The
Kit Fox has 16 tons on a 30 ton chassis for 53.3%. The
Hel has 40 tons on a 65 ton chassis for 61.5%. I don't know of anything else that gets up that high and the
Hel beats out the various 4/6 XLFE heavies for sheer podspace. Of course, you pay for it with armor that's relatively thin compared to the other Clan 4/6 XLFE heavies and a small cockpit.
There's more than just raw podspace to consider there, though, and it's worth looking at what I consider the benchmark competitors. Without an exhaustive search, let's take four other 4/6 XLFE Omnis in the same weight class and speed bracket, including an IS design for cross-comparison, ranked:
- Night Gyr - 75 tonner, 38 tons podspace, 12 fixed DHS, 4 fixed jump jets
- Nova Cat - 70 tonner, 38 tons podspace, 11 fixed DHS
- Flamberge - 70 tonner, 35 tons podspace, 11 fixed DHS, 2 fixed SRM 6
- Avatar - 70 tonner, 34 tons podspace, 10 fixed DHS, 2 fixed ISML, fixed CASE in the side torsos
Speaking for myself, I think the
Night Gyr comes out on top here in general. Considering it's got 10 tons on the
Hel and five tons on the other two, it'd better be. The DHS come out in the wash against the
Hel - it's two tons you won't get back, yeah, but it's also two tons the
Hel is almost always going to be mounting anyway. The jump jets eat up another four tons but the crits are the same crits the
Hel is having to use for those two extra DHS. I'd prefer not having them hard-mounted but overall, for podspace and crits, the
Hel has a single crit advantage in practical terms it pays for with the piloting penalty from a small cockpit. In exchange, you get fewer heat sinks that can get critted out and two more tons of armor, plus jump jets if you like jump jets. You can fit most
Hel loadouts on here if you try hard enough; the A will have to lose a crit somewhere. Clearly you're never going to get IJJs on here, either. Mission payload is 44 tons at the end of the day.
The
Flamberge and
Nova Cat both use standard armor, so they lose some tonnage but gain crits. The main practical difference between them is the SRMs on the
Flamberge. (There's differences in the armor distribution but that's a little out of scope.) Mission payload is 39 tons on both of them counting the fixed DHS. I find the SRMs annoying personally and cut the
Flamberge less slack than the
Avatar or
Night Gyr but opinions may differ. A
Nova Cat can come within spitting distance of a
Hel's podloads if thoughtfully outfitted and has more crits to shove the pods into.
Flamberges can do decently for themselves, too, if they lean on the SRMs for short-range damage and have more crits to rely on energy weapons vs. the ballistics a
Hel might use.
The
Avatar is at the bottom of the heap, although personally I find the design's flaws a lot more tolerable than the
Flamberge's SRMs. Leaving the XLFE size aside, the fixed CASE is useful a lot of the time and while the fixed MLs are not great, they're broadly useful and don't require you to haul along ammunition to use them. It also illustrates just how much endo-steel and ferro-fibrous buy you - the
Hel is packing 39 tons (+1 ton for the cockpit) on a frame 5 tons lighter. The
Avatar has the lowest mission payload at 37 tons, purely because unlike the Clan 'Mechs it doesn't use endo-steel.
The fact that every design I think is a good comparison for the
Hel is 5-10 tons heavier says something about the podspace I managed to shoehorn into it. All of that is specifically to accommodate the Prime configuration's armaments while providing a real Gauss endurance, enough heat sinks to use the guns well, and a reasonable level of armor. Though I personally think the
Night Gyr is a better 'Mech, I'm proud of what I managed to achieve with the
Hel. It's a nasty piece of work for its size.