Cicada 3C as an example of flaws, and no character

[SpiralRazor]

Has FOUR ballistics slots....so uh....a 40 ton mech is going to carry 24 tons of guns plus even more for ammo?

It says in the description that it trades engine size for armor and weaponry..yeah..what weaponry? It effectively has ONE ballistic slot, if even that at 7 tons, one energy slot which is likely an Mlas, and 4 support weapons. If it gets close enough to use those support weapons, you'd better hope the target dies or the Cicada will die next. Meanwhile, the "under gunned" 2A has SIX Energy slots, and 2 Supports, meaning it can put out 5 times more damage over the course of an engagement then the "Gunned Up!" 3C


And this is why the system is badly(stupidly) implemted...I just cant understand how stuff like this was Ok'd after all the supposed playtesting...

[SpiralRazor]

The only way to make Four Ballistic slots viable under the current system is to allow us to choose engine sizes.

With a Nissan 120 engine, you might be able to carry 4 Ac/2's...and the mech would likely have a movement of 2 or 3. It would still be more viable then its currnet form however.

[Wales Grey]

i get the feeling that many designs are a bit hamstrung by the hardpoint system segregating support weapons from their parent groups - and the traditional battletech mass of ballistics of course.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by Kaetetôã Bird Warrior:

i get the feeling that many designs are a bit hamstrung by the hardpoint system segregating support weapons from their parent groups - and the traditional battletech mass of ballistics of course.

One suggestion I saw on Reddit re: this was to allow machine guns to go in ballistic hardpoints and small lasers in energy hardpoints, if there are no remaining support hardpoints on that part.

[SpiralRazor]

Originally posted by Kaetetôã Bird Warrior:

i get the feeling that many designs are a bit hamstrung by the hardpoint system segregating support weapons from their parent groups - and the traditional battletech mass of ballistics of course.

Honestly....you can tell that whatever system they were using got changed halfway through or maybe at the end of development...and now everything feels wrong and behaves badly.

A true ballistic light or medium mech had maybe one or two light AC's and the rest went to MG's to fend off people who closed on you. In 3025, outside of heavys and assault, AC's werent boated.

I just know im going to Cringe when i see how they have the 4 AC Jagermech set up at 65 tons....

[PengoPaddy]

I like the system. Picking one of the weakest mechs to prove the whole system is broken is akin to saying Warcraft is crap because peons are so much weaker than other unit.

Each mech has different variants. The 3C is a variant of the Cicada, see: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Cicada

[SpiralRazor]

Originally posted by PengoPaddy:

I like the system. Picking one of the weakest mechs to prove the whole system is broken is akin to saying Warcraft is crap because peons are so much weaker than other unit.

Each mech has different variants. The 3C is a variant of the Cicada, see: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Cicada

Dude..did you even read what I wrote?

I can give you plenty of other examples of major flaws with the system.

White Knight gonna White Knight.

[PengoPaddy]

Originally posted by SpiralRazor:

Originally posted by PengoPaddy:

I like the system. Picking one of the weakest mechs to prove the whole system is broken is akin to saying Warcraft is crap because peons are so much weaker than other unit.

Each mech has different variants. The 3C is a variant of the Cicada, see: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Cicada

Dude..did you even read what I wrote?

I can give you plenty of other examples of major flaws with the system.

White Knight gonna White Knight.

You say the single energy slot is "which is likely an Mlas".

Dude, read the link I gave. Its a PPC :)

[BoogieMan]

Originally posted by SpiralRazor:

Originally posted by Kaetetôã Bird Warrior:

i get the feeling that many designs are a bit hamstrung by the hardpoint system segregating support weapons from their parent groups - and the traditional battletech mass of ballistics of course.

Honestly....you can tell that whatever system they were using got changed halfway through or maybe at the end of development...and now everything feels wrong and behaves badly.

A true ballistic light or medium mech had maybe one or two light AC's and the rest went to MG's to fend off people who closed on you. In 3025, outside of heavys and assault, AC's werent boated.

I just know im going to Cringe when i see how they have the 4 AC Jagermech set up at 65 tons....

4 AC/2s on the Jager if I recall.

[DarkFenix]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

Originally posted by SpiralRazor:

Honestly....you can tell that whatever system they were using got changed halfway through or maybe at the end of development...and now everything feels wrong and behaves badly.

A true ballistic light or medium mech had maybe one or two light AC's and the rest went to MG's to fend off people who closed on you. In 3025, outside of heavys and assault, AC's werent boated.

I just know im going to Cringe when i see how they have the 4 AC Jagermech set up at 65 tons....

4 AC/2s on the Jager if I recall.

There's one with 2 AC/2s and 2 AC/5s too.

[Coyote]

If you removed all its armor you probably could slap some weak ac2's on it. Maybe have it be a glass "cannon". I had to do that to fit 4 ac5's on my jager.
I dont know much about these things though since i sell them as soon as i get them because they die in 1 groupfire shot every single time i precision their ct with 8 medium lasers.

[Strayed]

As has been pointed out, some mechs are probably hamstrung more so than others without being able to swap out engines, internal structure and armour

But, in my opinion, the way Battletech has been portrayed here seems ot be to stop what occured in other mech games (as well as TT); crit padding

I feel that Battletech is pretty much as close as we're gonna get to something that's somewhat balanced for MP that addresses the inherent loop holes of the TT rules and other mech games exploits

Saying that, you can't whinge about, a Jenner for instance, not being able to take out an Atlas; notwithstanding using called shot to land a lucky one hit kill on the cockpit with an alpha strike. Ton for ton, a Jenner will never (and shouldn't really) even be able to go toe to toe with an Atlas that has armour and weapons remaining. This is were MWO fails. Hard.

Someone posted a link to Sarna; thats a pretty decent place to start to learn about what mechs were designed to do. In this instance, a Cicada is basically a medium sized Spider - fast scout mech. Why you would want it to be a brawler is beyond me; it doesn't have the weapon pods to do it (even in TT, I'd strongly recommend against using it as a brawler) and its only 40 tons. Use a centurion as your brawler.

My 2 cents

[Fiona]

Yeah it never made sense to me to fill all 4 slots at any given time. Maybe 2 if you really wanna squeeze it in there.

I'd just change the chassis of the cicada in the game files to allow it to equip more than 1 or 2 ballistic weapons.

[Scorpius [SNDR]]

Maybe I am just naive, but did HBS bring the hardpoints that MWO had along with their models? Many mechs in MWO had hardpoint inflation to make them competitive. Because as far as I know about "muh lore" the Cicada 3C never had 4 ballistics. It had 1 E and 2 B (1PPC and 2 MGs). Could that be the discrepency? Again, Ciacada 3C was never meant to boat ballistics. It was a scout, that literally had the armor of a locust. Its bigger engine gave it speed which was its primary defense.

[Wales Grey]

Originally posted by Strayed:

As has been pointed out, some mechs are probably hamstrung more so than others without being able to swap out engines, internal structure and armour

to be fair, changing the engine on a mech is a class E or F refit - it's not something that you could reasonably do in a dropship

[Wales Grey]

Originally posted by Scorpius SNDR:

Maybe I am just naive, but did HBS bring the hardpoints that MWO had along with their models? Many mechs in MWO had hardpoint inflation to make them competitive.

i'm gonna stop you right there, (in mwo) the "extra" hardpoints are there to allow greater flexibility and encourage experiementation - not to make them "competetive".