.

Why? No to hit modifiers. When player skill gets involved, it creates a powerful force for equalization.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 09 January 2013 - 11:54 AM.