8 replies to this topic

[Terran123rd]

I bought a Cat-C1 and I'm using it as an artillery 'mech. Would it be worth it to buy an XL engine for it? Or am I better off using a standard?

[Flapdrol]

XL

the torso's in catapults are hard to hit, you'll rarely die to it if you keep them fully armored and have a lot on the arms as well.

[Twilight Drake]

And what about engine power?

[Praehotec8]

I run an XL 265, and it seems to work well in terms of balancing speed, firepower, and armor. Remember, if you're running artillery (LRMs I presume), large LRM launchers and ammo +/- artemis are heavy, so you won't get crazy with high speed engines, and don't generally need to as long as you aren't camping home base or something, and can get to friendly mechs if you get harassed. An XL 265 with speed tweak gets you to about 72 kph.

[Rattazustra]

Keep in mind that the most important engine power steps are the 25 steps. 200, 225, 250, 275, 300. Everything in between is just for speed and nothing else. The 25 steps get you free heat sinks and later engine heat sink slots.

Thus if you can manage to get an XL275 in, you are off way better than with an XL265. You might as well take an XL250 instead and put in more weapons, ammo and heat sinks for more sustained fire.

[Dauphni]

Don't forget that when you're talking about XL engines, quite a few of them have the same tonnage, so it's almost never worth it to get the lower rated engine when it weighs the same. For example, an XL275 weighs 14 tons, but an XL280 does too, so you should pick the latter over the former. Same story with the XL250 and XL255.

Another good thing to remember is that when you upgrade to DHS, they don't actually cool twice as well, but 1.4 times. The heat sinks built into the engine (but not those slotted in) do gain the full 2.0, so going with at least a 250 rated engine gives you much better cooling than going with a lower rated engine plus additional sinks.

[Pale Horseman]

Rattazustra, on 11 February 2013 - 12:31 AM, said:

Keep in mind that the most important engine power steps are the 25 steps. 200, 225, 250, 275, 300. Everything in between is just for speed and nothing else. The 25 steps get you free heat sinks and later engine heat sink slots.

Thus if you can manage to get an XL275 in, you are off way better than with an XL265. You might as well take an XL250 instead and put in more weapons, ammo and heat sinks for more sustained fire.

That is true in general, but for XLs the 250 and the 255 have the same weight, and the 275 and 280 as well.

[VonRunnegen]

To summarise:

The main options in XLs are: 255 for low speed (You want all 10 engine DHS on almost any CAT build), 265 for slightly faster (great weight for engine size, if not ideal in the extra heatsink band), the 280 for +1 heatsink or the 300 for +2

The 250/275/300 may be good choices in 'normal' engines tho.

[CECILOFS]

XL300 lets you comfortably fit in jump jets, 2xALRM15s and 4 Medium laser/Tag. I would only go lower than that if boating LRM 20s or you wanted to use large lasers.