Which would you choose?

[lucho]

 The Radical Heatsink is the biggest potential disruptor of 3145, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.The ability to get even more unlimited cooling- albeit at a risk- easily outweighs the benefits of new armor types or new weapons. So here's a thought exercise:

You are choosing the primary guns for your mech. Maybe it's a custom design, maybe an omnimech pod configuration, it doesn't matter. Which would you choose (this is IS tech only):

1) 3 ERPPCs (21 tons, 9 critical slots), 5 double heatsinks (5 tons, 15 critical slots), and the radical heatsink ( 4 tons, 3 critical slots).
           total:  30 tons, 27 critical slots, 30 points of damage in 3 10pt. groups
or

2) 4 ERLLs (20 tons, 8 critical slots), 6 double heatsinks (6 tons, 18 critical slots), and the radical heatsink ( 4 tons, 3 critical slots).
            total: 30 tons, 29 critical slots, 32 points of damage in 4 8pt. groups.

The two choices weigh the same, but the lasers do slightly more damage for slightly more space. The PPCs have four hexes more range, but the lasers give one more chance to hit with something (four chances to hit vs. three chances). In both cases, the engine will of course take in some of those heatsinks, but both are equally affected so the point is moot.

I suspect that most opinions will fall along the traditional ERLL/ERPPC bias; am I offbase? Let me know what you would do, fire away!  :)

[Daemion]

I'm torn. Because I'm generally a fan of the PPC and ERPPC in general. The extra four-hex range also speaks to me. And landing even one can really hurt. For that matter, a 10 point shot on the head is an instant breach for any armor type that doesn't reduce damage.

But, there's something about having the extra die roll.

Still, extra dice rolls aside, I've seen games where it didn't matter how many dice a person was chucking at the table and still roll very low numbers all at one time.

[lucho]

yes, Hellbie dice is a common problem :-\

[Mattlov]

Yeah, the IS ER LL just isn't good enough as a primary barrage weapon.  I'd rather have 5 standard large lasers at that point.  Maximize damage instead of range.

[lucho]

The Juliano makes good use of the ER Large Laser: make a few holes while closing to pepper the target with SRMs. A single ERLL isn't much, but it's light enough to deploy in groups. The PPC/ERPPC is heavy and bulky enough that it normally only appears one or two at a time.