OP, you forgot to include THE most important imbalancing A1 feature on your poll: the small side torsos. You see, what makes the splatterpult so deadly is not just its srm alpha, but the combination of speed, mobility granted by jump jets and extremely high burst damage. The catapult has the ability to close in on pretty much any medium or heavy at will in a very short amount of time, not to mention the lumbering assaults (not even the xl370+ rocking 9M Awesomes or Pretty Babies can outrun them fast enough to save their hides), which makes your range advantage much less important, UNLESS you have a very competent team with an overabundance of long range weapons that can stop a massed brawler assault (only bad cat players go into the fray alone, since everyone and their dog knows to focus it first) dead in their tracks. The high speed is achieved due to the cat's ability to mount an XL engine with little to no negative consequences, since their side torsos are so small and extremely difficult to hit from the front (yes, it's possible, but more often than not it is a matter of luck, since even the best shot will have a very hard time hitting the side torso of a circle strafing splatterpult which is looking directly at him).
If you make the side torsos bigger, then catapults will suddenly become MUCH less durable, because smart people will always go for those relatively poorly armored STs to destroy the engine. This way, a part of the catapult piloting playerbase will switch to STDs for extra survivability in an all out brawl, making them less maneuverable and allowing most of the medium mechs and some heavies (like the babby Atlas Cataphract 2X) to disengage at will, since their speed will not go over 70kph with speed tweak most of the time.
This is the best I can come up with when it comes to a STD A1 splatterpult build:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c7b617122cf7434
Notice how it has to sacrifice speed (the standard 300XL build goes 82kph with speed tweak), mobility (due to lack of JJs) and heatsinks (the standard build usually has 15-16 dubs). This would allow the players to avoid the cat or see it coming and allow them to exploit their range advantage much more easily, softening it up before it reaches them and giving them much better chances up close. Of course, you could mount JJs on that build by sacrificing heatsinks and ammo, but the splatterpult is already extremely hot and ammo hungry, so this decision would nerf it in another way decreasing its sustainable DPS and total damage inflicted per match.
Nerfing the torso twist would make a much smaller impact on the catapult than people would like to believe. After all, most of the actually good stalker pilots have easily adapted to the 5M's horrendous torso twist and can eat Atlases for breakfast at will with their ability to output 2 95-100 damage alphas one after another and then switch to only firing their 5 srm6 launchers for 75 damage per volley (5Ms usually have 21-22 dubs and cool down much faster than the catapults, although they do have higher heat spikes when alphaing). The torso twist nerf alone is not enough to balance the catapult, since it would still retain its deadly speed and mobility (achieved through JJs which allow it to turn around mid air quite fast).
Edited by Leimrey, 11 February 2013 - 07:57 AM.
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RacerX, on 11 February 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:
